Barbara Palmer

ISSUE FLUIDITY ON THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

In making decisions on the merits, the members of the U.S. Supreme Court are often willing to provide authoritative answers to questions that have not been asked and to disregard issues that the parties have presented. What accounts for these forms of issue fluidity? Analyzing data from the 1988 term of the Court, we find that issue transformation is quite common, occurring in roughly half of the cases on the plenary agenda. We propose models of both issue discovery and issue suppression that, while successful in explaining how the justices select issues, suggest that these two forms of fluidity result from largely different influences.

Political Ambition and Women in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1916-2000

This analysis demonstrates how political ambition theory can be applied to women who have served in the U.S. House of Representatives: under what conditions do political women manifest discrete, static, and progressive ambition? Our database includes all women elected to the House between 1916 and 2000. In differentiating between discrete and static ambition, we find that among congressional widows, there are measurable differences between those who seek reelection and those that step down, with independent political experience and working partnerships in their husband’s political careers being especially important. In addition, we show that women in the House are strategic when deciding whether to run for the Senate. Progressive ambition—the decision to run for higher office—flows from a calculus that incorporates the probability of winning, the value of the office, and the costs of running. As such, it appears that the women of the House respond to the same strategic forces as their male counterparts.

When Women Run Against Women: The Hidden Influence of Female Incumbents in Elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, 1956–2002

Although it is well known that “when women run, they win as often as men,” the literature on women and campaigns suggests that we should see significant differences in races involving male and female incumbents. Do female incumbents face the same competitive environment as their male counterparts in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives? Using the existing literature on the role of stereotypes and gender traits in campaigns, we formulate two hypotheses to explain the relationship between gender and incumbency. The Competition Hypothesis asserts that compared to male incumbents, women running for reelection will face more competition in retaining their seats. The Gender Effect Hypothesis predicts that female incumbents will induce other women to enter the race. On the basis of an analysis of House elections from 1956 to 2002, we find considerable support for both hypotheses. In House elections, female incumbents have a “hidden influence”: Not only do they face more competition but they also increase the participation of female candidates in their own party as well as the opposition party. Although female incumbents win at the same rates as male incumbents, they face a much more competitive environment.

The Political Glass Ceiling

Abstract Why has the integration of women into elective office, particularly Congress, been so slow? We argue that incumbency and the general lack of competition in American elections serve as a “political glass ceiling,” having a dampening effect on the number of women running in both primary and general U.S. House elections. With data from House elections from 1978-1998, we find that although there have been general upward trends in the number of women running in primaries, winning primaries, and winning election to Congress, there is a distinct gender gap between the parties. The growth in the presence of women since 1988 is largely a Democratic phenomenon. In addition, women are strategic in their decisions regarding whether or not they will run; the likelihood of success influences the decision to become a candidate. Women are far more likely to run in districts with an open seat than they are in districts where they would face a safe incumbent. This implies that the number of women entering the House depends upon the political cycle of redistricting or unanticipated events and “crises” that create large numbers of open seats.

Issues, Agendas, and Decision Making on the Supreme Court

In the process of agenda setting, the U.S. Supreme Court is limited to selecting from among only those cases brought before it. Despite this limitation, the justices possess considerable discretion and can reshape the issues in a case as a means of advancing their policy preferences. With data drawn from the Courts opinions, we find that, over the past twenty-five years, the justices have evinced a frequent willingness to expand the issues on their plenary docket and resolve questions not formally presented by the parties. We conclude that, notwithstanding informal norms that disapprove of this practice, issue fluidity is an important component in a continuous program of agenda building.

Issue Fluidity and Agenda Setting on the Warren Court

While justices have considerable discretion in the picking and choosing between cases in the creation of their agenda, how much discretion do they exercise in the picking and choosing between the issues that were presented by the parties, or even in developing new issues? Given the Warren Courts reputation for articulating broad rules that went beyond the particular circumstances of an individual case, especially in the area of civil rights and liberties, we would expect that this issue fluidity, particulary the expansion of issues, occurred with some frequency during this era. With an analysis of a random sample of 200 cases from the Warren Court, I found that the justices developed new issues in about one-fourth of all cases, while they suppressed issues that had been fully briefed and argued in over half of all cases. In addition, surprisingly, the Warren Court tended to suppress issues in civil rights and civil liberties cases, rather than expand them.

Political Science in a Different Voice: Women Faculty Perspectives on the Status of Women in Political Science Departments in the South

As we approach the American Political Science Association’s Centennial Celebration and reflect upon the history of the discipline, perhaps nothing has changed the face of political science more than the growing numbers of women in the profession. The entry of women into the field of political science, however, was not always welcomed. Gender discrimination posed barriers to women’s academic career advancement. Even into the late 1980s, subtle discrimination perpetuated what researchers described as a “chilly climate” for women faculty. Through a commitment to gender equity by the APSA, the Women’s Caucus, regional associations, and political science departments, significant progress has been made in the last decade. This progress, however, has been measured only from the perspective of department chairs through surveys regarding issues of recruitment and retention of women. The limited information that department chairs have been able and/or willing to provide has frustrated our attempts to clearly measure the status of women in the profession. This study, made possible by a Centennial Research Grant from the American Political Science Association and a supplemental grant from the Southern Political Science Association, adds the direct perspective of women faculty in order to understand fully the scope of the barriers that remain.

Women in the American judiciary: Their influence and impact

Abstract This article reviews the women and politics literature on gender and the American judiciary. Specifically, it explores what we know about the behavior of women on the bench: Do women judges behave differently than their male counterparts, or do they blend in and conform to existing norms and institutional cultures? The research in this area largely has gone in two directions. First, there appears to be a great deal of consensus in the literature that in sex-discrimination cases, women judges are more supportive of womens claims than men judges, regardless of their ideology. Second, there is much less consensus over whether or not women employ different methods of reasoning, such as a “difference” jurisprudence.

The Roll Call Behavior of Men and Women in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1937–2008

Our analysis investigates the ideological differences in the voting records of male and female members of the U.S. House of Representatives using a relatively novel natural-experiment research design to account for variations in district-level factors. We ask whether it makes a difference when a woman succeeds a man or a man succeeds a woman in a given congressional district. To answer this question, we created a database consisting of predecessor-successor pairs in all elections to the House between 1937 and 2008. In the case of intraparty change, we find that there is no significant difference in the voting scores of female and male members of the House; the roll call scores of female Democrats who replace male Democrats are virtually identical, as are the scores of male Democrats who replace female Democrats. The same results hold for Republicans. We also demonstrate that when interparty change occurs in a district, there is no evidence that the resulting ideological change is greater when the successor or predecessor is a woman. In other words, the voting records of consecutive members of Congress that come from a particular district are virtually the same regardless of their gender.