P olitical institutions translate inputs-in the form of changed preferences, new participants, newinformation, or sudden attention to previously available information-into policy outputs. In the process they impose costs on this translation, and these costs increase institutional friction. We argue that the "friction" in political institutions leads not to consistent "gridlock" but to long periods of stasis interspersed with dramatic policy punctuations. As political institutions add costs to the translation of inputs into outputs, institutional friction will increase, and outputs from the process will become increasingly punctuated overall. We use a stochastic process approach to compare the extent of punctuations among 15 data sets that assess change in U.S. government budgets, in a variety of aspects of the public policy process, in election results, and in stock market returns in the United States. We find that all of these distributions display positive kurtosis-tall central peaks (representing considerable stability) and heavy tails (reflecting the punctuations, both positive and negative). When we order institutions according to the costs they impose on collective action, those with higher decision and transaction costs generate more positive kurtosis. Direct parameter estimates indicate that all distributions except budget data were best fit by the double-exponential probability distribution; budgets are Paretian.

This study outlines a new paradigm for the investigation of the effects of deliberation on political decisions. Specifically, it uses the ultimatum game as a situation in which the opportunity to deliberate and the placement of this opportunity are experimentally manipulated. Structural factors, such as the players' roles and their ability to vote on the proposal being offered, are also manipulated as a basis for comparison. Two outcomes are examined: the games' allocations, and players' perceptions of fairness. After controlling for structural factors, deliberative opportunity creates a more equitable distribution of money and enhances fairness perceptions. However, these results hold only when such an opportunity occurs before the proposal stage. Deliberative opportunity after the proposal stage has no discernible impact. A survey of participants found that their personal characteristics and political predispositions influence perceptions of fairness for proposers, but not for acceptors. These findings demonstrate the potential benefits of deliberation while highlighting the importance of the nature of its implementation in determining its level of success.The empirical study of deliberation and its effects is enjoying increasing attention among scholars of political psychology and political communication. A number of recent studies have attempted to determine whether the advantages ascribed to deliberation by most democratic theorists actually exist (see, e.g., . These studies, most of which have examined the effects of deliberation in real-world settings, have revealed much about the nature and extent of deliberation's effects. In this paper, we outline a new research program that we believe will complement this literature. Specifically, we advocate experimental investigations based on the ultimatum game that can be used to

No abstract

I explore the extent to which the campaign appeals made by congressional candidates serve as credible signals about the issues they will pursue in office. My analyses focus on the televised advertisements of 391 House candidates in the 1998, 2000, and 2002 elections and the content of their subsequent legislative activity in the 106th-108th Congresses. I track candidates' and legislators' attention to a set of 18 different issues and show that legislators do indeed follow through on the appeals they make in campaigns. However, the strength of the linkages between campaign appeals and legislative activity varies in a systematic fashion with features of candidates' rhetoric. These findings illustrate the value of extending the study of campaigns to include phenomena that occur after Election Day and of conceiving of the linkages between electoral and legislative politics as a locus for representation.

We explore differences in House candidates' campaign agendas across Web sites and televised ads, comparing the size and scope of their online and off-line issue priorities, their patterns of partisan issue ownership and issue trespassing, and the extent of issue convergence with the agendas of their opponents. Our results, based on a sample of 129 candidates in the 2000 election, indicate that Web and ad agendas are similar in a number of ways but that differences do exist across the venues. These differences have important theoretical implications for our understanding of candidate behavior and campaign effects as well as important practical implications for political communication researchers choosing venues for study.

We argue that bill cosponsorship in Congress represents an institutional arrangement that provides credibility to commitments of support. We predict that if cosponsorship fosters legislative deals, MCs will only rarely back out on their pledges to support a bill if it comes up for a floor vote, and when they do, these choices will reflect strategic calculations. Further, legislators who violate their cosponsorship agreements will face punishment from colleagues, compromising their ability to gain support for their own bills. We explore the causes and effects of MCs' choices to renege on a pledge by voting no on a bill for which they were a cosponsor, focusing on all cosponsorship decisions in the 101st–108th Houses. The results reveal that patterns of reneging and its consequences are consistent with the idea that cosponsorship functions as a commitment mechanism.

Do members of Congress follow through on the appeals they make in campaigns? The answer to this question lies at the heart of assessments of democratic legitimacy. This study demonstrates that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that candidates' appeals are just 'cheap talk', campaigns actually have a lasting legacy in the content of representatives' and senators' behavior in office. Levels of promise-keeping vary in a systematic fashion across legislators, across types of activity, across time and across chamber. Moreover, legislators' responsiveness to their appeals shapes their future electoral fortunes and career choices, and their activity on their campaign themes leaves a tangible trace in public policy outputs. Understanding the dynamics of promise-keeping thus has important implications for our evaluations of the quality of campaigns and the strength of representation in the United States.

Members of Congress (MCs) are concerned about reelection and act in office with this goal in mind. Whether citizens notice this behavior and how they respond remains an open question. We examine the relationships between legislators' characteristics and activity and their constituents' evaluations of their performance in office. We argue that MCs' behavior does filter down to citizens, but that their responses are conditioned by their partisanship and interest in politics. Our analyses combine 2006 and 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey data on citizens with information on legislators' activity in office in the 109th and 110th Congresses. The results reveal that there are widespread linkages between MC behavior and constituency approval, but that legislators' copartisan, outpartisan, and independent constituents respond in different, yet predictable, ways. Moreover, these effects are strongest among the most interested constituents. Our findings have important implications for our assessments of legislators' strategies and constituency representation.