The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall
The first complete history of America's most bizarre and longest-running political act. Stories of chicanery and finagling and rigged elections abound in this look at a bygone era in American politics.
Group incentives and rational voting 1
Our model describes competition between groups driven by the choices of self-interested voters within groups. Within a Poisson voting environment, parties observe aggregate support from groups and can allocate prizes or punishments to them. In a tournament style analysis, the model characterizes how contingent allocation of prizes based on relative levels of support affects equilibrium voting behavior. In addition to standard notions of pivotality, voters influence the distribution of prizes across groups. Such prize pivotality supports positive voter turnout even in non-competitive electoral settings. The analysis shows that competition for a prize awarded to the most supportive group is only stable when two groups actively support a party. However, competition among groups to avoid punishment is stable in environments with any number of groups. We conclude by examining implications for endogenous group formation and how politicians structure the allocation of rewards and punishments.
Political Corruption in America: A Search for Definitions and a Theory, or If Political Corruption Is in the Mainstream of American Politics Why Is It Not in the Mainstream of American Politics Research?
Lack of a clear definition of political corruption has limited its systematic study by analysts of American politics. This article offers a conceptual framework with which to view corruption. A corrupt act is categorized by its four components: the donor, the favor, the public official and the payoff. For each component, propositions about perceived corrupt and noncorrupt elements can be formulated and tested. The usefulness of this scheme in analyzing attitudes about corruption is demonstrated with data from state legislators. Finally, the article suggests some future research possibilities using this scheme to compare elites and public or other groupings in the political system.