Abstract: Academics and political practitioners alike have long concerned themselves with the representativeness of primary electorates. Hoping to moderate the ideological extremity of primary voters, state parties have increasingly adopted more open primary eligibility rules. This article explores the extent to which open and modified-open primaries actually attract a more representative electorate than their closed counterparts. Using state-level exit poll data from 1988 through 2000, we compare the ideological, age, and income representation of primary electorates with general election voters. We find that open primaries result in the ideological convergence of the parties’ primary electorates, although the extent of this convergence is contingent upon the candidate choices within individual election years. Notably, open primaries are responsible for the inclusion of younger participants in both parties’ primaries. While reformed primary structure may weaken party control over the nomination process, it clearly ...

Abstract: Prior research on the media’s portrayal of female candidates in comparison to male candidates has indicated that differences do exist, although most studies have focused on general election races of senate candidates. This study analyzed the media’s portrayal of candidates in mixed-gender gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races through a comparison of primary coverage to general election coverage in 2000. The study relied on content analyses of more than 1,200 articles from major newspapers to understand how female and male candidates might be framed differently when running for their party’s nomination as opposed to during the general election. The findings suggest that although the coverage from the primaries to the general election was relatively consistent across most categories of analysis, female candidates continue to face some stereotypical biases in the news coverage of their campaigns.

Abstract: We study the results of elections of Fellows of the Econometric Society. We aremotivated largely by the question of whether these elections are “fair,” where our defini-tion of fairness is that votes are based solely on the quality of the candidates. If so, thenconditional on quality other characteristics of the candidates (such as geographic locationor subspecialty) should not influence the probability of election. We find that, conditionalon a number of measures of the quality of the candidates, other characteristics do sig-nificantly predict election. For example, an Australian econometrician is less likely to beelected than a North America-based economic theorist. This is true whether or not wecontrol for quality measures.One might object that even fully informed individuals may differ in their assessment ofquality, and that neither the voters nor the authors of this study are fully informed aboutcandidates’ quality. This is true in any study of the impact of ascriptive characteristics onoutcomes. We discuss various interpretations of our findings in the conclusion, but readersmust draw their own conclusions about what the results imply about the roles of qualityand fairness in this electoral process.1 the electoral institutionMost members of the economics profession consider election as a Fellow as an honor.It recognizes prior professional achievements (within what are the more technical areasof economics). There are roughly 500 living Fellows. Names are placed on the ballot inone of two ways: (i) by the Nominating Committee of the Society, or (ii) by petition ofat least three members (who need not be but usually are current Fellows). The ballotcontains the candidate’s name and current affiliation; a list of at most six publications; ashort statement of the candidate’s contribution to economics; and an indication of whetherthe nomination was by Committee or by endorsers and, if the latter (from 1990 through2000), the names of all the endorsers. The ballot deadline is April 30.The electorate, dues-paying current Fellows, receive the ballot in early autumn alongwith the nomination form for each candidate, mark their ballots, and return them tothe Society’s office. Results are announced in December. Names on the ballot are inalphabetical order, with a different starting point in each annual election. Voters checkthe names of individuals whom they wish to be elected. A candidate is elected who isapproved on at least 30 percent of the ballots returned. (Typically about half the eligibleFellows cast votes.) Losing candidates can be nominated in later years by either of thetwo methods, but the process must be undertaken de novo.

Abstract: president of the Academy and to invite me to run for the position. I told him I would make a decision about whether or not to accept the nomination the same way I make most serious decisions. That is, I would have a dream about it and work with the dream, and then, depending on how the work with the dream came out, either accept the nomination or not. I realize that working with dreams probably is not the primary way many of us in the Academy make decisions. However, this approach had worked effectively for me in the past, so it seemed worth trying. Sure enough, a couple of nights later I dreamed that I went shopping for shoes with Deborah Ancona (Figure 1), who is a professor of management at MIT's Sloan School of Management. The shoe store we were going to was up on the roof of a tall apartment building (Figure 2). And this apartment building, in turn, was next to an even larger warehouse owned by the parents of some of my students (Figure 3). I was sure this shoe store would not have shoes that

