Gary Zuk

Politics, economics and party popularity in Britain, 1979–83

Abstract Analysts of party popularity frequently have emphasized macroeconomic conditions at the expense of political events. The wisdom of doing so is challenged by time-series analyses of British party popularity between the 1979 and 1983 elections. Some of the significant political interventions modeled were part of ‘usual’ politics, that is, by-elections, intraparty disputes, and public reactions to party leaders, whereas others were ‘unusual’, that is, engagement and victory in a foreign war, and the emergence of a new party. Analyses also show that inflation and unemployment had significant effects, but, taken together, they were not in accord with the dominant ‘reward-punishment’ model of party support. Rather, they conformed to an ‘issue-priority’ model which postulates that the impact of macroeconomic conditions depends upon how the electorate perceives the priorities of competing parties. Future expectations as well as evaluations of past performance govern the political economy of party popularity.

The Post-Coup Military Spending Question: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Time Series Analysis

Despite or because of a decade of research that yielded conflicting results, the question of whether or not military coups or regimes brought into power through coups have an impact on subsequent military spending remains open. A review of the relevant literature suggests that part of the analytical problem may result from assumptions about military political behavior as well as various limitations associated with cross-national analyses of change, and the use of exclusively cross-sectional or longitudinal research designs. In addition, some of the disparity in research findings may result from the reliance on different indicators-both dependent and independent-by a number of different analysts. In response to these potential technical problems, this analysis of military spending patterns in 66 less-developed states applies a GLS routine, pooling cross-sectional and time-series data, to the 1967-1976 relationships between two measures of military spending and several predictor variables, including regime type, coup occurrences, level of conflict, economic development, arms imports, and previous military spending. Although the empirical outcome varies according to which dependent variable is examined, we find, in general, that information on the distribution and timing of regime types-military, civilian, and mixed-and successful military coups is not very helpful in predicting post-coup military spending policies. This finding suggests, in turn, that the crucial presumption that military personnel participate in politics primarily to defend or advance their corporate interests is not a very useful predictive foundation for the examination of post-coup military spending.

An Institutional Analysis of Turnover in the Lower Federal Courts, 1900- 1987

Retirement and resignation rates for lower federal court judges have been increasing steadily over the last two decades, yet there has been little systematic analysis either of the extent of, or reasons for this trend. Using multivariate time-series analysis, we investigate the turnover rates for lower federal court judges in the years 1900-1987, 1900-1953, and 1954-1987 by level of court and by political party. Drawing upon the literature on judicial and congressional retirements, we examine the impact of five variables on judicial leaving rates: presidential elections, salary increases, improved retirement benefits, caseload, and major Supreme Court decisions. We find that the caseload in each court, marked shifts in Supreme Court policies and especially presidential elections are consistently associated with judicial turnover in both lower federal courts for Democratic and Republican judges alike. Moreover, the electoral and major case effects continue to be statistically significant in the post-1953 era of rising turnover rates and spiraling caseloads. In general, then, judicial retirement/resignation rates have been strongly influenced by political/ideological considerations, and infused with partisanship, especially after 1954.

World Power and the Strategic Trap of Territorial Commitments

Long cycle theorizing argues that systemic leadership depends upon the creation and maintenance of a global network of bases to support sea, and later aerospace, based capabilities of global reach. Control over, and responsibility for, extensive amounts of territory tends to be counterproductive to the extent that territorial commitments drain attention and resources from the global network. After briefly illustrating the existence of this strategic dilemma in the 16th and 17th centuries, we concentrate on the empirical relationship between onsets of British imperial warfare and the ratio of navy to army budgets between 1671 and 1913. As anticipated, the longitudinal relationship between imperial warfare, an indirect indicator of expanding territorial commitments, and the budgetary primacy of sea-power concerns is found to be negative and statistically significant. We interpret this finding to be supportive of the view that expanding territorial commitments can constitute a strategic trap for system leaders, and as such, a partial explanation for the decline of their ability to function as leaders. We conclude with some suggestions about how this historical problem may relate to the contemporary foreign policy problems of the current system leader, the United States.

U.S. Defense Spending, Electoral Cycles, and Soviet-American Relations

We investigate whether U.S. defense spending has been systematically increased (or decreased) during national election years for the presumed purpose of influencing the economy in general and the electorate in particular. Our analysis of five major kinds of defense spending essentially showed no support for a two- or four-year electoral-defense spending cycle. Instead, we find that two international factors, war and the state of U.S.-Soviet relations, have been largely responsible for the distinctively irregular pattern of post-1945 U.S. defense spending.

American Elections and the International Electoral-Economic Cycle: A Test of the Tufte Hypothesis

Tuftes hypothesis on the existence of an international electoral-economic cycle specifies that government economic stimulation for reelection purposes tends to spill over and affect the economies of other industrialized democracies (Tufte, 1978). After discussing some problems with Tuftes empirical evidence, this paper undertakes a new examination of the hypothesized cycle with a primary focus on quarterly gross national product growth data (1955-1980) for Canada, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Based on a consideration of percentage comparisons and Box-Tiao impact assessment models, the new tests produce results that are not entirely in agreement with Tufte. Because there is no support for an American electoral-economic cycle, which would play a crucial role in the international cycle, it is concluded that the evidence examined provides little corroboration for the notion of systematic and diffused electoral impact on the economies of six of the most important industrialized democracies.

National Growth and International Conflict: A Reevaluation of Choucri and North's Thesis

Choucri and Norths thesis that major powers characterized by a growing population, technology, and military capability but with limited access to scarce resources will acquire sovereignty over resource-producing states and in the process become more conflict oriented is reinvestigated. It was found that the territorially expanding and conflict-oriented powers of the 1870-1913 period (the era investigated by Choucri and North) either produced in sufficient amounts the resources most important to their needs (e.g., coal, petroleum, iron ore) or had access to these resources from sovereign, industrially developing nations. Consequently, the Choucri-North framework, with its emphasis on resource shortages being the catalyst of major power international expansion and conflict, does not appear to provide an effective direction for scholarship.

Political Support in Multiparty Canada: 1980–1984

In recent years Canada’s national political parties have faced an increasingly discontented and volatile electorate. Each of the last three federal elections has resulted in the defeat of an incumbent government, and party popularity between elections has fluctuated widely, often over quite brief time intervals. To date, however, few systematic attempts have been made to explain aggregate electoral change (Clarke et al., 1979, 1984), and until recently, inter-election movements in party support have received virtually no attention (Clarke and Zuk, 1984; Erickson and Monroe, 1984). This paper focuses on the latter by analyzing monthly variations in the popularity of Canada’s three national parties as revealed by surveys conducted by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion between March 1980 and June 1984.1 The time interval was bracketed by the reinstatement of a Liberal government and its ouster in one of the most crushing electoral defeats in recent Canadian history.