Department of Public and International Affairs, Political Science

PhD Comprehensive Exams

George Mason University

August 2013

Examination Committee: Jennifer N. Victor (Chair), Peter Balint, Suzanne Robbins

This exam must be completed in eight hours. You may use no books or notes in the course of the exam. Provide necessary citations using authors and years using in-text parenthetical citations. Do not provide bibliographic citations or reference lists.

Answer one question from Part I. Answer two questions from Part II. Your complete exam will consist of three essays. There is no required page (or word) minimum or maximum. Provide a comprehensive answer to each of your selected questions in the time allotted.

Part I: Methods

  1. Ordinary least squares regression assumes that the errors are independent (not serially correlated) and that they have constant variance (i.e., homoscedastic). For each of these two assumptions discuss the causes, consequences, detection, and appropriate correction. In your conclusion, discuss the likely frequency with which political science researchers face violations of these assumptions in the “normal” course of their data analysis.
  2. In a 1999 article in Political Science Quarterly, Jeff Gill wrote, “There is evidence that null hypothesis significance testing as practiced in political science is deeply flawed and widely misunderstood.” While Bayesian critiques of conventional quantitative methods in the social sciences are not uncommon, they’re still largely ignored. Explain and assess the criticisms of null hypothesis significance testing in political science research.

Part II: American Politics

  1. What role, if any, do political parties play in campaigns and elections?Specifically, your essay should consider whether and how parties matter for: electoral choice,voter mobilization and candidate selection and behavior. Within these areas, your essay should address both whether and how parties matter in the present context of the incumbency advantage, campaign finance and independent expenditures on the part of outside organizations. Be sure to address how their role has shifted over time.
  2. V.O. Key observed that “unless mass views have some place in the shaping of policy, all the talk about democracy is nonsense.” Using thiscriterion of mass opinion shaping policy, assess how democratic contemporary American politics is. At minimum, be sure to consider: What does the literature in American politics say about the process by which citizens formulate policy opinions and choose representatives? To what extent can mass opinion and behavior be used to explain the behavior of candidates and incumbents, and the policy outputs of democratic institutions? Given that many elections and policy decisions take place in low information environments, how voters make decisions about participation, candidates and policy.
  3. The literature on Congress includes a long a fruitful debate over the role of legislative parties in the legislative process. If we assume that legislative party organizations are consequential institutions in the legislative process, how do changes in party strength, party unity, and the centralization of party leadership over time affect legislative processes (e.g., committee work, floor votes, etc.), constituent evaluation of representatives, and the ability of congress to be productive?
  4. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, mainly for his work with Amos Tversky on the role of biases and heuristics in decision-making. With references to the literature, describe the relevance and influence of this work on the study of political behavior.