Abstract: Foreword - Pat Schroeder. The White House: The Ultimate Prize - the Editors. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL EQUALITY. Breaking the Glass Ceiling - M.J. Skidmore. Paving the Way: The Work of the Women's Movement - A.N. Costain. Changing the Climate of Expectations - E. Falk and K. Hall Jamieson. Profile: Shirley Chisholm, Blazing Trails. THE CAMPAIGN. Obtaining the Nomination: The Role of Parties - M. Haussman. Fundraising Issues for Female Candidates - V.A. Farrar-Myers. Communication on the Way to the White House - D. Bystrom. Public Discourse - C.L. Bower. Profile: Pat Schroeder, The Campaign that Wasn't. THE MEDIA, VOTERS, AND PUBLIC OPINION. Media Coverage of Campaign Firsts - D.J. Heith. Is America Ready for a Woman President? - C. Kennedy. Gender, Race, and the Oval Office - A. Gordon and J. Miller. Profile: Geraldine Ferraro, Media Coverage of History in the Making. GOVERNING. Leadership: Governance from a Woman's Perspective - L. Cox Han. A Female Leader for the Free World: Foreign Policy Issues - T. Lansford. Confronting the Myths: A Question of National Security - J. Davis. Profile: Elizabeth Dole, Executive Leadership. CONCLUSION. Madam President: Sooner or Later? - K. O'Connor.

Abstract: A recent political anthropology argues that the character of Canadian parties' constituency election campaigns is largely determined by the nature of their local associations' nomination politics, ...

Abstract: We consider a model of political competition among two ideological parties who are uncertain about the distribution of voters. The distinguishing feature of the model is that parties can delegate electoral decisions to candidates by nomination. It is shown that if the credible platform commitments of the candidates is feasible, then at least one of the parties nominates in equilibrium to a candidate who has an ideology that is more radical than the delegating party's ideology. In a variety of circumstances, this, in turn, yields a polarization of equilibrium policy choices of the candidates. It is thus argued formally here that strategic nomination of the candidates may well be one of the major reasons behind the well documented observation that the platforms associated with the political parties in two-party democracies are often surprisingly polarized.

Abstract: growth of television, allowed candidates to appeal directly to voters to build support in the primaries. Estes Kefauver, for example, utilized the new influence of television to enhance his standing and favorability leading up to the 1952 Democratic Convention, even though rules allowed party leaders to deprive him of the nomination. In the 2004 campaign, the rules allow voters to determine the nominee. The question for outsider candidates is whether or not the Internet will help them obtain the resources necessary to attract voters’ support. We examine this question in three ways. First, are there differences between voters who use the web and those who do not that could have implications for these candidates’ ability to build support? Second, how extensively do these voters use the web to obtain information about candidates? Finally, does the use of the web to raise funds favor some candidates over others? We conclude the paper with a short discussion of our findings and their implications for the 2004 race.

Abstract: Accuracy and comprehensibility are two important criteria when developing decision support systems for credit scoring. In this paper, we focus on the second criterion and propose the use of decision tables as an alternative knowledge visualisation formalism which lends itself very well to building intelligent and user-friendly credit scoring systems. Starting from a set of propositional if-then rules extracted by a neural network rule extraction algorithm, we construct decision tables and demonstrate their efficiency and user-friendliness for two real-life credit scoring cases.

Abstract: Over time, the Senate has developed a series of procedures to deal with the concerns of its Members on nominations. First is the custom of senatorial courtesy, whereby Senators from the same party as the President might influence a nomination or kill it by objecting to it. This tradition has not always been absolute, but it has allowed Senators to play a fairly large role, particularly in the selection of nominees within a Senator’s home state, such as for district court judgeships.

