While much scholarly research has focused on the quality of candidates in U.S. elections, the quantity of candidate participation has received much less attention. Consequently, there is little systematic evidence on what factors stimulate or dampen candidate entry into electoral contests, especially at the state level. In this article, we examine the effects of electoral laws, states' social and political climates, and incumbency on gubernatorial candidacies. We test our claims using an event-count model with the number of candidates contesting each gubernatorial election from 1980 to 2005 as the outcome of interest. We divide total candidate participation into major and third party candidates to observe whether the factors affect neither, one, or both types of candidacies. We find that electoral laws and incumbency play an important role in determining the number of candidacies in these elections, but the effect of these factors varies for the two types of candidates.

This article examines the influence of several canons within state codes of judicial ethics aimed at constraining the campaigning of candidates running for U.S. state judicial office. These canons have been much debated since 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that one of them, the announce clause, unconstitutionally restricted the free speech rights of candidates. Based on their likely influence on the availability of information in judicial contests, I hypothesize that the primary effect of these canons is to make incumbents less accountable to the public. Looking at U.S. state supreme court contests from 1998 to 2006 where incumbents are seeking re-election, I find strong evidence that four of the five canons make it less likely for challengers to arise, and I also find evidence that restrictions on candidate solicitation of funds favor incumbents in the general election.

States and the federal government have initiated reforms designed to increase voting participation. Research has focused on the effects of these reforms—specifically, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA)—on voter turnout, but little research has focused directly on voter registration. Moving beyond the question of whether the NVRA increased registration, we ask: Did its implementation diminish the influence of core demographic variables on registration, producing a more representative pool of registered citizens? Relying on data from Current Population Surveys, our analyses provide limited affirmative support. The NVRA attenuated the influence of income in the states with no previous Motor Voter laws. It also reduced the on-year influence of age and the off-year influence of residential stability in these states and those that had prior passive Motor Voter laws. It did not have a similar effect on the influence of other core characteristics.

This article examines the responses of sub-national governments to international agreements that severely reduce their policy discretion. I focus on their decision to subject public procurement to international competition by joining the Agreement of Government Procurement (GPA) of the World Trade Organization. In a public procurement market, a government becomes both a market participant and a market regulator. I argue that the propensity of governments to join the GPA, thus reducing their discretion as market regulators, depends on the degree of local political competition. Studying state governments in the United States, I find that the degree of political competition positively affects not only the propensity to join the GPA but also the amount of procurement that a government subjects to international competition.