Collective action, particularly by low-resource groups, presents an opportunity for re-election-minded legislators to learn about (and subsequently represent) their constituents’ salient interests. In fact, legislators are more likely to support the preferences of protesters than non-protesters. Legislators are also more likely to support the preferences of racial and ethnic minority, low-income and grassroots protesting groups than they are to represent better-resourced protesters. This argument emerges from a formal theory and is empirically tested using legislative roll-call vote data from the 102nd through the 104th US Congresses and data on civil rights, minority issues and civil liberties issue area protests reported in the New York Times. This counterintuitive result enhances understanding of inequalities in representation. It demonstrates that under certain conditions, political representation favors disadvantaged populations.

Forecasting elections has long been regarded by political scientists as an interesting problem in its own right. But it assumes special importance for those countries that do not have fixed election dates. In Britain, for example, it is up to the prime minister to choose the date, within the statutory five year limit. Correct timing can clearly be crucial to the outcome, and the prime minister can be expected to go to considerable lengths to ensure that the election is called for the date most favourable to his party. But there lies the prime minister's problem: elections must be called three to four weeks before polling day. With what degree of accuracy can the result be forecast at the time the election is called?

A small but interesting literature on election forecasting has emerged in recent years. The forecasting techniques used in this literature vary widely, from crude extrapolation to sophisticated model building. Up to now the emphasis has been on election night forecasting, in which the basic problem involves extracting the maximum amount of information from electoral returns, in order to forecast the outcome a few hours before it is finally known. For obvious reasons the techniques utilized in this context are of little use prior to election day.

This contribution to the study of democratic inclusiveness advances three main claims, based on Lijphart’s original data. First, his measurement of executive inclusiveness is incoherent and invalid. Secondly, executive inclusiveness is best explained by the interaction of many parties and strong legislative veto points. This implies that executive inclusiveness should not be contained in either of Lijphart’s two dimensions of democracy. Thirdly, parties have incentives to economize on the costs of inclusive coalitions by avoiding strong legislative veto points, and these incentives are greater in parliamentary than in presidential systems. Hence, Lijphart’s favourite version of consensus democracy – characterized by a parliamentary system and a high degree of executive inclusiveness – is unlikely to be a behavioural-institutional equilibrium.

We examine ‘heuristic’ and ‘systematic’ candidate-appraisal strategies within a presidential election context. Controlling for political knowledge, we determine whether individual differences in the capacity for ideological thought condition voters' reliance on the major determinants of candidate choice, increasing reliance on policy considerations and decreasing reliance on the heuristic cue of party identification and on perceptions of candidate character when ideological capacity is high, and exerting the opposite effect – decreasing the role of issues and increasing the role of party identification and candidate qualities – when such capacity is low. Using American National Election Studies data from the 1984–2000 period, we find that ideological thinking consistently heightens voters' reliance on issues and decreases their reliance on candidate cues, but only among voters who report being concerned about the outcome of the election. In contrast, the effect of partisanship is stable across levels of ideological thinking and concern about the campaign. We discuss the cognitive processes by which ideological thinking regulates political choice, and assert its centrality in the political decision-making process.

This article considers the historical development of a characteristic crucial for the functioning and normative appeal of Westminster systems: cohesive legislative parties. It gathers the universe of the 20,000 parliamentary divisions that took place between 1836 and 1910 in the British House of Commons, construct a voting record for every Member of Parliament (MP) serving during this time, and conducts analysis that aims to both describe and explain the development of cohesive party voting. In line with previous work, it shows that – with the exception of a chaotic period in the 1840s and 1850s – median discipline was always high and increased throughout the century. The study uses novel methods to demonstrate that much of the rise in cohesion results from the elimination of a rebellious ‘left tail’ from the 1860s onwards, rather than central tendency shifts. In explaining the aggregate trends, the article uses panel data techniques and notes that there is scant evidence for ‘replacement’ explanations that involve new members behaving in more disciplined ways than those leaving the chamber. It offers evidence that more loyal MPs were more likely to obtain ministerial posts, and speculates that this and other ‘inducement’-based accounts offer more promising explanations of increasingly cohesive parties.

This article examines how party organization affects, and is itself affected by, the objectives pursued by parties in liberal democracies; it focuses on vote-seeking behaviour by parties. It argues that it is a mistake to model activist–leader relations in the past as having been primarily the product of particular kinds of ‘exchanges’ between leaders and activists in a party. Such models limit our understanding of intra-party relations in four important respects – by focusing exclusively on the idea of ‘exchange’ and not examining the role of ‘gifts’; by not considering the role of solidary incentives; by omitting an analysis of loyalty; and by not taking account of the role of habit. However, the article also argues that ‘exchange’ is becoming now a far more significant element in intra-party relations and that this development will constrain party leaders and influence the goals pursued by parties. Greater reliance on exchange between leaders and activists may lead to parties becoming generally more policy-seeking in their behaviour and also to their becoming less manageable than in the past.

