Past comparative voting-behavior research has revealed that electoral institutions can explain much of the variation in voter turnout between nations. This study takes an alternative and dynamic approach by identifying and explaining a pattern of turnout decline within industrial democracies, which is beyond purely institutional explanation. Multivariate analysis of a pooled cross section of 18 industrial democracies between 1950 and 1997 suggests that turnout decline can best be explained in terms of changing patterns of group mobilization and electorate demographics. The authors specifically point to the decline of unions and labor parties, which have traditionally been associated with the mobilization of peripheral voters and the real increases in the cost of mobilization. The authors control for institutional changes and find that they are less useful in explaining variation in turnout within advanced industrial democracies.

How do rising levels of international interconnectedness affect social, economic, and political conditions for women? Research on gender and international relations frequently offers clear propositions but seldom submits them to broad, quantitative testing+ This article begins to fill that gap+ We advance the hypothesis that, on balance and over time, increasing cross-national exchange and communication lead to improvements in women's status and equality+ Economic aspects of globalization can bring new opportunities and resources to women+ But equally important, globalization promotes the diffusion of ideas and norms of equality for women+ In an analysis of 180 countries from 1975 to 2000, employing cross-sectional-timeseries regression techniques, we examine the impact of several measures of globalization on women's levels of life expectancy, literacy, and participation in the economy and parliamentary office+ International trade, foreign direct investment, membership in the United Nations~UN! and World Bank, and ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women~CEDAW!, are associated with improved conditions for women+ How do rising levels of international interconnectedness affect the social, economic, and political conditions for women? Competing hypotheses are easy to identify+ Indeed, research on gender and international relations sometimes offers clear propositions but seldom submits them to broad, quantitative testing+ This article begins to fill that gap+ We expect to find a considerably mixed picture: some women will benefit from globalization and some will be hurt; the status of women will improve in some respects but not others+ Nevertheless, we advance the hypothesis that, on balance and over time, increasing cross-national exchange

We argue that greater degrees of international integration lead to lower levels of corruption, which we define as the misuse of public office for private gain. We theorize that international factors affect a country's level of corruption through two principal channels. One acts through economic incentives, altering for various actors the costs and benefits of engaging in corrupt acts. The second mode is normative. Prevailing norms in international society delegitimate and stigmatize corruption. Countries that are more integrated into international society are more exposed to economic and normative pressures against corruption. We therefore test the following hypothesis: the more a country is tied into international networks of exchange, communication, and organization, the lower its level of corruption is likely to be. The analysis of data from approximately 150 countries strongly confirms our expectation.

The proportion of Hispanics who are Catholic remains unclear, partly because of varying survey methods and limited understanding of how these variations affect estimates of Hispanic religious identification. We compare 12 national surveys conducted since 1990. Language use strongly predicts religious identification among Hispanicsmore strongly than other indicators of assimilation-and evidence suggests English-only interviewing inflates Protestant identification. Additionally, identifying Hispanics through ancestry questions may inflate Catholic identification. We also explore effects of sampling bias, noncoverage bias, and weighting on religious identification. Analyses suggest that poststratification weighting is advisable, particularly for language use. However, weighting cannot fully substitute for extensive coverage of subpopulations such as recent immigrants and Spanish-only speakers. We conclude that 70 percent or slightly more is a reasonable estimate of the proportion of adult Hispanics who are Catholic, and 20 percent a reasonable estimate of the proportion who are Protestant or other Christian.

We assess clergy political activism dynamics using data from a national survey of Roman Catholic priests. Like their elite counterparts in interest groups and other secular political institutions, clergy encounter expectations and demands from competing principals when determining how to publicly act on key political issues. Building on insights from decades of clergy politics scholarship, we leverage new perspectives of principal-based influence by examining how Catholic priest perception of both local parish finances and diocesan bishop expectations affect their reported political actions. Our findings are consistent with the notion that parish and bishop principals condition priest political behavior, controlling for priest ideology. However, priest political action proves more sensitive to parish financial concerns than bishop encouragement.