Abstract: One of the common generalizations about presidential elections is that incumbents win their political party's nomination if they seek it (David et al. 1960, 67; Keech and Matthews 1976, ch. 2; Epstein 1978, 178; Abramson et al. 1987). Though renomination challengers have not defeated an incumbent in over 100 years, several have generated significant attention and public support. (1) Most notable are Theodore Roosevelt's challenge to William H. Taft (1912), Ronald Reagan's challenge to Gerald Ford (1976), and Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter (1980). Lesser challenges include Hiram Johnson against Calvin Coolidge (1924), Joseph France against Herbert Hoover (1932), George Wallace against Lyndon Johnson (1964), and Pat Buchanan's challenge to George Bush (1992). Harry Truman also faced opposition to his nomination from southern Democrats in 1948, though no serious alternative emerged during the primaries. Truman (1952) and Johnson (1968) chose not to seek reelection, decisions that may have been influenced in part by the strength of other candidates in the New Hampshire primary (Keech and Matthews 1976, 45-51). (2) Since 1912, only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton were essentially unchallenged in their renomination bids. While incumbents prevailed in every case, it is worth asking when and why candidates challenge incumbent presidents, and why some challenges attract more support than others. Renomination challenges correlate strongly with the president's chances in the general election. In the last 100 years, five of the six most serious renomination challenges preceded the president's defeat in the general election. Presidents who faced no or only weak renomination challenges won reelection, typically by a landslide. Whether renomination challenges affect or reflect a president's chances in the general election is a matter of debate. Crotty and Jackson (1985, 205-06) characterize renomination challenges as increasing the likelihood of defeat in the general election. Mayer (1996b, 58-60) argues that presidents face renomination challenges when they are already likely to lose the general election. I address this debate by investigating the circumstances in which different kinds of candidates enter the race. Despite their frequency and apparent significance, we know relatively little about when and why renomination challenges occur. Key (1964, 399) recognized the incidence of renomination challenges, but dismissed them as "revolts by noisy dissident factions within the parties." Though Keech and Matthews (1976, ch. 2) offered a detailed analysis, they excluded the most significant renomination challenges. (3) Abramson, Aldrich, and Rhode (1987) concluded that senators rarely challenge incumbents, but their theory does not explain why senators were the most frequent renomination challengers in the 20th century. (4) Crotty and Jackson (1985, 205-06) recognized that incumbents generally lose their reelection bids after facing a renomination challenge, but they did not address why incumbents are challenged. All of these studies discuss the difficulties of defeating an incumbent; none explain when and why presidents face renomination challenges in the first place. Mayer (1996b, 46, 58-60) comes closest to providing an explanation when he observed that incumbents who are popular with their party members tend to be renominated with ease, while those who are not face a rocky reception. I agree with Mayer that renomination challenges depend on party members' evaluations of the incumbent's performance, but argue that renomination challenges are more complex. First, whether a challenger attracts support depends on party members' opinion of the president's performance and the characteristics and strategies of the candidates who pose an alternative to the president. Second, in contrast to Mayer (1996b), the model leads to the prediction that no, or only a weak candidate will challenge an incumbent when the president's party is considered likely to lose the general election. …

Abstract: This article analyzes recent developments in the village self-government movement (democratic elections, democratic decision making, democratic management, and democratic supervision) in Guangdong in 2002 as a lens through which to view the village self-government movement throughout China. In reviewing changes in both election practices and the anticorruption components of such elections, the article concludes that the new discourse and mechanisms of village self-government, including nomination, voting, and recall procedures, include significant, although gradual and sometimes contradictory, progress towards participatory elections and, to a lesser extent, popular democracy while tending to empower new groups in local politics with the potential to challenge elements of the existing power structure. In addition, the anticorruption elements of this movement, particularly new transparency and accounting practices, incorporate numerous elements of both the Chinese leadership and internal anticorruption exp...

Abstract: With the 2002 midterm elections barely over, serious maneuvering for the important 2004 presidential race is already underway. That contest will feature a popular, but minority, president against a still unknown challenger, set in the context of national security concerns, international tensions and possibly war, a new muscular American foreign policy, and perhaps continued economic weakness. To help students and politically active citizens understand the process and the players, Michael L. Goldstein, a former political science professor at Claremont College, has written a short, uncomplicated guide to show the way from early positioning of candidates through the primaries and conventions to election day. Guide to the 2004 Presidential Election is the perfect resource for all who want to learn more about the grand process the nation follows every four years as voters collectively decide how, and by whom, they want to govern. This short, easy-to-understand volume is an excellent introduction to help students and general library patrons understand the way Americans select the occupant of the highest office in the land. Written in straightforward prose for nonexperts, this book has since the early 1980s helped voters and younger voters-to-be prepare for one of the most important events on the nation's political landscape. Assuming little previous knowledge, Goldstein walks the reader through the context of the election, the preliminaries leading up to the nomination, the actual process of getting the nomination, the full campaign, and the essential issues the winner will confront in office. In the course of this book the author informs and educates about campaign financing, access to the ballot, the media's role, the use of advertising, and other controversial topics in the news. Teaching exercises are included to assist high school instructors and college professors in engaging students and helping them understand the election process. The volume also contains tables to allow students and other readers to look up past events and outcomes that help illuminate the 2004 contest.

