Partisan Ideology Research Articles

Individual policy preferences for vocational versus academic education: Microlevel evidence for the case of Switzerland

This paper uses an original dataset from a survey conducted in Switzerland in 2007 to explore the dynamics of education policy preferences. This issue has largely been neglected in that most studies on welfare state attitudes do not look at preferences for education. We argue that education policy preferences vary along two dimensions: the distribution of resources across different sectors of the education system (that is, vocational training versus academic education) and the level of investment in education both from public and private sources. With regard to the former, the findings suggest that individual educational experience matters most, that is, individuals prefer to concentrate resources on those educational sectors that are closest to their own educational background. With regard to the latter, we find that affiliation to partisan ideologies matters much more than other variables. Proponents of the left demand more investment both from the state as well as from the private sector and oppose individual tuition fees.

What parties are and what parties do: partisanship and welfare state reform in an era of austerity

The New Politics perspective holds that there is no room for partisanship to matter for welfare state policies in the present ‘era of austerity’. Proponents of power resources theory disagree. In this paper, we show how an emphasis on the actual degree of ideological polarization between left and right can move this debate forward. In essence, the disagreement regarding the role of partisanship is (a) over the degree of party polarization, (b) whether party polarization on redistributive issues still mobilizes voters to vote in accordance with their economic interest and (c) whether political parties are able to make their ideologies count in the post-electoral arena. Combining data from three comparative data sources, we show (a) that there is no general decline in party polarization, (b) that high levels of party polarization are associated with stronger income stratification of the vote and (c) partisan ideology matters for changes in welfare state generosity.

Of Private and Public Safety Nets

If any doubts remain regarding the necessity for health reform or for an enlightened and judicious process of addressing our social insurance and safety-net spending, one only has to observe our increasingly frail private, employment-related safety net and the tenuous employment circumstances that have characterized the last two decades. Once a critical component of middle-class economic and health security, the private safety net--consisting of employment-related health insurance, retiree health coverage and pension benefits, paid sick leave, and other valued work-related benefits--has developed gaping holes that are unlikely to be repaired in the foreseeable future. As of this March writing, we are slowly emerging from the dismal employment prospects brought about by the Great Recession. While February's decline in the unemployment rate to just below 9% and the addition of 192,000 private-sector jobs are causes for optimism, the changing nature of employment contracts, employer commitments to job-related benefits, and the types of jobs the newly employed are likely to acquire should give us pause. At issue are whether many middle-class workers will acquire and continue to hold jobs that will yield both economic and health security. As many families face continued uncertainty regarding their economic prospects, and as we await the nearly full implementation of health reform in 2014, Congress is going through its annual ritual of budgetary posturing, with each side making efforts to demonstrate its fealty to sound fiscal principles, not to mention valued political constituencies. With a budget gap of $1.5 trillion in 2011 and $1.1 trillion for 2012--9.8% and 7% of gross domestic product (GDP), respectively--and with public spending on Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, and national defense the key contributors to this shortfall, Congress for now largely has avoided these substantial budgetary expenditures and the consequences of alienating critical political support. Instead, it has homed in on the relatively small component of the federal budget that is related to non-defense discretionary spending and which makes up less that a fifth of its total. At the same time, critics of health reform persist in their efforts to derail Obamacare while offering no viable reform alternative for coverage or cost containment, and exhibiting little response to the president's offer to states to waive some of the formal requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is difficult to take seriously claims that we are at the day of fiscal reckoning when the best that some lawmakers can propose is to sharply curtail funding for such big ticket items as Head Start, Child and Maternal Block Grants, the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition and health program, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, and Planned Parenthood. Add to this the sentiment voiced by some Republican governors that the way to address their shortfalls is to curtail the ability of public employee unions to engage in collective bargaining. With most federal and state legislators unwilling to consider new sources of revenue enhancements, even from small income tax increases on their most affluent citizens, there is reason to be concerned that the budget crisis is being used to support partisan ideology and to assault long-standing political targets. Such responses also reflect the deep chasm that exists between the haves and have-nots regarding the value of the public safety net and public amenities and the willingness to pay for such services by those fortunate enough to have access to the private safety net. With the recent recession demonstrating that even top earners are not immune from personal economic catastrophe, those unwilling to support the public safety net are misinformed at best and myopic at worst. In what follows, I draw attention to our deteriorating private safety net of employment-related benefits, explore the implication for our health and financial security, and emphasize the importance of assuring adequate funding for our public safety net and social programs. …

Why Institutions Are Not the Only Thing That Matters: Twenty-Five Years of Health Care Reform in New Zealand

