Damon M. Cann

Campaign Spending, Diminishing Marginal Returns, and Campaign Finance Restrictions in Judicial Elections

For years, scholars of elections have argued about whether campaign finance limitations adversely affect electoral competition. In this article, we examine how the institutional campaign finance restrictions differentially affect the performance of incumbents and challengers. Using elections for the state high court bench between 1990-2004, we demonstrate that candidate spending in judicial elections has diminishing marginal returns, but that the returns to challenger spending diminish more slowly than incumbent spending. Since this is the case, campaign finance restrictions that limit candidate spending dispropor- tionately harm challengers, increasing the incumbency advantage and decreasing electoral competition. That is, states with more stringent contribution limits have lower levels of candidate spending, and the restrictions thus put challengers at a competitive disadvantage.

Exchange Theory, Political Parties, and the Allocation of Federal Distributive Benefits in the House of Representatives

Much work has acknowledged partisan differences in distributive benefits. Few works, however, have empirically examined the role party building activities play in these distributions. Through Exchange Theory, we hypothesize that legislators are rewarded with distributive benefits for promoting the legislative and electoral goals of the party. Using data on party unity, member-to-member contributions, and distributive benefits, we observe these exchange relationships occurring between members and their parties in the House of Representatives, as well as directly between representatives and members of the Appropriations Committee. The analyses point to the importance of political parties in distributive politics.

Religious Identification and Legislative Voting The Mormon Case

While religion has profound effects on political behavior in mass publics, less is known about the effect of religion on political elites. This article considers the extent to which religious identification influences the roll-call voting behavior of Mormon members of the U.S. House of Representatives. While some aspects of Mormonism make it seem like a likely case for religious influence, the literature on legislative decision making provides no theoretical rationale for religious influence on legislative roll-call voting. A simple empirical test finds that Mormon representatives are no more unified in their voting behavior than are randomly selected sets of legislators.

Analyzing Text Complexity in Political Science Research

This article analyzes the text complexity of political science research. Using automated text analysis, we examine the text complexity of a sample of articles from three leading generalist journals and four leading subfi eld journals. We also examine changes in text complexity across time by analyzing a sample of articles from the discipline’s fl agship journal during a 100-year span. Although it is not surprising that a typical political science article is diffi cult to read, it is accessible to intelligent lay readers. We found little diff erence in text complexity across time or subfi eld.

Campaign contributions and judicial decisions in partisan and nonpartisan elections

Part I: Selecting Judges 1. Selecting Justice: Strategy and Uncertainty in Choosing Supreme Court Nominees Christine L. Nemacheck 2. The Role of Public Opinion in Supreme Court Confirmations Jonathan P. Kastellec, Jeffrey R. Lax, and Justin Phillips 3. Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions in Partisan and Nonpartisan Elections Damon M. Cann, Chris W. Bonneau, and Brent D. Boyea Part II: Trial Courts 4. Race and Death Sentencing Isaac Unah and John Charles Boger 5. Under-Estimating and Over-Estimating Litigation: How Activist Plaintiffs May Advance Their Causes Even As They Lose Their Cases William Haltom and Michael McCann Part III: Appellate Courts 6. Patterns of Policy Making across State Supreme Courts Scott A. Comparato, Scott D. McClurg, and Shane A. Gleason 7. Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals: The Determinants of Reversal on Appeal Virginia A. Hettinger and Stefanie A. Lindquist 8. Supreme Court Agenda Setting: Policy Uncertainty and Legal Considerations Ryan C. Black and Ryan J. Owens 9. The Origin and Development of Stare Decisis at the U.S. Supreme Court Timothy Johnson, James F. Spriggs, II, and Paul. J. Wahlbeck 10. Bargaining and Opinion Writing on the U.S. Supreme Court Tom S. Clark Part IV: Courts and Their Political Environments 11. Goldilocks and the Supreme Court: Understanding the Relationship between the Supreme Court, the President, and the Congress Michael A. Bailey and Forrest Maltzman 12. Interest Groups and Their Influence on Judicial Policy Paul M. Collins, Jr. 13. Public Opinion, Religion, and Constraints on Judicial Behavior Kevin T. McGuire Part V: Implementation and Impact 14. Lower Court Compliance with Precedent Sara C. Benesh and Wendy L. Martinek 15. Why Strict Scrutiny Requires Transparency: The Practical Effects of Bakke, Gratz, and Grutter Richard Sander

Ballot Titles and Voter Decision Making on Ballot Questions

From gay marriage to taxation to environmental issues, many of our nation’s most important policy issues are decided by voters through ballot questions. Conventional wisdom holds that information provided on the ballot about the ballot questions heavily influences voters’ choices in those elections, but there is little empirical evidence of this. We apply theories of framing to voters’ choices on ballot questions and design an experiment to test the hypothesis that ballot title wording influences voters’ decisions. Even on a matter that is hotly contested and where the policy is relatively noncomplex and relatively well understood by voters, we find strong framing effects for changes in ballot title wording, though the effects are driven primarily by influencing whether individuals who previously supported the measure abstained from participation.

The Effect of Campaign Contributions on Judicial Decisionmaking

In this paper we address a pressing issue on the contemporary political agenda: Is justice for sale? The implications of such a relationship between campaign contributions and judicial decisions, if it exists, merit a thorough empirical investigation regarding the existence of quid pro quo exchanges between judges and their campaign contributors. We examine decisions by judges on both nonpartisan (Nevada) and partisan (Michigan, Texas) supreme courts in the 2005 term. While we do not find any evidence of a relationship between contributions and the votes of judges in Nevada, it does appear that there is a quid pro quo relationship between contributors and votes in Michigan and Texas. Using an instrumental variables probit model, we are able to control for the endogeneity between contributions and votes and thus can conclude that contributions drive judicial votes, and not the other way around. While we only examine three states and one year here, the results suggest that there may be circumstances where the appearance of impropriety surrounding campaign contributions and judicial decisionmaking may be an empirical reality.

Education Finance Reform in the American States: A Discrete-Time Competing Risks Model

In this research, we develop a model that predicts the occurrence of education finance reform in the states. We improve upon existing studies of education finance reform that depict the process as a single event that may happen in only state supreme courts or state legislatures. We account for the possibility of reform via courts, legislatures or referendum as well as the possibility of repeated reform events. In this way, we have a more complete, more accurate picture of the reform movement in the states.