Abstract: Fifteenth-century Scotland was a very violent society. To understand the mentalite of fifteenth-century Scotland, historians have naturally emphasised the nationalism of Wyntoun and Bower. Historians of Scotland have tried to demonstrate the success of the kingdom in terms of contemporary experience. The nature of Scottish political society highlights sharply an issue obscured by more 'developed' societies: that in the end, successful rule is a political and not a constitutional matter. Fifteenth-century Scotland provides us with the paradox of exceedingly tough and effective kings ruling a decentralised kingdom, in which to an increasingly unusual degree local power could be exercised without challenge. Scotland was the first kingdom to receive formal recognition of the right of the crown to nominate to the greater benefices. No doubt Scotland had this distinction because the Papacy was more willing to give to the less important kingdom; but that was hardly a relevant consideration to the Scots.

Abstract: Theory: We extend research on the spatial theory of voting and the electoral connection by exploring how US House members responded to Electoral College gridlock in the presidential election of 1824 We analyze whether John Quincy Adams's victory was consistent with a spatial-theoretic, ideological model of voting or more closely followed the standard historical account that emphasizes Adams's role in a vote-buying "corrupt bargain" Hypotheses: The corrupt-bargain thesis predicts that several states won by Adams in the House ballot swung on votes cast by MCs closer to Andrew Jackson than to Adams The sincere voting model predicts MCs to vote for the closest candidate Prediction errors should be most frequent near the cutting line between Adams and his closest opponent Methods: We use a spatial model of sincere voting as a baseline against which to test the corrupt-bargain hypothesis We use logistic regression to further test implications from the spatial model Legislator and candidate preferences are based on transformed Nominate scores (Poole and Rosenthal 1997; Poole 1998), which locate ideal points for House members and the 1824 presidential candidates in a common space Results: Adams's victory and profile of support were consistent with the sincere voting model and did not support the corrupt-bargain hypothesis Voting errors involving Adams lie systematically closer to the cutting line than did "correct" votes Additional evidence from an examination of lame-duck MCs' subsequent careers and an analysis of the congressional elections of 1826 support our findings

Abstract: Political scientists and other scholars have collectively failed to define the term “interest group” and its synonyms in a consistent fashion or with any real precision. A definition of the term that considers the nature of interest groups, why they are studied, and how they have been defined in the past is offered: interest groups are actual organizations, they are private in nature, they attempt to influence public policy, and they are not political parties—i.e., they do not nominate candidates for public office. The history of the recognition of these definitional elements is traced, along with the etymology of the term and its synonyms.

Abstract: In systems of governance such as the one in the United States, where there is a separation of powers and where separate elections determine who will control the distinct institutions, executive-legislative relations are cumbersome and perhaps conflictual by design. At least since the scholarship of Woodrow Wilson in the early part of this century,(1) students of U.S. politics have questioned the wisdom of constitutional arrangements that help give rise to inefficiency and institutional conflict, theorized about how and if American government operates properly in spite of them, and analyzed circumstances that exacerbate or attenuate cooperation across the two elected branches. While the resulting body of scholarship does not tend exclusively toward any singular topic in the area of executive-legislative relations, cooperation and conflict in policy making constitute what is by far the dominant focus of interest in this field of research. The joint role played by the elected institutions in structuring the third branch of U.S. government receives by comparison somewhat less scholarly attention. Our article runs counter to that trend, in that we seek here to situate a contemporary conflict between the Senate and the president regarding appointments to the lower federal bench within the long-established strands of analysis on institutional relations. Initial discussion is descriptive of the current dilemma. Subsequent commentary is aimed at the locus of responsibility for it and focuses first on the personalities and groups involved in the contemporary debate. Attention is then given to the effects of coalition government on the balance of institutional authority in structuring the judiciary and, in particular, to the erosion of the president's power in the new era of divided partisan control. Emphasis is then placed on the limitations of presidential leadership in the Congress on matters, such as lower court appointments, that lack a firm national profile and thus do not generate intense media interest, especially during times of scandal. We conclude by raising the prospect that during periods of divided partisan control, the institutional norms that otherwise facilitate executive-legislative cooperation in the shaping of the lower federal bench may not be sufficient to overcome the inherently conflictual institutional arrangements that presently govern the nation's judicial selection process. The Contours of the Problem The procedure for the selection of all federal judges is patterned after the constitutional arrangements defining appointment and confirmation mechanisms for the U.S. Supreme Court. Article II authorizes the executive to nominate judges and, as a measure of balanced government, requires that the president do so "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." The precise meaning of advice and consent is left undefined in the Constitution, as is the balance of authority across the elected institutions. The Senate's role with respect to lower court appointments has traditionally included avenues for initiative (i.e., advice), in the forms of state party patronage and senatorial courtesy, that are absent in the context of Supreme Court nominations, in which consent has been the principal legislative task. The advice norms associated with lower court appointments introduce opportunities for institutional rivalry, conflict, and inefficiency in the staffing of the lower federal judiciary that are not present in the selection process for Supreme Court Justices. This is particularly true in the districts. It is perhaps little wonder then that while President Clinton's two appointments to the High Bench engendered little opposition in the Senate, his lower court choices fared less well. And yet, as Table 1 illustrates rather clearly, the present executive-legislative conflict over lower court appointments is unusual by almost any standard, for the upper house last year approved fewer (and the lowest percentage of) judicial nominees than has any Senate in the past twenty years. …

