Senate Retirements and Progressive Ambition among House Members in 1996

In this article we examine the decisions made by the 85 United States representatives from the 13 states from which United States senators were retiring in 1996 and by the 137 representatives from states holding Senate elections in which incumbents were seeking reelection. We use these data to examine individual-level decision making in order to reassess the conventional wisdom on progressive ambition of House members. Using a decision calculus derived from previous studies, we are able to understand the decisions made by all but a handful of the representatives under study. These findings should prove useful in predicting which representatives will exhibit progressive ambition in the future.     

杨家埠画店概述

在传统年画的下方,署有年画店的店名,表明为该画店产品,它是区分和确定年画产地的标志,是知晓年画大致朝代的依据,是年画史中不可缺少的参照。为了调查山东潍坊杨家埠的年画史,笔者曾于1961年春夏之际在杨家埠住了三个月,在艺人杨连元的大力协助下,对杨家埠年画店进行了疏理,并深入溯源,弄清了杨家埠画店的概况。     

Small Parties and the Senate Revisited: The Consequences of the Enlargement of the Senate in 1984

An intriguing feature of electoral systems is that apparently insignificant modifications of their constituent rules can have important consequences. One such potentially important change, following the increase in the size of the Senate in 1984, was the shift from five to six places for each state to be filled at each half Senate election. Attention has been drawn, most notably by Sharman \[1986. 'The Senate, Small Parties and the Balance of Power.' Politics 21(2): 20-3], to the capacity of this change to reduce the representation of small parties, with adverse consequences for the role of the Senate in national government. A decline in Labor's share of the vote and growth in support for minor parties are identified as the primary reasons why the predicted outcomes have not eventuated. The paper speculates about the possible future relevance of Sharman's argument.     

Shirking and Ideology: Defense in the Senate

A repeated finding in political science is the influence of a representative's so-called ideology on roll call voting in the U.S. House and Senate. Many of these studies attempt explicitly to separate the impact on roll call voting of "personal" ideology from that of constituency ideological preferences. In these studies, personal ideology is viewed as a form of shirking in which members pursue their own policy preferences rather than those of their constituents. This paper shows, at least for the case of defense in the Senate in the 1980s, that the evidence is sufficient to reject the claim that shirking represents the consumption of personal ideological policy preferences. Instead, the apparent impact of shirking on defense voting was an instrumental, reelection-oriented response to President Reagan's ability to muster popular support for his defense build up, and thus cannot be regarded as shirking at all.     

Postmaterialism and the Vote for the Senate in Australia

There is a disagreement in the political science literature regarding the impact of postmaterialism upon Australian politics. Elim Papadakis, and Ian McAllister and Clive Bean argued that postmaterialist values were expressed through support for the minor parties in the 1990 federal election. But David Gow, analysing the same data, found no evidence supporting postmaterialist theory. In this research note, I re-analyse the data and present fresh evidence which suggests that there is a postmaterialist effect associated with voting for the minor parties in the Senate. My analysis also addresses the question of modelling the vote for the Senate to adequately account for the representation of new politics values by the minor parties.     

Archaeology and the Late Modern State: Introduction to the Special Issue

While archaeologists have always shown great interest in the rise and fall of premodern states, they perennially show little interest in their own. This is particularly troubling because the state is the nexus of power in archaeology. In practice, virtually all archaeology is state archaeology, imbued with and emboldened by state power. It is in this light that contributors to this Special Issue of Archaeologies grapple with the archaeology–state nexus, addressing such timely issues as colonialism, capitalism, and cultural resource or heritage management (CRM/CHM). We outline here the archaeology–state nexus concept and introduce the Special Issue.     

The Representation of Small Parties and Independents in the Senate

Minor party and independent senators have played a critical role in supporting procedural changes which have given the Australian Senate the ability to play an independent role in the legislative process, and to scrutinise the executive branch effectively. This article examines how this situation has followed from the adoption of proportional representation (PR) for Senate elections since 1949. In looking at the evidence available in 1948, it is argued that the current symbiotic relationship between minor parties and the Senate could not have been foreseen. Whether intended or not, the adoption of PR and the representation of minor parties has done more to enhance the operation of parliamentary democracy in Australia than any institutional change since federation.     

美国众议院关于“慰安妇”问题的H．Res．121议案

2007年1月31日,关国众议员迈克·本田（Mike Honda）向关国众议院提交了H．Res．121议案,表达众议院在“慰安妇”问题上的关切,要求日本对“慰安妇”问题正式做出明白和明确的道歉。随之在美国国会历史上第一次举行了由三名“慰安妇”幸存者组成的听证会,几经波折后H．Res．121议案终于在7月30日被美国众议院一致通过。正是借助H．Res．121议案不仅使得“慰安妇”问题迅速地引起世人注意,而且得以在美国众议院这个平台上以及从美-日同盟角度来探讨“慰安妇”问题,这些对于“慰安妇”问题发展的影响意义深远。