Olson_American_Review

Orren and Skowronek (2004)

APD isn't political history or history-as-data, but is rather a way of thinking about politics as taking place at a period in time that is itself the product of political decisions. Pattern identification is the sine qua non of the enterprise. Political change proceeds on a prior politically-established footing. Sites of political change are characterized by full authority. Institutions are more methodologically tractable. APD is the study of shifts in authority.

Adams (1997)

Abortion: Evidence of Issue Evolution. Hypotheses: 1) clarification of party's positions on abortion over time, 2) masses have shifted party id to comport with views on abortion (wouldn't gps/jacoby say other way around?), 3) elite shifts cause mass shifts. According to the issue evolutionn theory, a few rare issues exist with the capacity to instill fundamental and permanent changes in the political order. Issue evolution contrasted with realignment theory. For issue evolution to occur, elite cues must be clear and 2) masses must adapt partisanship. Uses time series on abortion to show that this seems to be happening, but is frank that confounders might exist. Issue evolution centrally requires new issues to enter framework as well as generational turnover.

Lauderdale and Clark (2012)

Across issue areas and time, judges are ordered differently. No one median justice. Kernel-weighted optimal classification applied to votes. Systematic variation in judges preferences over time and jurisdictions. Does this work against Dahl (1957) and Whittington (2005)?

Simon (1945)

Administrative Behavior. Asks "how organizations can be understood in terms of their decision processes." View any organization as an operating staff with a supervisory staff imposed upon it to ensure the direction of the staff toward determined goals. Authority, loyalty, efficiency, advise, and training all affect the running of an organization. Decisions in an organization involve both facts and values--the former, he suggests, is best left to professional bureacracies, but democratic processes ought to resolve the latter. Incentives to trespass exist. Public organizations differ from private in that the former must be concerned with own preservation and also external goals. Emphasizes central importance of organizational loyalty.

Kagan (1991)

Adversarial Legalism and American Government. Relative to other countries, the US has more complex legal rules and generally more paths and more costly methods of legal recourse. Adversarial legalism describes a highly formalized, but also party-based (rather than hierarchical) legal system. It is characterized by complex legal rules, a strong bar relative to justicing, and a slow, structured process. A product of growing belief in "total justice," but the fact that even the slightest harm can be pursued in court is also taken advantage of by the evil-doers. Caused by the implementation of a broad-based welfare state in a diffuse, decentralized political and legal context. NIMBY issues are often a cause. Strong relationship for me here to Skowronek's "state of courts and parties" becoming overstretched in being asked to a assume a broader mandate than that for which originally conceived.

Groseclose (2001)

A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage. Adjustment of a model with office- and policy-motivated candidates to allow one candidate to have a valence advantage. Result is that advantaged candidate adopts a more-moderate position. This unintuitive result arises because moderation de-emphasizes importance of policy and increases the relative importance of valence advantages. Assumes two candidates in a one-dimensional space, exogenous valence, credible platform commitments, and one median voter with a probabilistic ideal point. With the above assumptions about goals, etc., divergence is monotonically increasing in valence, with advantaged moving toward median. Stokes region as set of voters who vote against policy due to valence; edge of this region moved toward median by convergence.

Tiebout (1956)

A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures. Basic idea is that a community will politically cater its public goods/taxation level to the local residents. Consumer-voter moves toe the community whose local government best satisfies preferences. Assumes full employment, absolute mobility, and complete information. "Vote with your feet." Cities optimize population to ideal level.

Kim (2000)

Bitter Fruit. Something about Koreans and Blacks in NYC.

Steinmo (1994)

"American Exceptionalism Reconsidered." American institutions, and especially their fragmentation, rather than some sort of liberal commitment, make America's uniquely anti-government vein. The multiple points of access afforded by a hyperpluralist system mean that interest groups yield undue influence and have kept us from having a proper welfare state. Decentralization in 19th century made elites and parties (unifying forces?) the villains of politics. Fragmentation inhibits ability to pass sweeping programs.

Skowronek (1982)

"Any given state can be recognized by its civil service, its army, and its regulation of the economy." US lacked a strong central state in the 1800s but the "state of courts and parties" was ill-equipped for the rapid-onset industrialization that occurred around 1900. Those who sought to build up central state at US founding instead built up strong parties (Federalists). Because of decentralized character, Congress was seen as preeminent national institution by facilitating inter-local logrolls. Parties primarily functioned to distribute spoils, rather than as programmatic entities. Constructing national administrative apparatus seen as both enhancing prospects for economic development as well as conferring new rights on the average citizen. Skowronek paints a portrait of national politics as shifting from a patronage, party-based civil service to a civil service based on constitutional stalemates between parties in Congress and the presidency.

Dahl (1957)

"Decision-Making in a Democracy." States that "much of the courts legitimacy rely on the fiction that it is not a political institution." People view the court as a check against tyranny of the majority, but Dahl questions if it has ever actually done this, arguing that the court generally reflects the current political consensus. Court confers legitimacy on what is really just political decision making and reasonable consensus. Evidence is overturned laws. Not clear how this holds up in a divided government world. No room for anticipation of overturning/decisions.

Fiorina (2003)

"Divided Government." Claims that divided government has become a defining feature of American politics. Reflects a lack of popular consensus and "chronic social strain." Suggests that incumbency, professionalization (for Dems), but not gerrymandering responsible. May also be a choice of divided government (Alesina and Rosenthal?).

Dahl (1977)

"On Removing Certain Impediments to Democracy in America." Claims that US has made 5 commitments: primacy of rights, democracy, corporate capitalism, welfare state, international power, and that these are not strictly compatible. The presidency has been expanded by the last two largely as a function of the president's status as the voice of all. Calls for procedural democracy based on political equality, effective participation, enlightened understanding, inclusiveness, and final control of the demos. Main takeaway is maybe that the presidency as one possible unifying force among these incompatible goals is bad; capitalism is hierarchical and anti-democratic. Big criticism of campaign finance.

Friedman (2006)

"Taking Law Seriously." Three suggestions: 1) direct more attention to normative impact of court and why positive courts scholarship is important, 2) pay attention to the norms of law (look at opinions too, not just votes/outcomes), 3) Data collection and bias (lower courts, more time, look at cases not picked up).

March and Olsen (1984)

"The New Institutionalism." Behavioral research tends to view people as the unit of analysis without regard for the institutional settings in which they find themselves. Political Science since the 50s had generally taken the individual as the unit, viewed politics as a part of society, left no room for norms, and focused on resources and history, and assumed history was "right." Really key point: "institutions seem to be neither neutral reflections of exogenous environmental forces nor neutral arenas for the performance of individuals driven by exogenous preferences and expectations."

Zaller (n.d.)

A Theory of Media Politics. Kind of dumb and not published, basically wants us to regard "media politics" as in the same vein as "party politics," etc. Important element is that journalists, politicians, and citizens can all be regarded as strategic actors with unique wants and needs from their interaction.

Segal and Spaeth (1993)

Advocate for an "attitudinal model" of court behavior. Justices claim for public consumption a legalistic approach, but in fact simply vote for their policy preference. A view of the court as fully unconstrained such that justices can simply vote for preferences. Justices have no accountability, ambition for higher office, and is the court of last resort. Unclear how this would extend to lower courts. Not clear to me how to disentangle legal philosophy from ideology. US SC has unique (in comparative perspective) policy power.

Moe (Presidents, Institutions, and Theory)

Advocates for models that emphaisze institutional features of presidents in a parsimonious way. Counters Neustadt's claim that the informal personal attributes of presidents should be objects of studying, noting that as Neustadt was writing Presidency was becoming more institutionalized, etc. Organization Studies focus on management styles as a good template. Individuality/personality not a sound basis for theory-building.

Baumgartner and Jones (1993)

Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Develop a "punctuated equilibrium" model of American politics, based on the emergence and recession of policy issues from the public agenda. Elite domination of issue agenda features: 1) ideas undergirding this domination, and 2) long-term fragility. When a general principle of policy action is in place, policymaking tends to assuem an incremental character. When new principles are under consideration, the policymaking process tends to be volatile. Development of policy monopolies, which contain a definable institutional structure for policymaking that limits access to the process, and powerful supporting ideas associated with the institution. Destruction of policy monopolies is generally associated with a change in intensities of interest. Incrementalism in policy can result from deliberate change by monopoly holders, or as a response to counter-mobilization. Winners attempt to control the "battleground" of policy, while losers attempt to redefine the bases of conflict. "Policy image" is how a policy is understood and discussed, and every policy image has an empirical and a valuative component. Policy entrepreneurs as interest groups and venue shopping as seeking a friendly audience.

Kingdon (1995)

Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. The public policy process is characterized by the setting of agendas, evaluation of alternatives, making an authoritative choice, and implementing the decision. Self-stated purpose of the book is to examine why things get on the agenda, and why only certain alternatives are taken seriously. One influence is the constant onslaught of problems pressing on the agenda. Leaving world of pressures and influence and entering the world of ideas--interesting distinction here. Ideas can come from anywhere. Political processes affect the agenda, elections, national mood, public opinion, etc. Tracing origins of an idea is an infinite regress. Seed and soil metaphor...what makes the soil fertile? Garbage can metaphor for choice.