Abstract: If you have ever read a science report in your daily newspaper, or heard one on radio or TV, that made you sit up and say, “That's darn good! They got this complicated story exactly right,” you probably wanted to congratulate the author. Actually, you can do better than that: you can nominate him or her for AGU's Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism. Nominations are now open for the 1999 Sullivan Award, which will be presented at the Spring Meeting next May in Boston, Mass. Any AGU member may nominate a journalist, and journalists may also nominate themselves. The award is made for a single report in any medium that is accessible to the general public and published in 1998; it carries a prize of $2000 along with a plaque.

Abstract: The "rock" in this case is the Granite State of New Hampshire; the "hard place" is the South, where Republican candidates for any office have had a hard row to hoe over the last century. How could a Republican even get on a ballot after "Mr. Lincoln's Party" interfered with the region's effort to form its own nation? Between 1920 and 1950 in South Carolina, not one Republican candidate for governor, the U.S. Senate, or the U.S. House of Representatives received more than 5 percent of the popular vote. Republican presidential candidates fared about as poorly. In the 1940s, J. Bates Gerald, chair of South Carolina Republicans, gave the party's meager funds to GOP candidates in other states. Over time, however, Republican fortunes have begun to change in South Carolina and in the South as a whole. In 1988, South Carolina Republicans scheduled for the first time a March presidential primary as a way for nominees to test their potential success across the region. The primary has become for Republicans in the South what the New Hampshire primary has long been for both parties in the nation. THE DEMOCRATS LOSE THEIR GRIP It is still a relatively new thing for a white southerner to be a Republican. From Reconstruction to the 1960s, many southerners and most South Carolinians wallowed in the "raw deal" of subsistence cotton agriculture or marginal employment in cotton-related manufacturing. A social and intellectual vacuum guaranteed South Carolina's isolation. Memories of John Calhoun's fears of national political power and outside influences coupled with white apprehension of African American political power created a politics of suspicion that resisted political change. White southern ties with national Democrats began to loosen in the 1930s and 1940s in reaction to the New Deal. For one thing, federal purchase of eroded cropland seemed to destroy a way of life. New jobs were created by highway construction or defense spending and were protected by wage and hour laws; but for some people, programs like rural electrification, public housing, or more education smacked too much of "northern meddling" or European socialism. Such ideas left little doubt in the minds of many southern leaders that FDR Democrats were being overtaken by big labor, big government, and, perhaps most ominously, by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. V. O. Key Jr., the foremost student of southern politics at mid-twentieth century, noted that the poor condition of South Carolina's economy was overshadowed by its preoccupation with race. In the aftermath of Reconstruction and economic collapse, South Carolina Democrats emerged to keep the state in the clutches of a one-party system that emphasized states' rights and racial segregation, albeit with a faint undercurrent of agrarian liberalism. Democratic political leaders came from an agrarian middle class of farm owners and professionals--the lawyer, the doctor, the teacher, the preacher. With few exceptions, they advocated or tolerated the status quo in a political culture that restricted the vote or political influence of cash wage earners, farm tenants, laborers, and household workers. They may have been Republicans under the skin, but they could not join a party identified with the destruction of the South. The nominating primary was the mechanism for Democratic political dominance. Since Republicans seldom had a candidate in the general election, a primary victory resulted in election. In southern states, it was customary for African Americans not to participate in the primary, thus losing any meaningful role in the election. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared the white primary unconstitutional in 1944, South Carolina repealed its primary laws and redefined the state Democratic Party as a private organization that could nominate political candidates. This maneuver also failed, and in July 1948, the South Carolina Democratic Party began enrolling African Americans. …

Abstract: The White House has tapped a new chief for the U.S. Geological Survey, the Interior Department9s science agency. Last week President Clinton announced his intention to nominate Charles Groat, a geologist who9s a familiar face in policy circles but little known among scientists.