What's hot at APSA.

What the latest research reveals about race, crime money, politics, and American values

THIS MONTH, LEGIONS OF DEEP thinkers will converge on Boston for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. There they'll compare research, schmooze in the cool, incipient New England fall breezes, and engage in some hard-core academic ruminating. And while the gathering most likely won't generate a media frenzy near the magnitude of, say, Monica Lewinsky's getting her hair done, attention paid to the work presented there can serve to inform debate on a host of pressing issues. In preparation for the conference, the Monthly took an informal survey of some of the nation's top political and social scientists to find out some of the more talked-about work that is to be presented.

Campaign Cash

Despite the high visibility many politicians and outraged public-interest groups have given to the issue of campaign finance reform, does anyone really know to what extent money spent campaigning affects electoral outcomes? Not according to Jeffrey Milyo of Tufts University. While admitting that a candidate with a dramatic monetary edge can use the cash to pad his vote share, Milyo says his research shows that small differences in spending between individuals has no discernible effect. (And in at least one instance, which we'll get to in a minute, he's found that this trend holds true even in elections with major spending disparities.) Milyo dismisses past research that has stressed the positive, vote-gaining effects of campaign spending as methodologically flawed. Insufficient controls for other factors that contribute to campaign victories, he asserts, have resulted in misleading conclusions. "If you approach this issue with the belief that money influences vote share, then you can find confirmatory evidence," says Milyo. "If your approach is more skeptical, then what you find is much less conclusive"

Researching this issue does indeed present a methodological challenge. How can a candidate's campaign wallet be isolated for study from other, less quantifiable attributes, such as likeability, integrity, and performance record--all of which not only make a politician a better fund-raiser, but of themselves contribute to electoral success? Indeed, this question highlights one of the persistent problems of the social sciences in general: Replicable and controlled environments in which to test hypotheses are few and far between. But thanks to the baser elements of human nature, Milyo was provided an episode which, in several aspects, resembles that of a controlled natural-science experiment.

In 1992 Enid Greene and Karen Shepard vied for an open U.S. congressional seat representing Utah's 2nd congressional district. Shepard defeated Greene by four percentage points. The two faced each other again in 1994, with Shepard as the incumbent and Greene the challenger. As the incumbent, Shepard would seemingly have had the edge. But this time around, Greene had a new husband, Joe Waldholtz, whom she happened to name her campaign treasurer. In the months leading up to the `94 election, Joe stole several million dollars from his new father-in-law--$1.8 million of which he funneled into Enid's campaign. Consequently, Enid Greene Waldholtz was the beneficiary of a windfall campaign contribution received independently of other variables that may have assisted in her victory. Aided by a late media blitz, presumably funded by the illegal contributions of her husband, Enid Greene Waldholtz won the `94 election by 10 percentage points.

Up to this point the evidence seems to suggest that campaign spending does, in fact, equal votes. And indeed, when Joe's imaginative fund-raising style was revealed in late 1995, many people in Utah accused Waldholtz of having bought the election--with stolen cash no less. A close look at the money spent and margin of victory, however, raises questions about the actual role the additional funds played in Waldholtz' victory.

Ignoring other possible factors in Waldholtz' success--such as the strong anti-incumbent bias that defined the 1994 elections--and attributing the entirety of the 14 percent decrease in Shepard's vote share between `92 and `94 to the influence of her opponent's ill-gotten campaign funds, Waldholtz still gained less than one percentage point of the vote for each $100,000 of the $1.8 million in illegal funds she spent. Even this may well be an exaggeration of the money's effect, since an independent candidate--Merril Cook--siphoned 18 percent of the vote away from Waldholtz and Shepard. According to Milyo, the Waldholtz case is indicative of broader findings in his research.

Though the benefits to politicians of massive campaign spending is less clear than many people believe, research being conducted by Stephen Ansolabehere and Jim Snyder of MIT indicates that the benefits to those making the donations are somewhat clearer. Despite politicians' assurances that political contributions have no influence on their vote--a claim already considered specious by those of us concerned about the influence of special interest money in politics--Ansolabehere's work shows that the giving patterns of big-money donors do, in fact, suggest that political influence is being treated as a commodity.

