Showing papers in "American Political Science Review in 2003"
TL;DR: This article showed that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system.
Abstract: An influential conventional wisdom holds that civil wars proliferated rapidly with the end of the Cold War and that the root cause of many or most of these has been ethnic and religious antagonisms. We show that the current prevalence of internal war is mainly the result of a steady accumulation of protracted conflicts since the 1950s and 1960s rather than a sudden change associated with a new, post-Cold War international system. We also find that after controlling for per capita income, more ethnically or religiously diverse countries have been no more likely to experience significant civil violence in this period. We argue for understanding civil war in this period in terms of insurgency or rural guerrilla warfare, a particular form of military practice that can be harnessed to diverse political agendas. The factors that explain which countries have been at risk for civil war are not their ethnic or religious characteristics but rather the conditions that favor insurgency. These include poverty—which marks financially and bureaucratically weak states and also favors rebel recruitment—political instability, rough terrain, and large populations.We wish to thank the many people who provided comments on earlier versions of this paper in a series of seminar presentations. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (Grants SES-9876477 and SES-9876530); support from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences with funds from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; valuable research assistance from Ebru Erdem, Nikolay Marinov, Quinn Mecham, David Patel, and TQ Shang; sharing of data by Paul Collier.
5,994 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on several literatures to distinguish two types of multi-level governance: dispersion of authority to general-purpose, nonintersecting, and durable jurisdictions, and task-specific, intersecting and flexible jurisdictions.
Abstract: The reallocation of authority upward, downward, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in political science. Yet beyond agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no consensus about how it should be organized. This article draws on several literatures to distinguish two types of multi-level governance. One type conceives of dispersion of authority to general-purpose, nonintersecting, and durable jurisdictions. A second type of governance conceives of task-specific, intersecting, and flexible jurisdictions. We conclude by specifying the virtues of each type of governance.For comments and advice we are grateful to Christopher Ansell, Ian Bache, Richard Balme, Arthur Benz, Tanja Borzel, Renaud Dehousse, Burkard Eberlein, Peter Hall, Edgar Grande, Richard Haesly, Bob Jessop, Beate Kohler-Koch, David Lake, Patrick Le Gales, Christiane Lemke, David Lowery, Michael McGinnis, Andrew Moravcsik, Elinor Ostrom, Franz U. Pappi, Thomas Risse, James Rosenau, Alberta Sbragia, Philippe Schmitter, Ulf Sverdrup, Christian Tusschoff, Bernhard Wessels, the political science discussion group at the University of North Carolina, and the editor and three anonymous reviewers of APSR. We received institutional support from the Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Wissenschaftszentrum fur Sozialforschung in Berlin. Earlier versions were presented at the European Union Studies Association meeting, the ECPR pan-European Conference in Bordeaux, and Hannover Universitat, Harvard University, Humboldt Universitat, Indiana University at Bloomington, Mannheim Universitat, Sheffield University, Sciences Po (Paris), Technische Universitat Munchen, and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The authors' names appear in alphabetical order.
1,956 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors collected suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, 188 in all, and showed that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions.
Abstract: Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but the most common explanations do not help us understand why. Religious fanaticism does not explain why the world leader in suicide terrorism is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a group that adheres to a Marxist/Leninist ideology, while existing psychological explanations have been contradicted by the widening range of socio-economic backgrounds of suicide terrorists. To advance our understanding of this growing phenomenon, this study collects the universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, 188 in all. In contrast to the existing explanations, this study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s. In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorist political cause made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before. Thus, Western democracies should pursue policies that teach terrorists that the lesson of the 1980s and 1990s no longer holds, policies which in practice may have more to do with improving homeland security than with offensive military action.I thank Robert Art, Mia Bloom, Steven Cicala, Alex Downs, Daniel Drezner, Adria Lawrence, Sean Lynn-Jones, John Mearsheimer, Michael O'Connor, Sebastian Rosato, Lisa Weeden, the anonymous reviewers, and the members of the program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago for their superb comments. I especially thank James K. Feldman and Chaim D. Kaufmann for their excellent comments on multiple drafts. I would also like to acknowledge encouragement from the committee for the Combating Political Violence paper competition sponsored by the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, which selected an earlier version as a winning paper.
1,250 citations
TL;DR: This article presented a method for extracting policy positions from political texts that treats texts not as discourses to be understood and interpreted but rather, as data in the form of words, and used this approach to replicate published estimates of the policy positions of political parties in Britain and Ireland, on both economic and social policy dimensions.
