Showing papers in "American Political Science Review in 1998"

A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1997

Abstract: Extensive empirical evidence and theoretical developments in multiple disciplines stimulate a need to expand the range of rational choice models to be used as a foundation for the study of social dilemmas and collective action. After an introduction to the problem of overcoming social dilemmas through collective action, the remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first briefly reviews the theoretical predictions of currently accepted rational choice theory related to social dilemmas. The second section summarizes the challenges to the sole reliance on a complete model of rationality presented by extensive experimental research. In the third section, I discuss two major empirical findings that begin to show how individuals achieve results that are “better than rational” by building conditions where reciprocity, reputation, and trust can help to overcome the strong temptations of short-run self-interest. The fourth section raises the possibility of developing second-generation models of rationality, the fifth section develops an initial theoretical scenario, and the final section concludes by examining the implications of placing reciprocity, reputation, and trust at the core of an empirically tested, behavioral theory of collective action.

The Political Relevance of Political Trust

Abstract: Scholars have debated the importance of declining political trust to the American political system. By primarily treating trust as a dependent variable, however, scholars have systematically underestimated its relevance. This study establishes the importance of trust by demonstrating that it is simultaneously related to measures of both specific and diffuse support. In fact, trust's effect on feelings about the incumbent president, a measure of specific support, is even stronger than the reverse. This provides a fundamentally different understanding of the importance of declining political trust in recent years. Rather than simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with political leaders, declining trust is a powerful cause of this dissatisfaction. Low trust helps create a political environment in which it is more difficult for leaders to succeed.

Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting

Abstract: It is often suggested that requiring juries to reach a unanimous verdict reduces the probability of convicting an innocent defendant while increasing the probability of acquitting a guilty defendant. We construct a model that demonstrates how strategic voting by jurors undermines this basic intuition. We show that the unanimity rule may lead to a high probability of both kinds of error and that the probability of convicting an innocent defendant may actually increase with the size of the jury. Finally, we demonstrate that a wide variety of voting rules, including simple majority rule, lead to much lower probabilities of both kinds of error.

On the Legitimacy of National High Courts

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to examine theories of diffuse support and institutional legitimacy by testing hypotheses about the interrelationships among the salience of courts, satisfaction with court outputs, and diffuse support for national high courts. Like our predecessors, we are constrained by essentially cross-sectional data; unlike them, we analyze mass attitudes toward high courts in eighteen countries. Because our sample includes many countries with newly formed high courts, our cross-sectional data support several longitudinal inferences, using the age of the judicial institution as an independent variable. We discover that the U.S. Supreme Court is not unique in the esteem in which it is held and, like other courts, it profits from a tendency of people to credit it for pleasing decisions but not to penalize it for displeasing ones. Generally, older courts more successfully link specific and diffuse support, most likely due to satisfying successive, nonoverlapping constituencies.

Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises

Abstract: This article explores the effect of domestic political competition on the escalation of international crises. It combines an incomplete information model of crisis bargaining with a simple model of two-party electoral choice. One state has two strategic actors—a government and an opposition party—both of which declare openly whether they support the use of force to alter the status quo. The rival state updates its beliefs and selects its strategy in response to both signals. The parties' payoffs depend upon a retrospective evaluation by the domestic electorate. The model shows that the inclusion of a strategic opposition party decreases the ex ante probability of war by helping to reveal information about the state's preferences. This finding has important implications for research on democracy and international conflict, since it suggests a mechanism through which democratic states can overcome informational asymmetries, which have been identified as a central obstacle to negotiation.

International Crises and Domestic Politics

Abstract: Audience costs enable leaders to make credible commitments and to communicate their intentions to their adversaries during a crisis. I explain audience costs by simultaneously modeling crisis behavior and the domestic reelection process. I assume that a leader's ability influences the outcome of a crisis. As such, voters use outcomes as a signal of their leaders' quality. Leaders have incentives to make statements that deter their enemies abroad, since these statements also enhance their standing at home. Yet, such “cheap talk” foreign policy declarations are only credible when leaders suffer domestically if they fail to fulfill their commitments. In equilibrium, false promises are only made by the least competent types of leaders. Leaders that break their promises suffer electorally. Because initial domestic conditions and institutional arrangements affect the vulnerability of leaders to these domestic costs, such factors influence the credibility of policy declarations and, therefore, the crisis outcome.