Ansolabehere began his analysis by separating donors into two groups: consumers and investors. Consumer-donors give because they support the cause or causes that the politician or party represent, while investors-donors--which include corporations, unions, and political action committees--are seeking a return on their investment in the form of access to, or services and favors from, politicians. Consumer donations behave like charity donations, fluctuating based on factors such as a donor's income level and are, says Ansolabehere, "a matter of taste" Investor donations, on the other hand, are extremely invariant. For example, while campaign spending among senators varies widely, the differences in aggregate PAC contributions to the Senate do not--ranging from around $1 million at the lowest quartile to $1.7 million at the highest. In less technical terms, this means the average PAC donations to the most poorly funded 25 percent of senators is about $1 million, while the average PAC donations to the most well-funded 25 percent of the Senate is $1.7 million.

Using Ansolabehere's investor theory, one would expect to find the price of a vote to run about three times more in the Senate than in the House--there being around three times as many House members as there are Senate members, making an individual senator's vote considerably more influential than one representative's. Sure enough, from 1978 to 1996, PAC contributions to the Senate and the House have adhered closely to a 2.7-to-1 ratio. Evidently, even as dollar amounts have risen, the market price for access to a politician has remained proportionally constant between the House and Senate over the past two decades.

Further insight into the PAC-politician connection is afforded when we look at the distribution of contributions in relation to the power structure of each house of Congress. The distribution of power in the House is stratified, with party and committee leaders clearly sitting atop the food chain. Investor-donors recognize this, and their donations--unlike consumer-donors'--closely follow the hierarchy in the House. For instance, Ansolabehere notes that before joining the Ways and Means Committee in 1984, Rep. Ray McGrath's (R-NY) total PAC receipts stood at just over $100,000. McGrath joined the Committee in 1985 and by 1988 his PAC receipts totaled over $300,000. By contrast, on the Senate side, where political power is more equitably distributed, investor donations too are more evenly spread out.

Candidate Emergence

Where are the quality candidates for elected office? This is the question that a team of researchers, led by L. Sandy Maisel of Colby College and Walter J. Stone of the University of Colorado, is investigating. For what is called the Candidate Emergence Study, these scholars sought out 1,400 "activist-informants," evenly distributed across the political spectrum, from a random sample of U.S. House districts. These 1,400 informants were asked to identify potentially strong candidates for the House from their respective regions. They were encouraged to choose individuals they thought truly worthy of elected office, regardless of whether the person was in a party other than theirs, had ever been mentioned in the press, or had even ever considered running for office.

The informants were then asked about the odds of their potential candidates running--and possibly winning--in an election. Not surprisingly, while potential candidates who already held office were assigned a 90 percent likelihood of running for reelection, the odds that a nonincumbent would run were placed much lower at 35 percent. Similarly, informants saw a 91 percent chance that the incumbent would win in his party's primary, and an 85 percent chance for victory in the general election. Potential challengers, on the other hand, faced much tougher odds: Their perceived chance at winning the primary was just a bit better than 50-50 and in the general election a bit worse. In fact, the perceived chance that a potential challenger would both run and win was less than 15 percent. Clearly, our current political system is perceived to heavily favor incumbents.

Despite the disparity in expected electoral outcomes, however, informants saw little difference in candidate quality between incumbents and potential challengers. Asked to rate the overall strength of candidates on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being the strongest, incumbents averaged a 5.9 and potential challengers a 5.4. More than half of the informants rated the potential challengers as stronger candidates than the incumbents.

From this survey it is clear that the informants feel the best candidates are often not running for the House. But even more disturbing was informants' perception that, as the personal qualities of a potential challenger increase, the likelihood of his or her seeking office decreased. That's right, the greater a potential candidate's perceived level of integrity, ability to solve problems, and grasp of the issues, the less he or she is thought likely to run.

In the second phase of the study the potential candidates identified by the informants were contacted and asked to explain their attitudes toward running for office. About 1,200 responded. Though at the time of this writing the data collected is still being evaluated, some common objections made by the potential candidates have emerged: The effect on family, loss of privacy, negative campaigning, and the sense that they can accomplish more in another role, perhaps in state legislatures, were common reasons given for an individual not seeking election to the U.S. Congress.

