Modeling Politics

Dr. Courtney Brown

Assignment #3

Read the article by Samuel Patterson and Gregory Caldiera titled "The Etiology of Partisan Competition." Pay particular attention to how the authors address the issue of statistical significance with regard to their reported regression results. Write a short three to five page essay describing the empirical analyses that are presented in this article. When you answer the questions below, include a discussion of statistical significance whenever appropriate.

• What is their primary thesis idea that they try to explain in the article?
• What dependent variables are used?
• Do you find that the operationalization of their main idea using the dependent variables that they employ is persuasive?
• How do they describe variation in their dependent variables, and how much variation do they find?
• What independent variables are used?
• Do you find that their choice of indepedent variables is adequate to demonstrate their points?
• What other dependent and independent variables might be interesting to examine that the authors did not include in their analyses?
• What kind of regression do they use in their analyses? Why do they use this type of regression?

Use normal margins of 1 inch all around. Use Times New Roman 12 point font, and double space.