The Presidency and the Economic Policy offers an update on how economic issues have developed and... more The Presidency and the Economic Policy offers an update on how economic issues have developed and evolved since the first version of the book was published in 1994. This book addresses the extent to which the president influences the domestic and global economy, ...
Wellhofer's adaptation of Klingman's suggestion that spatial diffusion be modeled... more Wellhofer's adaptation of Klingman's suggestion that spatial diffusion be modeled as an autoregressive spatial series is questioned on two counts. First, this approach is inappropriate for most classes of diffusion models, including dendritic diffusion systems. Second, the procedure by which Wellhofer has ordered the observations in his Argentine illustration produces a database that bears almost no resemblance to the underlying pattern of causation he wishes to examine and actually creates an additional source of bias in the analysis.
While earlier research stressed the importance of attributes of the government, parliament, and p... more While earlier research stressed the importance of attributes of the government, parliament, and political system in determining the point of governmental dissolution, the most recent studies emphasize the random character of this phenomenon. This article describes the points of convergence and divergence between these distinct research phases. Ultimately these differing approaches are seen to be complementary, both conceptually and in their ability to predict postwar governmental dissolutions in 12 western parliamentary democracies. The next theoretical step should be the formulation of a model combining both static and random elements, a model which identifies the ways in which political events change the ability of governments to continue in office.
At one time the New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling looked somewhat down his editorial nose at Chica... more At one time the New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling looked somewhat down his editorial nose at Chicago, calling it "The Second City." The term stuck, for comedians and the rest of us. It really took until now for someone like political scientist Larry Bennett to turn the long-term sobriquet into part of a typology describing Chicago and its history less as a comparative second fiddle to global New York and more like what another New Yorker, the late New York Times writer, R. W. Apple called the city: "America's city." Apple was probably not the first to opine such representative logic-for a long time, and perhaps even still, social scientists have studied Chicago more than most, if not all other, American cities. Putting aside social science and the lasting impact of the "Chicago School," for the moment, Chicagoans of all types including Mike Royko and Elizabeth Taylor (newspaper columnists), Arnold Hirsch (political scientist), Milton Rakove (historian), Steven Cohen (lawyer and fundraiser), and both Sara Paretsky and Michael Harvey (crime writers) have taken important turns at describing the city. In perhaps the most trenchant recent addition to the academic study of Chicago, The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism, Larry Bennett blends experience and social science. On the one hand, Bennett is a longtime Chicagoan and writes in the tradition of one who has spent over three decades walking the streets and embedding himself in the neighborhoods of "America's city." In other words, like the literature he contributes to, he might not be a mystery writer/bar owner like Harvey or an essayist/news reporter like Royko, but Bennett is deep down a Chicagoan and it shows in this book. On the other hand, he is a clear-eyed and objective academic who uses the city not only as the object of his academic affections but also as a lens with which to assess a full range of the urban literature as both tool and critical subject. In short, The Third City is a rich and critical mix of urban study, academic literature, and Chicago experience that together produces another good urban book on R. W. Apple's representative city. Beyond his street-level experience, Bennett approaches his subject from two perspectivesalternating visions of urbanism from two scholars he believes to be the two most important interpreters of American urbanism in the twentieth century, Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford. Each chapter of the book, each turn of Chicago as "first, second or third city," is informed by either the panoramic metropolitan or regionalist view of Lewis Mumford and/or the fine-grained, street-level view of the city and its neighborhoods of Jane Jacobs. Even when they are not firmly written into the paragraph one can find either Mumford's geographic development of the city and its region or Jacobs's close experience of the street registering in Bennett's phased assessment of Chicago. He begins his account of Chicago and its representations with Chapter Two on the various "renditions" of the city-finding especially good ground in the "self conscious" production of the "city of broad shoulders" with its muscular rise to predominant "first city" status as an
Virtually all studies of policy diffusion are based on statutory enactments by state legislatures... more Virtually all studies of policy diffusion are based on statutory enactments by state legislatures. But a substantial number of medicalized marijuana laws were initiated through citizen initiatives and ratified by referenda (I&R). This case study suggests that the diffusion of laws adopted by I&R requires two modifications to the conventional model of policy diffusion. First, early policy adoptions must occur through direct democracy so that horizontal diffusion results when those past adoptions by the I&R process lead to future adoptions. Second, the necessity of bypassing institutions of representative government must be operationalized as an interaction between the availability of direct democracy and the precise political variable that blocks legislative enactments.
Congress authorized states to negotiate with Native American tribes to establish tribal gaming fa... more Congress authorized states to negotiate with Native American tribes to establish tribal gaming facilities. The lop-sided support in Congress indicated broad agreement that the primary purpose was t...
ABSTRACT Objective While previous cross-sectional research has suggested a relationship between t... more ABSTRACT Objective While previous cross-sectional research has suggested a relationship between the prohibition of alcohol sales and the presence of distinctive patterns of religious adherence, the relationship between policy adoption and social change is best evaluated through longitudinal analysis. We assess the extent to which a policy decision by a county to shift away from or toward a policy of prohibition is related to underlying changes in the composition of the countywide population. Methods Multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to describe the relationship between county-level demographic and cultural variables and changes in a county's prohibition policy status from dry to wet and wet to dry between 1970 and 2008. ResultsThe results demonstrate that certain kinds of social change are associated with changes in a county's public policy with respect to prohibition. By far, the strongest factor explaining shifts from dry status to wet status is an increase in a county's religious diversity. Conversely, there is also a relationship between a county's religious character and movement from wet status to dry status, specifically, the strongest factor associated with movement from wet status to dry status is an increasing rate of Evangelical adherence in the county. Conclusions There is a relationship between the religious character of a county and the preference for this particular policy option. While religious change is most important in explaining public policy on prohibition, changes in the religious milieu are one element of a broader process of modernization and other social change that involves such demographic variables as income, education, and urbanization.
ABSTRACT Thesis (Ph. D. in Political Science)--University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1981. Vita. Inc... more ABSTRACT Thesis (Ph. D. in Political Science)--University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1981. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-153).
The American Review of Public Administration, 1978
While there has been a multitude of research concerning innovation published in the last twenty y... more While there has been a multitude of research concerning innovation published in the last twenty years; attempts by scholars to study on a comparative or national basis the factors affecting innovation adoption in cities are fairly recent. Innovation is believed to be a key element in productivity improvement, yet little is actually known of the barriers and facilitators of innovation adoption by cities. The need for such information has spurred recent studies which seek to illuminate the process of decisionmaking in municipal government, but more immediately to aid in the development of strategies for the facilitation of public productivity improvements.
This study applies OLS and Poisson regression analysis to predicting the legislative output of Co... more This study applies OLS and Poisson regression analysis to predicting the legislative output of Congress during the first Hundred Days of 1897 to 1995. The celebrated One Hundred Days of 1933 has not encouraged researchers to try to identify the structural, political, and incumbency variables that matter systematically across a range of Congresses. Here the 25 presidential Hundred Days are included along with 25 mid-term “hundred days” for comparative purposes. Four conclusions are reached. First, (1) adverse economic conditions and (2) greater electoral support for congressional candidates of the President's party are generally associated with higher levels of 100-days enactments. Second, there is a marked drop-off in 100-days enactments beginning with the 81st Congress, which we speculate may be attributed to the growth of subcommittees that added another layer to the legislative process. Third, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt arguably exhibited some independent effects on Hundred Days enactments, whereas two other “skilled” legislative leaders-Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan-did not. Finally, the 1933 Hundred Days were exceptional but not unique because their productivity was linked to the confluence of systemic political variables and crisis conditions and, moreover, because the most important 1933 Hundred Days laws were Depression-specific enactments and not general purpose legislation.
This analysis of county-level voting on 22 state referenda that sought to legalize marijuana for ... more This analysis of county-level voting on 22 state referenda that sought to legalize marijuana for medical purposes or recreational use is driven by hypotheses from post-materialism theory. Separate regression models for each type of policy largely, though not entirely, support our expectations. Voting to legalize both medical and recreational marijuana was greater in counties with larger college-educated populations, a partisan preference for Democratic presidential candidates, and smaller percentages of Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical adherents. The findings for age, the other primary driver of post-materialist values, are counter-intuitive, but holding these referenda during a U.S. presidential election year had statistically significant though different impacts on the outcome. The higher turnout during presidential elections seemingly facilitated voting in favor of recreational marijuana while lower turnouts during non-presidential elections aided voting for medical marijuana. Finally, population density was not statistically significant in either model.
Abstract This study has two objectives: to rank order the top ten publishers of all 609 “best boo... more Abstract This study has two objectives: to rank order the top ten publishers of all 609 “best book” awards by APSA sections from 1985 to 2016 and to show using multiple regression analysis which variables best explain why some award-winning volumes receive more scholarly citations than other books. Our dependent variable is average yearly citation counts from copyright date to 2017, and five independent variables were tested in the analysis: (1) prestige ranking of the publisher; (2) number of authors; (3) size of APSA section; (4) subfield specialization; and (5) gender (male or female authors). The top ten publishers account for 74% of the award-winning volumes, and the multiple regression analysis confirms that all variables were statistically significant and consistent with our hypotheses, except subfield. More citations were earned by the smallest subfields of Political Theory and Methodology rather than the largest subfield of American Politics. Three validation tests largely confirm that award-winning books garner more citations than other political science scholarly volumes: comparison with books winning Honorable Mentions; a random sample of Cambridge University Press and University of Chicago Press volumes; and a random sample of all political science volumes from nine award-winning publishers in 2009.
The Presidency and the Economic Policy offers an update on how economic issues have developed and... more The Presidency and the Economic Policy offers an update on how economic issues have developed and evolved since the first version of the book was published in 1994. This book addresses the extent to which the president influences the domestic and global economy, ...
Wellhofer's adaptation of Klingman's suggestion that spatial diffusion be modeled... more Wellhofer's adaptation of Klingman's suggestion that spatial diffusion be modeled as an autoregressive spatial series is questioned on two counts. First, this approach is inappropriate for most classes of diffusion models, including dendritic diffusion systems. Second, the procedure by which Wellhofer has ordered the observations in his Argentine illustration produces a database that bears almost no resemblance to the underlying pattern of causation he wishes to examine and actually creates an additional source of bias in the analysis.
While earlier research stressed the importance of attributes of the government, parliament, and p... more While earlier research stressed the importance of attributes of the government, parliament, and political system in determining the point of governmental dissolution, the most recent studies emphasize the random character of this phenomenon. This article describes the points of convergence and divergence between these distinct research phases. Ultimately these differing approaches are seen to be complementary, both conceptually and in their ability to predict postwar governmental dissolutions in 12 western parliamentary democracies. The next theoretical step should be the formulation of a model combining both static and random elements, a model which identifies the ways in which political events change the ability of governments to continue in office.
