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Congressional roll-call votes are often used to investigate legislative voting behavior. To depict adaptive roll-call behavior in response to demographic changes that occur during redistricting, I use issue specific interest group scores from the ADA, NFU, and COPE. This exploits the bias in the selection of the issues that interest groups utilize to rate U.S. representatives, by using them to reflect changes in response to significant demographic fluctuations in the constituency population. The findings indicate that while party is the most significant factor in whether legislators adapt their voting in favor of certain groups, they do notice group composition changes within district and adapt their voting accordingly. This illustrates the impact of redistricting on policy and legislators' adaptation to changes in district composition.

This dissertation, a collection of independent papers, explores the polarization of the United States Congress through the lens of primary elections, campaign finance, and party structures during a pivotal moment in American political history. Paper 1 focuses on the top two primary format and its potential in producing moderate candidates and legislators, while Paper 2 expounds on the deleterious consequences it poses for the party system as a whole, particularly in this modern era of both high polarization and high fragmentation. Paper 3 examines the Downsian median voter theorem from the perspective of primary election voters, asking if general election wins/losses beget the nomination of more ideological/moderate nominees next cycle. Ultimately, the article illustrates that the parties instead retain consistent records through both election wins and losses, linked to credibility concerns from position changes as well as the inability of members to disentangle from national party identities. Its companion paper, Paper 4, takes that Downsian question to elites in Washington, D.C. Through original interviews with twenty-three individuals including former members of Congress, leadership, congressional staff, and think tank scholars, I describe the electoral and legislative pressures that prevent officeholders from responding to their median voter, especially among those in swing districts most exposed to the risks of partisan behavior. Paper 5, the final paper, brings together the themes of those preceding it by analyzing the ways in which outside interference, specifically political action committees and more inclusive primary elections, propagates legislative caucus fragmentation and weakens official leadership. This work plays one minor role in providing prescriptive steps to improve and empower channels of dialogue in the U.S. legislative brancha - in spite of larger systemic sorting along geographical and partisan lines - and ensure the mediation of ideology between voters and their elected representatives results in policy solutions rather than gridlock.

Purpose- The aim of this master’s thesis is to analyse the dichotomy between west and east and how this is seen in the following two libraries; Library of Congress (LC) and Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA). I want to analyze if the portrait of east, as slow and hostile, and of west, as welcoming and forward, and how this, if at all, is actually seen in LC and BA. The presence and use of patriotism and nationalism in libraries is also examined. I asked myself the following questions: 1) How do LC and BA present themselves on their websites and how does this correspond to the dichotomy?, 2) How do LC and BA relate to patriotism on their websites?, and 3) Can one see what, if anything, LC and BA say about each other and how does this correspond to the dichotomy? These are questions that libraries world-wide might gain from to ponder, how and why, a western norm is almost always seen as superior to an eastern option.   Method- The approach was norm critical analysis of LC and BA’s websites. The method used was comparative text and image studies combined with netnography. Benedict Andersons and Jürgen Habermas’ theories about patriotism and nationalism was used, as well as Edward Saids Orient perspective. Andersons’ idea of an imagined community was also central.   Key Findings- The analysis shows that the dichotomy is actually the other way round, BA are the modern and welcoming ones, while LC are more traditional by way of expressing themselves. The dichotomy is also in some cases even very misleading of how the East is interpreted by the West. The conclusion is three major findings, 1) BA want to create and share knowledge both with each other and with the world as a whole, whilst LC is more about gathering knowledge and keeping this in the library for the sake of the United States welfare, 2) LC speak of themsleves as modern and of BA as ancient just as the dichotomy often display the two of them, but this is not a correct statement; BA has, for instance, modern western superheroes displayed on their website for children, while LC, on the other hand, has heroes such as the late American president Abraham Lincoln and American veterans on display for children (in other words, mostly an American perspective that one might find difficult to relate to if being a non-american citizen, while BA is more global with well-known cartoon figures), and lastly, 3) LC displays patriotism through stories of war by having a prominent section dedicated to American veterans on their website, while BA speaks more of a patriotism through a proud cultural heritage.   Originality/value- This kind of study had not been done before in LIS research.   Paper type- This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science (LIS) in Archive, Library and Museums studies

Elections are seldom covered in detail below the level of the national contests. Regional, district, and local elections often appear to be too provincial to be worth the time and effort to research and analyze in any detail."Taking the Fifth" is about a contested congressional race that was in dispute between various local and forces longer than any other House race on record.The Fifth District of Indiana leaned Republican, but it swung to the Democrats about once a decade. The 1960 election broke that historic pattern.Since 1960 was a pivotal election year for both political parties, and since the U. S. Congress was divided by various regional and philosophical factions, it is the contention of the dissertation that the Indiana Fifth District took on more importance than it would have under normal circumstances.Pursuit of power by local and national figures became inextricably involved with the struggle of the candidates in the Fifth District of Indiana. Intraparty grudges between district and state Democratic leaders, scars from Republican battles for congressional leadership posts, Dixiecrat versus urban Democrats maneuvering for dominance on key congressional committees, and an energetic young President and his allies -- bent on making a lasting mark on history -- all influenced the outcome of the race.As the gap widens between election day in Indiana and final settlement of the contest, the two candidates fade into secondary roles, and eventually appear to be little more than pawns for the congressional and national figures who had pre-empted the contest for their own political purposes.

Keyword searching and controlled vocabularies such as Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) proved to work well together in automated technologies and the two systems have been considered complimentary. When the Internet burst onto the information landscape, users embraced the simplicity of keyword searching of this resource while researchers and scholars seemed unable to agree on how best to make use of controlled vocabularies in this huge database. This research looked at a controlled vocabulary, LCSH, in the context of keyword searching of a full text database. The Internet and probably its most used search engine, Google, seemed to have set a standard that users have embraced: a keyword-searchable single search box on an uncluttered web page. Libraries have even introduced federated single search boxes to their web pages, another testimony to the influence of Google. UNT's Thesis and Dissertation digital database was used to compile quantitative data with the results input into an EXCEL spreadsheet. Both Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) and author-assigned keywords were analyzed within selected dissertations and both systems were compared. When the LCSH terms from the dissertations were quantified, the results showed that from a total of 788 words contained in the 207 LCSH terms assigned to 70 dissertations, 246 of 31% did not appear in the title or abstract while only 8, or about 1% from the total of 788, did not appear in the full text. When the author-assigned keywords were quantified, the results showed that from a total of 552 words from304 author-assigned keywords in 86 dissertations, 50 or 9% did not appear in the title or abstract while only one word from the total of 552 or .18% did not appear in the full text. Qualitatively, the LCSH terms showed a hierarchical construction that was clearly designed for a print card catalog, seemingly unnecessary in a random access digital environment. While author-assigned keywords were important words and phrases, these words and phrases often appeared in the title, metadata, and full text of the dissertation, making them seemingly unnecessary in a keyword search environment as they added no additional access points. Authors cited in this research have tended to agree that controlled vocabularies such as LCSH are complicated to develop and implement and expensive to maintain. Most researchers have also tended to agree that LCSH needs to be simplified for large, full text databases such as the Internet. Some of the researchers have also called for some form of automation that seamlessly links LCSH to subject terms in a keyword search. This research tends to confirm that LCSH could benefit from simplification as well as automation and offers some suggestions for improvements in both areas.

Conflict among legislators has been an ever-present component of the legislative process in the U.S. Congress. However, most political scientists have treated all dissension within the legislature as the result of partisan disagreement over various policy options. I propose in this thesis that a second dimension of conflict exists within Congress, one caused by personal rivalries unrelated to the discussion of issues. This category, which I have termed "personality conflict," or "incivility," can take the form of actions between legislators such as name-calling and fist-fights. In my research, I have created a measure of these incivilities and studied the movement in the levels of personality conflict within Congress from 1851 through 2004. In addition, I compare these trends to a conventional measure of party polarization or partisan conflict. The analysis suggests that the two types of conflict are distinct, but also that levels of one type of congressional conflict can have important effects on the absolute level of the other.

This thesis seeks to understand how political awareness affects what information one uses to indicate their approval or disapproval of Congress and its members. More concisely, do more and less aware individuals rely on the same pieces of political information to mold their opinions of Congress? The second question of concern is what role does media consumption play in informing survey respondents about Congress. Third, I consider how survey respondents use cues like the condition of the economy and presidential job performance to help formulate their opinion of Congress Finally, by applying the Congressional approval literature to incumbent level approval, I seek to advance the theory and literature on what motivates the approval of incumbents.

This study examines individual roll call votes on energy issues taken in Congress during the years 1973 to 1983. Logit analysis is used to compare the influence of partisan identification; personal ideology, as measured by support and opposition to the conservative coalition; and district or state energy characteristics, including energy consumption and production. The potential for misleading results due to the multicollinearity of party and ideology is eliminated through the use of a residual variable representing the non-party component of ideology. The results indicate that members of Congress demonstrated considerable variability in voting on energy matters. The House of Representatives was more responsive to variations in energy constituencies. Both the House and the Senate showed a different response when the substantive character of energy issues varied. Questions with an economic impact were more influenced by partisanship, while environmentally related issues were more strongly influenced by ideology. The gross impact of changes in public opinion and changes in the presidency are noticeable throughout, but most especially after the election of Ronald Reagan, when many of the policy changes made previously were dismantled. The results of this study support the basic proposition that individual roll call votes are a product of constituency influence. The results also indicate that the political partisanship and ideology of members are representative of a member's supportive and reelection constituency. The statistical methods used allowed a direct comparison of the influence of party, ideology, and variables representing the characteristics of member's districts. The results obtained substantiate the importance of constituent influence in congressional voting.

In this dissertation, I develop and empirically test a comparison of the private versus public strategies presidents use to gain support and passage of their policy agendas. By focusing on presidential influence on policy outcomes in Congress, I can determine which form of presidential leadership - going public or using private bargaining or both - may prove most effective in shaping policies to suit the administration's political interests, given the context in Congress. This allows for an assessment of Neustadt's (1990) classic private bargaining presidency and Kernell's (1997) public presidency to show that both may be compatible and may even work in combination in order for presidents to pass their policy agendas under varying political circumstances in Congress.Original data is collected from Statements of Administration Policy to examine private presidential rhetoric, and additional data is collected from the yearly editions of Congressional Quarterly Almanac to assess the effects of public presidential rhetoric. I test my hypotheses with this new collection of data using logistic regressions, as well as complimentary case studies of No Child Left Behind, immigration reform, and the Andean Trade Preference Act. The broader implications of this study include: systematic assessments of presidential influence on Congress; indentifying a broader view of presidential leadership to better fit empirical observations; and incorporating inter-branch influences in Congressional behavior.