Political Science Publications

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A comment on McCaleb's “The size principle and collective-consumption payoffs to political coalitions”
(Springer, 1975) Stoll, Richard J.
Adaptation, State Survival and System Endurance: A Simulation Study
(Sage, 1990) Cusack, Thomas R.; Stoll, Richard J.
This paper reports on a study using the EARTH (Exploring Alternative Realpolitik Theses) Simulation Model. The model is an abstract representation of an anarchic multistate system wherein states employ Realists' principles in guiding their choices on questions dealing with war and peace. The present study examines the systemic and state level consequences that arise in the presence or absence of the ability of states to adapt or change the fundamental decision rules that they employ.
Are We There Yet? The Voting Rights Act and Black Representation on City Councils, 1981ﾖ2006
(Southern Political Science Association, 2013) Shah, Paru R.; Marschall, Melissa J.; Ruhil, Anirudh V. S.
Sound evidence demonstrating what, if any, role the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has played in the impressive gains minorities have made in local office holding over the last 45 years remains in short supply. The present study is motivated by three crucial questions. First, where are gains in minority office holding most apparent, and how are these gains related to the VRA? Second, while studies have noted gains in black representation over time, the question of how the VRA in particular has contributed to these gains remains unclear. Finally, given claims made by opponents of the 2006 legislation reauthorizing the VRA that it was no longer needed, the question of when the VRA has been most efficacious, and if it continues to be relevant, is also salient. Our findings suggest that the VRA has been and continues to be an important tool in ensuring black descriptive representation, particularly in places with a legacy of racial intimidation and discrimination.
The Arms Acquisition Process : The Effect of Internal and External Constraints on Arms Race Dynamics
(Sage, 2000-10) Bolks, Sean; Stoll, Richard J.
A new approach to address oversights in the traditional arms race literature is presented. It involves five factors that have not been previously applied to arms races. The focus of military capability is not expenditures but weapons counts. The entire set of major powers is modeled as a system. A factor controlling for the level of environmental threat faced by each state is included. Domestic factors are included in the decision-making calculus of the state. It is assumed that states use simple decision rules rather than a complex set of calculations to make their decisions. The authors usc this approach to test a system of equations that model the number of capital ships of the major powers from 1860 to 1986 in different time periods. Results indicate that the overall approach has a good deal of validity.
Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending, and Campaign Finance Law by Comparing the States
(Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2020) Hunt, Charles R.; Kettler, Jaclyn J.; Malbin, Michael J.; Glavin, Brendan; Hamm, Keith E.
Independent expenditures (IEs) in U.S. elections have increased substantially at nearly all levels of government over the past decade, but judicial decisions are only a partial explanation for this growth. Using a descriptive difference-in-differences approach, we show that the growth has been uneven across types of elections and spenders under different legal regimes. This finding highlights the importance of disaggregating spenders, elections, and laws in order to explain IEs more fully. This article analyzes IEs in state gubernatorial and legislative elections from 2006 through 2018 across states with differing campaign finance laws and political contexts. It uses an original and detailed classification of spenders, along with data on IEs from the National Institute on Money in Politics, the Campaign Finance Institute's historical database of state campaign finance laws, and other sources. The legal variations on which the article focuses are the various states' laws limiting contributions to candidates and political parties. It concentrates on these because of an oft-stated expectation that removing contribution limits will sharply reduce the level of IEs. In addition to contribution limits, we also assess partisan competition as a primary explanation for the level of IEs in various states, and across the sectors of spenders. We find, using multi-variate analysis, that increased partisan competition (at both the candidate level and chamber level) is in most cases a significant driver of IEs. In contrast, the associations between IEs and contribution limits are inconsistent and generally not significant. Importantly for ongoing policy debates, ideological and issue-driven spending appears to have weak association (or none) with contribution limits. Therefore, if the recent increase in IEs is in fact a normative problem, the solution may be more elusive than once thought.
Bloc Concentration and the Balance of Power: The European Major Powers, 1824-1914
(Sage, 1984-03) Stoll, Richard J.
