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Hispanic Americans, Political participation, and Legislative voting

Using data on representation and voting in the U.S. Congress from 1972 to 1980, the authors examine the impact of Hispanic constituencies and Hispanic representatives on roll call voting. Findings indicate that Hispanic representatives have a more liberal voting record than their non-Hispanic counterparts, even after controlling for salient party and constituency characteristics. Representatives with substantial numbers of Hispanic constituents also vote more liberally than their counterparts. Regional differences in the impact of Hispanic populations are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentation, Sciences exactes et technologie, Exact sciences and technology, Sciences et techniques communes, Sciences and techniques of general use, Sciences de l'information. Documentation, Information science. Documentation, Gestion des services d'information, Information service management, Gestion des bibliothèques et des centres de documentation, Library and documentation centre management, Gestion des collections, Collection management, Acquisition et accès : politique de développement, licences, censure, Acquisition and access: development policy, licenses, censorship, Sciences de l'information et de la communication, Information and communication sciences, Bibliothèque nationale, National library, Biblioteca nacional, Collection, Colección, Etude comparative, Comparative study, Estudio comparativo, Livre, Book, Libro, Siècle 18eme, Century 18th, Siglo 18, Siècle 19eme, Century 19th, Siglo 19, Madison (J.), and library of Congress

This essay compares a catalog that James Madison proposed to the Continental Congress in 1783 as the foundation for a congressional library with the list of books that were actually purchased in 1800 for the original Library of Congress. While one might assume that these lists would be fairly similar in scope, we found that they are surprisingly different in many important respects. After evaluating and comparing the lists, we offer a number of possible reasons for the differences.

International relations, Presidents of the United States, Developing countries, and Nuclear weapons

The article assesses the differences in the power of the U.S. president and congress in foreign and domestic affairs. Presidents find the foreign policy arena more volatile than the relatively stable confines of domestic politics. While their domestic programs are usually tied up by the Congress. Growth in the number of Third World nations, the existence of nuclear weapons and the threat of holocaust, and the cold war were cited as reasons why foreign policy tends to drive out domestic concerns. The President has greater access to information than other actors and has greater control of expertise. Rivals for power in foreign affairs not only have fewer resources at their disposal but are weak, divided or believe that they should not control foreign policy. The list of potential rivals includes the public, special interest groups, the military, the military-industrial complex, the State Department and the Congress. The seamlessness of the distinction between foreign economic and domestic economic policy may simply extend the President's weakness in domestic policy to foreign policy as well. Presidential initiatives to Congress are important indicators of the policy role of the Chief Executive. While they do not provide a complete picture, they reflect concrete actions taken to carry out the President's priorities. The initiatives themselves tell us something about a President's level of activity as well as policy interests and priorities

Voting, Human settlements, Election districts, and Elections

The article examines the effects of place differences on the voting behavior in the United States Congress House of Representatives. The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of place differences--city, suburban, and nonmetropolitan--on voting behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives. Because the information necessary to classify congressional districts according to their settlement pattern is not regularly provided by the Census Bureau, studies of the impact of place on congressional voting behavior continue to rely on improper operationalizations of place. The purpose of this research is, therefore, to examine the effect of differences in human settlement patterns on voting behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives. This is a subject about which virtually nothing is known. It is of course, conventional wisdom that city representatives are more liberal than suburban and rural representatives. However, this conventional wisdom has not been subjected to a properly controlled empirical test designed to isolate the effect of place from the effects of other variables.

Multivariate analysis, Regression analysis, United States elections, Women political candidates, American women legislators, Women in politics, and United States legislators

Objective. This article tests the claim that 1992 was the "year of the woman" by examining U.S. House elections between 1972 and 1992. Methods. Multi- variate regression models are tested for women running against male opponents in open seat elections, and for women running against male incumbents. Results. Women who faced male opponents in open seat races received an increase of over 5 percent in their share of the vote by running in 1992. By contrast, females challenging male incumbents did not benefit by running in 1992. This conclusion is supported by opinion poll data suggesting a changed perception in the electorate toward women candidates in 1992. Conclusions. Only in open seat races for the U.S. House of Representatives is there evidence that running in 1992 was beneficial to female candidates. The research implies that nonincumbent female candidates behaved strategically by choosing to run in an election cycle favoring their candidacies. Future research will determine whether female electoral success in 1992 was an isolated event or whether female candidates and activists used their experience in 1992 to expand their political gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budget, Influence, and Multiple regression analysis