Norton (1986)

Alternative Americas. Essentially argues that the masculine north overtook the feminine south. Lincoln posited as a persistent centralizer with no regard for civil liberties.

Mayhew (2000)

America's Congress. Kind of a dumb book, David. Thought is to look at "conspicuous member actions" as a way to understand congress. Actions can be extra-constitutional, legislative, or taking stands. Drawn from history books. Increasing importance of committees over time, and increasing seniority for action over time. MCs are agents of groups, but are actors in a public sphere.

Bauer, Pool, and Dexter (1963)

American Business and Public Policy. Paints a portrait of lobbying as inefficacious. Focuses on foreign trade legislation. Focus on the 1953-1955 passage of Reciprocal Trade act. "The lobbies were on teh whole poorly financed, ill-managed, out of context with Congress" and only got things through that were going to be passed anyway. Pressure groups were not at all effective in buttonholing MCs, but rather were effective in organizing and channeling communications (knowledge production).

Huntington (1981)

American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. Claim is that what makes American politics (and America itself) unique is the fact that our creed can never be met by our institutions. We insist on liberty, equality, individualism, democracy, and constitutionalism, and almost all elements of this definition are anti-power. We have four reactions, cyclically: moralism, cynicism, complancency, and hypocrisy. Because ideals can't be met, corruption flourishes (power pushed underground). Notes that "American" refers to our politics, not a shared culture/history.

Myrdal (1944)

An American Dilemma. Blacks entire biological, historical, and social existence as a participant American repsresent to the ordinary white man in the North as well as in the South an anomoly in the wvery structure of American society. Menace and guilt as political challenges. Goal of book is to accurately depict the condition of the American black man. Educational, political, economic, sociological, and religious distinctness in black culture as well as discrimination. Despite existence of a common American creed, our use of legalist formalism to address grievances. Though few Americans are unaware of the negro problem, some don't see it as a problem and other delude themselves. White freedom is achieved through ignorance of black condition.

Lewis (2003)

As Presidents gain power, Congress wants more and more insulated bureaucratic agencies. insulation comes with small majorities or divided government...one wants a politicized agency if one expects to be in power, but wants it insulated if one expects not to be..

Neustadt (1960)

Bargaining is the focus, and is both evidence of and a source of strength. Command is a sign of weakness. A persuasive president in control is the ideal type. Fairly strong emphasis on the limits of formal powers, and the need for a strong ability to bargain as a compensatory strategy. President as the central bureaucratic figure, but the bureaucracy has its own sources of power. A pluralist worldview of competing groups is the basis. Professional reputation and prestige as the bases of negotiating/bargaining power. President may be able to interact better with congress than agency heads, as the latter don't need him for anything.

Wilson (1989)

Bureaucracy. Weber views it as increasing the predictability of government. Agencies may resist any effort to set forth their agency tasks in a set of rules. Central role of organizational systems, even over audiences, funding, etc., as the determining factor of success in bureaucracy. Government "bosses" must focus on interfacing with external audiences much more than businesses, are concerned with maintaining position of their institutions in a complex, conflict-laden political environment (consistent with Simon). Rules in general reduce responsiveness to the uniqueness of specific cases, but are principally intended to increase predictability and generalizability of rules. The values of public bureaucracies reduce their efficiency.

Weingast and Moran (1983)

Bureaucratic Discretion or Congressional Control. Competing views of bureaucracy as independent or controlled by congress. Lack of oversight hearings, infrequency of investigations, perfunctory agency head confirmations, lack of awareness of ongoing agency activity, superficiality of appropriations all observationally equivalent with these two hypotheses. Show that preferences of relevant subcommittee seem to matter for agency activity, but fail to control for full chamber.

Ansolabehere, Snyder, and Stewart (2001)

Candidate Positioning in US House Elections. Spatial model gives three predictions: 1) convergence, 2) reponsiveness, 3) electoral gains from moderation. Greater convergence found in competitive races, in contrast to Huntington hypothesis. Examine NPAT scores for recent elections, and use "matched pairs" of candidates from same district proximately. Incumbents are more moderate than open seat than challengers. Statistically significant but substantively small moderation, some returns in recent years. Parties represent same districts quite differently.

Peterson (1981)

City Limits. Basic claim is that city politics are not scaled-down versions of national politics. Most urban reform has pitted Anglo reformers against ethnic machine favorers. Modern federalism theory suggests that national govt can and does do what state and local do (Marble Cake). There is an ideal city size (from Tiebout). Cities want to maximize economic position (by achieving some sort of correct size), but lack the ability to manipulate capital flows to do so (like states and national government have). This competition between cities largely precludes redistribution, because this would both 1) attract the wrong residents and 2) take spending away from competition for businesses. Developmental, redistributive, and allocational spending are good, bad, and neutral from cities perspectives. Federalism as the presence of a contractual arrangement that divides power among the sovereigns. Cities are seriously constrained by national and state policymaking. Suburbs have the capacity to engage in Tiebout-style service/taxation-targeting, but major cities generally can't. Local politics is limited politics, hitched to national parties and often issueless. Development politics are consensual and given to groups; allocational are combative. Power elite vs. pluralist, vs. 2nd Face of Power.

Katznelson (1981)

City Trenches. Main claim is that the different political and employment organizations in cities staved off the development of socialist parties in the United States. A sharp division exists between work and home, with the former being class-based almost by definition and the latter being functionally ethnically based (see Lipsett). An increasingly polyglot working class nevertheless found their homes and their politics organized ethnically rather than on a class basis. Not an absence of class in American politics, but its limitation to the arena of work. Neighborhood based machines and issueless local politics leading to no class basis for politics in urban centers.

Smith (1999)

Civic Ideal. About conflicting visions of what citizenship. Out ideals, he argues, are increasingly not actually compatible. We're not necessarily grounded in a Lockean liberalism anymore (liberty, reason, property), but we are democrats (equality) and republicans (virtue, public spiritedness) with differing values. There's also an important element of ascriptive Americanism, as in control by WASPs.

Stouffer

Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties. Develops the classic form of "civil liberties" questions, like allowing someone to speak in a public square, allowing books in the city library, etc. Does a pretty big survey for the time. Finds that generally intolerance is a function of a lack of information.

Ferejohn and Shipan (1990)

Congressional Influence on Bureacracy. Basically an update of Weingast and Moran. Simple model that improves on WM in three ways: 1) allow for open rule in Congressional policymaking, 2) No preference outlying committees, 3) incorporate presidents and courts. Complete information with no commitment. In short, agency always offers either the agency position or the committee position, whichever is "safer." President and courts both shift policy toward median MC.

McCubbins and Schwartz (1984)

Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols vs. Fire Alarms. Folk wisdom holds that Congress is bad at monitoring agencies because it doesn't undertake many overt demonstrations of such oversight. Two supposed types of oversight: police patrols (centralized, active, direct, process-based) and fire alarms (decentralized, passive, based on citizen and interest group input, outcome-based). Both of these can be "active," but rely on different sources. With technology to do both or either, and motivated to get reelection, fire alarms may be preferred both because they reduce time and costs, but also because they may work better! Reminds me of adversarial legalism for some reason.

Miller and Stokes (1963)

Constituency Influence in Congress. Claims that the idea of representation embodied in responsible parties is grounded in a delegate model. Most americans are almost totally uninformed about legislative issues in congress. Low correlation (p=0.3) between MCs and constituents on social welfare, lower on FA and higher on CR. Opposing candidates have negative correlation. For good representation, legislator must decide based on personal or district considerations, this decision must align with the district, and policy must be accounted for by electorate. Legislators think they line up better than they do. "A measure of control exists."

Moe (1985)

Control and Feedback in Economic Policy: The Case of the NLRB. Gets kickass data on NLRB decisions, an dlooks at change in the presidential administration, liberality of chairs and members of relevant committees, and the degree of court support for the NLRB, and finds pretty strong support that all of these matter for agency decisions. Emphasizes the role of the president in having the opportunity to directly shape the outcomes.

Austen-Smith and Wright (1994)

Counteractive Lobbying. Lobbying happens to both supporters and non-supporters. Lobbying of supporters is held to be (derived from model) based on counteraction of opposite side. This combats people like Bauer, Pool, and Dexter, who highlight communicative function of lobbying. Lobbying is simultaneous, and legislators have incentives to allow lobbyists to provide them with information, with occasional audits sufficient to enforce honesty. Bork nomination as a test case.

Horowitz (1976)

Courts and Social Policy. The courts are not the place to make social policy. They consider simple cases with unique features and therefore are not capable of generating generalizable outcomes. Argue that there are latent consequences from judicial policymaking that can often make things worse. Judicial incapacity is a problem.

Epstein and O'Halloran

Delegating Powers. THE CHOICE between making policy or delegating policymaking power to an agency is like a private business's choice between making a component or buying it from a vendor. "Make-or-buy model." Divided government leads to Congress being less likely to delegate and delegations likely to be to insulated institutions, such as independent commissions. President's party legislators are more likely to favor delegation, committees are the opponent of the executive. Congress will delegate if committee preferences are far from chamber median. Committees are good for pork-type things, but bureaucracies might be better for information-intensive events.

