REGRESSIONS AT WORK: IDEOLOGY AND LAW, CORRELATES OF DEMOCRACY

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REGRESSIONS AT WORK IDEOLOGY AND LAW, CORRELATES
OF DEMOCRACY
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OUTLINE

• Ideological Values and Votes of Supreme Court
  Justices
• National Political Development Measurement and
  Analysis

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Regression at Work (I)

• Theme Supreme Court decisions
• General question What is the underlying basis of
  voting by justices?
• Specific question Is voting related to political
  ideology?
• Hypothesis Y f (X)

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Operationalizing the Independent
Variable Source Editorials in newspapers (New
York Times and Washington Post, Chicago Tribune
and Los Angeles Times) Coding of paragraphs
liberal, moderate, conservative, not
applicable JI (liberal- conservative)/(liberal
moderate conservative) Scale from 1.0 to
1.0 (ultraliberal to ultraconservative) Thus
perceived values rather than real values
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• And the Dependent Variable
• liberal votes in civil liberties cases,
  1953-1987
• Pro-person accused or convicted of crime
• Pro-civil liberties or civil rights claimant
• Pro-indigent
• Pro-Indian
• Anti-government regarding due process and privacy.

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• Basic Finding
• Voting 51.25 23.44 (JI)
• r .80, r2 .64
• Thus the force of ideology (or attitudes).
  Alternative
• explanations
• Legal doctrine and precedent
• Case facts
• Internal politics and external forces.

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Regression at Work (II)
Theme Determinants of political
democracy General question What social factors
tend to produce political democracy? Specific
question Is democratic development (Y)
associated with social development
(X)? Hypothesis Y f(X)
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Operationalizing the Dependent Variable Legislati
ve branch 2 points for each year (1940-60) with
two or more political parties and opposition
held at least 30 of seats 1 point for each year
with one or more parties but 30 rule violated 0
points otherwise Executive branch 1 point for
each year (1940-60) chief executive if
elected 0.5 if selected otherwise or colonial
ruler 0 points if hereditary ruler Range 0-3
per year, 0-63 for 21-year time span
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Measures of the Independent Variable
Communications newspaper readers per capita,
newsprint consumption per capita, domestic mail
per capita, telephones per capita Urbanization
proportion living in cities over
100,000 Education literacy rates and students
per 100,000 in Institutions of higher
education Agriculture proportion of labor force
in agriculture Economic development per capita
measures of energy consumption, steel
consumption, income and motor vehicles
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• Why T Scores?
• Definition
• T z x 10 50, thus a variation of the
  standard score
• Advantages
• formation of composite indices
• absence of a meaningful zero point
• avoidance of negative scores

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Key Findings PD 31 (.2154) COMM, r
.812 and r2 .65 standard error of b
.0179 R2 for equation using all four
independent variables .67, so very little
additional gain
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