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This paper analyzes the influence of the two most commonly examined causes of presidential vote choice, policy preferences and party identification. The focus is on change across elections in order to assess how the effects of issues and partisanship respond to the larger political context in which voters make their decisions. In contrast to party centric views of politics, I find little direct responsiveness to party issue contrast and substantial influence of candidate issue contrast. Further, I find that leading hypotheses for the "resurgence in partisanship" are not consistent with some important facts suggesting that the explanation remains elusive.

David Boaz


Suddenly, and rather quietly, both public and elite opinion are turning against the "new" methods of teaching reading that have dominated our schools for a generation.
I've been keeping an eye on this issue for a long time. In 1995 I noticed that after state test results showed that the vast majority of California public school students could not read, write, or compute at levels considered proficient, Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin appointed two task forces to investigate reading and math instruction. The reports were clear — and depressing. There had been a wholesale abandonment of the basics — such as phonics and arithmetic drills — in California classrooms. Eastin said there was no one place to lay the blame for the decade‐​long disaster. "What we made was an honest mistake," she said. Or as the Sacramento Bee headline put it, "We Goofed."
You'd think such a devastating report in the nation's largest state would have had an impact. But it didn't seem to get much attention outside California. Instead, schools kept adopting reading instruction plans based on "whole language" and "balanced literacy" theories. Despite the fact that in 1997 Congress instructed the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development to work with the Department of Education to establish a National Reading Panel that would evaluate existing research and evidence to find the best ways of teaching children to read. The panel reviewed more than 100,000 reading studies. In 2000 it reported its conclusion: That the best approach to reading instruction is one that incorporates:
Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
Systematic phonics instruction
Methods to improve fluency
Ways to enhance comprehension
But suddenly, in May of last year the New York Times took note of the problems with school reading instruction with a page 1 article on how a leading advocate of "balanced literacy" was backtracking. At Columbia University's Teachers College, she and her team trained thousands of teachers, and she estimated that her "Units of Study" was used in a quarter of the country's 67,000 elementary schools.
The Times noted that a 2019 investigation by American Public Media revealed "American education's own little secret about reading: Elementary schools across the country are teaching children to be poor readers — and educators may not even know it."
Then in January of this year I noted that the Fairfax County and Arlington County NAACP chapters in Virginia were making demands on the local school system: they want the schools to teach black and Hispanic kids to read. And they want the school to start using the best research‐​tested methods. After years of promising to make minority achievement a priority, finally in the past school year, the district gave all kindergarten through second‐​grade teachers scripted lesson plans featuring phonics.
In March the Washington Post editorialized: "Cut the politics. Phonics is the best way to teach reading."
In April the New York Times reported, "A revolt over how children are taught to read, steadily building for years, is now sweeping school board meetings and statehouses around the country." They quoted Ohio Governor Mike Dewine: "The evidence is clear," Mr. DeWine said. "The verdict is in." And noted: "The movement has drawn support across economic, racial and political lines. Its champions include parents of children with dyslexia; civil rights activists with the N.A.A.C.P.; lawmakers from both sides of the aisle; and everyday teachers and principals."
American Public Media has continued to follow the issue, and reported recently that at least 18 state legislatures are considering "ways to better align reading instruction with scientific research."
NPR's "All Things Considered" reported in June on the state of Georgia's new push for phonics in the lower grades. NPR notes that "there's perhaps no greater predictor of how a child will succeed in school than how well they can read by about the third grade. Research has shown that if students don't learn by then, they're far more likely to fall dangerously behind."
This new approach is being called "the Science of Reading," but it's the science your grandmother knew: Learn the letters, learn how each letter sounds, learn how the letters combine into words. The amazing thing is that for a generation or more, professors and school administrators thought they had better ideas.
As I wrote before:
Phonics seems like a good idea to me, but I'm no expert. As noted, though, there's a lot of research recommending phonics that a lot of school districts still aren't following. As a libertarian, I don't usually spend much time telling government agencies how to do their jobs, except as their actions impinge directly on individual rights. My focus is more on defining what activities ought to be undertaken by government and what ought to remain in the private sector, with individuals, businesses, churches, clubs, nonprofits, and civil society. And I think there's a lesson here on that.
Government agencies tend to be sluggish monopolies, with little incentive to improve and subject to political influence. When the California superintendent promised to fix the mistake, the teachers union head warned, "It's like turning an oil tanker around. You just don't do that quickly," and the governor's spokesperson said it would be a hard slog because "there is such partisan politics going on." Private organizations, especially profit‐​seeking businesses, are under constant pressure to serve customers better than their competitors. Businesses fail to meet that test every day and go out of business. When's the last time you heard of a failed government agency being shut down? That includes schools. Private schools must keep families happy or they can go elsewhere, and the school could be forced to shut down. Public schools, no matter how unhappy parents are, are almost never closed. As long as the tax money keeps coming in, they stay in business.
The problem is that the schools are run by a bureaucratic government monopoly, largely isolated from competitive or community pressures. We expect good service from businesses because we know–and we know that they know — that we can go somewhere else. We instinctively know we won't get good service from the post office or the Division of Motor Vehicles because we can't go anywhere else.

