How America's "devolution revolution" reshaped its federalism

American federalism is constantly in flux. The "devolution revolution" of the mid-1990s gave states tremendous power to rewrite the rules of their welfare programs, changed the fiscal incentives that states face, and initiated a massive health insurance expansion funded primarily by the federal government but implemented, with great latitude, by states. How did states react? How did this change the social safety net in the United States, and how did it reshape the nation's distinct brand of federalism? This essay explores these questions, both through a close focus how devolution played out in California and through a broader look at trends across the states

Reform and Representation: A New Method Applied to Recent Electoral Changes

Can electoral reforms such as an independent redistricting commission and the top-two primary create conditions that lead to better legislative representation? We explore this question by presenting a new method for measuring a key indicator of representation - the congruence between a legislator's ideological position and the average position of her district's voters. Our novel approach combines two methods: the joint classification of voters and political candidates on the same ideological scale, along with multilevel regression and post-stratification to estimate the position of the average voter across many districts in multiple elections. After validating our approach, we use it to study the recent impact of reforms in California, showing that they did not bring their hoped-for effects

Kingmakers or Cheerleaders? Party Power and the Causal Effects of Endorsements

When parties make endorsements in primary elections, does the favored candidate receive a real boost in his or her vote share, or do parties simply pick the favorites who are already destined to win? To answer this question, we draw on two research designs aimed at isolating the causal effect of Democratic Party endorsements in California’s 2012 primary election. First, we conduct a survey experiment in which we randomly assign a party endorsement, holding all other aspects of a candidate’s background and policy positions constant. Second, we use a unique dataset to implement a regression discontinuity analysis of electoral trends by comparing the vote shares captured by candidates who barely won or barely lost the internal party endorsement contest. We find a constellation of evidence suggesting that endorsements do indeed matter, although this effect appears to be contingent upon the type of candidate and voter: endorsements matter most for candidates in their party’s mainstream, and for voters who identify with that party and for independents. The magnitude of their impact is dramatically smaller than might be estimated from research designs less attuned to recent advances in causal inference

Bullet impacts and built heritage damage 1640–1939

© 2018, The Author(s). Conflict damage to heritage has been thrust into the global spotlight during recent conflict in the Middle East. While the use of social media has heightened and enhanced public awareness of this ‘cultural terrorism’, the occurrence of this type of vandalism is not new. In fact, as this study demonstrates, evidence of the active targeting of sites, as well as collateral damage when heritage is caught in crossfire, is widely visible around Europe and further afield. Using a variety of case studies ranging from the 1640s to the 1930s, we illustrate and quantify the changing impact of ballistics on heritage buildings as weaponry and ammunition have increased in both energy and energy density potential. In the first instance, this study highlights the increasing threats to heritage in conflict areas. Second, it argues for the pressing need to quantify and map damage to the stonework in order to respond to these challenges

Conceptualizing historical organization studies

© 2016 Academy of Management Review. The promise of a closer union between organizational and historical research has long been recognized. However, its potential remains unfulfilled: The authenticity of theory development expected by organization studies and the authenticity of historical veracity required by historical research place exceptional conceptual and empirical demands on researchers. We elaborate the idea of historical organization studies-organizational research that draws extensively on historical data, methods, and knowledge to promote historically informed theoretical narratives attentive to both disciplines. Building on prior research, we propose a typology of four differing conceptions of history in organizational research: History as evaluating, explicating, conceptualizing, and narrating. We identify five principles of historical organization studies-dual integrity, pluralistic understanding, representational truth, context sensitivity, and theoretical fluency-and illustrate our typology holistically from the perspective of institutional entrepreneurship. We explore practical avenues for a creative synthesis, drawing examples from social movement research and microhistory. Historically informed theoretical narratives whose validity derives from both historical veracity and conceptual rigor afford dual integrity that enhances scholarly legitimacy, enriching understanding of historical, contemporary, and future-directed social realities

How do public goods providers play public goods games?

We study how policymakers play public goods games, and how their behavior compares to the typical subjects we study, by conducting parallel experiments on college undergraduates and American state legislators. We find that the legislators play public goods games more cooperatively and more consistently than the undergraduates. Legislators are also less responsive to treatments that involve social elements but are more likely to respond to additional information that they receive. Further, legislators' fixed characteristics explain much of the variation in how legislators play the game. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how institutions affect the provision of public goods

The influence of political leaders on climate change attitudes

Is public opinion on global climate change stable, with voters holding deeply rooted attitudes that guide them toconsistent policy positions? Or is public opinion malleable, with voters adjusting their environmental positionswhen they learn about the positions of political leaders? To explore whether leaders can influence mass opinionon climate change, we conduct a pair of survey experiments in Australia. Emissions trading plans and renewableenergy targets have been central issues in Australian politics over the last decade, with the members of the majorparties deeply polarized on these issues. Our experiments reveal that survey respondents take different positionson climate change policy when they learn what positions leaders hold. When respondents learn that leaders takedivergent positions on addressing climate change, they become more polarized along party lines. But whenleaders converge on a policy proposal, they also bring those who follow them into closer agreement, providingevidence that partisan polarization at the mass level can be overcome when leaders come together on environmentalpolicies

Turning Out Unlikely Voters? A Field Experiment in the Top-Two Primary

Those who turn out in American primary elections are a small and unrepresentative subset of the population. Why do citizens forgo participation in nominating contests yet vote in general elections? We argue that limited contact lowers participation in primary elections. We present results from a randomized field experiment with near 150,000 letters in California’s 2014 primary. Each letter went to one of the four million Californians who had participated in recent general elections but not in primaries. We find that a single letter increased turnout by 0.5 points from a base rate of 9.3 percent. This increase is more than twice the average effect calculated in a recent meta-analysis and represents a proportional increase of 5.4 percent. Our experiment shows that registrants who typically abstain from primaries—and who are thus often ignored by campaigns—can be effectively mobilized

How America's "devolution revolution" reshaped its federalism

American federalism is constantly in flux. The "devolution revolution" of the mid-1990s gave states tremendous power to rewrite the rules of their welfare programs, changed the fiscal incentives that states face, and initiated a massive health insurance expansion funded primarily by the federal government but implemented, with great latitude, by states. How did states react? How did this change the social safety net in the United States, and how did it reshape the nation's distinct brand of federalism? This essay explores these questions, both through a close focus how devolution played out in California and through a broader look at trends across the states

How do public goods providers play public goods games?

We study how policymakers play public goods games, and how their behavior compares to the typical subjects we study, by conducting parallel experiments on college undergraduates and American state legislators. We find that the legislators play public goods games more cooperatively and more consistently than the undergraduates. Legislators are also less responsive to treatments that involve social elements but are more likely to respond to additional information that they receive. Further, legislators' fixed characteristics explain much of the variation in how legislators play the game. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding how institutions affect the provision of public goods