Interstate compacts hold tremendous promise for resolving tough public problems at the subnational level. They have also been promoted as one way that states can protect their sovereignty vis-à-vis the national government. But the rate at which states participate in such compacts varies widely. Thus, we ask: What explains a state's propensity to join national interstate compacts? Using time-series cross-sectional event count models of state compact participation from 1960–2000, we find that states join compacts to enhance their policymaking capacity and to substitute for policy action by the national government. We also find that the physical connection among states influences their preference for certain types of compacts. Isolated states show a preference for compacts that simply harmonize policies, while more proximate states are more likely to join compacts that effectively open their borders to other states. Contrary to the expectations of some observers, interstate compacts do not appear to be used strategicallyby states as a means to forestall federal preemption.

Recent research has taught us much about the effects of campaign finance laws, but we know little about why states adopt the regulations that they do. I address this question by examining why states increased the stringency of their campaign finance laws from 1993 to 2002. As is the case with other policies regulating the conduct of elected officials, the popular perception exists that politicians resist stringent campaign finance out of a concern for their own electoral self-interest. As a result, I test whether campaign finance policymaking results from the selfish electoral incentives that politicians allegedly have on this issue or decisions on this issue are influenced by factors that influence other types of policies. I find evidence to support both views. Specifically, the initiative option, a liberal government, strong good government groups, legislative professionalism, and scandal increase the likelihood of a state increasing the stringency of their regulations, while states with expensive legislative elections are less willing to do so.

Recent studies (Brace and Hall 1990, 1995, 1997; Hall 1987, 1992; Hall and Brace 1989) have demonstrated that state supreme court judges' decisionmaking is influenced by the type of selection mechanism that put them into office. In particular, judges are found to respond to the interests of those who have placed them on the bench. We extend this line of inquiry further by testing the effect of rules governing the retention of these judges in merit systems. Do these judges respond to the subtle differences in constituency that these rules establish? We address this question with a larger dataset than that used in previous studies of decisionmaking (Brace and Hall 1995, 1997; Hall 1987, 1992), and we find overwhelming evidence of the effects of these retention rules. In fact, we also conclude that judicial decisions are more influenced by the actor charged with retaining them than the actor who placed them on the bench in the first place.

Political scientists are increasingly turning to direct democracy, as practiced in the American states, to investigate a broad range of questions dealing with median voter preferences and policy responsiveness, minority interests, theories of representation, policy implementation, political knowledge and behavior, citizen engagement, mobilization and turnout, voter competence, activities of interest groups and political parties, campaign finance, media effects, and agenda-setting. In this review article, we examine recent research on the instrumental effects of ballot measures on policy outcomes as well as the educative (and spillover) effects of the process of direct democracy on candidate contests. Throughout the article we suggest avenues for possible future research.

Researchers are often interested in the effects of state policies and institutions on individual behavior or other outcomes in sub-state-level observational units, such as election results in state legislative districts. In this article, we examine the issue of clustered data in state and local politics research and the analytical problems it can cause. Standard estimation methods applied in most regression models do not properly account for the clustering of observations within states, leading analysts to overstate the statistical significance of coefficient estimates, especially of state-level factors. We discuss the theory behind two approaches for dealing with clustering—clustered standard errors and multilevel modeling—and argue that calculating clustered standard errors is a more straightforward and practical approach, especially when working with large datasets or many cross-level interactions. We demonstrate the relevance of this topic by replicating a recent study of the effects of state post-registration laws on voter turnout (Wolfinger, Highton, and Mullin 2005).