Estimating the Effect of Campaign Spending on Senate Election Outcomes Using Instrumental Variables

Abstract: o examine the traditional view that challenger spending is more effective than incumbent spending, 7 I reestimate the effects of spending using instrumental variables that affect a candidate's ability to raise campaign funds, such as candidate wealth levels. Hhen the endogeneity of candidate spending levels is properly taken into account, the marginal effects of incumbent and challenger spending are roughly equal. In contrast to previous research showing that, because of higher marginal returns to challenger spending, the incumbent's spending advantage cannot explain high incumbent reelection rates, this article shows that in an average Senate election the incumbent's spending advantage yields a 6% increase in the incumbent's vote share. That incumbent spending wins elections has direct implications regarding the consequences of campaign finance reform. My findings imply that equalizing spending levels may significantly increase incumbent defeat rates, and caps on candidate spending may improve the chances of challengers. In American congressional elections incumbents routinely win reelection. Even in the 1994 Republican landslide, change in the partisan makeup of Congress occurred mainly through open seats switching from the Democrats to the Republicans. A common explanation for high congressional reelection rates is the large campaign spending advantage enjoyed by incumbents. It is widely believed that challenger spending is very important, but there is surprisingly little evidence in the academic literature that incumbent campaign spending has an important effect on congressional election outcomes. In light of the substantial effort incumbents devote to fundraising, as well as some nagging methodological questions about existing academic studies, the effect of incumbent spending on election outcomes remains an unresolved issue. Accurately measuring how incumbent spending leads to votes is of obvious importance. Politicians want to win elections, and so if money matters, then this will influence their behavior. If campaign spending effects are trivial, then concerns about politicians being

Information Effects in Collective Preferences

Abstract: Contrary to much of the literature on collective opinion, I find that the low levels and uneven social distribution of political knowledge in the mass public often cause opinion surveys to misrepresent the mix of voices in a society. To assess the bias introduced by information effects, I compare “fully informed” collective preferences simulated from actual survey data to collective preferences revealed in the original data. Analysis of policy questions from the 1988 and 1992 American National Election Studies shows that group differences in knowledge, along with the public's modest average level of political knowledge, can cause significant distortions in measures of collective opinion. The mass public may appear more progressive on some issues and more conservative on others than would be the case if all citizens were equally well informed. To the extent that opinion polls influence democratic politics, this suggests that information effects can impair the responsiveness of governments to their citizens.

Cohesion in Legislatures and the Vote of Confidence Procedure

Abstract: W T He present a framework to analyze the effects of constitutional features on legislative voting with respect to cohesion and the distribution of payoffs. We then apply this framework to parliamentary democracies and show how a prominent feature of decision making in parliaments, the vote of confidence procedure, creates an incentive for ruling coalitions to vote together on policy issues that might otherwise split them. The key feature that creates cohesive voting is the fact that votes on bills are treated as votes on who controls floor access in future periods. As a consequence, legislative majorities capture more of the legislative rents from the minority in parliamentary democracies than in nonparliamentary settings.

The Political Determinants of International Trade: The Major Powers, 1907–1990

Abstract: We test three arguments about the effect of international politics on trade flows. The first argument states that trade flows are greater between states with similar interests than those with dissimilar interests, the second that trade flows are greater in democratic dyads than nondemocratic dyads, and the third that trade flows are greater between allies. We examine trade flows between the major powers from 1907 to 1990. This period provides variation on all three independent variables of interest and allows us to separate the three arguments empirically. We estimate a gravity model of trade with the above political variables added. Our results demonstrate that joint democracy and common interests increase trade in a dyad, but alliances generally do not, even when controlling for polarity of the system.

Partisan Cues and the Media: Information Flows in the 1992 Presidential Election

Abstract: Electoral research acknowledges the growing significance of the mass media in contemporary campaigns, but scholars are divided on the nature of this influence. Using a unique database that includes both media content and public opinion, we examine the flow of partisan information from newspapers to the voters and assess the press's role in electoral politics and citizen learning. We find that the American press does not present clear and singular messages about presidential elections but, rather, multiple messages about the candidates and the campaign. In addition, perception of the information is shaped as much by an individual's political views as by the objective content. Despite the mixed messages, we find that a newspaper's editorial content is significantly related to candidate preferences in 1992. These results challenge the minimal effects interpretation of the media, because local newspapers can play a significant role in providing cues that influence voters' electoral calculus.

Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community

Abstract: We present a theory of European legal integration that relies on three causal factors: transnational exchange, triadic dispute resolution, and the production of legal norms. After stating the theory in abstract terms, we explain the construction of the legal system and test the relationship among our three variables over the life of the European Community. We then examine the effect of the EC legal system on policy outcomes at both the national and supranational levels in two policy domains: the free movement of goods and gender equality. Our theory outperforms its leading rival, intergovernmentalism. The evidence shows that European integration has generally been driven by transnational activity and the efforts of EC institutions to reduce transaction costs, behavior which governments react to but do not control.

