Ambition theory suggests that scholars can understand a good deal about politics by exploring politicians' career goals. In the USA, an enormous literature explains congressional politics by assuming that politicians primarily desire to win re-election. In contrast, although Brazil's institutions appear to encourage incumbency, politicians do not seek to build a career within the legislature. Instead, political ambition focuses on the subnational level. Even while serving in the legislature, Brazilian legislators act strategically to further their future extra-legislative careers by serving as 'ambassadors' of subnational governments. Brazil's federal institutions also affect politicians' electoral prospects and career goals, heightening the importance of subnational interests in the lower chamber of the national legislature. Together, ambition and federalism help explain important dynamics of executive-legislative relations in Brazil. This book's rational-choice institutionalist perspective contributes to the literature on the importance of federalism and subnational politics to understanding national-level politics around the world.

Although observers of Brazilian politics commonly hold that voters reward incumbents for "bringing home the bacon," I provide reasons to question the direct link between pork and electoral success as well as statistical evidence demonstrating the lack of such a link. This generates a puzzle: if pork barreling is ineffective, why do Brazilian deputies spend so much time seeking pork? The answer is that deputies do not trade pork for votes, they trade pork for money: porkbarrel success helps incumbents raise funds from private sector interests that profit from government contracts. In turn, politicians' access to money, not pork, directly affects their electoral prospects. This article provides a new understanding of the electoral connection in Brazil by showing that existing analyses either have overestimated pork's impact or are underdetermined because they have not included measures of campaign finance. The findings should also encourage comparativists interested in pork-barrel politics, clientelism, the personal vote, and campaign behavior more generally to focus attention on the role of money in elections.

Comparative studies of electoral institutions have largely neglected a fundamental characteristic of most of the world's electoral systems: malapportionment. This article provides a method for measuring malapportionment in different types of electoral systems, calculates levels of malapportionment in seventy-eight countries, and employs statistical analysis to explore the correlates of malapportionment in both upper and lower chambers. The analysis shows that the use of single-member districts is associated with higher levels of malapportionment in lower chambers and that federalism and country size account for variation in malapportionment in upper chambers. Furthermore, African and especially Latin American countries tend to have electoral systems that are highly malapportioned. The article concludes by proposing a broad, comparative research agenda that focuses on the origins, evolution and consequences of malapportionment.

T o what extent do the institutions of presidentialism allow voters to hold governments accountable? Powell and Whitten (1993) suggested that voter capacity to sanction is strong when "clarity of government responsibility" for outcomes is clear, and vice versa. I argue that clarity of responsibility functions differently under presidentialism and that presidentialism generates particular forms of accountability. In general, electoral sanctioning is weak in nonconcurrent elections, which do not occur under parliamentarism, but is stronger in concurrent elections. In concurrent executive elections the clarity of responsibility does not attenuate the economy's impact on the vote. Yet in concurrent legislative elections both partisan and institutional variables diffuse responsibility for economic performance. Thus under many common institutional and partisan formats, voters sanction presidents to a greater degree than legislators for the same phenomenon. These findings elucidate the conditions under which we might observe accountability similar to what we find in some parliamentary systems or a more uniquely presidentialist "dual democratic legitimacies" of the kind Linz (1994) imagined.

Do voters reward or punish incumbents for retrospective performance similarly in different democratic regimes? Despite debates on the merits of different regimes, little research has investigated the implications of constitutional design on voters' ability to hold politicians to account. This article shows that regime type determines the way and extent to which elections enable voters to reward or sanction incumbents. These regime effects are separate from and conceptually prior to factors previously identified in the literature on comparative economic voting. Analysis of elections from seventy-five countries reveals that, all else equal, voters have greater potential to hold incumbents to accounts under the separation of powers than under parliamentarism. Moreover, variables particular to separation of powers systems -the electoral cycle in pure presidential systems and instances of cohabitation in semi-presidential systems -affect the relative impact of the attribution of responsibility. The results contribute to ongoing debates about the relative advantages of different constitutional formats for democratic performance.The degree to which voters can hold elected officials to account is a central concern for democratic theory. Most empirical research on electoral accountability has explored a relatively limited set of established democracies, nearly all of which have parliamentary forms of government. However, the 'Third Wave' of democratization has dramatically increased the variety among the world's democratic systems. 1 As of 2002, of the seventy-five democracies with a population greater than one million, thirty-one were parliamentary, while twenty-five were presidential and nineteen were semi-presidential. This relatively new institutional diversity pushes us to re-examine enduring questions about democratic performance: how and to what extent does this variety affect voters' ability to hold governments accountable at the polls? Do particular institutional dynamics reduce or enhance the prospects for electoral accountability? More specifically, do voters reward or punish incumbent governments, presidents and legislators in parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems similarly for retrospective performance, and to the same degree?Little research has explored this question across the world's democracies. This is surprising, for two reasons. First, controversy persists about the relative merits of different democratic regimes. Some of our most prominent scholars disparage presidentialism: for example, Lijphart argues that parliamentarism is superior in terms of the 'quality of

