Legislator Turnout and the Calculus of Voting: The Determinants of Abstention in the U.S. Congress

The belief that turnout and abstention depend on theinteraction of the benefits and costs of voting is oneof the longest held in public choice. The interplaybetween benefits and costs has typically been studiedwithin the context of voter turnout in elections, butthese results are confounded by the fact thatparticipation in such elections is a low-cost, low-benefit activity. Analysis of voting in legislatures,where the potential returns and costs to participantsare greater, is more promising. This paper examines participation on roll calls in theU.S. House of Representatives during the recent 104thCongress (1995–1996). We analyze all contested rollcalls during this two-year period, using a negativebinomial count model that accounts for legislatorheterogeneity, to determine what factors associatedwith such votes induce turnout. Our results suggestthat, while turnout is predictable, its primaryexplanation does not lie with our standard calculationof expected benefits. We find that the ideologicalpolarization of the roll call alternatives is not avery important factor for turnout and, even morestrikingly and contrary to what past analysis hasimplied, the likelihood of any given legislator beingpivotal is completely irrelevant. Rather, what is mostimportant is that a non-trivial number of members ofCongress decide not to vote when contextual factorsforce them to choose between electioneering andlegislating. Consequently, while our results are notsufficient to induce a full-fledged ``paradox ofcongressional voting'' analogous to that of massvoting, they do indicate that participation inCongress depends most heavily on factors beyond adesire to affect the outcome.     

Guilty Pleas in International Criminal Law: Constructing a Restorative Justice Approach, Nancy Amoury Combs

The field of transitional justice is entering a new phase bornof several decades of experience and a maturation of the practicaland theoretical engagement with the complex set of problemsinvolved in facing past atrocities. Guilty Pleas in InternationalCriminal Law: Constructing a Restorative Justice Approach focusesattention on the issue of guilty pleas in international criminallaw as an area of legal practice that merits additional attention,     

Regional coordination of federal programs: Has the difficult grown impossible?

As the various categorical programs of federal assistance proliferated during the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government sought to bring about some degree of coordination among the programs in any given region through a network of regional clearinghouses. Operating with inadequate resources, limited authority, and various other difficulties, the clearinghouses nevertheless chalked up some modest accomplishments. In 1982, as a step in the New Federalism concept of the Reagan administration, the clearinghouse system was drastically shrunk back in scope and decentralized in structure. If the concept of regional coordination among federal programs is to survive, it will have to depend on action at the state and local levels; but such action does not seem promising.     

Valuing Policy Alternatives: A Generalization

Those interested in political phenomena such as voting havefound random utility models, originally developed for decisionssuch as transportation choice, especially attractive, as theunderlying model can yield a statistical model with a few simple,realistic assumptions. Unfortunately, such models have provendifficult to apply to situations with more than two votes andthree alternatives or an unknown cutpoint. Additionally, aswe show, standard applications of such models to voting, whileproducing consistent parameter estimates, yield standard errorsthat are too small and, due to a failure to employ all relevanttheoretical information, biased ideal point estimates. We specifya general model applicable to any number of votes and alternatives,with correct standard errors and unbiased ideal point estimates.We apply this model to a number of cases studied by previousscholars involving legislative voting over the minimum wage:(1) when there are two votes and two known cutpoints (K. Krehbieland D. Rivers, American Journal of Political Science, 1988,32, 1151–1174); (2) when there are three votes and threeknown cutpoints (J. Wilkerson, American Journal of PoliticalScience, 1991, 35, 613–623); and (3) when there are threevotes but where one cutpoint is unknown given a lack of knowledgeabout the impact of a policy (J. Wilkerson, American Journalof Political Science, 1991, 35, 613–623) or the possibilityof sophisticated voting (C. Volden, Journal of Politics, 1998,60, 149–173). We show that in various contexts our analysisimproves on existing methods, yielding consistent and efficientideal point estimates and a better-fitting model with improvedpredictive accuracy.