The literature on the causes of health care reform is dominated by institutionalist accounts, and political institutions are among the most prominent factors cited to explain why change takes place. However, institutionalist accounts have difficulty explaining both the timing and the content of reforms. By applying a range of explanatory approaches to a case study of health reform in New Zealand since the 1970s, this article explores some of the theories of reform beyond institutionalism, particularly those that take into account problem pressure, policy ideas, and the more agency-centered factor of partisan ideology. The aim is not to dismiss institutionalism but to try to fill some of the gaps that cannot be addressed with institutionalist theories alone. The detailed analysis shows that various factors played a role in conjunction, namely, problem pressure, policy ideas, and the ideology of parties in government. Partisan ideology, in particular, has perhaps been prematurely ignored by health care scholars.

Opportunistic and partisan election cycles in Brazil: new evidence at the municipal level

This article tests the hypothesis of opportunistic and partisan cycle models using a new large data set of Brazilian municipalities over the 1989–2005 period. The results show an increase in total and current expenditures and a decrease in municipal investments, local tax revenues, and budget surplus in election years. They also show that partisan ideology exerts a relative influence on the performance of the local public accounts. These results confirm that both opportunistic and partisan cycles have occurred in the management of the budgets of Brazilian municipalities after the end of the military government.

Unequal democracy: the political economy of the new gilded age

The first edition of Unequal Democracy was an instant classic, shattering illusions about American democracy and spurring scholarly and popular interest in the political causes and consequences of escalating economic inequality. This revised and expanded edition includes two new chapters on the political economy of the Obama era. One presents the Great Recession as a “stress test” of the American political system by analyzing the 2008 election and the impact of Barack Obama’s “New New Deal” on the economic fortunes of the rich, middle class, and poor. The other assesses the politics of inequality in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2012 election, and the partisan gridlock of Obama’s second term. Larry Bartels offers a sobering account of the barriers to change posed by partisan ideologies and the political power of the wealthy. He also provides new analyses of tax policy, partisan differences in economic performance, the struggle to raise the minimum wage, and inequalities in congressional representation. President Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” Unequal Democracy is the definitive account of how and why our political system has failed to rise to that challenge. Now more than ever, this is a book every American needs to read.

“Comfort to Our Adversaries”? Partisan Ideology, Domestic Vulnerability, and Strategic Targeting

Recent research on strategic conflict avoidance and targeting in the American case shows that states avoid militarily challenging presidents whose domestic situations might be improved by diversionary conflict, and that congressional opposition to presidential foreign policy invites increased challenges by decreasing other states' perceptions of likely American resolve. This article seeks to refine these lines of research by considering the intervening effects of partisan ideology. As previous scholarship indicates that diversion is a more attractive option for conservative than for liberal governments, there are likely greater incentives for other states to strategically avoid Republicans given lagging economic conditions. Conversely, the relative liberal aversion to military ventures means that the resolve-undermining effects of congressional opposition are likely more pronounced for Democrats. Analyses of the American foreign policy experience from 1949 to 2001 provide support for these hypotheses, as increases in the misery index are related to substantial decreases in the militarized targeting of Republican administrations and congressional foreign policy opposition acts are related to substantial increases in the militarized targeting of Democratic administrations.

"A Mob of Women" Confront Post-Colonial Republican Politics: How Class, Race, and Partisan Ideology Affected Gendered Political Space in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Colombia

This essay explores why some groups of women in nineteenth-century Colombia were able to engage in public, political action but others were not. Elite conservative women (mostly white) and popular liberal women (mostly black and mulatta) found ways to participate publicly in republican politics, but elite liberal women (mostly white) and some popular conservative women (mostly Indian) were largely absent from the public sphere. I argue that colonial gender roles, elite and popular visions of citizenship, the contest between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, the structure of indigenous communities, and popular liberal women's access to independent economic resources all helped shape women's abilities to publicly practice republican politics. Instead of asserting that the rise of republicanism in nineteenth-century Latin America reduced women's political space, I propose that race, class, and partisan ideologies acted in complex and locally determined ways to both create male political subjects and open or close possibilities for women to forge political discourses and practices for themselves.

