The Impact of Unified Party Government on Campaign Contributions

This article examines the connection between unified party government and campaign contributions. Our central argument is that unified party government confers a substantial, but previously overlooked, fundraising advantage to intra‐chamber majority parties. We examined data on corporate campaign contributions to U.S. House incumbents and state legislators in 17 different legislative chambers. We found a strong fundraising benefit accruing to intra‐chamber majority status across all of these legislatures, but the benefit is heavily conditioned by the presence of unified or divided government. The results offer important implications for our understanding of the financial balance of power in American politics and for the vast scholarly literature on unified party government.     

Issue Accountability and the Mass Public

Under what conditions, if any, does the mass electorate hold congressional members accountable for their records on specific issues? We examine this question on the issue of crime, for which salience has varied substantially and opinion has favored Republicans, and the environment, for which salience has not varied much and voters have favored Democrats. Because different parametric specifications produce divergent findings, we utilize matching analysis in addition to ordinary least squares. The tests suggest that issue accountability exists even controlling for a member's overall record. However, such accountability depends crucially on issue salience and a member's partisan affiliation.     

Why We Still Need Bernard Crick

Bernard Crick's greatest polemic In Defence of Politics remains as relevant today as when it was written. As modern politicians try to contract out responsibility for more and more, Crick's argument that honesty about the limitation of what they can achieve is the best defence of their most important of all human activities is increasingly important. His attacks on scientism in political thought, on populism, and on the value‐free nature of market mechanisms, remain classic.     

Determinants of Pay‐as‐You‐Go Financing of Capital Projects: Evidence from the States

Although states have long practiced pay‐as‐you‐go in financing their capital projects as a supplement to debt, academia has paid scarce attention to pay‐go financing. This study fills in the niche by providing empirical evidence on what determines the use of pay‐go in financing capital projects. It develops a model that considers the preferences of both voters and politicians when they make capital financing decisions in a given institutional setting. The empirical results suggest that the use of pay‐go is affected by a state's income level, its economic conditions, the presence of a divided government, as well as its budgetary institutions.