Abstract: During a January 9, 2009, press conference (1) announcing members of his national security team, President-elect Barack Obama responded to this question from Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News: "Will you be appointing big donors in the time-honored tradition to foreign embassies to serve as ambassadorships? Or will you draw solely from the ranks of career foreign service?" He responded as follows: "Are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some. ... I think it would be ... disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven't come through ... the ranks of the civil service." While he did not provide a definitive yes or no regarding the prospect of appointing big donors, the president-elect gave strong hints that he would do so, following the well-trod path of other chief executives before him. Indeed, in the ensuing months, when making his nominations to the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Denmark, he would nominate individuals who had either bundled or donated at least $100,000 to his campaign or inauguration. (2) Additionally, he would nominate former six-term Democratic congressman Timothy Roemer to be his ambassador to India and David Huebner--general counsel for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation--to be his ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa; while neither had contributed significant amounts to President Obama's campaign, they both provided political assistance in other ways. Representative Roemer--who was also a member of the 9/11 Commission---endorsed then candidate Obama during the Democratic primary and was a strong advocate of his foreign policy; the nomination of the openly gay Huebner was perceived as a gesture to shore up support within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. (3) Worrying to many in the media was that none of aforementioned had prior diplomatic experience; indeed, while relatively rare, scandals caused by ambassadors without prior diplomatic experience had been detrimental to American interests in the past. For example, during his tenure as President Richard Nixon's ambassador to Jamaica, Vincent de Roulet--who had no previous diplomatic experience, but donated $75,000 to President Nixon's reelection campaign--publicly referred to Jamaican locals as idiots and children, closed off the American embassy's restrooms to Jamaican visa applicants, offered to improperly support one candidate in a national election in return for a promise to refrain from nationalizing the U.S.-owned bauxite industry, and was eventually declared persona non grata by the Jamaican government and expelled from the country; this move was followed by the tripling of Jamaican taxes and royalties on purchases made by American companies. (4) Overall, critics at home and abroad lambasted President Obama's decisions as nothing but the perpetuation of the politics of patronage, to the possible detriment of American interests abroad. (5) Indeed, over the course of his first term, approximately one-quarter of all his nominees for ambassadorships and other chiefs of mission to foreign states would begin their tenure without previous Foreign Service experience; four of them--his ambassadors to Malta, Luxembourg, Kenya, and the Bahamas--resigned after the State Department's Office of the Inspector General issued reports alleging neglect and the fostering of dysfunction and low staff morale. (6) However, as Figure (1) illustrates, the proportion of nonprofessional ambassadorial appointments is roughly in line with prior presidents, if not reflective of a larger trend toward a greater emphasis on formal Foreign Service experience. (7) Nonetheless, despite their prevalence, nonprofessional ambassadors are not uniformly distributed, as certain countries are more attractive postings than others. Figure 2 displays several regional patterns; nonprofessional appointments are common in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Japan, Canada, and the Caribbean. …

Abstract: This study examines how political party organizations shape campaign participation in advanced industrialized parliamentary democracies. In some parties, members directly nominate candidates to run for parliament. In others, selection is the sole responsibility of the party leadership. Two countervailing arguments are presented: one stating that member participation will increase incentives to get involved in campaigns; the other contending that democratic nominations expose internal party divisions and depress participation. The hypotheses are tested using cross-national election surveys and original candidate selection data. Participation is measured in two ways: campaign activity and political persuasion. The results suggest that partisans are more likely to participate when leaders, rather than members, select candidates. In addition, the article examines the role of party ideology, size, incumbency, and heterogeneity in shaping participation.

Abstract: Taking advantage of a quasi-experimental setting and drawing upon analysis of electoral results and a survey of voters, this article explores the political costs of reform through the example of the 2009 local elections in Denmark. The article finds that the local parties of mayors were punished at the polls for implementing municipal amalgamations decided by the central government. However, the effect on the mayoral parties’ electoral result is more indirect than direct. Analyses of the electoral results demonstrates that the political parties holding the mayoralty in times of amalgamations tend to nominate very tenured mayors as candidates, thereby missing the positive first-term incumbency effect, which a new mayor could have acquired. And analyses of a survey of voters demonstrates higher levels of dissatisfaction with the municipal service in amalgamated municipalities, leading to a higher cost of ruling for mayoral parties which have led the implementation of an amalgamation.

