The State of American Federalism, 1994-1995

Federalism, as a concept and as a reality, received assistancefrom a variety of sources during 1994–1995. Opinion pollsrevealed a public strongly supportive of shifts in the balanceof power between federal and state governments. The new Republican-controlledCongress, bent on devolving authority to the states, busieditself with an ambitious legislative agenda. The DemocraticPresident pursued his principles of federalism and intergovernmentalrelations by supporting the unfunded mandates bill and by increasingthe use of the administrative waiver. The U.S. Supreme Courtbolstered federalism with its rulings in cases such as Lopez,a state challenge to the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act.The new mood in Washington, D.C. was complemented by state leadersanxious to take on the challenges of a rebalanced federal system     

Government 'strength' and budget deficits in advanced democracies

Abstract. Roubini and Sachs provided the first systematic test of the idea that political structure the size, composition, diversity, and/or stability of a governing cabinet - is related to budget deficits. In this paper, we take issue with several of Roubini and Sachs' choices concerning data and operationalization, and argue that their approach cannot offer clear conclusions about the relationship between national political structure and budget deficits. We test the 'strength of government' hypothesis using central government finance data on 16 countries, 1959–1990. We measure deficits in a way that maximizes comparability across countries but avoids the potential problems of standardizing by GDP. We examine carefully the definition and measurement of 'strength of government', in light of recent theoretical and empirical work in comparative politics. We perform pooled time-series regression analysis of deficit change in 16 OECD countries for the period 1959–1990. We argue that while structural differences between governments may have little impact on deficits during good economic times, they may become especially noticeable and influential during periods when governments struggle to cope with severe economic problems.     

Townies

His work has been featured in numerous publications.     

Win,lose, or withdraw: A categorical analysis of career patterns in the House of Representatives, 1948–1978

The literature on incumbency advantage has focused on margin as an indicator for electoral security. But while electoral margin is a goodex ante measure, it is a poorex post measure of security. Further, existing work has not integrated the choice of retirement with changes in the level of security. To improve the specification and definition of “marginality”, a multinomial LOGIT model is proposed where the dependent variable is categorical. Account is therefore taken of all the ways a Representative's term in office can end, including reelection, defeat, retirement, or pursuit of other office. The sample includes all U.S. Representatives elected for the first time between 1948 and 1978. The results indicate that (1) margin in the previous election is a significantex ante proxy for the probability of electoral defeat, and (2) while the electoral safety of all incumbents in the House has been increased, the increases are greater for members elected for the first time in the period since 1965.     

The effect of the secret ballot on voter turnout rates

Secrecy in the voting process eliminated an important motivation for voting. No longer able to verify the voters' choices, political parties stopped offering payments in return for votes. Within the rational voter framework, it will be shown that these payments were a prime impetus for people to vote. Without a vote market to cover their voting costs, many voters were rational to stay away from the polls. This hypothesis is supported through a series of empirical tests culminating in a multivariate legislative regression. When other electoral laws are controlled for, the secret ballot accounts for 7 percentage points lower Gubernatorial turnout.     

The influence of state-level economic conditions on the 1992 U.S. presidential election

Evidence is found that state-level economic conditions played a significant role in the defeat of George Bush in the 1992 U.S. presidential election. Evidence is also found which indicates that the entrance of Ross Perot into the race as an independent candidate was not instrumental in the Bush loss.