At one time the New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling looked somewhat down his editorial nose at Chica... more At one time the New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling looked somewhat down his editorial nose at Chicago, calling it "The Second City." The term stuck, for comedians and the rest of us. It really took until now for someone like political scientist Larry Bennett to turn the long-term sobriquet into part of a typology describing Chicago and its history less as a comparative second fiddle to global New York and more like what another New Yorker, the late New York Times writer, R. W. Apple called the city: "America's city." Apple was probably not the first to opine such representative logic-for a long time, and perhaps even still, social scientists have studied Chicago more than most, if not all other, American cities. Putting aside social science and the lasting impact of the "Chicago School," for the moment, Chicagoans of all types including Mike Royko and Elizabeth Taylor (newspaper columnists), Arnold Hirsch (political scientist), Milton Rakove (historian), Steven Cohen (lawyer and fundraiser), and both Sara Paretsky and Michael Harvey (crime writers) have taken important turns at describing the city. In perhaps the most trenchant recent addition to the academic study of Chicago, The Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism, Larry Bennett blends experience and social science. On the one hand, Bennett is a longtime Chicagoan and writes in the tradition of one who has spent over three decades walking the streets and embedding himself in the neighborhoods of "America's city." In other words, like the literature he contributes to, he might not be a mystery writer/bar owner like Harvey or an essayist/news reporter like Royko, but Bennett is deep down a Chicagoan and it shows in this book. On the other hand, he is a clear-eyed and objective academic who uses the city not only as the object of his academic affections but also as a lens with which to assess a full range of the urban literature as both tool and critical subject. In short, The Third City is a rich and critical mix of urban study, academic literature, and Chicago experience that together produces another good urban book on R. W. Apple's representative city. Beyond his street-level experience, Bennett approaches his subject from two perspectivesalternating visions of urbanism from two scholars he believes to be the two most important interpreters of American urbanism in the twentieth century, Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford. Each chapter of the book, each turn of Chicago as "first, second or third city," is informed by either the panoramic metropolitan or regionalist view of Lewis Mumford and/or the fine-grained, street-level view of the city and its neighborhoods of Jane Jacobs. Even when they are not firmly written into the paragraph one can find either Mumford's geographic development of the city and its region or Jacobs's close experience of the street registering in Bennett's phased assessment of Chicago. He begins his account of Chicago and its representations with Chapter Two on the various "renditions" of the city-finding especially good ground in the "self conscious" production of the "city of broad shoulders" with its muscular rise to predominant "first city" status as an
Virtually all studies of policy diffusion are based on statutory enactments by state legislatures... more Virtually all studies of policy diffusion are based on statutory enactments by state legislatures. But a substantial number of medicalized marijuana laws were initiated through citizen initiatives and ratified by referenda (I&R). This case study suggests that the diffusion of laws adopted by I&R requires two modifications to the conventional model of policy diffusion. First, early policy adoptions must occur through direct democracy so that horizontal diffusion results when those past adoptions by the I&R process lead to future adoptions. Second, the necessity of bypassing institutions of representative government must be operationalized as an interaction between the availability of direct democracy and the precise political variable that blocks legislative enactments.
Congress authorized states to negotiate with Native American tribes to establish tribal gaming fa... more Congress authorized states to negotiate with Native American tribes to establish tribal gaming facilities. The lop-sided support in Congress indicated broad agreement that the primary purpose was t...
ABSTRACT Objective While previous cross-sectional research has suggested a relationship between t... more ABSTRACT Objective While previous cross-sectional research has suggested a relationship between the prohibition of alcohol sales and the presence of distinctive patterns of religious adherence, the relationship between policy adoption and social change is best evaluated through longitudinal analysis. We assess the extent to which a policy decision by a county to shift away from or toward a policy of prohibition is related to underlying changes in the composition of the countywide population. Methods Multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to describe the relationship between county-level demographic and cultural variables and changes in a county's prohibition policy status from dry to wet and wet to dry between 1970 and 2008. ResultsThe results demonstrate that certain kinds of social change are associated with changes in a county's public policy with respect to prohibition. By far, the strongest factor explaining shifts from dry status to wet status is an increase in a county's religious diversity. Conversely, there is also a relationship between a county's religious character and movement from wet status to dry status, specifically, the strongest factor associated with movement from wet status to dry status is an increasing rate of Evangelical adherence in the county. Conclusions There is a relationship between the religious character of a county and the preference for this particular policy option. While religious change is most important in explaining public policy on prohibition, changes in the religious milieu are one element of a broader process of modernization and other social change that involves such demographic variables as income, education, and urbanization.
