John Mark Hansen

Individuals, Institutions, and Public Preferences over Public Finance

This study examines public preferences over deficits, taxes, and spending. Using responses to public opinion questions designed for the purpose, the article assesses the state of preferences as expressed by individuals and as represented in government. One section examines the characteristics of individual preferences—their completeness, consistency, and coherence. Public opinion is remarkably well structured and overwhelmingly partial to the policy status quo. A second section explores the properties of mass preferences as they are aggregated by several different kinds of institutional voting rules. Institutions matter, at least to a point: Consistent institutional differences over federal budget policy trace directly to the diverse means by which institutions represent the publics positions. The conclusion assesses the meaning and import of the publics resistance to budget policy change.

Taxation and the political economy of the tariff

Traditional accounts of U.S. tariff policy emphasize trade strategies and interest group politics. This article makes a departure. It opens with an observation: up until World War I, the tariff was the largest single source of federal government revenues. It then explores the significance of tariffs as taxes, theoretically and empirically.

Primary Elections and Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress

Many observers and scholars argue that primary elections contribute to ideological polarization in U.S. politics. We test this claim using congressional elections and roll call voting behavior. Many of our findings are null. We find little evidence that the introduction of primary elections, the level of primary election turnout, or the threat of primary competition are associated with partisan polarization in congressional roll call voting. We also find little evidence that extreme roll call voting records are positively associated with primary election outcomes. A positive finding is that general election competition exerts pressure toward convergence as extreme roll call voting is negatively correlated with general election outcomes.

Influence of nuclear spin on angular distribution and polarization of photoelectrons: resonant two-photon ionization of Na

Abstract Resonant ionization of Na through its 3p levels by two pulsed lasers illustrates how coherent excitation of hyperfine levels affects the angular distributions of photoelectrons and of electron spin polarization. The effects appear as dependence of the distributions on the time interval between excitation and ionization pulses. Theoretical and experimental results are given for photoelectron distributions, and several microscopic parameters are determined. Theoretical predictions are given for angle- and time-dependence of spin polarization.

Building the Chicago School

The Chicago School of Political Science, which emerged at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, is widely known for its reconception of the study of politics as a scientific endeavor on the model of the natural sciences. Less attention has been devoted to the genesis of the school itself. In this article, we examine the scientific vision, faculty, curriculum, and supporting institutions of the Chicago School. The creation of the Chicago School, we find, required the construction of a faculty committed to its vision of the science of politics, the muster of resources to support efforts in research and education, and the formation of curriculum to educate students in its precepts and methods. Its success as an intellectual endeavor, we argue, depended not only on the articulation of the intellectual goals but also, crucially, on the confluence of disciplinary receptiveness, institutional opportunity, and entrepreneurial talent in support of a science of politics.

More Democracy: The Direct Primary and Competition in U.S. Elections

This article offers a first-ever comprehensive empirical assessment of a key Progressive reform, the direct primary, and its impact on competition in American elections. We begin with a review of the problems Progressives diagnosed in the American electoral system and reasons to expect the direct primary to be a pro-competitive, democratizing reform. We then consider prior research into the direct primary and electoral contestation and describe the database of primary and general election outcomes that we have constructed to trace competition in primaries for federal and statewide offices. Finally, we examine the historical trajectory of competition in primary elections, starting with the first decades after the introduction of the reform and then the succeeding decades. Consistent with the hopes of reformers, we find primary elections indeed provided a forum for contestation for federal and statewide elections. Although primaries were never broadly competitive, even at the outset, they accounted for about a third of the serious electoral tests faced by statewide officeholders and about a fifth faced by U.S. representatives. The role of primaries as a venue for robust contestation, however, was short-lived, as the competitiveness of federal and statewide primaries decreased sharply starting in the 1940s. The last section of this article explores whether two recent developments in American elections—the extension of two-party competition and the rise in the value of incumbency—conspired to temper the contribution of direct primaries to electoral competition.

Mobilization, participation, and political change

Mobilization is itself a form of political participation, chosen with attention to the effects that an intervention in politics by significant numbers of others might be expected to produce, the costs that will need to be borne in order to produce it, and the effectiveness and cost of other kinds of investments in political influence. This essay focuses on the political participation of political mobilizers, the actors behind the actors in mass politics. Considering matters from the perspective of the elites who might solicit citizen involvement, I review some of the major ways that politics in the United States has changed over the last two decades, their implications for the cost-effectiveness of mobilization as a strategy in politics, and the evidence – such as exists – for their effects on mass participation in American elections and government. The regularization of two-party competitive politics, the polarization of political elites and the electorate, and the shifting regulation of campaigns and elections, I argue, have affected the opportunities, incentives, and resources for mobilization as the strategy of choice for campaigns, parties, and advocates in America.