We present, at the end of this section, the first thorough revision of our “Instructions to Contributors” in some years. The old version had accumulated archeological layers of revision that led to unclarity of meaning and infelicity of style; and it had come to terms in only a marginal way with the changed realities of online submission and digital files. Both problems, we hope, are now substantially corrected. We also include new language on replicability and verifiability, which many readers have urged upon for some time and which, in our view, comports well with the ongoing efforts of the American Political Science Association task force (co-chaired by Arthur Lupia and Colin Elman) on these matters. We have also tried to attune our language, to the extent possible, to that already in place at such journals as the American Journal of Political Science and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. We welcome comments and criticism, and we of course reserve the right to make further emendations in light of feedback and experience.

Scholars investigating European state development have long placed a heavy emphasis on the role played by representative institutions. The presence of an active representative assembly, it is argued, allowed citizens and rulers to contract over raising revenue and accessing credit. It may also have had implications for economic growth. These arguments have in turn been used to draw broad implications about the causal effect of analogous institutions in other places and during other time periods. But if assemblies had such clear efficiency benefits, why did they not become a universal phenomenon in Europe prior to the nineteenth century? I argue that in an era of costly communications and transport, an intensive form of political representative was much easier to sustain in geographically compact polities. This simple fact had important implications for the pattern of European state formation, and it may provide one reason why small states were able to survive despite threats from much larger neighbors. I test several relevant hypotheses using an original data set that provides the first broad view of European representative institutions in the medieval and early modern eras. I combine this with a geographic information system data set of state boundaries and populations in Europe between 1250 and 1750. The results suggest a strong effect of geographic scale on the format of political representation. The broader implication of this result is to provide a reminder that if institutions help solve contracting problems, ultimately, the maintenance of institutions may itself depend on ongoing transactions costs.

Arguments about how ethnic diversity affects governance typically posit that groups differ from each other in substantively important ways and that these differences make effective governance more difficult. But existing cross-national empirical tests typically use measures of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF) that have no information about substantive differences between groups. This article examines two important ways that groups differ from each other—culturally and economically—and assesses how such differences affect public goods provision. Across 46 countries, the analysis compares existing measures of cultural differences with a new measure that captures economic differences between groups: between-group inequality (BGI). We show that ELF, cultural fractionalization (CF), and BGI measure different things, and that the choice between them has an important impact on our understanding of which countries are most ethnically diverse. Furthermore, empirical tests reveal that BGI has a large, robust, and negative relationship with public goods provision, whereas CF, ELF, and overall inequality do not.

We develop an approach to studying public opinion that accounts for how people process competing messages received over the course of a political campaign or policy debate. Instead of focusing on the fixed impact of a message, we emphasize that a message can have variable effects depending on when it is received within a competitive context and how it is evaluated. We test hypotheses about the effect of information processing using data from two experiments that measure changes in public opinion in response to alternative sequences of information. As in past research, we find that competing messages received at the same time neutralize one another. However, when competing messages are separated by days or weeks, most individuals give disproportionate weight to the most recent communication because previous effects decay over time. There are exceptions, though, as people who engage in deliberate processing of information display attitude stability and give disproportionate weight to previous messages. These results show that people typically form significantly different opinions when they receive competing messages over time than when they receive the same messages simultaneously. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding the power of communications in contemporary politics.

What does the furor over the “politicization” of Coretta Scott King's funeral reveal about contemporary black mourning practices? What does it reveal about black political thought, rhetoric, and practice? Identifying two key modes of mourning and their concomitant conceptions of democracy, this article situates the funeral within a tradition of self-consciously political responses to loss that played a significant role in abolitionism and the struggle for civil rights. Tracing the tradition's origins, and employing the speeches of Frederick Douglass as an exemplar, it considers the approach's democratic value and the consequences of its failure. Arguing that the response to the King funeral indicates that the tradition is in decline, the article locates causes of this decline in significant changes among the black population and in the complex consequences of the tradition's previous successes. It concludes by considering the decline's potentially negative impact, both for African Americans and for the broader political community.

Ideology is widely considered to be an important factor in shaping policy outcomes and in influencing election outcomes. We propose a theory of the coalition-directed vote. The argument suggests that voters anticipate the postelection bargains negotiated among potential members of the governing coalition and that these anticipated policy agreements inform their vote choice. Our analysis, based on 86 voter preference surveys from 23 countries and over a 25-year period, confirms that coalition-directed voting occurs with considerable frequency in contexts with multiparty coalition governments.

