Public Presidential Appeals and Congressional Floor Votes: Reassessing the Constitutional Threat

The assertion that public appeals by presidents can create electoral threats to noncompliant members of Congress is central to arguments about the value of "going public" as a legislative strategy. Although recent scholarship suggests a link between popular presidential rhetoric and the likelihood of bill passage, researchers have yet to examine the impact of public presidential appeals on individual legislators. This study examines the logic of electoral threats imposed by going public. We test whether a president's going public with increased intensity leads individual members of Congress to increase their support for presidential preferences on congressional floor votes. We employ several measures to assess the intensity of presidents' public appeals, including domestic speeches, nationally televised addresses, and speeches in legislators' home states. Several logistic regression models are tested to determine whether congressional support for presidential preferences on the floor is influenced by the interaction between members' electoral vulnerability and presidents' use of popular appeals. The findings suggest that presidential speechmaking has very little impact on the likelihood that members of Congress will support the president's position on roll call votes. We argue that this suggests a necessary revision of criticisms of the "rhetorical presidency." Public presidential appeals do not seem to present a considerable threat to a constitutional order that is predicated on congressional autonomy and deliberation.     

The Mormon Historical Demography Project

Abstract

This article describes the background and reconstruction of the Belgian 1961 census sample file. Recently, a complete codebook for the sample file has been drawn up, and the representativeness of the sample has been evaluated as accurate, except for the loss of cases that occurred for three Belgian subregions. With the addition of the 1961 census sample, cross-sectional microdata from the five successive population censuses since that year, covering a broad range of topics, are now available to the research community. The reconstruction of the 1961 census sample was part of the activities of the HISSTAT project, which is currently being run by a consortium of research institutions in Belgium to bring together cross-sectional aggregated data since 1800, aggregated longitudinal data since 1880, and cross-sectional microdata since 1961, all covering the entire country.     

Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico

Explaining culture change requires a multi-dimensional approach, and so does explaining cultural continuity. I combine several approaches to explain why the account given of a Mexican town's history changed between 1879 and 1992. I also identify and explain what did not change during the period, as well as during the subsequent period of fieldwork itself, 1992–2005. Rather than treat cultural continuity as the result of inertia, I follow Urban ([2001], Metaculture: How Culture Moves Through the World, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN) in looking for what motivates the transmission of culture as well as what pathways it takes, although I prefer to stress human agency in writing of the trajectories along which people propel culture, in this case a town's history. One approach which I draw, for explaining the trajectories of culture, is Malinowski's seminal study of Trobriand myths (1926), but I combine it with the more recent approaches that link versions of history to the interests of social groups; highlight the density of ties between person, people and place; pay attention to the genre of narratives being transmitted, and to the skewing of culture towards central places; and finally, consider shifts not just in the figure of particular narratives but in the grounds that underlie them, such as the criterion of truth against which narratives are measured.     

Traditional and computed tomographic (CT) techniques link modern and Cenozoic fruits of Pleiogynium (Anacardiaceae) from Australia

