Given their political incentives, governments in more autocratic polities can strategically channel unearned government and household income in the form of foreign aid and remittances to finance patronage, which extends their tenure in political office. I substantiate this claim with duration models of government turnover for a sample of 97 countries between 1975 and 2004. Unearned foreign income received in more autocratic countries reduces the likelihood of government turnover, regime collapse, and outbreaks of major political discontent. To allay potential concerns with endogeneity, I harness a natural experiment of oil price–driven aid and remittance flows to poor, non–oil producing Muslim autocracies. The instrumental variables results confirm the baseline finding that authoritarian governments can harness unearned foreign income to prolong their rule. Finally, I provide evidence of the underlying causal mechanisms that governments in autocracies use aid and remittances inflows to reduce their expenditures on welfare goods to fund patronage.

The present study examines the dynamics of partisanship and voting behavior by utilizing national survey panel data gathered in 1965, 1973, and 1982 from two strategically situated generations—members of the high school senior class of 1965 and their parents. At the aggregate level, generational effects appeared in the persistently weaker partisan attachments of the younger generation. At the individual level, strong effects based on experience and habituation appeared in the remarkable gains occurring in the stability of partisan and other orientations among the young as they aged from their mid-20s to their mid-30s. Dynamic modeling of the relationship between partisanship and voting choice demonstrated that the younger voters had stabilized at an overall weaker level of partisanship, leading to more volatile voting behavior which, in turn, failed to provide the consistent reinforcement needed to intensify preexisting partisan leanings.

When the economy in a single country contracts, voters often punish the government. When many economies contract, voters turn against their governments much less frequently. This suggests that the international context matters for the domestic vote, yet most research on electoral accountability assumes that voters treat their national economies as autarkic. We decompose two key economic aggregates—growth in real gross domestic product and unemployment—into their international and domestic components and demonstrate that voters hold incumbents more electorally accountable for the domestic than for the international component of growth. Voters in a wide variety of democracies benchmark national economic growth against that abroad, punishing (rewarding) incumbents for national outcomes that underperform (outperform) an international comparison. Tests suggest that this effect arises not from highly informed voters making direct comparisons but from “pre-benchmarking” by the media when reporting on the economy. The effect of benchmarked growth exceeds that of aggregate national growth by up to a factor of two and outstrips the international component of growth by an even larger margin, implying that previous research may have underestimated the strength of the economy on the vote.

In spite of the fact that political eras in the United States are widely (and often ambiguously) defined in terms of a general policy sentiment or mood, political scientists have done little in the way of rigorous analysis regarding this subject. I argue that shifts in domestic policy sentiment along a liberal–conservative continuum may be understood in part as responses to changing economic expectations. Specifically, expectations of a strong economy result in greater support for liberal domestic policies, whereas anticipation of declining economic conditions pushes the national policy mood to the right. Using quarterly data for the period 1968–88, I present a multiple-time-series error correction model that lends considerable support to the hypothesis.

Interest group ratings are widely used in studies of legislative behavior. Since the set of votes used is not constant over time and across chambers, the scales underlying the scores can shift and stretch. We introduce an econometric model that corrects the problem. Specifically, we derive an index, much like an inflation index for consumer prices, that allows one to make intertemporal and interchamber comparisons of interest group ratings. The adjusted scores for the ADA show a strong liberal trend in the average member of Congress during 1947–94, followed by a conservative reversal. A nonparametric test using ADA and ACU scores demonstrates the validity of adjusted scores and the invalidity of nominal scores for intertemporal and interchamber comparisons. Using two studies (Levitt 1996; Shipan and Lowry 1997) we illustrate that the choice of adjusted versus nominal scores may greatly affect substantive conclusions of researchers.

A survey of the American public is used to model citizen political recruitment as a two-stage process. First, those who recruit others to become active in politics seek likely activists through “rational prospecting.” Second, they seek acquiescence to their requests. We model each part of the process, delineating the characteristics of individuals that make them attractive prospects and that make them likely to say “yes.” Recruiters who have information about, and leverage over, their targets are more likely to be successful. In seeking out people who would be likely not only to participate but also to participate effectively, rational prospectors select people with characteristics that are already overrepresented among participants. The net result of the recruitment process for political activity in general—and for financial contributions, in particular—is to exacerbate participatory stratification.

Recent scholarship argues that one solution to ensure longevity and economic growth in an authoritarian regime is to co-opt potential opposition by offering them limited policy influence in a national legislature. Although cooptation theory generates a number of predictions for delegate behavior within an authoritarian parliament, the opacity of such regimes has made empirical confirmation difficult. We resolve this problem by exploiting the transcripts of query sessions in the Vietnamese National Assembly, where delegates question the prime minister and Cabinet members on important issues of the day. Using a content analysis of queries, we offer the first empirical test of delegate behavior in nondemocratic parliaments. We find that some delegates exhibit behavior consistent with cooptation theory by actively participating in sessions, demonstrating criticism of authorities, and responding to the needs of local constituents. Such responsiveness, however, is parameterized by regime rules for nominating, electing, and assigning parliamentary responsibilities to individual delegates.

