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Morality at the Ballot examines the ability of direct democracy (the process of deciding policy through the ballot) to increase turnout. In contrast to previous studies, Daniel R. Biggers shows that this ability is much more limited than currently thought. Using ballot matters that address morality policy, combined with experimental and election data from the past twenty years, he demonstrates how and when direct democracy can increase participation, affect who votes, and influence electoral and policy outcomes.
Arguments about the American ballot initiative process date back to the Progressive Era, when processes allowing citizens to decide policy questions directly were established in about half of the states. When political scientists began to systematically examine whether the state ballot initiative process had spillover consequences, they found the initiative process had a positive impact on civic engagement. Recent scholarship casts doubt on these conclusions, determining the ballot initiative process did not make people believe they could influence the political process, trust the government, or be more knowledgeable about politics in general. However, in some circumstances, it got them to show up at the polls, and increased interest groups’ participation in the political arena. In Initiatives without Engagement, Dyck and Lascher develop and test a theory that can explain the evidence that the ballot initiative process fails to provide the civic benefits commonly claimed for it, and the evidence that it increases political participation. This theory argues that the basic function of direct democracy is to create more conflict in society.
States have historically led in rights expansion for marginalized populations and remain leaders today on the rights of undocumented immigrants.
If the same-sex marriage debate tells us one thing, it’s that rights do not exist in a vacuum. What works for one side at the ballot box often fails in the courtroom. Conservative opponents of same-sex marriage used appeals to religious liberty and parental rights to win ballot measure campaigns, but could not duplicate this success in court. Looking at the same-sex marriage debate at the ballot box and in the courts, this timely book offers unique insights into one of the most fluid social and legal issues of our day—and into the role of institutional context in how rights are used. Why, Joseph Mello asks, did conservative opponents of same-sex marriage enjoy such an advantage when deba...
A wide-ranging discussion of factors that impede the cumulation of knowledge in the social sciences, including problems of transparency, replication, and reliability. Rather than focusing on individual studies or methods, this book examines how collective institutions and practices have (often unintended) impacts on the production of knowledge.
This research explores one of the baffling mysteries in contemporary non-Western democracies. The conversion to a mixed system of the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation for the Japanese House of Representatives in 1994 has not realised the widely spread desire for recurrent changes of government, as the Liberal Democratic Party have maintained their grip. Dr Nagatomi monitors Japanese politics with the theories and methodologies of electoral geography. From a comparative perspective, the operation of the electoral system can mostly be explained by the geographical distributions of party supports, the arrangements of electoral constituencies and the candidacies of parties. Packed with a volume of the analyses unpublished elsewhere, this book will offer food for thought to political scientists, Asian watchers and broadly comparative researchers.
"While government policies can build supportive coalitions, they can also mobilize powerful opposition forces. What causes backlashes in the American political system? Why do some policies generate resistance among political elites and mass publics? Drawing on case studies of key issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Eric Patashnik explores how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. He argues that backlash politics is fueled by polarization, changes in American culture and society, and the negative feedback from activist government itself. Countermobilization shows that backlashes arise when policy motives, constituency means, and political opportunities converge, and debunks the claim that backlash politics is exclusively a right-wing phenomenon. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wishes to identify backlash risks-and design against them"--
“I have no agenda,” US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts proclaimed at his Senate confirmation hearing: “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” This declaration was in keeping with the avowed independence of the judiciary. It also, when viewed through the lens of Roberts’s election law decisions, appears to be false. With a scrupulous reading of judicial decisions and a careful assessment of partisan causes and consequences, Terri Jennings Peretti tells the story of the GOP’s largely successful campaign to enlist judicial aid for its self-interested election reform agenda. Partisan Supremacy explores four contemporary election law issues—voter iden...
In many elections, candidates frame their appeals in gendered ways--they compete, for instance, over who is more "masculine." This is the case for male and female candidates alike. In the 2016 presidential election, however, the stark choice between the first major-party female candidate and a man who exhibited a persistent pattern of misogyny made the use of gender more prominent than in any previous election in the United States. Presidential campaigns often have an impact on downballot Congressional races, but the 2016 election provided a new opportunity to see the effects of misogyny. While much has been written about the 2016 election--and the shadow of 2016 clearly affected the pool of...
This book provides a new theoretical perspective to election law showing how alignment theory would operate in practice, in both litigation and legislation.