This article argues that a better trace of the operation of a balance of power system can be obtained if two dimensions, alliances and capabilities, are combined into a single measure of bloc concentration. After reviewing the basic features of a balance of power system to show why this is the case, such an index is constructed. Several patterns of bloc concentration consistent with the operation of a balance of power system are derived and examined, using data for the European major powers from 1824 through 1914, and for all the major powers from 1919 through 1965. The findings are consistent with the existence of a balance of power system in the earlier era and with a form of balancing behavior in the post-World War I era.
Can I Rely on You?
(MDPI, 2018) Aksoy, Billur; Eckel, Catherine C.; Wilson, Rick K.
This paper introduces a strategic element into the dictator game by allowing recipients to select their dictator. Recipients are presented with the photographs of two dictators and the envelopes containing their allocations, and are then asked to select which dictator’s gift they would like to receive. The recipient is paid the contents of the envelope they select. The photographs carry information about the gender and race/ethnicity of the dictators, and we ask an independent sample of raters to evaluate the photographs for other characteristics. While gender and ethnicity do not affect the recipient’s choice, one characteristic inferred from the photos makes them significantly more likely to be selected: Their perceived reliability.
Careful Commitments: Democratic States and Alliance Design
(University of Chicago Press, 2015) Chiba, Daina; Johnson, Jesse C.; Leeds, Brett Ashley
Evidence suggests that leaders of democratic states experience high costs from violating past commitments. We argue that because democratic leaders foresee the costs of violation, they are careful to design agreements they expect to have a high probability of fulfilling. This may cause democratic leaders to prefer flexible or limited commitments. We evaluate our argument by analyzing the design of alliance treaties signed by countries of the world between 1815 and 2003. We find that alliances formed among democratic states are more likely to include obligations for future consultation rather than precommitting leaders to active conflict, and defense pacts formed among democratic states are more likely to specify limits to the conditions under which member states must join their partners in conflict. This research suggests that separating screening effects and constraining effects of international agreements is even more difficult than previously believed. States with the greatest likelihood of being constrained are more carefully screened.
Charity Begins at Home: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment on Charitable Giving
(MDPI, 2018) Eckel, Catherine C.; Priday, Benjamin A.; Wilson, Rick K.
Charities operate at different levels: national, state, or local. We test the effect of the level of the organization on charitable giving in a sample of adults in two Texas communities. Subjects make four charitable giving “dictator game” decisions from a fixed amount of money provided by the experimenter. Three decisions target different charitable organizations, all of which have a disaster-relief mission, but differ in the level of operation. The fourth targets an individual recipient, identified by the local fire department as a victim of a fire. One of the four is selected randomly for payment. Giving is significantly higher to national and local organizations compared to state. We find a higher propensity to donate and larger amount donated to the individual relative to all organizations. Subsequent analysis compares a number of demographic and attitudinal covariates with donations to specific charities. In a second decision, subjects instead indicate which of their four prior decisions they would most prefer to implement. Here we see that a majority of subjects prefer the gift to the individual.
Civil Engineering : Does a Realist World Influence the Onset of Civil Wars?
(Sage, 2010) Stoll, Richard J.
Recently, the study of civil wars has attracted more and more attention from scholars of international relations. Using a computer simulation called EARTH (Exploring Alternative Realpolitik THeses) that not only simulates a realist world, but also includes civil wars, the author explores what aspects of a realist world are associated with the onset of civil war. Although features of a realist world are not the dominate factors in accounting for civil wars, the loss of territory that accompanies losing interstate wars does influence the chances of states undergoing civil war.
Civil Reality? Simulation Experiments on the Impact of Civil War in a Realist World
(Taylor & Francis, 2005) Stoll, Richard J.
The most widely used theoretical framework in international relations is realism. Realism takes many forms, and there have been hundreds of writings on the topic. In the United States, the two most popular exemplars of realism are Morgenthau (Morgenthau & Thompson, 1985; original 1948) and Waltz (1979). There is no systematic attempt to incorporate civil wars into the realist framework. In this paper, we use a computer simulation to explore the impact of a state's civil war experience on its interstate war experience. The results suggest that a state's civil war experience can have an impact on its interstate war experience.