Tocqueville

Democracy in America. Lack of a great capital city as abetting republican government. The democratic spirit resides in towns. Origins as the greatest asset-based, revolution, good leaders, etc. US has no religion hostile to democratic spirit. Separation of church and state as contributing to peaceful influence of religion to democracy in America. Customs are more important than laws are more important than physical attributes for the flourishing of democracy. Lack of a feudal legacy. Democracy is upheld because of belief in an American Creed. Civic skills developed in church (Voice and Equality). Ability to expand westward contributing to economic equality.

Oliver (2001)

Democracy in Suburbia. Main camps in urban politics literature are centralized bosses vs. pluralistic decision making. The "authentic democracy principle": local governments should bring people in an area together to maximize representation for local conflicts. One might think that suburbs would lead to smaller local government and higher engagement in civic affairs, but it results in politics not encompassing local cleavages; suburbs are divided along, not across these, and so politics at local level becomes stagnant and low-involvement, with conflict between rather than within local government. Civic capacity defined as community-level social capital.

Skocpol (2003)

Diminished Democracy. Real contribution is to note that interest group politics have historically not been grounded in small, local organizations, but actually have always been federally organized and concerned with national politics. Interest groups (AARP, liberal ones that came with the 1960s and 1970s) essentially have killed "civic engagement," which is aided by federated membership groups. The professionalization of groups parallels that of parties, with expert knowledge having a premium placed on it. Our local organizations were not merely social clubs, but were in fact federated national groups that permitted citizens to reach out to others with similar concerns across a vast republic and build the organizational capacity to shape national culture and politics. Civil rights and subsequent groups spurred a reorientation toward professional organizations and against cross-class federated voluntary organizations.

Mayhew (2005)

Divided We Govern. David Mayhew counts important bills. Claim is that divided government does not appear to affect the output of important bills or investigations of the executive branch. Sweep one bills are included in Times or WaPo roundups, Sweep two are retrospective historical evaluations. Bills tend to pass with large majorities. Reasonable to think that maybe the types of bills change?

Bartels (1998)

Electoral Continuity and Change, 1868-1996. Part of the realignments literature, essentially attempts to identify realignments using year fixed effects and error terms (former is uniform shock, latter is regional shifts). Look for evidence of paty loyalties in continuity of party voting patterns over time. 1880 shows up as surprisingly important. Equilibrium around 50% republican support.

Bailey and Maltzman

Essentially analyze court ideal points, but estimated using free speech, precedent, and deference to Congress as covariates. The claim is that precedent and other "legalistic" elements of the court matter in examining their behavior. Both legal philosophy and policy attitudes affect court decisions.

Skocpol (1985)

From an individual perspective of politics, government was generally viewed as an arena in which economic interest groups and normative social movements could compete, but government was not itself regarded as an independent actor. This left no capacity to accommodate findings such as bureaucratic innovation, or even government actions above and beyond group demands. Weber's definition of the state. State capacity and state impact on politics. Really highlights the bureaucracy as a central element of the state (and one with preferences, no less).

Caldeira and Gibson (1992)

General finding: no connection between support for policy-specific court findings and the court itself. Uses a novel approach of asking whether respondents want to fundamentally alter the nature of the court as a way of getting at "diffuse support." Opinion leaders tie their support to demands; overall, support for trust in people--not government institutions--is a predictor of support for the court, and a belief in general democratic norms as well (for non-opinion leaders). Fair to ask if the mass public is the place to search for this support.

Kernell (1997)

Going Public. Kernell puts his work in the Neustadt tradition, setting it up as an oppositional tactic to the interpersonal bargaining that Neustadt so cherished. Essentially, "Going Public" is fundamentally counter to interpersonal bargaining, because it doesn't include any element of exchange that pluralist theory calls for, it fails to extend benefits for compliance but happily punishes non-compliance, and it entails posturing that makes compromise difficult. Generally notes that something changed in the 1970s that made going public more effective (or did it make bargaining less effective?). Divided government inhibits bargaining's value. Political outsiders go public (presidents often are).

Carpenter (2002)

Groups, the Media, Agency Waiting Costs, and FDA Drug Approval. Timing and wait time is a key bureaucratic choice variable. Agencies learn about a drug (and thereby learn if it'll kill folks) the longer they study, but there can be pressure to release so that people don't die without it. Hypotheses are that Dems will want higher wait times, better organized/funded disease groups will lead to faster approval, media attention will lead to faster approval, producing firms' political clout will decrease wait, and order of entry is important. Finds no real effects for government oversight, a non-monotonic effect of number of groups on a disease's behalf, but the print media and order of entry seem really quite important.

Fenno (1978)

Home Style. Time is a legislator's scarcest resource, and so time spent in district is a concerted effort, not a break. 4 Constituencies: geographic, reelection, primary, and personal. Views visits and district staff as, in some sense, substitutes. Different legislators develop different styles in keeping with their skill sets and comfort levels (contextual, personal, and strategic factors). Issue-oriented, personal, casework-based, etc. personal styles. Reelection, power in the chamber, and policy as goals. Explanation of votes as a fundamental activity of legislators. Polishes reputation at expense of chamber. Expansionist and protectionist phases. Value of homestyle is that Congress is a microcosm of the USA.

Han (2013)

How Organizations Develop Activists. Essentially divides organizations into those that are essentially nothing but a membership card (lone wolves), those that rely on self-selection into membership levels, and those that ask more of members and develop them into invested activists (difference between mobilizing and organizing). Generally seems to suggest that the latter gets the most done. Organizing can be transformational in an individual's life, while the other ways cannot. People have purposive, solidary, and material goals fro membership (see also Wilson, Rosenstone and Hansen).

Mutz (1998)

Impersonal Influence. The basic premise of the book is that an increasingly important force in contemporary political life involves what may be termed "impersonal influence"; that is, influence that derives from people's perceptions of other's attitudes, beliefs, or experiences." So, public opinion and sociotropic considerations are taking on increasing importance, according to Mutz. The mass media now spends a significant amount of time conveying public opinion and collective feeling. Indirect associations involve the mediation of communication technologies, media, etc., rather than face-to-face interactions. This leads to a new distinction between everyday life and the big picture. Sociotropic voting, because this encourages a focus on government rather than personal factors/attributes. Claim that personal determinations are a more accurate basis for representative accountability. Media distorts because of a preference for negativity, an overemphasis on rare events, and a preference for stories about change. "Compartmentalization" of personal and national things. Information about other's views differing from one's own causes people to re-evaluate one's own position.

Binder

Minority parties lose rights when majority parties are heterogeneous. Strong majority parties don't really have to restrict minority rights.

Krehbiel (1991)

Information and Legislative Organization. First, remarks that organization feeds directly into policy. The distributive framework relies on the idea that the committee system is designed to capture gains from trade reliably and predictably. Worth noting that committees came before this goal. The informational incentive suggests that committees are created to incentive specialization and the sharing of information with fellow legislators. Key idea is that legislators are uncertain about the consequences of policy. Committees are given some floor prerogatives (closed rule, perhaps) to allow them to recommend a policy that allows them to capture some policy concessions from the floor (but leaving floor better off than in absence of specializing committee). Predicts few/no preference outliers, in contrast to distributive theory.

Diermeier and Krehbiel (2003)

Institutionalism as a Methodology. The aim of institutionalism circa 2000 is not to make a point that institutions matter because they stave off McKelvey-style chaos, but because the study of institutions can illuminate which more-or-less stable features of collective choice setting are essential to understanding collective choice behavior and outcomes.

Pettigrew (1998)

Intergroup Contact Theory. Allport's (1954) hypothesis specifies four conditions for successful group contact: 1) equal status, 2) common goals, 3) intergroup cooperation, 4) support of authorities. Empirical issues have been reverse causality, and the expansion of possible conditions. Possible processes by which the hypothesis could act could be 1) learning about outgroup, 2) changing behavior, 3) generating affective ties, 4) ingroup re-appraisal. Could apply to new contexts, from individuals to group, or to other outgroups (types of generalization). Offers "sufficient time to develop friendships" as a fifth condition.

Whittington (2005)

Interpose Your Friendly Hand. Life tenure aside, courts can be either encouraged or censured by other branches. Court can be a useful institution for overcoming governing coalition barriers. In particular, this requires a friendly court and that judicial review is helpful. This can be seen in the selection of activist justices, teh encouragement of judicial action, the friendly reception of decisions, and the public expression of support for courts couched in constitutional arguments. Federalism, entrenched interests, an dcorss-pressured coalitions are possible tasks for a court. Unclear to me exactly how courts can be punished, but other than that quite plausible. Some congruence with Dahl (1957).