An Analysis of the States' Responses to Republican Party of Minnesota v. White

We examine the state supreme courts' implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002), which invalidated a restriction on judicial campaign speech. We find that the lower courts' responses to the decision varied, and place them in the following categories: 1) noncompliance; 2) slow compliance; 3) compliance; 4) expansion; 5) limited expansion; and 6) unresponsive. We then analyze the states' actions in light of their courts' ideology, citizens' ideology, level of interest-group activity, political culture, and system of judicial selection. We find that some states' reactions to White seem to be influenced by institutional norms and political culture and values relating to the proper roles for judicial office-seekers but not by partisan ideology or interest-group pressures. We speculate that these factors are significant because the manner in which White is implemented may affect fundamentally the functioning of the judiciary and the public's perception of it; thus, the state high courts may be more likely to respond to the decision reflecting the state's political values and norms.

How much should a person consume?: environmentalism in India and the United States

Based on research conducted over two decades, this accessible and deeply felt book provides a provocative comparative history of environmentalism in two large ecologically and culturally diverse democracies--India and the United States. Ramachandra Guha takes as his point of departure the dominant environmental philosophies in these two countries--identified as agrarianism in India and wilderness thinking in the U.S. Proposing an inclusive social ecology framework that goes beyond these partisan ideologies, Guha arrives at a richer understanding of controversies over large dams, state forests, wildlife reserves, and more. He offers trenchant critiques of privileged and isolationist proponents of conservation, persuasively arguing for biospheres that care as much for humans as for other species. He also provides profiles of three remarkable environmental thinkers and activists--Lewis Mumford, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, and Madhav Gadgil. Finally, the author asks the fundamental environmental question--how much should a person or country consume?--and explores a range of answers. Copub: Permanent Black

Science, Religion, and the Politics of Stem Cells

William B. Hurlbut Science, Religion, and the Politics of Stem Cells IN JULY 2 0 0 5 , A M E R IC A ’S O N G O IN G DEBATE OVER EMBRYONIC STEM cell research reached a dram atic m om ent during a Senate subcommit­ tee hearing.* In a conference room crowded w ith television cam era crews, newspaper journalists, fellow legislators, and a panel of expert witnesses ranging from scientists to bioethicists, Senator Tom Harkin (D„ Iowa), in a long and impassioned statem ent, asserted there are no m oral issues here, just personal religious views parading as political principle (“Transcript Hearing,” 2005). In m aking this com m ent, Senator Harkin was joining a wider chorus of critics labeling President George W. Bush’s policy on stem cells a conflict betw een the objectivity of secular science and the cultural variability of traditional religion—with religion here relegated to the categoiy of partisan ideology. The policy under attack is the president’s August 9, 2001, execu­ tive order lim iting federal funding to already existing stem cell lines. At that tim e President Bush declared that during his adm inistration, no further em bryo-destructive research would be supported by the Am erican taxpayers. Now, however, as Congress threatens a legisla­ tive override of this policy—which the president, in turn, promises to veto—there is an ever more vocal outcry that this is not mere politics, but the im position of religious beliefs, a deeper m atter violating the established order of separation of church and state. A May 26, 2005, editorial in the New York Times declared: “His actions are based on strong religious beliefs on the part of some conser­ social research Vol 73 : No 3 : Fall 2006 819 vative Christians, and presumably the president himself. Such convic­ tions deserve respect, but it is wrong to impose them on this pluralistic nation” (“Stem Cell Theology,” 2005). From a broad social perspective, this difficult dispute over federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) m ight be seen simply as democracy in action, the social process essential for progress into any new and unfam iliar technological terrain. Yet w hen one pauses to ponder exactly w hat is at issue and the nature of the controversy, it is clear that this conflict is driven by m ore fundam ental forces—forces that challenge us at the m ost basic level as a cooperative society. At the im m ediate political level, the issue is the federal funding of research that involves the destruction of early but incipient hum an life. That alone qualifies as a m atter of profound social and ethical signifi­ cance. But beneath this issue, the dispute involves the m ost basic assump­ tions concerning the foundation of the m oral principles on which our civilization is built: W hat is the source of our moral principles and how do we govern amid a plurality of perspectives? Indeed, recognizing the immensity of the issues and the depth of the division, we m ust acknowl­ edge we are at a crisis of science, religion, and politics. The recognition of this foundational conflict has become increas­ ingly clear in American culture. Most analysts agree that the results of the last presidential election reflect a widening divide w ithin American society over m atters of faith. It is also clear that w ith advances in our understanding and control of biology, our social division increasingly involves different basic assumptions concerning the source and signifi­ cance of the natural world—m ost specifically, the m eaning of hum an nature as grounded in natural hum an em bodiment, and the possibility of its degradation or destruction through technological manipulation. This conflict over the use of biotechnology to intervene in hum an life has reached its deepest point of disagreem ent over the issue of cloning to create hum an embryos for scientific experim entation. The historical background of this conflict reflects changes in both our basic religious values and scientific knowledge, and, m ost im portant, the way these relate to each other. The situation in the 820 social research United States is, in turn...