The article examines the congressional dominance model to determine its explanatory power, when the model is extended to include both the House and the Senate, acting through both appropriations and the oversight processes. The article highlights on a multiple regression analysis to detect congressional influence on U.S. Forest Service outputs. An important institutional detail that must be incorporated into the analysis is that there are two avenues open to congressional preferences. The direct avenue, open to oversight subcommittees, is associated with hearings, reviews, and response to constituent alarms during the period when agency activities are undertaken. The indirect avenue is through the appropriations process where the budgets to be spent on observable agency activities are allocated. Both appropriations subcommittees and oversight subcommittees impose their preferences along this indirect route. The empirical approach accounts for both avenues using a recursive technique that embodies the timing of the appropriations process and the subsequent spending on activities at the forest level.

Campaign funds, Political parties, United States -- Politics & government -- 1989-1993, United States presidential elections, and Presidential candidates

This article focuses on the status of the Republican Party in the U.S. Congress. The great exception in United States politics has historically been the South. This remains true today as scholars try to explain the greatest single paradox in southern politics: the failure of the Republican party of G.O.P. to dominate elections as it controls the region's presidential elections. The overwhelming success of the G.O.P. at the presidential level has encouraged Republicans in the region to suggest realignment and even dominance. Initially, the Republican success in the South is briefly discussed in order to illuminate the apparent stall at the district level. Secondly, the aspects of congressional election literature which are relevant to this stagnation are applied to the regional context in order to guide the development of the model. At the congressional level this Republican success has not been duplicated, which is the paradox of southern voting. Here the G.O.P. has struggled to win and has never held a majority of the region's delegation. The literature on congressional elections is vast and ever expanding with most of it considering congressional outcomes at a national rather than regional level. Two topics from this body of literature seem particularly helpful in explaining this inconsistency in voting patterns and are discussed here: incumbency advantage and coattail effects. A third topic, the development of primary elections, emerges from the party development literature and also seems relevant.

Political parties, Primaries, United States -- Politics & government -- 1989-1993, and Presidential candidates

This article comments on the article "The Rise and Stall of Southern Republicans in Congress," published in this periodical. Extrapolating beyond the range of the data is one problem-southern house primaries between 1956 and 1986, particularly Republican ones, provide too few cases of contested primaries. Yet a far more serious problem stems from inclusion of noncontested general elections. One difficulty with the invigorating interpretation recognizes that competition in the primary may not raise the party's chance to win the general election so much as reflect the perceptions of that chance. Of course, the connections between competitive primaries, a candidate's political experience, and promising general election prospects are more varied than this suggests. Strong incumbents have bright general election prospects so primary challengers rarely appear; correspondingly, hard-fought primaries can run down resources and inflict wounds that prove to be fatal in the general election. Presidential vote signals a high-water mark for Republican political support. If southern Republican House candidates could grasp their presidential candidate's coattails to overcome the Democratic incumbency advantage the partisan composition of southern congressional delegations would tilt heavily Republican.

Partisanship, United States presidential elections, United States political parties, and Ideology

The article assesses the partisan role of new members of the 103rd and 104th U.S. Houses by testing the hypothesis that new members are more supportive of party than are returning members. Analogs for the electoral factors in the aggregate, diachronic party voting model is developed to explain variation in individual members' levels of party support. These variables include electoral turnover, partisanship of the president, an indicator of the extent of homogeneity of each party across districts, and inter-party ideological conflict in Presidential election years. It is found that in both U.S. Congresses mean Democratic unity scores on key votes lag those observed on general party votes. Nevertheless, differences between new and returning members are clearly visible in the Democratic key-vote data. In the first session of the 104th Congress, however, new Republicans are more supportive of party on key votes than are returning members. And both groups of Republicans show increase in key-vote party unity relative to the 103rd Congress.

