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Objective. Recent studies of the impact of black elite electoral success on the system-supporting attitudes of black citizens have yielded mixed, but generally unimpressive, empirical results. We extend this limited research by examining the effects of the presence of black judicial officials on public attitudes toward a state judicial system. Methods. We employ data from a telephone survey of citizens in Mississippi and develop multivariate models to test for the effects of black judges on citizens' evaluations of the fairness of judges, equity in sentences, and overall impartiality of the state judicial system. Results. We find no systematic evidence that the election of black judicial officials ameliorates the suspicions of the black public regarding the fairness of the state courts. Conclusions. Our findings are in line with other recent studies on the limited effects of black elite electoral success on the attitudes of the black public and generally support a ''political reality'' model of political trust rather than an ''empowerment model.''

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Analysis of data from a 1988 survey of presidential parties demonstrates that campaign leaders are better understood as true believers than as either representatives or vote maximizers. Analysis of leaders' attitudes reveals four issue groups in both the Republican and Democratic parties. The dominant coalition in the Republican party is slightly more conservative, and that in the Democratic party is slightly more liberal, than the party median. Comparison with similar 1972 data shows stable patterns of issue advocacy and intraparty cohesion over this time period but somewhat increased issue distance between the parties in 1988.

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As political scientists, we spend much time teaching and doing scholarly research, and more time than we may wish to remember on university committees. However, just as many of us believe that teaching and research are not fundamentally different activities, we also need not use fundamentally different standards of inference when studying government, policy, and politics than when participating in the governance of departments and universities. In this article, we describe our attempts to bring somewhat more systematic methods to the process and policies of graduate admissions.We had a role in the graduate admissions process at the Department of Government at Harvard University at different times over the past half-decade. We conducted a study of the admissions committee's policies and attempted to bring some of the modern methods of statistical inference, common in political science research, to the task of choosing among applicants to our graduate program. We report here our experience, our statistical studies, and our improvements to the process, as well as a variety of information that may be of use to scholars and administrators at other universities in similar circumstances.As political scientists, we spend much time teaching and doing scholarly research, and more time than we may wish to remember on university committees. However, just as many of us believe that teaching and research are not fundamentally different activities, we also need not use fundamentally different standards of inference when studying government, policy, and politics than when participating in the governance of departments and universities. In this article, we describe our attempts to bring somewhat more systematic methods to the process and policies of graduate admissions.We had a role in the graduate admissions process at the Department of Government at Harvard University at different times over the past half-decade. We conducted a study of the admissions committee's policies and attempted to bring some of the modern methods of statistical inference, common in political science research, to the task of choosing among applicants to our graduate program. We report here our experience, our statistical studies, and our improvements to the process, as well as a variety of information that may be of use to scholars and administrators at other universities in similar circumstances.Admissions committee decisions represent an interesting combination of judgments based on quantitative and qualitative information. Until our changes, virtually all decisions were made using only qualitative (or "clinical") methods, even though some of the data on applicants were quantitative, such as grades and standardized test scores. We speculated that this pointed to an inefficiency in our admissions process since "a search of the literature fails to reveal any studies in which clinical judgment has been shown to be superior to statistical prediction when both are based on the same codable input variables" (Dawes 1982, 394). Because some of the information...