The prime voting dynamic in the critical presidential election of 1896 was, according to the literature, the conversion of Democrats to the Republican banner. Unfortunately, mobilization of new voters has not been given much attention. To assess the role of mobilization, the vote shift possibilities from 1892 to 1896 were formalized, and all possible scenarios conforming to the aggregate data that characterized the electoral shift were analyzed by computer. Solutions to the tables representing the changes in voting from 1892 to 1896 show that in the Midwest more voters were mobilized in the 1896 election than were converted. In the Northeast, the conventional wisdom was not challenged. The findings illustrate the importance of mobilization as an explanation of large-scale electoral change.

There has long been a division of opinion among economists concerning the effects of economic developments on voting behavior. In his well-known study, Kramer (1971a) concluded that the fluctuations in economic activity have a systematic influence on U.S. congressional elections. His findings were challenged by various economists, including Stigler (1973).

The purpose of this paper is to extend the analysis of Kramer's results by examining the post-sample forecast performance of his models. As noted by Christ (1966, pp. 546–49), the acid test of a time series model is its ability to perform well outside the sample period. The results discussed below demonstrate that Kramer's equations have relatively good post-sample predictive ability. The findings thus support the view that short-term economic fluctuations have important effects on national elections. However, the results also suggest that economic factors alone are not sufficient to account for all variations of voter behavior.

Significant differences in the distribution of public resources among neighborhoods within the same municipality have been repeatedly reported in the literature. Previous researchers have generally concluded that these differences in the distribution of governmental benefits represent “unpatterned inequality” produced by idiosyncratic events and bureaucratic decision rules. This study of the distribution of municipal expenditures for public services in New York City comes to a very different conclusion. Municipal expenditures for social services (health, welfare, and education) increase with the dependency of district populations, which suggests a compensatory model of distribution. At the same time, municipal expenditures for property-related services (fire, sanitation) increase with tax revenues, which suggests a contributory model of distribution for these services. City expenditures for police services, however, are determined by both tax contributions and degree of dependence. These findings indicate that differences in the allocation of public resources in New York City are patterned by clearly recognizable distributional criteria.

An analysis of affirmative action data regarding levels of black employment in the civil service of forty-three U.S. cities indicates that observed variations are mainly a function of the size of the black population and the presence of a black mayor. By interpreting the size of the black population as an indicator of potential bloc voting power and by making explicit the links between the mayor's office and the personnel system, we may conclude that civil service hiring represents one tangible benefit of black political po wer. Other possible hypotheses explaining variations in levels of black employment are less satisfactory, including the argument that minority employment is mainly a function of the expansion or contraction of the public sector. The research suggests that to some degree a politics of ethnicity which involves the distribution of divisible economic goods to a particular group as a consequence of that group's political power is still a possibility in American cities.