Telecommunications Policies: Measurement and Determinants

This paper presents new data on telecommunications reform for a cross section of countries. We measure telecommunications reform along two dimensions: entry barriers and regulatory independence. This data set is combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data to analyze the determinants of telecommunications policies. We find that entry barriers are positively associated with the degree to which countries have an interventionist legal tradition, but they are unrelated to the partisan ideology of reforming governments. We also find that countries with weak protection of investors' quasi-rents by other means, and countries with a larger incumbent are more prone to create independent regulatory agencies, although this last result is statistically weaker.

Telecommunications Policies: Measurement and Determinants

This paper presents new data on telecommunications reform for a cross section of countries. We measure telecommunications reform along two dimensions: entry barriers and regulatory independence. This data set is combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data to analyze the determinants of telecommunications policies. We find that entry barriers are positively associated with the degree to which countries have an interventionist legal tradition, but they are unrelated to the partisan ideology of reforming governments. We also find that countries with weak protection of investors' quasi-rents by other means, and countries with a larger incumbent, are more prone to create independent regulatory agencies, although the latter is a weaker result.

Conceptualizing Access to Justice and Victims’ Rights in International Sentencing

The purpose of this article is to confront some of the theoretical and conceptual difficulties in understanding the meaning and relevance of notions of access to justice and rights for victims in the context of international sentencing. In particular, it suggests the need for such conceptualizations to engage with the nature of international sentencing process as a transformative mechanism where fact and value are negotiated to correspond with the moral ideologies of the powerful. It is argued that for international penality to progress beyond partisan ideology, rhetorical symbolism and the dynamics of retribution and vindictiveness require us to recognize and understand how moral values and moral action are linked through process and the significance of this for the legitimacy of punishment. For victims and victim communities in international conflict this means conceiving of participation and rights as processual reality and a recognition that any constructive engagement with notions of truth and justice must be grounded in context.

Telecommunications Policies: Determinants and Impact

This Paper presents new data, in the form of several indices, on liberalization policies and the independence of regulators for a cross section of countries. These indices are combined with a comprehensive set of performance, institutional and political data to analyze both the determinants and the impact of telecommunications policies. We find that liberalization policies are negatively associated with the degree to which countries have an interventionist tradition, but not with the partisan ideology of reforming governments. We also find that countries with weak protection of investors' quasi-rents by other means, and countries with a larger incumbent, are more prone to create (at least legally) independent regulatory agencies. There is preliminary evidence with this dataset that, when the endogeneity of policies is taken into account, the creation of independent regulatory agencies and pro-entry policies have a significant positive effect on network penetration and a negative effect on productivity.

Coalitions: Beyond the Politics of Centrality?

This article explores a number of themes common to the work of Gordon Smith and to more formal models of coalition behaviour, with an empirical focus on coalition bargaining in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is argued that numerical formation criteria alone are poor predictors of actual coalition outcomes, and that institutional structures and norms - particularly partisan ideology - play a decisive role. Parallels are drawn between de Swaan's 'median legislator' theory and Smith's concept of the 'politics of centrality' and two conclusions are reached. First, that the dynamics of coalition behaviour have remained remarkably stable, despite changes in the numerical composition and ideological range of the German party system. Second, that the formation of the Red-Green coalition in 1998 does represent a change in those dynamics, but that there is no evidence to suggest that the Federal Republic is moving beyond the politics of centrality.

Party size and policy outcomes: An empirical analysis of taxation in democracies

Taxation varies widely among democracies. Yet scholars disagree whether differences in political institutions help produce the variation. This article identifies topdown and bottom-up mechanisms by which political institutions are thought to influence taxation. It then combines political and economic data on more than 50 democracies to evaluate the impact of political institutions on government revenues. Cross-sectional and pooled time series analyses that include controls for economic conditions and partisan ideologies of governments confirm an indirect impact of these institutions: there is a curvilinear relationship between the size of political parties in a democracy and the tax revenues collected. Yet the effect of party size on policy outcomes is limited to a subset of democracies. The article opens new paths for research on the roles of electoral, constitutional, legislative, and party institutions in democratic policy making around the world.

Les mots du pouvoir. Cinquante ans de discours inauguraux au Québec (1944-1996)

THE WORDS OF POWER. FIFTY YEARS OF INAUGURAL SPEECHES IN QUEBEC (1944-1996) The ispeech of the throneî in Quebec is used to detail the programme of each government. Forty-nine texts provide the material for lexicometric analyses. The circumstances and the emergence of new stakes partly explain the evolution in vocabulary. The study of the period highlights the ilexical seismic shifti that was produced by the Quebecker party coming to power, and the impact of a partisan ideology on the grouping of electoral lists of jobs.

