Government 317: Campaigns and Elections

Fall 2002
Tuesday and Thursday 2:55-4:10 (Malott Hall, Bache)
Professor: Walter R. Mebane, Jr.
Office: 121 McGraw Hall (255-3868); email [email protected]
Office hours: Tue 4:30-5:30, Wed 2-4 or other times by appointment.
Course web page: http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/gov317.html
TA: Yuriko Takahashi
TA email: [email protected]
TA Office: B27 McGraw Hall
TA Office Hours: Tue 1-2:30, Thu 1-2:30 or other times by appointment.

Assignment Due Dates
due date	description	weight
October 8	first paper	25%
November 14	proposal for final paper	5%
December 11	final paper	35%
December 18 (9-11:30am)	final exam	35%

Reading Availability

Large portions of the following books are required reading, so you may wish to buy them. All should also (soon) be on reserve at Uris library.

Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, David W. Rohde. 2002. Change and Continuity in the 2000 Elections. Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly.

Alesina, Alberto, and Howard Rosenthal. 1995. Partisan Politics, Divided Government, and the Economy. New York: Cambridge UP.

Canon, David T. 1999. Race, Redistricting, and Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Fiorina, Morris P. 1989. Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment. Second edition. New Haven: Yale UP.

Hinich, Melvin J., and Michael C. Munger. 1997. Analytical Politics. New York: Cambridge UP.

Jacobson, Gary C. 2000. The Politics of Congressional Elections. 5th edition. New York: Addison-Wesley.

Magleby, David B. 2002. Financing the 2000 Election. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Merzer, Martin and the Staff of the Miami Herald. 2001. The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Miller, Warren E., and J. Merrill Shanks. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Sunstein, Cass R., and Richard A. Epstein. 2001. The Vote: Bush, Gore and the Supreme Court. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

Class meeting and reading schedule

Items with a bullet () are required. Others are supplementary.

1. Money, Interests, Parties, Pork (Aug 29-Sep 19)
   • Magleby. Financing the 2000 Election. Chapters 1-7, 10.

   • Fiorina. Congress. Entire.

   • Mebane, Walter R. Jr., and Gregory J. Wawro. 2002. ``Presidential Pork Barrel Politics.'' MS available at http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/targeting.pdf.

   • opensecrets.org. http://www.opensecrets.org/

   • FECInfo. http://www.fecinfo.com/

   • Center for Voting and Democracy. ``Redistricting: In Whose Interest?''
     http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting/index.html

   • Project Vote Smart. http://www.vote-smart.org/.

   • Thomas (House of Representatives). http://thomas.loc.gov/

   • House Congressional Directories 104th-107th Congresses (and more).
     http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/cong016.html

   • GPO Access, Other Databases. http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/databases.html

   C-SPAN.org. ``Redistricting 2001.''
   http://www.c-span.org/state_local/redistricting/index.asp

   National Conference of State Legislatures. ``State Sites Related to Legislative Districts and Redistricting.'' http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legman/elect/statesites.htm

   Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. http://www.dccc.org/

   Republican National Committee. ``Redistricting.'' http://www.rnc.org/redistricting

   U.S. Government Web Sites. http://www.firstgov.gov/

   Miscellaneous House Information. http://www.clerkweb.house.gov/ or http://www.house.gov/ or http://thomas.loc.gov/home/legbranch/cis.html

   Information Sources for Legislative Reseach.
   http://thomas.loc.gov/home/legbranch/otherleg.html

   Federal Election Commission. http://www.fec.gov/

   Consolidated Federal Funds Report. http://www.census.gov/govs/www/cffr.html

   Federal Procurement Report. http://www.fpdc.gov/ and http://www.fpdc.gov/fpdc/fpr.htm

   Federal Assistance Award Data System. http://www.census.gov/govs/www/faads.html

   Budget of the U.S. Government. http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/index.html

   U.S. State and Local Gateway, Federal Funding. http://www.statelocal.gov/funding.html

   U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/

   Government Information Sharing Project. http://govinfo.kerr.orst.edu/

   Electoral College including Historical Presidential Election Results.
   http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/electoral_college.html

   Official House Election Returns. http://www.clerkweb.house.gov/elections/elections.htm

   Political Points. http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/polpoints.html

   Money in State Politics. http://www.followthemoney.org/

   C-SPAN Campaign 2000. http://www.c-span.org/campaign2000/

   Campaign Finance Institute. http://www.cfinst.org/

   The Center for Voting and Democracy. http://www.fairvote.org/

   Democracy Matters. http://www.democracymatters.org/

   electionreform.org. http://electionreform.org/

   Biersack, Robert, Paul S. Herrnson and Clyde Wilcox, eds. 1999. After the Revolution: PACs, Lobbies, and the Republican Congress. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

   Biersack, Robert, Paul S. Herrnson and Clyde Wilcox, eds. 1994. Risky Business: PAC Decisionmaking in Congressional Elections. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

   Groseclose, Tim, and James M. Snyder, Jr. 1996. ``Buying Supermajorities.'' American Political Science Review 90:303-315.

   Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 1996. ``Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics.'' Review of Economic Studies 63 (Apr.): 265-286.

   Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 2001. Special Interest Politics. Cambridge: MIT.

   Magleby, David B., ed. 2000. Outside Money: Soft Money and Issue Advocacy in the 1998 Congressional Elections. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

   Mebane, Walter R., Jr., Marc T. Ratkovic and Michael W. Tofias. 2001. ``Legislative Context, Legislator Quality and Campaign Contributions.'' Paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 19-22, Palmer House, Chicago. MS available at http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/spq.pdf

   Alexander, Herbert E. 1984. Financing Politics: Money, Elections, and Political Reform. Washington, DC: CQ.

   Alexander, Herbert E., and Anthony Corrado. 1995. Financing the 1992 Election. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

   Thompson, Joel A., and Gary F. Moncrief, eds. 1998. Campaign Finance in State Legislative Elections. Washington, DC: CQ.

   R. Douglas Arnold. 1979. Congress and the Bureaucracy: A Theory of Influence. New Haven: Yale UP

   Douglas Arnold. 1990. Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Fenno, Richard R. Jr. 1978. Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. Boston: Little, Brown.

   Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Stein, Robert M. and Bickers, Kenneth N. 1995. Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy. New York: Cambridge UP.

   Brams, Steven. 1978. The Presidential Election Game. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Gurian, Paul-Henri. 1987. ``Resource Allocation Strategies in Presidential Nomination Campaigns.'' American Journal of Political Science 31:802-821.

2. Spatial Theory, Electoral Systems, Parties and Campaign Strategy (Sep 24-Oct 1)
   • Hinich and Munger. Analytical Politics. Chapters 1-4.

   • Riker, William H. 1982. ``The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science.'' American Political Science Review 76 (Dec.): 753-766.

   • Lijphart, Arend. 1990. ``The Political Consequences of Election Laws, 1945-85.'' American Political Science Review, 84 (June): 481-496.

   Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago: U of Chicago P.

   Ansolabehere, Stephen, James M. Snyder, Jr., and Charles Stewart, III. 2001. ``Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections.'' American Journal of Political Science 45:136-159.

   Cox, Gary. 1996. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral System. New York: Cambridge UP.

   Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

   Duverger, Maurice. 1959. Political Parties. New York: Wiley.

   Hinich, Melvin J., and Michael C. Munger. 1994. Ideology and the Theory of Politicial Choice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

   Lindblom, Charles E. 1977. Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems. New York: Basic Books.

   Lupia, Arthur, and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? New York: Cambridge UP.

   Rosenstone, Steven J., Roy Behr and Edward Lazarus. 1996. Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure. Expanded Revised ed. Princeton University Press.

   Shepsle, Kenneth A. 1991. Models of Multiparty Electoral Competition. New York: Harwood Academic.

   Sundquist, James L. 1973. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings.

   Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge UP.

3. Congressional Elections (Oct 3-17)
   • Abramson, Aldrich and Rohde. Change and Continuity. Chapters 9-10.

   • Canon. Race, Redistricting, and Representation. Introduction and Chapters 1-3.

   • Erikson, Robert S. 1988. ``The Puzzle of Midterm Loss.'' Journal of Politics 50:1012-1029.

   • Jacobson. The Politics of Congressional Elections. Chapters 1-4, 6, 8.

   Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina. 1987. The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence. Harvard UP.

   Erikson, Robert S. 1990. ``Economic Conditions and the Congressional Vote: A Review of the Macrolevel Evidence.'' American Journal of Political Science 34:373-399.

   Erikson, Robert S., and Thomas R. Palfrey. 2000. ``Equilibria in Campaign Spending Games: Theory and Data.'' American Political Science Review 94:595-609.

   Jacobson, Gary C. 1990. The Electoral Origins of Divided Government: Competition in U.S. House Elections, 1946-1988. Boulder: Westview.

   Jacobson, Gary C. 1980. Money in Congressional Elections. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Jacobson, Gary C. 1989. ``Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of U.S. House Elections, 1946-86.'' American Political Science Review 83:773-793.

   Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2000. ``Congressional Campaign Contributions, District Service and Electoral Outcomes in the United States: Statistical Tests of a Formal Game Model with Nonlinear Dynamics." In Political Complexity: Nonlinear Models of Politics, Diana Richards, ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Also linked to http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/gov317.html.

   Abramowitz, Alan. 1992. Senate Elections. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan.

   Monmonier, Mark. 2001. Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Cameron, Charles, David Epstein, and O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1996. ``Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation in Congress?'' American Political Science Review 90:794-812.

   Lublin, David. 1997. The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   Shotts, Kenneth W. 2001. ``The Effect of Majority-Minority Mandates on Partisan Gerrymandering.'' American Journal of Political Science 45:120-135.

4. The 2000 Presidential Election Catastrophe (Oct 22-24)
   • Abramson, Aldrich and Rohde. Change and Continuity. Chapters 1-3.

   • Merzer and the Miami Herald. The Miami Herald Report. Chapters 1-7, 9-11.

   • Epstein and Sunstein. The Vote: Bush, Gore and the Supreme Court. Introduction and Chapters 2-4, 8-10.

   C-SPAN Campaign 2000 (includes extensive Florida 2000 information).
   http://www.c-span.org/campaign2000/

   Wand, Jonathan N., Kenneth W. Shotts, Jasjeet S. Sekhon, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Michael C. Herron, and Henry E. Brady. 2001. ``The Butterfly Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida.'' American Political Science Review 95 (December): 793-810. MS version available at
   http://elections.fas.harvard.edu/wssmhb/

   Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2002. ``Robust Estimation and Outlier Detection for Overdispersed Multinomial Models of Count Data, with an Application to the Elián Effect in Florida.'' MS available at
   http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/multinom.pdf

   Herron, Michael C., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2001. ``Overvoting and Representation: An Examination of Overvoted Presidential Ballots in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties.'' Electoral Studies forthcoming. MS linked to http://elections.fas.harvard.edu/

   United States General Accounting Office. 2001. ``Elections: Statistical Analysis of Factors That Affected Uncounted Votes in the 2000 Presidential Election.'' Report to the Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives. October 15, 2001. GAO-02-122. MS available at
   http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/d02122.pdf or available by searching in ``Find GAO Reports'' at http://www.gao.gov/

   Hansen, Bruce E. 2001. ``On the Reliability of Recounts from Undervotes: Evidence from the 2000 Presidential Election.'' MS linked to
   http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/vote/vote.html

   United States General Accounting Office. 2001. ``Elections: A Framework for Evaluating Reform Proposals.'' October 15, 2001. GAO-02-90. MS available at
   http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/d0290.pdf or available by searching in ``Find GAO Reports'' at http://www.gao.gov/

   Brady, Henry E., Justin Buchler, Matt Jarvis, and John McNulty. 2001. ``Counting All the Votes: The Performance of Voting Technology in the United States.'' MS available from
   http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/countingallthevotes.pdf also linked to http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/

   United States General Accounting Office. 2001. ``Elections: Status and Use of Federal Voting Equipment Standards.'' Report to Congressional Requesters. October 15, 2001. GAO-02-52. MS available by searching in ``Find GAO Reports'' at http://www.gao.gov/

   United States General Accounting Office. 2001. ``Elections: Perspectives on Activities and Challenges Across the Nation.'' Report to Congressional Requesters. October 15, 2001. GAO-02-3. MS available by searching in ``Find GAO Reports'' at http://www.gao.gov/

   NORC Florida Ballots Project. 2001. http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/fl/index.asp

   Florida County and Precinct Voting and Demographic Data (compiled by Bruce Hansen). http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/vote/data.html

   Brady, Henry E., Michael Herron, Walter R. Mebane, Jr., Jasjeet S. Sekhon, Kenneth Shotts and Jonathan Wand. 2001. ``Law and Data: The Butterfly Ballot Episode.'' PS: Political Science and Politics 34: 59-69. http://www.apsanet.org/PS/march01/brady.cfm

   Dershowitz, Alan M. 2001. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000. New York: Oxford University Press.

   Kaplan, David A. 2001. The Accidental President. New York: William Morrow.

   Nichols, John 2001. Jews for Buchanan: Did You Hear the One About the Theft of the American Presidency? New York: The New Press.

   Posner, Richard A. 2001. Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts. New York: Princeton University Press.

   Toobin, Jeffrey 2001. Too Close to Call: The Thirty-six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. New York: Random House.