Abstract: We present a new way of extracting policy positions from political texts that treats texts not as discourses to be understood and interpreted but rather, as data in the form of words. We compare this approach to previous methods of text analysis and use it to replicate published estimates of the policy positions of political parties in Britain and Ireland, on both economic and social policy dimensions. We “export” the method to a non-English-language environment, analyzing the policy positions of German parties, including the PDS as it entered the former West German party system. Finally, we extend its application beyond the analysis of party manifestos, to the estimation of political positions from legislative speeches. Our “language-blind” word scoring technique successfully replicates published policy estimates without the substantial costs of time and labor that these require. Furthermore, unlike in any previous method for extracting policy positions from political texts, we provide uncertainty measures for our estimates, allowing analysts to make informed judgments of the extent to which differences between two estimated policy positions can be viewed as significant or merely as products of measurement error.We thank Raj Chari, Gary King, Michael McDonald, Gail McElroy, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on drafts of this paper.
1,179 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that retrenchment can fruitfully be analyzed as distributive conflict involving a remaking of the early postwar social contract based on the full employment welfare state, a conflict in which partisan politics and welfare-state institutions are likely to matter.
Abstract: The relevance of socioeconomic class and of class-related parties for policymaking is a recurring issue in the social sciences. The “new politics” perspective holds that in the present era of austerity, class-based parties once driving welfare state expansion have been superseded by powerful new interest groups of welfare-state clients capable of largely resisting retrenchment pressures emanating from postindustrial forces. We argue that retrenchment can fruitfully be analyzed as distributive conflict involving a remaking of the early postwar social contract based on the full employment welfare state, a conflict in which partisan politics and welfare-state institutions are likely to matter. Pointing to problems of conceptualization and measurement of the dependent variable in previous research, we bring in new data on the extent of retrenchment in social citizenship rights and show that the long increase in social rights has been turned into a decline and that significant retrenchment has taken place in several countries. Our analyses demonstrate that partisan politics remains significant for retrenchment also when we take account of contextual indictors, such as constitutional veto points, economic factors, and globalization.Author names are in alphabetical order and they share equal responsibility for the manuscript. Early versions of this paper were presented at annual meetings of the Nordic Political Science Association in Aalborg, 2002, and the American Political Science Association in San Francisco, 2001, the International Sociological Association RC 28 meeting in Mannheim, 2001, the International Sociological Association RC 19 meeting in Tilburg 2000, and the American Sociological Association in Washington, DC, 2000, as well as at various seminars. For constructive comments on different versions of the manuscript we thank Rainer Lepsius, Anders Lindbom, Ingalill Montanari, John Myles, Michael Shalev, Sheila Shaver, and Robin Stryker, as well as other participants in these meetings. We want to thank Olof Backman, Stefan Englund, Ingrid Esser, Helena Hoog, and Annita Nasstrom for very valuable help and Dennis Quinn for providing us his data on international financial deregulation. Our thanks are also due to three anonymous referees for careful reading. This research has been supported by grants from the Bank of Sweden Tercentennial Foundation and the Swedish Council for Social Research.
960 citations
TL;DR: This article measured response category incomparability via respondents' assessments, on the same scale as the self-assessments to be corrected, of hypothetical individuals described in short vignettes.
Abstract: We address two long-standing survey research problems: measuring complicated concepts, such as political freedom and efficacy, that researchers define best with reference to examples; and what to do when respondents interpret identical questions in different ways. Scholars have long addressed these problems with approaches to reduce incomparability, such as writing more concrete questions—with uneven success. Our alternative is to measure directly response category incomparability and to correct for it. We measure incomparability via respondents’ assessments, on the same scale as the self-assessments to be corrected, of hypothetical individuals described in short vignettes. Because the actual (but not necessarily reported) levels of the vignettes are invariant over respondents, variability in vignette answers reveals incomparability. Our corrections require either simple recodes or a statistical model designed to save survey administration costs. With analysis, simulations, and cross-national surveys, we show how response incomparability can drastically mislead survey researchers and how our approach can alleviate this problem.
802 citations
TL;DR: Goldstone et al. as mentioned in this paper used a case-control approach to test alternative specifications of a multivariate model that identifies preconditions of geno-/politicide and found that the optimal model includes six factors that jointly make it possible to distinguish with 74% accuracy between internal wars and regime collapses that do and those that do not lead to genocides.
