Constituents’ Responses to Congressional Roll‐Call Voting

Do citizens hold their representatives accountable for policy decisions, as commonly assumed in theories of legislative politics? Previous research has failed to yield clear evidence on this question for two reasons: measurement error arising from noncomparable indicators of legislators’ and constituents’ preferences and potential simultaneity between constituents’ beliefs about and approval of their representatives. Two new national surveys address the measurement problem directly by asking respondents how they would vote and how they think their representatives voted on key roll‐call votes. Using the actual votes, we can, in turn, construct instrumental variables that correct for simultaneity. We find that the American electorate responds strongly to substantive representation. (1) Nearly all respondents have preferences over important bills before Congress. (2) Most constituents hold beliefs about their legislators’ roll‐call votes that reflect both the legislators’ actual behavior and the parties’ policy reputations. (3) Constituents use those beliefs to hold their legislators accountable.     

Rising powers and order contestation: disaggregating the normative from the representational

A central theme of the literature on rising powers is that new aspirants to great power status pose a challenge to the underlying principles and norms that underpin the existing, Western-led order. However, in much of the literature, the nature and significance of rising powers for international order are imprecisely debated, in particular the concept and practice of ‘contestation’. In this article, we aim to establish a distinction between normative contestation and what can be thought of as ‘contestation over representation’: that is, contestation over who is setting and overseeing the rules of the game rather than the content of the rules themselves and the kind of order that they underpin. The paper engages with debates on international order and international society, and its empirical basis is provided by a thorough analysis of the discourse of rising power summitry.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

The place of stories in development: creating spaces for participation through narrative analysis

The stories that we hear as we conduct development research or implement development projects are often relegated to the margins of development studies. This article argues that these stories require our attention, for they are windows on to indigenous narratives of development and our placement in those narratives. Examining these stories as efforts to emplot experiences of development and encounters with development professionals within particular narratives enables us to better understand our own positionality in the communities in which we work, and therefore better understand the opportunities and challenges that our research/interventions present to the emergence of a truly participatory development.     

Impossibility results in the axiomatic theory of intertemporal choice

Public Choice - We have shown formally that for infinite generation, transitive, intertemporal choice procedures the familiar conditions of Pareto optimality and independence together with the...     

A comparison of respondents in initial and recommitment hearings

Legislators and researchers have focused on one aspect of civil commitment: initial commitments. Many patients, however, remain in the hospital after their initial commitment expires and, thus, must be recommitted if they are to remain in involuntary treatment. Demographic, clinical, and treatment data were collected on 374 adults having initial or recommitment hearings during a 3-month period at a large state hospital in Virginia. Respondents in initial commitment hearings were younger and displayed acute symptoms; recommitment respondents were older with symptoms of chronic psychopathology, especially those associated with schizophrenia and organic brain syndrome. The subject of recommitment patients and hearings needs to be a focus of future research efforts to determine whether these differences are reflected in a greater relative gap between the letter and practice of the law in recommitment hearings.This research was supported by grant No. R03 MH44065-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The financial assistance of the Institute for Research Development of the Human Sciences Research Council is also acknowledged. This article was written while the first author was a postdoctoral fellow in Clinical Services Research, NIMH grant No. 5T32MH17184-06.