Kenneth N. Bickers

Domestic Discontent and the External Use of Force

Although the diversionary theory of international conflict is intuitively plausible and is supported by much anecdotal evidence, quantitative tests generally have failed to establish a systemic link between domestic political troubles and foreign policy adventurism. In this article we revise the diversionary theory. We argue that a state leader will treat an erosion of domestic support more seriously when it comes from within segments of society that are critical in the maintenance of the leaders ruling coalition than when it comes from other domestic groups. We also argue that diversionary behavior typically should involve actions short of war. The revised theory is tested for the United States over the period from 1953 to 1976. Multiple empirical techniques are used to analyze the relationship between the uses of external force by the United States and the level of support for the president among members of the presidents party. The results provide strong support for the revised diversionary theory.

Congressional Elections and the Pork Barrel

It is an enduring belief in American politics that legislators who bring home the bacon are rewarded for their efforts at the ballot box. Most researchers, however, have been unsuccessful in corroborating empirically a relationship between allocations to member districts and reelection margins. Previous research may have failed to detect a relationship due to misconceptualization, misspecified empirical tests, or both. We argue that not all legislators have the same incentives to utilize pork-barrel strategies to enhance their electoral margins. Furthermore the extent to which voters are influenced by the provision of distributive benefits is likely to depend on the attentiveness of voters to politics, their interest group affiliations, and their sources of political information. In short, both the predisposition to engage in pork-barrel strategies and their effects are likely to be conditional. Hypotheses derived from this respecification of the electoral connection thesis are tested with a data base that combines information on domestic assistance awards to congressional districts, information about members of Congress, and the political knowledge and group affiliations of individual voters. We find that only some incumbents, namely those who are most vulnerable, are likely to seek increases in new awards. Certain constituents, those who are politically attentive members or interest groups are most likely to be aware of new awards to the district and to more favorably evaluate the incumbent as a result. Most members of general public remain indifferent to alterations in the flow of new awards.

The Congressional Pork Barrel in a Republican Era

In this article, we ask what the pattern of distributive spending has been during the 104th. Congress, in which Republicans have been in the majority, compared to the preceding Congress when Democrats were the majority party. We seek to understand the patterns of change in light of four alternative explanations of distributive spending. The changes in the content and recipients of federal domestic outlays between the 103rd and 104th. Congresses are suggestive of a partisan influence. Republican control of Congress does not appear to have significantly altered the politics of domestic spending. However, Republican control has influenced the content of domestic public policy. The House under Republican control produced significantly more contingent liability obligations than the 103rd. Congress-programs that are ideologically and politically compatible with the interests of Republican representatives. Evidence suggests that Republican control has produced a partial shift in the interests that are rewarded by federal spending.

Interlocal Cooperation and the Distribution of Federal Grant Awards

Much of the research on the distribution of federal assistance focuses on the activities of members of Congress. Yet it has been long understood that seeking and receiving federal aid programs by state and local governments is a costly activity. What is not understood nor carefully studied is how local jurisdictions attempt to “work” the federal aid system to obtain increased federal funding. To investigate this question, we draw upon theories of collective action among governmental jurisdictions within metropolitan areas to explain both the quantity and quality of participation in the federal aid system. We focus on four questions: (1) To what extent is governmental fragmentation and interjurisdictional collaboration among governmental jurisdictions within metropolitan areas positively related to the ability of local actors to secure new federal grant awards? (2) To what extent do congressional delegations that represent voters within metropolitan areas influence the flow of grant awards to those areas? (3) To what extent are the efforts of congressional delegations to secure new grants conditional on partisan factors, both nationally and at the local level? (4) Do the effects of cooperative grant seeking endeavors vary across different types of grant programs? The single most important finding is that interlocal cooperation and governmental structure within metropolitan areas matter significantly in the distribution of federal assistance.

Universalism and the Electoral Connection: A Test and Some Doubts

A recurring theme in the academic literature on distributive policy is the tendency for legislators to form oversized coalitions to bestow benefits on virtually every district represented in the legislature. In this paper we offer two tests of the universalism hypothesis. First, we examine the distributional expectation of the universalism thesis under the assumption that separate logrolls occur over the distribution of benefits for individual programs. Se cond, we test the thesis under the assumption that logrolls occur over bundles of programs organized by policy subsystems. Our findings show that the evidence on the extent to which benefits from distributive programs are univer salized is weak. We suggest a number of reasons why these weak results might be expected. We argue that the incentive to universalize benefits is only one goal of legislators and may not always be the most fruitful strategy for enhanc ing their reelection prospects.