Abstract: This article reports a test of a structural model of the antecedents of genocide and politicide (political mass murder). A case–control research design is used to test alternative specifications of a multivariate model that identifies preconditions of geno-/politicide. The universe of analysis consists of 126 instances of internal war and regime collapse that began between 1955 and 1997, as identified by the State Failure project. Geno-/politicides began during 35 of these episodes of state failure. The analytic question is which factors distinguish the 35 episodes that led to geno-/politicides from those that did not. The case–control method is used to estimate the effects of theoretically specified domestic and international risk factors measured one year prior to the onset of geno-/politicide. The optimal model includes six factors that jointly make it possible to distinguish with 74% accuracy between internal wars and regime collapses that do and those that do not lead to geno-/politicide. The conclusion uses the model to assess the risks of future episodes in 25 countries.This study was commissioned in 1998 by the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence in response to President Clinton's policy initiative on genocide early warning and prevention. It was designed by the author and carried out using her data with other data and analytic techniques developed by the State Failure Task Force. Statistical analyses reported here were done by Michael Lustik and Alan N. Unger of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), McLean, Virginia. The author is senior consultant to the Task Force, which was established in 1994 in response to a request from senior U.S. policymakers to design and carry out a data-driven study of the correlates of state failure, defined to include revolutionary and ethnic wars, adverse or disruptive regime transitions, and genocides and politicides (for the latest report on Task Force research see Goldstone et al. 2002). The author acknowledges the advice of other Task Force consultants and analysts throughout the research process. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the official views of the U.S. government, the U.S. intelligence community, or the Central Intelligence Agency.The author especially thanks Ted Robert Gurr for his critiquing early drafts and using the findings to construct the table that identifies high-risk countries and groups. His insistence about the importance of the study prompted me to revise the manuscript a number of times, despite my initial reluctance, given the years of work that had gone into its preparation. It was especially hard to condense this effort from its original 75 pages. The paper also benefited from a careful reading by Mark I. Lichbach of a previous report and from comments of anonymous reviewers for the American Political Science Review.
652 citations
TL;DR: In the context of monetary policy and independent central banks, the authors find evidence supporting the following predictions: delegation is more likely to enhance credibility and political replacements of central bank governors are less likely in the presence of multiple political veto players; this effect increases with the polarization of veto players.
Abstract: Governments unable to make credible promises hinder economic development and effective policy making. Scholars have focused considerable attention on checks and balances and the delegation of authority to independent agencies as institutional solutions to this problem. The political conditions under which these institutions enhance credibility, rather than policy stability, are still unclear, however. We show that checks – multiple veto players – enhance credibility, depending on the extent of uncertainty about the location of the status quo, on how agenda control is allocated among the veto players, and on whether veto players have delegated policy making authority to independent agencies. In the context of monetary policy and independent central banks, we find evidence supporting the following predictions: delegation is more likely to enhance credibility and political replacements of central bank governors are less likely in the presence of multiple political veto players; this effect increases with the polarization of veto players.
600 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors test hypotheses about the impact of civil wars and find substantial long-term effects, even after controlling for several other factors, such as age, gender, and type of disease or condition.
Abstract: down by age, gender, and type of disease or condition. We test hypotheses about the impact of civil wars and find substantial long-term effects, even after controlling for several other factors. We estimate that the additional burden of death and disability incurred in 1999, from the indirect and lingering effects of civil wars in the years 1991-97, was approximately equal to that incurred directly and immediately from all wars in 1999. This impact works its way through specific diseases and conditions and disproportionately affects women and children.
595 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the causal logics that underpin the theory to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the finding of mutual democratic pacifism, and they found that they do not, since democratic states do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution and do not trust or respect one another when their interests clash.
Abstract: Democratic peace theory is probably the most powerful liberal contribution to the debate on the causes of war and peace. In this paper I examine the causal logics that underpin the theory to determine whether they offer compelling explanations for the finding of mutual democratic pacifism. I find that they do not. Democracies do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution and do not trust or respect one another when their interests clash. Moreover, elected leaders are not especially accountable to peace loving publics or pacific interest groups, democracies are not particularly slow to mobilize or incapable of surprise attack, and open political competition does not guarantee that a democracy will reveal private information about its level of resolve thereby avoiding conflict. Since the evidence suggests that the logics do not operate as stipulated by the theory's proponents, there are good reasons to believe that while there is certainly peace among democracies, it may not be caused by the democratic nature of those states.
452 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate reports of marginalization from Congresswomen of color, and examine legislative practices in the 103rd and 104th Congresses to illuminate dynamics that structure hierarchies on the basis of race and gender.
Abstract: Investigating reports of marginalization from Congresswomen of color, I examine legislative practices in the 103rd and 104th Congresses to illuminate dynamics that structure hierarchies on the basis of race and gender. I advance an account of racing–gendering as a political process that silences, stereotypes, enforces invisibility, excludes, and challenges the epistemic authority of Congresswomen of color. Racing–gendering constitutes a form of interested bias operating in Congress, which has important implications for understandings of the internal operations of political institutions, the policy priorities of Congresswomen of color, the substantive representation of historically underrepresented groups, and the practice of democracy in the United States.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate whether electoral institutions and ethnopolitical cleavages shape the structure (the fragmentation or concentration) of party systems separately or jointly, and how can this joint effect be theoretically specified and empirically tested.
