Robert M. Stein

Reconciling Context and Contact Effects on Racial Attitudes

The inter-group contact hypothesis states that intera ctions between individuals belonging to different groups will influence the attitudes and behavior between members of these different groups. The two dominant measures of inter-group contact are context (i.e., size of a minority group within a specified geographic area) and individual behavior (i.e., personal contact between members of the majority and minority groups). The contextual and behavioral measures of contact produce divergent finings. The contextual contact literature finds that whites residing in areas with high concentrations of minority populations have significantly more negative attitudes toward minorities and minority-based public policies than whites residing in areas with low concentrations of minority poplations. The behavioral contact literature finds that inter-group contacing among majority and minority populations significantly reduces preudicial attitudes and opinions about minorities and minority-based policies. In this article we examine both contextual and behavioral meaures of the contact hypothesis as they influence white attitudes toward immigrant populations (i.e., Hispanics) and white policy positions toward immigration policies. We offer and test an explanation for the lieratures divergent findings.

Performance assessment of topologically diverse power systems subjected to hurricane events

Large tropical cyclones cause severe damage to major cities along the United States Gulf Coast annually. A diverse collection of engineering and statistical models are currently used to estimate the geographical distribution of power outage probabilities stemming from these hurricanes to aid in storm preparedness and recovery efforts. Graph theoretic studies of power networks have separately attempted to link abstract network topology to transmission and distribution system reliability. However, few works have employed both techniques to unravel the intimate connection between network damage arising from storms, topology, and system reliability. This investigation presents a new methodology combining hurricane damage predictions and topological assessment to characterize the impact of hurricanes upon power system reliability. Component fragility models are applied to predict failure probability for individual transmission and distribution power network elements simultaneously. The damage model is calibrated using power network component failure data for Harris County, TX, USA caused by Hurricane Ike in September of 2008, resulting in a mean outage prediction error of 15.59% and low standard deviation. Simulated hurricane events are then applied to measure the hurricane reliability of three topologically distinct transmission networks. The rate of system performance decline is shown to depend on their topological structure. Reliability is found to correlate directly with topological features, such as network meshedness, centrality, and clustering, and the compact irregular ring mesh topology is identified as particularly favorable, which can influence regional lifeline policy for retrofit and hardening activities to withstand hurricane events.

Who is Held Responsible When Disaster Strikes? The Attribution of Responsibility for a Natural Disaster in an Urban Election

ABSTRACT: When do voters hold politicians accountable for events outside their control? In this article, we take advantage of a rare situation in which a prominent election in a large city followed a devastating flood. We find that voters are willing to punish the incumbent mayor for the flood if they believed the city was responsible for flood preparation. Moreover, we find that the attributions of responsibility for flood preparation are shaped by whether respondents lived in a neighborhood hard hit by the flood and the degree of knowledge they possessed about local, rather than national, politics. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the psychology of attribution for voting behavior and electoral outcomes.

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.

The Allocation of Federal Aid Monies: The Synthesis of Demand-Side and Supply-Side Explanations

Previous research on the distribution offederal aid monies has been dominated by the donors perspective. Different distribution formulas, political influence of congressional representatives, bureaucrats, and individual aid recipients have been studied as the sole determinants of aid allocations. Each explanation, however, fails to examine the question of aid allocations from a demand-side perspective. This omission assumes that all governmental units are equally desirous of federal assistance and that any bias in the distribution of federal aid is a function of supply-side conditions. Identifying a linkage between demand-side and supply-side determinants of aid allocations, this article proposes and tests hypotheses derived from an integrated model of federal aid allocations.

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.

Engaging the Unengaged Voter: Vote Centers and Voter Turnout

Previous election reforms designed to increase turnout have often made voting more convenient for frequent voters without significantly increasing turnout among infrequent voters. A recent innovation—Election Day vote centers—provides an alternative means of motivating electoral participation among infrequent voters. Election Day vote centers are nonprecinct-based locations for voting on Election Day. The sites are fewer in number than precinct-voting stations, centrally located to major population centers (rather than distributed among many residential locations), and rely on county-wide voter registration databases accessed by electronic voting machines. Voters in the voting jurisdiction (usually a county) are provided ballots appropriate to their voter registration address. It is thought that the use of voting centers on Election Day will increase voter turnout by reducing the cost and/or inconvenience associated with voting at traditional precinct locations. Since 2003 voters in Larimer County, CO have balloted at one of 32 vote centers. Precinct voting in Larimer ended in 2003. To test the efficacy of Election Day vote centers, we have collected individual vote histories on voters in Larimer and a control county (i.e., Weld, CO) that used precinct voting on Election Day for the years 1992–2004. We find significant evidence to support the hypothesis that Election Day vote centers increase voter turnout generally, and among infrequent voters in particular.

Tiebout's Sorting Hypothesis:

The sorting of residential populations among metropolitan area communities and its impact on municipal service bundles is studied across 216 metropolitan areas. There is strong empiricial support for the policy implications of Tiebouts model. The service bundles of metropolitan communities are significantly differentiated. Support for the homogeneous sorting of residential populations is not confirmed, nor is there a significant relationship between the sorting of residential populations and the content of municipal service bundles. State-local relations are examined as a potential constraint on the operation of this aspect of Tiebouts model.

The Budgetary Effects of Municipal Service Contracting: A Principal-Agent Explanation

This study examines the spending and employment practices associated with service contracting. Specific attention is paid to the aggregate spending and employment levels of different contracting practices. A principal-agent model is offered and tested in which the decision to contract is mediated by the preferences of different actors in the policymaking process. Incentives for the use of a contract mode of production differ between mayors and bureau heads, producing an asymmetry between the spending and employment effects of contracting observed at the bureau and city level.

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.