The Incumbent Spending Puzzle

Objective This article seeks to explain the puzzle of why incumbents spend so much on campaigns despite most research finding that their spending has almost no effect on voters. Methods The article uses ordinary least squares, instrumental variables, and fixed-effects regression to estimate the impact of incumbent spending on election outcomes. The estimation includes an interaction term between incumbent and challenger spending to allow the effect of incumbent spending to depend on the level of challenger spending. Results The estimation provides strong evidence that spending by the incumbent has a larger positive impact on votes received the more money the challenger spends. Conclusion Campaign spending by incumbents is most valuable in the races where the incumbent faces a serious challenge. Raising large sums of money to be used in close races is thus a rational choice by incumbents.

The Effect of Weight on the Perception of Political Candidates

Chris Christie recently visited the famous “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem, Israel, during his first trip abroad as governor of New Jersey. The New York Post reported on his trip with the headline “The Whale at the Wall” (Campanile 2012). Given headlines like this, it is easy to see anecdotal evidence of the stigmatization that surrounds obesity within contemporary American society. What’s more important is that these social stigmas that Americans are faced with every day are not merely surface level jokes bantered about for a cheap laugh. They are often prejudices that permeate every aspect of human life. Whether it comes to finding a date, looking for a job, or trying to be taken serious by one’s peers, weight is always a topic of concern. In an effort to understand how far entrenched these biases are in society, this thesis studies the ramifications of obesity in politics. In this thesis, I attempt to understand to what extent, if any, obesity matters in regard to candidate appearance, voters' choices, and political behavior.

Democratization, Education Reform, and the Mexican Teachers' Union

This study examines the effect of democratization on a key education reform across three Mexican states. Previous scholarship has found a positive effect of electoral competition on social spending, as leaders seek to improve their reelection prospects by delivering services to voters. However, the evidence presented here indicates that more money has not meant better educational outcomes in Mexico. Rather, new and vulnerable elected leaders are especially susceptible to the demands of powerful interest groups at the expense of accountability to constituents. In this case, the dominant teachers' union has used its leverage to exact greater control over the country's resource-rich merit pay program for teachers. It has exploited this control to increase salaries and decrease standards for advancement up the remuneration ladder. The evidence suggests that increased electoral competition has led to the empowerment of entrenched interests rather than voters, with an overall negative effect on education.