The impact of complexity and reform on congressional committee output

Some investigators argue that recent reforms in Congress have made it more difficult for Congress to do its job, while others contend that growing complexity in the larger congressional environment has had this result. We test these competing explanations using selected measures of congressional committee inputs and outputs over a period of eight Congresses, 1961–1975. Analysis based on pooled time-series and cross-section data reveals that reform had no direct impact on our measures of committee inputs and outputs once the effects of underlying trends attributable to complexity in the external environment are controlled. Similar conclusions emerge when we compare committees in complex and noncomplex environments and also when we compare committees differentially affected by reform. We discuss methodological and policy implications of our findings.     

United Kingdom

European Journal of Political Research -     

The End of the PRI in Mexico?

The article examines the outcome of the 1997 mid-term elections in Mexico and the new political dynamics thereby generated, and asks to what extent they portend the end of the longest-surviving single-party government in the world, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Explanations for the PRI's dramatic decline in 1997 are explored, and an assessment is made of the strength of the principal opposition parties.     

Book reviews

Music and Video Private Copying: An International Survey of the Problem and the Law Gillian Davies and Michèle E. Hung 1993 Sweet & Maxwell P. 280 £40.00 ISBN 0‐421‐48450‐0

Publishing and Multimedia Law Michael Henry 1994, London: Butterworths Pp. xxviii + 820 + diskette (hardback)

Blackstone's Guide to the Trade Marks Act 1991 Ruth Annand and Helen Norman Pp. 411 £19.95     

Transitions between Formations and Organisations: An Historical Perspective on the Political Representation of Australian Farmers

The political representation of Australian farmers merits more attention from an historical perspective. Drawing upon the existing wealth of organisational histories it is argued that one can identify a number of shifts in the dominant organisational form or strategy pursued by primary producers in seeking political representation over time. Each phase has its own logic and rationale rooted in a range of historical conditions. The article identifies the importance of the pattern of social interaction, economic conditions and the prevailing political process in catalysing transitions between "phases" of representation. It concludes that the current debate over representation amongst primary producers and rural communities should be interpreted as the precursor to yet another phase of representation.     

Olson Triumphant? Recruitment Strategies and the Growth of a Small Business Organisation

This article looks at the emergence and maintenance of interest groups. We systematically identify a range of membership incentives that underpin mobilisation and apply them to a case study, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), focusing on the recruitment literature rather than the special niche literature on trade associations. The FSB was created in 1974 and membership was 'flat' at about 40,000 until recruiting method changes were introduced in the early 1990s. The total now approaches 200,000. This account of FSB recruitment argues unsurprisingly that the group resulted from a combination of diverse influences rather than the Truman type of 'automatic' mobilisation. More surprisingly, it notes that while early membership is accounted for by the perspectives of Truman, Salisbury, Wilson, Moe, Opp and Sabatier, the major increases of the past decade requires attention to the contribution of face-to-face marketing and Olsonian incentives. The FSB is an unusually good example of group entrepreneur activity that illustrates how entrepreneur incentives are different from those salient to members. Groups can experience different phases and forms as they grow. We exploit a 'natural experiment' by illustrating how the FSB addressed membership stagnation by changing the recruitment package in a broadly Olsonian direction. The 'before and after' patterns of recruitment allow a 'test' of these techniques. It also raises the issue of how different recruitment efforts produce a membership with different political characteristics.     

Stereotype Threat and Race of Interviewer Effects in a Survey on Political Knowledge

Social desirability is generally thought to underlie the propensity for survey respondents to tailor their answers to what they think would satisfy or please the interviewer. While this may in fact be the underlying motivation, especially on attitudinal and opinion questions, social desirability does not seem to be an adequate explanation for interviewer effects on factual questions. Borrowing from the social psychology literature on stereotype threat, we test an alternative account of the race-of-interviewer effects. Stereotype threat maintains that the pressure to disconfirm and to avoid being judged by negative and potentially degrading stereotypes interferes with the processing of information. We argue that the survey context contains many parallels to a testing environment in which stereotype threat might alter responses to factual questions. Through a series of framing experiments in a public opinion survey and the reliance on the sensitivity to the race of the interviewer, our results are consistent with expectations based on a theory of "stereotype threat." African American respondents to a battery of questions about political knowledge get fewer answers right when interviewed by a white interviewer than when interviewed by an African American interviewer. The observed differences in performance on the political knowledge questions cannot be accounted for by differences in the educational background or gender of the respondents.     

House of Lords simplifies the law on patent entitlement

The House of Lords has held that, to claim entitlement to another'spatent or patent application, a person need only prove thathe was the inventor of the subject-matter of the patent, anddoes not also need to invoke ‘some other rule of law’as required previously by the Court of Appeal in Markem v Zipher[2005] RPC 31.