But now, after many years of complaints from parents, the elite media are joining the chorus: Teach children to read, using time‐​tested methods, confirmed by the National Reading Panel in 2000. It's about time.

ABSTRACT "Subjectification in the Southern Baptist Conservative Resurgence," is a sociological and philosophical analysis of the 1980s Conservative Resurgence. In the Resurgence, Baptist congregations rejected continued tolerance for "liberals," people who did not confess the literal and inerrant truth of the Scriptures, holding positions of authority in the Southern Baptist Convention's agencies and seminaries, and demanded that liberals be replaced by those who believed completely in the Bible. After a decade of partisan maneuvering unprecedented in the Convention, the liberals were totally ousted, and the denomination's prior trend towards alignment with mainstream American Christianity was sharply reversed. To this day, Southern Baptists are defined by the sectarian tendencies that motivated the Resurgence, and its leaders and their successors significantly influence politics and public life in the United States. This dissertation asks why the Resurgence happened, and pursues this question along two lines. First, what benefits outweighed the significant costs involved in increasing the antagonism between Southern Baptists and their surrounding culture? This is answered by using the formal framework developed by rational choice sociology of religion. Second, what is the genealogy of the desire that made Southern Baptists prefer those benefits over the costs? This is answered by using post-structuralist processes of subjectification to explain how their preference was directed. The main object of analysis, in both cases, is the preaching of W. A. Criswell, pastor of the then-largest church in the Convention, and nationally prominent leader of the Resurgence.

Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties' positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating whether political awareness mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment, evidence that partisan evolution is concentrated among more aware citizens is uncovered, and the implications are examined.

Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties' positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating whether political awareness mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment, evidence that partisan evolution is concentrated among more aware citizens is uncovered, and the implications are examined. Adapted from the source document.

The 2019 Indonesian presidential elections indicate that ideology played an important role in voting behaviour, as aggregate subnational results seem to mirror the mid-1950s, when Indonesian politics was organised around ideological and partisan groups known as aliran. However, the extent to which these macro-level patterns are rooted in real ideological divisions among Indonesian voters is an open question. This article analyses an original survey specifically designed to measure aliran identities, ideological orientations and political preferences of ordinary Indonesians. Findings indicate that aliran identities are still present and associated with party choice but only loosely connected with political ideology. Most notably, however, political Islam is associated with important political attitudes and behaviours. Islamist Indonesians are less likely to support liberal understandings of democracy, more likely to see economic issues as policy priorities and more likely to support economic redistribution and regional autonomy. This suggests that ideology should receive greater attention in the study of Indonesian politics. (JCSA/GIGA)