Abstract: Do electoral institutions and ethnopolitical cleavages shape the structure (the fragmentation or concentration) of party systems separately or jointly? If they shape the structure of party systems jointly, how can this joint effect be theoretically specified and empirically tested? If ethnopolitical groups and associated ethnopolitical cleavages are not primordially fixed but constructed in the course of social, economic, and political interactions, as the accumulated findings of over three decades of comparative research on ethnopolitics attest, how can constructed ethnopolitical groups be specified and associated eth
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine independent party candidates who are motivated primarily to win elections but who use activist contributions to increase vote shares, arguing that the party cleavage line is much as it was a century ago, but the parties have switched sides.
Abstract: In this paper, we contend that party realignments occur due to the interaction of candidates and activists. We examine independent party candidates who are motivated primarily to win elections but who use activist contributions to increase vote shares. In a two-dimensional policy space, such candidates will on occasion engage in “flanking” moves so as to enlist coalitions of disaffected voters, at the risk of alienating some of their traditional activist supporters. We argue that a result of such “flanking” moves, in the early part of the century, has been a shift in emphasis from an underlying social dimension to the economic dimension. In recent decades, electoral salience has shifted back to the social dimension. The net result is that the party cleavage line is much as it was a century ago—but the parties have switched sides.
TL;DR: The authors used a stochastic process approach to compare the extent of punctuations among 15 data sets that assess change in U.S. government budgets, in a variety of aspects of the public policy process, in election results, and in stock market returns in the United States.
Abstract: Political institutions translate inputs—in the form of changed preferences, new participants, new information, or sudden attention to previously available information—into policy outputs. In the process they impose costs on this translation, and these costs increase institutional friction. We argue that the “friction” in political institutions leads not to consistent “gridlock” but to long periods of stasis interspersed with dramatic policy punctuations. As political institutions add costs to the translation of inputs into outputs, institutional friction will increase, and outputs from the process will become increasingly punctuated overall. We use a stochastic process approach to compare the extent of punctuations among 15 data sets that assess change in U.S. government budgets, in a variety of aspects of the public policy process, in election results, and in stock market returns in the United States. We find that all of these distributions display positive kurtosis—tall central peaks (representing considerable stability) and heavy tails (reflecting the punctuations, both positive and negative). When we order institutions according to the costs they impose on collective action, those with higher decision and transaction costs generate more positive kurtosis. Direct parameter estimates indicate that all distributions except budget data were best fit by the double-exponential probability distribution; budgets are Paretian.This project was funded by the Political Science Program of the National Science Foundation, Award SES9904700. We appreciate the support of Frank Scioli, the program officer, and various political science program directors. We benefited from comments by Frank Baumgartner, John Brehm, Chris Mackie, Peter John, John Padgett, Bat Sparrow, Jim True and John Wilkerson.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a model of simultaneous bargaining and fighting where both players can make offers and asymmetric information exists about the distribution of power in the Markov perfect sequential equilibrium, making and rejecting offers has informational value that outweighs the one provided by the battlefield.
Abstract: If war results from disagreement about relative strength, then it ends when opponents learn enough about each other. Learning occurs when information is revealed by strategically manipulable negotiation behavior and nonmanipulable battlefield outcomes. I present a model of simultaneous bargaining and fighting where both players can make offers and asymmetric information exists about the distribution of power. In the Markov perfect sequential equilibrium, making and rejecting offers has informational value that outweighs the one provided by the battlefield. However, states use both sources of information to learn and settle before military victory. The Principle of Convergence posits that warfare ceases to be useful when it loses its informational content and that belief in defeat (victory) is not necessary to terminate (initiate) hostilities. Thus, the standard puzzle in international relations that seeks to account for prewar optimism on both sides may not be that relevant.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose an agent-based model of war and state formation that exhibits power-law regularities, and demonstrate that the scale-free behavior depends on a process of technological change that leads to contextually dependent, stochastic decisions to wage war.
Abstract: Richardson's finding that the severity of interstate wars is power law distributed belongs to the most striking empirical regularities in world politics. This is a regularity in search of a theory. Drawing on the principles of self-organized criticality, I propose an agent-based model of war and state formation that exhibits power-law regularities. The computational findings suggest that the scale-free behavior depends on a process of technological change that leads to contextually dependent, stochastic decisions to wage war.Early drafts of this paper were prepared for presentation at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University. I am grateful to the participants in those meetings and to Robert Axelrod, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Fredrik Liljeros, and the editor and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for excellent comments. Laszlo Gulyas helped me reimplement the model in Java and Repast. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Nevertheless, I bear the full responsibility for any inaccuracies and omissions.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors model war as a costly bargaining process and show that inefficient fighting can occur in equilibrium under very general assumptions favoring peace, such as the ability of states to impose costs on their opponent, and bear costs.