Party Aggregation and the Number of Parties in India and the United States

Abstract: We rely on data from India and the United States to show that political and economic centralization can influence the number of national parties in single-member simple-plurality electoral systems. Historically, in both countries the number of parties in local electoral districts has been near two, but the number of national parties has fluctuated. Periods of a small number of national parties in both countries correspond to periods of centralization. We argue that, as national governments centralize power and make policies that affect local areas, candidates have greater incentives to associate with national organizations, and voters have greater incentives to abandon locally competitive but nationally noncompetitive parties.

Structure, Behavior, and Voter Turnout in the United States

Abstract: Electoral participation in the United States is examined to provide a clearer account of the effect of the registration requirement on individual voting behavior. Pooling NES data from 1980, 1984, and 1988, I first model, with traditional and selection bias techniques, the full electorate to distinguish among three groups: nonregistrants, registered nonvoters, and voters. Analyses limited to recent movers then reported to understand more fully the forces associated with the actual decision calculi of registering and voting. The influences of many factors commonly accepted as important determinants of voting are disentangled, and their effect at each stage is ascertained. Factors yielding inconsistent effects in previ research or believed to be unimportant—such as race, gender, attitudes toward the candidates, and trust government—are shown to deserve closer scrutiny by electoral scholars.

The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda Setting

Abstract: Theoretical and empirical work on public policy agenda setting has ignored foreign policy. We develop a theory of foreign policy agenda setting and test the implications using time-series vector autoregression and Box-Tiao (1975) impact assessment methods. We theorize an economy of attention to foreign policy issues driven by issue inertia, events external to U.S. domestic institutions, as well as systemic attention to particular issues. We also theorize that the economy of attention is affected by a law of scarcity and the rise and fall of events in competing issue areas. Using measures of presidential and media attention to the Soviet Union, Arab-Israeli conflict, and Bosnian conflict, we show that presidential and media attentions respond to issue inertia and exogenous events in both primary and competing issue areas. Media attention also affects presidential attention, but the president does not affect issue attention by the media.

Organized Interests and the Decision of Whom to Lobby in Congress

Abstract: In a departure from previous research, we focus on the dyadic relationship between lobbyists and committee members in the House of Representatives in order to test hypotheses about what factors shape the decisions of individual groups to lobby individual committee members. Our primary assumption is that organized interests seek to expand their supportive coalitions and affect the content and fate of bills referred to committees. In order to accomplish these goals, they give highest priority to lobbying their legislative allies in committee; allies may lobby other members of Congress on a group's behalf and shape legislation to conform with a group's preferences. But organizations with access to a strong resource base can move beyond their allies and work directly to expand support among undecided committee members and legislative opponents. Our empirical analysis provides evidence to support our expectations.

Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States

Abstract: Clear fiscal policy effects appear in American state gubernatorial and legislative elections between 1968 and 1992, independent of the effects of incumbency, coattails, term limits, and macroeconomic conditions. The results show that accountability is generally stronger following a period of unified party control than under divided government. Voter reactions to taxes and spending relative to the state economy are conditional on expectations, which differ for each party. Net of these expectations, Republican gubernatorial candidates lose votes if their party is responsible for unanticipated increases in the size of the state budget; Democrats do not and, indeed, may be rewarded for small increases. Independent of this, the incumbent governor's party is punished in legislative elections for failing to maintain fiscal balance. Taken together, these results show how electoral accountability for fiscal policy outcomes is strong but highly contingent on a complex configuration of party labels, partisan control, expectations, and institutions.

Consequences of the Condorcet Jury Theorem for Beneficial Information Aggregation by Rational Agents

Abstract: “Naive” Condorcet Jury Theorems automatically have “sophisticated” versions as corollaries. A Condorcet Jury Theorem is a result, pertaining to an election in which the agents have common preferences but diverse information, asserting that the outcome is better, on average, than the one that would be chosen by any particular individual. Sometimes there is the additional assertion that, as the population grows, the probability of an incorrect decision goes to zero. As a consequence of simple properties of common interest games, whenever “sincere” voting leads to the conclusions of the theorem, there are Nash equilibria with these properties. In symmetric environments the equilibria may be taken to be symmetric.

