John Hickman

Candidate Competition and Attrition in Presidential Primaries, 1912-2000

This article analyzes candidate competition and attrition in presidential primaries from 1912 to 2000. We use a modified market concentration index to measure the number of effective candidates entering presidential primaries and to calculate winnowing across presidential primaries. We test competing hypotheses about the increasing number of candidates entering primaries. We find that the number of effective candidates increased following the reforms of the 1970s. We reject the hypothesis that the number of candidates entering primaries increased gradually as a function of long-term factors. We also find similarities in the winnowing of candidates in each party during the prereform and postreform eras, which suggests the timing of candidate withdrawal owes to more than differences in each party’s delegate allocation rules. Republican presidential primaries more efficiently winnow candidates than do Democratic presidential primaries in both the prereform and postreform eras.

The Effect of Open Seats on Challenger Strength in Japanese Lower House Elections

This research tests the hypothesis that Japanese Lower House (multimember) districts with more open seats attract more strong challengers. Lower House incumbents are reelected at higher percentage rates than challengers are elected. Using data for the 10 most recent elections to the Lower House (1963-90), measures appropriate to the medium-sized district, single-entry ballot electoral system were constructed for the proportion of open seats and the effective number of strong challengers in each district. Analysis shows that strong challengers enter district races in proportion to the opportunities presented by open seats. Differences in the electoral strength of candidates for the Japanese House of Representatives are readily apparent. Incumbents enjoy obvious electoral advantages over challengers. Success in previous campaigns, experience in office, and higher visibility make incumbents formidable opponents. There are also clear differences in the strength of challenger candidacies. Some challengers offer serious electoral competition and threaten to displace the weakest incumbents. Other challengers enter races with little expectation of gaining office. Defeated independent candidates, Communist party candidates, and minor party candidates are numerous in every general election to the Lower House of the Diet. Districts with open seats-that is, multimember districts with fewer incumbent candidates than seats-would appear to offer challengers crucial opportunities for gaining office. This study addresses the question of whether, in fact, Lower House districts with open seats attract more strong challengers. There are good reasons for believing that strong challengers decide to enter races by calculating the likelihood of being elected, rather than by heeding the behest of party or faction. Since the Diet is a parliamentary body, one might expect competition on the basis of party and ideology; however, Diet elections clearly exhibit some of the

Resurrecting the Space Age: A State-Centered Commentary on the Outer Space Regime

Currently, space development is confined to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Several states joined the United States and the Soviet Union in space, yet space exploration and development beyond LEO has fallen far short of what is possible given technology and treaty constraints. The authors examine this puzzle of collective inaction, offer insights that contradict much of the conventional wisdom about the development of space, and conclude with a legal-institutional remedy which would solve the collective inaction problem.

WHAT IS A PRISONER OF WAR FOR

This article presents a conceptual map of the purposes served by continuing custody of prisoners of war and captured non-combatants. Morally legitimate and non-controversial purposes include preventing prisoners of war from rejoining their comrades-in-arms, preventing both prisoners of war and captured non-combatants from giving material support to combatants still in the field, facilitating orderly release and repatriation at the end of hostilities, and the prosecution for war crimes. Morally illegitimate purposes include punishment, exploitation as conscript labour, recruitment or conscription as combatants, exploitation for intelligence, display as proof of victory, and ideological indoctrination. Analysis of historical cases illustrating each purpose reveal that continuing custody is often motivated by multiple purposes, both legitimate and illegitimate. What explains adoption of multiple and illegitimate purposes for continuing custody? Prisoners are available for legitimate and illegitimate purposes because neither elites nor masses within the captor state typically view prisoners as members of the moral community.1 Continuing custody does not alter the perceived status of the captured as aliens who cannot be intuitively invested with expectations of reciprocity. This suggests both ending custody as soon as legitimate purposes are served and bringing the captured within the moral community while in continuing captivity. Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies Vol. 36 (2) 2008: pp. 19-35

Is electoral violence effective? Evidence from Sri Lanka's 2005 presidential election

This research note reports empirical findings from a study of the effectiveness of electoral violence and intimidation in Sri Lankas 2005 presidential election. Using the previous 1999 presidential election as a baseline for comparison, analysis conducted at the polling division level reveals that both United National Party (UNP) candidate Ranil Wickramasinghe and United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFP) candidate Mahinda Rajapakse experienced declines in the percentage of votes in polling divisions where opponent party activists committed acts of violence or intimidation. Fewer polling divisions reported violence or intimidation by UNP than UPFP activists, but the former appear to have been more effective in demobilizing voters.

Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade

If and when interplanetary and interstellar trade develop, it will be novel in two respects. First, the distances and time spans involved will reduce all or nearly all trade to the exchange of intangible goods. That threatens the possibility of conducting business in a genuinely common currency and of enforcing debt agreements incurred by governments. Second, interstellar trade suggests trade between humans and aliens. Cultural distance is a probable obstacle to initiating and sustaining such trade. Such exchange also threatens the release of new and dangerous memes.

Explaining the two‐party system in Sri Lanka's National Assembly

Abstract Although members of Sri Lankas National Assembly are elected under a proportional representation electoral system, the 1994 and 1989 elections produced a legislative party system with only two major parties. Legislative party systems are the result of deviations from proportionality, or the degree to which parties fail to receive shares of legislative seats equal to their shares of popular votes. This article reports findings from a constituency level analysis of the relative effects of effective threshold, ethno‐national diversity, ‘presidentialism’, and voter turnout on deviation from proportionality. A simulation is used to evaluate the effect of the ‘bonus seats’ provision. The findings reveal that the effective threshold and the bonus seats provision, but not ethno‐national diversity, affect deviation from proportionality.

The occupier's dilemma: Problem collaborators

ABSTRACT Every occupying power recruits collaborators but potential recruits vary with respect to their acceptance by occupied populations. That matters because the legitimacy of the occupation regime facilitates securing the war aims of the occupying power. This article surveys the different reasons why collaborators often elicit popular contempt, a response which may inspire insubordination and resistance, to produce a conceptual stencil of the optimal rather than the ideal collaborator. Limited pools of potential recruits mean that occupying powers may not be able to recruit ideal candidates. The resulting conceptual stencil can serve a checkoff list for evaluating the utility of potential collaborators.

How Plausible is Chinese Annexation of Territory on the Moon

This article argues that a hypothetical decision by the Peoples Republic of China to assert territorial sovereignty over the area surrounding its planned manned Moon base is plausible. Enhanced international prestige in the near term and access to natural resources and strategic military positions in the long term may be sufficient temptations for Chinas leaders to challenge the United States to a twenty-first century space race. Strategic surprise could be successfully employed, given the opacity of Chinese decision-making; the conceptual blindness of external observers, including decision-makers, analysts, and academics; and Chinas repeatedly demonstrated capacity for executing military or diplomatic surprises of comparable magnitude. The ability of signatory states to withdraw from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty with one-years notice means that international law only poses a temporary obstacle to such a decision. A manned Moon base would fulfill the condition of effective occupation necessary for territorial sovereignty under international law. An international relations constructivist approach discourages consideration of the advantages to states of territorial aggrandizement or the weakness of international law in restraining the behavior of states.

The New Territorial Imperative

Events during the first decade of the new millennium have contradicted scholarly predictions made in the 1990s about the declining relevance of the sovereign territorial state in international affairs. The state remains the proper primary focus of attention for scholars of international relations because territory remains the ineluctable and ultimate basis for power in the international system. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, states have claimed enormous new territories that have added to the power resources of coastal states. This realist analysis contributes to identification of the likely locations of future interstate wars and a major objective of strategic planners.