We propose and test a formal model of war and domestic politics, building on recent evidence on the relationship between regime type, the effect of war on the probability of losing office, and the consequences of losing office. The less the outcome of international interaction affects a leader's tenure and the less punitive are the consequences of losing office, the more a leader is willing to make concessions to strike a peaceful bargain. We demonstrate that our theory successfully predicts war involvement among nondemocratic regime types. Moreover, our theory offers an intuitive explanation for the democratic peace. Compared to nondemocratic leaders, the tenure of democratic leaders depends relatively little on the war outcome, and democratic leaders fare relatively well after losing office. Thus, democratic leaders should be more willing and able to avoid war, especially with other democrats.

The hallmark of the new positive theories of the judiciary is that Supreme Court justices will frequently defer to the preferences of Congress when making decisions, particularly in statutory cases in which it is purportedly easy for Congress to reverse the Court. Alternatively, judicial attitudinalists argue that the institutional structures facing the Court allow the justices to vote their sincere policy preferences. This paper compares these sincere and sophisticated models of voting behavior by Supreme Court justices. Using a variety of tests on the votes of Supreme Court justices in statutory cases decided between 1947 and 1992, I find some evidence of sophisticated behavior, but most tests suggest otherwise. Moreover, direct comparisons between the two models unambiguously favor the attitudinal model. I conclude that the justices overwhelmingly engage in rationally sincere behavior.

The election of African Americans to Congress is a primary achievement of the post– civil rights transition from protest to politics. I evaluate the link between black congressional representation and political engagement, as measured by voting participation. There are two related objectives: Construct a broader model of participation that takes into account a key component of the political environment since the civil rights era, and more fully appreciate the political significance of minority officeholding by considering its nonpolicy consequences. Using precinct data from eight midterm elections, I demonstrate that the election of blacks to Congress negatively affects white political involvement and only rarely increases political engagement among African Americans.

This study explores how trust arises among policy elites engaged in prolonged face-to-face negotiations. Mirroring recent evidence that citizens' procedural preferences (as opposed to policy preferences) drive trust in government, we find that interpersonal trust among stakeholders in consensus-seeking partnerships is explained by the perceived legitimacy and fairness of the negotiation process more so than by the partnership's track record of producing mutually agreeable policies. Overall, hypotheses derived from social psychology do as well or better than those based on rational-choice assumptions. Important predictors of trust include small and stable groups, generalized social trust, clear decision rules, political stalemate, congruence on policy-related beliefs, and absence of devil-shift (the belief that one's opponents wield more power than one's allies). Surprisingly, null or negative correlations exist between trust and network density, measured by membership in voluntary associations. The study illustrates the value of behavioral models that integrate institutional, rational, and psychological explanations.

This paper proposes and tests a new formal model of the competition for capital, using the analogy of a “tournament” as a substitute for the ”race-to-the-bottom” model. Our key insight is that political costs that accompany legislating have both direct and indirect effects on the likelihood and scale of reforms. While countries with higher political costs are less likely themselves to enact reforms, the presence of these costs also reduces competing countries' incentives to reform regardless of their own political costs. Domestic politics therefore mitigates the pressures for downward convergence of tax policy despite increased capital mobility. We examine the capital tax policies in OECD countries during the period from 1980 to 1997 and find that states are sensitive to tax reforms in competitor countries, although their responses to reforms are mediated by their own domestic costs to reform. We define two potential sources of political costs of reform: transaction costs, due to the presence of multiple veto players in the legislative process, and constituency costs, due to ideological opposition to policy changes that benefit capital. Our evidence reveals that a reduction in these costs either domestically or abroad increases the likelihood that a country enacts tax reforms.

Traditional studies of political participation assume an electoral environment in which voters decide between two White candidates, and find Latino citizens less politically engaged. Given the growth in the number of Latino candidates for office over the past 20 years, this article tests whether ethnicity impacts Latino voting behavior. I argue that the presence of a Latino candidate mobilizes the Latino electorate, resulting in elevated voter turnout and strong support for the co-ethnic candidates. Although some research provides a theoretical basis for such a claim, this article brings together a comprehensive body of empirical evidence to suggest that ethnicity is salient for Latinos and provides a coherent theory that accounts for the empowering role of co-ethnic candidates. Analysis of recent mayoral elections in five major U.S. cities reveals that Latinos were consistently mobilized by co-ethnic candidates.