When the surveys used for the first stage of this research were mailed last year, they apparently did not sit well with Democratic Rep. William Clay of Missouri, some of whose constituents were polled. Clay and a handful of colleagues, outraged that the study had been funded by the National Science Foundation, instigated a General Accounting Office inquiry into the work. The GAO demanded that the list of House districts used in the research be revealed, while Clay and his colleagues went even further, asking for the names of the 1,400 informants. Clay and Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) then went onto the floor of the House and demanded a $174,000 cut in the NSF budget as a reprimand for its funding the CES. (When contacted for this article, Rep. Clays office refused to comment.) The cut was eventually approved. Asked to explain the response of Clay and his cohorts to his research, Maisel is unequivocal: "They don't want the system that supports them to be changed."

Sentencing Disparities

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, if recent incarceration rates remain unchanged, 5 percent of Americans will serve time at some point in their lives. Here in the greatest democracy on earth, however, it has long been recognized that, when it comes to prison sentences, all men are not created equal. If you're black, for instance, your chance of serving time rises sharply: An estimated 28 percent of blacks will spend time in a federal or state prison. Moreover, blacks, when convicted, typically serve longer sentences than their white counterparts, as do Hispanics.

In an attempt to rectify these disparities, in 1984 Congress passed the Sentencing Guidelines and Policy Statement of the Sentencing Reform Act. The SRA, which went into effect in 1987, states that race, gender, ethnicity, and income should not affect the length of sentences given to criminals. In order to promote uniformity in sentencing and ensure implementation of the SRA, the United States Sentencing Commission in 1987 developed a detailed set of rules outlining how long a person should serve for a particular crime. These guidelines determine a criminal's appropriate sentence by calculating two factors: an offense-level score based on the type of crime involved, and a criminal history score. Between individuals with equivalent scores, judges are prohibited from issuing sentences that vary by the greater of 25 percent or six months. If a case presents highly atypical features, a judge may sentence outside of the specified range, but must provide compelling and specific reasons for doing so. Moreover, an appellate court may review the judge's rationale for departing from USSC guidelines.

A decade later, however, blacks and other minority groups are still not being treated equally under the law, according to work done by David Mustard at the University of Georgia. In the largest study ever of its kind, Mustard examined 77,756 federal offenders sentenced under the SRA. His findings: Both blacks and Hispanics still serve significantly longer sentences than do whites. When the appropriate controls are added for offense level and criminal history, black offenders typically receive a sentence six months longer than their white counterparts, while Hispanics' sentences are typically 1.4 months longer than whites. Furthermore, blacks and Hispanics are much less likely to receive downward departures--sentences less than what the USSC guidelines indicate--than whites. As this would suggest, you're more likely to be sentenced to zero time, should this be among the judge's options, if you're white than if you're black or Hispanic.

One group that seems to benefit from sentencing bias, however, is women. On the whole, women across the racial spectrum serve sentences six months (13 percent) shorter than men do. It is an ironic effect of paternalism, and one likely to bring smiles to the faces of wayward girls everywhere, that chivalry is still alive and well in the American court system.

Income and education are also shown by Mustard to play a role in sentencing. If you have no high-school diploma, expect close to a month of additional time. If you're college educated, you'll get a break of 1.2 months. If you have an income of $5,000 a year or less, expect to serve 6.8 months longer than criminals who bring in between $25,000 and $35,000 a year. In jurists' defense, Mustard notes that sentencing disparities may stem from the judges' superior knowledge of the particulars of the individual cases. Considering the widespread pattern of disparity, however, a more likely explanation is that the sentencing differences are either the result of education and income discrimination on the part of judges or the fact that wealthier and better educated defendants can take advantage of legal resources the less-fortunate cannot--or, what is most likely, a little of both.

As for the race-based discrepancies, Mustard found that 57 percent of the black-white disparity in sentencing stems from judges departing from the USSC guidelines. The degree of difference is particularly pronounced in sentencing for drug-related offenses: More than 70 percent of the black-white disparity and 82 percent of the Hispanic-white disparity in drug trafficking sentences is the result of judges' departing from sentencing guidelines.

Both the Sentencing Reform Act and the rules of the USSC make it explicitly clear that this kind of inequity is a no-no. Perhaps judges should spend some time familiarizing themselves with the rules they themselves are supposed to follow in order to fulfill their obligation to mete out equal justice under the law.

