Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-131).

Unlike many western democracies, Canada has a party system which is not polarized in terms of class. Particularly since the early 1930's many writers have attacked "brokerage politics" on the grounds that it has enabled a small elite to control political debate, and in particular has prevented the party system from presenting meaningful alternatives for the social and economic development of the country. To people such as Frank Undorhill, Gad Horowitz and Charles Taylor, "the politics of polarization" is essential to an efficient democratic political system. Another writer, Robert R. Alford in Party and Society, has concluded that the trends in Canada towards industrialization, urbanization and secularization are bound to encourage an increase in class-oriented voting behaviour. The large numbers of people working in the cities, coupled with a decline in the salience of regional, religious and ethnic issues, will increase working class consciousness to the point where a change in the substance of political debate is feasible. The thesis examines the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion (Gallup) surveys for the 1962, 1963, 1965 and 1968 elections to see if Alford’s forecast is substantiated. There are many shortcomings in both the data, and the approach used, but the analysis would suggest that the overwhelming importance of religious and linguistic factors has not significantly declined, and as far as this thesis can detect, there has been little increase in class voting. A concluding chapter suggests other research approaches to the problem under investigation, which might well have produced different conclusions. However, a brief examination of the early political history of Canada would seem to indicate that the absorption of the working classes into the existing party system was done in such a way as to permanently restrict the extent to which a working class consciousness is likely to develop. While there are signs indicating that class-oriented voting will probably increase, it is unlikely that the polarization will ever occur to the extent possible in countries which have developed, politically and econonacally, along different lines. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-259). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-259). Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation asks three fundamental questions about representation in American cities. Who serves as mayor? How do voters select mayors? And, do mayors shape policy? Responsible for funding and providing essential services, municipal governments have a huge impact on the public's safety and quality of life. As chief elected officials, mayors are unquestionably important but also understudied political actors. A number of rich and detailed case studies provide valuable insights on individual mayors and their influence, but quantitative cross-city studies have yielded mixed findings on mayors' abilities to affect outcomes. To date, efforts to comprehensively and systematically study mayors have been hampered by a lack of data. To overcome these data limitations, I amassed an original dataset that includes detailed background information on more than 3,200 mayoral candidates, covering nearly 300 U.S. cities over the last 60 years. My data reveal that mayors, like politicians at higher levels of government, are not very representative of their constituents---they are much more likely to be white and male, with prior political experience and white-collar careers. Business owners and executives are especially well represented in American city halls, accounting for about 32% candidates and mayors. This study provides compelling new evidence that mayors can and do influence policy outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that business executive mayors shape spending priorities, leading to significantly lower levels of spending on redistributive programs and greater investment in infrastructure. Perhaps counterintuitively, electing a business executive mayor appears to have little effect on the overall size of government. However, suggestive evidence indicates that they may increase local revenue, but in the form of fees and charges rather than taxes. My findings suggest that business executives preside over policy changes with implications for the distribution of both costs and benefits of local government. In another component of the dissertation, I employ a conjoint survey experiment to investigate why voters so often elect business executives. The experimental results suggest that a candidate's experience as a business owner or executive is likely to influence voters preferences and evaluations. These findings are consistent with longstanding claims that voters rely on candidate characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or incumbency, as information shortcuts in the absence of party cues. Notably, the cues they use may vary with party identification. In nonpartisan contests, political experience has an even stronger influence on the preferences of Democratic respondents, while Republicans give more weight to occupation. Overall, my experimental results suggest that electoral institutions may interact with voters' preferences to shape descriptive representation. At the same time, my analyses of new observational data on mayoral candidates document striking deficits of descriptive representation in America's cities and suggest that who serves in office has meaningful policy consequences.

Voters are getting information from more and more sources. Along with this proliferation of sources has come an increasing distrust of traditional mass media. This has created a challenge for voters who seek reliable information when making decisions in the voting booth; including on ballot initiatives. Because voters tend to find ballot initiatives confusing and not easily informed by traditional party cues, the Citizen's Initiative Review (CIR) and the non-partisan, fact-based recommendations they produce have now spread into multiple states. This thesis seeks to gauge whether the CIR is effective at achieving the goals of increasing voter knowledge and encouraging thoughtful voting decisions; two challenges posed by ballot initiatives. I evaluate the available literature on how voters make decisions in general and about ballot initiatives specifically and then review data from five studies conducted in states with a CIR to determine whether the CIR has met these goals. Where other reports have evaluated findings from individual studies or states, my report takes a comprehensive view of the available data and compares it to what traditional political science literature has to say about voter behavior related to ballot initiatives. On balance, I find that voters see the CIR as providing useful and informative recommendations that have legitimate positive impacts on how they deliberate and vote on ballot initiatives.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Political Science Department, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-155).