Abstract: The idea of America as politically polarized—that there is an unbridgeable divide between right and left, red and blue states—has become a cliche. What commentators miss, however, is that increasing polarization in recent decades has been closely accompanied by fundamental social and economic changes—most notably, a parallel rise in income inequality. In Polarized America, Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal examine the relationships of polarization, wealth disparity, immigration, and other forces, characterizing it as a dance of give and take and back and forth causality. Using NOMINATE (a quantitative procedure that, like interest group ratings, scores politicians on the basis of their roll call voting records) to measure polarization in Congress and public opinion, census data and Federal Election Commission finance records to measure polarization among the public, the authors find that polarization and income inequality fell in tandem from 1913 to 1957 and rose together dramatically from 1977 on; they trace a parallel rise in immigration beginning in the 1970s. They show that Republicans have moved right, away from redistributive policies that would reduce income inequality. Immigration, meanwhile, has facilitated the move to the right: non-citizens, a larger share of the population and disproportionately poor, cannot vote; thus there is less political pressure from the bottom for redistribution than there is from the top against it. In "the choreography of American politics" inequality feeds directly into political polarization, and polarization in turn creates policies that further increase inequality.

Abstract: DW-NOMINATE scores for the U.S. Congress are widely used measures of legislators' ideological locations over time. These scores have been used in a large number of studies in political science and closely related fields. In this paper we extend the work of Lewis and Poole (2004) on the parametric bootstrap to DW-NOMINATE and obtain standard errors for the legislator ideal points. These standard errors are in the range of one to four percent of the range of DW-NOMINATE coordinates.

Abstract: Like voters (the represented), politicians (the representees) are the heart and soul of representative democracy But isnt being a politician just like any other job? After we get past the rhetoric, is politics any different than other occupations? In the political sector, voters, parties and politicians represent the counterparts of consumers, firms and workers/managers in the market sector In fact, the analogy is much deeper than it may appear at first sight In the market sector, consumers determine to a large extent the success of a firm and ultimately the managements fate However, managers are chosen by the firms, which typically have an objective that is different from those of consumers and managers Likewise, while in all democratic systems the voters ultimately determine who is elected, it is typically the case that political parties nominate candidates for public office Furthermore, the objectives of voters and parties with respect to the selection of candidates may differ, and are constrained by the career ambitions of individuals with political aspirations But then, what really makes a career in the political sector different from a career in any other economic sector? There are at least three distinctive features that characterize the labor market in the political sector First, politicians are typically under the spotlight, receiving the attention of the media and of a variety of citizens organizations This makes politics a showcase, where politicians in office can display their political skills, while it might be more difficult for individuals working in the market sector to reveal their market ability Second, inter-party competition for potential politicians is likely to be of secondary importance, as ideological preferences are more likely to attract individuals toward specific parties at the beginning of their political careers Third, it is often the case that political parties take care of their losers by reserving partys positions to defeated incumbents As a result, while individual careers within the political sector are inevitably linked to the opportunities available within parties, the extent to which individual endowments of political and market skills are correlated, or experience in the political (market) sector is also valuable in the market (political) sector, links the labor markets of the two sectors This link affects the selection of politicians, the politicians careers, and the relationship between parties and voters

Abstract: Empirical models of spatial voting allow legislators' locations in an abstract policy or ideological space to be inferred from their roll call votes. Over the past 25 years, these models have provided new insights about the US Congress and legislative behavior more generally (see, for example, Poole and Rosenthal, 1997). There are now a number of alternative models, estimators, and software that researchers can use to recover latent issue or ideological spaces from voting data. While these different estimators usually produce substantively similar estimates, important differences also arise. In this paper, we investigate the sources of observed differences between two leading methods, NOMINATE and IDEAL. Considering data from the 1994 to 1997 Supreme Court and the 109th Senate, we demonstrate that while some observed differences in the estimates produced by each model stem from fundamental differences in their underlying behavioral assumptions, others arise from arbitrary differences in implementation. Using Monte Carlo experiments, we find that neither model has a clear advantage over the other in the recovery of legislator locations or roll call midpoints in either large or small legislatures.

