The Demise of California's Public Schools Reconsidered

I’m not sure when I first got interested in this particular line of research—the fact that I have a son who is now 10 and that we had to make a lot of decisions about his educational future probably got me a bit worried, but I think it actually dates back to when we first arrived in California in the fall of ’79. It seemed that all anyone was talking about was Proposition 13, which had passed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin (65 to 35 percent) the previous year. Everywhere we went, it was Proposition 13 this and Proposition 13 that. Some people felt that the voters had just gotten into an angry snit and had irrationally gone on an antigovernment crusade without thinking about the consequences; people on the other side felt that they had been provoked by then-governor Jerry Brown’s inane fiscal policies. I don’t know if we ever sorted that out, but the conventional wisdom, both among public-policy experts and the voters on the street, has been that Proposition 13 was roughly equal to the Sylmar earthquake, except that we inflicted it upon ourselves

Approval Voting: the Case of the 1968 Election

For most of this nation's history, electoral democracy has consisted mainly of competition between the candidates of two major national parties. Thus in most elections for national office the present method of categorical voting, that is, voters vote for one candidate only, has served adequately. Except for the electoral college, this method satisfies a simple democratic criterion - the winner is prefferes to the loser by a simple majority of the voters

The Effects of Personal Economic Problems upon Voting in American National Elections

Several previous studies have concluded that individuals' personal economic conditions exert only weak, intermittent effects upon their voting decisions. These studies, however, have all used the same measure to test the same basic hypothesis—that economic adversity of any kind leads to voting against the incumbent President and candidates of his party. This study uses answers to a battery of open-ended questions included in the 1972-1976 CPS National Election Studies to develop new and more detailed indicators of personally experienced economic problems. These data are then used to test an alternative, policy-oriented hypothesis that personal difficulties resulting from inflation lead voters to give greater support to the Republicans, while voters personally injured by unemployment give greater support to the Democrats. In analyzing these new measures this study repeatedly found important differences between inflation and unemployment. First, unemployment inflicts substantial objective economic costs while the major costs of inflation, at least in the short run, are the more intangible psychological costs of coping with more uncertainty. Secondly, the costs of unemployment are heavily concentrated among certain sectors of the labor force, while the costs of inflation are borne roughly equally by all major groups in society. Thirdly, inflation and unemployment differ markedly in their political ramifications. Only a small percentage of individuals cited unemployment, but they tended to perceive the Democrats to be better at dealing with unemployment, and gave relatively greater support to Democratic candidates. In contrast, during the period studied a large percentage of the citizenry cited inflation as their most serious economic problem. But these voters did not give a significant edge to either party as better able to handle inflation, nor did their concern over inflation systematically affect their choices in presidential and congressional elections

The Rationality of Candidates who Challenge Incumbents in Congressional Elections

Making use of the numerous resources available to them, incumbent congressmen have come to enjoy very high rates of success in getting reelected. Typically, however, incumbents are challenged by relatively weak, unknown candidates, while potentially much stronger candidates are deterred. So why do these weak candidates engage in such apparently foolish behavior? Previous research has suggested several answers to this question. It is commonly argued that weak, inexperienced candidates either misperceive the odds against them, or that they are actually using a congressional campaign to pursue nonpolitical goals or political goals other than winning office. Others point out that weak candidates may be induced to run by a low probability of victory because their political opportunity costs are low or because a stronger than expected showing may serve as an investment in future campaigns. This paper argues, however, that there is a much simpler and direct reason why weak candidates choose to run against incumbents, and that is that they do so so as to maximize their probability of being elected to Congress

Accounting for the Electoral Effects of Short Term Economic Fluctuations: The Role of Incumbency-Oriented and Policy-Oriented Voting

Several previous studies have found considerable evidence of incumbency-oriented voting, i.e. voting for or against the incumbent president and candidates of his party on the basis of fluctuations in economic conditions. This study explores the hypothesis that voting in response to economic conditions is often policy

Are the Communists Dying Out in Russia?

Many predicted that the strength of the Communist Party in Russia would wane as the elderly pensioners who disproportionately supported the party died off. Contrary to this prediction, the findings of our analysis indicate that voters who reached retirement age during the past decade were even more supportive of the communists than the cohort of pensioners who preceded them. We believe this occurred because it was workers approaching retirement, not pensioners per se, who were disproportionately injured by the transition to a more market-oriented economy. Like pensioners they lost savings, but in many cases they also lost their jobs. They also had little opportunity to learn the new skills that the Russian economy increasingly calls for. There is as yet no indication that the communists have begun to die out

Presidential Influence on Congressional Appropriations Decisions

We investigate the extent to which possession of the veto allows the president to influence congressional decisions regarding regular annual appropriations legislation. The most important implication of our analysis is that the influence the veto conveys is asymmetrical: it allows the president to restrain Congress when he prefers to appropriate less to an agency than they do; it does not provide him an effective means of extracting higher appropriations from Congress when he prefers to spend more than they do. This asymmetry derives from Constitutional limitations on the veto, the sequencing of the appropriations process provided by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1920, and the presence of a de facto reversionary expenditure level contained in continuing resolutions (Fanno, 1966). We find strong support for this proposition in a regression of presidential requests upon congressional appropriations decisions

In the Mood: The Effect of Election Year Considerations Upon the Appropriations Process

The analyses undertaken in this study generate evidence supportive of the hypothesis that Congress treats the budgets of agencies which supply particularistic, constituency-oriented benefits more favorably in election years than non-election years. There appears not to be any greater election year generosity on the part of Congress with regard to those agencies which perform primarily universalistic services. The data also show that congressional appropriations decisions regarding the constituency-oriented agencies are also influenced much more strongly by the level of unemployment in the economy and by the balance of party power in the federal government. It must be stressed, though, that the impact of congressional election year appropriations process is quite limited. This is because over all changes in agency appropriations are much more a function of the budget estimates submitted to Congress by OMB than of what Congress does to these estimates. And given that there were no important differences evident in OMB behavior between election years and non-election years, overall trends in actual appropriations were not much affected by election year considerations either

Congressional Appropriations and the Electoral Connection

Congressional scholars have frequently reported dramatic shifts int he mood of Congress toward federal spending. In seeking to explain these fluctuations in congressional moods, we develop and estimate an "electoral connection" model of the congressional appropriations process. In this model appropriations decisions are seen to be the product of the responses of reelection-seeking members of Congress to the key political and economic variables in their environment