Laron K. Williams

But Wait, There’s More! Maximizing Substantive Inferences from TSCS Models

Political scientists rarely take full advantage of the substantive inferences that they can draw from time-series cross-section data. Most studies have emphasized statistical significance and other standard inferences that can be drawn from single coefficients over one time period. We show that by simulating the quantities of interest over longer periods of time and across theoretically interesting scenarios, we can draw much richer inferences. In this article, we present a technique that produces graphs of dynamic simulations of relationships over time. Graphical simulations are useful because they represent long-term relationships between key variables and allow for examination of the impact of exogenous and/or endogenous shocks. We demonstrate the technique’s utility by graphically representing key relationships from two different works. We also present a preliminary version of the dynsim command, which we have designed to extend the Clarify commands in order to produce dynamic simulations.

War Voting Interstate Disputes, the Economy, and Electoral Outcomes

This article explores the interactive effects of the economy and the use of force on incumbent parties’ electoral performance. Research on the diversionary use of force assumes that leaders (especially democratic leaders) use force abroad to bolster their domestic political fortunes during hard economic times. But other research suggests that crises either lead to removal from office or have no effect on incumbents’ political fortunes. Although a good deal of scholarship assesses the role of the economy on electoral outcomes, no research has explicitly examined the interactive effects between dispute involvement and the economy on leaders’ share of the vote. We argue that the salience of the economy conditions voters’ sensitivity to the costs of conflict, which reduces electoral support for incumbent parties engaging in dramatic foreign policy events. Moreover, we expect executives’ efforts to emphasize foreign policy during economic downturns to be met with electoral punishment as voters prefer to see leaders working on a remedial economic policy. To evaluate this argument, we examine incumbent parties’ vote shares in elections among nine advanced democracies from 1960 to 2000. Our results support the hypothesis that during economic downturns voters care more about domestic politics than foreign policy. Furthermore, our results have implications for the diversionary hypothesis, gambling for resurrection argument, the democratic peace, and economic voting research agendas.

Survival of the Fittest? Cabinet Duration in Postcommunist Europe

Studies of government duration in transitional democracies are critically important in that they have profound implications for stability, democratic representation and accountability, and the prospects for continued democratic consolidation. For example, there is a long-standing debate on the different effects of presidential and parliamentary systems on the survivability of regimes.1 Examining government duration in postcommunist Europe addresses some key questions about institutional choice in transitional democracies, principally, how specific institutional arrangements are effective in constraining or extending the tenures of postcommunist governments. Yet the majority of studies of cabinet duration focus on western Europe and ignore the interesting cases of transitional democracies.2This article tests whether theories used to explain cabinet duration in western Europe can be transported to the postcommunist context. Although postcommunist states may not exhibit the strongest institutions or the most predictable mass behavior, their governments are still constrained by institutional arrangements that give domestic actors an oppositional role and are lengthened by strong economic performance. Analyses of the postcommunist states of the eastern Europe and Baltic states have been mainly comparative case studies.3 Although there have been attempts to compare them with the western democracies, scholars have argued that different histories, developments, and characteristics represent obstacles to these attempts. Hypotheses developed for the western democracies can address the same characteristics and processes for cabinet duration in eastern European and Baltic states. They are tested using duration models on a sample of ten postcommunist countries from the date of their independence through 2003. Similar to western European governments, tenure in office is determined by a mixture of institutional constraints (effective number of parties, type of government) and policy success (inflation).

Democracy and Diversion: Government Arrangements, the Economy, and Dispute Initiation

Do legislative constraints constrain or compel democratic executives’ conflict behavior during periods of economic decline? Although institutional constraints are thought to reduce democratic executives’ propensity to engage in interstate conflict, other research suggests that such constraints may provide incentives to engage in diversionary uses of force. Incorporating work from the comparative study of economic voting and cross-national research on the diversionary use of force, this article contends that government arrangements — coalition, minority, weak party cohesion — influence democratic conflict behavior by (1) shaping the extent to which the executive is held accountable for the economy and (2) determining the executive’s capacity to address the economy with legislation. Specifically, the argument presented here suggests that governing parties in coalition governments share the blame for a poor economy, reducing the likelihood that the executive initiates disputes in response to the economy. Compared to single-party majority governments with high party discipline, executives presiding over minority governments, or whose parties are plagued by a lack of cohesion, are more likely to initiate disputes when faced with poor economic conditions, because these executives are likely to face resistance to remedial economic policy. Probit analyses of the interactive effects of government arrangements and economic performance on dispute initiation among industrialized democracies, 1950—97, support the argument. The article concludes with implications for research in comparative politics and international relations, including, for example, executive—legislative relations and strategic conflict avoidance.