Heclo (1990)

Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment. Views iron triangles as painting an incomplete picture of the role of bureaucratic agents in government. Important factors at work include the growth in government activity, the peculiar ply of influence accompanying this growth, and the layering and specialization of bureaucrats and political overseers. While iron triangles emphasize a small group of invested policymakers, Heclo's "issue networks" comprise a large number of participants with variable degrees of mutual commitment and interdependence...these issue networks are a function of increasing government involvement in new issue areas and investment which mobilize new groups and people. Top political appointments to bureaucracy rarely interest group members, but policy area specialists. Issue networks substitute for parties as a bridge between branches, which leads to serious questions of democratic accountability.

Sulkin

Issue Politics in Congress. Basically, MCs are given a signal of their weaknesses by their opponents, who choose specific things to focus on in their campaigns. This represents an addendum to theories of responsiveness and suggests that campaigns serve an important role, voters aside, in aiding this responsiveness.

Fiorina (1989)

Keystone. Vanishing marginals result in immunity of congress to changing political sentiments. Dismisses redistricting, incumbent technologies, etc. for this fact. Pork barreling and casework are pure profit activities, while policy has costs, so congress delegates programmatic policymaking to an unelected bureaucracy so as to boost the prospects for taking advantage of incumbency.

Cox and McCubbins (1993)

Legislative Leviathan. "Our view is that parties in teh House--especially the majority party--are a species of "legislative cartel." These cartels usurp the power theoretically resident n the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation." Legislative process stacked in favor of majority party. Committee staffing as not credibly autonomous in post-war period. Committee representativeness as a result of majority interest, rather than distributive logrolling that would produce preference outliers. Institutions are a solution to collective dilemmas; regards the majority party institutions as a means of solving collective action problems, as a type of central agent: tasked with costly taks of monitoring population with collective dilemma, central figure endowed with selective incentives, and agent wants to oversee due to reward for doing well. Time horizons are central for these actors. Party record here is collective public good, incentives to shirk put this at risk.

Hall and Deardorff (2006)

Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy. Policy information, political intelligence, and legislative labor all essentially function to change the budget constraint of legislators, allowing them to "costlessly" focus more on a lobbyists chosen issue. Amicus briefs in courts, Alex H-F and ALEC as an example, fire alarms/police patrols connection?

Gerber (1996)

Looks at initiatives as constraining legislators' behavior. Parental consent as a case, initiative states seem to be more in keeping with state preferences.

Hochschild (1996)

Main idea is to probe the American Dream, with all its positives and flaws, by examining the relationship between a largely excluded group, African Americans, and this ideology. Based on three paradoxes: "what's all the fuss about?" (both blacks and whites see the AD in their lives, but only whites see it for everyone), "succeeding more and enjoying it less" (socially ascendant blacks are more pessimistic regarding AD), and "remaining under the spell of the great national suggestion" (always someone worse off, ways to generate a culture, rejection of the dream as an aside). Dream states that all may pursue succeess, may reasonably expect it, that one gets what one deserves, and that success is associated with virtue.

Berinsky and Kinder (2006)

Making Sense of Issues through Media Frames. Claim: "seemingly subtle differences in the presentation of identical information in the news media can affect the organization and recall of information and ultimately influence political judgments." Basically claim that people try to make stories out of the information that they have. Same story (identical content) but one just news, one organized to stay out, one to go in (to Kosovo). A Frame is the "central organizing idea of story line around an issue, "the essence of the issue." Distinct opinion changes and information recall differences based on frames.

Nelson et al (1997)

Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance. This is the famed "KKK rally" experiment, where it is alternatively framed as a 1) civil liberties issue (Stouffer) and a 2) public disruption. Basically show that these frames matter for the way that things are perceived.

Bartels (1993)

Messages Received: The Political Impacts of Media Exposure. Early work on role of media (Lazarsfeld and friends) came to a "minimal effects" conclusion. Experimental work is potentially more convincing, but has external validity problems. Use of 1980 ANES panel that asks about media consumption, and then uses a model that explicitly allows for measurement error, and fins that this is a noisy-ass measure. Surveys would understate media affects and overstate party ID. Those who consume media get a "distinct" portrait of the election, seeing important differences between candidates.

Kingdon (1977)

Models of Legislative Voting. Emphasizing developing a model of the vote choice that legislators face. They take cues, they evaluate the policy dimension, they examine consensus, they try to remain consistent with past behavior, and they maximize their goals. Goals are taken to be satisfying constituents, influence in the chamber, and good public policy (also Fenno, Cox and McCubbins, sort of Arnold, etc.).

Hall and Wayman (1990)

Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias in Congressional Committees. Two main claims: 1) committees are where we ought to look for effects of interest groups spending, and 2) this spending ought to manifest its effects in the involvement, not the voting, of committee members. PAC money designed to mobilize support and demobilize opposition, not to buy votes. Committee stage is the efficient input point, as Congress is decentralized. Spending alters involvement, sign of preference promotion in decision making process. Justifies a buying of access argument. Uses evidence from AG, Education and Labor, and Commerce. Use of money as predictor and outcome is participation in deliberations.

Lowi (1992)

Mostly just bitching about political scientists studying easy rather than interesting things. Distressingly anti-science. Government technocratizing science, including political science. Becoming too close to government has led political scientists to miss ideological changes (Reagan, etc.).

Iyengar and Kinder (1987)

News that Matters. Experimental designs are both sequential (over a week) and assemblage (all at once). Agenda Setting Hypothesis: those problems that receive prominent attention on the national news become the problems that the viewing public regards as the nation's most important. Basically they show that folks that get bombarded with defense spending stories start to view defense spending as more of a national priority. Also discuss priming, which affects standards of evaluation: news has made it so we want a "buddy" president.

Kollman

Outside Lobbying. Expanding the scope of conflict--perfect example. Can't win in legislature, so go to the public to get them to induce pressure on those inside. Goals as shaping preferences, Signaling preference intensity, moving salience, rather than preferences. Evidence is primarily interview-based.

Hall (1996)

Participation in Congress. Essentially remarks that representation is surely a function not only of a relatively costless roll call record, but of the activities to which an MC chooses to dedicate his/her time while in the chamber. Also something that the MC has huge amounts of choice over. Actors in the policy process surely care about the intensity of preferences.

Rohde (1991)

Parties and Leaders in the Post-Reform House. Clear outline of 1970s house reforms, and subsequent alignment of Democratic party in 80s and 90s. First statement of CPG: "collective party responsibility only if there were widespread policy agreement among House democrats."

UCLA School of Political Parties

Party Decides, etc. Parties are composed of coalitions of "intense policy demanders" who involve themselvs in primaries and are generally comprised of local interest groups who take sides in these primaries. The classic view holds that parties are groups of ambitious politicians, but the new view is that parties are aggregations of interest groups with policy interests who lobby politicians. Shom views Levy's model as a compelling formalization of this idea. Interest groups select, rather than monitor, legislators, as a cheaper means of ensuring faithfulness. You buy office for your friends, rather than buying votes. View in an adverse selection, rather than moral hazard, framework. Also the concept of the "extended party network," including interests, media, etc. etc.

Mickey (2015)

Paths Out of Dixie. The unity of state democratic party elites predicted how protracted the racial desegregation of states was. SC had organized elites who engaged with reforms, MS had fragmented elites, leading to a violent, sloppy reform, and GA represents a middle case. Also the point that Democrats, by going along with democratization/de-segregation, actually doomed their parties in the long-run in these states.

Mackuen, Erikson, Stimson (1992)

Peasants or Bankers: The American Electorate and the US Economy. It's understood that the economy matters for voting, less well understood is how--prospective or retrospective process (reward or learnign?). Additionally, the degree to which it is sociotropic is not known. Finding here is that the impact of the economic news is both sociotropic and prospective (based on media perceptions of how the economy is going to be, rather than how it was). Assumes an informed elite analysis to lead the public.

Bobo and Hutchings (1996)

Perceptions of Racial Group Competition. Two main questions: 1) to what extent do groups view themselves as being in competition with other racial groups, and 2) what are the social and/or psychological underpinnings of that competition? Prior theoretical accounts were 1) simple self-interest, 2) stratificiation beliefs (deservingness), 3) classical prejudice, 4) Blumer's group position model: "feelings of competition emerge from historically and collectively developed judgments about the positions int he social order that in-group members should rightfully occupy relative to members of an outgroup." AKA, racial alienation should cause a group to view others as competitors. Senses of competition vary in a complex way that is definitely not self-interest. Whites have the least racial alienation, and Blumer's group position model is the winner, apparently.

Krehbiel (1998)

Pivotal Politics. Modal definition of gridlock involves party, but why does it require that? Clear challenge, following from "Where's the Party?," is that there is an observational equivalence between homogeneous parties and heterogeneous parties with party discipline. (challenge addressed by ASS in LSQ using NPAT and GS in AJPS using lopsided votes). Notes two empirical regularities: 1) lopsided coalitions (greater than MWC) and bipartisan coalitions. Model assumes unidimensional policy space, veto and filibuster as anti-majoritarian institutions that create pivots, a status quo location is important, no parties. Can result in partial convergence, full convergence, or gridlock. Looks at coalition sizes and switchers.

