Issue Salience and Bill Introduction in the House and Senate

I propose that many if not most bills introduced in the House and Senate represent electoral position taking on the part of members. Thousands of bills are introduced every year, only a fraction of which are passed into law, much less seriously considered in the chamber. Moreover, bills are very good position-taking devices in that they can appear to voters to be a credible step in the electoral process. I search for electoral motivations by examining the content of the bills members introduce. For five different policy areas, and in both the House and the Senate, I find strong correlations between indicators of issue salience in members’ districts and the number of bills the member introduces within the policy area. In addition, in the House the relationship between salience and bill introduction is strongest among vulnerable members, although in the Senate vulnerability does not influence the relationship.     

The Members of the House of Lords and the Hanoverian Succession

This essay examines what happened in August and September 1714, from the death of Queen Anne on 1 August to the swearing-in of the new privy council on 1 October, specifically from the perspective of the membership of the house of lords. It confirms that most members were present in London during this period and active in parliament, the privy council, the regency, and politics generally. Very few were absent without a good reason.     

Party Leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives: Making Theoretical Sense of Ambition and Context

This article focuses on the policy-making activities of House Republicans in their early transition to power (104th Congress) as well as in their settling in (105th Congress). Key components of House governance, as practiced by the Democrats in the 103rd Congress, serve as a benchmark for comparison. The analysis reveals substantial differences between the size, scope, and thrust of the leaders' issue agendas. Over time, decision-making apparatus and strategies for building floor coalitions and publicizing party views vary as well. Using data from interviews with the principals and a host of sources from the government and the media, I find evidence that draws attention to the power of personal ambitions and political contexts.     

Ambition and temporal sovereignty in recent Scottish cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This paper is a study of the figure of ‘ambition’ in Scottish cultural policy since about 2010. The argument of the paper is established through the development of the concept of ‘temporal sovereignty’. Through ‘ambition’ cultural policy attempts to subject culture and cultural agents to the formation of the Scottish government’s temporal regime, and in particular the relation between creative industries and the effects of economic temporality. The study examines the temporal properties of ‘partnerships’ as a key strategic mechanism in that project. The focus of the study is an analysis of authoritative Scottish cultural policy texts which show that the subject of culture becomes the organisation of temporal sovereignty. The paper explains the conditions for the emergence of the problem of ‘temporal sovereignty’ and discusses its consequences for structures of rule and logics of cultural policy formation. It concludes by indicating the location of culture in a politics of temporalities.     

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.     

Decadent Conservatism: Politics and Aesthetics in The Senate

Abstract: The relationship between late-Victorian Decadence and Aestheticism and politics has long been vexed. This article explores the hitherto under-explored confluence of conservatism and avant-garde literature in the period by introducing The Senate, a Tory-Decadent journal that ran from 1894-7. While Decadent authors occupied various political positions, this article argues that The Senate offers a crucial link between conservatism and Decadence The article presents the journal in its political and publishing context, outlining its editorial position on such issues as the Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition governments, Britain's relationship with Europe and the threat of ‘State Socialism’, as well as its valorisation of Bollingbroke and eighteenth-century Toryism, and its relationship to, and difference from, key Decadent journals the Yellow Book and The Savoy. It then goes on to articulate its relationship to Decadence by focussing on the presence of Paul Verlaine in its pages and its vitriolic response to the press coverage of Oscar Wilde's trials. The article concludes by exploring the surprising wake of The Senate, briefly tracing the editors' influence in the development of Modernism and links with the journal BLAST.     

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.     

The Marginality Hypothesis and Supreme Court Confirmation Votes in the Senate

Studies of Supreme Court confirmations have found that a senator's vote is primarily determined by his or her ideological proximity to a nominee and that nominee's objective qualifications. This literature does not account for the extent to which a senator's electoral safety may enhance or mitigate the effects of ideology or qualifications. We argue that senators from less competitive states are more likely to eschew a nominee's qualifications in favor of their own ideological preferences. By analyzing roll call data on confirmation votes from Byron White to Elena Kagan, we support this argument and add an intriguing new piece to the puzzle underlying the changing dynamics of Senate confirmation voting.     

国民党人在处置昆明学潮问题上的分歧

抗战结束后 ,在国民党统治区内学潮不断。面对学潮 ,蒋介石一向态度僵化 ,必欲将之消灭于萌芽之中 ,惟恐被中共所利用。而地方军政当局因守土有责及利害所关 ,更不免反应强硬 ,往往大打出手 ,造成惨案。对此 ,身居教育系统的国民党负责人及国民党籍教授们虽不以为然 ,又无可奈何 ,只能亡羊补牢 ,居间调和 ,力求将损害减少到最小程度。但随着类似事件频频出现 ,一些国民党人由抱怨不满 ,到逐渐与国民党离心离德 ,几不可免。从国民党人在“一二·一”惨案善后问题上的不同态度中 ,即可一窥其端倪。     

The Politics of Executive Nominations in the Post-Nuclear Senate

In response to an ever more inefficient, intrusive, partisan, and plodding executive nominations process, a variety of increasingly potent reform measures have been recently enacted within Congress. The solutions have ranged from cutting the number of appointments requiring Senate confirmation to reducing the power of the filibuster on most nominations. Although these reforms may speed the nominations process, they may also influence the balance of power between Congress and the presidency by allowing more unilateral and unrestricted appointments. Is Congress conceding confirmation for expediency? In this investigation, I explore recent reforms with respect to the speed and outcomes of the executive nominations process as well as the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.     

Governed by Experience: Political Careers and Party Loyalty in the Senate

In this article, we study the U.S. Senate to understand how legislators' previous experiences in elected office influence their political behavior. We posit that, as a result of their experiences in office, former governors in the Senate are less partisan than their colleagues. We code the political jobs held by senators between 1983 and 2015 and analyze the effects of these careers on party loyalty in Senate floor votes. We find that gubernatorial service is associated with a 7–8% decrease in Party Unity. We test several hypotheses for the observed “governor effect” and find that, relative to their colleagues, former governors are supported by donor networks that are less ideologically extreme. We conclude that the unique experiences associated with serving as governor, along with the personalized nature of governors' electoral support coalitions, affect a senator's relationship with the party. Ultimately, our analysis illuminates how personal attributes, such as prior experience in elected office, can inform the study of legislative behavior.     

迪政丹独龙人的房葬

滇西高黎贡山西麓的独龙江畔,是中国人口不足万人的少数民族独龙族生活的乐园。由于长期的封闭,使独龙族与外界相对隔绝,外界的人们在对独龙族人的生活很少知晓的情况下,对其生存的独龙江原始生态区域的认识本身就是一种秘密,其纹面、巢居等遗风遗俗又使其披上了神秘的色彩,迪政丹一带的房葬更是鲜为人知。