Pinpointing the Powerful: Covoting Network Centrality as a Measure of Political Influence

This article introduces centrality in covoting networks as a measure of influence. Based on a simple cueing dynamic, it conceptualizes those lawmakers as most central—and thus as having the greatest signaling influence—who impact the greatest number of colleagues' voting decisions. A formal proof and an agent‐based simulation show that cue‐providers are always more central than followers; hence, we can use real‐world voting data to identify the most influential legislators. To confirm the measure's construct validity, we predict covoting centrality in the European Parliament and find those factors that are expected to impact legislators' influence to predict their centrality.     

Adolescents' experience of a life-framing decision

High school students participating in a year-long longitudinal study of the college decision-making process described their experiences in open-ended essays, and rated their reactions to the process on several different Likert scales. Students' certainty in the decision and readiness to make a decision rose over time. As the process continued, students reported increasing satisfaction with the information they had obtained, and more comfort with the process itself. However, overall levels of reported enjoyment of the process were low to moderate, and overall ratings of the stressfulness of the decision remained high. Students gave evidence of seeing this decision as a life-framing one.This project was funded by The Spencer Foundation and by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-28177-R15), both to Kathleen M. Galotti. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stephanie Aubry, Jessica Bresler, Laura Gibson, Julie Greene, Ruby Hou, Perrin Klumpp, Jodi Matthes, Jennifer McGregor, Nancy Michelsen, Terrance Overby, Amy Prullage, Melissa Schneider, Katherine Seiden, Daniel Simons, and Meghan Wilhelm for gathering and coding data. We also thank the principals, guidance counselors, and teachers at the cooperating schools for helping us recruits students and schedule surveys.Received a Ph.D. in psychology and an M.S.E. in computer and information sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Current research interests include everyday reasoning and decision making, and the development of these skills.Received a Ph.D. in counseling and guidance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Research interests are in adolescent development and adolescent psychopathology.     

US‐Japan joint workshop to avoid nuclear anarchy

Since 1992, experts and officials from the United States and Japan have been meeting regularly to discuss a wide range of ongoing, emerging, or unresolved issues relating to nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear power. Steven Miller of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and Ryukichi Imai, Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute for International Policy Studies, Tokyo, provide an account of this collaboration, a central focus of which has been concern about what would happen with the Soviet nuclear arsenal.     

Policy views,constituency pressure,and congressional action on flag burning

Much of the rational choice literature suggests that constituency considerations will dominate decision-making when constituency concerns are pronounced and the issue is conducive to citizen audit. The 1990 House of Representatives vote on a constitutional amendment banning flag burning provides a good test of this argument. Drawing from a survey of legislators and polling data we argue that even in the face of salient constituency views legislators demonstrated a willingness to vote their policy views and cross their constituents. We explore how concerns about reputation and other considerations contributed to this phenomenon. We also suggest directions for future research.     

Demonstration evaluations and cost neutrality: Using caseload models to determine the federal cost neutrality of New Jersey's reach demonstration

The Reagan Administration's Interagency Low Income Opportunity Advisory Board (ILIOAB) requirement that states conduct impact evaluations of their welfare reform demonstrations no doubt led some states to conduct evaluations when they otherwise might not have. The ILIOAB requirement that demonstrations be cost neutral to the federal government, on the other hand, limited the ability of states to test promising approaches that require more resources. The New Jersey experience with REACH clearly demonstrates the limitations of caseload modeling for assessing cost neutrality. In retrospect, too much might have been asked of a fairly crude forecasting technique. If carefully designed, experiments can provide better information on participant impacts and cost neutrality, although different experimental designs are preferred for estimating participant impacts than for estimating cost neutrality or overall impacts.