The Election of 2000 includes all the chapters we have come to expect from this series. E. J. Dionne provides a brief but compelling overview of the Clinton legacy and how it overshadowed the entire political landscape. One of the predominate themes of 2000 was to what extent 'Clinton fatigue' would affect [Gore]. Dionne argues that the Clinton legacy was, at its core, an ambivalent one that both assisted and hindered all who fought political battles last year. He shows that Clinton's effectiveness in repositioning the Democratic Party created opportunities for Gore but that Clinton, the man, so infuriated the Republicans that they would stop at nothing to retake the White House. Dionne's essay is followed by seven more, each on a discrete subject. The presidential election receives direct attention in William Mayer's discussion of the nominating process and Pomper's own account of the fall campaign. Each is superb, with Mayer giving a solid recounting of events that led to the nominations of [Bush] and Gore. Particularly noteable is Mayer's consideration of the front loading of primaries and how it affects the kind of candidates eventually nominated. He is not afraid to ask whether the system is producing good leaders. The short answer is that we got decent candidates who reflect their parties, but the decision-making process was flawed. Mayer further observes that, at least with Bush, Republican governors acted in much the same fashion as the old conventions--they exercised a kind of peer review. [Gerald Pomper]'s account is more challenging because he must explain not only what happened in the fall, but the entire Florida postelection fiasco. He does this with an excellent analysis of the electoral coalitions each candidate built. Pomper rightly points out that this election was marked by a high degree of partisan voting and that Gore made a mistake by 'underplaying his party.' The heart of The Election of 2000 includes four essays dealing with the news media, campaign finance, congressional elections, and public opinion. The articles collectively tell us that recent political trends persist in each of those areas. Barbara Hershey shows how the news media continue to frame elections and fit candidates into straitjackets--to put it bluntly, Bush the intellectual light-weight and Gore the ambitious fibber. She not only illustrates the concept of framing; she deftly shows why it constrains the entire electoral process. Hershey also rightly points out that framing is not simply created at the whim of reporters; it reflects the expectations and beliefs of reporters, subjected to the boundaries set by the candidates themselves. Anthony Corrado catalogues the various ways that money was raised and argues convincingly that the Federal Election Campaign Act has basically collapsed. Paul Herrnson analyzes congressional politics, and despite some wonderful stories--the first lady running in New York and a dead man winning in Missouri--he concludes that this year was 'ordinary for modern day congressional races.' Control of Congress may have been extraordinarily close, but the style and form of past politics persist. We still live in a political world dominated by candidate centered campaigns, and incumbents usually win. Finally, Kathleen Frankovic and Monika McDermott's analysis of public opinion shows that, once again, Americans want government action, but they also believe in small government. Furthermore, while most Americans agreed with Gore on specific issues, this agreement was parried by Bush's personal popularity. And, when voters elect people in a representative democracy there is always potential conflict between issues and personalities.

Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- The Crises of 2020 -- Part I. Federalism and the Resurgence of the states -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Mythos of American Federalism -- 3. From Backwaters to Battlegrounds -- Part II. The Nationalization of State Politics -- 4. Who Governs the State-Level Resurgence? -- 5. National Activists in State Politics -- 6. Partisan Laboratories of Democracy -- Part III. Democracy in the States -- 7. Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding -- 8. Explaining Dynamics in Subnational Democracy -- 9. Conclusion -- Appendixes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Abstract
A wide range of empirical scholarship has documented a partisan gap in health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, but the political foundations and temporal dynamics of these partisan gaps remain poorly understood. Using an original six-wave individual panel study (n = 3,000) of Americans throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that at the individual level, partisan differences in health behavior grew rapidly in the early months of the pandemic and are explained almost entirely by individual support for or opposition to President Trump. Our results comprise powerful evidence that Trump support (or opposition), rather than ideology or simple partisan identity, explains partisan gaps in health behavior in the United States. In a time of populist resurgence around the world, public health efforts must consider the impact of charismatic authority in addition to entrenched partisanship.

The growth in the electorate of those who classify themselves as independents and the recent tendency of partisans to vote for opposition party candidates constitute evidence of a general loosening of party ties. The argument of this article, however, is that reports of the demise of party have been exaggerated. Most independents lean in a partisan direction, and "leaners" are behavioral partisans almost the equal of weak identifiers. Moreover, a dimension of partisanship based on party issue intentions has important explanatory power and can be activated when issues with which the parties have been historically identified are salient. Although the findings fit the facts of the resurgence of partisanship in 1976, one cannot be sanguine that parties have regained their former role: partisans increasingly fail to perceive issue differences between the parties.

Introduction : the resurgence of realist political theory -- The liberal visi of the political : consensus, freedom, and legitimacy -- The realist vision of the political : conflict, coercion, and the circumstances of politics -- The realist challenge to liberal theory -- Liberal alternatives : the liberalism of fear and modus vivendi -- Bernard Williams and the structure of liberal realis -- The partisan foundations of liberal realism -- The moderate hegemony of liberal realism.

In this introductory article for the 2020–2021 Annual Review of American Federalism, we review notable developments in U.S. politics and policy during the last year, with an emphasis on their intersections with and consequences for federalism. We focus in particular on the 2020 elections and the COVID pandemic, along with policy developments in the areas of criminal justice and police reform, health care, environment, immigration, and equality and religious liberty. The events of the past year, especially those related to the pandemic and the fallout of the presidential election, led to a resurgence of public interest in federalism and a focus on the importance of government decision-making of state and local governments. Events during the last year have not only reinforced partisan polarization but have also deepened the existing divide of Americans along partisan lines and perhaps in new ways. Partisan differences have increasingly become cultural differences, so that political and policy differences have saturated American culture in notable ways.