The Diffusion of Executive Power in American State Constitutions: Tenure and Tenure Limitations

The comparative study of the development of state constitutionalprovisions concerning executive power, within the frameworkof diffusion theory, has value for a general understanding ofexecutive authority in contemporary America. American chiefexecutive offices were designed with a complex package of powersand limits, all viewed by their creators as mutually contingentand in delicate balance. Since the creation of each executiveoffice, constitutional development has evidenced a "decouplingeffect," that is, in different eras, discrete powers and limits,considered individually, were altered in response to unfoldingevents and changing ideological premises, generally with theeffect of enhancing executive power. This pattern is evidentin the development of the current norm in constitutional provisionsregarding tenure and tenure limitation, the four-year term andthe two-term limit. In this development, there has been evidenceof mutual influence between the states and the national governmentwith some evidence, too, of regional patterns of resistanceto change (in New England). Somewhat surprisingly for thosewhose study of executive power is limited to the Presidency,when a comparative approach is employed, the post-Civil Warperiod emerges as a crucial time of executive strengtheningin America.     

The pits and the core: Simple collective decision problems with concave preferences

This essay extends the theory of simple collective decision problems to spatial games in which (contrary to the traditional assumption) each agent's preferences are concave, in the sense that the alternatives that the agent does not prefer to any particular reference alternative together constitute a convex set. Such concave preferences might characterize decision problems in which, say, a site must be selected for some obnoxious facility, such as a prison, garbage dump, or facility for managing hazardous materials. The results indicate that, under these conditions, the (weak -)core can be structurally unstable, changing discontinuously with apparently minor perturbations of the decision problem. The main theorem identifies a curious property of the core when the set of feasible alternatives is compact and convex and each agent's preferences are strictly concave. Namely, a point in the feasible set's interior can belong to the core only if there is no feasible alternative that makes every member of any winning coalition strictly worse off. In this sense, an interior point belongs to the core only if it lies in the pits.A preliminary version of this essay was presented at the West Coast Conference on Small Groups Research, Stanford University, 17 April 1985, and the Experimental Social Choice Workshop, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 20–21 June 1985. This material is based on work supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (Grants SES 83-12123 and SES 84-10094), the Real Estate Center and Department of Decision Sciences of The Wharton School, and the Research Fund of the University of Pennsylvania.     

Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

The pervasive influence of partisanship on political evaluations is well known and understood. Whether citizens rely on their policy attitudes has received less attention, especially in the context of how people update and revise their evaluations. This paper focuses on presidential assessments and uses panel data covering three presidencies to model the determinants of opinion change. The results indicate that policy preferences (like partisanship) exert a regular and substantial influence on how citizens update their presidential evaluations.     

The Rhetoric of Educational Reform

This article is an examination of the language of recent large-scale education reform in England, New Zealand, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Manitoba. In each jurisdiction, we review both the official documents and the parliamentary debate around a set of major educational reforms, looking at both the similarities and differences between jurisdictions and at the overall nature of official discourse. Although some similar rhetoric was used in all four settings, we conclude that the differences in justifications were more significant than the commonalities. Our analysis supports a view of official rhetoric as being primarily symbolic and intended to create or support particular definitions of problems and solutions, but also as shaped by the historical context, institutional structure, and political culture of each setting.     

Americans and the Rise of China as a World Power

The rapid ascendency of China has attracted considerable attention from American scholars, policymakers, and media. Yet what does the American public think about the rise of China as a world power? In this paper we use survey data collected by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and other organizations to explore the nature and causes of Americans' views. It turns out that most Americans are well aware of the rise of China. Some are apprehensive about that rise, chiefly for national security (rather than economic) reasons, and many favor a degree of off-shore ‘balancing’ of the sort that realists recommend. But few Americans want to actively work to limit the rise of China. Very few favor the use of troops to defend Taiwan. Very few favor a nuclear-armed Japan. Large majorities of Americans take stands more akin to those of neo-liberals than realist theorists, favoring cooperation and peaceful engagement with China.     

British technical intelligence and the Soviet intermediate range ballistic missile threat, 1952–60

This article looks at the shifting intricacies of British assessments of the Soviet IRBM threat to the United Kingdom during the 1950s. Based on JIC, Cabinet and Air Ministry records of the period, as well as political memoirs, it looks at the assessments in parallel with the development of the British Blue Streak nuclear ballistic missile programme. This land‐based weapon was eventually cancelled in April 1960 on strategic not cost grounds, too early in this author's opinion.