Unsuccessful Success?Failed No-Confidence Motions,Competence Signals,and Electoral Support

If no-confidence motions are primarily motivated by bringing down governments, why do only approximately 5% of no-confidence motions in advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 result in the termination of government? In this project the author addresses this puzzle by developing a formal model of the electoral benefits of no-confidence motions and tests these hypotheses with the use of an original data set. No-confidence motions represent highly visible opportunities for opposition parties to highlight their strength or ability compared to the government in the hopes of improving their vote shares. The author finds support for the signal-based theory on a sample of 20 advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 to 2008. Although no-confidence motions result in decreases for the government parties, the opposition parties that propose the motion experience boosts in vote share. This relationship is even stronger when the proposing party is an alternative governing possibility—illustrated by the conditioning impacts of the number of parliamentary parties and the opposition party’s ideological extremism. This provides an explanation as to why opposition parties would continue to challenge the government even though the motions are likely to fail.

Relaxing the Constant Economic Vote Restriction Economic evaluations and party support in Germany

The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using Seemingly Unrelated Regression to relax the Constant Economic Vote Restriction, we simultaneously model separate monthly party support functions for the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), Social Democrats (SPD), Liberals (FDP), and Greens over the post-unification period. After controlling for temporal dynamics and political factors, we find that economic evaluations have the strongest effect on support for the SPD and CDU/CSU when they hold the Chancellorship, and both of these parties are strongly affected when in opposition. The FDP remains insulated from economic perceptions, despite the party’s emphasis on economic policy. Additionally, economic evaluations do not significantly change support for the Greens as an issue party.

Hawks, doves, and opportunistic opposition parties

Parliamentary regimes offer the unique opportunity for opposition parties to react to foreign policy by proposing no-confidence motions (NCMs). The threat of an NCM bringing down the government may be enough to induce pacific behavior by the executive. Yet, this simplistic characterization neglects the possible electoral motivations of opportunistic opposition parties. I develop a theory that opposition parties respond to involvement in international conflict by proposing NCMs as a tool to influence voters’ opinions with an eye toward the next election. I develop two expectations based on policy disagreement and issue ownership that I use to explain the electorally motivated decision to propose NCMs following conflict. I test these expectations with a dataset of 14 European parliamentary democracies from 1970 to 2001. The empirical evidence suggests that the partisanship of both the government and opposition parties interact to create varying electoral incentives to propose NCMs based on issue ownership. Right-wing opposition parties are more likely to challenge than left-wing parties, and this effect is exacerbated when facing left-wing governments. This study has important implications that underpin a number of theories of the domestic causes of international conflict as well as implications for the study of party strategy.

Data Selection for Making Biodiversity Management Decisions: Best Available Science and Institutionalized Agency Norms

Best available science has long been the standard for using science to inform environmental and natural resource policy. This study examines the selection of data from federal, state or local, and nongovernmental sources for use in making ground-level natural resource policy, or biodiversity management decisions. The authors argue that aspects of neo-institutional theory are explanatory of data selection within a natural resource agency. They empirically test their theory by analyzing original data collected from a 2007 survey of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field offices, which attained a response rate of 36.6% (204 of 557 field offices). The authors find that data selection cannot merely be explained by the discussion of best available science. Rather, neo-institutional theory tenets of normative isomorphism and path dependency are explanatory of how science is selected for use in making biodiversity management decisions. However, coercive isomorphism does not possess the same explanatory ability with regard to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office data selection.

Predictably Unpredictable: The Effects of Conflict Involvement on the Error Variance of Vote Models

British Journal of Political Science / Volume 44 / Issue 02 / April 2014, pp 287 299 DOI: 10.1017/S000712341200083X, Published online: 18 March 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S000712341200083X How to cite this article: Laron K. Williams and David J. Brule (2014). Predictably Unpredictable: The Effects of Conict Involvement on the Error Variance of Vote Models . British Journal of Political Science, 44, pp 287-299 doi:10.1017/S000712341200083X Request Permissions : Click here

Guns Yield Butter? An Exploration of Defense Spending Preferences

The popular notion of a trade-off between social and defense spending—or guns versus butter—appears often in elite discourse, popular media, and empirical studies of budgetary politics. Yet, there are good reasons to suspect that the public’s preferences for these types of spending do not reflect that trade-off. I develop a theory that whether social and defense spending preferences are competing or complementary depends on if the respondent views the government as an important contributor to job creation. Using data from fifty-nine surveys in twenty-seven countries from 1985 to 2008, I show that favoring government-financed job creation makes a respondent much more likely to view social and defense spending as complementary. Indeed, aside from the anomalous case of the United States, preferences are consistent with guns yield butter instead of guns versus butter. This theory has important implications for the thermostatic model of policy responsiveness and theories of budgetary politics.