Volume 28, Number 1, January 2005

 


Call for Papers

American Politics Research Special Issue:
“Ten Years of GOP Control of the U.S. House of Representatives"

Submission Deadline: April 1, 2005
In late-2005 (or early 2006), American Politics Research will be publishing a special issue on the ten years of Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives preceding the start of the 109th Congress.  The APR readership is most interested in articles that evaluate theories, test hypotheses and examine data about electoral, historical and institutional characteristics and factors.

Papers on all topics related to congressional politics are welcome. Papers that reflect on the ten years of Republican control in contrast to the previous era of Democratic control would be especially valuable.

Suitable papers include but are not limited to studies of the changing role and power of committees; long term trends in policy making, policy productivity, and inter-branch relations; leadership; leadership styles; committee assignments; the politics and impact of institutional rule changes such as limiting the terms of committee chairs; use of the Rules Committee; roll call voting; the  appropriations process and legislative spending priorities; oversight of the executive branch; House and Senate relations; budget politics; congressional policymaking in specific domains, such as criminal justice, immigration,  homeland security, transportation, national security, social security, healthcare, and welfare reform; as well as electoral studies of polarization and redistricting.

The deadline for submission of papers is April 1, 2005, although articles will be accepted and reviewed before then.  All papers should be approximately 20-25 pages in length, double-spaced, including a 150 word abstract.  Papers should conform to the APR Guidelines as outlined in the submission instructions for the journal at http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/apr/.  Questions, as well as electronic submissions should be directed to Jim Gimpel, Editor, at apr@gvpt.umd.edu.

Call for Papers
State Politics and Policy Quarterly Special Issue:
“The Impacts of State Legislative Term Limits”

Submission deadline: February 1, 2005
 
State Politics and Policy Quarterly invites scholars to submit papers for review for inclusion in a special issue entitled, “The Impacts of State Legislative Term Limits,” to be published in 2006.

In the 1990s, 21 states established limits on the number of terms a state legislator could serve in office.  This dramatic institutional change was comparable to perhaps only two other state legislative reforms of the 20th century – legislative professionalization and mandatory equal population redistricting.  Proponents and opponents of term limits predicted a variety of significant consequences for state legislatures, elections and politics, state government, and public policy.

After the flurry of term limits adoptions in the 1990s, it is only in the 2000s that we have seen their full implementation.  We can now begin to assess the proponents’ and opponents’ predictions.  Furthermore, scholars can use this important institutional reform to test general theories of legislative behavior and policymaking.  Papers that develop and test hypotheses of the impacts of state legislative term limits are invited to be reviewed for this special issue of SPPQ.

All submissions will be rigorously double-blind peer reviewed.  Studies accepted for publication will be theoretically driven, well written, cogently argued, and empirically sound.  They will make significant contributions to our understanding of political processes and policymaking in general, in addition to contributing to our understanding of term limits. Qualitative and quantitative, single-state and multi-state studies will be considered for publication; only those manuscripts that meet the most rigorous methodological and theoretical academic standards will be accepted for this special issue. 

Submit manuscripts for this special issue BY FEBRUARY 1, 2005, to:
Christopher Z. Mooney, Editor
State Politics and Policy Quarterly
Institute for Legislative Studies, PAC 466
University of Illinois at Springfield
One University Plaza, MS-PAC 466
Springfield, IL 62703-5407
email: sppq@uis.edu.

Send four copies of the manuscript, three of which having all identifying references removed, and a computer disk with an electronic version of the entire paper with identifying references removed. SPPQ does not consider manuscripts under review elsewhere or manuscripts of greater than 40 pages in length, inclusive of tables, references, and text.   Authors of works published in SPPQ must be prepared to provide, upon request, a replication dataset for analyses reported therein.


Congress to Campus Program

The United States Association of Former Members of Congress

The Congress to Campus Program is designed to address several aspects of the civic learning and engagement deficit among the country’s college-age young people, combining traditional educational content with a strong message about public service. The Program sends bipartisan pairs of former Members of Congress - one Democrat and one Republican - to visit college, university and community college campuses around the country. Over the course of each visit, the Members conduct classes, hold community forums, meet informally with students and faculty, visit high schools and civic organizations, and do interviews and talk show appearances with local press and media.

In the summer of 2002, the Board of Directors of the U. S. Association of Former Members of Congress (USAFMC) engaged the Center for Democracy & Citizenship (CDC) at the Council for Excellence in Government to help manage the Congress to Campus Program in partnership with the Stennis Center for Public Service (Stennis). CDC and Stennis, with the blessing of the USAFMC, agreed to undertake a number of initiatives to greatly increase the number of campuses hosting program visits each year, expand the pool of former Members of Congress available for campus visits, develop new sources of funding, raise the profile of the program and its message in the public and academic community, and devise methods of measuring the impact of the program at host institutions.

[To access full report on Congress to Campus, click here.]


Data on Legislative Voting and Representation

Professon John Carey has established a website at Dartmouth that includes various resources from his field research and data collection in an organized data archive. Of particular significance is the data from a project on legislative voting and representation. That project includes:
Visitors are invited to use any of the data, qualitative or quantitative, that is available on the site. The address of the website is http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey/dataarchive.htm.  Professor Carey's email address, in case of questions, suggestions, or problems related to the data, is john.carey@dartmouth.edu.

Dirksen Center Invites Applications for Grants
DEADLINE: Proposals must be postmarked no later than February 1

The Dirksen Congressional Center invites applications for grants totaling $35,000 in 2005 to fund research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. The competition is open to individuals with a serious interest in studying Congress. Political scientists, historians, biographers, scholars of public administration or  American studies, and journalists are among those eligible. The Center encourages graduate students to apply and awards a significant portion of the funds for dissertation research. Undergraduate or pre-Ph.D. study, research teams of two or more individuals, and organizations are not eligible.

There is no standard application form. Applicants are responsible for showing the relationship between their work and the awards program guidelines. Applications are accepted at any time. Incomplete applications will NOT be forwarded to the screening committee for consideration.

All application materials must be postmarked on or before February 1, 2005. Awards will be announced in March 2005. Complete information about eligibility and application procedures may be found at The Center's Web site: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm. Frank Mackaman is the program officer -- mailto:fmackaman@dirksencenter.org.

The Center, named for the late Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen, is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to the study of Congress and its leaders. Since 1978, the Congressional Research Awards (formerly the Congressional Research Grants) program has paid out $620,000 to support 325 projects.

 A complete list of Congressional Research Award recipients is posted at http://www.dirksencenter.org/grantcongresearchaward.htm.
The Dirksen Congressional Center is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization in Pekin, Illinois, that seeks to improve civic engagement by promoting a better understanding of Congress and its leaders through archival, research, and educational programs.

Election Results Archive

Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University

The Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University is pleased to announce the launch of the Election Results Archive (ERA), a collection of electronic files containing data on election results from around the world.  This unique online database with global coverage provides researchers, policy-makers, scholars, and others interested in elections with information on over 900 elections from around the world.  It includes information on the following:
  • Types of Elections: Results for presidential and national legislative elections.
  • Countries: The Archive currently contains election results from 134 countries that have met a minimum threshold of democratic performance for the year in which the elections took place. 
  • Dates of Elections: The ERA contains results back to 1974, This date was selected because it is frequently cited as a beginning point of the recent phase of democratic expansion (democratic elections in Greece and Portugal).

More election data will be added to this Archive as time and resources permit.

The archive can be searched by country, region, or year and type of election.  Please visit the archive at http://cdp.binghamton.edu/era/index.html

European Consortium for Political Research

ECPR has a new standing group on Parliaments, coordinated by Shane Martin, University of California, San Diego) and Matti Wiberg (University of Turku).

For a number of years the study of legislatures has concentrated on the US Congress. Parliaments in Europe have not been a subject of investigation to any comparable extent. Nevertheless, the body of knowledge is ever expanding on both the long-standing parliaments in Europe and the new institutions of the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

The Standing Group's aim is to promote comparative research and theory-building on the institutionalisation, capacity, operation, and performance of legislatures and the dissemination of such research.

For more information, and to register for membership (which is free) please see their web site at: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/standinggroups/parliaments/index.htm



Parliamentary  Representation in the Internet Age

Economic and Social Research Institute, University of Salford, UK
ESRI has announced a new research project that looks into parliamentarians' use of internet based technologies in the UK and Australia. In particular, they are examining the role of new technologies in shaping the work of MPs and the nature of parliamentary representation. The project is wide ranging, looking at a number of complementary issues, and does involve a range of research activities and methodologies:
  • Regular analyses of parliamentary/MPs websites to assess the function of such sites (over the next two years);
  • Postal surveys of parliamentarians to gauge the attitude toward, and importance of, Internet communication and online participation;
  • Interviews with MPs to understand Internet communication strategies, and their associated benefits and problems;
  • Public opinion survey to evaluate citizen awareness, usage and problems of internet communication with representatives;
  • Focus group assessment of the design and content of parliamentary websites.

For more information, visit the web site at http://www.ipop.org.uk or contact Wainer Lusoli by email at s.lusoli@salford.ac.uk.


Visiting Scholars Program

APSA Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs

The American Political Science Association recently opened the Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs in its headquarters building in Washington, D.C.  As part of its programs, the Centennial Center assists scholars from the United States and abroad whose research and teaching would benefit from a stay in and access to the incomparable resources available in the nation's capital.  The Center provides to Visiting Scholars the infrastructure needed to conduct their work, including furnished work space with computer, phone, fax, conference space, and library access.

The Center has space to host 10 scholars for extended periods of time, ranging from weeks to months.  Space for shorter "drop-in" stays is also available.  Scholars are expected to pursue their own research and teaching projects and contribute to the intellectual life of the residential community by sharing their work with Center colleagues in occasional informal seminars.

Eligibility is limited to APSA members.  Senior or junior faculty membes, post-doctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students are also strongly encouraged to apply.  A short applicationform is required, and submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis.  Positions are awarded based on space availability and relevant Center programming.

For more information and an application, please visit the Centennial Center web site <www.apsanet.org/centennialcenter> or call Sean Twombly at (202)483-2512.


Visiting Scholars Program

Carl Albert Center

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center's archives. Awards of $500 - $1000 are normally grantedas reimbursement for travel and lodging.

The Center's holdings include the papers of many former members of Congress, such as Robert S. Kerr, Fred Harris, and Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma; Helen Gahagan Douglas and Jeffery Cohelan of California; and Neil Gallagher of New Jersey. Besides the history of Congress, congressional leadership, national and Oklahoma politics, and election campaigns, the collections also document government policy affecting agriculture, Native Americans, energy, foreign affairs, the environment, the economy, and other areas.

Topics that can be studied include the Great Depression, flood control, soil conservation, and tribal affairs. At least one collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date from the 1920s to the 1970s, although there is one nineteenth century collection.

The Center's archives are described on their website at http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/ and in the publication titled A Guide to the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives by Judy Day et.al. (Norman, Okla.: The Carl Albert Center, 1995), available at many U.S. academic libraries. Additional information can be obtained from the Center.

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in history, political science, and other fields. Graduate students involved in research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Interested undergraduates and lay researchers are also invited to apply. The Center evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a variety of topics is expected.

No standardized form is needed for application. Instead, a series of documents should be sent to the Center, including:
(1) a description of the research proposal in fewer than 1000 words;
(2) a personal vita;
(3) an explanation of how the Center's resources will assist the researcher;
(4) a budget proposal; and
(5) a letter of reference from an established scholar in the discipline attesting to the significance of the research.
Applications are accepted at any time.

For more information, please contact Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019.  Telephone: (405) 325-5401.  FAX: (405) 325-6419.  Email: channeman@ou.edu

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