Priming Gender: Campaigning on Women's Issues in U.S. Senate Elections

The gender gap has been an important feature of American elections since 1980. Yet, most explanations for the effects of gender on voting behavior focus on differences between men and women without taking account of how campaign strategies may serve to highlight or mask these differences. I examine how Senate candidates act strategically in deciding whether and how to target women voters. I find that candidates make these decisions based largely on two factors: (1) the importance of these issues to the state's voters and (2) whether gender gaps had been decisive in previous statewide contests. Analysis of exit-poll data indicates that when campaigns focused more on women's issues, women became more likely to vote Democratic while the vote choices of men were unaffected. Thus, campaign strategies do appear to influence the importance of gender differences in voting behavior.     

Neither Seen Nor Heard: Children's Citizenship in Contemporary Democracies*

This article addresses the subject of children's citizenship in liberal democracies. While children may lack full capability to act in the capacity of citizens, the political status to which they have been relegated leaves much to be desired. Paternalist policies dictate that children be represented politically by their parents, leaving them as or more vulnerable and excluded from private life as women were under coverture. Lacking independent representation or a voice in politics, children and their interests often fail to be understood because the adults who do represent them conflate, or substitute, their own views for those of children. Compounding this damage is the tendency for democratic societies to view children not as an ever-present segment of the populace, but rather as future adults. This encourages disregard for children's interests. Until democratic societies establish a better-defined and comprehensive citizenship for children, along with methods for representation that are sensitive to the special political circumstances faced by children, young people will remain ill-governed and neglected by democratic politics.     

From Heroes to Whingers: Changing Attitudes to British Migrants, 1947 to 1977

Shifts in attitudes towards British migrants from the late 1940s to the late 1970s chart the development of a non-British Australia. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, British migrants were accorded a special prestige based on a belief that Australia and Britain had fought to defend shared imperial British values. Although British migrants protested at hostel conditions, public sympathy remained on the side of the migrants. The rise of the Whingeing Pom stereotype around 1960 reflects the declining weight of British wartime experience and a strengthening of the idea of an independent non-British Australia. The 1970s saw the ending of British preference, and the debate surrounding British activism in Australian trades unions raised the question of whether British migrants were now merely an ethnic group within a multicultural Australia.     

Reading Downs: New Labour and An Economic Theory of Democracy

In Downs' median voter theorem parties can only increase their vote by changing their policies and moving towards the electoral centre ground. This theorem has been used to sustain a particular and, I will argue, one-sided interpretation of New Labour's actions and political trajectory. There is more to An Economic Theory of Democracy than the median voter theorem. Downs argues that voters and parties operate in conditions of uncertainty and that this gives parties the opportunity to persuade voters to revise their beliefs. Parties can win elections not only by changing their policies but by changing voters' minds. Downs' arguments about persuasion can be used to generate an alternative and very different interpretation of New Labour.     

Do generic gTLDs require their own ex ante regulation?

This article reviews ICANN's treatment of applications to create new Top Level Domains based on generic terms (e.g. .book, .motorcycles), reserved for exclusive use by the applicant. It finds little evidence in past domain name history that such registrations represented a risk to competition. Had applicants made abusive use of their domains then existing law would have provided appropriate remedies in any case. Theory suggests that such a novel market was unsuitable for prospective regulatory action and that, by converting potential monopolies into potential cartels, ICANN's action may even have made the competition risk worse.