A resurgent debate in the field of judicial politics has been the controversy over which has the greatest effect in decisionmaking: legal or extralegal variables. This study applies the controversy to an arena in which a consistent answer has yet to be found: federal district court reception of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that there was a great deal of variation in compliance, with southern district justices being substantially unwilling to apply the new precedent. Results found here, however, strongly suggest that the legal variable was in fact significant. Moreover, this variable was more important than region or type of case.
An established hypothesis explaining the increased incumbency advantage is that incumbents reaped the benefit of the reduction in partisan identification's influence on the congressional vote. Briefly, the hypothesis maintains that as partisan identification's influence waned incumbent behavior's influence increased. The increased incumbency advantage is then the result of incumbents actively attracting voters whose decision is based less on partisan considerations and more on what incumbents offer. Using the 1972-76 NES panel study, we test this hypothesis by examining incumbent behavior's influence on voters with loosened partisan identification. The results support this premise. The interaction between incumbent behaviors and loosened partisan identifi cation increases the probability of an incumbent vote, attracting loosened challenger party identifiers and retaining loosened incumbent party identifiers. Finally, the results suggest that higher levels of incumbent activity increase the probability of an incumbent vote.
The record of civil rights roll-call votes in the House of Representatives has yet to be systematically explained or predicted. In particular, it is not clear why House members sometimes appear to have a great deal of inde pendence from constituency, but at other times are limited by negative public assessments. I contend that the key is the variation in content of different types of civil rights bills, and construct a categorical scale which rates bills voted on in the House from 1957-1991 according to potential costs (whether actual or perceived) to white Americans. The expectation that an increase in category will result in decreased likelihood of passage, and significantly smaller supporting coalitions, is supported. While par tisanship also emerges as a significant determinant of roll calls, a more complete explanation is arrived at when it is considered in conjunction with the legislative classification variable.
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