Abstract: A method for locking a nomination item in a multi-user distribution scheduling system is provided. At least one nomination item, associated with a voyage, may be created and stored within a database. A lock object, associated with the nomination item, may be created to prevent concurrent modification of the nomination item. The nomination item may be modified and stored within the database, and then the lock object may be deleted.

Abstract: How did George W. Bush and Al Gore come to win the 2000 presidential nominations of America's two major political parties? Of all the dozens or even hundreds of persons who might plausibly have aspired to serve as the nation's forty-third president, how was it that the choice was effectively narrowed down to these two individuals? The thesis of this article is that at least during the nomination phase of the campaign, the 2000 election was pretty much business as usual. Over the past two decades, the presidential nomination process, once widely thought of as an almost uniquely turbulent and unpredictable enterprise, has in fact usually operated in a quite regular and predictable fashion. And while every election has its new wrinkles and novel situations, most of what transpired during the 2000 nomination contests has clear and obvious parallels in the races that preceded them. The analysis in this article thus proceeds along two tracks. In the first place, I attempt to describe and document some of the basic dynamics of the contemporary nomination process. In particular, I focus on the issue of how it is that the process finally settles on a candidate: how and why it is that one candidate rather than another finally wins the nomination. With that as background, I then examine the particular circumstances of 2000, showing how much of that election was simply the latest remake of a quite familiar plotline but also highlighting those aspects of the 2000 campaign that genuinely were exceptional. An Initial Model The starting point for this analysis is a nomination forecasting model that I first developed almost ten years ago. (1) Though presidential nomination races often seemed to be chaotic and unpredictable, there were, I argued, two indicators, both available before any of the primaries and caucuses had taken place, that correctly predicted which candidate would win his party's presidential nomination in six of the past seven contested nomination races. (2) The first of these indicators was the candidates' relative standing in polls of the national party electorate. Well before any of the national convention delegates are actually selected-in fact, quite soon after the conclusion of the previous presidential election-pollsters regularly ask national samples of Democrats and Republicans whom they would like to see nominated as their parties' candidate for president. As shown in Table 1, if one focuses on the last poll taken before the start of delegate selection activities--meaning, in most years, the last poll before the Iowa caucuses--the candidate leading in that poll went on to win the nomination in six of the seven contested nomination races held between 1980 and 1992. The second indicator was the candidates' relative success in raising money. Under the campaign finance laws enacted in 1974, every active presidential candidate is required to make periodic reports to the Federal Election Commission indicating how much money he or she has raised and spent for the campaign. As is also shown in Table 1, the leading money raiser during the preprimary campaign--more precisely, the candidate who had raised the largest amount of money by December 31 of the year before the election--went on to win the nomination in six of seven cases. Since that article was published, the country has seen three contested presidential nomination races, and both indicators worked perfectly in every case. The relevant data for the 2000 election are shown in Table 2. On the Democratic side, Al Gore had a large lead over Bill Bradley in the polls; Gore was also his party's leading preelection year fund-raiser, though by a surprisingly narrow margin. As for George Bush, to say that he was the Republican front-runner in 2000 is a distinct understatement. In fact, Bush had perhaps the most successful invisible primary season in the modern history of presidential elections. The most publicized measure of his success was his fund-raising. …

Abstract: Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, known for being a liberal First Amendment absolutist and a courageous defender of individual freedom, is considered one of the best justices ever to serve on the nation's high court. This essay examines the events surrounding Justice Black's controversial nomination to the Supreme Court, focusing on his nationally broadcast radio address on October 1, 1937, to answer charges that the then Alabama Senator was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Utilizing archival research from both the Franklin Roosevelt and Hugo Black papers, the analysis focuses on how Black's rhetorical philosophy and his adaptation to multiple audiences resulted in a remarkable "minimalist" address that, despite first impressions, ultimately contributed to his success in pacifying the situation.

