I spent last Thursday speaking at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) conference. (Due to a family commitment I could not spend the entire weekend). I gave a presentation on my paper about ways to reconcile property rights and smart growth. (Latest draft online at http://works.bepress.com/lewyn/41/ )
Since the paper is online I'm not going to talk about that. Instead I want to discuss a few of the other papers I heard.
*James Gimpel of Maryland spoke about the "Big Sort" theory (the idea that Democrats and Republicans tend to move into Democratic and Republican areas). He monitored movement of registered Democrats and Republicans into different zip codes, and found that very few zip codes gained Ds and lost Rs, or vice versa. Most gained both or lost both. He also suggested that the most lopsidedly D or R areas tend to be population-losing city slums or rural areas, while growing suburbs tend to be more closely balanced. I think this presentation would have been improved had Gimpel focused on movement within metro areas, since people have more choices in those areas and are thus more likely to "sort" themselves into living with like-minded neighbors. Having said that, I do think he has a point: in the age of sprawl, the fastest-growing places (middle-class exurbs) had advantages that would appeal to people of all partisan stripes and are thus likely to gain both Ds and Rs.
*Lisa Blaydes of Stanford talked about the growth of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world. She began by talking about her personal experience: when she rode in taxicabs in the late 1990s, most people liked Americans- now, not so much. Then she focused on the Pew surveys of these countries, which asked a variety of questions about America and Americans. Based on their responses she divided Muslim poll respondents into several categories: people who hated everything about America (culture, policies, business), people who hated only some things about America ("we hate Americans but we like their movies") and people who didn't hate America. She noted that there was a huge variance among countries. In Pakistan, 61% are in the most anti-American category, only 3% were pro-American, and 34% sort of hate America. At the other extreme, in Nigeria 73% are pro-American and only 4% are in the most anti-American category. (Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Indonesia are in the middle- the numbers being: Egypt 4 pro/54 anti, Jordan 10 pro/33 anti, Turkey 18 pro/33 anti, Indonesia 38 pro/4 anti, with the rest in the middle categories).
She then focused on the "despair" thesis- the idea that people who hate America were dissatisfied with their lot. Basically there was no correlation.
On the other hand, the perception that Islam was under attack made a huge difference. And despair + paranoia made a huge difference.
Support for a greater political role for Islam made some difference but not as much, since there are secular nationalists who are anti-American as well as Islamists.
Bottom line: a lot of America-haters, but America hatred is based on paranoia not poverty.
*Jon Bond of Texas A&M spoke about the rise and fall of Congressional moderates (which he defined as people out of step with their parties). Basically, the number of "moderates" began to rise in both parties in the 1920s and 1930s, starting to decline in the past 30 years. He suggests that these changes correlated with the percentages of Southerners and northerners in the D and R caucuses respectively. In 1910 the Solid South was the congressional Democratic party. As the Democrats gained seats in the north, some southerners started to be out of step with the rest of their Party. After the New Deal, this gap between southern Ds and other Ds accelerated. Similarly, the Republicans began as a northern/midwestern party- but as Rs gained support in the West and later the South, some northerners were out of step. In other words, a party becomes divided as it grows; its historic base has to share the caucus with other legislators with different priorities (northern D liberals during the New Deal era, sunbelt conservative Rs more recently). Eventually, the party's base switches, and the moderate southern Ds and northern Rs were replaced by members of the other party, causing the number of moderates to decline.
*David Webber of Missouri spoke about school district consolidation; the number of school districts has decreased in recent decades as rural districts got consolidated. Does this make a difference? He suggests that larger districts have lower graduation rates and higher test scores- suggesting to me that larger districts allow bad students to drop out and get lost, while smaller districts focus on the weaker students more.
*Adam McGlynn of Texas/Pan American spoke about the mayoral takeover of the schools in NYC. Points out that mayor ran the schools until 1960s, then control devolved to neighborhood school boards due to concerns by racial minorities. Decentralization didn't work real well, but it was still difficult for mayors to regain control due to racial issues. How did Bloomberg succeed while other mayors had failed? By promising extra funding to gain the support of teachers' unions and state legislative Democrats, and by persuading business leaders that mayoral control meant better schools. McGlynn says jury still out- elementary test scores have improved, higher levels not so much.