5. Voter Turnout and Other Political Participation (Oct 29-31)
   • Abramson, Aldrich and Rohde. Change and Continuity. Chapter 4.

   • Hinich and Munger. Analytical Politics. Chapter 7.

   • McDonald, Michael P., and Samuel L. Popkin. 2001. ``The Myth of the Vanishing Voter.'' American Political Science Review 95 (Dec.): 963-974.

   • Brady Henry E., Kay L. Schlozman, and Sidney Verba. 1995. ``Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation.'' American Political Science Review 89 (June): 271-294.

   Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Harvard University Press.

   Burnham, Walter Dean. 1982. ``The Appearance and Disappearance of the American Voter.'' Chapter 4 in The Current Crisis in American Politics. Oxford: Oxford UP.

   Palfrey, Thomas R., and Howard Rosenthal. 1985. ``Voter Participation and Strategic Uncertainty.'' American Political Science Review 79:62-79.

   Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1988. Why Americans Don't Vote. New York: Pantheon Books.

   Powell, G. Bingham Jr. 1986. ``American Voter Turnout in Comparative Perspective.'' American Political Science Review, 80:17-43.

   Riker, William H., and Peter C. Ordeshook. 1973. Introduction to Positive Political Theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

   Rosenstone, Steven J., and John Mark Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America . New York: Macmillan.

   Verba, Sidney, and Norman H. Nie. 1972. Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper and Row.

   Wolfinger, Raymond E., and Steven J. Rosenstone. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven: Yale UP.

6. Partisanship, Ideology and Voting (Nov 5-19)
   • Abramson, Aldrich and Rohde. Change and Continuity. Chapters 5-8.

   • Jacobson. The Politics of Congressional Elections Chapter 5.

   • Miller and Shanks. The New American Voter. Chapters 6, 7, 11-15.

   Abramson, Paul R., John H. Aldrich, David W. Rohde. 1999 [1983, 1987, 1991, 1995]. Change and Continuity in the 1996 [1980, 1984, 1988, 1992] Elections. Rev. ed. Washington DC: CQ.

   Berelson, Bernard R., et al. 1954. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.

   Enelow, James M., and Melvin J. Hinich. 1984. The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge UP.

   Enelow, James M., and Melvin J. Hinich, eds. 1990. Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

   Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale UP.

   Kelley, Stanley Jr. 1983. Interpreting Elections. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   Kiewiet, D. Roderick. 1983. Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Kramer, Gerald H. 1983. ``The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate versus Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting.'' American Political Science Review, 77:92-111.

   Nie, Norman H., Sidney Verba and John R. Petrocik. 1979. The Changing American Voter. 2d ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

   Wattenberg, Martin P. 1996. The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1994. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

   Aldrich, John H. 1980. Before the Convention: Strategies and Choices in Presidential Nomination Campaigns. Chicago: U of Chicago.

   Bartels, Larry. Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   White, Theodore H. 1961 [1965, 1969, 1973]. The Making of the President, 1960 [1964, 1968, 1972]. New York: Atheneum.

   McGinniss, Joe. 1970. The Selling of the President, 1968. New York: Pocket Books.

   Witcover, Jules. 1977. Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-1976. New York: Viking Press.

7. Policy Moderation and Divided Government (Nov 21-Dec 5)
   • Alesina and Rosenthal. Partisan Politics. Chapters 1-4, 7.

   • Fiorina, Morris P. 1995. Divided Government. Second edition. Allyn and Bacon. Chapters 4-5.

   • Hinich and Munger. Analytical Politics. Chapters 8-9.

   Mebane, Walter R., Jr. 2000. ``Coordination, Moderation, and Institutional Balancing in American Presidential and House Elections.'' American Political Science Review 94 (March): 37-57. MS version available at
   http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/covote.pdf

   Mebane, Walter R., Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. 2002. ``Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm.'' American Political Science Review 96 (March): 141-157. MS version available at http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/work/wrm1/midterm.pdf

   Sundquist, James L. 1988-1989. ``Needed: A Political Theory for the New Era of Coalition Government in the United States.'' Political Science Quarterly 103 (Winter): 613-635.

   Alesina, Alberto, Nouriel Roubini and Gerald D. Cohen. 1997. Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Chapters 1-3.

   Campbell, James E. 1991. ``The Presidential Surge and its Midterm Decline in Congressional Elections, 1868-1988.'' Journal of Politics 53 (May): 477-487.

   Tufte, Edward R. 1978. Political Control of the Economy. Princeton: Princeton UP.

   Nordhaus, William D. 1989. ``Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle (with discussion).'' Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2:1-68.