On the Passing of Angus Campbell

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72370/1/j.1536-7150.1981.tb01649.x.pd

Partisanship and the party system

The defining properties of party identification long established for the United States fail with some frequency to be replicated in electoral systems abroad. A number of plausible suggestions have been made to account for this system-level variability: Most of these have some face merit, but none taken alone is adequate to provide a full cross-system explanation. Variation in party system size or fractionalization has recently been discussed as another source of differential dynamics of party loyalties. Unfortunately, the conventional means of assessing party identification properties are subject to rather severe artifacts, typically ignored, when comparisons are made across systems of very different party size. The conceptual stakes underlying key methods options for such comparisons—most notably, between continuous and discrete statistical tools—are examined. The use of continuous statistics for systems of very multiple parties rests on an assumption that voters do in some degree regard these party systems as imbedded in a continuous space. A simple test for this assumption is mounted in four systems and unsurprisingly it shows very clear support. Analysis of residuals beyond this obvious result add several points of less obvious information about the distribution of party affect in such systems.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45485/1/11109_2004_Article_BF00991980.pd

Congressional campaign effects on candidate recognition and evaluation

To date, most congressional scholars have relied upon a standard model of American electoral behavior developed in the presidential setting. This research extends our knowledge of Congressmen's incumbency advantages and their sources. Candidate preference is viewed as a function of the relative recognition and evaluation of incumbents and their challengers, as well as of Democrats and Republicans. In the recognition model, contact with voters and media effects are quite important, but there is no direct role for party identification. Evaluation is a function of personal contact and party identification, and media variables are insignificant. Relative recognition, relative evaluation, and party identification are three important predictors of candidate preference, and incumbency itself adds little beyond what is contained in incumbent recognition and evaluation advantages.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45489/1/11109_2004_Article_BF00989756.pd

Party identification and party closeness in comparative perspective

The present analysis uses data from 1974 and 1981 U. S. cross sections, which incorporate a panel, to compare the standard NES measure of party identification (ID) with a measure of partisanship derived from a party closeness question widely employed in cross-national research. Important features of the two scales are examined by transforming the closeness measure into a scale of very close, fairly close, not very close, and no preference corresponding to the seven-point ID scale. The scales are highly correlated and are similar in their reliability. More than 75% of the “independents” in the ID scale choose a party in the closeness version, and over half of these select the “fairly close” category. Respondents do not volunteer that they are independents when that alternative is not stated in the question.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45482/1/11109_2004_Article_BF00990552.pd

Is democracy an option for the realist?

In Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that the depressingly well-established fact that people are woefully ignorant on politically relevant matters renders democratic ideals mere “fairy tales.” However, this iconoclasm stands in deep tension with the prescriptions they themselves end up offer-ing towards the end of the book, which coincide to a surprising extent with those that have been offered by democrats for decades. This is a problem because, if we take seriously the type of data that Achen and Bartels rely on (and add to)—data that should make us realists in the sense of the book’s title—it is not clear that democracy in any recognizable sense remains an option for the realist

The Role of Gender in Descriptive Representation

This article broadens consideration of the gender gap from voting differ ences to the larger question of affective preferences for descriptive represen tation (Pitkin 1967). The results, based on a 1993 survey of 416 individuals, suggest that women are far more likely than men to be "gender conscious" in their evaluation of a candidate or a preferred representative. Differences among the 224 women in the sample can be traced to at least four sources. Group interests and feminist attitudes are positive sources of women's preferences for descriptive representation. Conversely, conservative political views deter some women from supporting women in politics. The results also provide partial support for Carroll's (1987) psychological and economic autonomy thesis. Finally, the results suggest that in part the "gender gap" may be a generational gap most prevalent among "baby boomers."Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline