° PS360 - Parties and Voting Behavior Syllabus
° OIS sites: Drop Box; Forum; Gradebook

PS360 Essay 2 - Fall 2009
Professor Renka

Essay 2 is worth 100 points.  Write on one topic.  The essay should be a paper of approximately 3 to 4 normal honest pages in length.  Be sure to properly cite all source material, including regular class readings.  If you quote from something I wrote on the Forum, cite which Forum item it is (with author, title of Forum article, and date of its posting).  It's A-OK to use the assigned reading as sources on all papers and assignments; in fact, I actively encourage it.  Same for anything I have written on our Forum.

Due date is by or before midnight on Monday, November 9, at Essay 2 locale of the Drop Box.

1. Morton cites the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (aka McCain-Feingold) as an intended antidote to increasing party uses of soft money.  First, explain what distinguishes soft money from hard money in political campaigns.  Second, explain why soft money assumed such importance leading into the 2002 passage of BCRA.  And third, explain why its Senate cosponsors now insist that the law has not been properly administered by the FEC in the subsequent elections.

2.  Morton cites retrospective voting as a voter's partial remedy to problems of moral hazard and adverse selection.  First, explain what distinguishes these two problems, with reference to politicians' motives and to the voter's problem of uncertainty.  Second, explain how retrospective voting can reduce (if not eliminate) each of these problems.  And third, cite which problem is the more serious one, and defend that conclusion.

3.  Psephology is the modern science of forecasting election results.  It includes straw polls in advance of voting, and exit polls immediately after; but in both areas, failures have been rather common and sometimes spectacular.  Why are these failures so important in the history of this emergent applied science?  What corrections have been undertaken to improve our ability to make accurate forecasts?

4.  What are the main reasons for widespread use of gerrymandering in congressional district design?  What effect does gerrymandering have upon the tendency of incumbent legislators to keep their office when election time comes around?  And what effect does gerrymandering have upon the recent polarization of the parties in the U.S. House of Representatives?

Russell Renka