LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND GROUP RIGHTS: THE LEGACY OF INDIVIDUALISM AND ITS IMPACT ON AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES

Abstract Individualism is the foundation.of democratic theory and practise in the United States. A multi-ethnic, but not really a multi-communal society in the same sense as Northern Ireland or India, the United States has not generally had to confront the nature and justification of its historical opposition to group rights and communal social and political organization. Only the American Indian tribes, with their treaty-mandated communalism, have presented exceptions to this pattern. This paper explores the assumptions underlying liberal democratic attitudes towards communalism, the ways in which group claims pose challenges to conventional notions of justice and equality, and the utility of introducing alternative assumptions about the nature and role of groups in democratic society. Discussion centers on the most recent attempt to reduce the group rights of American Indian tribes.     

HEART RATE AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF IMPULSIVE SENSATION SEEKING

Although a low resting heart rate is considered the best‐replicated biological correlate of antisocial behavior, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains largely unknown. Sensation‐seeking and fearlessness theories have been proposed to explain this relationship, although little empirical research has been conducted to test these theories. This study addressed this limitation by examining the relationship between heart rate and antisocial behavior in a community sample of 335 adolescent boys. Heart rate was measured during a series of cognitive, stress, and rest tasks. Participants also completed self‐report measures of state fear, impulsive sensation seeking, and both aggressive and nonaggressive forms of antisocial behavior. As expected, increased levels of aggression and nonviolent delinquency were associated with a low heart rate. Impulsive sensation seeking, but not fearlessness, significantly mediated the association between heart rate and aggression. This study is the first to show that impulsive sensation seeking partly underlies the relationship between aggression and heart rate, and it is one of the few to examine the mechanism of action linking heart rate to antisocial behavior. Findings at a theoretical level highlight the role of impulsive sensation seeking in understanding antisocial behavior and at an intervention level suggest it as a potential target for behavioral change.     

Bicameralism and Geographic Politics: Allocating Funds in the House and Senate

Because they represent different kinds of constituencies—states versus parts of states—senators and House members have different incentives in constructing federal distributive programs. In order to claim credit for providing particularized benefits, House members need to use policy tools—earmarks and narrow categorical programs—that target funds to their constituencies. Senators, by contrast, are able to claim credit for the large formula grants that distribute the bulk of intergovernmental grant money. Examining House‐Senate interactions in one of the largest distributive programs, federal aid to states for surface transportation, I show that the different bases of representation in the House and Senate structure the chambers' preferences on distributive programs and affect the outcomes of interchamber conflicts.     

Who governs? Parties and policies in Denmark

Abstract. The literature on party government, coalition formation, and links between party and policy tends to assume that parties in government command legislative majorities that can be used to enact desired policies. This assumption, however, does not apply in general. In Scandinavia, and especially in Denmark, the minority type of government is predominant. Minority governments cannot govern by means of their own votes. Two questions for research are therefore obvious. Why do Scandinavian countries deviate from the normal pattern of government formation? And what are the consequences of minority government for policy making? While the first question has been treated in recent research, this paper carries the analysis a step further by exploring the policy consequences of minority government in Denmark during the 1980s. It is shown that the government may in fact not always govern, that the government may actually be the opposition, and, consequently, that the party-policy link can indeed be extremely complex.