Assessing Presidential Communications in Civil Rights Policymaking

This chapter compares the public communications of modern presidents across target groups and issue areas of civil rights. We find that attention, support, and symbolism on civil rights vary considerably across individual presidents and political party. Not surprisingly, in their public messages Democratic presidents are more attentive and supportive of civil rights than are Republican presidents. Some results were expected, while others were surprising. Lyndon B. Johnson was attentive and supportive; but, unexpectedly, George H. W. Bush was highly attentive to and quite nonsupportive of civil rights. Also surprisingly, on most indicators, Bush's policy statements were less symbolic and less equivocal than were Ronald W. Reagan's. Most attention is given to blacks as a target group (although this is declining) and to the employment issue area. Overall, the findings reveal the considerable flexibility and discretion in presidents' public communications in the civil rights realm.     

A Classification of Spatial Distributions Based upon Several Cell Sizes

Several procedures, based upon cell count analysis, have been proposed for classifying spatial distributions, or maps, associated with some region R. Such procedures are rather imprecise and are known to depend upon the sixes and shapes of the cells in the particular partition of R under consideration. In this paper, the problem is considered from the point of view of hypothesis testing. A test of randomness based upon an arbitrary number of partitions of R is giuen. If the hypothesis of randomness is rejected, additional tests may be performed to classify the map into one of two categories, clustered or regular. These tests provide a number of advantages over existing procedures. Based upon multiple partitions of R, they decrease the dependence upon any particular partition, and the colresponding classification is precise since the null hypothesis distribution of the test statistic is (asymptotically) known. Finally, they allow a great deal of flexibility in testing for certain alternatives to randomness, and are applicable to one-, two-, and three- dimensional maps.     

Lessons from the Zeyouma Trading post near Flagstaff,Arizona

Historical Archaeology -     

Canada’s Hemisphere: Canadian Culture and the Question of Continental Identity

Canada has always been ambivalent about its spatial location. Even though it is situated in the Americas, historically it has perceived itself—and has been perceived by the world—largely as a European outpost. In particular, Canada has identified much more with the Northern Hemisphere than with the Western Hemisphere. This article examines the reluctance of Canadian writers and artists to engage with the continent below the United States–Mexico border. However, it will conclude by analyzing some of the songs that Bruce Cockburn wrote in response to his tours of the Central American war zones in the 1980s, which mark a turning point in Canada’s inter-American identity.     

What’s so good about parliamentary hybrids? Comment on ‘Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarianism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies’

Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision of complex majoritarianism with the principle of simple majoritarianism, arguing that the values of identifiability, clarity of responsibility and stability are instrumental rather than intrinsic values. It notes further problems with semi-parliamentarianism as a two-chamber system.