• Greg Vonnahme
  (Ph.D. expected 2008) Curriculum Vitae

Greg’s research and teaching interests include voting and elections, state and local politics, public policy analysis, and research methods. His dissertation focuses on the effects of the institutional design of elections and recent reforms on electoral participation. The project specifically examines three aspects of election administration, which are registration deadlines, early voting, and Election Day vote centers. By building from recent theoretical advances in models of turnout and analyzing new data on county turnout and voter registration, the project seeks to better identify and evaluate the process by which registration deadlines and early voting affect participation in contemporary elections (1992-2004). Preliminary results from the analysis of registration deadlines suggests that while deadlines affect participation, the process might be more complex than previously thought, as existing explanations seem unable to fully account for the findings. This project also examines the effects of Election Day vote centers, which is the newest election reform, and provides an alternative to precinct-based polling locations as a means of administering Election Day voting. The reform was first adopted in Larimer County, Colorado in 2003, and has since spread to other counties in Colorado, Indiana, and Texas. A number of other states and counties are also considering adopting vote centers. This project seeks to add to the anecdotal evidence from Larimer County that the reform is popular with voters and further evaluate the general effects of vote centers on participation.

Dissertation Committee: Robert M. Stein (Chair), Keith Hamm, Mark P. Jones, and Richard Batsell (Business)

• Jonathan B. Robinson
  (Ph.D. expected 2008) Curriculum Vitae

Jonathan’s research and teaching interests include comparative politics, Latin American politics, political parties, comparative institutional analysis, and political clientelism. His dissertation explores the question of why clientelism varies from one context to another. The literature on clientelism offers two contrasting views of the exchanges among patrons, brokers and clients. A “rational choice” approach to clientelism emphasizes the explicit and calculated nature of exchange, while a “sociological” approach emphasizes the long-term bonds of friendship and trust that exist, particularly between brokers and clients. Jonathan argues that these theoretical approaches are better conceptualized as empirical types, the prevalence of which depends on factors that vary from one context to another. A second major theme in the literature on political clientelism explores the relative autonomy of brokers vis-à-vis the party-state. While some brokers depend entirely on the resources of powerful patrons and government agencies, others are politically independent and self reliant. The expectation is that electoral rules play an important role in determining the extent of broker autonomy. Drawing on qualitative data from more than one-hundred field interviews in four locations in Argentina and Brazil, Jonathan creates two scales of clientelism. Using a systematic coding scheme, each regional interview is assigned a score on both dimensions, making it possible to examine how different levels of development, distinct electoral rules and other factors affect variation in the functioning of political clientelism.

Dissertation Committee: Mark P. Jones (Chair), Randy Stevenson, and Lanny Martin

We have no job candidates in international relations this year.