Democratizing for Peace

Abstract: The argument that democratization can bring about war is a powerful critique suggesting limits to the linkage between democracy and peace. This research examines this claim. Our findings demonstrate that democratizing polities are substantially less war prone than previously argued. By focusing on the characteristics of the transition process, we show that as contemporary polities become more democratic they reduce their overall chances of being involved in war by approximately half. We also find that rocky or especially rapid transitions or reversals are associated with a countervailing effect; namely, they increase the risk of being involved in warfare. Both in the long term and while societies undergo democratic change, the risks of war are reduced by democratization and exacerbated by reversals in the democratization process. To reach these conclusions, we developed and applied a logit model linking authority characteristics and war involvement using Polity III and Correlates of War databases.

Democracy, War Initiation, and Victory

Abstract: How do nation-states' political institutions affect the relations between states? This article addresses that question by testing the predictions of different theories linking political institutions to war outcomes. Specifically, rent-seeking and regime legitimacy theories predict that all democratic belligerents are more likely to win wars because they fight more effectively. Alternatively, other theories focusing on the domestic political vulnerability of leaders and the marketplace of ideas predict that democracies are likely to be more careful about choosing when to start war. This would mean that only democratic initiators are more likely to win. Analyzing all interstate wars from 1816 to 1982 with a multivariate probit model, we find that democratic initiators are significantly more likely to win wars; democratic targets are also more likely to win, though the relationship is not as strong. We also find empirical support for several control variables, including strategy, terrain, and capability.

Administrative Procedures and Political Control of the Bureaucracy

Abstract: administrative procedure-the notice and comment process-in the context of Medicare physician payment reform, a fundamental restructuring of the way in which the Medicare program pays for physician services. I find, contrary to the deck-stacking thesis, that the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) was more responsive to physicians expecting reductions in fees than to the intended beneficiaries of the new payment system. Although these results do not necessarily imply that Congress exerted little influence over HCFA decision making, they suggest that certain administrative procedures do not operate as instruments of political control. D elegation of policymaking authority from elected officials to unelected bureaucrats is a fact of contemporary American politics. It does not, however, necessarily imply abdication, as officeholders possess instruments that potentially limit bureaucratic discretion. Presidents, for example, fill many high-level agency posts with appointees whose preferences closely resemble those of the chief executive. Members of Congress regularly conduct oversight hearings, which are proceedings designed to monitor and, if necessary, redirect agency activity. The presence

An Information Rationale for the Power of Special Interests

Abstract: Political decisions are often biased in favor of special interests at the expense of the general public, and they are frequently inefficient in the sense that the losses incurred by the majority exceed the gains enjoyed by the minority. This article explains the bias in terms of information asymmetries and the free-rider problem. First, incumbents increase their reelection prospects by biasing policy toward groups that are better able to monitor their activities. Second, because smaller groups are better able to overcome the free-rider problem of costly monitoring, policy will be biased in their favor. Third, the effect of asymmetric monitoring on voter welfare is ambiguous. The inefficiencies created by the policy bias are offset by a positively valued selection bias: Incumbents of above-average quality are more likely to survive voter scrutiny than are low-quality types.

Rational Choice and the Dynamics of Collective Political Action: Evaluating Alternative Models with Panel Data

Abstract: Causal inference in research testing rational choice models of unconventional political behavior has been hampered by the inability to use perceptions of the costs and benefits of participation at a given time to predict behavior that necessarily occurred in the past and by ambiguities associated with analyzing behavioral intentions instead of actual participation. Using panel data collected on a national sample in West Germany between 1987 and 1989, we show that variables from a “collective interest” model measured in 1987—individuals' dissatisfaction with the provision of collective goods, beliefs that group actions can be successful, and beliefs in the importance of their own participation—predict subsequent participation in collective protest activities. Variables corresponding to the private “selective incentives” associated with protest are found to be less relevant. Furthermore, we find that engaging in protest changes many of the perceptions that influence future participation. We discuss the implications for theories of political mobilization.

A political explanation of variations in central bank independence

Abstract: Although central banks possess a similar function across the industrial democracies, their institutional structures—their levels of independence—differ greatly. My explanation of this variation emphasizes the informational asymmetries of monetary policymaking. Government ministers have informational advantages in the policy process, potentially creating conflicts with backbench legislators and, in a multiparty government, coalition partners. An independent central bank can help alleviate these conflicts. Politicians will choose an independent bank (1) if government ministers, party legislators, and coalition partners have different monetary policy incentives and (2) if government ministers fear that party legislators and coalition partners will withdraw their support over a policy dispute. I statistically test the argument against the cross-national variation of central bank institutions. I also use the theoretical framework to examine episodes of institutional choice and reform in Germany, Britain, and Italy.

