Elections and Activist Coalitions in the United States

Formal models of voting have emphasizd the mean voter theorem , that all parties should rationally adopt identical positions at the electoral mean. The lack of evidence for this assertion is a paradox or contradiction in need of resolution. This article attempts to resolve this paradox by considering an electoral model that includes "valence" or nonpolicy judgements by voters of party leaders. The theorem is used to suggest that Republican success depends on balancing the opposed demands of economic and social conservatives. Democrat success in future elections resides in overcoming the policy demands of economic liberals and gaining support from cosmopolitans—the socially liberal but economically conservative potential supporters of the party .     

Why Has Public Administration Ignored Public Education,and Does It Matter?

Although education accounts for one-quarter of the United States' state and local government spending, employs one-third of all governmental employees, and consistently ranks as a high priority of citizens, public administration has neglected public education. This article considers the neglect of public education by public administration scholars, researchers, and practitioners and documents the sparse coverage of public education in textbooks, journals, books, professional association activities, and curricula. This neglect can be attributed to public administration's federal focus, ideological views about the relationship between public education and politics and resulting structural and organizational barriers, and the costs of overcoming these barriers. The separation limits the generalizability of public administration research and theory, harms policy development, constrains the capabilities of public administration program graduates, and impedes the success of public education. This article outlines steps needed to bring public education under the umbrella of public administration.     

The Political Determinants of Federal Expenditure at the State Level

It has been shown that states with higher per capita senate representation have higher federal spending per capita (Atlas, C. M., Gilligan, T. A., Hendershott, R. J. and Zupan, M. A. (1995). American Economic Review 85: 624–629). With a more recent data sample, more highly disaggregated data and a different set of political control variables, we are able to confirm the main result of Atlas et al. that per capita senate representation is positively related to federal expenditure. This effect is strongest for procurement expenditures. By contrast, we do not find support for their result that spending increases with per capita representation in the House of Representatives. Several other political variables are found to be significant in a subset of the expenditure equations.     

State budget stabilization fund adoption: Preparing for the next recession or circumventing fiscal constraints?

The high rate of budget stabilization fund adoption during the 1980s is often attributed to the 1980–1982 recession. In this view, states adopted funds to prevent a recurrence of the fiscal crises experienced during that recession. An alternative hypothesis is that some funds adopted during this period were intended to circumvent tax and expenditure limit laws. We find that states with TELs in place were significantly more likely to adopt statutory funds, but were significantly less likely to adopt funds with stringent deposit and withdrawal rules, suggesting that some funds were adopted to circumvent existing fiscal constraints.     

Competition in the sandbox: A test of the effects of preschool competition on educational outcomes

The emergence of publicly subsidized preschool raises important policy questions about the role of market forces and, in places where competition to provide these services exists, presents a setting in which the effects of competition on educational outcomes can be tested. We test neo‐institutional hypotheses concerning the effects of competition to provide publicly‐funded prekindergarten (pre‐k) services on the performance of public schools and private organizations. We use student‐level data collected over a five‐year period on a large sample of children who attended publicly subsidized prekindergarten in Georgia. Overall, we find that more competition improves third grade reading and math test scores but does not significantly affect retention or school readiness ratings during elementary school. Not all children are equally affected by competition; for example, greater competition significantly decreases the likelihood of retention for children of the working poor. Contrary to the expectations of some theorists, both public schools and private organizations respond to increased competition in ways that improve test scores but not retention. However, children attending private prekindergarten have higher language arts scores and lower retention across the range of competition when compared with children who attended public school pre‐k. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Electoral Competitiveness and the Voting Decision Evidence from the Pooled Senate Election Study

Scholarship on congressional elections holds that competitive elections are different from noncompetitive elections. Specifically, some scholars argue that the level of competitiveness determines the criteria or the weight of various criteria for the voting decision. Using the 1988–1990–1992 Pooled Senate Election Study, this research finds that enhanced electoral competitiveness increases the importance of assessments of presidential performance on the voting decision. These effects are particularly large for voters with high levels of educational attainment. Contrary to previous research, in highly competitive elections the role of ideological considerations is smaller than in less competitive elections.     

Election Campaigns,Social Communication,and the Accessibility of Perceived Discussant Preference

This paper examines the communication of political preferences between citizens during the course of an election campaign. We are particularly concerned with the ability of individuals to make judgments regarding the likely votes of others within their networks of relationships. To this end, we employ the concept of accessibility and its measurement device—response latency or response time—in the context of a computer-assisted telephone interview. We argue that the accessibility of respondent perceptions regarding the voting preferences of their associates depends on a range of individual and contextual factors, and the analysis focuses on variation across individuals, across relationships, and across the temporal contexts of election campaigns.     

HEALTH-CARE REFORM UNDER PRESIDENT CLINTON: ISSUES,IDEAS AND IMPLICATIONS

Abstract: President Clinton's proposals to reform health-care in the United States have stimulated unprecedented levels of discussion amongst stakeholders, commentators, policy analysts and the media. It seems obvious that there is a need to reform a system that consumes 14% of gross domestic product, yields only OECD-average morbidity and mortality rates and fails to provide coverage to millions of people. Nevertheless, forces against change are marshalling considerable resources in opposition to Clinton's proposals, and now that the November 1994 mid-term elections have routed the democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the belief is that his reforms will never be adopted in their original format. Some of the issues and ideas emanating from the American debate parallel trends in Australian health-care. Elements in transition include the switch from an input-to an outcomes-orientation, improving the quality of care, focusing on the customer and securing greater value-for-money. Unlike America, Australia has a limit on national health-care spending and this poses different challenges. However, the American debate is of vital interest to Australia. Australian and American hospitals are increasingly in competition to export services to South-East Asia. Of particular importance to Australia are: the extremely public nature of the American debate, which should be emulated, the fact that explicit rationing is now clearly on the international health-care agenda, the need to reconceptualise western culture's preoccupation with immortality, the need to alter economic incentives to health-care providers and the shift to outcomes measurement and effectiveness. Despite the comparatively healthy state of the Australian system, complacency should not be allowed to set in. Lessons for Australia from America are numerous, and it behoves us to monitor closely developments, trends and options arising from the Clinton-inspired debate.     

How Cities in California Have Responded to Fiscal Pressures Since Proposition 13

Fiscal pressures on California cities have been severe since the passage of Proposition 13. Federal and state aid policies have, in fact, exacerbated an already wrenching pattern of revenue losses since FY 77-78. State aid, in particular, has perversely dropped the most for those cities hit hardest by reductions in other revenues outside their direct control. Despite this, California cities have kept total real per capita revenues and expenditures constant over this period by increasing revenues from a variety of local sources—and especially from current service charges for enterprise activities. Furthermore, cities hit hardest by exogenous revenue losses have increased locally raised revenues the most. In short, cities in California have responded to reductions in revenues outside their direct control by increasing revenues from sources within their direct control, rather than by reducing expenditures and their revenue-increasing responses have tended to be in proportion to the losses they have faced in exogenous revenues.     

Fiscal Centralization in the American States: Findings From Another Perspective

Studies of the determinants of fiscal centralization have produced conflicting results. The difficulty may lie in reliance on cross-section analyses and their presumptions of the sources and nature of change. Studies of the current relative positions of political units ignore historical factors which may have "pushed" units away from some sort of normal position. An historical analysis of the American states demonstrates these points.