Dreier, Mollenhopf, Swanstrom (2001)

Place Matters. One's ability to convert income into a good life is contingent on where one lives. Cities as exporters of income to the suburbs, with a defacto national housing policy being allowing decaying city centers while building up suburbs. Calls for a "regional" or "metropolitan" political structure that accounts for the inequalities. Economic segregation reduces political competition.

McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal (2006)

Polarized America. Just as American politics became polarized, we became a more diverse and more unequal society. Polarization in American institutions means that institutions can't be used to redress inequality. Party ID and vote choice are increasingly related to income. Polarization has occured via a rightward shift by Republicans. No capacity to demand redistribution through government due to polarization/gridlock. Model of polarization based on income-based voting and an increasing alignment of income and party id.

Carpenter and Sin

Policy Tragedy. Maybe provides better evidence of "no capture" position. Interest organization at state level seems not to impact how state individuals vote on issues. MCs vote against farma with organizations, however.

Lane (1962)

Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does. Basically does in-depth interviews of residents of one housing complex in New Haven. White, married men. People generally have a fear of equality. More general finding that people find it easier to accept their status in life if they think that the outcome is just. Rationalization about making your life sound good, at least relative to some others, occurs frequently.

Banfield (1961)

Political Influence. Defines influence as the ability to get other to act, think, or feel as one intends. Party bridges decentralized government organs. Decentralization makes influence important, because it makes its exercise costly (influence=political capital). Party should appear to support good government. Mythology of a cadre of influential businessmen. Mixed model of centralized political leadership with solicited input from relevant parties. Party and its leaders (mayor) as central authorities who must incur a cost to exercise influence in a decentralized system.

Kitschelt (1986)

Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest. The landscape of political opportunities matter for social movement outcomes. In short, political opportunity structures are "configurations of resources, institutional arrangements, and historical precedents for social mobilization. Mobilization depends upon the coercive, remunerative, and informational resources that an incipient movement can extract from its setting. Access of social movements to social sphere and government matters, and the sphere of social movements themselves, and how ti changes over time, matters. Take an assimilative strategy when government is weak, but a confrontational when it is strong. Procedural change, substantive change, and structural change as three possible outcomes.

Wilson (1973)

Political Organization. Ostensibly offers a theory of the behavior of voluntary formal organizations. Organizations provide continuity and predictability to social processes that would otherwise be unproven and uncertain. Organizations function to give roles to people. The central theme in the study is that the behavior of persons who lead or speak for an organization can best be understood in their efforts to maintain and enhance an organization and their position in it. Leadership works to maintain and enhance organizations by supplying incentives. The incentives are material, specific solidary, collective solidary, and purposive. Decentralization affords opportunity for organizations. Finds shortcomings in Olson's treatment of groups in his lack of addressing solidary benefits and self-interst from an organizational, not an individual perspective. Links with Hansen and Rosenstone and Han in terms of the incentives for group membership. Definitely views higher-SES people as more likely to join an organization.

McAdam (1982)

Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Claim: "I will argue that the emergence of widespread protest activity is the result of a combination of expanding political opportunities and indigenous organization, as mediated through a crucial process of collective attribution." (maybe a relationship to Kitschelt?) Attempts to join institutional concepts of power with apolitical social movement studies. Pluralist views of politics almost requires ssocial movements to be apolitical at their core. Resource mobilization is an alternative theory. McAdam's political process model: 1) protest is political, 2) movement is a process, 3) social movements are seen as rational attempts by excluded groups to mobilize sufficient political leverage to advance collective interests through non-institutional means. Three factors: 1) organization in aggrieved community, 2) collective assessment of prospects for success, 3) political alignment of groups. The decline of cotton, Democratic Power, great migration, and WWII all created more-favorable political opportunities in the South from 1930-1955. Colleges and churches were the hotbeds of organization.

Hall and Taylor (1996)

Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms. Historical (based on conflict between groups for scarce resources), Rational choice (collective problems), sociological (bridging culture and organization theories). Rational choice has advantage of precision but also is unrealistic.

Jacobs and Shapiro (2000)

Politicians Don't Pander. Trending away from adopting publicly popular policies. Three points: 1) disregard for public opinion in order to adopt policy that supporters want, 2) use of crafted talk to move public opinion, and 3) these features have an impact on media and public opinion. Polarization, interest groups, partisan media all increase incentives to be less responsive; this accounts for changes over time, as there are always incentives to move public opinion to match your preferences.

Zeisberg (2013)

Potential shoddiness of legal draftsmanship of constitution and war powers resolution. Idea of "separated branches sharing powers." Various legitimate interpretations of what branch controls what in terms of war powers. General consensus that all armed conflict isn't war; without courts, there would be devestating levels of interprative struggle over what is legitimate for what brancehs to use. Branches have distinctive and separate sources of authority. Advoctes processuralist standards (what branch has procedures that are favorable to the situation) versus deterministic insularist standards (rules for assignment based on context).

Gaventa (1980)

Power and Powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley. Both Marx and democratic theorists suggest that the dispossessed should have the capacity to redress and counter inequality. Three possible faces of power: 1) the pluralist/dahl face of power (first face) is about A getting B to do something that B otherwise wouldn't do. In the first face of power world, silence=consensus, and inaction suggests that there are no grievances to be redressed. 2) The second face of power (Bachrach and Baratz) involves not only power expressed in making individuals act against their interests, but also in controlling the agenda/access to the political process. 3) Gaventa's third face of power, which he identifies as active in the miners that he studies, extends broadly to any action of A that affects B counter to B's interest, even if this includes affecting B's beliefs or wants. Company town culture in the Clear Fork Valley (and others) contributed to quiescense because it stripped away any semblance of civic life--often these places were legally privately owned and the franchise was not encouraged. Pay slips enforce the relationship between the company and the miner as a citizen, employee, and consumer. The onset of the great depression severed the paternalistic wage relationship and allowed rebellion. Union revolts preculded in the 1960s despite clear union issues because the power relationship established the appropriate relationship, and voting against that would violate it. Powerlessness in union powerful relative to no union.

Howell, Jackman, and Rogowski (2013)

Presidents are taken to have more power in wartime because presidents have more national (rather than local/parochial) interests, and these national interests come to the fore in wartime. Congress deigns to president due to large informational advantage that they hold in foreign affairs. Both president and legislature can endogeneously gain expertise, but legislators are less incentivized to do so due to interests in parochial matters.

Howell (2003)

Presidents make bold use of their unilateral powers and seek to expand these. This would signal weakness to personality-focused scholars. Presidents can affect policy without Congress. Unilateral action is distinctive in the lack of assent from other branches and because it forces reaction by these other branches. Types of instruments include EOs, proclamations, national security directives, and executive agreements. Higher gridlock and fragmentation in Congress gives president more power to shape policy to his preferences. President can take moderate action to avoid big one (SA sanctions) or can shift policy to preference when Congress fragmented (Truman desegregation). The court can overturn or not, depending on decision rule.

McConnell (1966)

Private Power and American Democracy. Exercise of political power by private groups is characteristic of US politics. Claims US has a prediliction toward small groups...small groups have power over government, but lack the civil liberties protections that government offers. Small constituencies threaten liberty by reinfocing conformity, discriminating in favor of elites, and eliminating public values from consideration (agenda control). Groups gain autonomy and isolate segments of public policy. Parties, presidency, and national government in general as countervailing forces against the small group pressure system. Presidency as a possible solution. (Do I sense a trend of pluralists being opposed to a strong presidency while non-pluralists being in favor?)

Gay (2004)

Putting Race in Context. Neighborhood quality and neighborhood socioeconomic composition work as cross-purposes...salience of race recedes with improvements in neighborhood quality yet advances with greater exposure to the race-oriented predispositions of high-status blacks. Blacks often substitute group for individual identity (linked fate). Racial attitudes tend to vary with socioeconomic status, so socioeconomic conditions ought to concentrate attitudes. Blacks in low-amenity neighborhoods (self-reported measure) are more likely to view race as a defining element of their life. The education level doesn't actually seem to matter, but worse neighborhoods do.

Gilens (1996)

Race-Coding and White Opposition to Welfare. Racially coded issues such as crime or welfare can be used to provoke negative feelings about blacks. Earlier evidence suggested that either economic self-interest or "American individualism" predicted support for welfare. Survey results indicate that anti-black affect is significantly predictive of welfare attitudes. Experimental manipulation that removes bias shows that race matters when interacted with pre-existing attitudes about welfare. Tying in the book (from a few years later), shows that basically attitudes about blacks as well as perceptions of welfare recipients as undeserving color the results. Also suggests that the media is to blame for portraying welfare recipients as 1) black and 2) lazy, and does a media content analysis to show this.

Moe (The Politicized Presidency)

Reagan's approach to governing focused on moving policy concerns into the White House and politicizing administrative appointments. "Congruence" between goals and executive branch institutions as the fundamental question. The main idea here is that the expansion of the executive branch and its constant aggregation and restructuring is a function of presidents' goals being poorly met by their predecessors institutional arrangemenets. Ambition and expectation outstrip institutional capabilities (science and time). Related to path dependence (adaptation of predecessor's structures) and policy feedback (institutions generate their own interests and supporters).

