It Takes an Outsider: Extralegislative Organization and Partisanship in the California Assembly, 1849–2006

Why are American politicians “single‐minded seekers of reelection” in some decades and fierce ideological warriors in others? This article argues that the key to understanding the behavior of members inside a legislative chamber is to follow the actions of key figures outside the chamber. These outsiders—activists, interest groups, and party bosses—use their control over party nominations, conditioned on institutional rules, to ensure ideological behavior among officeholders. To understand how vital these outsiders are to legislative partisanship, this article takes advantage of a particular natural experiment: the state of California's experience with cross‐filing (1914–59), under which institutional rules prevented outsiders from influencing party nominations. Under cross‐filing, legislative partisanship collapsed, demonstrating that incumbents tend to prefer nonpartisanship or fake partisanship to actual ideological combat. Partisanship quickly returned once these outsiders could again dominate nominations. Several other historical examples reveal extralegislative actors exerting considerably greater influence over members' voting behavior than intralegislative party institutions did. These results suggest that candidates and legislators are the agents of activists and others who coordinate at the community level to control party nominations.     

Media effects: The influence of local newspaper coverage on municipal police size

This paper explores the influence that local newspaper coverage exerts on the relative size of municipal police agencies. It is hypothesized that the volume of law enforcement news stories affects sworn personnel allocations. Regression results based on 63 large U.S. cities show that media coverage does affect police employment levels. A content analysis of selected newspapers suggests that crime-related stories are prominently featured and tend to portray the police as effective in responding to criminal incidents. Implications for future research concerning media influence and criminal justice policy-making are offered. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, D.C., November 1998. I would like to thank Ruth Peterson, David Jacobs, Randy Hodson, Christopher Browning, Maria Velez, the editor of AJCJ, and three anonymous reviewers for most helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

The Wrong Prescription for the Congo

In October 2006, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which experienced possibly the world's deadliest humanitarian catastrophe, held the second of two rounds of the first free presidential elections in 46 years. The culmination of a transitional process funded, designed, and overseen by the West, the elections were supposed to bring stability, accountability, and democracy to a land long devastated by war, poor administration, and authoritarianism. Sadly, this brighter future is unlikely to be reached any time soon, for the transitional process is fatally flawed. A bold approach is needed to reform the DRC's governmental apparatus, the collapse of which not only affects its citizens, but also destabilizes states throughout the continent and provides a haven for terrorists, arms traffickers, and criminal networks.     

A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology

Many theoretical and empirical accounts of representation argue that primary elections are a polarizing influence. Likewise, many reformers advocate opening party nominations to nonmembers as a way of increasing the number of moderate elected officials. Data and measurement constraints, however, have limited the range of empirical tests of this argument. We marry a unique new data set of state legislator ideal points to a detailed accounting of primary systems in the United States to gauge the effect of primary systems on polarization. We find that the openness of a primary election has little, if any, effect on the extremism of the politicians it produces.     

The Friendly Media Phenomenon: A Cross-National Analysis of Cross-Cutting Exposure

We hypothesize that in the real world, as opposed to the lab, the norm is for people to experience friendly media that favor their political predispositions when political favoritism is perceived at all. For this reason, media are generally limited in their ability to create cross-cutting exposure. We test this hypothesis using representative survey data drawn from 11 different countries with varying media systems. We further hypothesize that television will contribute more to cross-cutting exposure than newspapers. Finally, and most importantly, we test the hypothesis that the more the structure of a country's media system parallels that of its political parties, the more that country's population will be dominated by exposure to like-minded views via mass media. We find confirmation for all 3 of these hypotheses and discuss their implications for the role of mass media in providing exposure to cross-cutting political perspectives.     

THE DIVIDED WORLD OF THE CHILD: DIVORCE AND LONG‐TERM PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

This study evaluated the extent to which divorce creates the “divided world of the child,” as well as consequences of this “divided world” for long‐term adjustment. An ethnically diverse sample of 1,375 young‐adult university students completed retrospective measures of parental nurturance and involvement, and current measures of psychosocial adjustment and troubled ruminations about parents. Results indicated that reports of maternal and paternal nurturance and involvement were closely related in intact families but uncorrelated in divorced families. Across family forms, the total amount of nurturance or involvement received was positively associated with self‐esteem, purpose in life, life satisfaction, friendship quality and satisfaction, and academic performance; and negatively related to distress, romantic relationship problems, and troubled ruminations about parents. Mother‐father differences in nurturance and involvement showed a largely opposite set of relationships. Implications for family court practices are discussed.     

Strengthening Moral Distinction

The authors in this symposium on Sparing Civilians gave me much to think about; their criticisms have helped me to strengthen the argument for moral distinction, and enhance the moral protection of civilians in war. In this response I address their objections thematically, focusing in turn on each chapter of the book.