Abstract: According to common explanations of war, since war is costly and risky, rational states have incentives to strike a bargain and avoid conflict. War is then the result of private information about capabilities or resolve and incentives to misrepresent this information, or inability to make credible commitments (Fearon 1995). This article presents another rationalist explanation, which does not depend on either of these mechanisms. By modeling warfare as a costly bargaining process, the paper demonstrates that inefficient fighting can occur in equilibrium under very general assumptions favoring peace. Specifically, it is assumed that peace can be supported in equilibrium, and that fighting brings no benefits to either state, only costs. Despite the fact that there exist many agreements that Pareto-dominate the final settlement, states are unable to agree to them and fighting can occur in equilibrium. The equilibrium is driven by the ability of states to impose costs on their opponent, and bear costs. The power to hurt the opponent establishes a range of acceptable settlements, and the existence of such a range makes inefficient equilibria possible. The article suggests that (1) states may fight if they believe that seeking peace means accepting an unpalatable settlement; and (2) a diminished ability to hurt the enemy is a major reason for war termination. Historical examples are provided to illustrate these results.
TL;DR: Ting and Bendor as discussed by the authors constructed a model of adaptive rationality: citizens learn by simple trial and error, repeating satisfactory actions and avoiding unsatisfactory ones, and their aspiration levels, which code current payoffs as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, are also endogenous, themselves adjusting to experience.
Abstract: The so-called “paradox of voting” is a major anomaly for rational choice theories of elections. If voting is costly and citizens are rational, then in large electrorates the expected turnout would be small, for if many people voted the chance of anyone being pivotal would be too small to make the act worthwhile. Yet many people do vote, even in large national elections. To address this puzzle we construct a model of adaptive rationality: Citizens learn by simple trial and error, repeating satisfactory actions and avoiding unsatisfactory ones. (Their aspiration levels, which code current payoffs as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, are also endogenous, themselves adjusting to experience.) Our main result is that agents who adapt in this manner turn out in substantial numbers even in large electorates and even if voting is costly for everyone.Standard conceptions of rational behavior do not explain why anyone bothers to vote in a mass election…. [Turnout is] the paradox that ate rational choice theory.Fiorina (1990, 334)We would like to thank Stephen Ansolabehere, Sorin Antohi, Glenn Ellison, Dedre Gentner, Sunil Kumar, David Laitin, Tze Lai, Arthur Lupia, Elijah Millgram, Lincoln Moses, Scott Page, Tom Palfrey, John Patty, Paul Pfleiderer, Adam Simon, Joel Sobel, Carole Uhlaner, three anonymous referees, and the participants in the Political Economics seminar at the GSB, the Stanford–CalTech workshop, the UNC American Politics Research Group, the UCLA conference on Cognition, Emotion, and Rational Choice, panels at the Annual Meetings of the MPSA and the APSA, the Agent 2000 Workshop, the Seventh Annual Wallis Conference, the CMU–Pitt Colloquium Series, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences seminar series for their helpful comments. This paper was written while Ting was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he thanks UNC's Department of Political Science for its support. It was revised while Bendor was a Fellow at the CASBS, and he is grateful for the Center's financial and intellectual support.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that migration policy is an integral instrument of state grand strategy in this context and that examining levels of threat on each facet of security at a given point in time can largely explain variation in policy.
Abstract: How does migration affect the security of advanced industrial states and how does the security environment shape the way states deal with international migration? Migration rests at the nexus of three dimensions of security including geopolitical interests material production and internal security. I argue that migration policy is an integral instrument of state grand strategy in this context and that examining levels of threat on each facet of security at a given point in time can largely explain variation in policy. I test a series of hypotheses drawn from this security framework using a case-study method that examines policy development in four advanced industrial states including the United States Germany France and Great Britain in the period 1945-present. (authors)
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the racial integration of national labor unions as a case study and found that courts played an important and meaningfully autonomous role in integrating unions while elected officials largely failed to act.