Ambivalence

In the March `98 Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris reviewed a book by Boston University sociologist Alan Wolfe that describes the latent moderate sympathies of the American public. It seems that despite all the partisan rhetoric, people, when given a chance to offer more than a simple yes/no poll response on controversial issues such as welfare, crime, and even abortion, aren't as narrowly liberal or conservative as they present themselves. Now researchers Stephen Craig and Jim Kane at the University of Florida are completing a study indicating that, in fact, when it comes to the morally charged and divisive issue of abortion, there exists greater ambivalence and less polarization in Americans' attitudes than many would suppose.

Floridians were asked a series of six questions that present different circumstances under which a woman may be compelled to seek an abortion. These same six questions have been used by the General Social Survey since 1972. The Florida respondents were first asked whether they agreed that a given circumstance justified obtaining an abortion. Though generally more conservative than the GSS respondents nationwide in `94, the Floridians ranked the six differing circumstances in the same order as did respondents to the national survey.

The six questions were then reformulated as statements and the respondents were asked to rate on a scale of one to four both their positive and negative feelings about each, one being the total absence of any positive or negative feeling and four being an extreme emotional response. These numbers were then used to calculate an ambivalency score for each respondent. All told 64 percent of those questioned expressed some level of ambivalence to the six statements. The most conflicted responses came when respondents were asked whether abortion is justified when a mother is "too poor" to raise the child, while respondents were much more definite that rape justifies an abortion.

Most intriguing is the fact that there was no statistical difference in the level of ambivalence expressed by those who identified themselves as pro-life and those who identified themselves as pro-choice. It appears as if, on both sides of the abortion debate, there is a notable situational component that informs attitudes that are often perceived as stemming wholly from an extremist position.

Immigration 

Considering the changing face of America, it's little wonder that immigration policy is always a hot topic: Since 1970 the percentage of first-generation immigrants in the United States has almost doubled, climbing from 4.8 percent to around 10 percent today. From 1990 to 1994 alone, 4.5 million immigrants arrived in this country, and since 1965 the number has approached, maybe surpassed, the number of those who immigrated here between 1880 and 1920.

Numerous studies have been done concerning immigrants' effects on the American economy, culture, etc., but surprisingly little attention has been paid to way these groups interact after they arrive. Now Michael Jones-Correa of Harvard University is filling that gap, focusing his research on the urban context of inter-ethnic strife. More than 93 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States live in cities. Roughly half are concentrated in one of eight urban areas: Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Anaheim, Chicago, Washington D.C., Houston, and San Francisco. These immigrants often settle in poor neighborhoods where they must compete for resources and jobs that support native-born minority populations. There is simply not enough to go around, thus making these melting pot microcosms flash points for ethnic conflicts.

This already volatile situation was profoundly exacerbated, according to Jones-Correa, by the intergovernmental and economic restructurings of the Reagan administration. During the postwar years, and particularly under Johnson, the federal government developed a variety of grants programs for cities that, in essence, bypassed state authority. Ronald Reagan changed all that, devolving the power to allocate aid to the states in the belief that such decentralization would enable regional concerns to be more efficiently addressed. Ironically, the move had exactly the opposite effect at the municipal level. Under Reagan, federal grants to cities fell significantly for the first time: Federal money that once flowed directly to cities was redirected to states. In turn, the states, trying to contend with their own budget shortfalls, chose to keep money from metropolitan areas. Consequently, cities had fewer resources, and thus less flexibility, in dealing with demographic changes than they once did. One of the results of this has been an increase in urban ethnic crises.

Though this decrease in funding was only temporary, the changes in the way funds are allocated, which have continued under Bush and Clinton, emphasizing state authority over cities, have had more permanent effects. Jones-Correa points to the riots which erupted throughout the 1980s and early '90s in Miami, Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles as evidence. One would think that these riots, in which dozens were killed and billions of dollars in property damaged, would have provoked a host of rigorous policy evaluations. According to Jones-Correa, however, "We haven't learned anything since then."

Journalists are among those Jones-Correa holds responsible for the lack of a constructive response to these disturbances. The media, he says, erroneously compared the riots of the 1980s and early `90s to those of the `60s. By presenting them as ideologically driven, in essence dissents over social injustice, journalists obscured the real issues of interethnic conflict at the heart of the riots.

RELATED ARTICLE: Top Picks

On September 2, more than 6, 000 political scientists will coverage on Boston for the American Political Science Association's annual meeting. Thousands of papers will be presented. We asked a few of the nation's top political scientists which of them are likely to be most interesting. Their picks:

Linda Fowler, author of Candidates, Congress, and the American Democracy, is director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center and the Reagan Professor of Policy Studies at Dartmouth.

