5th Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey

Volume 5 of the Idaho Policy Survey contains four sections. As in the four previous survey reports, the first section examines citizens\u27 opinions on the quality of life in Idaho, and what problems facing the state are seen as the most important. The next section focuses on attitudes toward the federal, state, and local levels of government, as well as on the perceived fairness of different types of taxes and the degree of support for state spending increases in eleven broad service areas. The third section this year is a new one: we explore the public\u27s awareness of and attitudes toward a variety of initiative and referenda questions which may be on the 1994 statewide ballot. Finally, the last section explores how residents of the Gem State feel about a variety of specific policy issues. The report concludes with a methodological appendix that summarizes the procedure used to draw the sample and conduct the interviews

Electoral Reforms, Membership Stability and the Existence of Committee Property Rights in American State Legislatures

One of the most creative theories advanced about legislative organization in recent years is Katz and Sala\u27s linkage of the development of committee property rights in the US House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. Katz and Sala argue that the Australian ballot – a government-printed ballot cast in secret that replaced a party-produced ballot that was cast in public – gave members of the House an incentive to pursue personal constituency votes. This, in turn, led to the rise of committee property rights as members sought to keep their committee assignments from term to term because of the potential electoral benefits they derived from them. In this Note we use the state legislative committee membership dataset collected by Hamm and Hedlund and their colleagues to test whether committee property rights appeared in American state legislatures at roughly the same time as Katz and Sala find they emerged in the US House. State legislatures were, of course, exposed to the same electoral innovation at the same time. But, while in some ways state legislatures were much like Congress as organizations, in other ways they were very different. Our cross-sectional data and the variance in important institutional variables they provide allow us to test a critical proposition about the importance of membership stability rates in mediating the rise of committee property rights. We also go beyond Katz and Sala\u27s analysis by testing to see if differences in Australian ballot design (office column and party bloc) across the states influenced the behaviour of legislators in the way their theory suggests

Gubernatorial Campaigns

Just as the office of governor has changed over the years, so have campaigns for that office. Gubernatorial campaigns in virtually every state are media-driven, expensive races, requiring a complex organization that seeks to reach and persuade a statewide audience. But not all gubernatorial campaigns are the same. There are variations born of the differences in the legal and political context from state to state and of the circumstances surrounding the array of candidates and issues in any given election

Candidate Spending in State Legislative Races

In 1992 Frank Sorauf, one of the leading authorities on campaign financing in the United States, wrote a book entitled, Inside Campaign Finance. The subtitle was Myths and Realities . Another leading authority, Herbert Alexander, had published in 1991 Reform and Reality, a book on financing state and local political campaigns. It is significant that the term reality appears in both titles. The issue of campaign financing is so complex, so illusory, and increasingly emotive that we often talk above, below, or past each other on the subject. In part this is because we do not agree on what is the reality of campaign finance

Congressional Redistricting: How the Process Works

Reapportionment and redistricting are an integral, and often controversial, component of the American political process. In this podcast, Boise State professor Gary Moncrief discusses the important terminology and theories involved, as well as the history of redistricting in the United States, and how redistricting issues are different in various regions of the country. He also analyzes the difference between having the legislature do the redistricting work and having an independent commission in charge of the task. Utilizing his research and expertise in the field, Dr. Moncrief sheds significant light on a sometimes complicated and contentious part of our political structure.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/beyond_the_blue_podcasts/1009/thumbnail.jp