Disputed Ownership: Parties,Issues, and Traits in the Minds of Voters

Is party “ownership” of issues and traits manifest in the minds of voters in ways that could generate the oft-hypothesized implications for mass and elite electoral behavior? We specify two ways in which it may be: party reputations refer to the association of a trait or issue with a party; candidate stereotyping requires that party labels prompt differential assignment of attributes or competencies to candidates. We develop a quantitative measure of both ownership types, and apply it to issues and traits. New national survey data provide the first evidence that party reputation ownership exists for issues and traits. New experimental tests reveal evidence of candidate stereotyping for issues, but not traits. Voters associate some traits more with one party, but may not assign them to candidates based upon party label, demonstrating a key difference in the nature and likely implications of issue and trait ownership.     

Coalitions and Conservation: Conditional Impacts of Coalitions on Ballot Measures for Open Space

Social scientists have long debated the impact of interest group coalitions on public policies. While views on coalition impacts range from dominance to impotence, an emerging perspective suggests that coalitions have impacts under certain conditions. In this paper, we join and expand that perspective by arguing that coalitions have a conditional impact on public policies through ballot measures. Specifically, we argue that coalitions will have greater impact on ballot measure outcomes in non‐presidential election years, when the stakes involved are high, and when the goals of the measure are diverse. We test these hypotheses with analyses of a dataset of over 2,400 ballot measures on spending for open space at the state and local level between 1988 and 2014. We find strong support for our hypotheses. The findings have implications for scholarly debates on interest groups and coalitions, for the role of ballot measures in American public policy, and for assessments of open space and conservation in American society.     

Russia as a Gravity Pole of the GCC’s New Foreign Policy Pragmatism

Abstract

Despite the obvious differences over the Syrian crisis and Iran, the GCC countries do not seem to be distancing themselves from Russia politically. To a large extent that is due to Russia’s growing military role (in Syria) and military cooperation (with Iran), as well as the diminishing role of the United States under Obama. Having accepted the situation in Syria (after the fall of Aleppo) as a fait accompli, the GCC’s elites seem to be looking at Russia as a powerful player able to reduce the scope of Iran’s expansion in the region. Their approach involves a carefully established mechanism of economic interaction exploiting Russia’s need for GCC finances and arms acquisitions.     

Formal versus traditional institutions: evidence from Ghana

Citizens in Ghana have a host of options when it comes to local governance provision as a result of the government’s decentralization policies. We undertake to explore and understand how Ghanaians navigate the constellation of local institutions, both formal and traditional, to solve an array of common problems. A four-constituency survey was administered during the summer of 2009 and asked respondents about their experiences interacting with four formal institutions and one traditional institution. We find that formal institutions are by and large working effectively and are enhanced by the presence of a traditional institution. We consider the implications of our results with respect to both democratization and decentralization.     

Minority Arab voting: village dynamics and electoral observations in Israel

For all the novelty of a democratizing “Arab Spring”, there have long been pockets in the Middle East where Arabic-speaking voters have gone to the polls in competitive elections, albeit as minority citizens. This article sheds light on such voting at the grassroots level, in Israel, where passions are intense even as the issues and candidates are local. Contradictions between Western notions of electoral democracy and the power of the Arab extended family (hamula) result in what we call “electoral hamulism”. Unexamined heretofore in the scholarly literature are the variability of polling station openness and the methodology of electoral observation in the Arab electoral world. Also underappreciated are psycho-cultural consequences of electoral loss. Overall, the article takes up Valbjørn’s call for “meta-study” analysis and “self-reflective” rethinking of the study of Arab politics.     

Give them toys? Military allocations and regime stability in transitional democracies

In contrast to the conventional wisdom that democratization reduces coups, 46% of coups targeted democracies from 2000–2009, twice the rate seen in the prior half-century. Efforts to explain coups have arrived at wildly varied conclusions regarding the vulnerability of democracies. We argue that this is attributable to regime type acting as a conditional influence. We theorize that democratization incentivizes old elites to veto the process, and these vetoes are more likely to occur when the new regime cannot credibly commit to the military’s corporate interests. Using cross-national data for 172 states for the years 1952–2009, we find that though young democracies are more vulnerable to coups than either civilian authoritarian regimes or older democracies, this vulnerability is mitigated when military expenditures are near or above the sample mean. We also find that commonly argued determinants of coups appear to be driven by their influence in democracies, suggesting the need for scholars to revisit commonly held assumptions regarding autocratic survival.     

Introduction: Contemporary Romanian politics

Romania is an archetypical case of protracted post-communism. Its regime transition was problematic and its founding election flawed, allowing successor communists to secure their hold on power. A period of quasi-authoritarianism and failed reform followed until critical elections in 1996 brought the liberal opposition to power for the first time. Since that time its political system has stabilized into a pattern in which electoral competition occurs but political accountability is limited and corruption is widespread. The current regime should therefore be considered as consolidated, bearing the marks of the transition period, but unlikely to undergo any further near term dramatic change.     

Schoolhouses,courthouses, and statehouses after Serrano

The constitutionality of public school finance systems has been challenged in 43 states in the 25 years since the landmark Serrano decision. Using data on revenues from more than 16,000 school districts over the 1972-1992 period, this article assesses the impact of court-mandated reform on the role of the states in school finance. We find that resources from the state increased while revenues from local districts were roughly unchanged after successful litigation. States also followed a more aggressive redistribution policy in the aftermath of court-mandated reform; after successful litigation, state aid to the poorest districts increased and aid to the wealthiest districts remained unchanged. Finally, we find that reforms that were initiated by the states without judicial prodding were typically ineffective.     

Essence of Negotiation: Understanding Appeasement and “The Great Munich Stereotype”

The relative merits of rational choice and behavioral approaches to the study of negotiation continue to be hotly debated. This article tests qualitative postdictions (assertions or deductions about something in the past) from these paradigms as well as the alternative approach of new institutional theory against the extensive record of negotiation process, contractual form, and contract implementation from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. I find the incomplete relational form of the peace treaty to be consistent with the behavioral and new institutional concepts and find that only behavioral theory can explain how unilateral German moves unraveled the treaty during the 1930s. But the historical record further reveals that the close fit between the behavioral paradigm and these events is more than coincidence. I also discuss the role of conference participants, particularly John Maynard Keynes and Walter Lippmann, in establishing the basis for modern behavioral science. The behavioral paradigm emerged from efforts to understand and fix serious policy mistakes such as those made in the peace negotiations. The study of human error was intended to serve as the basis for broad‐based organizational solutions. Finally, I discuss the impact of “the Munich stereotype” on such recent events as the planning for the American invasion and reconstruction of Iraq; such examples suggest continued imperfections in the system of organized intelligence that has actually evolved in the United States.     

Where there's no green man: child road-safety education in Ethiopia

Traffic crashes kill 1.2 million people annually, and the number is growing fast, particularly in developing countries. Although child road-safety education is widely considered important, few programmes have resulted in demonstrated improvements in safety. We review road-safety education in Ethiopia and conclude that it is often locally inappropriate and impractical. Such programmes are frequently based on dominant but ineffective educational models imported from other contexts. Drawing on our experience of establishing a community-managed child road-safety education programme in Ethiopia, we suggest how road-safety education in developing countries might become more effective.