Research in American Politics (RAP)
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 Wednesdays
Directors:
Harwood McClerking
Dean Lacy
Kira Sanbonmatsu
This workshop serves as a forum for the presentation of research by graduate students
and faculty in American politics. For graduate students, RAP is
an opportunity to hear and present practice job talks, dissertation
chapters, and conference papers. Occasional RAP sessions will include
research presentations by faculty from Ohio State and other universities.
RAP will be held during Winter Quarter 2005 in the Spencer Room (Derby 2130) on Wednesdays from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. (unless otherwise noted).
Please contact Kira Sanbonmatsu (sanbonmatsu.1@osu.edu) if you would like to
present.
Spring 2006 Presentation Schedule:
April 19, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Banks Miller (co-authored with Nancy Scherer)
The Federalist Society's Influence on the Federal Judiciary"
Abstract: In 1982, four young conservatives formed the Federalist Society to challenge the prevailing liberal philosophy which then existed among professors at our nation’s leading law schools. Since then, the Federalist Society has wielded substantial power in three Republican presidential administrations. Not only did Society members attain critical positions in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush (“Bush I”) and George W. Bush (“Bush II”) Justice Departments, but also, Society members also came to fill the ranks of the federal bench. While the Society leadership has always maintained that it is no more than a debating club, since the Reagan administration, liberal interest groups have disputed this proposition. Believing that Federalist Society membership is a proxy for a nominee with extremely conservative views, liberal interest groups have launched confirmation challenges to many Republican nominees because they were affiliated with the Federalist Society. In this paper, we test whether, as liberal interest groups maintain, Republican-appointed judges who are affiliated with the Federalist Society members are, in fact, more conservative than Republican-appointed judges not affiliated with the Federalist Society. Does the Federalist Society attract members who lie at the far conservative end of the ideological spectrum? We test our hypothesis using data on U.S. Courts of Appeals decisions (1994-2005) in two areas of law: search and seizure cases and states' rights cases.
May 10, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
TBA
May 17, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
TBA
May 24, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
TBA
May 31, 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Erin McAdams and Anand Sokhey
"The Content and Electoral Purpose of Moral Values (What the Heck are 'Moral Values' Anyway?)"
Abstract: Though there is much speculation that “moral values” have been key in
recent elections, the empirical evidence regarding the electoral
importance of “moral values” has been mixed. We argue that gauging the
importance of this issue in voting behavior necessitates understanding
what voters are referencing when they mention moral values, which in
turn demands understanding how definitions of moral values are formed.
With this in mind, we investigate the following questions: How do
individuals define moral values? What structures and predicts those
definitions? And how do varying conceptions of moral values play into
electoral decisions?
Analyzing data from The 2004 Post Election Callback Survey, we note that
voters in the 2004 presidential election did indeed define moral values
is many different ways. Using a multinomial logit modeling framework, we
find contrary to the widespread notion that “moral values” is simply a
catch-phrase for a stereotypical religious conservative agenda that a
variety of non-religious factors structured how the phrase was defined
by voters. Our results also indicate that these varying conceptions of
moral values significantly influenced presidential vote choices in 2004,
even after controlling for issue salience and other factors.
Archived RAPs