Abstract: Tools dedicated to inferring the ideological leanings of legislators from observed votes—techniques such as NOMINATE (Poole and Rosenthal 1997) or the item-response-theory model of Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers (2004)—rest on the assumption that the political process that generates abstentions is ignorable, an assumption not always easy to justify. We extended the item-response-theory model to analyze abstention and voting processes simultaneously in situations where abstentions are suspected to be nonrandom. We applied this expanded model to two assemblies where the existing literature gives reason to expect nonrandom abstentions, and we demonstrate how our extensions yield nuanced analyses of legislative politics. We also acknowledge limits to our ability to decide on the adequacy of alternative assumptions about abstentions, since these assumptions are not readily verifiable.

Abstract: Political scientists have developed accepted numerical estimates of political ideology for legislators, candidates, parties and even nations, but interest groups lack such scores. This absence puts interest group research at a disadvantage compared to other subfields. I generate ideology scores for 72 groups across 10 years by combining groups’ evaluations of Members of Congress with Poole and Rosenthal’s estimates of Members’ ideologies. Alternative methods are explored, and the validity of the scores is demonstrated. Examinations of the scores focus on the relative distribution of groups and Members of Congress and the link between a group’s ideology and its campaign contributions.

Abstract: When John Londregan asked me to write something for TPM about NOMINATE and "why we (Howard Rosenthal and I) went high tech" rather than using simpler descriptions of roll call data, I was puzzled for some time on how to explain why we did what we did The problem is that my whole career has been devoted to testing a "high-tech" spatial theory so of necessity the methods I have employed over the years have been complicated However, in the spirit of John's request, I will give a short intellectual history of how and why Howard and I developed NOMINATE in the form we did

Abstract: Of the many vital functions that political parties serve in American democracy, selecting candidates for public office is near the top of the list. Giovanni Sartori (1976) cites this purpose as their chief defining element—claiming that, at a minimum, a party is a “political group that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office” (64). Moreover, understanding how parties vet, groom, select, and promote candidates is central to empirically evaluating the strength of political party organizations, the quality of elected policymakers, and ultimately the effectiveness of government. For scholars of American politics, this has led to fruitful lines of research on the processes that the Democratic and Republican Parties use to select their candidates—namely the conventions, primaries, and caucuses that nominate individuals for various federal, state, and local offices. For example, many have investigated the effects of reforms to the presidential nomination process in the early 1970s (Aldrich 1993; Hagen and Mayer 2000; Reiter 1985; Wayne 2000), some arguing that it took power of choosing candidates away from the party organizations and towards other institutions like the press, interest groups, and small ideological factions (Polsby 1983) with potentially negative consequences for governance.

Abstract: Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are as ideologically consistent and distinct as they have been at any point in the past three decades. Since 1973, the Senate has become 29 percent more polarized and House polarization has increased 47 percent. This investigation of party polarization finds that member adaptation accounts for one-third of the total party polarization in both the House and Senate. Member replacement accounts for the other two-thirds, the lion’s share of which has been the replacement of moderate southern Democrats by conservative Republicans. Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats. If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.

Abstract: The Constitution clearly states that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint" individuals to positions in the executive and judicial branches; yet the process may sometimes seem murky. While much has been written about the confirmation phase of those appointments, far less attention has been paid to the pre-nomination process - until now.In this groundbreaking book, Mitchel Sollenberger takes readers behind the scenes to explain what happens before presidents publicly announce their nominees. A comprehensive history of this process, his book shows how political practice has shaped the use of a power that the Constitution declared must be shared by the executive and legislative branches.Drawing on unpublished letters and papers of presidents, senators, and other public figures, Sollenberger unravels the way this struggle has been viewed and resolved from George Washington's day to the present. He reveals the extent to which the political process has shaped the outcomes of particular appointments and how these outcomes have reflected the fundamental principle of shared power. Along the way, he sheds new light on issues related to express and implied power, the validity of the unitary executive model, the tension between politics and professionalism, and the limits of originalism and textualism in interpreting the appointment process.Sollenberger documents how the president and Senate have worked with or against each other in managing the prenomination process, examining both the tradition of the president's consulting with senators and the Senate's numerous ways of killing a nomination. He also shows how the two branches have often sought compromise rather than test public patience, yet another testament to the genius of our system of checks and balances. And while past observers of the process have looked most closely at judicial appointments, Sollenberger casts a much wider net, while critiquing the "spoils era," civil service reform, and implications of the Pendleton Act before concluding with George W. Bush and his appointment of Michael Brown to FEMA.The first major study of the prenomination phase, Sollenberger's work asks important questions about our constitutional balance of powers and shows us how the appointments clause should ideally operate in a republican form of government.