Strategy and Background in Congressional Campaigns

Abstract: Common conceptions of the electoral connection often make two assumptions about the behavior of candidates and voters. The first is that candidates focus their campaigns on their records. The second is that voters evaluate candidates on the basis of their campaign messages. This article explores how candidates' backgrounds influence these two components of representation. The main premise is simple: Campaign messages are more effective if they emphasize issues on which candidates have built a record that appears favorable to voters. Consequently, candidates tend to focus on this type of issue when choosing campaign themes. Candidates are less successful in winning favorable evaluations if they stray from their records and make unsubstantiated claims.

A New Approach to the Study of Ticket Splitting

Abstract: A new solution to the ecological inference problem is used to examine split-ticket voting patterns across states and congressional districts in the 1988 elections. Earlier studies of ticket splitting used either aggregate data, which suffer from the “ecological fallacy” and threaten individual-level inferences, or survey data from small, unrepresentative samples. We produce more accurate estimates of the proportions of voters splitting their ballots in each state and district, which enables us to examine variations across geographical units. We also clarify the connection between ticket splitting and divided government and test several competing theories about the causes of both. We find, contrary to balancing arguments, that voters are not intentionally splitting tickets to produce divided government and moderate policies. In most cases split outcomes are a by-product of lopsided congressional campaigns that feature well-funded, high-quality candidates versus unknown competitors.

Comparative Dynamics of Parliamentary Governments

Abstract: This article presents a dynamic theory of parliamentary governments that incorporates attributes of the institutional system in a country, exogenous events that shape parliamentary and electoral opportunities, and the strategies of the government and the opposition as structured by institutions and preferences. The dynamics are investigated in an infinitely repeated game in which events in the form of shocks to income or government resources occur and the government responds with a legislative proposal that is subject to a confidence or censure procedure and may lead to government continuation, reorganization, or dissolution. With a majority confidence procedure, governments are stable, and if parties are politically patient, voting cohesion within the government is high. A censure motion initiated by the opposition can result in voluntary dissolution of government, and the approach of required elections increases the likelihood of dissolution. If the events represent fluctuations in aggregate income, governnment dissolution occurs in good times for the government leader and bad times for the other parties.

Macropartisanship: A Replication and Critique

Abstract: MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1989, 1992) argue that the aggregate distribution of party identification, or macropartisanship, shifts significantly over short periods in response to changes in presidential popularity and consumer sentiment. Their results are based on a subset of Gallup surveys available from 1953 to 1988 and only those CBS /New York Times surveys conducted during the Reagan administration. We replicate this analysis using a more extensive inventory of Gallup and CBS /New York Times data and find considerably less evidence of partisan fluctuation. The amount of partisan change caused by short-term movements in consumer sentiment and presidential popularity is found to be two to three times smaller than initially reported by MacKuen et al. (1989). Our results indicate that macropartisanship adjusts to short-term shocks in a limited and gradual fashion, consistent with traditional views of partisan realignment.

From Abe Fortas to Zoë Baird: Why Some Presidential Nominations Fail in the Senate

Abstract: Why, given a strong presumption of success, do some presidential nominations fail? Of 1,464 important nominations from 1965 to 1994, less than 5% failed. Ninety-four percent of failures were rejected or withdrawn before reaching the floor, suggesting that opponents are most effective during prefloor stages. We propose a theoretical framework based on the notion that policy entrepreneurs pursue their goals within the context of a presumption of success. Logit analysis tends to support the theory that entrepreneurs can alter the presumption of success and defeat a nomination if they (1) identify negative information about a nominee to provide a rationale for changing the presumption and (2) expand the conflict through committee hearings and the media. Presidential resources—high public approval and efforts to signal that the nomination is a high priority—increase the chances of confirmation. Contrary to previous research, divided government has no independent effect on the fate of nominations.

The Public’s Conditional Response to Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract: To investigate the effect of the Supreme Court on public opinion, we offer the conditional response hypothesis based on a theory of Supreme Court legitimacy and a microlevel social-psychological theory of attitude formation. Together these theories predict that the Court may affect public opinion when it initially rules on a salient issue, but that subsequent decisions on the same issue will have little influence on opinion. To test our predictions, we analyze public opinion data before and after the Supreme Court ruled in a highly visible abortion case (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services [1989]) and before and after three key capital punishment rulings (Furman v. Georgia [1972], Gregg v. Georgia [1976], and McCleskey v. Kemp [1987]). The results suggest that our theory is not issue bound but is generally applicable to how the Supreme Court affects public opinion when it rules in highly salient cases.