Civilian confidence in domestic institutions, particularly in the security sector, is important for stability and state consolidation in post-conflict countries, where third-party peacekeepers have helped maintain peace and security after a conflict. While other scholars have suggested that a strong security sector is necessary for mitigating the credible commitment problem, this article provides two alternative criteria for assessing security sector reforms’ effect on confidence in the security sector: restraint and inclusiveness. Female ratio balancing in the security sector meets these two criteria, suggesting that it has the potential to help enhance confidence in the security sector and thereby create the right conditions for the peacekeeping transition. The argument is tested using original surveys conducted in post-conflict, ex-combatant communities in Liberia. The expectations received empirical support. The findings indicate that restraining and inclusive reforms could improve trust in the state’s security sector. They also demonstrate the importance of considering gender in theories related to post-conflict peace building and international relations more broadly.

Biotechnology policy in the United States promotes the commercial development of genetically modified crops, yet adopts a precautionary approach when it comes to stem cells and cloning. In this article, the evolution of this bifurcated policy domain is traced. A detailed analysis of congressional hearings shows how distinctions between the products of biotechnology came to be reflected in the character of committees holding hearings, the attention to risks and benefits, and the pattern of interest-group activity in different biotechnology applications. It is argued that many of the differences that separate the United States and Europe in biotechnology reflect the way institutions reinforce past policy choices.

Using national survey panel data collected in Germany during the 1990 Bundestag election campaign, we develop a model to assess the effect of the campaign on individual votes and the election outcome. We find that the dominant effects of the campaign on German voters, as in the Lazarsfeld et al. studies from the 1940s and in more recent US research, were the ‘reinforcement’ of earlier preferences and the ‘activation’ of latent vote dispositions based on fundamental individual attitudes such as party affiliation and left-right ideology. At the same time, the analysis shows that the number of campaign ‘converts’ (those who vote against their dispositions and prior preferences) was approximately 14 per cent of the electorate. The vote division among these individuals was overwhelmingly pro-government, suggesting that the 1990 German campaign altered a sufficient number of votes to turn what was an even contest, based on the electorate's initial political dispositions, into a solid government coalition victory.

Automated content analysis is employed to measure the dimensionality of Senate debates on the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and compare these results with the final vote. The underlying verbal conflict leading up to the final roll-call vote contains two important dimensions: (1) an emotive battle over the abortion procedure itself, and (2) the battle over the constitutionality of the bill. Surprisingly, senators appear not to have voted along the first dimension of the verbal conflict, but rather along the second dimension. The analysis of the deliberations of senators not only enables us to understand the complexity of the arguments that is not captured in the vote, but it also uncovers (and measures empirically) the strategies employed by legislators to shape the relevant lines of conflict, and ultimately, the final content of the bill.

Recent political contests across Europe and North America have been propelled by a wave of populist, anti-immigrant resentment, and it was widely expected that these populist victories would further fan the flames of xenophobia. This article reports the results of an experiment around the Brexit referendum, designed to test how populist victories shape anti-immigrant attitudes. The study finds that anti-immigrant attitudes actually softened after the Brexit referendum, among both Leave and Remain supporters, and these effects persisted for several months. How could a right-wing, populist victory soften anti-immigrant attitudes? The authors use causal mediation analysis to understand this ‘populist paradox’. Among Leavers, a greater sense of control over immigration channelled the effects of the Brexit outcome onto anti-immigrant attitudes. Individuals' efforts to distance themselves from accusations of xenophobia and racism explains the softening of attitudes towards immigration observed among both Leavers and Remainers.

The British prime minister’s power to appoint and dismiss ministers is probably his most important single power. This article explores how prime ministers from Macmillan to Blair have used that power. The article considers the criteria that prime ministers use when choosing to appoint or dismiss individuals from office before examining the calculations and miscalculations that prime ministers have made in practice. Finally, the article analyses the way that prime ministers have exercised, in particular, their power to dismiss and finds that Thatcher was far more likely than others to sack cabinet colleagues on ideological or policy grounds. The article emphasizes that prime ministers’ relationships with especially powerful ministers – ‘big beasts of the jungle’ – are crucial to an understanding of British government at the top.

Does the voting behaviour of African-American legislators differ significantly from their white colleagues on legislative issues of importance to the black community? This question is important for two reasons. First, the underlying premise behind creating more majority-black legislative districts is that black legislators do a better job of representing the policy interests of black constituents than do white lawmakers.Charles Cameron, David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran, ‘Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation in Congress?’ American Political Science Review, 90 (1996), 794–812; Richard L. Hall and Colleen Heflin, ‘The Importance of Color in Congress: Members and the Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the US House’ (unpublished paper, University of Michigan, 1994); David I. Lublin, The Paradox of Minority Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Kenny J. Whitby, The Color of Representation: Congressional Behavior and Black Interests (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). If this assumption is incorrect, then as one scholar notes, efforts to advance the substantive interests of African Americans through racial redistricting ‘would appear badly misdirected’Richard L. Hall, Participation in Congress (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 191. Even if the assumption is correct, the question also arises as to whether the importance associated with race is altered when it comes to specific types of legislative issues. Perhaps race matters not only for the policy representation of black interests, but also for whether or not the proposed legislation is disproportionately (dis)advantageous for African Americans compared to the general population.