Abstract: INTRODUCTION This essay provides an overview of the federal judicial nomination and confirmation processes from the perspective of a former Clinton administration attorney involved in the judicial selection process from 1997 to 2001. It then focuses on judicial appointments to the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and the Ninth Circuits to illustrate the complex political and historical dynamics of appellate appointments during the divided-government phase of the Clinton presidency, when the legislative and executive branches were controlled by opposing parties. This essay is intended to provide practitioners and judges with a better understanding of how the judicial appointment process functions, and to add a participant observer account to more detached scholarly analyses of the process. THE JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT PROCESS Oliver Wendell Holmes's observation that the life of the law is rooted less in logic than in experience (1) applies equally to the judicial appointment process. The interdependent and sometimes competing roles of the legislative and executive branches are described in general terms in the constitutional text, (2) but the inner workings of the nomination and confirmation processes are the product of the gradual accretion of executive and legislative practices and prerogatives developed over time, and with some regional differences. The Executive Branch Presidential administrations have traditionally handled appellate and district court nominations somewhat differently. During the Clinton administration, the White House exerted greater control over the selection of appellate judges, while home-state senators who shared the president's party recommended candidates who served as presumptive nominees for district court vacancies. With the exception of President Carter, who established a merit selection commission system that was all but mandatory for appellate judgeships and recommended for district court vacancies, most modern presidents have adopted this shared system of nomination authority. (3) This essay will focus on the selection of appellate judges. Upon the submission of a resignation or retirement letter from an active appellate judge, members of the administration's judicial selection team, headed by the White House Counsel, developed brief biographical profiles for a list of potential candidates from which a few leading contenders were selected for interviews. Candidate sources included the candidates themselves, home-state Senators, prominent lawyers, government and Democratic party officials from the relevant state, members of the judicial selection team, and federal and state judicial almanacs. There was rarely a shortage of candidates; the term "short list" was a misnomer in jurisdictions with large and talented legal communities. However, on occasion, the selection team reached out to lawyers in the relevant region to solicit additional names to deepen the pool. Consultation with home-state senators was a critical part of the pre-nomination stage of the appointment process. Pursuant to the longstanding tradition of senatorial courtesy, home-state senators from both parties had veto power over the President's judicial nominees from their states, through the "blue-slip" policy. Following the nomination of a candidate, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair distributed a blue form to each home-state senator seeking approval of the nominee as a prerequisite to scheduling a confirmation hearing. Failure to return a blue slip, or the return of a blue slip beating an indication that a senator opposed the nomination, would doom a nominee's chances of confirmation. Consequently, pre-nomination consultation with a prospective nominee's home-state senators was an essential, if time-consuming, part of the judicial selection team's work. During the Clinton presidency, consultation ranged from merely notifying home-state senators of a nominee's identity to the selection of a consensus candidate approved in advance by home-state senators as well as the President. …

Abstract: The New Hampshire Primary and the Nomination Process The Environment: New Hampshire Voters and the Politics of Factions The Primary Campaigns, 1968-80 The Primary Campaigns, 1984-92 The 2000 Primary The Media Environment Primary Lessons