Abstract: Institutions whose members fail to reflect the diversity of the population are often taken to be unrepresentative of citizens' policy preferences and potentially undemocratic (Mansbridge 1999; Pitkin 1978). For the courts to be viewed as legitimate, they must be at least marginally representative of the racial composition of the public. The symbolic representation of minority judges "has a positive and legitimizing effect on the functioning of a democracy" (Walker and Barrow 1985, 597). Institutional legitimacy is particularly essential for the judiciary because it "has no influence over either the sword or the purse" (Hamilton 1788). Furthermore, if minority judges decide cases differently (Scherer 2004-05; Welch, Combs, and Gruhl 1988), it is especially imperative to understand what drives minority nominations to circuit courts. Even though extensive work has been done on minority representation in Congress (e.g., Cameron, Epstein, and O'Halloran 1996; Canon, Schousen, and Sellers 1996; Lublin 1997a, 1999), minority representation on circuit courts remains relatively unexamined outside of qualitative studies (e.g., Goldman 1997). The primary value of this research article is that it demonstrates that some of the potential influences believed to affect presidents' nomination decisions have little impact, whereas others have surprisingly large effects. When presidents and their advisors are deciding whom to nominate to openings on the U.S. courts of appeals, to what extent do they take into consideration or even give priority to signals from other political actors? Senators, especially home-state senators, immediately come to mind as a potential influence on these decisions. Various characteristics of a state (e.g., the size of the minority population, minority economic influence, and minority representation in the congressional delegation) may also generate pressure on presidents to nominate minority judges and on senators to approve them (Gryski, Zuk, and Barrow 1994). A reading of Goldman's (1997) work on how various presidents have gone about nominating federal judges can take researchers down a variety of paths with respect to a particular combination of influences because of the lack of clear guideposts as to what affects presidents making this decision, Some quantitative studies indicate which factors might affect presidential decision making on the diversification of circuit courts. For example, Bratton and Spill (2002) show that gender diversification of state supreme courts is responsive to a variety of conditions, such as the method of appointment in a state. However, relatively little is known about how minority nominations are generated for appointments to the U.S. courts of appeals--a gap that is especially surprising given that the U.S. courts of appeals, which lie immediately below the Supreme Court in the judicial hierarchy, are effectively courts of last resort for each party in nearly every federal case (Carp and Stidham 1998). In fact, the Supreme Court usually reviews less than 1 percent of the cases that are appealed to it each year from the U.S. courts of appeals (Songer, Sheehan, and Haire 2000). (1) Because circuit courts play such a prominent role in the federal judicial system, knowing what determines who is on the circuit courts is imperative to better understanding American politics. In analyzing minority nominations to the U.S. courts of appeals, I employ a strategic model of presidential decision making. That is, I account for how presidents combine their own preferences with information about the preferences of other potentially influential individuals and institutions to arrive at a particular nomination. Strategic models have been used to show that presidents are strategic in deciding whether to issue an executive order (Deering and Maltzman 1999), in nominating Supreme Court justices (Moraski and Shipan 1999), and in determining whether to go public (Canes-Wrone 2001). …

