2007 Conference Program - Midwest Political Science Association

Paper God and Caeser: Religion in the Public Workplace
Steven P. Brown, Auburn University
Overview: State and local governments employ some 8 million
people, few of whom know how they can express themselves
religiously in the public workplace. This paper considers federal
court rulings that pertain to religious expression in the public
workplace.
Paper Thought, Word and Deed: Religion Before the Supreme
Court, 1961-1981
Jesse D. Covington, University of Notre Dame
Overview: This project traces two divergent views of religion that
developed during the expansion of religious liberty during these
two decades: the individual as the locus of belief versus the
community of faith as central to protecting religious conduct.
Paper What Can the State Say?: Examining Government Speech
Within a Free Marketplace of Ideas
John C. Evans, University of Iowa
Overview: In this paper, I examine recent Supreme Court
jurisprudence in the area of "government speech" and give my
analysis on how I believe the Court should proceed in this area in
the future.
Paper The Trinitarian Pledge of Allegiance: God, Children, and
Security
Mina Suk, Johns Hopkins University
Overview: The constitutional controversy surrounding the Pledge
of Allegiance poses a unique Establishment problem because of its
intersection of the spoken word "God," public schools as places of
intellectual safety, and the security rhetoric of patriotism.
Disc. Alan Tarr, Rutgers University
44-9 STATE BUDGET POLITICS
Room Parlor C, 6 th Floor, Sat at 9:50 am
Chair Michael J. New, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Paper The Roots of Executive Power
Thad B. Kousser, University of California, San Diego
Justin H. Phillips, Columbia University
Overview: How much influence do governors have over policy,
and what is at the root of their power? We investigate these
questions by looking at the outcomes of budget negotiations and at
how successful governors are in moving their legislative agendas.
Paper Institutions, Interests, and the Composition of State Budgets
Christian Breunig, University of Washington
Chris Adolph, University of Washington
Chris Koski, University of Washington
Overview: We use American state-level data to test to what extent
institutional structures endow political actors with abilities to
determine the composition of state budgets. Our inquiry focuses
on the impact of governors, legislators and partisanship.
Paper For Whom the TEL Tolls
Ellen C. Moule, University of California, San Diego
Thad Kousser, University of California, San Diego
Mathew D. McCubbins, University of California, San Diego
Overview: This paper evaluates the effectiveness of tax and
expenditure limits (TELs) using comprehensive fiscal data from
the 50 U.S. states. We analyze the conditions of TEL passage to
predict which, if any, TELs will be most effective.
Disc. Michael J. New, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Michael E. Greenberg, Shippensburg University
45-5 LOCAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY INSTRUMENTS
Room Burnham 4, 7 th Floor, Sat at 9:50 am
Chair Stephen Mergner, University of Cincinnati
Paper Strategic Plans and Local Development Policy Instrument
Choices
Moon-Gi Jeong, University of Texas, San Antonio
Overview: We empirically test proposition about how strategic
planning constrains development policy and policy instrument
choices using OLS regression based on panel data from ICMA
survey of local economic development conducted in 1999 and
2004.
Paper Evolving Local Government Purpose through Economic
Development
Debra H. Moore, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Andrew J. Theising, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Overview: The common use of enterprise zones and tax increment
financing bring new actors into the local policy process, increasing
the power of private developers and shifting government purpose
away from traditional roles.
Paper Public Demand, Institutional Choice and Dynamics of
Governmental Structure
Jongsun Park, Florida State University
Inwon Lee, Florida State University
Overview: Why do local governments choose specific types of
agencies for economic development? Our opinion is the
combination of public demands and various institutions, and the
decision mechanism of governmental structure is dynamic rather
than static.
Paper Knowing One When You See It: Special-Purpose Authorities
as a Fuzzy Set
James M. Smith, University of Illinois, Chicago
Overview: Miscounts and misnomers make the study of special
authorities difficult at the macro level. This study considers
special authorities in Chicago qualitatively using a fuzzy set
approach (Ragin 2000) to overcome such ambiguity.
Disc. Nicholas Bauroth, North Dakota State University
46-102 ROUNDTABLE: THE FUTURE OF THE ACF
Room Monroe, 6 th Floor, Sat at 9:50 am
Chair Paul Sabatier, University of California, Davis
Panelist Hank Jenkins-Smith, Texas A&M University
Bill Leach, California State University, Sacramento
Chris Weible, Georgia Tech University
Overview: The Future of the ACF
49-6 NETWORKS AS FEATURES OF
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
Room PDR 6, 3 rd Floor, Sat at 9:50 am
Chair Brent Steel, Oregon State University
Paper Environmental Networks in Developing Countries and Their
Effects on Policy
Jonathan Fuentes, University of Houston
Jentry Edleson, University of Houston
Overview: Through a comparative case study of oil-rich
developing countries, we wish to discover who controls the
policy-making environmental networks. Given the structure and
the power distribution within the network, what type of policies is
produced?
Paper To Persuade, or To Be Persuaded?
Soo Hyun Jung, Florida State University
Overview: This article examines how interactions between permit
issuers and holders affect the stringency of wetland permits with
the development of policy networks, using data from a survey of
the Tampa Bay area and record of wetland mitigation.
Paper The Institutionalization of Energy Policy and Its
Consequences in the United States
Philip A. Mundo, Drew University
Overview: This paper analyzes the extent to which energy policy
favoring oil and coal has become embedded in political
institutions at the national level. The extent to which policies
encouraging the use of these fossil fuels have become
institutionalized.
Paper Which Variables Matter? Testing Frameworks Using
Watershed Collaboratives
Edward P. Weber, Washington State University
Tetyana Lysak, Washington State University
Overview: Our paper tests the efficacy of four theoretical
frameworks in helping us to understand the degree of
collaborative success found in three different cases of
collaborative watershed governance in Washington State.
Disc. Mark Lubell, University of California, Davis
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