Volume 9, Issue 2

“The economics profession both sanctioned and rationalized a business model of society which supported a minimally supervised rule of markets. As a consequence, the failure of markets has marginalized economics itself. It is left on the sidelines as politicians try to salvage something from the breakdown of the market order.” Robert Skidelsky, 2009“When I was in college, I majored in political science. But if I were going through college today, I’d major in economics. It possesses a rigor that other fields in the social sciences don’t—and often greater relevance as well. That’s why economists are shaping national debates about everything from health care to poverty, while political scientists often seem increasingly theoretical and irrelevant.” Nicholas D. Kristof, 2011Foreign policy decision makers tend to rely on historical analogies. The “surge” in Afghanistan, for example, was inspired in part by the “surge” in Iraq. Processes for dealing with foreign policy issues involving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were substantially different from those processes in the Bush and Obama administrations aimed at dealing with economic crises in 2008 and 2009. The latter processes were influenced extensively by economists, especially in the Obama administration. The decisions to send additional troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan involved relatively few political scientists. More substantial input from political scientists in the decision making process about the surge in Afghanistan might have produced more knowledgeable and informative analyses of relevant historical and political data in the form of structured focused comparisons of the wars and counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as analyses and interpretations of data on larger numbers of cases pertaining to broader phenomena of which the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are examples. Perhaps political scientists deserve a role within foreign policy making processes more similar to that reserved for economists in processes focusing on economic issues.

Economic voting models predict a direct translation of “objective” economic conditions into voter’s preferences. These models posit that declining micro- and macroeconomic circumstances will automatically lead to a vote against the incumbent government. The 2008 financial crisis provides a valuable opportunity to test the applicability of these theories. This paper argues that the framing of the crisis and the competency signals voters received during the 2008 US and the 2009 German campaigns mediate the link between economic perceptions and the vote intention.

Legislators like Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson become nationally infamous for their provocative behavior, yet there is little scholarly attention to such infamy. This paper examines the predictors of congressional infamy, along with its electoral consequences. First, infamy is measured through the frequency with which internet users conduct searches of legislators’ names, paired with epithets attacking their intelligence or sanity. Then, ideological extremism and party leadership positions are shown to be the best statistical predictors. The electoral consequences of infamy follow: infamous legislators raise more money than their lower-profile colleagues, but their infamy also helps their challengers to raise money. In the case of House Republicans, there appears to be an additional and direct negative effect of infamy on vote shares. The fundraising effect is larger in Senate elections, but there is no evidence of direct electoral cost for infamous senatorial candidates.

Sociologists have identified an emerging new ethnic population of “unhyphenated Americans,” those whites who claim an “American” ancestry, or none at all. This article measures the voting habits of these individuals in the 2010 elections. Research has shown that Barack Obama’s vote share suffered in the 2008 election in regions where these voters are concentrated. This paper extends that analysis to the 2010 midterm elections. I find that in districts where unhyphenated Americans are concentrated, Democratic candidates suffered reduced vote share and chances of victory. These findings show the importance of identity politics among white voters and raise further questions about the role of ethnicity and voting.

Historical context affects the race for the White House as much as it does presidential leadership. Candidates from the opposition party require several elements to fall into place for them to achieve victory. Is Barack Obama a successful opposition candidate—someone who won office in a fashion similar to Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, and Woodrow Wilson? Or did he run a campaign that set the stage for a new reconstruction of politics along the lines of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan? This paper examines the 2008 presidential election through the lens of political time, evaluating the Obama campaign to determine whether it met the criteria for opposition party victory. The answer to that question helps us understand where President Obama may be placed in political time—and the nature of the opportunities and constraints he possesses as either a president of opposition or a president of reconstruction.

Did African American voters—drawn to the polls by Barack Obama in 2008—cast their ballots for him and then vote to ban gay marriage in Florida, causing Amendment 2 to pass? Using original survey and county-level data, we find the linkage fails to hold. While they tend to be less supportive of marriage equality than whites, black surge voters in Florida were only slightly more likely to support a ban on gay marriage than other likely voters. In addition, we show that although counties that experienced large numbers of black surge voters did exhibit more support for Obama, they were no more supportive of Amendment 2 than other counties. Finally, we demonstrate that black voters were not responsible for carrying Florida’s gay marriage ban to passage, as it would have met and surpassed a 60-percent threshold even in their absence.

The notion of “starving the beast” has been an important justification for fiscal programs emphasizing revenue reductions since the mid-1970s. While the idea of restraining government spending by limiting government revenues has an intuitive appeal, there is convincing evidence the reducing federal tax rates without coordinated reductions in federal spending actually produces long-term growth in spending. This perverse result is explained by a theory of “fiscal illusion.” By deferring the costs of government services and benefits through deficit financing, starve the beast policies have the effect of lowering the perceived price of government in the minds of many citizens. We assess the principal behavioral prediction of the fiscal illusion theory.Incorporating estimates of the effects of federal deficits into a standard substantive model of Stimson's mood index, we find strong support for a subjective price-driven theory of demand for government. In particular, we find that the size of the federal budget deficit is significantly associated with greater demand for government services and benefits. This may have important implications for contemporary debates about fiscal discipline.

This paper examines the desirability and constitutionality of using sampling techniques in conducting the United States census. The census is one of the most controversial political events each decade. Most people would be surprised to learn that the census was a hotly debated topic at the Constitutional Convention. In spite of the fact that a census is typically considered more accurate than a sample, this paper argues that using sampling techniques, for the allocation of legislative seats, would produce a more accurate count of inhabitants in America. Furthermore, the paper addresses the constitutional issues surrounding the use of sampling.

The Obama Administration argued that a publicly announced withdrawal timeline would help further U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) objectives in Afghanistan by incentivizing better behavior from the Karzai government and the Afghan people. In this article, I test the “Obama timeline hypothesis” to determine whether it is likely to produce the positive change that the Administration claims. By utilizing a mix of consistent historical predictors, deductive logic based on contemporary COIN theory, and currently available evidence, I conclude that the withdrawal timeline has not produced, and likely will not produce, these results and that, on the whole, it has likely engendered perverse incentives that run contrary to America’s COIN objectives. More broadly, the Afghan case should make U.S. policymakers deeply skeptical of assertions that withdrawal timelines can serve as an effective policy tool for changing the behaviors of key regional actors.

Ever see a problem on the news and realize that you have a solution buried on your hard drive, or tucked away in a research journal in a library corner? Ever wonder what it would be like if you—the eminent political scientist—were in charge of making policy decisions? Or, ever try to get information out of the government or an interview with a politician? Consider joining the Practicing Politics Working Group, a newly formed division of the American Political Science Association, your personal consulting agency. Look out at the APSA 2011 conference where we are co-sponsoring panels on: Modern Diplomacy (with Foreign Policy); The Federal Budget (with Public Administration); Technology and Development (with Information Technology and Politics); and Bilateral Trade (with International Political Economy).

This brief note addresses Paul Quirk's response to our article "Simulating Representation: Elite Mobilization and Political Power in Health Care Reform," in which we responded to his comments about our earlier work.