Assessing the Micro-Foundations of the Tiebout Model

In this article, we seek to shed light on the micro-foundations of the Tiebout model. We use a survey of respondents in four of the largest United States metropolitan areas to analyze factors that contribute to households exiting behavior. In this analysis, we explore the types of reasons likely movers offer to explain a potential move. The analysis incorporates variables measuring Tiebout factors and variables drawn from two important alternative explanations that have been discussed widely in political science in recent years. Our findings generally support a Tiebout explanation: Evaluations of core municipal services are found to be the strongest determinant of the likelihood to move. Moreover, variables drawn from alternative explanations, including race, family income, and social capital, are found to be either unrelated to the decision to move or to have the opposite effect on the likelihood of moving from what would be expected.

The Microfoundations of the Tiebout Model

The authors extend the argument of the marginal consumer to show an important way in which the microlevel requirements of the Tiebout model can be met. They critique the existing literature on the microlevel requirements and argue that the way research has been conducted on the information about public goods possessed by citizens has been flawed in its theoretical presumptions. An alternative view is articulated in which citizens are viewed not to use objective information about tax service bundles that might be detectable in survey research but, instead, to use informational heuristics and proxies that permit them nonetheless to locate in jurisdictions that provide them with desired levels of public services.

Exit, Voice, and Electoral Turnover

Much of the contemporary literature on metropolitan politics revolves around the mobility of local residents and the implications this has both for policies of local governments and for the racial composition of local populations. In this article, the authors hypothesize that resort to exit is a function of the extent to which local residents lack effective access to institutionalized forms of voice, in particular availability of opportunities for replacing elected officials viewed as unresponsive to local needs and concerns. The authors test this argument with information from a 2002 survey of residents of four of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, along with census data about their neighborhoods and data on electoral turnover in their municipal governments. The authors find evidence that intentions to leave a city are indeed conditional both on dissatisfaction with key collective goods and services (in particular local public schools and neighborhoods) and lack of effective opportunities for the replacement of locally elected public officials. The authors find evidence of racially driven motivations for exit, but the direction is inconsistent and the magnitude of the racial effect is smaller than that deriving from dissatisfaction with services where electoral turnover is low.

Forecasting the 2012 Presidential Election with State-Level Economic Indicators

Nearly all forecast models of US presidential elections provide estimates of the national two-party vote (Campbell 2008 ). Each of the nine forecasts published in the 2008 forecasting issue of PS: Political Science and Politics made national popular vote total predictions for the major party candidates, while only one provided an expected result in the Electoral College (Klarner 2008 ). These national vote models are assumed to be reliable forecasts of who is likely to win the general election. In most cases, this assumption is reasonable. It becomes problematic, however, at precisely the point that forecasts are most interesting: when elections are close. In tight elections, national forecasts can and have produced a “winner” different from the actual winner. Consider the forecasts and ultimate outcome of the 2000 election. Each of the 2000 presidential election forecasts predicted vice president Al Gore to win a majority of the two-party popular vote, which he did, but none correctly predicted governor George W. Bush to assume the presidency (Campbell 2001 ). Never in US history have White House residents been determined through a national popular vote. Presidential elections are decided through contests in the states and the District of Columbia. The forecast model we developed explicitly models the presidential contest based on factors inherent to these 51 jurisdictions. This modeling approach allows us to make a projection of the Electoral College result, which popular vote estimates cannot.

The Programmatic Expansion of the U.S. Government

R esearch on the correlates and causes of government growth has constituted something of a cottage industry in recent years (cf. reviews by Lybeck 1988; Larkey, Stolp, and Winer 1981; Borcherding 1977; and Tarschys 1975). Research has focused on the empirical utility of factors that have been proposed as potential sources of government growth (e.g., Berry and Lowery 1987; Cameron 1978). Research also has focused on methodological debates about how to measure and compare the scope of the public sector over time and cross-nationally (e.g., Klein 1985; Lewis-Beck and Rice 1985; Beck 1976). This paper, however, is not primarily concerned with the question of what factor (or factors) best explains government growth; nor is it primarily concerned with methodological issues. Instead, it seeks to show that the selection of explanatory variables as well as questions of methodology must turn on substantive decisions about what is to be explained. My argument is that focusing on the size of government in the aggregate (however measured) tends to mask the issue of what aspects of the governments responsibilities are increasing or decreasing in size and importance. This is consistent with Roses injunction that we must consider what government does as well as why it grows. (1984: 1). On his view, size is only one issue, and not necessarily the most important one: To measure the totality of government by one undifferentiated observation reduces everything to a denominator so common that it tells us nothing in particular (1984: 5). Rose proposes a programmatic approach as a way of analyzing the mix of qualitatively different activities in which governments can be engaged. Such a focus permits a wider and richer range of comparisons than a focus only on aggregate measure of government size. The activities on which governments expend resources can vary significantly. Two different governments may differ in size because