Term limits advocates argued that the reform would revitalize the electorate and spur increased voter participation. They suggested two main mechanisms by which term limits would do this: (1) term limits would increase the number of open-seat races, which tend to be more competitive, and the increased competition would inspire more voting, and (2) the removal of entrenched incumbents would inspire more trust and confidence in government, thereby encouraging voter enthusiasm in a more diffuse way, increasing turnout for all races. I evaluate these hypotheses empirically using data from California state legislative races from 1976 to 2004; incorporating a variety of methods, including pooled cross-sectional time-series regression. I find evidence that state legislative term limits not only fail to achieve the reformers' goals, but they, in fact, decrease voter turnout.
Political protests cannot succeed without public support. Extant studies point to weaker average support among ideological conservatives, but researchers have yet to consider the extent to which such apparent ideological asymmetry is (a) an artifact of the particular protest cases that researchers have tended to investigate, and/or (b) conditioned by the precise meaning of “ideological conservatism.” In this investigation, we address these gaps. Specifically, we analyze public perceptions of protest legitimacy after exposing survey respondents to one of a series of experimental treatments that randomize the specific ideological and issue contents of the particular protests under consideration. In iterative models, we observe how political ideology, social dominance orientation and authoritarianism condition the effects associated with these experimental treatments. The data suggest that that the notorious ideological asymmetry that is often associated with support for protests is authentic, but it is also conditioned in important ways by these other factors.
Political science research has long established a list of factors associated with higher levels of political knowledge. Among these are education, income, political attentiveness, voter participation, and age. This analysis, using questions from a 2005 and a 2009 California Field Poll, shows that all of those predictors are associated with not only a lack of accurate understanding, but actual misinformation when it comes to basic comprehension of California's Proposition 13. This is a unique finding, in that misinformation is concentrated among those who ought to be most politically aware. Several possible explanations for this bizarre phenomenon are explored. This is especially interesting, since the misunderstanding persists 31 years after the passage of the landmark tax measure.
There has long been concern about the role of interest groups in the policymaking process, especially the effect of group money in legislative elections/decision making and informal relationships between lobbyists and legislators. The result has been more than four decades of reform in California, beginning with the legislative ethics code in 1966. The current reform regime does almost all it can to regulate behavior through disclosure rules and limits on gifts and contributions. Interest groups play an important role in policymaking and increased constraints on their activities may be counterproductive. Future reforms should not focus on controlling legislator/lobbyist interactions, but empower the public to become more involved in the policy process as a counterweight to interest group pressure. We propose ways to improve the usability of available government information to make the public more active in policymaking and elections. Accountability and quality of policy will improve as both interest groups and interested citizens influence legislative decisions.
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