The global regulator CodY controls the expression of dozens of metabolism and virulence genes in the opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus in response to the availability of isoleucine, leucine and valine (ILV), and GTP. Using RNA-Seq transcriptional profiling and partial activity variants, we reveal that S. aureus CodY activity grades metabolic and virulence gene expression as a function of ILV availability, mediating metabolic reorganization and controlling virulence factor production in vitro. Strains lacking CodY regulatory activity produce a PIA-dependent biofilm, but development is restricted under conditions that confer partial CodY activity. CodY regulates the expression of thermonuclease (nuc) via the Sae two-component system, revealing cascading virulence regulation and factor production as CodY activity is reduced. Proteins that mediate the host-pathogen interaction and subvert the immune response are shut off at intermediate levels of CodY activity, while genes coding for enzymes and proteins that extract nutrients from tissue, that kill host cells, and that synthesize amino acids are among the last genes to be de-repressed. We conclude that S. aureus uses CodY to limit host damage to only the most severe starvation conditions, providing insight into one potential mechanism by which S. aureus transitions from a commensal bacterium to an invasive pathogen.

To what extent do party labels influence individuals' policy positions? Much research has examined this question in the United States, where party identification can generate both in-group and out-group pressures to conform to a party's position. However, relatively little research has considered the question's comparative generalizability. We explore the impact of party labels on attitudes in Brazil, a relatively new democracy with a fragmented party system. In such an environment, do parties function as in-groups, out-groups, or neither? We answer this question through two survey experiments, one conducted on a nationally representative sample and another on a convenience sample recruited via Facebook. We find that both in-and out-group cues shape the opinions of identifiers of Brazil's two main parties but that cues have no effect on nonpartisans. Results suggest that party identification can structure attitudes and behavior even in "party-averse" electoral environments. P artisanship is a core heuristic individuals use to make sense of politics. It shapes voters' opinions on a range of issues, motivates engagement in politics, and impacts vote choice. Most of what we know about the nature and impact of party identification (ID) comes from the United States, where the same two parties have competed for over 150 years, and where scholars have found ample support for the idea that source cues can shape public opinion (Goren, Federico, and Kittilson 2009;Greene, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002;Lau and Redlawsk 2006;Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991).Over the last 30 years, new democracies have emerged in nearly every corner of the globe. Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the study of voting behavior in these countries. However, relatively little experimental research has considered whether the core concept of mass partisanship can travel into such different political contexts, particularly where political parties are new and numerous (for an exception, see Barder and Tucker 2012). Miller, and to the anonymous reviewers and editors at AJPS for comments and suggestions. Thanks to Ted Brader for sharing ideas and experiences with partisan cueing experiments. The online surveys were approved by the IRBs of the University of Minnesota (#1110S05602) and Rutgers University (#E12-231). Thanks to Andy Sell in the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts Office of Information Technology for helping implement and manage the online survey. because free and fair elections are a relatively new phenomenon, and as such, partisanship has had less time to develop as predicted-as a function of consistent information parties provide to voters (Fiorina 1981). Moreover, although individuals in established democracies partly inherit their partisan disposition from their parents (Converse 1969;Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009), in new democracies, neither older nor younger citizens have had many opportunities to vote-and in any case the political context may have changed dramatically and rapidly in recent yea...

No abstract