Abstract: Two of America's most prominent shareholder activists discuss three major issues surrounding the U.S. corporate governance system: (1) the case for increasing shareholder “democracy” by expanding investor access to the corporate proxy; (2) lessons for public companies in the success of private equity; and (3) the current level and design of CEO pay. On the first of the three subjects, Robert Monks suggests that the U.S. should adopt the British convention of the “extraordinary general meeting,” or “EGM,” which gives a majority of shareholders who attend the meeting the right to remove any or all of a company's directors “with or without cause.” Such shareholder meetings are permitted in virtually all developed economies outside the U.S. because, as Monks goes on to say, they represent “a far more efficient and effective solution than the idea of having shareholders nominate people for the simple reason that even very involved, financially sophisticated fiduciaries are not the best people to nominate directors.” Moreover, according to both Jensen and Monks, corporate boards in the U.K. do a better job than their U.S. counterparts of monitoring top management on behalf of shareholders. In contrast to the U.S., where the majority of companies continue to be run by CEO/Chairmen, over 90% of English companies are now chaired by outside directors, contributing to “a culture of independent-minded chairmen capable of providing a high level of oversight.” In the U.S., by contrast, most corporate directors continue to view themselves as “employees of the CEO.” And, as a result, U.S. boards generally fail to exercise effective oversight and control until outside forces—often in the form of activist investors such as hedge funds and private equity—bring about a “crisis.” In companies owned and run by private equity firms, by contrast, top management is vigorously monitored and controlled by a board made up of the firm's largest investors. And the fact that the rewards to the operating heads of successful private equity-controlled firms are typically multiples of those received by comparably effective public company CEOs suggests that the problem with U.S. CEO pay is not its level, but its lack of correlation with performance.

Abstract: The 2006 midterm elections were nothing short of stunning. Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress. More surprising than Democratic gains in the House were their gains in the Senate. In order to achieve a majority in the Senate the Democrats needed to reelect all of their incumbents and elect Democrats in three out of four competitive states, all of which had supported George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential elections (Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, and Virginia). Riding a wave of public discontent associated with the president's Iraq War policy, Democrats beat incumbents in Missouri, Montana, and Virginia to take a slim one-seat majority in the Senate. Democrats organized the Senate in the 110 th Congress, with the support of two independents—Bernie Sanders (VT) and Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman (CT). The authors thank Doug Harris for encouraging us to pursue this project and including it in the forum. Our analysis benefits from our separate experiences as participant-observers in the Senate. While a Presidential Management Intern, Frisch served in the Senate Office of Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ); Kelly was an APSA Congressional Fellow and worked for the Senate Democratic Leadership in the Democratic Policy Committee. nominate data used in this paper are made available by Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal at www.voteview.com . Data on campaign contributions were supplied by Jamie Pimlott to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.

Abstract: In the shareholder governance area, one of the most contentious issues concerns the right of shareholders to nominate directors and include the nominees in management's proxy statement. This article examines the conflict in the context of the growing importance of independent directors. State law and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have increasingly relied upon independent directors to protect shareholders and ensure the integrity of the financial disclosure process. Yet because of weak definitions and problems of enforcement, these directors are often not truly independent. One method of addressing these concerns is to allow shareholders to nominate and elect their own candidates. They have the power to nominate under state law but the authority has largely been emasculated by the need to solicit proxies, an expensive and time consuming process. The SEC has from time to time sought, always unsuccessfully, to amend the rules to allow shareholders some access to the company's proxy statement for their nominees, with the first effort taking place in 1942. The article contains a comprehensive analysis of these efforts, including the most recent iteration in 2007 when the Commission reaffirmed its traditional position that shareholders should not have access to the company's proxy statement for nominees. The article takes the position that in an era of activist shareholders, pressure on the SEC to reform its rules will continue to grow. Moreover, continued denial of access will make things worse, leading to efforts by activist shareholders that are more intrusive and more likely to result in contests for the board of directors. The denial of access also leaves in place a serious gap in the disclosure regime for proxy contests. Finally, as the SEC becomes increasingly involved in the corporate governance process, a role it has not historically had to consider, the denial of access raises questions about the agency's willingness to protect the interests of shareholders.