Computed tomography (CT) and traditional techniques were used to study the internal morphology of modern fruits of Pleiogynium timoriense (DC.) Leenh., and phosphatized and silicified fruits that were considered to belong to the genus. The results demonstrate that phosphatized fruits from the Oligocene–Miocene Dunsinane site at Riversleigh and silicified fruits from the Oligocene Glencoe Site, which are both in Queensland, are referable to Pleiogynium. The Riversleigh material (Pleiogynium wannanii Rozefelds, Dettmann & Clifford sp. nov.) is very similar to extant P. timoriense (DC.) Leenh. Both possess locules that, in the vertical axial plane, are asymmetrically reniform and enclosed by a two-layered endocarp, the inner layer woody and resistant to decay, the outer of fibres and parenchyma, surrounded by a mesocarp of fibres and sclereids and a parenchymatous exocarp. The outer mesocarp is sculpted by meridionally arranged, elongate depressions (germination apertures) situated at the dorsal surface of each locule; erosion of the mesocarp and outer endocarp provides passage for emergence of the embryo’s radicle on germination. The silicified material from Glencoe (P. parvum Rozefelds, Dettmann & Clifford sp. nov.) is smaller in all its parts and has locules that are ovate in the vertical axial plane. Discrete, cap-like, opercula are not evident in the fruit wall of the fossil and extant fruits studied. The presence of Pleiogynium, and associated taxa, indicates the existence of rainforest communities at Glencoe, and mixed open forest/rainforest at Riversleigh during Oligocene–Miocene times. The multilocular, fossil fruit described as Pleiogynium mitchellii Collinson, Manchester and Wilde from the Eocene deposits at Messel Quarry, Germany, is not considered to belong in the genus, as evidence of elongate depressions on the dorsal surface of the fruit stones has not been demonstrated conclusively, and its internal morphology/anatomy differs significantly from that of Pleiogynium.     

17th century Huron village life: insights from the copper-based metals of the Ball site,southern Ontario,Canada

Copper-based metal artifacts from the Ball site, a late 16th – early 17th century Huron (Wendat) village in southern Ontario that doubled in size during its estimated 20-year existence, were analysed by INAA. The goal was to assess the number of kettles that had reached the village, explore the chronology of their arrival and examine patterns in their discard within the site. Our results suggest that about two to three dozen European copper, red brass, and yellow brass kettles may have reached the village during its occupation; that copper kettles may have been traded to the inhabitants of the village before brass kettles; that the new inhabitants may have brought some kettles with them; and that differences in the discarding of copper and brass pieces inside and outside longhouses indicate that yellow brass was possibly of lower value than red copper.     

Book reviews

UNITED NATIONS. THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS. Clark M. Eichelberger. New York, Harper and Row, 1965. Pp. 176. $3.50.

THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: LEGAL BASES, STRUCTURE, FUNCTIONS. Hans Aufricht. Published under the auspices of the London Institute of World Affairs. London, Stevens and Sons, 1964. Pp. 126. Australian price $4.55.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM. B. A. Santamaria. Melbourne, Campion Press, 1964. Pp. 258. 35/‐d.

THE ANZUS TREATY ALLIANCE. J. G. Starke. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1965. Pp. xiv + 314. $8.50 (Australian).

CAMBODIA'S FOREIGN POLICY. Roger M. Smith. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1965. Pp. x + 273. U.S.$5.75.

CONFLICT IN LAOS. THE POLITICS OF NEUTRALIZATION. Arthur J. Dommen. London, Pall Mall Press, 1965. Pp. xiv + 338. Australian price 63/6d.

THE LEFT‐WING MOVEMENT IN JAPAN, 1945–1964. Fukao Noda (ed.). Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, Vol. III, No. I, April 1965. Tokyo, The Centre for Japanese Social and Political Studies. U.S.$2.00.

MOHAMMED, MARX AND MARHAEN. THE ROOTS OF INDONESIAN SOCIALISM. Jeanne S. Mintz. London, Pall Mall Press, 1965. Pp. 246. Australian price 66/‐d.

THE RISE OF POLITICAL ANTI‐SEMITISM IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. P. G. J. Pulzer. New dimensions in history: essays in comparative history. New York, Wiley, 1964.

BRITISH STRATEGY AND POLITICS, 1914–1918. Paul Guinn. London, Oxford University Press, 1965. Pp. xvi + 360. 8 maps and 14 illustrations. Australian price 67/6d.

THE POLITICS OF NAVAL SUPREMACY. The Wiles Lectures, 1963–4. G. S. Graham. London, Cambridge University Press, 1965. Pp. viii + 132. 2 maps. 30/‐d. stg.

THE UNITED STATES AND THE ITALO‐ETHIOPIAN CRISIS. Brice Harris, Jr. Stanford University Press, 1964. Pp. vi + 187, bibliographical essay. Australian price 75/6d.