Book Review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. by Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, Eds.

Book review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. By Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, eds. Reviewed by: Charles R. Shipan

Book Review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. by Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, Eds.

Book review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. By Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, eds. Reviewed by: Charles R. Shipan

Strategic Behavior and Variation in the Supreme Court’s Caseload over Time

Over the past sixty years, the size of the Supreme Court’s docket has varied tremendously, growing at some points in time and shrinking at others. What accounts for this variation in the size of the docket? We focus on two key strategic factors – the predictability of outcomes within the Court, and whether justices consider the potential actions of other political institutions – and assess whether these factors help to explain the variation in docket size over time. We discover that uncertainty and institutional constraints prevent the Court from choosing cases with complete freedom, even after accounting for other potential influences on the size of the Court’s docket

The diffusion of financial supervisory governance ideas

Who is watching the financial services industry? Since 1980, there have been multiple waves of thought about whether the ministry of finance, the central bank, a specialized regulator or some combination of these should have supervisory authority. These waves have been associated with the convergence of actual practices. How much and through what channels did internationally promoted ideas about supervisory 'best practice' influence institutional design choices? I use a new dataset of 83 countries and jurisdictions between the 1980s and 2007 to examine the diffusion of supervisory ideas. With this data, I employ Cox Proportional Hazard and Competing Risks Event History Analyses to evaluate the possible causal roles best practice policy ideas might have played. I find that banking crises and certain peer groups can encourage policy convergence on heavily promoted ideas

The diffusion of policy frames: evidence from a structural topic model

Policy diffusion occurs when policies in one unit (e.g., countries, states, cities) are influenced by the prior adoption of policies in other units. Although numerous studies have convincingly documented this phenomenon, they have, with very few exceptions, generally ignored a crucial step in the diffusion process—namely, how policies are framed ahead of their adoption. Policy frames—the discussion of a policy from particular viewpoints—play a crucial role in linking the actions of previous units with the potential actions in other units. In this paper, we identify policy frames and examine their link with prior policy adoptions. We focus on the area of restrictions on smoking in U.S. states. Our analysis draws upon an original dataset of more than four million paragraphs from articles published in 50 American newspapers covering 47 states between 1996 and 2014. We use structural topic models to estimate how smoking bans have been framed and how frames change as a function of policy adoption in other states. We find that, as more neighboring states enact legislation restricting smoking, concerns about the restaurant business decrease; worries about the casino business increase; detailed regulations such as ventilation requirements or separate rooms for smokers are discussed less frequently; voters’ support and involvement in the decision-making process surrounding smoking bans are discussed more frequently; the compatibility of smoking restrictions with individual rights loses salience as a topic; and the passage of legislation is discussed more frequently, while the process by which decisions are made loses salience. These findings establish a foothold for the usefulness of structural topic models and support for the idea that policy frames are an important part of the diffusion process

The diffusion of policy perceptions: evidence from a structural topic model

Policy diffusion occurs when policies in one unit (e.g., states, cantons, cities) are influenced by the prior adoption of policies in other units. Although numerous studies have convincingly shown that policy adoption is a function of previous adoptions in other units, they have, with very few exceptions, generally ignored a crucial step in the diffusion process—namely, how political units perceive the policies that they are considering adopting. This policy perception plays a crucial role in linking the actions of previous units with the potential actions in other units. In this paper we focus on the link between prior adoptions and policy perceptions, both by identifying the mix of perceptions and by examining the link between prior adoptions and policy perceptions. We study these perceptions in the area of restrictions on smoking in U.S. states. Our analysis draws upon an original dataset of almost half a million articles published in thirty American newspapers between 1996 and 2014 and uses structural topic models to estimate how smoking bans have been perceived and how perceptions changes as a function of policy adoption in nearby states. We find that many of the most prominent topics are indeed a function of prior policy adoptions in other states

Book Review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. by Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, Eds.

Book review: A New Constitutionalism: Designing Political Institutions for a Good Society. By Stephen L. Elkin and Karol Edward Soltan, eds. Reviewed by: Charles R. Shipan