Abstract: Using the racial integration of national labor unions as a case study, I find that courts played an important and meaningfully autonomous role in integrating unions while elected officials largely failed to act. Courts, unlike elected officials, offered civil rights groups relatively easy access to the legal agenda. In response to thousands of cases in federal courts, judges rewrote key civil rights statutes, oversaw the implementation of their rulings, and used attorneys' fees and damage awards to impose significant financial costs on resistant unions. Court power was the product of multiple and historically contingent forces that involved the interaction of elected officials, civil rights activists, and the legal community. Elected officials delegated to the courts the power to enforce civil rights laws and tacitly endorsed procedural changes that augmented the courts' institutional powers and the legal community's professional influence. In response, judges and lawyers promoted and implemented a civil rights agenda far beyond the endorsement of elected officials. An historical–institutional approach helps explain how courts achieved and wielded independent power and the consequences of their action for civil rights, labor unions, and the American state.Thanks for very helpful comments go to Amy Bridges, Kerstin Carlson, Malcolm Feeley, Beth Garrett, Howard Gillman, Mark Graber, Jeff Haydu, David Karol, Ken Kersch, David Mayhew, Jim Morone, Shehzad Nadeem, Ruth O'Brien, Corey Robin, Pam Singh, John Skrentny, Mark Tushnet, Rick Valelly, Keith Whittington, Janelle Wong, the APSR reviewers, and Lee Sigelman. The University of California's Institute for Labor and Employment provided generous financial assistance.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the differential effects of open versus closed amendment rules within the framework of a distributive model of legislative bargaining and show that there are longer delays in distributing benefits and a more egalitarian distribution of benefits under the open amendment rule, the proposer gets a larger share of the benefits than coalition members under both rules, and play converges toward minimal winning coalitions under the closed amendment rule.
Abstract: We investigate the differential effects of open versus closed amendment rules within the framework of a distributive model of legislative bargaining. The data show that there are longer delays in distributing benefits and a more egalitarian distribution of benefits under the open amendment rule, the proposer gets a larger share of the benefits than coalition members under both rules, and play converges toward minimal winning coalitions under the closed amendment rule. However, there are important quantitative differences between the theoretical model underlying the experiment (Baron and Ferejohn 1989) and data, as the frequency of minimal winning coalitions is much greater under the closed rule (the theory predicts minimal winning coalitions under both rules for our parameter values) and the distribution of benefits between coalition members is much more egalitarian than predicted. The latter are consistent with findings from shrinking pie bilateral bargaining game experiments in economics, to which we relate our results. O ne of the fundamental questions legislatures deal with is how to allocate government resources between constituencies that have different and sometimes conflicting preferences. The formal rules under which this legislative bargaining process takes place are universally recognized to play a major role in the budget allocation process, both within the specialized standing committees assigned to draft legislation and within the parent legislature itself. Although no legislative bargaining model can fully capture the complex nature of this bargaining process, at a minimum it is important to distinguish between situations where a proposal can be amended many times before being brought to a vote (open amendment rule) and situations where the agenda setter exercises greater control and manages to bring unamended proposals to the floor (closed amendment rule). A good deal of theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to understanding the basis for legislatures ceding substantial authority to specialized standing committees and to the impact of the amendment
TL;DR: In this paper, two main positions in the philosophy of science, instrumentalist-empiricism and scientific-realism, act as competing epistemological foundations for rational choice theory, and illustrate how these philosophical perspectives help political scientists understand what is at stake in the theoretical debates surrounding the rationality assumption, self-interest, and methodological individualism.
Abstract: Rational choice theorists have not clearly articulated their epistemological positions, and for this reason, their arguments in favor of rational choice theory are inconsistent, contradictory, and unpersuasive. To remedy this problem, I describe how two of the main positions in the philosophy of science, instrumentalist-empiricism and scientific-realism, act as competing epistemological foundations for rational choice theory. I illustrate how these philosophical perspectives help political scientists (1) understand what is at stake in the theoretical debates surrounding the rationality assumption, self-interest, and methodological individualism, (2) identify inconsistencies in the epistemological positions adopted by rational choice theorists, and (3) assess the feasibility and desirability of a universal theory based on the rationality assumption.
TL;DR: In this paper, a survey of 2,026 adult Russians conducted in 1998 during the height of the Russian wage arrears crisis showed that Russians who attributed blame for the crisis to specific culprits or problem-solvers protested more than Russians who did not, and the mobilizing efforts of entrepreneurs had a greater impact on the less specific attributors.
Abstract: Blame plays an important role in motivating many human activities, but rarely has the attribution of blame been analyzed for its effects on protest behavior. I argue that how people understand causal relationships and attribute blame for a grievance plays a crucial role in their decision to redress the grievance through protest. The greater the specificity of blame attribution, the greater the probability of protest. Among the less specific attributors of blame, political entrepreneurs have more opportunities to mobilize protest, especially if they can aid in blame specification. I test these hypotheses using evidence from an original nationwide survey of 2,026 adult Russians conducted in 1998 during the height of the Russian wage arrears crisis. Russians who attributed blame for the crisis to specific culprits or problem-solvers protested more than Russians who did not, and the mobilizing efforts of entrepreneurs had a greater impact on the less specific attributors. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. I would like to thank the Office of Research at the U.S. Information Agency (now State Department) for making the collection of these data possible and Vanessa Baird, Tami Buhr, Ray Duch, Steve Hanson, Will Moore, Cliff Morgan, Bob Stein, Randy Stevenson, Ric Stoll, and Andy Stock for their helpful advice. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not represent official positions of the State Department or the U.S. Government. The data and documentation necessary to replicate this analysis can be obtained from the National Archives.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors employ a simple ultimatum game of bargaining to evaluate two traditional power-centric theories of world politics, balance of power, and power transition theory, and demonstrate that as states approach power parity, information asymmetries are greatest, thus enhancing the probability of militarized conflict.