Abstract: The news that "Picking Federal Judges," which I co-authored with Virginia Hettinger and Todd Peppers, was one of the most frequently cited articles published in Political Research Quarterly came as a surprise. While we, of course, thought the article made a significant contribution and were pleased that the reviewers and editor agreed, it seemed an unlikely prospect to win a competition for citations. After all, the article appeared under the designation of a research note, and the focus was on an issue central to a subfield but not to the discipline at large. How then can the scholarly attention given to "Picking Federal Judges" be explained? The impact of the article, I think, can be attributed in some part to external political and intellectual forces. While political science research sometimes seems impervious to current political debates, the controversy surrounding judicial appointments in the Bush administration increased scholarly interest in judicial selection. Likewise, the publication of Sheldon Goldman's (1997) seminal Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt through Reagan contributed to increased scholarly attention to selection of lower federal court judges. The citation count of our article undoubtedly benefited from the resulting increase in publications to which it was relevant However, the benefit of a rising tide of scholarly interest in judicial selection is not sufficient to place our article among the select category of "most cited." As the analysis below indicates, credit for that status appears to be attributable largely to the methodological contribution of the article. In the following essay, I will describe that contribution and survey the reactions of citing authors. The recognition that lower federal courts are important policy makers generated two important and vigorous research programs among judicial scholars: One focused on the process of selecting judges and one focused on the factors influencing their decisions. While these research programs were individually fruitful, few studies prior to our "Picking Federal Judges" had attempted to explore the linkage between the politics and process of selection and the decisions of judges (exceptions were Rowland and Carp 1996; Rowland, Carp, and Stidham 1984; Songer 1982). The principal hindrance to that inquiry was the reliance of scholars on the party of the appointing president as the measure of judicial preferences for lower federal court judges. The party of the appointing president has consistently been linked to judicial behavior, with judges appointed by Democratic presidents more liberal in their decision making than those appointed by Republican presidents. While this result supports the inference that the party that controls the presidency matters in the selection process, it does not tell us how it matters. The problem is one of behavioral equivalency. All three of the causal mechanisms elaborated in Goldman's (1997) selection agendas could result in the judges appointed by Democratic presidents being more liberal than those appointed by Republican presidents. First, Democratic presidents are more liberal than their Republican counterparts, and each may nominate candidates with preferences close to their own (Goldman's "policy" agenda). Second, Democratic political activists are more liberal than Republican activists, and presidents may simply reward activist members of their party with judicial posts (Goldman's "partisan" agenda). Third, presidents may reward their friends with judicial appointments (Goldman's "personal" agenda), and with few exceptions, those friends will also be party activists. Thus, employing the party of the appointing president to measure judicial preferences presents a roadblock to assessing these alternative selection strategies.1 In addition to the problem of behavioral equivalence, the party of the appointing president is, at best, a poor proxy for judicial preferences. …

Abstract: When patients were asked to nominate nurses who had gone the extra mile in providing care, there was a huge response.

Abstract: We stand at an extraordinary moment: never before have so many powerful men wished to be women. For the first time in history, a massive number of male and female voters --18 million in fact -- cast their ballots to nominate a woman, Senator Hillary Clinton, to be President of the United States. Disappointed at Senator Clinton's failure to win the Democratic Party's nomination, many women threatened to bolt the party. Sensing opportunity, the Republican Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, promptly named as his vice-presidential running mate the first woman ever nominated by the Republican Party to a Presidential ticket. And, not to be outdone, the other vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden, with characteristic candor, openly wondered whether his running mate might have been better off choosing a woman.

Abstract: Abstract When the Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York joined with the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, they adopted guidelines that have remained in place ever since. Chairs of the departments are university officers, and they are the ones who nominate new members of the faculty. If a clinical department is involved, the person has two titles, one at the university and the other in the hospital. For instance, an assistant professor of neurology in the medical school is an assistant attending neurologist in the hospital. In the medical school, Tracy Putnam’s title was professor of neurology. At Presbyterian Hospital, he was director of two separate services, Neurology and Neurosurgery. He held these positions with “tenure,” which ordinarily means that he could not be forced to relinquish his positions without cause. Tenure was designed to protect the right of university professors to speak and write without fear of being fired for expressing unpopular views. Tenure is granted by the university, not the hospital. It is a promise to pay a salary if other sources are lost but has never been tested at Columbia as far as the author knows.