David C. King

Integrating Community Service and Classroom Instruction Enhances Learning: Results From an Experiment

To help inform discussion of the educational value of community service, we report results of an experiment in integrating service-learning into a large undergraduate political science course. Students in service-learning sections of the course were significantly more likely than those in the traditional discussion sections to report that they had performed up to their potential in the course, had learned to apply principles from the course to new situations, and had developed a greater awareness of societal problems. Classroom learning and course grades also increased significantly as a result of students’ participation in course-relevant community service. Finally, pre- and postsurvey data revealed significant effects of participation in community service upon students’ personal values and orientations. The experiential learning acquired through service appears to compensate for some pedagogical weaknesses of classroom instruction.

SEX AND THE GRAND OLD PARTY An Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Candidate Sex on Support for a Republican Candidate

We report the results of an experiment involving 820 randomly sampled adults. Half heard about a female Republican candidate for Congress. The other half learned of an otherwise identical male candidate. Democrat and Independent voters were more likely to trust, think qualified, view as a leader, and vote for the female Republican (contrasted with the male Republican). On the other hand, being female led to associations that hurt Republican women within their own party. We augment our experimental results by providing evidence that Republican women have done significantly worse than Democratic women in winning nominations in open-seat congressional districts.

Partisan Mobilization Campaigns in the Field: Results from a Statewide Turnout Experiment in Michigan

Political parties have recently rediscovered grassroots tactics for voter mobilization. The only solid evidence for the effectiveness of such get-out-the-vote (GOTV) tactics is based upon non-partisan field experiments that may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In order to address this lacuna, during the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Party’s Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. Contrary to past non-partisan experiments, our results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.

The Nature of Congressional Committee Jurisdictions.

Jurisdictions are the defining characteristics of committee systems, and they are central in any discussions about the U. S. Congress; yet we know little about them. Where do committee property rights come from? Are they rigid? Are they flexible? I introduce a distinction between statutory jurisdictions (which are written in the House and Senate Rules) and common law jurisdictions (which emerge through bill referral precedents). Turf is gained through common law advances, not through formal rules changes (like the “reforms” passed by the House in 1946, 1974, and 1980). Jurisdictional change is ongoing and incremental. The analysis draws on an examination of hearings held by the House Commerce Committee from 1947 through 1990.

The Management Performance of the U.S. States

The Maxwell Schools Government Performance Project rated the management successes of the 50 states in several areas, such as capital management, human resources and information technology in 1998 and 2000. Variability among the states was significant. Viewing the Maxwell School data as something to be explained, we focus on political institutions, social characteristics and the economic environments in the states. We review hypotheses that predict management performance, and we test them empirically. We find that states high in social capital, states with professional legislatures, and states with vibrant entrepreneurial economies are more likely to be better managed. A state’s tax burden and the governor’s powers seem unrelated to the Maxwell School scores. States with a high density of “good government” groups tend to be poor performers, presumably because citizens join such groups hoping to improve their unsatisfactory state governments. Please note: The larger study that this paper discusses will be published in a book by The Brookings Institution in early 2005.

A mathematical model for estimating the potential margin of state undecided voters for a candidate in a US Federal election

A US Federal election in which candidates from two major political parties compete for the votes of those undecided voters in a state who usually do not vote in US elections is considered. A mathematical model for evaluating the expectation of the margin of votes to be received from such voters by either candidate as a result of the election campaigns of all the competing candidates is proposed. On the basis of this model, finding the estimation under consideration is reducible to finding the minimum of the maximin function of the difference of two bilinear functions with one and the same first vector argument whose second vector arguments belong to a polyhedron of connected variables (strategies of the candidates), and this minimum is sought on another polyhedron.

Mobilizing the party faithful: Results from a statewide turnout experiment in michigan

Recent large-scale field experiments of get out the vote (GOTV) drives have been non-partisan and may not accurately capture the effectiveness of partisan campaign outreach. In the 2002 Michigan gubernatorial election, a large field experiment across 14 state house districts evaluated the cost effectiveness of three mobilization technologies utilized by the Michigan Democratic Partys Youth Coordinated Campaign: door hangers, volunteer phone calls, and face-to-face visits. The results indicate that all three GOTV strategies possess similar cost-effectiveness.

Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress By Eric Schickler. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 356p.

For those of us who watch Congress and steep ourselves in its history, there are a handful of theories purporting to explain how and why Congress changes. Political parties behave like cartels gathering power at anothers expense. Election-minded members shape Congress to ease the passage of pork-barrel bills and to trade votes. Congress often seems designed to encourage legislators to become policy experts, and their expertise is protected by deference to committees that fairly closely represent the interests of the whole House or Senate. For at least the last 15 years, and in the name of New Institutionalism, full-throated fans of various theories have been arguing over which one is “right.”