Congressional Distributive Policymaking

The New York Post reports some of the details of the newly proposed omnibus spending bill, which is rife with distributive policies.

Lecture Cancelled 03/04/2009 (Both Sections) for Makeup Exams

Due to the number of students who missed the first exam, I am canceling lecture on 03/04/2009 for both sections so I can administer the makeup exams during normal class time. I will adjust the course calendar soon to account for this.

To recap: All makeups for exam 1 (both sections) will be given during normal class times this coming Wednesday. If you are not taking a makeup, you do not need to come to class on that day.

Exam 1 Availability

Next week, I have arranged for a couple of graduate students in the political science department to hold special office hours so that you will be able to drop by and look over the first exam if you like. There are separate times for each section.

Section 503 (10:20-11:10)
Peyton Wofford (Allen 2054)
Tuesday, March 3, 1:00-4:00PM
Wednesday, March 4, 1:00-4:00PM

Section 504 (11:30-12:20)
Stephen Huss (Allen 2034)
Monday, March 2, 1:00-4:00PM
Thursday, March 5, 1:00-4:00PM

You will be able to look over your exams, and I will make answer keys available, but you may not take these with you or make copies of them (though you may take notes).

Because these grad students will have the exam copies in their offices, I won't have them back in mine until the following week. So, you are welcome to speak with me about the exam in general during my office hours next week, but we wouldn't be able to go over your specific exam.

Please take advantage of these opportunities now. This is the best chance you'll have to look over the first exam prior to the second exam without having to drag yourself over to the Allen building for my morning office hours.

Undergraduate Research Opportunity

I know that many of you are freshmen, so this won't be applicable at the moment, but the university is accepting applications for its Undergraduate Research Scholars program. If any of you have completed at least 60 hours at A&M and have at least a 3.0 GPR, you may be eligible for the program which is designed to let you complete an original research project under the supervision of a faculty member.

This is an exceptional opportunity for students interested in graduate school, and I encourage those of you who may be eligible to pursue this. If any of you might be interested in applying to the program to conduct research in political science (now or sometime down the line), you are welcome to speak with me.

Here are the details:

The Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research wishes to announce the call for proposals for the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program for the 2009-10 academic year. The goal of this program is to encourage capable undergraduates to participate actively in
research/scholarly projects and to give them the opportunity to communicate their findings as principal authors to the university's scholarly community.

To qualify for participation in this program, students must have completed at least 60 hours of undergraduate courses with at least 24 hours at Texas A&M (exceptions may be made with the approval of the student's dean). Students should also have and maintain a Texas A&M GPR
of 3.0 or higher, and be currently involved or planning to start a suitable undergraduate project. If you have a student working with you who you feel would benefit from this program, we urge you to work with them in preparing an proposal for this program. The deadline for proposals for the 2009-10 academic year is Monday, April 20.

For more information about the UGR Scholars Program, visit our Web site at http://ugr.tamu.edu/scholars.

Application guidelines and instructions may be found at
http://ugr.tamu.edu/scholars/application-materials/guidelines. Sample proposals and timelines are also available on the website.

To view requirements for the program, please visit,
http://ugr.tamu.edu/scholars/requirements0607.

If you have questions about the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, please direct them to Dr. Robert C. Webb, Associate Dean for
Undergraduate Research, by email at ugr@tamu.edu or phone 979-458-0039.

Dr. Robert C. Webb
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research
1112 TAMU
318B Jack Williams Administration Building
College Station, TX 77843-1112
979-458-0039

Exam 1 Grades Discussion

So, as a group, both classes performed well on the exam.

The average grade (before any extra credit) was almost exactly 74 for both classes. In terms of a distribution, letter grades broke down like this:

A: 10%
B: 25%
C: 33%
D: 22%
F: 10%

For those of you who did well, keep it up. For those of you who did not do as well as you might have hoped, you need not despair. It's important to keep in mind that this exam (intentionally) counts less than the remaining two. Now that you've been through the first third of the course and seen the structure and format of the exams, you have a chance to adjust your studies and improve over the next two exams.

Literally, three quarters of your grade is undetermined, so there is a substantial opportunity to improve.