Abstract: Social identity voting (SIV) is a new model of voting behavior based on the principles of social identity theory. We introduce and use this model to analyze roll call votes for the 35th through 112th US Congresses. Comparing out-of-sample accuracy of SIV and Poole and Rosenthal’s Weighted NOMINAL Three-step Estimation (W-NOMINATE), we find that SIV performs better than the one- or two-dimensional W-NOMINATE model and that generally, W-NOMINATE needs up to 10 dimensions to produce accuracy comparable to that of SIV. The differences between SIV and W-NOMINATE are further clarified in three case studies: first, a longitudinal examination of all Congresses; second, an analysis of the 112th House of Representatives; and third, a study of the Tea Party caucus in the 112th House of Representatives. Each study sheds new light on the potential motivations driving voting behavior, supporting our assertion that the SIV and W-NOMINATE models provide two distinct approaches to understanding voting records. SIV, with its emphasis on political identity derived from group membership, expresses combinations of individual and group preferences which contribute to legislators’ ideological classifications.

Abstract: In this study, we assess whether Blacks and/or Latinos are more likely to identify with political parties that nominate a U.S. House candidate who shares their race/ethnicity using the 2010 Coopera...

Abstract: In recent years, commentators have complained about what they regard as an increasingly dysfunctional confirmation process for judges and high-ranking executive officials, and the proper role for the Senate in the confirmation process has been much debated. This Article suggests that confirmations have been contentious throughout American history, and that the focus on ideological issues in today’s confirmation proceedings is not anomalous. Indeed, historically, both Republicans and Democrats have used the confirmation process to delay or oppose nominations when the President hails from a different political party, and, sometimes, even when the President comes from the same party but there are ideological objections to the nominee. That the appointments process has, at times, been difficult and contentious should come as no great surprise. The Framers of the United States Constitution intentionally created a governmental structure that was more prone to obstructionism than other comparable systems. Relying on concepts like “separation of powers,” and “checks and balances,” the Framers sought to constrain the federal government in ways that would limit the possibilities for governmental abuse. The appointments power reflects this approach. Like many other constitutional powers, it is a shared power. Although the President has the power to nominate Article III judges, as well as ambassadors and “officers,” nominees can only be confirmed with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. By placing the power to appoint in two politically elected entities, the Constitution establishes a system whereby political influences will sometimes have a major impact on the confirmation process. Although contentiousness can arise during any type of nomination, some Supreme Court nominations have been particularly bitter. Both the Senate and the American public have increasingly become aware Copyright © 2015 Russell L. Weaver. † Professor of Law & Distinguished University Scholar, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. WEAVER IN PRINTER FINAL (COMPLETED) (DO NOT DELETE) 5/7/2015 6:32 PM 1718 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 64:1717 that the courts make law and that the political and judicial attitudes of nominees matter. Under such circumstances, the Senate’s inquiry quite naturally goes beyond the simple question of whether a nominee is qualified or unqualified. However, the confirmation process is more difficult today, even for nonjudicial nominees, because of the bitter partisanship that has infected the U.S. political system.

Abstract: The closing of the United States to immigrants is arguably the most economically and socially significant policy shift in American history. The U.S. had virtually open borders until 1879, when the first of a series of federal laws prohibiting or limiting immigration of particular groups was passed. By 1924, immigration had been reduced to a small fraction of the peak in the 1890s. During this time frame, 42 major votes were considered in the House and 31 in the Senate to limit immigration. Using data from the U.S. Congressional record, I explain the policy shift in public choice terms: identifying voting patterns that can be explained by shifts in public and elite opinion, the incentives of policymakers, and changing economic conditions. Explanations of the policy shift from previous scholarship are evaluated in light of roll-call voting data and NOMINATE scores. Using multivariate analysis, I find that Congressional ideology was an important factor in the development of immigration restriction policy, with the most restrictive legislation passed when legislators from the rural South joined a Congressional coalition against immigration.

Abstract: These sentiments, expressed in 1697, might have been articulated by any number of Protestant ministers, in any number of settings across the seventeenth century and, as in this case, with particular force in the years after the Revolution of 1688–9, interpreted readily in terms of the nefarious schemes of ‘popery’ as well as ‘arbitrary government’. In this instance, they were voiced by an Irish-born Presbyterian—but not in Ireland. These Truths in a True Light … Vindicating the Non-conformists were addressed to the ‘Reformed Protestants’ of Barbados by Francis Makemie, whom later generations would nominate the ‘father of American Presbyterianism’. Alongside its well-worn anti-Romanism, Makemie was addressing the profound changes which had swept across the Protestant world of the Stuart kingdoms in 1689–90. If he spoke directly of the legalisation of a form of toleration in England, arguably greater break came with the re-establishment of Presbyterianism in Scotland and with it the recognition that Scotland and England would have legally established, but very distinctly ordered, Protestant churches.2 The implications would colour Makemie’s whole career, and bear directly upon the experience of the community from whom he received his religious formation, the Presbyterians of Ireland.3

Abstract: Every 10 years, states set about redrawing the lines of their Congressional districts. Scholars in political science have long been interested in the strategic behavior and representational outcomes of this process. While majority-minority districts are intended to provide a constraint on strategic party behavior in order to ensure substantive representation of minority interests, researchers have noted a perverse effect that results in potentially less-representative political outcomes. In 2003, Kenneth Shotts, David Lublin, and D. Stephen Voss debated the veracity of the perverse effects claim, but Shotts’ critique was missing a key interaction between partisanship and the liberalizing effect of majority-minority districts. In the course of performing this necessary extension on Shotts’ work, we found that our results have an unexpected, and important, methodological implication for Congress scholars. Specifically, we were unable to replicate his results precisely due to sublte changes in DW-NOMINATE estimates that result from periodic updating of the database. Further-more, after substantially expanding the dataset, we continue to find the same null results and the evidence supporting the interaction is statistically ambiguous. Though these null results do not prove or disprove the perverse-effects hypothesis, they do undermine Shotts’ evidence of a liberalizing effect of majority-minority districting. While we lack sufficient precision to estimate whether majority-minority districting has a positive, negative, or truly no effect on minority representation (and the conditional effect of party control), it is more concerning that small changes to DW-NOMINATE would prevent the replication of these past results, given the abundance of studies that use it to measure legislator ideology.

Abstract: The judicial behavior literature typically assumes that politicians nominate judges on the basis of their ideology. That assumption helps explain studies that show a statistical correlation between the party of the nominating president and the ideological direction of the votes of judges. However, the assumption is too simple. Casual empiricism suggests that politicians, interest groups, and the public care not only about the ideology of judges. They may also care about their competence and political loyalty and about ensuring that the judicial system is diverse. We focus on the role of competence in judicial promotions. We find, however, that presidents do not take much account of competence when promoting judges—despite the fact that there is some, albeit mixed, evidence that the most competent appellate judges were highly competent district judges.

Abstract: Recent scholarship into American political parties argues that the power to nominate presidential candidates has not entirely devolved from the party to voters but retains party influence via a network of allied actors including political consultants. Once party elites coalesce around a preferred candidate, primary voters tend to comply with their will. However, scholarship has not yet shown whether consultants help produce this effect. Consultants, even those with close contractual ties to the party organization, do not behave as this view expects, and they worked for several GOP candidates in 2012, enhancing intraparty competition rather than rallying around the front-runner.

Abstract: The American model of immigration policy making with sole central government authority over the entry of immigrants without direct subnational input has not served subnational US interests well. In particular such a model has been inefficient in meeting labour and population needs in the US states. This article considers the problem of sole central government immigrant entry policy making in the US and examines alternative models from Canada and Australia for adoption in the US context.

Abstract: What kinds of candidates do former rebel groups that transform into political parties recruit to their electoral banner after a civil war? Although there has been a growing literature on the transformation of rebel groups into political parties, there is remarkably little literature on the candidates they recruit to run in elections. Using a unique dataset that codes individual level candidate characteristics, we examine the kinds of candidates that a former rebel group, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), recruited to run in the single-member plurality districts in the first Constituent Assembly Election in 2008 after the end of the Nepalese civil war. In particular, we examine two key questions: Who did the CPN(M) recruit to run under the banner of the party? Where did they nominate different kinds of candidates? The results suggest that the Maoists recruited candidates based on characteristics of the districts, not unlike what would be expected of most parties. Highly placed party officials were nom...