* "African American Candidates and White Voter Contact: The Individuation of Racial Stereotypes," Nayda Terkildsen, Carol Swain, and David Damore.

* "Roundtable on Campaign Reform," Larry Barrels, Bruce Buchanan, John G. Geer, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Daron Shaw, and Lynn Vavreck.

* "One, Some, and Many in Public Education: The Relation between Democratic Values and Individual or Group Preferences," Jennifer L. Hochschild.

* "Organizing the Presidency: The Institutional Implications of Presidential Power," Mathew J. Dickinson.

* "The Clinton Legacy: A Conversation with Robert Reich and Charles O. Jones," Robert Reich and Charles O. Jones.

* "Challenges to the American Two-Party System: Evidence from the 1468, 1980, 1492, and 1946 Presidential Elections," Paul R. Abramson, John Aldrich, and Philip Paolino.

* "Home Style Revisited: A Case Study of Political Change," Richard F. Fenno Jr.

* "Racial Polarization and Realignment in the New South," D. Stephen Voss.

* "The Changing Politics of Medicare: 1466-1446," Theodore Marmor.

James M. Glaser, author of Race, Campaign Political and the Realignment in the South, is an associate professor of political science at Tufts University.

* "Who Bowls? Class, Race, and Participatory Inequality over Time," Henry E. Brady, Kay Schlozman, and Sidney Verba.

* "The Consequences of Russian Intolerance: The Political Freedom of Minorities," James Gibson.

* "Sharing the Burden? The Politics of the Public and Private Social Provision in the United States," Jacob S. Hacker.

* "The impact of Science on Public Opinion: How People Judge the Natural Seriousness of Global Warming and Form Policy Preferences," Jon A. Krosnick.

* `Are European Party Systems Being Transformed in Response to European Integration?" Gary Marks and Carole Wilson.

* "Is There a Professor in this Class? Technology and the Changing Role(s) of the Teacher." David C. Paris.

* "Exposure to and Acceptance of Economics Information: Understanding Citizens' Views of the American Economy," Renee M. Smith.

* "Consultant Attitudes Toward the Improvement of Campaign Conduct," James Thurber and Candice J. Nelson.

* `"Potential Politics': The Development of Partisanship Among Contemporary Immigrants in the U.S.," Janelle Wong.

Larry J. Sabato, professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, is the co-author with Genn R. Simpson of Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption In American Politics.

* "The Political Implications of Higher Turnout," Raymond E. Wolfinger and Benjamin Highton.

* "Candidate Emergence in U.S. House Elections," L. Sandy Maisel, et al.

* "A Different Perspective on the Causal Role of Partisan Predisposition," Warren Miller.

* "Reformulating the Party Coalitions: A Christian Democratic Party System in the 1990s," John R. Petrocik.

* "Floating Voters in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948-1996," John Zaller.

* "Modeling Campaign Effects: Does Attack Advertising Depress Turnout?" John G. Geer and Richard R. Lau.

* "The Electoral Effect of Campaign Spending in House Elections," Jeffrey Milyo.

* "Money, Advertising, and Interest Groups: New Evidence from the 1996 Congressional Elections," Ken Goldstein and Paul Freedman.

* "Asian Americans and Immigration: All Exploration of Attitudes and Initiative Vote Patterns," Wendy Tam and Bruce E. Cain.

Michael J. Sandel, author of Democracy's Discontent: America in Search or a Public Philosophy, is a professor of government at Harvard University.

* "In Praise of Liberal Nationalism," Samuel H. Beer.

* "Transracial Adoption: Individual Rights and Group Membership," Molly Shanley.

* "Marriage and the Race Question," Randall Kennedy.

* "Beyond the Immanence/Transcendence Divide: Agency, Citizenship, and the Second Sex," Sharon Krause.

* "When Norms Collide, Who Decides?: The Case of Reproductive Health in India," Mary Fainsod Katzenstein.

* "Immigrants and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Four Cities," Michael Jones-Correa.

* "Frederick Douglas and the Idea of National Community," Bernard Boxill.

* "Springfield as Polis: The Politics of `The Simpsons,'" Paul A. Cantor.

* "What Would A Liberal Communitarian Polity Actually Look Like?" Marc W. Stier.