Stone (1989)

Regime Politics. Asks why Atlanta is effectively governed despite significant race and class barriers. Notes an informal norm of cooperation between business and city government, and that a growth objective is shared across races and gets pursued by a biracial coalition. Business can't be excluded because of its significant resources. Solid connections to Peterson, might be viewed as an outgrowth of Peterson's belief that development is often given over to groups.

Fiorina (1974)

Representation, Roll Calls, and Constituencies. Those from marginal districts are the least in-step with legislators. Miller and Stokes note that there is essentially no policy content to evaluations of members of congress. Really important for noting that the important comparison is legislator preferences relative to district, not relative to other legislators. Notes also that it isn't important for representation that constituents care, but whether they can be made to.

Carpenter (2010)

Reputation and Power. FDA as a gatekeeper to the drug marketplace. But FDA also has power to affect standards of scientific evidence, scientific concepts, etc. Carpenter rebuts two other claims: self-interest by pharmaceutical industry (generally resist accrual of power to FDA) and public interest (FDA has more power than what median voter might desire). Carpenter argues that FDA has accrued power on the basis of reputation, a set of symbolic beliefs in an organziation, embedded in multiple audiences. FDA has directive power, gatekeeping power, and conceptual power. Reputation determines the response to a changed agenda. Struggle with the lack of rational anticipation by firms. Perhaps the seeming ambivalence that McCubbins and Schwartz and Weingast and Moran identify is in fact what appears to be bureaucratic docility may be autonomy in the face of congressional passivity.

Cox and McCubbins (2005)

Setting the Agenda. Parties are responsible, but enact this responsibility through agenda control and success defined by avoiding "rolls." Voting is equal in Congress, but agenda control and veto power are really unequal. Add "majority status" to strategic goals of MCs. Reputation/Brand name are important for reelection goals. "Procedural cartel model." Rolls as cases where a majority of the majority votes against something. Rules committee an agent of majority always.

Putnam (2000)

Social capital is a public and private good. We can have bridging and bonding capital. Capital can be bad too, if it is exclusionary, for example. Views positive social capital as greasing wheels and reducing costs of solving collective dilemmas. Claims that pressures of time and money, sprawl and suburbs, technology (esp TV), and intergenerational differences are the causes, at least in part. Evangelicals one of few groups not losing social capital/having declining participation.

Skocpol

Soldiers and Mothers. Initial pension systems were patronage-based, gave welfare and social programs a bad reputation.

Key (1949)

Southern Politics in State and Nation. Factions of the Dems in the solid south played the roles assigned elsewhere to political parties. Some southern states had two clear factions, while others displayed a stochastic muli-factionalism. Localism is the role afforded to local areas in politics. Factional fluidity and discontinuity make governments especially susceptible to individual pressures and disposed toward favoritisim. Campaigns then turn on personal rivalries and make elections as accountability mechanisms ineffective. VA, NC, and TN as having strong parties/factions. Exclusion of blacks from politics a big win for the "Haves." Viewed change as inevitable given national politics.

Wright and Schaffner (2002)

Th Influence of Party: Evidence from State Legislatures. Claim is that party "lends order to conflict" by helping produce a low-dimensional space. How do parties achieve this? C&S claim that its purposive, that taking sides yields political advantage...parties may also induce social pressure or exert explicit pressure. NPAT scores and roll calls from Nebraska Uni and Kansas Senate. NPAT scores not really distinguishable, but the Uni has a much higher-dimensional space in the legislature.

Campbell et al (1960)

The American Voter. The "FUNNEL OF CAUSALITY." Claim that "few factors are of greater importance for our national elections than the lasting attachment of tens of millions of Americans to one of the parties." Party ID appears to be persistent across elections, candidates, even different voting behavior. Great deal of within-individual constancy in political affiliations and behavior. Party ID is not only a function of preferneces, but preferences can be a function of party ID (see also Jacoby 1988). The ideal of the independent citizen as a myth. Children are generally socialized into parents political views, esp. in politically active homes. "personal" and "social" forces can lead to individuals changing party ID. The intensity of identification can be increasing throughout life.

Epstein and Knight (1998)

The Choices Justices Make. A game-theoretic, rational choice approach to justice decision-making. Rejects the attitudinal model, suggesting that justices are in fact constrained. Justices are strategic actors that realize that their ability to achieve their goals depends on a consideration fo the preference so other, of the choices they expect others to make, and of the institutional context in which they act." This doesn't reject the idea that judges want their policy preferences enacted, but it rejects the idea that utility maximization is a function only of votin gin line with one's ideological preferences. Stepping stone, institutional reputation, principled decisions as alternative goals as well. Opinion writing and votes as forms of strategic behavior. Account for public, other branches, and each other.

Almond and Verba (1963)

The Civic Culture. Situated in a "structural functionalist" tradition, the book states that structures and institutions are to survive, they must promote social solidarity and system stability. Perception of a threat to social unity in second-wave democratization and military threats endemic to cold war. Individual orientations can be cognitive, affective, and evaluational, and can be directed at politial objects such as the system, participants, incumbents, policies. Ideal types of oreitnations are parochial, subject, and participant...civic culture is the first two with a dash of the latter. It allows for mediation between contradictions between political power and a need for responsiveness in a democratic polity. A goldilocks style to overcome democratic instability.

Hall and Grofman (1990)

The Committee Assignment Process and the Conditional Nature of Committee Bias. First, note that (consistent with Shepsle 1978) committees are jurisdiction-specific subunits of a chamber; the identification of self-selected preference outlying will be a function of the degree to which this is actually true. Therefore committees like commerce, budget, ways and means, etc. will be likely to not demonstrate coherent outlying behavior. Also, more likely to see subcommittee outliers, for this reason. Looks at Agriculture committee in senate and its subcommittees. Claim that 1) the narrowness of the committee's jurisdiction, 2) the identification of specific issues within the jurisdiction that evoke the concerns of a mobilized or otherwise visible constituency, and 3) the identification of issues in the jurisdiction with concentrated benefits and dispersed costs.

Lax and Phillips (2012)

The Democratic Deficits in the States. While they find influence of policy specific opinions, they find that majority opinions lose about half of the time. Policy is more polarized than public preferences. Professionalization and term limits enhance responsiveness. Interest groups stave off responsiveness. Salient policies do move opinions. Really bold claims, consistent with non-convergence.

Carpenter (2001)

The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy. "Bureaucratic autonomy occurs when bureaucrats take actions consistent with their own wishes, actions to which politicians and organized interests defer even though they would prefer that other actions be taken." Autonomy as a product of the development of legitimacy, based on expertise, efficiency, and moral role in protecting public as well as a uniquely complex set of ties to interest sand the media. Essential elements: 1) uniqueness (provision of a service that cannot be provided elsewhere) and 2) multiplicity (draws on diverse coalition that cuts across other political orientations--not strictly partisan). Claims that CSR as a sufficient condition for a bureaucratic state is a misconception: required political differentiation, unique organizational capacities, and legitimacy grounded in demonstrated capacity and interwoven but unique issue networks. Middle managers as the real experts due to longer tenure.

Rosenburg

The Hollow Hope. Suggests that courts are not able to carry out the type of social change that we'd ideally like them to be able to, and suggests that courts kind of just reflect the other branches of government (whittington, dahl). The court is not powerful alone, but only with assent of other branches. Good examples are Brown and Roe, in which cases the court's decision was not enforced until quite a bit later.

Druckman (2001)

The Implications of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence. Framing implies either that 1) citizens base preferences on arbitrary information, and 2) elites can use framing to manipulate citizens. Two types of framing: "emphasis" and "equivalency." The latter involves literally the same information, but with a different spin, and is really problematic for democracy but also not as pervasive as believed (this would be the program that saves/kills 30%/70%). Emphasis framing works through a deliberate mental process, and is likely to be limited. A unifying theory for framings' relationship to competence is needed.

Polsby (1968)

The Institutionalization of the US House of Representatives. Viable, legitimate political system need institutionalization (organizations specialized to political activity) and institutionalized representativeness. Institutionalized organizations are well-bounded, complex, and have codified decision-making procedures. Decline in turnover, increasingly powerful speakership, and development of committee system as evidence of US House institutionalization.

Bickell

The Least Dangerous Branch. Court's power is drawn from its ability to choose not to act on issues. Strict constructionism is a brand of conservatism. Bickel's thesis was that by sophisticated uses of doctrines of "not doing" such as standing and ripeness, by avoiding overly broad opinions, and by prudent decision-making as to when and when not to hear particular cases, the Court could better maintain its position and power. The Court, Bickel maintained, should generally "pronounce only those principles which can gain 'widespread acceptance.'"

Hartz (1955)

The Liberal Tradition in America. The unique thing about the American revolution in 1776 is that there wasn't an established feudal order that needed to be destroyed. Americans umbued not with a Christian universalism, but with a sense of "Hebraic separation." Americans as generally satisfied, historically. History has generally been good to (white) Americans, leading to a sense of providential guidance. Americans as being between rationalists and traditionalists. The non-aristocratic sensibility of America's middle class has led to a community sense...a common way of life and widespread public morality.

