D. Roderick Kiewiet

Political participation of ethnic minorities in the 1980s

Currently political participation, especially voter registration and turnout, varies substantially with ethnicity. Blacks and non-Hispanic whites participate at roughly equal rates, while Latinos and Asian-Americans are substantially less active. This variation may be the direct product of cultural factors, or it may reflect differences in the distribution of various determinants of participation, most notably education, citizenship, and age. Using data collected in 1984 on samples of Californias black, Latino, Asian-American, and non-Hispanic white populations, we conclude that such variables fully account for lower Latino participation rates. Even with these controls, however, Asian-Americans remain less likely to vote. Because ethnic group consciousness is one of the variables related to activity, we conclude that ethnicity does have an indirect effect on participation as a basis for mobilization. In addition, we establish that noncitizens engage in nonelectoral activities, and we project future political participation rates of Latinos and Asian-Americans under several scenarios.

The Acquisition of Partisanship by Latinos and Asian Americans

In this paper we examine the acquisition of partisanship by immigrants and subsequent generations of Latinos and Asian Americans. The data we analyze are derived from a survey of California residents in late 1984. We find that the longer Latino immigrants have been in the United States, the more likely they are to identify as Democrats and to have strong party preferences. We find age-related gains in both Democratic support and in the strength of partisanship among subsequent generations of Latinos as well. In line with our hypotheses about their foreign policy concerns, the data also suggest that immigrants from China, Korea, and Southeast Asia become more Republican with increased exposure to American politics. Other Asian immigrants and subsequent generations of Asian Americans exhibit no such trends in either the direction of their party preferences or in partisan intensity.

A Retrospective on Retrospective Voting

This paper critically reviews the extensive literature on retrospective voting in response to economic conditions. Each of the major types of analyses which have been performed — time-series analyses of national vote totals, presidential popularity, and cross-sectional analyses of individual survey responses — has raised several interesting and important questions. The answers that have been obtained, however, are only partial and limited, as each of these approaches entails serious problems of estimation and interpretation. Further progress in this area, we argue, requires explicit treatment of conceptual and statistical issues that have hindered previous research: the dynamic formulation of expectations and preferences, the incidence of policy (and nonpolicy) effects across the population, and notions of incumbency and political responsibility.

Presidential Influence on Congressional Appropriations Decisions

We investigate the extent to which possession of the veto allows the president to influence congressional decisions regarding regular annual appropriations legislation. The most important implication of our analysis is that the influence the veto conveys is asymmetrical: it allows the president to restrain Congress when he prefers to appropriate less to an agency than they do; it does not provide him an effective means of extracting higher appropriations from Congress when he prefers to spend more than they do. This asymmetry derives from Constitutional limitations on the veto, the sequencing of the appropriations process provided by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1920, and the presence of a de facto reversionary expenditure level contained in continuing resolutions (Fanno, 1966). We find strong support for this proposition in a regression of presidential requests upon congressional appropriations decisions.

Explaining Patterns of Candidate Competition in Congressional Elections

The low probability of defeating incumbent members of Congress deters potentially strong rivals from challenging them. Yet almost all incumbents are challenged, usually by opponents who lack previous experience in office and run underfinanced, ineffectual campaigns. But if strong challengers are deterred from challenging incumbents, why are not weak challengers, who have even less chance of unseating an incumbent? The model developed in this paper indicates that there is a simple reason why weak candidates choose to run against incumbents: they do so in order to maximize their probability of getting elected to Congress. Together with the findings of previous researchers, the results of our analyses of congressional primary data from 1980 through 1984 provide strong support for the major hypotheses derived from our model.

Policy-Oriented Voting in Response to Economic Issues

This study explores the hypothesis that voting in response to economic problems is policy-oriented: voters concerned about unemployment ore predicted to give greater support to Democratic candidates, while those concerned about inflation are predicted to vote more Republican. In light of evidence from previous research, this study investigates the electoral effects of inflation and unemployment as (1) problems directly experienced by the individual, and (2) problems deemed serious for the nation as a whole. Support is strongest for the unemployment side of the hypothesis. Voters personally affected by unemployment gave a modest boost to Democratic candidates in virtually every election. And in years of high unemployment the large percentage of voters who fell it was a serious national problem voted heavily Democratic as well. This study concludes by discussing the important implications these findings have for our understanding of how economic conditions influence voting behavior in American national elections.

Appropriations Decisions as a Bilateral Bargaining Game between President and Congress

In this essay we model appropriations decisions as products of a bilateral bargaining game between a reelection-minded president and Congress. The findings bear out the expectation that the two sides jointly pursue a strategy of accommodation. In awarding appropriations, Congress takes into account the presidents preferences embodied in the OMBs budget requests; these requests in turn reflected expectations of congressional action. The evidence also reveals that several important exogenous political and economic variables influence both executive and legislative appropriations decisions.

Economic retrospective voting and incentives for policymaking

This paper explores the possibility that the punishment–reward strategy known as economic retrospective voting provides incentives to pursue good economic policies. By “good” we mean policies that enhance efficiency and reduce economic rents. The key hypothesis is that in those countries whose electoral arrangements and governing institutions yield high clarity of responsibility, a resultant high level of retrospective voting should compel incumbent parties to be more vigorous in the pursuit of efficiency-enhancing policies, or at least less vigorous in creating rents. In countries where the clarity of responsibility is low, the more tenuous linkage between economic performance and electoral success should leave incumbent governments less motivated to promote efficiency and to eliminate rents. As hypothesized, countries low in clarity of responsibility appear to be more inclined to subject their economies to over-regulation and to engage in higher levels of transfers and subsidies. On several other policy dimensions, however, there were no discernable differences between high and low clarity of responsibility countries.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND: SELF-INTEREST, THE PUBLIC INTEREST, AND SOCIOTROPIC VOTING

ABSTRACT Four decades ago, Gerald Kramer showed that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes. Some researchers took this to mean that voters were self-interested, voting their “pocketbooks,” while others, such as Leif Lewin, took it to mean that voters were sociotropic, motivated by the public interest—and therefore altruistic. It is important, however, to avoid conflating sociotropic voters with altruistic ones. Voters might be voting in favor of politicians or parties that they think will further the public interest as an indirect route to furthering their own interests, as members of the public. More research, perhaps conducted using novel methodologies, is needed in order to settle the extent to which voters are motivated by self-interest or by the public interest.

Czar Rule in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies?

Czar Rule in the Russian congress of Peoples Deputies, to characterize equilibrium strategies pursued by an agenda-setting Speaker. In conjunction with the information about the distribution of preferences in the RCPD, our Czar Rule model yields several testable hypotheses. The model receives some empirical backing, but overall the results of our analysis do not support it. We therefore, attribute the conflict between the Yeltsin government and the RCPD to fundamental disagreements over policy and not to internal contradictions in constitutional design.