How Electoral Institutions Shape Citizen Participation and Legislative Behavior

The electoral system is often treated as fixed, but throughout U.S. history significant changes in electoral institutions, or in political conditions dictated by electoral institutions, make it possible to identify more precisely the role that the electoral system plays in the democratic process. This dissertation examines three related questions, each focusing on an aspect of the influence of electoral rules on political behavior. How has the ability to directly elect representatives influenced other forms of citizen engagement with government? How has competitiveness influenced voter turnout? Finally, when separate elections lead to differences in partisan control over the branches of government, what is the effect on policymaking in Congress? The first chapter shows that petitioning campaigns have historically substituted for the communication and accountability obtained through direct elections. I estimate that rates of petitioning to the Senate declined by 30% when the passage of the 17th Amendment ended the practice of indirect election by state legislatures and replaced it with direct elections. The implication is that electoral reforms meant to improve representation may weaken other ties between citizens and lawmakers. The second chapter examines the relationship between electoral competition and turnout. Past research has found that citizens vote at higher rates in response to closer elections, either through instrumental voting at the individual level or through voter mobilization by elites. In contrast, this chapter demonstrates that citizens living in competitive congressional districts differ markedly from those in uncompetitive districts along a range of dimensions other than turnout. Using an individual panel based on voter files from all 50 states and exploiting variation in competitiveness induced by the 2012 redistricting cycle yields a precisely estimated null effect of competitiveness on turnout. The third chapter re-examines whether divided government reduces legislative productivity. After developing the most comprehensive database to date of significant acts of Congress---from 1789-2010---this chapter shows that unified control corresponds with one additional significant act passed per Congress in the 19th Century and four additional such acts in the 20th Century. However, party control of government cannot explain the broad historical trends in the rate at which Congress passes significant legislation.Governmen

Gender, age and the MBA: An analysis of extrinsic and intrinsic career benefits

Against the background of an earlier UK study, this paper presents the findings of a Canadian based survey of career benefits from the MBA. Results indicate firstly that gender and age interact to influence perceptions of career outcomes (young men gain most in terms of extrinsic benefits of career change and pay), and secondly that both men and women gain intrinsic benefits from the MBA. However, intrinsic benefits vary by gender: men in the study were more likely to say they gained confidence from having a fuller skill set while women were more likely to say they gained confidence from feelings of self worth; men emphasised how they had learned to give up control while women argued that they had gained a ‘voice’ in the organization. The role of the MBA in career self- management and the acquisition of key skills are examined as well as the implications for the design of programmes in meeting the varied need of men and women in different age groups

People and Things on the Move: Domestic Material Culture, Poverty and Mobility in Victorian London

© 2016, The Author(s). The development of what Mayne and Lawrence (Urban History 26: 325–48, 1999) termed “ethnographic” approaches to studying nineteenth-century households and urban communities has gathered momentum in recent years. As such research agendas have taken hold and been applied to new contexts, so critiques, methodological developments, and new intellectual and theoretical currents, have provided opportunities to enhance and develop approaches. This article contributes to this on-going process. Drawing upon household archaeological research on Limehouse, a poor neighborhood in Victorian London, and inspired by the theoretical insights provided by the “new mobilities paradigm,” it aims to place “mobility” as a central and enabling intellectual framework for understanding the relationships between people, place, and poverty. Poor communities in nineteenth-century cities were undeniably mobile and transient. Historians and archaeologists have often regarded this mobility as an obstacle to studying everyday life in such contexts. However, examining temporal routines and geographical movements across a variety of time frames and geographical scales, this article argues that mobility is actually key to understanding urban life and an important mechanism for interpreting the fragmented material and documentary traces left by poor households in the nineteenth-century metropolis.We are grateful to the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council who funded the research upon which this paper is based (Grant Reference AH/E002285/1): ‘Living in Victorian London: Towards a Material History of Everyday Domestic Life in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis

River histories : A thematic review

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