Olson (1965)

The Logic of Collective Action. Organizations are generally designed to further members goals, otherwise people would pursue the goals individually. However, conditional on a group being organized, there are strong incentives to shirk and free ride off of other's efforts. The analogy developed is that of price in a perfectly competitive industry; all firms would benefit if they could coordinate on restricting output and increasing price, but it is not worth any one firm bearing the loss of sales to restrict output and raise the price for everyone. Americans are not joiners. Members of small groups may individually provide some degree of the collective good alone, but provision will be less than optimal level; this gap will be increasing in group size. The irony is that the "great"--who Olson assumes to be more invested in the economic value of the group--will be taken advantage of by the less-invested. In principle, larger groups and more members are good, but organizing has serious costs. There are small groups, oligopolistic groups, and large groups. Selective incentives are needed for group success. Large groups are hampered by smaller group benefits, smaller benefits for any individual, and greater costs of organization. Social rewards and punishments function as a type of selective incentive. Compulsory membership and picket lines as the essence of unionism. Union members wanting more participation but also not going to meetings as a rational reaction to the pathologies of group membership. Freedom restriction necessary to ensure adequate provision of public goods (non-voluntary tax payments).

Arnold (1990)

The Logic of Congressional Action. Develops a theory that lays out conditions for particularistic vs. universalistic policy to be made by congress. Why does Congress approval broad benefits with concentrated costs, ever? "Coalition leaders" as central actors in the theory, along with constraints from constituents and a bit of free agency. Coalition leaders are those who determine what alternatives the choice over policy is going to take. Policy is drafted with citizen and legislator (which account for citizen) policy preferences. Attentive citizens and charismatic leaders as capable of overcoming group preferences.

Erikson, Mackuen, Stimson (2002)

The Macro-Polity. The study of micro decision making is important, but the macropolity is more than the sum of its parts. Upturns previous belief that party ID, ideology, policy mood were constant within individual and, hence, more or less collectively. Early survey research (Converse) held voters to be fools! Claim here is that the highly informed and invested have disproportionate sway in the electorate, contributing disproportionately to aggregate opinion movement. Macro-perspective is worthwhile because 1) political behavior can be social, 2) different questions and perspectives are available at macro level, 3) sum of parts DNE whole for political outcomes. Citizens are held to evaluate, identify, hold preferences, and choose. Politicians are held to care about preferences of electorate. Focus on performance and policy from 1952 to 1996.

Shipan and Volden (2008)

The Mechanisms of Policy Diffusion. Four mechanisms posited: learning, competition, imitation (of larger cities), and coercion by states. These disadvantage smaller cities in the federal system. Most seem to matter. State institutions like term limits and professionalism matter.

:Zaller (1992)

The Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion. Opinions are the joinings of information and predispositions; elites give the informational cues, and members of the masses follow the opinion leadership of elites with the same ideological orientation. Typical american knows remarkably little about politics and forgets quickly (but see Lodge et al). Competing streams of elite discourse, and awareness mediates between these. The impact of value predispositions varies across teh ability of citizens to transmit values through contextual knowledge to support for policies. Values are "domain-specific organizing" principles, and ideology organizes values (ought to focus on issue-specific things if posible). Converse suggested that people have no true opinions; the inter-survey correlation suggests as much. Achen suggests measurement error, that essentially people answer in a distribution around true opinions--Zaller, I think, views himself as offering an explanation for why the variance might be in one direction or another on a given occassion. CLAIM: PEOPLE SEE AND INTERNALIZE LARGE AMOUNTS OF INFORMATION (MORE AWARE WILL BE ABLE TO ESCHEW NON-CONSISTENT INFO MORE OFTEN) AND TEND TO RESPOND WITH WHATEVER HAPPENS TO BE AT THE TOP OF THEIR HEAD AT ANY GIVEN TIME. THE FLOW OF ELITE DISCOURSE, AS WELL AS SURVEY FEATURES, AFFECT IMMEDIATE CONSIDERATION SALIENCE. A schema is a cognitive structure that organizes prior information and guides interpretation of new information. A consideration is any reason that might indicue a person to decide a politidcal issue one way or another. RAS (Receive-Accept-Sample) model axioms: 1) reception (greater engagement with issue will lead to higher engagement with political messages on it). 2) Resistance (people resist arguments inconsistent with their predispositions, but only if they see the inconsistency). 3) accessibility (the more recently one has seen something, the more likely one is to say it, 4) Response (average across salient considerations). IMPLICATION IS THAT THOSE WITH MIDDLING ATTENTIVENESS LEVELS WILL BE THE MOST SUSCEPTIBLE TO ELITE CUES.

Converse (1964)

The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics. Elites and masses structure ideology differently...specifically, elites have a coherent ideology (belief system) while masses have scattered, non-dimensional sets of beliefs. Belief systems ought to have some sort of constraint or binding attributes. The constraints in belief systems can be logical, psychological, or social (traditional). Groups are "ideologues," "near-ideologues," "group interests," "spirit of the times," "no issue context," based on a recall exercise asking folks for reasons that they think things. While most recognize that politics occurs on a liberal-conservative spectrum, very few are able to assign values or issue positions to the correct side of this spectrum. Open ended survey responses yield the degree of coherence. Answers are almost random according to converse, shown with correlations across panel studies (but see Achen, who notes that even measures of church attendance only correlate at 0.6 in those surveys).

Moe (1984)

The New Economics of Organization. Hierarchy generally ignored by economists, who tend to focus on markets and voting. Neoclassical models black-box the firm. The New Economics of Organization focus on the contractual organization of the firm, transactin costs, rationality of structures, and individualistic explanations. The primary focus is on overcoming 1) adverse selection and 2) moral hazard stemming from the principal agent nature of organizations. The application of this methodology to bureaucracies raises interesting questions: no profitability incentive, and budgets reflect use/need, no private contractor allowed to become irreplacable, and political principals who aren't necessarily concerned with efficiency, but rather their desired outcomes. Bureaucracies as agents of government, nested PA structures in an agency, and agencies as agents of particular politicians.

Berry (1999)

The New Liberalism. Claims that liberal causes and ideas are actually thriving, not dead. Today's new liberalism has evolved from a traditional emphasis on bread-and-butter economic issues to a form he calls "postmaterialism"-quality-of-life concerns such as enhancing the environment, protecting consumers, or promoting civil rights. Berry credits the new liberalism's success to the rise of liberal citizen lobbying groups. There is a correlation between the increasing lobbying activities of citizen groups and a dramatic shift in the American political agenda from an early 1960s emphasis on economic equality to today's postmaterialist issues. Although conservative groups also began to emphasize postmaterial concerns-such as abortion and other family value issues-Berry finds that liberal citizen groups have been considerably more effective than conservative ones at getting their goals onto the congressional agenda and enacted into legislation.

Hansen (1985)

The Political Economy of Group Membership. Develops a straightforward model that boils down to "people join groups when it is in their interests to do so." In particular, if groups can provide selective incentives. Looks at the American Farm Bureau, League of Women Voters, American Home Builder's Association. Threat to group interests as a major motivation to join, as well as sensitivity to income (both on cost and benefit side). "Prospect theory" holds that group threat increases membership. Clear relationship to "Why We Lost the ERA."

Skowronek (1997)

The Politics Presidents Make. Concerned with the political impact of the presidency. Presidents are positioned by their relationship to the current presidential/policy commitments (opposed or supportive) and the strength of those commitments in society (resilient or vulnerable). This makes presidents either reconstructionist, disjunctionist, preempivist, or articulationist. In short, presidents are constrained by what came before them. Articulation is sort of the default. Supportive of a resilient set of commitments. Basically, the president today creates the political opportunities of tomorrow, and these tend to cycle.

Moe (1989)

The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure. Those in positions of power are not necessarily motivated by the national interest. They have their own interests to pursue in politics, and when they make choices about structure, they are implicitly making choices about policy. Structural politics is interest group politics. Political uncertainty and political compromise are the two fundamental concerns faced by those seeking to design agencies. Designing agencies so that goals can be met if opposition in government: insist on higher professionalism/autonomy, oppose formal oversight, insulate within the government, institionalization of agency decision-making. Opponents want structures that work against effective. Legislators have incentives to do what groups want, while presidents want a unified and useful structure. Agencies design will create its own politics, and so design must anticipate the incentives its occupants will face.

Burns, Schlozman, and Verba (2001)

The Private Roots of Public Action. Men as a general rule tend to be more politically active, except for protest attendance; however, conditional on activity levels, women tend to give more of their time. The gender gap in political activity has tended to persist from the 70s to the 90s. A long time ago voluntary orgs dedicated to "good works" provided one of the only ways for women to be civically active. Despite near-equality in efficacy levels, men seem to talk and read about politics more and thereby have more political information. Men's workplace advantages confer civic skills that enable political participation. Women more on parity in organizations, but are disadvantaged in mixeed gender organizations as far as leadership goes; women are advantaged in religious groups. Overall, the universe of institutions and differential treatment of women in workplaces and organizations advantages men in developing civic skills. Education and adult institutions give men big advantage (free time doesn't seem to matter).