Abstract: Ultimatum bargaining models of international interactions suggest that when conflict is costly and the actors are fully informed, the probability of conflict goes to zero. However, conflict occurs with some positive probability when the challenger is uncertain about the defender's reservation value. I employ a simple ultimatum game of bargaining to evaluate two traditional power-centric theories of world politics, balance of power, and power transition theory. The formal and empirical analyses demonstrate that as states approach power parity, information asymmetries are greatest, thus enhancing the probability of militarized conflict. Uncertainty is a central cause of conflict emergence and is correlated with the distribution of observable capabilities. Recognizing the relationship between the distribution of power and the uncertainty offers a more sophisticated interpretation of power-centric explanations of world politics.
TL;DR: This paper traced the early manifestations and evolution from 1828 to 1840 of Tocqueville's understanding of the commune or township, a featured source of public participation and cohesion within his larger associational lexicon.
Abstract: Despite elevating Alexis de Tocqueville to iconic status in our national debate on civic engagement, we have frequently neglected the range and depth of his associational thought. In this essay, I trace the early manifestations and evolution from 1828 to 1840 of his understanding of the commune or township, a featured source of public participation and cohesion within his larger associational lexicon. I show how his reflections on local liberties, in general, and the New England township, in particular, inspired and helped to shape both volumes of his Democracy in America. I emphasize the degree to which Tocqueville saw the participatory vector originating in the township's political life as galvanizing an ardent civic spirit leading to cultural, intellectual, and economic achievements. I conclude by seeking to connect lessons gleaned from Tocqueville's township to contemporary strategies to strengthen citizen participation.For their early encouragement and advice, I thank Clark Gilpin and David Tracy, leaders of the Brauer Seminar at the University of Chicago Divinity School where I presented an initial version of this essay in spring 1994. I am grateful to the late Francois Furet, who also commented upon that early paper, and Ralph Lerner, who read and notated each of its successive formulations, for their generous and sage oversight of my ensuing Tocquevillian studies. I also thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal for their comments and constructive criticisms.
TL;DR: Ting et al. as mentioned in this paper used a non-cooperative bargaining game based on the closed-rule, infinite-horizon model of Baron and Ferejohn (1989) to assess the conditions under which unequal representation in a bicameral legislature may lead to unequal division of public expenditures.
Abstract: Malapportionment of seats in bicameral legislatures, it is widely argued, confers disproportionate benefits to overrepresented jurisdictions. Ample empirical research has documented that unequal representation produces unequal distribution of government expenditures in bicameral legislatures. The theoretical foundations for this empirical pattern are weak. It is commonly asserted that this stems from unequal voting power per se. Using a noncooperative bargaining game based on the closed-rule, infinite-horizon model of Baron and Ferejohn (1989), we assess the conditions under which unequal representation in a bicameral legislature may lead to unequal division of public expenditures. Two sets of results are derived. First, when bills originate in the House and the Senate considers the bill under a closed rule, the equilibrium expected payoffs of all House members are, surprisingly, equal. Second, we show that small-state biases can emerge when (1) there are supermajority rules in the malapportioned chamber, (2) the Senate initiates bills, which produces maldistributed proposal probabilities, and (3) the distributive goods are “lumpy.”We thank seminar participants at New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the 2002 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association for helpful comments. James Snyder and Michael Ting gratefully acknowledge the financial support of National Science Foundation Grant SES-0079035. Stephen Ansolabehere gratefully acknowledges the support of the Carnegie Corporation under the Carnegie Scholars program. This paper was written while Michael Ting was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he thanks the Department of Political Science there for their support.
TL;DR: This article used directed dyads to identify potential initiators and found that personalist dictatorships are more likely to challenge democracies, but not vice versa, and that other kinds of autocracies, namely, military regimes and single-party regimes, are also more likely challenge democracies than vice versa.
