Much Ado About Very Little: Reply to Herron

Mitchell S. Sanders Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 e-mail: msander1{at}nd.edu While Herron (2004, Political Analysis 12:182–190) iscorrect that sensitivity to changes in underlying scale andhow they affect estimates and inferences is generally important,our assumption in Rothenberg and Sanders (2000, American Journalof Political Science 44:310–319) that W-NOMINATE scalescan be directly compared from one Congress to another to studylegislative shirking is quite defensible because scale variabilityis not a substantial problem. Not only are the assumptions inour original analysis regarding variability very reasonable,because any variability is quite small, but effects on consistencyare marginal and, to the degree that they are relevant, indicatethat our test of the shirking hypothesis is conservative. Furthermore,even generous estimates of variability in W-NOMINATE betweenone immediate Congress and another have little impact on results.In addition, Herron's analysis includes an unaddressed censoringproblem that again, while unlikely to have much substantiverelevance, indicates that Rothenberg and Sanders have workedagainst themselves in trying to find shirking. In conclusion,the issues that Herron highlights are of marginal consequencefor the original analysis and, to the extent they matter, onlybuttress the findings generated and the inferences drawn.     

The public choice of educational choice

The very small literature explaining (i) how citizens have voted in two California voucher referenda, (ii) how legislators have voted on voucher bills in the State of Florida and the US Congress, and (iii) the variation across states in charter school provisions is summarized. New empirical evidence documenting the cross-state variation in the success of voucher referenda and voucher bills is examined. Voucher bill characteristics and state characteristics play important roles. Voucher bills have been passed only in the more conservative Republican states, and almost all of the successful voucher programs have been targeted at large, struggling school districts.     

Evidence on the importance of spatial voting models in presidential nominations and elections

ADA scores and Nominate scores are used for the first time to examine the influence of spatial voting records on which candidate wins the party’s presidential nomination and on which nominee wins the general election. We find that the most conservative Republican candidate and moderately liberal Democrats were most likely to win their party’s nomination. For general elections we find that the candidate’s spatial record has nearly as much impact on the outcome as economic growth, which has been the focus of most past empirical research. The nominee whose voting record is more moderate is more likely to be elected.     

Full Disclosure: Unanticipated Improvements in Property Tax Uniformity

This paper contributes to two strands in the property tax literature. One thread considers the effects of full disclosure requirements or “truth in taxation” on the rate of property tax growth. The second studies the determinants of assessment uniformity. This article focuses on the role of full disclosure in changing administrative incentives and improving the uniformity of the property tax. A panel of 29 Utah counties over a 32‐year period is used in a TSCS analysis. Findings suggest there is substantial evidence that full disclosure improved uniformity in Utah, but limited evidence that it restrained property tax growth.     

Congressional Politics of International Financial Rescues

In the 1990s, the American executive organized financial rescues for Mexico and several Asian economies. These rescues were controversial in Congress, where members voted repeatedly to reduce or eliminate the executive's freedom to engage in them. I analyze these roll calls with an eye toward explaining who opposes and who supports international financial rescues. I argue that the interests of private actors (district constituencies and interest groups) have an important effect on member voting. Following Stolper-Samuelson reasoning, I find that a member is significantly more likely to favor (oppose) rescues as the proportion of high-skilled (low-skilled) workers in a district increases. In addition, I find that campaign contributions from international banks increase the probability that a member will vote in favor of rescues. Overall, the findings suggest that the distributional effects of rescues find expression in Congress and constrain U.S. international financial policymaking.     

Spontaneous cerebellar hemorrhage in children

Spontaneous cerebellar hemorrhages are a rare but often fatal occurrence in children. Although there are several predisposing factors such as blood dyscrasias or astrocytomas, the most common cause of cerebellar hemorrhage in an otherwise healthy child is the rupture of a vascular malformation. We reviewed the files of the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York and found four such instances over a period of less than two years. We present these here and outline the approach the forensic pathologist should take in evaluating such deaths.     

New Technologies and the Modernization of Local Government: an Analysis of Biases and Constraints

In emerging structures of local governance the institutions of elected local government have the potential to fulfil three complementary roles: those of local democracy, public policy making and direct service delivery. Although ICTs (information and communication technologies) could effectively develop all three roles there is a systemic bias which favours service delivery applications and ignores others. This bias can be explained by reference to a network of actors who determine ICT policy in relative isolation from the other policy networks active at the local level. The ways in which this bias is perpetuated are explored through a case study of ICT policy making in UK local government. The implications of the systemic bias for the long-term future of local government, and indeed public administration, are both severe and profound. They suggest an over-emphasis upon performance measurement, a decline in democratic activity and a diminishing capacity among elected bodies to effect broad public policy initiatives.     

The role of tax bases and collections costs in the determination of income tax rates,seigniorage and inflation

A growing theoretical literature on optimal taxation predicts that governments will set the tax rates on money holdings and on more traditional tax bases to minimize the deadweight losses of collecting government revenue. Under the presumption that relative collection costs and tax bases have not changed significantly over time, the empirical time-series seigniorage literature has focused on the theory's tax smoothing implication, finding only weak support. We show that changes in collections costs and tax bases played an important role in the determination of tax composition and find stronger support for tax smoothing when this is taken into account.