Abstract: In August 1999, as primaries for the millennial presidential election geared up, Republican frontrunner George W. Bush, the Texas governor and son of former President George H. Bush, was asked by a reporter about persistent rumors he had used illegal drugs. Questions to presidential aspirants and others seeking the public trust about drug use were not new; indeed, President Clinton added a phrase to the American lexicon when he conceded he had smoked marijuana as a college student "but didn't inhale." When first asked, George W. Bush refused to respond. When it was pointed out that political appointees in his father's administration had been asked questions about past drug use during routine Federal Bureau of Investigation interviews, his campaign offered a conditional denial: No drugs in the past 25 years. When pressed later on the drug issue, he responded obliquely, "I've told the people of this country that, over 20 years ago, I made some mistakes when I was younger. I've learned from those mistakes." Later that day, the candidate dug in: "What you've just heard from me is my answer through the course of the campaign."1George W. Bush had drawn a line in the sand. But the nagging question remains: What are the proper bounds of journalistic inquiry into candidate's private lives on matters not clearly related to their past or future performance as public servants? There was a time in recent decades when certain private matters were considered beyond the scope of mainstream journalism, despite numerous earlier episodes of salacious press accounts. During the nation's early years, press accounts of politicians' private matters abounded. Thomas Jefferson's alleged relationship with a Monticello slave was widely publicized by journalist James Callender, who had previously written about Alexander Hamilton's extramarital affair. In 1884, the Evening Telegraph in Buffalo, N.Y., alleged that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock. The press also dogged Cleveland relentlessly during his wedding ceremony to a woman half his age and also during their honeymoon.2 But as the press became more professional as the 20th century unfolded, coverage shifted away from personal affairs to more serious matters. During the terms of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a socalled "gentleman's agreement" was in effect, rendering most private behavior out of bounds. Reporters knew about Roosevelt's affection for Lucy Mercer, Dwight D. Eisenhower's relationship with aide Kay Summersby and John F. Kennedy's tryst with Judith Exner, yet each went unreported by mainstream journalists.3 Media commentator Thomas Griffith noted:For years there was a sort of gentleman's agreement among reporters who covered public figures, and certain matters were off limits. A number of presidents, from Warren Harding to Franklin D. Roosevelt through John F. Kennedy, were widely known to have conducted extramarital affairs, or suspected of it. Yet reporters for the most part avoided the subject in print.4Those self-imposed limits governing private affairs dramatically changed in May 1987 after The Miami Herald reported on its front page that Gary Hart, a leading contender for the 1988 Democratic nomination, had spent the night in Washington with a young Miami model. The candidate, who was married, denied having a sexual relationship. Ethical sirens sounded and The Herald was at first soundly criticized by its news media peers and the public. A Gallup Poll found that 69 percent of respondents in a national survey believed The Herald went too far and 86 percent said the news media should stick to the candidates' qualifications and positions on issues.5 But as the issue shifted from extramarital sex to personal judgment, the criticism also shifted as other news media reported and re-reported the story.6 Then-Sen. Robert Dole, himself a presidential hopeful before the Hart affair, summed up the privacy issue before a meeting of newspaper publishers not long after the story broke: "Once you stand up and say you're going to be a candidate for president, all bets are off. …

Abstract: As a pedagogical experiment, the students in a graduate seminar set out to produce a miniature edition of some Dickinson poems, annotated in detail with the help of library and Web resources. However, Dickinson's language bears only a nominal relation to the normative languages of nineteenth-century New England culture, and that indeterminacy of reference worked against the class's efforts to find stable definitions for her words. Dickinson's lines "Not unto nomination / The Cherabim reveal" (Fr1243) have to be taken as their own warning against being too far understood.

Abstract: 1960s and 1970s; so did the strength of partisan attachments, but to a lesser extent; and the proportion of self-identified independents in the electorate increased. Split-ticket voting became more prevalent. Party organizations also suffered as a result of reforms in the nomination process. With the electronic media, principally television, gradually replacing the parties as a major link to voters, campaigns and elections became more candidate-centered. Within the government, Congress decentralized power, evolving from a standing committee to a standing subcommittee system. The ability of its leadership to dictate policy outcomes also declined as did party unity. Presidents began to exercise more initiative in creating and maintaining issue-based coalitions across party lines. The weakening of the Democrats' status as majority party provided opportunities for Republicans to win the presidency, opportunities which they lacked in the aftermath of Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. With the Democrats re-

Abstract: The Principles of"Protection first, e xp loitation second","social exploitation equals economical exploitati on","preparing for long term work and enterprising acti vely" have been proposed for the nominations of cultural and natural properties to the World Heritage List.Identification, programming and protection of potent ial World Heritage are emphasized.On the base of principles and emphases,the str ategical target was developed of"striving for a new success of nomination to th e world Heritage List"and"achieving the equilibristic distribution".The sugge stions of"joint nomination of the Silk Road by all the countries along the Road ","joint nomination of Chinese sect of the Silk Road by all provinces along C hi nese sect of the Road" and "the nomination of Maijishan mountain by Gansu prov ince itself" have been presented and compared with each other,which would be u seful to the preparations for nominations to the World Heritage List for Cultura l and Natural Properties in Gansu Province.

Abstract: Professors Paul R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde discuss the major reform introduced by the Democratic Party for its 2004 presidential nomination contest–rules that will lead to a large number of delegates being chosen early in the delegate selection window. They show that the 2004 contest will be more “front-loaded” than any contest since the Democrats introduced a delegate selection “window” in 1980. They argue that these rules, along with the large field of Democratic contenders, make it more likely that no clear winner will emerge before the Democratic Party nomination convention.