Exam 1 Grades Posted

I have posted grades from Exam 1 on the course's BlackBoard website. You can login at http://elearning.tamu.edu/. There is also a link in the top right corner of the blog, under the course information tab.

You should be able to view two grades so far. The first is your "raw" grade for exam 1, the second is your grade with any extra credit you may be due from the majority cycle assignment or the review session.

There are a very small number of students who did not fill in their UINs or did so incorrectly (or did not fill in their names correctly). These students' grades are not yet posted. If you took the exam, and your grade is not yet up, you may be in this category. So, please give me a day or two to straighten this out.

Also, there were a few students who had been dropped from the course for one reason or another who I allowed to sit for the exam. If you have not been re-enrolled in the course, it will not be visible to you on BlackBoard. Once you have officially been added to the course again, contact me, and I will upload your grades.

Congress and Congressmen

So far, this course has focused on formal institutions and how choosing one set of rules or another can influence social choices. We have seen that the same group of people, with the same preferences, can be induced to make different decisions simply by manipulating the rules which govern how decisions are made. In contrast, we have paid somewhat less attention to the people (and their preferences) who make choices within the constraints imposed by a particular set of institutions.

That will now begin to change.

Institutions structure social choices, but people animate institutions. To understand politics--the process of making binding social choices--we need to go beyond the study of institutions in a vacuum and take some time to understand the motives and interests of people in political situations.

So, to get us started in this new direction, we are going to begin our discussion of Congress somewhat differently. Instead of talking about the formal institutions that govern Congress, we will start out talking about the people who serve in Congress and how they got there. Our goal will be to try to find some insight about the way that Congress works (what institutions or rules it has and what outcomes they produce) by thinking about what motivates the people who choose those institutions and live under them.

With that in mind, I want you to read this article from Money magazine. It's a profile of a man running for Congress that focuses on the difficult personal financial challenges facing him and his family as a result of his campaign. As you read, I'd like you to think about the prospect of running for Congress. Does it seem easy or hard? What are the costs and benefits of running for Congress? What kind of person would take up this particular task? And, given your thoughts on these issues, how would you expect an institution populated by this sort of people to behave?

Political Language

Honest politics starts with honest language. Non one has made the point more forcefully than George Orwell. His essay on this point, Politics and the English Language, is here.

Also, the Harry Frankfurt's video interview is here.

Exam seat assignments

Here are the seat number assignments for this semester's exams:

Section 503 (10:20-11:10)
Section 504 (11:30-12:20)

Slides

The slides for the review session are here.

Also, slides from Lecture 11 (political language) are here.

Omnibus Administrative Catch-Up Post

I am sorry about having to cancel classes on Wednesday, and I appreciate the get well e-mails I received from some of you.

There are several things to catch up on. First, here are the last two sets of lecture slides as well as the slides for today:

Lecture 8
Lecture 9
Lecture 10

Also, I'd like to remind everyone that we are now one week away from the first exam. The exam will be conducted in class during normal class times. The exam is entirely multiple choice and will cover lectures (through today), textbook readings, and material from the class blog.

Monday's lecture will not appear on the first exam, and on Wednesday, I will conduct a review session in each of the class sessions. I will use about 30 minutes for structured review activities and then take questions from the class for the final 20 minutes of class. In addition to helping you focus your studies a little bit, the structured review activity will offer you all the chance to win some fabulous prizes. (Seriously, there are prizes, though I suppose fabulous is subjective.)

To participate in the activity, please print and bring the following two pages with you to class:

Review props

I will have more details about the exam in class.

Lastly, I had forgotten to make an announcement in class, but I have the results of the extra credit project. The 10:20 class (Section 503) was able to turn in enough acceptable diagrams (nearly 70, in fact) to earn the extra credit, while the 11:30 class (section 504) did not reach the cutoff (only 31). So, students in the early section of the class will be getting 5 extra points on each of their exams.

Classes and office hours canceled today (2/11)

I've caught some sort of stomach flu, and I won't be able to make it to class today. We'll resume as usual on Friday.

For those keeping up with the class calendar, I will lecture on "Parchment Barriers" on Friday and drop the separate lecture on "Path Dependence." That will put us back on schedule for Monday.

