American Politics Research current issue

Who Whips?: Party Government and the House Extended Whip Networks

Meinke, S. R. — 2008-08-08

Little recent research on congressional parties has considered the relationship between the vast extended leadership and shifting partisan dynamics. This article draws on conditional party government theory to argue that elected House leaders use the extended whip networks to achieve somewhat different goals under weaker and stronger party government conditions and that these priorities are reflected in the whip systems' membership. Specifically, the whip system reflects caucus diversity under weaker party government but becomes disproportionately stacked with loyalists as party government conditions grow stronger; this shift reflects heightened leadership focus on agenda coordination and signaling under strong parties. The evidence on whip system composition and selection in the Democratic caucus (95th to 106th Congresses) provides very strong support for this argument. An examination of the Republican conference fails to support the main hypothesis but shows that the 1990s growing GOP majority whip network was unrepresentatively dominated by the cohort of junior members.

Strategic Anticipation and the Hierarchy of Justice in U.S. District Courts

Randazzo, K. A. — 2008-08-08

Does the hierarchical relationship between the district courts and the courts of appeals influence decision making at the trial level? Do these judges anticipate responses by appellate panels and condition their decisions based on these expectations? Using a sample of district court cases from 1925 to 1996 that were subsequently reviewed by the courts of appeals, and incorporating a strategic choice statistical framework, I discover that the district courts are constrained by the anticipated responses of the appeals courts. However, this conclusion is not apparent if one analyzes the data using traditional maximum likelihood methods. Only when empirical analyses specifically model underlying strategic relationships does one discover this constraint. If the federal trial judges anticipate a negative response on appeal, then they curtail their ideological influences (the magnitude of influence decreases by approximately one-half). This pattern remains consistent when one examines civil liberties and economic cases, but not for criminal cases. Thus, the hierarchical structure of the federal judiciary appears to exert a significant constraint on the district courts.

The Dimensions of Negative Messages

Fridkin, K. L., Kenney, P. J. — 2008-08-08

Candidates and campaign strategists believe that negative campaigning works—negative messages depress citizen's evaluations of targeted candidates. However, scholars have been unable to validate consistently the claims of practitioners. To better understand how negative campaigning influences the electorate, it is necessary to consider the relevance and civility of negative messages. In particular, do citizens make distinctions concerning the relevance and civility of campaign messages? If so, do citizens' views about the relevance and civility of negative messages influence how they evaluate candidates? We rely on an experimental research design embedded in a public opinion survey to examine people's reactions to negative commercials. Based on a national survey of nearly 700 respondents, we find citizens differentiate between negative advertisements in meaningful and consistent ways. Furthermore, the civility and relevance of the negative commercials significantly influences people's evaluations of the targeted candidates in several ways, including trait, affect, and issue evaluations.

Interparty Differences in Elite Support for Presidential Nomination Candidates

Steger, W. P. — 2008-08-08

Studies of the 1970s and 1980s viewed the political party insiders as having little influence on the selection of the presidential nominees. Recent studies, however, find a significant effect for party elite endorsements in presidential nomination campaigns. This study presents a theory of elite influence in the postreform presidential nomination system and analyzes patterns of elite party endorsements to address questions of when and why elites converge on a preferred candidate. Both party- and candidate-centric factors appear to affect elite endorsements of presidential candidates. Elite elected officials are mainly motivated to have a nominee with electoral appeal. Fewer elite Democratic elected officials endorse presidential candidates, they endorse later, and they tend to divide their endorsements among the presidential candidates to a greater degree than do elite Republican elected officials.

After the Supreme Word: The Effect of McCreary County v. ACLU (2005) and Van Orden v. Perry (2005) on Support for Public Displays of the Ten Commandments

Unger, M. A. — 2008-08-08

In this article, I explore the role that "reception" of Supreme Court cases plays in attitude change. By reception, I mean that individuals must be exposed to and understand Court cases to be influenced by them. I conducted a quasi-experiment during June 2005 to test whether receiving McCreary v. ACLU and Van Orden v. Perry increases the probability of attitude change on public displays of the Ten Commandments. I also examine the relationships among receiving cases, preexisting beliefs, source credibility, and attitude change. I find that receiving McCreary is associated with less support for the unconstitutional Kentucky display. Also, the effect of receiving Van Orden is related to one's preexisting beliefs.

Housing Starts and the Political Business Cycle

Ladewig, J. W. — 2008-08-08

The political business cycle (PBC) literature has, generally, been characterized by a relatively narrow set of economic variables and by unidirectional causal analysis. I challenge both of these traditional constructions. First, I expand the search by examining a surprisingly understudied component of the political economy: the housing market. As a vital component of the American macroeconomy, housing is an uncharacteristically powerful tool for politicians and political analyses alike. Second, I use vector autoregression to more accurately model the dynamic and reciprocal nature of the economic and political interrelations found in PBCs. I find significant evidence of PBCs in the U.S. housing market from 1959 to 2005.