Enduring Rivals: Presidential Success and Support in the House of Representatives

We compare presidents' legislative support and success at the vote level of analysis. In so doing, we remind readers that these two outcomes measures, collected by Congressional Quarterly, Inc., may or may not reflect presidential agenda preferences. Success refers to a victory for the president on his vote positions, while support refers to margin of legislators taking the same position on the vote as the president. The vote level provides numerous characteristics of the legislation itself that serve as useful predictors of these two presidential position outcomes. These include its substantive nature, the stage of the vote on the floor, and the issue area of the vote. In addition to the characteristics of the votes themselves, we also incorporate presidential resources and environmental conditions. Virtually all of the component variables within these three concepts contribute to explaining presidents' legislative success and support in the House. We also find that, while models of overall House success and support perform similarly, controlling for party coalitional support dramatically alters the observed relationships. Therefore, without this further analysis, scholars risk misinterpreting the relationship between the president and Congress. Although we have not measured influence, we believe that these findings raise important implications for scholars of presidential-congressional relations and also suggest avenues for further research.     

Charcoal analysis and the “Principle of least effort”—A conceptual model

The applicability of the Principle of Least Effort (PLE) to interpretations of palaeoclimatic data is considered, and found lacking in some instances. A conceptual model is presented to determine situations in which the PLE may, or may not, apply. This helps identify when the PLE may be a useful model for interpretation of appropriate data sets.     

AIDS and global security

AIDS has been medically visible for 30 years; but only in the last five have the security implications of the pandemic begun to be discussed seriously. This debate has been in many ways unsatisfactory to date. The purpose of this article is to begin to rectify this at the moment when the first major efforts to combat the pandemic are beginning to take effect. It records therefore the history of that debate and ascertains in what useful and defensible senses AIDS can be described and managed as a security issue. It argues that there are, indeed, several that meet these criteria. The article describes the first three engagements with the disease from the time of its discovery and then suggests three newer ones and, it argues, more fruitful approaches that have advanced since 2000 of which the security dimension is one. The others are the geo-politics of the human immune system and analysis through the prism of political economy. The scope of the next waves of AIDS after the southern African one, is depicted. Its coming intersection with oil and Great Power politics is noted.