The House That Abe Built: The "House Divided" Speech and Republican Party Politics

The House That Abe Built: The "House Divided" Speech and Republican Party Politics Michael William Pfau Lincoln's House Divided speech has received considerable critical attention from historians, as well as literary and rhetorical critics.1 Of the literature concerning the House Divided two readings in particular have significantly contributed to a uniquely rhetorical understanding of the speech. Don Fehrenbacher's authoritative analysis has contributed most substantially to our understanding of the House Divided speech as Lincoln's engagement with a particular set of concerns relating to the political context in which it was delivered. Fehrenbacher, however, while exhibiting a clear recognition of the speech as a response to exigence, lacked the rhetorical sensitivity that would have allowed him more fully to explain how the speech text was a response to the occasion in question.2 Michael Leff, on the other hand, has contributed to our understanding of the House Divided speech in the particular mode of a rhetorical critic—providing a close reading of the speech that reveals the intricacies of the action within the text. As a rhetorically minded close reading of the text, Leff's criticism is unsurpassed.3 However, even the fruitful dialogue between text and context represented by the intersection of the Leff and Fehrenbacher pieces is far from exhausting the hermeneutic possibilities of the House Divided speech. In this article I propose that it is possible to supplement, expand, and at times adjust, the solid interpretive foundation for the House Divided speech laid by Fehrenbacher and Leff by enriching and complicating particular aspects of the speech's context. I begin with the assumption that the text is but a trace of a complex rhetorical transaction that took place at the Illinois Republican state convention on June 16, 1-858; a trace that was once "inextricably interwoven with its world."4 Careful attention to the House Divided speech as such a transaction embedded within its own many-faceted context will enable a better appreciation of what actions Lincoln was performing in delivering the speech, and offer one way of achieving a more "exacting reading of texts as they are situated in history."6 The task of "expanding the hermeneutic burden of context" in relation to the House Divided Michael William Pfau is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 2, No. 4, 1999, pp. 625-651 ISSN 1094-8392 626 Rhetoric & Public Affairs speech is complicated, however, by the breadth and vagueness of the concept of "context" in rhetorical studies. One recent commentator has gone so far as to suggest that rhetorical studies has "failed in finding a way to conceptualize context."6 While it may not be possible or desirable to develop a conceptualization of context applicable to all texts in all times and places, it is nevertheless important to determine , on a case-by-case basis, what aspects of context are especially salient to understanding particular rhetorical texts. In the case of the House Divided speech, the concept of political party and the particularities of the Illinois Republican Party in 1858 provide one mode of mediating the text-context divide that promises to expand our understanding of the speech in important ways. This mode of contextualizing the House Divided is initially validated by the fact of its delivery at the Illinois state Republican convention of 1858. Here Lincoln addressed an audience of party leaders, operated within the generic constraints of partisan conventions, and invoked partisan ideologies of several kinds as he acted to build and unify the Illinois Republican Party. Careful attention to the partisan component of the House Divided's original context will not only allow me to better negotiate disputed portions of the text, but also has implications for the issue of how what most agree was such a masterful speech became "an albatross for Lincoln during the ensuing Senate campaign."7 The puzzle regarding the speech's reception context becomes clearer if we follow Celeste Condit in asking "why, for a given time, and specific peoples, a given speech was particularly masterful."8 When considered in the light of its partisan context and immediate partisan audience the...

Civil War by Other Means

The war in Kosovo opened more fissures in the American public and the U.S. foreign policy elite than any U.S. military interven tion since the Vietnam War. Many have remarked that viewpoints about the war transcended the ideological categories of left and right, producing unusual alliances of conservatives and liberals among both supporters and opponents of the nato campaign against Serbia. What has been overlooked, however, is the influence of American regional culture?not only on attitudes toward the war in Kosovo but on the domestic politics of foreign policy throughout American history. That so little attention has been paid to regional influences on U.S. foreign policy is surprising. After all, the polarization of American domestic politics along regional lines is one of the most obvious and striking phenomena of our time. The disproportionately southern congressional leadership reflects the new southern base of the Repub lican Party. Both liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans find their strongest support in the states of New England and the northern tier. The superimposition of regional cultural loyalties atop partisan ideologies accounts for much of the increase in partisan rancor in the United States. To name only one example, the impeachment of President Clinton revealed a stark division between this southern