Lodge and Taber (2013)

The Rationalizing Voter. "Political behavior and attitudes are very much a function of the unconscious mechanisms that govern memory accessibility. People develop a likability heuristic that they then use. People use "motivated reasoning," or a systematic bias in favor of things that are affectively charged. They text using lexical decision takes, sentence verification tasks, sequential attitude priming paradigm.

Schattschneider

The Semi-Sovereign People. Getting audiences on your side is the game. Conflicts between actors and actors get audiences. Federalism makes the scope of conflict quite apparent; essentially the author argues that politics is about "bringing people in." Pressure politics involves a narrow scope of conflict, party politics involves a broad scope of conflict. Under-represented groups need parties because pressure groups will exercise the second face of power to keep things off the agenda. (seems quite consistent with Baumgartner and Jones). Tremendous contagiousness of conflict. Relate the scope of conflict to the pitting of different factions against one another. Note that democracy can be a tool for majority to expand scope of conflict. Conflicts of politics fundamentally about who can and cannot get into the fray; special interests will try to paint themselves as being in the public's interest. Pressure system has a distinct class bias; less well off need parties to aggregate their interests.

Beck et al (2002)

The Social Calculus of Voting. Where info comes from matters for Democratic choice. The acquisition of information is arguably the primary cost of political participation (contrast with Downs, Popkin). Hypothesis is that the partisan skew of infomration will influence political participation. Snowball sample in 39 counties, combined with content analysis of news and survey of party and presidential organizations in counties. Personal networks are surprisingly partisan, and media bias impacts are slight. Editorials seem to matter, but not much else.

Riker (1982)

The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law. Science is characterized by a cumulation of knowledge. Duverger's law states that the simple majority ballot system favors the two-party system, because vote maximization incentivizes two parties to form. Duverger's hypothesis is the analog with proportional representation. If voting rationale is purely expressive, then the idea of wasted votes is bupkiss.

Shapiro (1981)

The prototype of judges is: 1) independent judge applying 2) pre-existing legal norms to 3) adversary proceedings to come to a 4) dichotomous conclusion. This is never met. The triad involves going to a third person to resolve a conflict, but this requires consent of both parties. Courts have neither the purse nor the sword. Criminal codes replace explicit consent with laws, the triad is weakened as one shifts from consent to social control to policymaking. Notes the general trend to economize on changing circumstances by using existing institutions. Lawmaking and political independence are fundamentally incompatible.

Wildavsky

There is a foreign-policy president and a domestic presidency. Presidents have a huge informational advantage in foreign policy that doesn't necessarily exist for the domestic policy. President is the national representative. Collective action issues in Congress. Wildavsky later walks this back and suggests that it was a produce of the times.

Melnick (1994)

US judges are unique in comparative perspective in their ability to look beyond the case at hand. US judges are effectively a part of the policymaking process. Focus on lower courts and shows their importance for welfare-type things, like foot stamps, IDEA, etc. Judges are part of the lawmaking process due to statutory interpretation.

Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995)

Voice and Equality. Participation can be because of resources, engagement, or recruitment. Resources can be 1) time, 2) money, 3) civic skills. Civic skills can be a function of schooling, workplace environment, organizations, and church. Workplace is the most, church the least (esp. Catholics). Claim is that institutional involvement leads to civic skills which leads to higher participation, even after accounting for education and income. Recruitment often occurs at church and work. Add in that political engagement--not a function of out-of-the-home activities, also predicts one's participation levels. Real shocker there.

Frymer (1999)

Uneasy Alliances. Clinton and the "New Democrats" engaged in active distancing of the party from previous calls for racial equality. The claim made is that in a two-party system, the electoral loser will be incentivized to reach out to groups neglected by the other party; Frymer claims that this view is flaws--can happen, but doesn't necessarily. Political incentives in the US, he claims, call for a marginalization of blacks. The creation of party systems in the past was the product of a desire for consensus on the race issue and focused almost exclusively on the average white voter. Parties can "capture" minority interest, whereby opposition doesn't want the vote of that group. Democrats are concerned that public appeals to blacks will lead to national electoral defeat; racism prevents African Americans from joining in the give and take of coalition politics. But then, why ever pay attention to civil rights? Perhaps circumstances are such that these are sometimes viewed as non-harmful, sometimes called for by ideology, a diverse party leadership, etc. Parties have traditionally focused on AAs when competition is low.

Bartels (2008)

Unequal Democracy. Elected officials are unresponsive to low-income citizens (consistent with Rigby and Wright (2013)). Inequality has grown. Reasons for continuing GOP success are myopic voters, income growth for affluent more influential, and voters who are swayed by valance of campaign spending. Claims that Bush tax cuts were starkly against majority views. People respond to estate tax repeal with perceptions of own tax burden. Some pretty tough stuff here.

Rae (2001)

Urbanism and Its End. Attributes urbanism to a confluence of events that have now faded: the importance of rail preceding automobiles, open immigration to provide urban labor, agricultural revolution that reduced need for farm labor, steam manufacturing, delayed and uneven implementation of distance-reducing technologies. Basically suggests that cities were favored by circumstances and their decline is a natural response to those circumstances' end.

Huber and Shipan (2002)

Use of medicaid authorization legislation in states (specifically authorizing bills length/complexity) as a means of examining the institutional incentives that legislatures face to delegate to bureacracy. Find that 1) more complex issues lead to more delegation but 2) divergence between legislator and bureaucracy preferences lead to less delegation. Also important are legislative capacity to draft legislation, to engage in post-legislative oversight, and to pass legislation (institutional barriers to policymaking).

Cameron (2000)

Veto Bargaining. The veto is a tool the president uses to move legislation close to his or her own preferred location; congress anticipates (imperfectly) vetos, leading us to see some but not many, and more on important legislation. Lays out "Take it or Leave it" bargaining, a simple model with spatial ideology and take it or leave it offers, an override game that adds uncertaintly to the location of override player in Congress, and finally the sequential veto bargaining model that adds uncertainty about presidential policy positions. President can veto things in first period he would actually accept to extract concessions. Positive probability (and non-zero) of policy passage in two periods. Eschews alternative veto motivations.

Dahl (1961)

Who Governs? Class resource inequality leads to political inequality. Main question is, "given the existence of inequalities...who actually governs in a democracy?" Some would say aprties, some would say parties are nothing more than collections of interest groups, some would say political entrepreneurs. Highlights the ambiguity of leader-citizen relationship; notes that leaders do act, but in well-defined boundaries that cannot be breached. The Democratic Creed links politicians to citizens, but sometimes conflict will arise. Leaders in nominations are politicians and party organization leaders...leaders in public education are teachers, who constrain the actual leaders. Few exercise direct power, but many exercise indirect power. Influence resources are unequally distributed, but everyone has some access to influence, and policymaking is too fragmented for any one group to dominate. The Tin House example.

Canes-Wrone (2001)

Who Leads Whom? Presidents strategically focus their public appeal on policies consistent with mass opinion, but often would have supported the policy even if the public had not. Essentially, really unpopular and really popular presidents (and those not up for reelection) can do as they please, but those facing pressure either from the public or elections are more constrained. Presidents rarely if ever pursue policies that they think will hurt society. President will make public appeals if he thinks that his preference is closer to electorate than congress. Kind of bridges Kernell to rat choice theory.

Lipset (1977)

Why No Socialism in the United States. Two main reasons. The first is the nature of American society, which lacks a feudal past, places a strong ideological emphasis on liberty and equality, and has historically had a significant ability for mobility (geographic and, consequently, social (see also Tocqueville)). The second cause is the nature of the (potential radical movement), which was too ethnically diverse (with negative affect) and therefore presented language and group affect barriers, workers who benefited from rapid economic growth, and consequently were better off than European peers. Finally, electoral rules favored two parties (might be an interesting tie-in to Valelly here--importance of state government, barriers to party system, and a stockpile of interested and available political entrepreneurs in the upper plains).

Lupia et al (2010)

Why State Constitutions Differ in Their Treatment of Same Sex Marriage. Weak relationship between attitudes and amendments, but looking at the constitutional amendment institutions (direct initiative, low threshholds, etc) makes relationship clear. Hard institutions make amendments harder. Shocking findings.

Mansbridge

Why We Lost the ERA. ERA would not have brought about sweeping changes. When volunteers can only be motivated through moral exhortation, dispensing with ideology in a movement is nearly impossible. Pro-ERA forces endorsed radical interpretation because they'd rather lose than compromise. 10-year shift from principles to concrete effects. Organizations can counteract the tendency toward ideological purity thorugh teh development of institutions (hierarchy, small groups). Organizations able to provide public goods through coercion, moral exhortation, or individual (selective incentives). Membership is fickle and responds to threat. Decentralization of pro-ERA groups made strategy difficult to coordinate. The "iron law of involution" by which social movements "necessarily" splinter into sects if they don't win quickly--if the ERA's inclusivity, diversity of roles, and likelihood of success couldn't beat that law, maybe nothing can.