Fiscal year, Legislative bodies, United States -- Politics & government, and Presidents of the United States

The article examines how the United States Congress treated the president and the Supreme Court in dealing with their requests for essential funds prior to and during controversial periods. In Federalist 51 the author wrote, "In republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominate." The authors of the Federalist Papers specifically called attention to the appropriations and taxation power of the legislature as a basis for its ability to dominate the other two branches. The author also examined the relationship between the executive and Congress by comparing base years with crisis years during the administrations of U.S. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. The author compares reactions of the Appropriations subcommittees in the House and the Senate to requests for funds for the presidency in various fiscal years. The crisis years include 1967 and 1968, a period characterized by sharp national divisions over the Vietnam War, which culminated with the tumultuous election of 1968.

LIBRARIES

Established as a legislative library in 1800 to support the U.S. Congress when it moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress--retaining its original name and primary legislative purpose-has subsequently become the largest and most international of the world's major libraries. The principal reason is that Librarians of Congress since Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1864-97), but especially Herbert Putnam (1899-1939), Luther H. Evans (1945-53), and James H. Billington (1987-), have affirmed and expanded Thomas Jefferson's concept that the Library of Congress is a national institution that should be universal in scope and widely and freely available to everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women politicians, Nominations for office, Elections, and Partisanship

The article focuses on women advancement to U.S. Congress through open seats in the country. Researchers examined 135 open seat general election contests across three years, 1994 (52), 1996 (50) and 1998 (33). Of the 135 races examined, 38 were male versus female races and another 3 were female versus female races. A total of forty-four women candidates ran in these races. Of the forty-four women running, twenty-nine were Democrats, which compares favorably to the Democratic distribution of female distribution of female nominees from 1982 to 1992. Despite continued levels of nomination and partisan discrimination, women have not maintained the levels of electoral success observed in 1992. Between 1994 and 1998, nineteen of the forty-four women succeeded, down from the 52% success rate in the previous study from 1982 to 1992. It is fruitful at this point to parse the pre-1994 data a bit further. In 1992, women won 21 of 34 open seat contests (61.8%), while from 1982 to 1990, women prevailed in only 11 of 27 open seat contests (40.7%). Female success in open seats has returned to a level observed in the 1980s, an era of female disadvantage.

Religion & state, Political affiliation, Voting, and Political participation

The article examines the influence of religion on the political behavior of members of the United States House of Representatives, from 1959 to 1994. Research into mass political behavior has demonstrated that religious affiliations and beliefs affect a wide variety of political attitudes and activities. Although evidence supports the impact of religion on political decisions at the mass level, research on congressional voting decisions ignored possible effects of religion on vote choice. This omission is surprising, given that there is evidence, that religious beliefs and roll call voting are related. Even with some flaws, much of the early literature on Congress did find some relationship between religious affiliation and voting, despite the use of simplistic measures of religion such as Protestant and Catholic. Since then, researchers have shown that religion, when measured more carefully, affects voting. Because of the complexity of religious beliefs and practices, the best way to study religion in Congress is to use the denominational affiliation that virtually every member has made public since the 1950s.

Government agencies, Cost, and Revenue

Since its inception in 1914, enforcement activity at the Federal Trade Commission has generated controversies with Congress. Time and again. Congress has clamped down on the agency, redirected its activity, and pared its enforcement territory, A review of episodes and an examination of data suggest that what appears to be a stormy relationship is indeed a revenue enhancement association between the agency and its supervisor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United States elections, Political candidates, and Voting

The article examines the open seat United States House elections from 1982 to 1992 to determine whether there is an inherent Democratic party advantage in congressional elections in the absence of incumbency. Open seats should have afforded ample opportunities for Republicans gains without the obstacle of Democratic incumbency advantages. Despite numerous open seats, competitive campaign finance, quality candidates, and two presidential victories, Republicans made no gains in open seats. Among the three major indicators related to open seat election outcomes--candidate attributes, constituency characteristics, and national political factors--the most difficult for panics or candidates to alter appears to be constituency characteristics. District lines are usually redrawn only once per decade. Campaign finance and candidate recruitment appear to be areas where parties are able to focus their time and energy, either by cultivating down-ticket talent through recruitment, by providing funding incentives, or by coordinating funding for their most promising candidates.