Internet surveys of the general population have been growing in use over the last few years because they are less expensive, faster, and greener than most other survey modes. However, they have been used less frequently to survey elites, and little is known about the representativeness of their results. This article helps fill that void by using an experiment where half of a sample of state legislators are given an Internet survey and half a mail survey, and then the response rate, representativeness of respondents, and similarity of responses are compared. The results indicate that mail and Internet surveys generate fairly representative samples, albeit with few biases, and similar responses; however, mail surveys generate a significantly higher response rate than Internet surveys. The implications of these findings are discussed.

We modify Berry et al.‘s congressional-delegation-based measure of state government ideology to construct a new measure—which we call the state-legislative-based state government ideology measure—by relying on Shor and McCarty's National Political Awareness Test common space estimates of the ideal points of U.S. state legislators. We conduct tests of convergent and construct validity for the two measures. We find that they correlate highly in each year for which the state-legislative-based indicator is available (1995–2008), and when observations are pooled across all years. We also replicate numerous published studies assessing the impact of state government ideology using each indicator of ideology and find that the two measures nearly always yield similar conclusions about the effect of government ideology. Because the state-legislative-based measure is based on more direct estimates of the ideal points of state legislators than is the congressional-delegation-based measure—which uses estimates of ideal points for members of Congress from the same state as a proxy—we believe the state-legislative-based measure is superior, and we recommend that scholars use it when it is available for the state-years being studied. Because our empirical evidence indicates that Berry et al.‘s congressional-delegation-based measure is also valid—and it is available for a much longer period (annually beginning in 1960)—we advise that it be used when the state-legislative-based measure is not available.

Do citizens have the information they need to hold state politicians accountable? We consider what people know about state politics and whether knowledge of state government is rooted in the same factors that explain knowledge of national matters. We argue that while knowledge of national politics is rooted within individual dispositions like education and political interest, knowledge of state politics depends on the political climate of the state. When state political environments provide more information and greater incentives to become informed, people are more knowledgeable about state matters. Even if citizens are not always well versed in matters of state politics, they appear to monitor the business of the states. Citizens are most knowledgeable about state politics in the cases where information is arguably most important—when state governments are underperforming, when political competition is high, and when the political parties in the state are ideologically divided.

We analyze the effect of redrawn constituents on incumbent vote shares in Georgia U.S. House elections from 1992 to 2006. The Georgia General Assembly redrew the congressional boundaries for the 2006 midterm and the new lines redistributed approximately 31% of residents into districts with a different incumbent than the one representing them in 2004. With the use of Voting Tabulation District (VTD) data, we use a hierarchical model to evaluate the effect these redrawn constituents had on their new incumbent's vote share. We find a consistent pattern: both Democratic and Republican incumbents experienced significant reductions in their vote shares as a consequence of the redrawn VTDs placed in their districts. The short-term political climate featuring a national Democratic tide and a simultaneous statewide trend favoring the Grand Old Party (GOP) helps to explain this finding. With offsetting partisan conditions, the incumbency advantage came to the fore as Georgia U.S. House members, irrespective of party affiliation, performed better among the constituents they retained prior to redistricting. Our findings for the 2006 election run counter to the significant Republican redistricting advantage prevailing in Georgia congressional contests from 1992 to 2004.

Scholars of social networks often rely on summary statistics to measure and compare the structures of their networks of interest. However, measuring the uncertainty inherent in these summaries can be challenging, thus making hypothesis testing for network summaries difficult. Computational and nonparametric procedures can overcome these difficulties by allowing researchers to generate reference distributions for comparison directly from their data. In this research, I demonstrate the use of nonparametric hypothesis testing in networks using the popular network summary statistic network modularity. I provide a method based on permutation testing for assessing whether a particular network modularity score is larger than a researcher might expect due to random chance. I then create a simulation study of network modularity and its simulated reference distribution that I propose. Finally, I provide an empirical example of this technique using cosponsorship networks from U.S. state legislatures.

In this article, I evaluate whether a state's level of bureaucratic discretionary authority with respect to welfare policy makes that state more or less likely to participate in policy diffusion with other states that share similar levels of bureaucratic discretionary authority. Using data on levels of access to welfare services in the late Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) era (1976–90), I find that bureaucrats across states who are granted high-discretionary authority engage in policy diffusion with one another. Diffusion based on similarity in discretionary authority is more pronounced when bureaucrats possess high compared with no discretion and does not occur when bureaucrats possess low discretion. Moreover, diffusion between high-discretion bureaucrats operates concurrently with geographic- and economic-driven forms of diffusion that have been well documented in the policy diffusion literature. Results demonstrate that a state's choice of how much discretion to give bureaucrats can open or close channels of diffusion that are available to policymakers in that state.

The cross-sectional variation among state legislative leaders' formal powers provides a unique opportunity to test a variety of hypotheses of the American legislative process that involve the causes and effects of these powers. But to date, measures of these powers have been developed primarily for single years or biennia, limiting their applicability, especially for drawing causal conclusions. In this note, I develop an index of state House speakers' formal powers for each biennia from 1981 to 2010 (for even-year-election states) and from 1982 to 2009 (for odd-year-election states).