Political scientists have increasingly viewed party activists as important catalysts for party behavior and change in American politics. Understanding the decisionmaking norms of these activists should help inform scholars' broader understanding of party performance. We examine the norms of party decisionmaking expressed by a select group of party activists: delegates to both parties' 2000 national conventions. We focus on how state contextual factors shape the norms these activists hold regarding the proper balance between ideological purity and the pragmatic pursuit of electoral success. The contextual factors we consider include the rules for delegate selection, the financial capacity of state parties, electoral competitiveness between the two parties, party polarization, and state political culture. We find evidence that norms respond as expected to some elements of state party context, but not to others.

Over the past 20 years, nearly every major city in the United States has faced making the decision of whether to build a new stadium or other professional sports facility. In this period, 41 referendums have been held to authorize the public financing of such a facility. Previous studies have demonstrated that elite endorsements affect referendum voters, but these studies have not differentiated the effects of different kinds of elites on public support. We examine the differing effects of the support and opposition of elected officials, business groups, minority leaders, and community groups when modeling referendum outcomes. Our analysis reveals that among these elites' cues, opposition by elected officials (either Republican or Democratic) has the greatest effect on the final referendum vote and that the size of the public subsidy has a significant influence on public support. We also find evidence that opposition by elected officials is exogenous to public opinion.

What effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

One of the oldest and most distinctive characteristics of American political culture is its anti-government, anti-politician bias. One manifestation of this attitude in state government today is the effort to maintain part-time “citizen” legislatures, whether through term limits, low salaries, or session length restrictions. But, realistically, how part-time is the job of a state legislator? We discuss findings from a national survey of state legislators in which they report spending more time on the job than one might anticipate given the presumably part-time nature of many state legislatures. As expected, we find that legislators serving in bodies characterized as full-time, professional legislatures spend more time on the job than those in part-time institutions, but we also see significant variation across states in both groups. We also find considerable variation among individual legislators, which is related to factors such as holding a leadership position and a legislator's demographic characteristics. We also show how time on the job is allocated among specific components of representation.

In recent years, scholars of applied public policy have published a growing number of studies regarding state tobacco policymaking. This article analyzes the research findings, data sources, and methodological approaches of this applied and theoretical policy research, including numerous comprehensive state tobacco policymaking studies analyzing issues such as youth access enforcement, tobacco taxes, anti-tobacco education efforts, and clean indoor air programs. Other studies have focused on individual policymaking instruments designed to address state tobacco control issues, including tort reform, tobacco listed as a cause of death on death certificates, tobacco sampling, promotion and advertising restrictions, and fire-safe cigarettes. This wealth of research into tobacco policymaking has contributed significantly to our understanding of federalism, policy diffusion, and iron triangles and issue networks.