2007 Conference Program - Midwest Political Science Association

country’s history of past successful and failed coups, drawn from
an original dataset of 500 post-WWII coup attempts worldwide.
Paper State Capacity, Taxation and Civil Wars
Zeynep Taydas, Clemson University
Dursun Peksen, University of Missouri
Overview: State capacity is an important determinant of civil
wars. Our paper shows that weaker states are more likely to
experience civil wars.
Disc. Jessica A. Stanton, Columbia University
18-5 PUBLIC OPINION, CONGRESS, AND FOREIGN
POLICY
Room Salon 7, 3 rd Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair James M. McCormick, Iowa State University
Paper Ideology, Economy, Policy Opposition, and the Strategic
Targeting of the U.S.
Dennis M. Foster, Virginia Military Institute
Overview: Explores the intervening role of partisan ideology on
the relationships amongst diversionary incentives, congressional
foreign policy opposition, and the strategic targeting/avoidance of
the United States.
Paper Playing with AIPAC: The Growing Arab Lobby's Strength
Khalil M. Marrar, DePaul University
Overview: Scholarship on domestic actors shaping American
policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always
concentrated on pro-Israel lobbying groups while ignoring the
growing effectiveness of the pro-Arab lobby. This paper attempts
to remedy that.
Disc. Elizabeth A. Bloodgood, Concordia University
19-6 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND
VIOLENCE
Room Clark 10, 7 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Alexander Thompson, Ohio State University
Paper Does Hierarchy Matter? International Hierarchy and the
Final Solution
Ethan J. Hollander, University of California, San Diego
Overview: This paper demonstrates that the efficient
implementation of the Final Solution depended upon the level of
hierarchy between Germany and each occupied country. It thus
elucidates the factors that contribute to the success of policy
implementation.
Paper Accounting for Endogeneity in the Success of UN
Peacekeeping Missions
Andrew G. Long, University of Mississippi
Greg Day, University of Mississippi
Harvey D. Palmer, University of Mississippi
Overview: We evaluate a bivariate probit model that accounts for
endogeneity in the decision-making calculus determining where
the UN intervenes and the impact of UN intervention, as well as
other factors, on the likelihood of conflict reoccurrence.
Paper Time Out: Examining the Duration of Interventions
Susan Hannah Allen, Texas Tech University
Shelli Keck, Texas Tech University
Overview: What determines when an international intervention
effort will end? Higher casualties increase the likelihood of
intervention (Gilligan and Stedman 2003), but do more intense
conflicts lead to longer or shorter intervention efforts?
Disc. Alexander Thompson, Ohio State University
21-3 VOTER RESPONSE TO CANDIDATE STRATEGY
AND INFORMATION (Co-sponsored with Voting
Behavior, see 22-18)
Room Salon 12, 3 rd Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Paper Do Citizens Follow the Crowd at Election Time? How Polls
Affect Decisions
Cheryl Boudreau, University of California, San Diego
Mathew D. McCubbins, University of California, San Diego
Overview: We use experiments to assess whether and when polls
help citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we examine
whether polls help even unsophisticated citizens and whether
opportunity costs prevent citizens from seeking polling
information.
Paper What to Attack? Candidate Strategy and Voter Response
David A. M. Peterson, Texas A&M University
Overview: This paper focuses on the content of attacks by
candidates. I ask two questions: 1) do candidate chose to attack
their opponents' perceived strengths or weaknesses? and 2) which
attack is more effective at persuading voters?
Paper Like leader, Like Party: Leadership Assessments and Party
Images in NL
Tereza Capelos, Leiden University
Sabine van der Eijk, Leiden University
Ron van den Akker, Leiden University
Overview: This paper examines how trait perceptions of political
leaders determine the image of political parties. This question is
particularly timely in the context of more personalized and
candidate centered politics in parliamentary European
democracies.
Paper Candidate Ambiguity and Political Competition
Robert P. Van Houweling, University of California, Berkeley
Michael Tomz, Stanford University
Paul Sniderman, Stanford University
Overview: We use survey experiments to assess the effects of
candidate ambiguity on voter perceptions and choice. Our
findings have important implications for politics, because they
demonstrate a partisan bias citizens responses to ambiguous
platforms.
Disc. Cindy D. Kam, University of California, Davis
21-101 ROUNDTABLE: 25 YEARS OF POLITICAL
TOLERANCE
Room Red Lacquer, 4 th Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Stanley Feldman, Stony Brook University
Panelist George Marcus, Williams College
Dennis Chong, Northwestern University
Darren Davis, Michigan State University
James Gibson, Washington University, St. Louis
Overview: Reflections on the past, present, and future of tolerance
research.
22-6 THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF
GEOGRAPHY
Room Salon 8, 3 rd Floor, Fri at 12:45 pm
Chair Scott McClurg, Southern Illinois University
Paper The Political Geography of the 2006 Election
David A. Hopkins, University of California, Berkeley
Overview: Voting patterns have become more geographically
distinct in recent U.S. elections. This paper investigates the extent
to which this trend continued in 2006.
Paper The Effects of Racial Segregation on Political Participation
Ryan D. Enos, University of California, Los Angeles
Overview: This paper shows that racial homogeneity at the
neighborhood level increases individual political participation
among African Americans; while segregating these neighborhoods
within cities also increases participation.
Paper There Goes the Neighborhood: The Impact of Population
Growth on Turnout
Joseph D. Giammo, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
Overview: In this paper I examine the impact of population
growth on the rate of turnout in a community, focusing on a
random sample of counties across the country over the past eight
presidential elections.
Paper Voters Like Me: Domestic Migration and Proximity to Shared
Ideology
Ian R. McDonald, Duke University
Overview: Does migration within the United States lead to
geographic sorting of political preferences? This paper considers
the claim that individuals tend to migrate towards other residents
who share their political ideology.
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