This article examines citizens' attitudes towards the two major parties in the United States since 1952 and in West Germany since 1969 employing open-ended data from each country's National Election Study time series. Despite similar declining trends in party identification in the two countries, it is found that the patterns of change in party images are markedly different. In the United States it is shown that voters have become increasingly neutral towards the two parties as the focus has turned more and more towards the candidates. In contrast, in West Germany voters have come to have a more balanced view of the parties, seeing both positive and negative features of both. Thus in both cases there has been a decline in polarized strong partisanship (‘my party right or wrong’), but for different reasons. In the United States this decline can be seen as a sign of the decay of an ageing and outdated party system; in West Germany it can be seen as the development of realistic and balanced views of a party system which is just reaching full maturity. The implications for analysing party system development in Eastern Europe are discussed.

This article analyses Imperial Germany's legendary coalition of landed aristocracy and heavy industry around a policy of tariff protection. Using a simple model of voting behaviour, where party affiliation serves as a partial intervening variable between constituency interests and legislative votes on trade policy, I test hypotheses derived from three different interpretations of the ‘marriage of iron and rye’. Roll-call votes from four key divisions in the Reichstag are analysed in a number of forms, ranging from cross-tabulations to conditional logistic regression. Ronald Rogowski's ‘factor endowment’ model offers an important dynamic perspective that is lacking in the others, but his model must be reconciled with anomalies that arise in the short run. Rather than attempting to disentangle political party ideology from constituents' interests, more insight may be gained from understanding why the effects of the two causal factors were not fixed, and how they varied over time.

In a recent article, Rogowski and Kayser introduced a claim to the political economy literature that majoritarian electoral systems: (a) systematically privilege consumers relative to producers and, consequently, (b) reduce real prices. The authors, modifying an established model of regulation, showed that, within a competitive political system, politicians favour those who provide only votes (consumers) over those who provide both money and votes (producers). When producers provide only money, the intuition becomes apparent even without a model: politicians respond more to voters under (majoritarian) systems in which a small change in vote share can produce a large change in seat share. Cross-sectional evidence for the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries in 1990 was strongly supportive, suggesting that real prices were, all else equal, about 10 per cent lower in the averageOECDcountry with single-member district (SMD) electoral systems than in those that used some form of proportional representation (PR).

As with all new empirical claims, healthy scepticism is warranted. Indeed, recent research in related areas has to be contrasted with – but it has not contradicted – these price results, associating proportional electoral arrangements with more positive social welfare outcomes including (a) less income inequality, (b) higher public spending, or, in combination with central banking institutions, (c) greater price stability. We acknowledge the possible incongruity of these results with those of Rogowski and Kayser; after all, verification of the price effects would suggest a more complicated relationship between electoral institutions and social welfare than is indicated in the extant literature.

We propose an analytic account of dispositional conservatism that attempts to uncover a foundation of what is often taken to be an anti-foundationalist position. We identify a bias in favour of the status quo as a key component of the conservative disposition and address the question of the justification of such a conservative disposition, and the circumstances in which the widespread adoption of such a disposition might be normatively desirable. Our analysis builds on a structural link between the economist's traditional emphasis on questions of feasibility and the conservative's attachment to the status quo.

What are the causes and consequences of systematic measurement error in violence measures drawn from media-based conflict event data? More specifically, how valid are such event data for geocoding and capturing election violence? This study examines sub-national variation in election violence and uses original data from domestic election monitor surveys as a comparison to widely used sources of event data. The authors show that conventional data under-report events throughout the election cycle, particularly in sparsely populated areas and outside anticipated violence hotspots. Moreover, systematic measurement error of media-based event data for measuring election violence can generate significant relationships where none exist, and can result in different effect magnitudes. The article suggests areas for future research and indicates ways in which existing work on election violence may have been affected by systematic measurement error.

Drawing on a panel of 136 countries over the period 1982–2004, we study a tipping point version of Vogel's ‘California Effect’ in the context of the diffusion of human rights practices. Because human rights practices are often deeply embedded in a society's customs and political institutions, we expect that a high level of pressure from the importing countries is needed to bring about changes in an exporting country's human rights records. We find strong empirical support for this threshold effect; provided that the average level of respect for human rights in importing countries is sufficiently high, trading relationships can operate as transmission belts for the diffusion of human rights practices from importing to exporting countries.

Long-standing results demonstrate that, if policy choices are defined in spaces with more than one dimension, majority-rule equilibrium fails to exist for a general class of smooth preference profiles. This article shows that if agents perceive political similarity and difference in ‘city block’ terms, then the dimension-by-dimension median can be a majority-rule equilibrium even in spaces with an arbitrarily large number of dimensions and it provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such an equilibrium. This is important because city block preferences accord more closely with empirical research on human perception than do many smooth preferences. It implies that, if empirical research findings on human perceptions of similarity and difference extend also to perceptions of political similarity and difference, then the possibility of equilibrium under majority rule re-emerges.