ABSTRACT Thesis (Ph. D. in Political Science)--University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1981. Vita. Inc... more ABSTRACT Thesis (Ph. D. in Political Science)--University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1981. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-153).
The American Review of Public Administration, 1978
While there has been a multitude of research concerning innovation published in the last twenty y... more While there has been a multitude of research concerning innovation published in the last twenty years; attempts by scholars to study on a comparative or national basis the factors affecting innovation adoption in cities are fairly recent. Innovation is believed to be a key element in productivity improvement, yet little is actually known of the barriers and facilitators of innovation adoption by cities. The need for such information has spurred recent studies which seek to illuminate the process of decisionmaking in municipal government, but more immediately to aid in the development of strategies for the facilitation of public productivity improvements.
This study applies OLS and Poisson regression analysis to predicting the legislative output of Co... more This study applies OLS and Poisson regression analysis to predicting the legislative output of Congress during the first Hundred Days of 1897 to 1995. The celebrated One Hundred Days of 1933 has not encouraged researchers to try to identify the structural, political, and incumbency variables that matter systematically across a range of Congresses. Here the 25 presidential Hundred Days are included along with 25 mid-term “hundred days” for comparative purposes. Four conclusions are reached. First, (1) adverse economic conditions and (2) greater electoral support for congressional candidates of the President's party are generally associated with higher levels of 100-days enactments. Second, there is a marked drop-off in 100-days enactments beginning with the 81st Congress, which we speculate may be attributed to the growth of subcommittees that added another layer to the legislative process. Third, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt arguably exhibited some independent effects on Hundred Days enactments, whereas two other “skilled” legislative leaders-Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan-did not. Finally, the 1933 Hundred Days were exceptional but not unique because their productivity was linked to the confluence of systemic political variables and crisis conditions and, moreover, because the most important 1933 Hundred Days laws were Depression-specific enactments and not general purpose legislation.
This analysis of county-level voting on 22 state referenda that sought to legalize marijuana for ... more This analysis of county-level voting on 22 state referenda that sought to legalize marijuana for medical purposes or recreational use is driven by hypotheses from post-materialism theory. Separate regression models for each type of policy largely, though not entirely, support our expectations. Voting to legalize both medical and recreational marijuana was greater in counties with larger college-educated populations, a partisan preference for Democratic presidential candidates, and smaller percentages of Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical adherents. The findings for age, the other primary driver of post-materialist values, are counter-intuitive, but holding these referenda during a U.S. presidential election year had statistically significant though different impacts on the outcome. The higher turnout during presidential elections seemingly facilitated voting in favor of recreational marijuana while lower turnouts during non-presidential elections aided voting for medical marijuana. Finally, population density was not statistically significant in either model.
Abstract This study has two objectives: to rank order the top ten publishers of all 609 “best boo... more Abstract This study has two objectives: to rank order the top ten publishers of all 609 “best book” awards by APSA sections from 1985 to 2016 and to show using multiple regression analysis which variables best explain why some award-winning volumes receive more scholarly citations than other books. Our dependent variable is average yearly citation counts from copyright date to 2017, and five independent variables were tested in the analysis: (1) prestige ranking of the publisher; (2) number of authors; (3) size of APSA section; (4) subfield specialization; and (5) gender (male or female authors). The top ten publishers account for 74% of the award-winning volumes, and the multiple regression analysis confirms that all variables were statistically significant and consistent with our hypotheses, except subfield. More citations were earned by the smallest subfields of Political Theory and Methodology rather than the largest subfield of American Politics. Three validation tests largely confirm that award-winning books garner more citations than other political science scholarly volumes: comparison with books winning Honorable Mentions; a random sample of Cambridge University Press and University of Chicago Press volumes; and a random sample of all political science volumes from nine award-winning publishers in 2009.
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