Abstract: It is an honor for me to be with you at the 118th commencement of the Lewis & Clark Law School here in Portland, Oregon (1) Honored though I am, it is nevertheless hard for me to believe, as I stand before you on this most joyous occasion, that forty years have passed since I sat where you are now sitting While some of you may be able to envision yourselves forty years hence, you must believe me when I tell you that, on my graduation day, I had no inkling that I would be where I am now And having just attended my own fortieth law school reunion, I can assure you that some of my classmates were only too eager to remind me that they could not believe that I had become a federal judge, either Perhaps among your graduating class there is a future federal judge or two Serving the nation in such a capacity is a worthy ambition, to be sure I fear, however, that many lawyers who would otherwise welcome such an opportunity may feel compelled to decline it when faced with the prospect of enduring what has become--at least at the appellate level--an increasingly acrimonious Senate confirmation process My own nomination was blessedly free of partisan strife Early on the morning of August 8, 1986, the telephone rang at my home, and my wife Maura answered "It's for you," she shouted upstairs, where I was in the shower "I think it's the press," she added "Tell them I'll call back," I said But, the caller persisted "The Pres-i-dent of the United States is calling" Needless to say, I threw a towel around myself and picked up the bedroom phone to hear President Ronald Reagan himself graciously ask if he had my permission to sign some papers on his desk Three days later, my nomination arrived in the Senate, which held a hearing less than a month after that, on September 10 The hearing lasted all of twenty minutes and two weeks later, on September 25, Senator Mark Hatfield called me at home to tell me that I had been unanimously confirmed My confirmation experience--all six weeks of it--contrasts sharply with those of my Ninth Circuit colleagues, Judges Richard Paez, Willy Fletcher, and Marsha Berzon, who endured protracted, years-long confirmation battles (2) Similar confirmation ordeals are playing out as I speak (3) One wonders what the Founders would have thought of the increasing intensity with which both parties have waged their respective confirmation rights After all, it was Alexander Hamilton who famously wrote, more than two centuries ago, in Federalist No 78, that "the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them" (4) If, as Hamilton believed, the courts were the "least dangerous" branch, then why the pitched battles over nominations to the supposedly un-dangerous courts? The easy answer, of course, is that, while the federal courts may lack the power to "annoy or injure" "the political rights of the Constitution," they nevertheless have come to possess an uncanny knack for annoying large portions of the population A recent example of this curious judicial tendency is my own court's controversial decision in Newdow v United States Congress, in which a bare majority of a three-judge panel declared unconstitutional the practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools (5) Insulated as we federal judges are from direct popular influence--the Founders saw to that by bestowing life tenure upon us and by preventing Congress from reducing judicial salaries (6)--the people and their elected representatives have sought to exert what influence they can The results have ranged from the symbolic--the "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers of the 1960s come to mind--to the legislative In the wake of the Newdow decision, for example, at least one congressman has threatened to introduce a bill to strip federal …

Abstract: Elections to Seanad Eireann, the upper house of the Irish parliament, take place well out of the public eye and have been aptly described as ‘subterranean’.1 The nomination process is obscure, the electorate is small, and the body that emerges rarely captures the news agenda. Nevertheless, Seanad elections are sometimes regarded as the most hard-fought Irish elections of all. They are in every sense a professional politicians’ election, with most of the seats filled by the votes of elected representatives.

Abstract: Most studies characterize political party organizations as having little impact in the selection of the presidential nominees since the McGovern-Frazier reforms. The circumstances that gave rise to this minimalist view, however, have changed. Front-loading of the primary schedule, rising campaign costs, declining media coverage, and adaptive behavior by presidential candidates have lessened the uncertainty of the primary campaign as the front-runner is increasingly likely to gain the nomination. The pre-primary competition is now the crucial stage of the presidential nominating campaign. One of the central questions about presidential nomination campaigns is who or what determines which candidate will emerge as the front-runner during the pre-primary period? This paper looks at the role of party elites in this regard. My thesis is that the extent to which party and elected officials coalesce around a single candidate, determines whether the primary campaign will be characterized by a clear frontrunner or divided among a more competitive field. Using newspaper reports of endorsements from all 50 states, I analyze candidate endorsements by party and elected officials in the preprimary campaigns from 1992 to 2000. The results support the idea that party elites can influence which candidate emerges as the front-runner during the pre-primary season. Republican elites appear to be more potent than Democratic elites, who tend to endorse candidates later and be less unified around a single candidate. Additional findings are reported regarding the ideological positions of endorsing party officials.