Announcement: Reading Assignment Update and Exam Preparations

I am adding a chapter form the textbook to the assigned readings for this week. You need to also read Chapter 5 (Civil Liberties) this week. I apologize for the change, but the chapter should have been listed on the original course calendar.

So, the required reading for the first exam, which is one week from this Friday, will be:

• Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 from The Logic of American Politics and
• Class blog posts (including items I have linked to) through Friday, February 13.

Additionally, this Friday's class will include the last lecture that introduces new material that will be covered on the first exam.

Next week is intentionally "quiet" to give you all time to get caught up on reading, gather missed lecture notes from peers, attend study sessions, and generally harness your academic Chi to get ready for the exam.

Federalist 10

Here.

Checks and Balances

The system of checks and balances may be the most important institutional feature of the US Constitution. Its presence is a result of the Founders' careful efforts to design a government that would be responsive to persistent changes in the needs of the country and public sentiment while limiting the ability of capricious, transient, or tyrannical majorities to use government power to promote private interests of the general welfare or violate the people's rights. James Madison--the primary architect of the Constitution--explains the logic behind the system of checks and balances more fully in Federalist 51.

This essay is one of the most important among The Federalist Papers, a set of extended newspaper editorials written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, under the pen name Publius, to encourage the state of New York to ratify the Constitution.

Message for POLS 206-504 (11:30 Section) Only

One of your classmates, Alyssa Bulnes, is trying to organize an effort to ensure enough people turn in the extra credit diagrams for the class to win the extra credit points. If you are interested in coordinating your efforts with her, you may contact her at: pols206.extra.credit@gmail.com.

Slides for Lectures 6 and 7

Lecture 6
Lecture 7

Example of a majority cycle and an extra credit opportunity

The House of Representatives' economic stimulus bill originally contained provisions providing funding for family planning, including birth control programs, in addition to spending on infrastructure projects and tax cuts. In pairwise competition with the status quo of no stimulus bill, it is likely that this proposal, including the controversial birth control provisions, would have passed the House with majority support. However, Republicans successfully pressured the Democratic leadership to consider an alternative proposal that stripped the family planning funds from the bill. It was clear that this amended proposal was preferred to original bill by a majority of the House, and the final legislation that passed the House did not include the birth control provisions.

News coverage of these developments are here and here.

Though a formal vote was not take on the floor to amend the stimulus bill by dropping the family planning funding, the outlines of a majority cycle are clear. Indeed, we might conceptualize this as a story about majority rule in two dimensions: stimulus spending on infrastructure and spending on family planning. Imagine three voters, a liberal Democrat (who wants high stimulus spending on infrastructure and family planning), a moderate Democrat (who wants high stimulus spending on infrastructure and some moderate level of funding for family planning), and a Republican (who wants low infrastructure spending and no funding for family planning). We could easily draw our policy space with infrastructure spending on one dimension and family planning spending on the other. We could place our voters in the space based on their preferences, draw indifference curves with respect to the status quo of no stimulus, and find a winset of alternatives including one with spending for both infrastructure and family planning. Then, we could repeat the process, drawing indifference curves with respect to the first bill to defeat the staus quo and identify a winning alternative that includes no spending on family planning.

I am offering 5 points of extra credit on our first exam (2/20/2009) to all students in each of my two sections entire class if any 45 students in a respective section (about 15% of the class) turn in two diagrams showing (1) the original bill (infrasturture plus family planning) defeating the original status quo (no stimulus at all) and (2) the revised bill (only infrastructure spending) defeating the original bill.

Rules:

1. Both diagrams should include two dimensions of spending and the three voters described above along with the relevant indifference curves and win sets. Diagrams without these features or that do not show the correct sequence of events will not count toward the 45 student total.

2. Hard copies of diagrams must be turned in to me or the mailbox in my office by the start of each class this Friday (2/6/2009). Late diagrams will not count toward the total. E-mailed diagrams do not count toward the total.

3. Students who make the diagrams will not receive additional credit above the five points awarded to the class.

4. Diagrams from each section of the class count separately.

5. I am the sole judge of the acceptability of diagrams and all other aspects of the administration of this extra credit opportunity, and my decisions are final.

Good luck.

Slides for Lecture 5

Lecture 5