The ballot initiative process does not make people moregenerally knowledgeable about politics

Do ballot initiatives help to improve people’s knowledge about politics? In new research which uses election survey data from more than 120,000 voters across 48 states Nicholas R. Seabrook, Joshua J. Dyck and Edward L. Lascher, Jr. find that ballot initiatives have no positive effect on general political knowledge. They write that these results hold no matter how often ballot initiatives are used, how many initiatives are on the ballot during an election, and how much money was spent by the initiative’s supporters and opponents

Secret Law: The Politics of Appointments to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

This study investigates the politics of appointments to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the court established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review secret federal government requests for warrants related to national security investigations. Since the FISA Court\u27s creation, its members have been appointed entirely at the discretion of the Chief Justice of the United States, who selects FISA Court judges from among the pool of existing U.S. District Court judges. Using data on the common space scores of the federal district judges appointed to the court, and the limited information available on the court\u27s decisions, we explore the implications of this, both for the ideological makeup of the FISA Court\u27s judges and for the oversight function they perform. The results suggest that the court has become decidedly more conservative in recent years, far more so than the district courts overall, with potentially serious implications for its ability to function as an effective check on the power of the executive branch

Do Ballot Initiatives Increase General Political Knowledge?

Current literature often suggests that more information and choices will enhance citizens’ general political knowledge. Notably, some studies indicate that a greater number of state ballot initiatives raise Americans’ knowledge through increases in motivation and supply of political information. By contrast, we contend that political psychology theory and findings indicate that, at best, more ballot measures will have no effect on knowledge. At worst greater use of direct democracy should make it more costly to learn about institutions of representative government and lessen motivation by overwhelming voters with choices. To test this proposition, we develop a new research design and draw upon data more appropriate to assessing the question at hand. We also make use of a propensity score matching algorithm to assess the balance in the data between initiative state and non-initiative state voters. Controlling for a wide variety of variables, we find that there is no empirical relationship between ballot initiatives and political knowledge. These results add to a growing list of findings which cast serious doubt on the educative potential of direct democracy

Administrative law judges in fair housing enforcement: Attitudes, case facts, and political control

Objective: This study investigates the effect of attitudes, case facts, and political control on the fair housing decisions made by administrative law judges (ALJs) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Methods: Based on data obtained from HUD under a Freedom of Information Act request, we use Probit regression to model the outcomes of every housing discrimination case decided by the entire population of ALJs between 1989 and 2003. Results: We discover significant variation in the likelihood of a pro-complainant outcome and the amount of actual damages awarded in fair housing disputes. Conclusion: The attitudinal model of judicial decision making appears to apply to ALJ behavior in housing discrimination cases. At the same time, case facts, bureaucratic oversight, and other legal factors constrain ALJs. © 2012 by the Southwestern Social Science Association

Design and application of a novel brain slice system that permits independent electrophysiological recordings from multiple slices

We describe a novel brain slice system ‘SliceMaster’ that allows electrophysiological recordings from eight brain slices independently. The system consists of two autonomous units each supporting four modular brain slice chambers enabling high signal-to-noise ratio recordings, each chamber has one stimulation electrode, one recording electrode, a twin camera system and a solution application system. The positioning of both electrodes and cameras are controlled from a remote user console. The software both acquires and performs on-line analysis of the data. We have demonstrated utility of this system in obtaining recordings of spontaneous firing activity and evoked synaptic activity from mouse hippocampal slices, with reduced variability within and between experiments. Furthermore, we show recordings of population spikes from the perirhinal cortex, indicating applicability of this system for further brain regions. In addition, stable recordings could be maintained until recording was terminated after 3 h, permitting investigation of the induction and maintenance of synaptic plasticity. Recordings of spontaneous and synaptic activity, and effects of pharmacological and electrophysiological manipulation, were consistent with reports using conventional methods. However, the described system permits concurrent and independent recordings from eight brain slices, thus improving throughput, statistical design, and reducing animal use