How do Americans decide whether their country should use military force abroad? We argue they combine dispositional preferences and ideas about the geopolitical situation. This article reports the results of a representative national survey that incorporated five experiments. Findings include the following: (1) Respondent dispositions, especially isolationism versus internationalism and assertiveness versus accommodativeness, consistently constrained policy preferences, whereas liberalism-conservatism did not; (2) features of the geopolitical context—the presence of U.S. interests, relative power, the images of the adversary's motivations, and judgments about cultural status—also influenced support for military intervention; and (3) systematic interactions emerged between dispositions and geopolitical context that shed light on when and why ideological disagreements about the use of force are likely to be amplified and attenuated by situational factors. Our results are consistent with a cognitive-interactionist perspective, in which people adapt broad predispositions in relatively thoughtful ways to specific foreign policy problems.

The political process often compensates the losers from technical change or international competition in an economically inefficient way, namely by subsidizing or protecting declining industries instead of encouraging the movement of resources to other more productive uses. We find that a dynamic inconsistency in the game of redistributive politics contributes to this outcome. To achieve economically efficient outcomes, it is necessary that those making economically inefficient choices not be given offsetting transfers. But the political process distributes income on the basis of political characteristics, which are in general different from the economic characteristics that are rewarded by the market. We identify circumstances in which the inefficient choosers have desirable political characteristics and are therefore immune from threats of having to face the economic consequences of their choices.

Arguments are presented for and against a series of hypotheses about the influence of the parliamentary party system on the stability of governments, and the hypotheses are tested against data on 196 governments in parliamentary democracies since 1945. A strong relation is found between the duration of governments and the fragmentation of the parliamentary party system and of the government parties, but the fragmentation of the opposition parties seems not to affect stability. One-party governments are more stable than coalition governments, and majority governments more than minority governments. The ideological dispersion of the parties—in the whole parliament, in the government, or in the opposition—does not explain stability any better than fragmentation, which is based upon only the number and sizes of parties; but the proportion of seats held by ‘anti-system’ parties (communists and neo-fascists, mainly) is a good indicator of stability. The best explanation of government stability found here is the combined linear influence of the size of the anti-system parties and the fragmentation of the pro-system parties.

This article argues thai the role of the law in the political system has been construed much too narrowly. A review of the political science literature demonstrates an interest in the law that is largely confined to the making of new laws, social change, and social control. That view implies an acceptance of the legal profession's distinction between public and private law as a reasonable guide for political scientists in the study of law.

A more interactive view of the law is presented, characterizing legal mobilization (invoking legal norms) as a form of political activity by which the citizenry uses public authority on its own behalf. Further, the legal system, structured to consider cases and controversies on an individual basis, provides access to government authority unencumbered by the limits of collective action. This form of public power, although contingent, is widely dispersed.

Consideration of the factors that influence legal mobilization is important not only to understanding who uses the law, but also as predictors to the implementation of public policy; with very few exceptions, the enforcement of the laws depends upon individual citizens to initiate the legal process. By virtue of this dependence, an aggregation of individual citizens acting largely in their own interests strongly influences the form and extent of the implementation of public policy and thereby the allocation of power and authority.

The requirement of unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials is widely believed to reduce the likelihood of convicting the innocent. This belief depends largely upon the assumption that jurors will vote nonstrategically based on their impression of the trial evidence. Recent literature, however, has questioned this assumption, and Feddersen and Pesendorfer propose a model in which it is never a Nash equilibrium for jurors to vote nonstrategically under unanimity rule, and equilibrium behavior produces higher probabilities of both convicting the innocent and acquitting the guilty under unanimity rule than under numerous alternatives. I extend this work by incorporating two additional features of actual jury procedure: the possibility of mistrial and communication among jurors. Under each circumstance, I demonstrate that nonstrategic voting is a Nash equilibrium under fairly general conditions and that unanimity performs better than any alternative rule in minimizing probability of trial error and maximizing expected utility.

I present a new empirical approach to the study of democratic consolidation. This approach leads to new insights into the determinants of democratic consolidation that cannot be obtained with existing techniques. I distinguish between democracies that survive because they are consolidated and those democracies that are not consolidated but survive because of some favorable circumstances. As a result, I can identify the determinants of two related yet distinct processes: the likelihood that a democracy consolidates, and the timing of authoritarian reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. I find that the level of economic development, type of democratic executive, and type of authoritarian past determine whether a democracy consolidates, but have no effect on the timing of reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. That risk is only associated with economic recessions. I also find that existing studies greatly underestimate the risk of early reversals while simultaneously overestimating the risk of late reversals, and that a large number of existing democracies are in fact consolidated.

This article presents an experiment in which 49 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results suggest that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy.