Government 320: Public Opinion and Public Choice

Spring 2007
Tuesday, Thursday 2:55-4:10 (MG 165)
Professor: Walter R. Mebane, Jr.
Office: 217 White Hall (255-3868); email wrm1@cornell.edu
Office hours: Monday 2-4 or other times by appointment.
Course web page: http://www.umich.edu/~wmebane/gov320.html

Assignment Due Dates
due date	description	weight
March 8	midterm exam	25%
April 19	final paper proposal	5%
May 11	final paper	35%
May 15 (9-11:30am)	final exam	35%

Reading Availability

The following books have been ordered through the campus store. Almost all the books are to be read in their entirety, or otherwise heavily used, so you probably want to buy them if you can. But the books should also (soon) be on reserve at Uris library.

Aldrich, John H. 1995. Why Parties? Chicago.

Cox, Gary. 1996. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral System. Cambridge UP.

Cox, Gary, and Mathew McCubbins. 200?. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge UP.

Craven, John. 1992. Social Choice: A Framework for Collective Decisions and Individual Judgements. Cambridge UP.

Gumbel, Andrew. 2005. Steal This Vote. Nation Books.

Mackie, Gerry. 2003. Democracy Defended. Cambridge UP.

Monmonier, Mark. 2001. Bushmanders and Bullwinkles. Chicago.

Riker, William H. 1986. The Art of Political Manipulation. Yale UP.

Class schedule

Items with a bullet ($\bullet$) are required. Others are recommended.

1. Political Manipulation (Jan 23-Feb 15)
   • Riker. Art.

   • Craven. Social Choice. Chapters 1-3, 5.

   • Hinich, Melvin J., and Michael C. Munger. 1997. Analytical Politics. Cambridge UP. Chapters 1-3.

   • Mackie. Democracy Defended. Chapters 1, 3 and 16, and one of chapters 9, 10 or 14.

   • Miller, Nicholas R. 2007. ``In Search of the Uncovered Set,'' Political Analysis 15: 21-45.

   Saari, Donald G. 2001. Chaotic Election! A Mathematician Looks at Voting. American Mathematical Society.

   Bianco, William T., Ivan Jeliazkov and Itai Sened. 2004. ``The Uncovered Set and the Limits of Legislative Action,'' Political Analysis 12: 256-278.

   Ordeshook, Peter C., and Thomas Schwartz. 1987. ``Agendas and the Control of Political Outcomes.'' American Political Science Review 81: 179-199.

   Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

   Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Barry Weingast. 1984. ``Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Institutions,'' American Journal of Political Science 28: 49-74.

2. Parties, Strategic Voting and Party Systems (Feb 20-Mar 6)
   • Aldrich, John. 1995 Why Parties? Chicago. Chapters 1-2, 6.

   • Cox. Making Votes Count. Chapters 1-7.

   Snyder, James M., Jr., and Michael M. Ting. 2002. ``An Informational Rationale for Political Parties,'' American Journal of Political Science 46 (Jan.): 90-110.

3. Midterm Exam (Mar 8)

4. Agenda-setting in the U.S. House (Mar 13-Mar 29)
   • Cox and McCubbins. Setting the Agenda. Chapters 1-3.

   Romer, Thomas, and Howard Rosenthal. 1979. ``Bureaucrats Versus Voters: On the Political Economy of Resource Allocation by Direct Democracy,'' Quarterly Journal of Economics 93 (Nov.): 563-587.

   Rosenthal, Howard. 1990. ``The Setter model.'' In James M. Enelow and Melvon J. Hinich, eds., Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting. Cambridge UP, pp. 199-234.

   Cameron, Charles M. 2000. Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power. Cambridge UP.

   Schickler, Eric. 2001. Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress. Princeton UP.

5. Gerrymanders (Apr 3-17)
   • Monmonier. Bushmanders.

   • Cox, Gary W., and Jonathan N. Katz. 1999. ``The Reapportionment Revolution and Bias in U.S. Congressional Elections,'' American Journal of Political Science 43: 812-841.

   • Grofman, Bernard, and Chandler Davidson. 1994. ``The Effect of Municipal Election Structure on Black Representation in Eight Southern States,'' in Davidson and Grofman, Quiet Revolution in the South, chapter 10.

   • Cameron, Charles, David Epstein, and O'Halloran, Sharyn. 1996. ``Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation in Congress?'' American Political Science Review 90:794-812.

   Balinski, Michel L., and H. Peyton Young. 2001. Fair Representation: Meeting the Ideal of One Man, One Vote, 2d ed. Brookings.

   Butler, David, and Bruce Cain. 1992. Congressional Redistricting: Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives. Macmillan.

   Cox, Gary W., and Jonathan N. Katz. 2002. Elbridge Gerry's Salamander: The Electoral consequences of the Reapportionment Revolution. Cambridge.

   Davidson, Chandler, and Bernard Grofman, eds. 1994. Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990. Princeton.

   Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. Basic Books.

   Rehfeld, Andrew. 2005. The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design. Cambridge.

6. Election Frauds (Apr 19-May 3)
   • Gumbel. Steal.

   • Mebane, Jr., Walter R. 2005. ``Voting Machine Allocation in Franklin County, Ohio, 2004: Response to U.S. Department of Justice Letter of June 29, 2005.''
     http://www.umich.edu/~wmebane/franklin2.pdf

   • Mebane, Jr., Walter R. 2006. ``Election Forensics: The Second-digit Benford's Law Test and Recent American Presidential Elections.'' Paper prepared for the Election Fraud Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 29-30, 2006.
     http://www.umich.edu/~wmebane/fraud06.pdf

   House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff. 2005. Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.
   http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf

   Democratic National Committee. 2005. Democracy At Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio. Section II. http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/06/democracy_at_ri.php or
   http://www.umich.edu/~wmebane/Ohio2004/OhioReportCover2Cover.pdf