A Cross-National Measure of Electoral Competitiveness

Electoral competitiveness is a key explanatory construct across a broad swath of phenomena, finding application in diverse areas related to political incentives and behavior. Despite its frequent theoretical use, no valid measure of electoral competitiveness exists that applies across different electoral and party systems. We argue that one particular type of electoral competitiveness'electoral risk'can be estimated across institutional contexts and matters most for incumbent behavior. We propose, estimate, and make available a cross-nationally applicable measure for elections in 22 developed democracies between 1960 and 2011. Unlike extant alternatives, our measure captures vote volatility and is constructed at the party (not system) level, exogenous to most policy predictors, and congruent with the perceptions and incentives of policy-makers.</jats:p

When Experts Disagree: Response Aggregation and Its Consequences in Expert Surveys

Political scientists use expert surveys to assess latent features of political actors. Experts, though, are unlikely to be equally informed and assess all actors equally well. The literature acknowledges variance in measurement quality, but pays little attention to the implications of uncertainty for aggregating responses. We discuss the nature of the measurement problem in expert surveys. We then propose methods to assess the ability of experts to judge where actors stand and to aggregate expert responses. We examine the effects of aggregation for a prominent survey in the literature on party politics and EU integration. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate that it is better to aggregate expert responses using the median or modal response, rather than the mean

The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals

Fox News pushes Democrats and Republicans to bemore conservative, especially around election time

Since it premiered in 1996, Fox News has become the most watched cable news network in America, pushing forward a partisan view which has been critical of President Obama and the Democratic Party. But does Fox News actually influence the way that we are governed? In new research which examines how House members vote, Kevin Arceneaux, Martin Johnson, René Lindstädt and Ryan Vander Wielen find that when Fox News is available in members’ constituencies, they are more likely to adopt more conservative policy positions – whether they are Republican or Democrat. They also find that this effect is most pronounced around election time, and is nearly nonexistent immediately after elections

Leaning Right and Learning From the Left

There is an increased focus in comparative politics and international relations on how choices of governments are dependent on choices made by other governments. The authors argue that although the relationship between policy choices across countries is often labeled as either diffusion or competition, in many cases the theoretical mechanisms underpinning these labels are unclear. In this article, the authors build a model of social learning with a specific application to the diffusion of corporate tax reductions. The model yields predictions that are differentiable from existing models of tax competition. Specifically, the authors argue that social learning is most likely in the wake of tax policy cuts by left governments. They test the model using an existing data set of corporate tax rate changes and an author-created data set of changes in tax legislation, covering 20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The authors’ empirical findings show that social learning is an important determinant of corporate tax policy making. </jats:p

Timely shirking: time-dependent monitoring and its effects on legislative behavior in the U.S. Senate

We examine legislative shirking under conditions of imperfect constituent monitoring. Our core argument states that variation in information costs and constituent memory leads to systematic variation in constituent monitoring over time. Assuming that legislators are responsive to multiple cues, we expect to observe time-dependent legislative shirking. We develop a theoretical model of legislative behavior with time-dependent monitoring, which we test empirically using Senate roll call data. Our findings show that a substantial number of senators engage in systematic, time-dependent shirking, and that senators consistently move toward extreme positions when monitoring is low and toward moderate positions when it is high

Replication data for: The Role of Qualifications in the Confirmation of Nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court

In light of concerns that politics, philosophy, and ideology now dominate the federal judicial appointment process—a process that many claim should emphasize ethics, competence, and integrity—scholars have offered a range of proposals. A considerable number, though, aim to compel elected actors to focus on the candidates' qualifications rather than on their political preferences. Without taking a normative position on these sorts of proposals, we demonstrate empirically that the process leading to the appointment of (at least) Supreme Court justices may not be the "mess" that the proposals suggest. While it is true that U.S. Senators are more likely to cast votes for nominees who are ideologically proximate to them, it is also the case that the nominees' qualifications play a significant role in accounting for the choices Senators make