Collective Security and State Survival in the Interstate System
(Wiley, 1994-03) Cusack, Thomas R.; Stoll, Richard J.
For hundreds of years realists have debated idealists about the nature of the interstate system and the most effective means to promote the endurance of the system and the survival of individual states. This paper uses a computer simulation called EARTH (Exploring Alternative Realpolitik Theses) to explore the viability of collective security in a realist world. The results of our experiments indicate that the practice of collective security promotes the endurance of the entire system. Our results also show that states that practice collective security principles are more likely to survive in a realist world than states that operate according to realist principles
Context and Political Knowledge: Explaining Cross-National Variation in Partisan Left-Right Knowledge
(The University of Chicago Press, 2016) Fortunato, David; Stevenson, Randolph T.; Vonnahme, Greg
We present a theory that links variation in aggregate levels of political knowledge across countries and over time to corresponding differences in the political context in which voters become (or do not become) informed. Specifically, we argue that the level of partisan left-right knowledge in a given context ultimately depends on how useful the left-right metaphor is for organizing, simplifying, or otherwise facilitating voters’ understanding of political processes. Using survey data on the distribution of left-right knowledge in 59 different contexts (in 18 countries), our analysis reveals that voters understand the relative left-right positioning of parties to a much greater degree when these positions are important predictors of the composition of policy-making coalitions, but that variation in this knowledge does not correspond to the accuracy with which the relative left-right positions of parties predicts more narrow policy positions.
Cortisol and politics: Variance in voting behavior is predicted by baseline cortisol levels
(Elsevier, 2014) French, Jeffrey A.; Smith, Kevin B.; Alford, John R.; Guck, Adam; Birnie, Andrew K.; Hibbing, John R.
Participation in electoral politics is affected by a host of social and demographics variables, but there is growing evidence that biological predispositions may also play a role in behavior related to political involvement. We examined the role of individual variation in hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) stress axis parameters in explaining differences in self-reported and actual participation in political activities. Self-reported political activity, religious participation, and verified voting activity in U.S. national elections were collected from 105 participants, who were subsequently exposed to a standardized (nonpolitical) psychosocial stressor. We demonstrated that lower baseline salivary cortisol in the late afternoon was significantly associated with increased actual voting frequency in six national elections, but not with self-reported non-voting political activity. Baseline cortisol predicted significant variation in voting behavior above and beyond variation accounted for by traditional demographic variables (particularly age of participant in our sample). Participation in religious activity was weakly (and negatively) associated with baseline cortisol. Our results suggest that HPA-mediated characteristics of social, cognitive, and emotional processes may exert an influence on a trait as complex as voting behavior, and that cortisol is a better predictor of actual voting behavior, as opposed to self-reported political activity.
Determinants of Sanctions Effectiveness: Sensitivity Analysis Using New Data
(Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2013) Bapat, Navin A.; Heinrich, Tobias; Kobayashi, Yoshiharu; Morgan, T. Clifton
In the literature on sanctions effectiveness, scholars have identified a number of factors that may contribute to sanctions success. However, existing empirical studies provide mixed findings concerning the effects of these factors. This research note explores two possible reasons for this lack of consistency in the literature. First, informed by the recent theories that suggest threats are an important part of sanctions episodes, we analyze both threats and imposed sanctions. Second, to lessen model dependency of empirical findings, we employ a methodology that permits us to check systematically the robustness of the empirical results under various model specifications. Using the newly released Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions data, our analyses of both threats and imposed sanctions show that two factors—involvement of international institutions and severe costs on target states—are positively and robustly related to sanctions success at every stage in sanctions episodes. Our analyses also identify a number of other variables that are systematically related to sanctions success, but the significance of these relationships depends on the specific model estimated. Finally, our results point to a number of differences at the threat and imposition stages, which suggests specific selection effects that should be explored in future work.
Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in political ideology
(Cambridge University Press, 2014) Hibbing, John R.; Smith, Kevin B.; Alford, John R.
Disputes between those holding differing political views are ubiquitous and deep-seated, and they often follow common, recognizable lines. The supporters of tradition and stability, sometimes referred to as conservatives, do battle with the supporters of innovation and reform, sometimes referred to as liberals. Understanding the correlates of those distinct political orientations is probably a prerequisite for managing political disputes, which are a source of social conflict that can lead to frustration and even bloodshed. A rapidly growing body of empirical evidence documents a multitude of ways in which liberals and conservatives differ from each other in purviews of life with little direct connection to politics, from tastes in art to desire for closure and from disgust sensitivity to the tendency to pursue new information, but the central theme of the differences is a matter of debate. In this article, we argue that one organizing element of the many differences between liberals and conservatives is the nature of their physiological and psychological responses to features of the environment that are negative. Compared with liberals, conservatives tend to register greater physiological responses to such stimuli and also to devote more psychological resources to them. Operating from this point of departure, we suggest approaches for refining understanding of the broad relationship between political views and response to the negative. We conclude with a discussion of normative implications, stressing that identifying differences across ideological groups is not tantamount to declaring one ideology superior to another.
Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left- Right Political Orientations
(Public Library of Science, 2011) Smith, Kevin B.; Oxley, Douglas; Hibbing, Matthew V.; Alford, John R.; Hibbing, John R.
Disgust has been described as the most primitive and central of emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that it shapes behaviors in a variety of organisms and in a variety of contexts—including homo sapien politics. People who believe they would be bothered by a range of hypothetical disgusting situations display an increased likelihood of displaying right-of-center rather than left-of-center political orientations. Given its primal nature and essential value in avoiding pathogens disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs. In this article, we demonstrate that individuals with marked involuntary physiological responses to disgusting images, such as of a man eating a large mouthful of writhing worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative and, especially, to oppose gay marriage than are individuals with more muted physiological responses to the same images. This relationship holds even when controlling for the degree to which respondents believe themselves to be disgust sensitive and suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations.
Does cronyism pay? Costly ingroup favoritism in the lab
(Wiley, 2022) Banuri,Sheheryar; Eckel, Catherine; Wilson, Rick K.
Cronyism in firms arises when favoritism toward an ingroup affects personnel decisions. Two main motives underlie cronyism: profit, if an ingroup employee works harder; or altruism, if used to transfer resources. In a lab-experiment trust game with naturally-occurring groups, an employer (proposer) faces an employee (responder) who is or is not an ingroup member. We see that both motives play a role. Cronyism is more likely from employers who are more altruistic to the ingroup in a dictator game; and even low-productivity (by design) ingroup members reciprocate trust generously. Cronyism pays for those who engage in it.
Effect of Election Day Vote Centers on Voter Participation
(2012) Stein, Robert M.; Vonnahme, Greg; Pew Charitable Trusts; Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
In this article we study the effects of Election Day vote centers on voter turnout. Specifically we examine Texas and Colorado’s experience with alternative arrangements for the number and location of Election Day voting places and its impact on voter turnout in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We test our hypotheses at both the aggregate (i.e., county) and individual levels. We find evidence that vote centers increase voter turnout in presidential and midterm elections, and particularly among infrequent voters in midterms.
Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy
(Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2015) Stein, Robert M.
What steps can and do local election officials take to prepare for and respond to natural disasters and emergencies that impede and disrupt the operation of scheduled elections? How efficacious are these actions and practices, and to what extent, if any, can these practices be generalized to the 3,000+jurisdictions charged with conducting elections? In this article I address these questions by examining the conduct of the 2012 presidential election in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I find several correctives for the disruptive effect of emergencies and natural disasters on voter participation including state laws that afford voters opportunities to ballot before Election Day and the number and staffing of polling places. These correctives provide clear guidance for the conduct of elections outside of natural disasters and emergencies.

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