Partisanship is strongly correlated with attitudes and behavior, but it is unclear from this pattern whether partisan identity has a causal effect on political behavior and attitudes. We report the results of a field experiment that investigates the causal effect of party identification. Prior to the February 2008 Connecticut presidential primary, researchers sent a mailing to a random sample of unaffiliated registered voters who, in a pretreatment survey, leaned toward a political party. The mailing informed the subjects that only voters registered with a party were able to participate in the upcoming presidential primary. Subjects were surveyed again in June 2008. Comparing posttreatment survey responses to subjects’ baseline survey responses, we find that those reminded of the need to register with a party were more likely to identify with a party and showed stronger partisanship. Further, we find that the treatment group also demonstrated greater concordance than the control group between their pretreatment latent partisanship and their posttreatment reported voting behavior and intentions and evaluations of partisan figures. Thus, our treatment, which appears to have caused a strengthening of partisan identity, also appears to have caused a shift in subjects’ candidate preferences and evaluations of salient political figures. This finding is consistent with the claim that partisanship is an active force changing how citizens behave in and perceive the political world.

Opposing candidates for a political office often differ in their professional backgrounds and previous political experience, leading to both real and perceived differences in political capabilities. We analyze a formal model in which candidates with different productivities in two policy areas compete for voters by choosing how much money or effort they would allocate to each area if elected. The model has a unique equilibrium that differs substantially from the standard median voter model. Although candidates compete for the support of a moderate voter type, this cutoff voter differs from the expected median voter. Moreover, no voter type except the cutoff voter is indifferent between the candidates in equilibrium. The model also predicts that candidates respond to changes in the preferences of voters in a very rigid way. From a welfare perspective, candidates are “excessively moderate”: almost certainly, a majority of voters would prefer that the winning candidate focus more on his or her strength.

Limitation riders, which allow the U.S. Congress to forbid agencies from spending money for specific uses, enable congressional majorities to exert greater influence over bureaucratic policy decisions than is appreciated by research on policy making in the United States. I develop a theory of limitation riders, explaining why they lead to policy outcomes that are preferable to a majority of legislators compared to outcomes that would occur if this tool did not exist. I assess this perspective empirically by analyzing the volume of limitation riders reported in bills from 1993 to 2002 and all limitation riders forbidding regulatory actions from 1989 to 2009. In addition to supporting the conclusion that Congress possesses more leverage over agencies’ decisions than is currently appreciated, the findings have implications for advancing theories of delegation.

Scholarship on distributive politics focuses almost exclusively on the internal operations of Congress, paying particular attention to committees and majority parties. This article highlights the president, who has extensive opportunities, both ex ante and ex post, to influence the distribution of federal outlays. We analyze two databases that track the geographic spending of nearly every domestic program over a 24-year period—the largest and most comprehensive panels of federal spending patterns ever assembled. Using district and county fixed-effects estimation strategies, we find no evidence of committee influence and mixed evidence that majority party members receive larger shares of federal outlays. We find that districts and counties receive systematically more federal outlays when legislators in the president's party represent them.

How should inquiry into ethical-political life come to terms with “depth experience?” By this, I mean extraordinary experience that breaks into the familiar frames of meaning and reasoning that undergird everyday life, bringing some sort of transformation or significant solidification of basic commitments or identity. Stated in this abstract fashion, my question is likely to seem rather bewildering or uninteresting for the study of politics. But its potential significance becomes apparent if one mentions George W. Bush and being “born again.” This article speculates more broadly about such experience, expanding the focus beyond theists and “limit” experiences. When one does this, depth experience need not be thought of as anathema to political theory. Rather, I show that it can be cultivated in such a way as to animate an admirable “bearing” on the part of citizens of affluent, late-modern societies and cohere with certain fundamentals of deliberative democracy.

Contact with the criminal justice system is greater today than at any time in our history. In this article, we argue that interactions with criminal justice are an important source of political socialization, in which the lessons that are imprinted are antagonistic to democratic participation and inspire negative orientations toward government. To test this argument, we conduct the first systematic empirical exploration of how criminal justice involvement shapes the citizenship and political voice of a growing swath of Americans. We find that custodial involvement carries with it a substantial civic penalty that is not explained by criminal propensity or socioeconomic differences alone. Given that the carceral state has become a routine site of interaction between government and citizens, institutions of criminal justice have emerged as an important force in defining citizen participation and understandings, with potentially dire consequences for democratic ideals.

The American Political Science Review peer review process relies on the professionalism and generosity of those who contribute their time to read and evaluate the work of others. The Co-editors thank the following scholars for serving as manuscript reviewers between September 1, 2009, and August 31, 2010.