Volume 5, Issue 2

The author contends that Michael Bloomberg's 2005 re-election signalled the collapse of Democratic Party dominance in New York mayoral elections. The author discusses the campaign, and suggests that the collapse of Democratic hegemony is due to the decline of the party organizations, the willingness of organized labor to support Republicans, and the city's changing economics and demographics.

The ``Red" versus ``Blue" state debate has reached a fever pitch in popular commentary, but scholars have contributed very little to the discussion by way of examining rural voting behavior. With the use of national exit poll data, this study attempts to fill this considerable void, with a detailed analysis of rural voters in the 1992-2004 presidential elections. In 1992 and 1996 the rural vote was split between the parties, but in 2000 the rural vote shifted decidedly in favor of Republican George W. Bush and it stayed with the incumbent in 2004. This research on the voting behavior of rural voters in recent presidential elections documents and evaluates the many differences between rural and non-rural voters, and accounts for several of the factors leading to an increase in rural Republican voting in 2000 and 2004. The conventional wisdom that rural voters are more likely to be so-called values voters is true and this translates into greater Republican support. Further, on virtually every survey item in which their non-rural counterparts share the same survey response, rural voters are consistently more Republican in their presidential vote choice. Dissatisfaction with President Clinton—termed Clinton fatigue—was much more pronounced among rural voters and this was a major reason for the strong rural shift in favor of the Republican Party in 2000.

By 2040, the United States will no longer be considered as a global superpower and the world may be headed toward a long era devoid of any superpowers. This will occur as a result of several negative trends within the United States itself, combined with changing dynamics and exigencies in the global system and the rise of more powerful competitors in Asia and Europe. The negative trends within the United States include unprecedented governmental and international debt, dysfunctional campaign-finance and lobbying systems, unmanageable entitlement and health-care obligations, a deteriorating public education network, an inordinate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of relatively few individuals and corporate interests, and imperial overstretch. Internationally, globalization trends will necessitate much more cooperation across national borders with a premium placed on multilateral cooperation as opposed to unilateral initiatives. More than one-third of humanity in China and India is now being integrated into the international market system and new national and regional competitors such as the EU and ASEAN will diminish the overall economic and political influence of the United States. In 2040, the United States may be primus inter pares among the leading group of nations, but both the ``American Century" and America's ``unipolar moment" in history will have come to an end.

This paper examines the Republican Main Street Partnership, a moderate faction in an increasingly conservative Republican Party. Using party and interest group measures, we examine to what extent RMSP members differ from their fellow Republicans in their unity around partisan and ideological issues. We find that Partnership members differ from other Republicans in their partisan and ideological behavior, but share similarities with the Party on specific policy areas. Understanding these factional differences may shed further light on the political battles before the modern Republican Party.

This article seeks to reconcile the activities of several of the groups organized during the 2004 election cycle under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code with existing theories of party and interest group behavior. While 527 groups have frequently been categorized as extensions of traditional advocacy groups or party networks, I argue that existing theories do not account for the functional differentiation between these groups. This functional differentiation marks a relatively unprecedented development in American interest group politics. However, the highly partisan nature of the 2004 election and the limited appeal of these groups either to party donors or to a broad base of interest groups may indicate that such groups will not endure or play as prominent a role in 2008 as they did in 2004 even absent changes in FEC rules.

This brief essay assesses the resources and liabilities that Fred Thompson brings to 2008 Republican presidential nomination politics. It examines facets of Thompson's Senate career, as well as his work as a lobbyist and actor. Although Thompson benefits from a political context in which social and religious conservatives find flaws in the first tier candidates and from national visibility, his relatively centrist voting record among Republican senators, reputed, but largely, untested campaign skills, lobbying activities, and late entry in the contest present significant obstacles for him.

The public polling industry frequently faces the challenge of measuring and reporting opinions on topical policy issues about which the public may be uninformed or confused. These situations present a true challenge to pollsters who, through the process of polling itself, could end up manufacturing, rather than measuring, public opinion. Multiple studies have addressed the problems with manufacturing opinions on fictional issues, but none have addressed how or whether these effects occur in the real and possibly more complicated world of actual policy opinion. This paper uses multiple experiments to demonstrate how reported opinions on an actual issue on which the public is largely uninformed – the USA Patriot Act – vary greatly due to simple variations in question wording, content, and response options due to a lack of public knowledge about the Act. Because an uninformed public resorts to scouring questions for information cues with which they can formulate an answer, different question wordings provide different contexts and considerations for respondents and can thereby result in disparate answers to substantively similar questions.

This piece reviews alternative reform proposals for international environmental governance, and the role of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in a new international environmental architecture. It argues for streamlining UNEP as a scientific hub within a broader international network of linked actors involved in environmental governance.

The author discusses Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, the two most recent Mayors of New York City, and their prospects for the Presidency. While the New York mayoralty has historically been a ``political dead end," Giuliani is a front-runner for the Republican nomination and Bloomberg is being discussed as a potential independent candidate. The author briefly examines their leadership styles and offers some ideas about how they might deal with aspects of the Presidency. Finally, the author notes the possibility that two other ``New Yorkers" also are serious candidates: Senator Hillary Clinton, who was elected to the Senate while still First Lady, and Fred Dalton Thompson, the unannounced candidate for the Republican nomination. Thompson, who served in the U.S. Senate for eight years (1995-2003), and before that had come to national prominence as the Minority Counsel during the Senate's Watergate Hearings (1973), is known to many voters as ``Arthur Branch," the fictional Manhattan District Attorney, a character that he has played for the last five seasons (2002-2007) on the NBC television program, ``Law and Order."

As the first unambiguous Southerner to be elected president since the antebellum era, Jimmy Carter was viewed at the time as a symbol that North-South reconciliation had finally come to pass. A quarter-century later, there are growing signs that the intersectional peace may be ending. This article shows that as Southerners, regardless of party, have steadily gained political power since the 1960s, various commentators have argued that the regional power shift presents serious negative consequences for the parties and the country and must be stopped. Thomas Schaller's widely cited, much heralded book Whistling Past Dixie is but the latest example. More than arguing that Democrats need to find an alternative, non-southern route to victory, Schaller suggests that Democrats must have the guts to run against the South, portraying it as the enemy once more of all that is good and right with America. It is a book that combines sectional strategy and sectional substance.