Joseph Daniel Ura

Income, Preferences, and the Dynamics of Policy Responsiveness

A variety of measures indicate that income inequality has grown significantly in the United States during the last three decades (APSA 2004; Brandolini and Smeeding 2006). In a flurry of recent research, scholars have attributed this trend to the failure of the national government to represent the preferences of ordinary citizens in general and less wealthy citizens in particular (APSA 2004; Bartels 2004; 2006; Gilens 2005), who participate in politics less consistently and contribute fewer resources to political candidates than their wealthier peers (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). The American Political Science Associations (APSA) Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy summarizes this representative failure hypothesis : “disparities in participation ensure that ordinary Americans speak in a whisper while the most advantaged roar” (2004, 2).

Partisan Moods: Polarization and the Dynamics of Mass Party Preferences

Inquiry into the origins of partisan polarization has generally treated polarization as a simple, symmetric phenomenon—the degree to which the worldviews of the mass Democratic and Republican parties have or have not diverged from one another. In this article, we disaggregate polarization into its constituent parts, the dynamic preferences of the mass Democratic and Republican Parties. This approach allows for the possibility that intraparty dynamics may influence interparty differences and for the integration of studies of polarization with literatures addressing other dynamics in aggregate public opinion. Building on individual-level research on partisan identities and macrolevel research on public mood, we argue that party polarization may be catalyzed, in part, by the mass parties’ differential responsiveness to changes in the macro political-economic context. We find support for this position, showing asymmetries in the dynamics of polarization that are associated with differential partisan responsiveness to domestic policy choices.

''An Appeal to the People'': Public Opinion and Congressional Support for the Supreme Court

Scholars often assert that public support for judicial authority induces Congress to grant resources and discretion to the Supreme Court. However, the theory of competing public agency embraced by the Constitution suggests that public support for courts cannot, by itself, explain congressional support for judicial authority. Instead, the logic of the separation of powers system indicates that legislative support for the institutional capacity of courts will be a function of public confidence in the legislature as well as evaluations of the judiciary. We test this theory, finding that public confidence in both Congress and the Court significantly affect congressional support for the Supreme Court, controlling for the ideological distance between the Court and Congress as well as the Court’s workload. The results offer a more refined and complex view of the role of public sentiment in balancing institutional power in American politics.

The Dynamic Consequences of Nonvoting in American National Elections

A growing body of work examines the consequences of unequal participation in American democracy for electoral outcomes. However, this scholarship has ignored the potential impact of unequal voting for the quality of dynamic representation in the American political system. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), we examine the dynamic relationship between the policy preferences of voters and nonvoters in the American electorate. Further, we assess how unequal participation—and the incentives that it may give to policymaking elites—may moderate the relationship between the mass public and policy outcomes. Our analysis reveals that the policy preferences of voters and nonvoters respond in similar ways to the political and economic environment. In addition, we find no evidence that national policymaking elites are differentially responsive to changes in the preferences of voters and nonvoters.

Public opinion and conflict in the separation of powers: Understanding the Honduran coup of 2009

Formal constitutional systems of separated powers often fail to sustain meaningful systems of checks and balances in presidential-style democracies. What conditions support balance in the separation of powers and what conditions provoke instability and conflict? We draw on Madisonian political theory and research addressing the separation of powers in the United States to develop a game theoretical model of inter-institutional stability and conflict within a separation of powers system. Two factors emerge as catalysts for institutional instability and conflict among the branches of government: high-stakes institutional rivalry combined with uncertainty about the public’s relative support for various branches of government. We apply the model to the experience of Honduras in 2008–2009 that resulted in the coup ousting President Zelaya which illustrates the difficulty of developing credible checks and balances.

The Supreme Court and Issue Attention: The Case of Homosexuality

Previous studies have shown that a small number of Supreme Court decisions that “rearrange[d] the … distribution of political benefits” have drawn the medias attention to the underlying issues involved in those cases. This article provides an additional test of that empirical claim, examining the effects of the Supreme Courts gay rights cases on media coverage of homosexuality from 1990 to 2005. The data indicate that Supreme Court decisions that expanded the scope of gay rights increased coverage of homosexuality in both The New York Times and USA Today, while cases that affirmed the existing scope of gay rights had no such effect.

The Chief Justice, Experience, and Strategic Behavior on the Supreme Court

We develop and test a theoretical account of the effect of management tenure on the strategic behavior of the Chief Justice of the United States. Substantial evidence from a variety of learning models and the public management literature indicates that tenure (length of service) is positively related to management performance in public organizations. This suggests that the chief justice’s tenure in office should be positively related to efficiency in the use of the chief justice’s formal powers. We assess this hypothesis by replicating and extending Johnson, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck’s (2005) study of Chief Justice Burger’s conference voting behavior. The data support our management tenure hypothesis, showing that Burger used greater discretion in reserving his conference vote over time as he became more adept at discriminating between circumstances when the tactic was strategically valuable and when it was not.

Experience counts: The chief justice, management tenure, and strategic behavior on the U.S. Supreme Court

We develop and test a theoretical account of the effect of management tenure on the strategic behavior of the chief justice of the United States. Substantial evidence from literatures on learning models and public management indicate that tenure (length of service) is positively related to management performance in public organizations. This suggests that the chief justice’s tenure in office should be positively related to efficiency in the use of the chief justice’s formal powers. We assess this hypothesis by replicating and extending Johnson et al.’s study of chief justice Burger’s conference voting behavior. The data support our management tenure hypothesis, showing that Burger used greater discretion in reserving his conference vote over time as he became more adept at discriminating between circumstances when the tactic was strategically valuable and when it was not.