Abstract: Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry (2002) find that interstate dyads containing a democracy and a personalist dictatorship are more likely than other types of dyads to experience militarized disputes. They argue that this is because democracies are especially likely to challenge personalist dictatorships. Unfortunately, they do not identify which state in a conflictual dyad initiated the dispute and so cannot present data to support their claim. We improve on their research design by using “directed dyads” to identify potential initiators. We confirm their finding that democracy–personalist dictatorship dyads are particularly conflict-prone, but we also disprove their argument that democracies attack dictators, as we find that personalist dictatorships are more likely to challenge democracies, but not vice versa. We also find that other kinds of autocracies, namely, military regimes and single-party regimes, are more likely to challenge democracies than vice versa. Our findings have important implications for understanding the relationships between regime type and international conflict.The authors thank Caroline Beer very much for assistance with data.
TL;DR: A state that is confronted with a grave external threat has three basic options of response, each of which involves certain trade-offs as mentioned in this paper, and the state should choose the policy, or combination of policies, that will provide an acceptable level of security at the lowest overall cost.
Abstract: Astate that is confronted with a grave external threat has three basic options of response, each of which involves certain trade-offs. First, it can strengthen its military. Rearmament, or “internal balancing,” allows it to maintain its diplomatic freedom of action, but its economy may suffer from the strain of accelerating the production of weapons of war. Second, it can join forces with another power. Alliances may obviate the need for an arms buildup, but they carry the risk that the state will be abandoned by its partners or drawn into undesired conflicts. Finally, it can attempt to reconcile with its adversaries by conceding to some of their demands. Appeasement may be the least troublesome way to eliminate a threat, but it is also the most risky because it transfers valued resources to a potential opponent. After weighing these options, the state should choose the policy, or combination of policies, that will provide an acceptable level of security at the lowest overall cost. 1 The foregoing account is appealingly parsimonious, but it captures only part of the story. States are frequently racked by bitter internal debates over how to deal with international pressures, and changes in their political leadership sometimes bring about sudden shifts in their behavior. Of the three strategies described above, rearmament is often the most acutely divisive. It requires a sharp increase in the extraction and mobilization of resources from society, so it can become highly politicized. Some groups will inevitably bear a heavier burden than others, and their discontent may eventually endanger the regime’s hold on power or its ability to prepare for war. To ensure domestic
TL;DR: The authors argue that the dominant post-cold war global security trend is the gradual construction of collective security rules, including rules punishing human rights abuses, terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Abstract: September 11 did not fundamentally change world politics. Instead, it exacerbated already existing tensions about how to implement post-cold war collective security rules. Using a rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security, I argue that the dominant post-cold war global security trend is the gradual construction of collective security rules, including rules punishing human rights abuses, terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Using an interpretive method called dialogical analysis, I analyze the debate about intervention in Kosovo and argue that the recent conflict over intervention in Iraq revolves around similar claims about how to implement collective security rules. This analysis challenges arguments that September 11 ushered in a new era of world politics that necessarily justifies more aggressive, preemptive U.S. policies.I would like to thank Karin Fierke, Yale Ferguson, Gavan Duffy, and David Ahola for comments on earlier drafts, as well as Maximo Sanchez Pagano for research assistance. Any errors are my own.
TL;DR: This paper found that less educated black and weak racial identifiers were less supportive of minority-majority districts and racial redistricting practices, while education and racial identification were key predictors of black opinion on racial redistribution.
Abstract: Minority–majority districts are highly controversial. To assess the degree to which black positions on this controversial matter were well-thought-out and fixed, questions based on Sniderman and Piazza's (1993) “counterargument” technique were included in the 1996 National Black Election Study. Black opinion instability on the issue of race and redistricting reveals the complexity of mass attitudes and the reasoning process and reflects the manner in which a set of clashing interests and core values is balanced and prioritized. Although a large majority of blacks voiced initial opposition to creating districts where blacks and Hispanics are the voting majority, most blacks changed their position in response to the counterargument. This asymmetry suggests that blacks more strongly favor the goal of increasing minority representation than the principle of color blindness in Congressional redistricting. Education and racial identification are key predictors of black opinion on racial redistricting. Less educated blacks and weak racial identifiers were less supportive of minority-majority districts and racial redistricting practices. These results support the revisionist perspective among public opinion scholars that rational, thinking individuals can hold wavering opinions upon questioning because they generally encapsulate a set of contradictory values and interests. The research reported in this paper was funded by grants to the author from the National Science Foundation POWRE Program (SBR-9743928) and from the National Science Foundation's Political Science Division (SBR-9796212). An earlier version was presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott Wardman Park, August 31–September 3, 2000. The author thanks Luis Fraga at Stanford University for his comments as the panel's discussant, as well as the APSR Editor, Lee Sigelman, and reviewers for their contributions to this paper. I also thank Bruce Boyd at Computing Services at UCI and Gary King at Harvard University for their technical assistance.