Though both journalists and the academic literature on ethnic conflict give the opposite impression, peaceful and even cooperative relations between ethnic groups are far more common than is large-scale violence. We seek to explain this norm of interethnic peace and how it occasionally breaks down, arguing that formal and informal institutions usually work to contain or “cauterize” disputes between individual members of different groups. Using a social matching game model, we show that local-level interethnic cooperation can be supported in essentially two ways. In spiral equilibria, disputes between individuals are correctly expected to spiral rapidly beyond the two parties, and fear of this induces cooperation “on the equilibrium path.” In in-group policing equilibria, individuals ignore transgressions by members of the other group, correctly expecting that the culprits will be identified and sanctioned by their own ethnic brethren. A range of examples suggests that both equilibria occur empirically and have properties expected from the theoretical analysis.

A 1987 law established popularly elected village committees in the Chinese countryside. This article analyzes a unique set of survey data to describe and explain the connection between village leaders and those who choose them, in terms of orientation to the role of the state in the economy. It compares positions of village leaders with positions of respondents sampled from their selectorates of township-level leaders and electorates of ordinary villagers. Results of multivariate regression analyses indicate that: (1) village leaders are responsive to both old and newly emerging constituencies, as reflected in significant congruence between village leaders and their selectorates above and electorates below; (2) congruence between village leaders and their electorates is not exclusively the result of shared local environment, informal influence, or socialization but is significantly associated with the electoral process; and (3) the causal mechanism underlying the electoral connection in the Chinese countryside is the familiar one of voter choice.

Great Britain faced an immensely complicated strategic problem in the 1930s, and important aspects of it can be stylized as a situation in which a state that is declining in power is unsure of the aims of a rising state. If those aims are limited, then the declining state prefers to appease the rising state's demands rather than go to war to oppose them. If, however, the rising state's demands are unlimited, then the declining state prefers fighting. And, given that the declining state is becoming weaker over time, it prefers fighting sooner rather than later if there is to be a war. This situation creates a trade-off: The earlier a state stands firm, the stronger it will be if war ensues, but the higher the chance of fighting an unnecessary war. In equilibrium, the declining state generally tries to appease the rising state by making a series of concessions.

Although constitutional protection for rights is increasingly popular, there is little systematic research on the extent to which bills of rights affect the process of government. This article examines the effects a bill of rights may be expected to produce, and then uses a quasi-experimental design to analyze the effects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Canadian Supreme Court's agenda. The data suggest that the Charter indeed has influenced the Court's agenda, although the effects are more limited than generally recognized. More important, the data suggest that a number of the influences often attributed to the Charter likely resulted instead from the growth of what I call the support structure for legal mobilization, consisting of various resources that enable litigants to pursue rights-claims in court. The political significance of a bill of rights, then, depends on factors in civil society that are independent of constitutional structure.

Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for directly testing turnout effects in U.S. politics. In a comprehensive analysis of these statewide elections since 1928, we find that the conventional theory was true outside the South through 1964, but since 1965 the overall relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes has been insignificant. Even before the mid-1960s, the turnout effect outside the South was strongest in Republican states and insignificant or negative in heavily Democratic states. A similar but weaker pattern obtains after 1964. In the South, which we analyze only since 1966, higher turnout helped Republicans until 1990, but in 1990–94 the effect became pro-Democratic. The conventional theory cannot account for these complex patterns, but they are impressively consistent with DeNardo's (1980) theory.

Majority-minority voting districts have been advanced as a remedy to the underrepresentation of minority interests in the political process. Yet, their efficacy in furthering the substantive goals of minority constituents has been questioned because they may dilute minority influence in surrounding areas and lead to an overall decrease in support for minority-sponsored legislation. Thus, there may be a trade-off between increasing the number of minority officeholders and enacting legislation that furthers the interests of the minority community. Using nonlinear estimation techniques, we simulate the districting strategies that maximize substantive minority representation, and find that such a trade-off does exist. We also find that, outside of the South, dividing minority voters equally across districts maximizes substantive representation; inside the South the optimal scheme creates concentrated districts on the order of 47% black voting age population. In addition, minority candidates may have a substantial chance of being elected from districts with less than 50% minority voters.

The consequences of veto power in committees is analyzed using the approach of noncooperative bargaining theory. It is first shown that in equilibrium nonveto players do not share in the benefits gained by the decision making of the committee, that is, in every equilibrium outcome of the bargaining game, nonveto players earn zero. Some measures for reducing the excessive power of veto members in committees are analyzed. Specifically, I study the effects of imposing a deadline on negotiations and of expanding the committee by increasing the number of nonveto players. Quantitative results are given for the case of the UN Security Council.

Using campaign contributions by business leaders as an indicator of their political preferences, this paper tests two different claims concerning the 1936 presidential elections: (1) Business leaders in mass-consumption industries differentially favored the Democrats for reasons of economic policy; and (2) business leaders in capital-intensive and internationally oriented industries differentially favored the Democrats for reasons of economic policy. The paper shows that in the 1936 election no industrial sector was more likely to support the Democrats when region, religion, and the special circumstances of the brewing industry (gratitude toward the Democrats for ending Prohibition) are taken into consideration. Democratic financial support came predominantly from southerners, members of the Jewish community, officers and directors of smaller businesses, and top-level business leaders from New York City.

Tsebelis (1994) argues in the American Political Science Review that the European Parliament has important power due to its right as a conditional agenda setter. I claim that Tsebelis' argument is based either on an incomplete analysis or on inaccurately specified decision rules. An accurate modeling of the cooperation procedure as stated in Article 189c of the Treaty of the European Community and as applied in practice changes the results considerably. Based on such a model, I provide an explanation of why the European Parliament sometimes can make successful amendments.

Moser analyzes the cooperation procedure using a model that assumes (1) one dimension and (2) complete information. I show that because of these two restrictive assumptions and his misunderstanding of the strategic implications of Article 189a(1) of the Maastricht Treaty (an article also present in the Single European Act and the Treaty of Rome), Moser's conclusions are mistaken. In particular, his predicted outcomes are incorrect, and his major institutional prediction (that the European Parliament plays no role in decision making except in the second round of the cooperation procedure) is contradicted by thousands of parliamentary amendments, the major part of which are accepted in the first round.

We argue that a variant of the sua sponte doctrine, namely, the practice disfavoring the creation of issues not raised in the legal record, is a norm with substantial consequences for the U.S. Supreme Court. Without it, justices would act considerably more like legislators, who are free to engage in “issue creation,” and less like jurists, who must wait for issues to come to them. Yet, McGuire and Palmer claim that justices engage in issue creation in a “significant minority” of their cases. We dispute this finding because we think it is an artifact of the way McGuire and Palmer collected their data. Indeed, for virtually every case in which they found evidence of issue creation, we show that the issue was actually present in at least one of the litigants' briefs. This suggests that justices may be policy seekers, but they are not policy entrepreneurs; an that briefs filed by third parties (such as amici curiae) are generally not a source of important issues considered by the Court.

In the process of agenda setting, the U.S. Supreme Court is limited to selecting from among only those cases brought before it. Despite this limitation, the justices possess considerable discretion and can reshape the issues in a case as a means of advancing their policy preferences. With data drawn from the Court's opinions, we find that, over the past twenty-five years, the justices have evinced a frequent willingness to expand the issues on their plenary docket and resolve questions not formally presented by the parties. We conclude that, notwithstanding informal norms that disapprove of this practice, issue fluidity is an important component in a continuous program of agenda building.