NATIONAL ELECTIONS Response Papers (due at the beginning of class, March 21)


INSTRUCTIONS: Your response paper should be relatively short: 2-3 pages,
 double-spaced.  You do not have to fret over rules such as how to report
citations or what font size to use.  No folders, plastic covers, or other
enhancements are necessary.

ADVICE: Make sure you answer the question thoughtfully, in an organized way that
shows detailed familiarity with the readings.  If you summarize too much or
take up too much space with quotations, you are unlikely to have written a
good essay.  The emphasis should be on analysis and illustrating your
level of understanding (or your ability to identify clearly and
comprehensively what you do not understand) about the readings.

Answer one of the following questions, drawing heavily on the assigned
readings for the topic:

1) FPV argues that political scientists and journalists do not
view elections in the same way.  Compare and contrast the portrayal of
voting behavior in our class readings, and especially in our main text,
with the way journalists covered the presidential election last semester.
Are the perspectives really different, or are the two sorts of experts
saying the same basic things in different forms?  Defend your answer.

2) The political consulting industry has grown immensely over the last
generation, professionalizing election campaigns.  Judging from FPV Chap. 7,
as well as the specific discussions in relevant S&L readings (especially
Johnson and Ansolabehere & Iyengar), do the costs of this development
outweigh the benefits, or has the growth of political consulting on
balance improved the conduct of national elections?

3) FPV Chap. 8 provides a history of the various party systems, pointing
along the way to: (a) the defining issues that brought down each system,
(b) the special cases that caused the dominant party to lose during each
system, and (c) the crisis that caused each party system to collapse
and created the next one.  At the end of this history, though, the book
indicates that political scientists are not exactly sure what has happened to
the party system in modern politics.  Drawing on FPV Chap. 7 as well as
relevant S&L readings (presumably Baer, but the others really depend on your
thesis), what do you think has happened?  Are we in a new party system that
started in 1964?  In 1984?  Has the whole party system idea fallen apart in
the modern age?