The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (137 page)

The idea that voters' decisions are largely determined by the issues at stake in the election. Before
survey research
, most writers on democracy assumed that issue voting was the norm in democratic elections (although there have always been sceptics, from Condorcet to
Schumpeter
, who denied that this was the case—Schumpeter even denying that it ought to be the case). The first surveys of the determinants of voting revealed a very different picture, in which habit and party identification played leading roles, and issue voting almost none, as it was shown that most voters knew nothing at all about many of the issues discussed by politicians and journalists during elections. Since the late 1960s issue voting has enjoyed a modest revival. This is due partly to the influence of rational-choice theory on election studies, and partly to the recognition that the United States in the 1950s—when the most influential surveys of the party identification school were done—was unusually bland and politics there was unusually consensual. When ‘issues’ are restricted to ‘issues which are salient to the electorate’, it can be shown that issue voting plays quite a prominent role in a typical election. The other main determinant is retrospective voting, or evaluation of the party (team) currently in office. Here voters must necessarily compare the performance of the government with the promises of the opposition, a comparison which most voters are well aware is lopsided.

 
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An item veto gives the governor in most US states the power to strike out specific sections of an
appropriations
bill, while signing the remainder into law. Item vetoes allow the executive to keep a close control over financial legislation, cutting out
riders
, and reducing
pork barrel legislation
. The US President does not posses an item veto, although it has been frequently proposed.

 
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Originally the name given to the ideas of members of the Jacobin Club, itself named after the religious order whose premises it had taken over during the
French Revolution
. Founded in 1789, it became extremely revolutionary under the leadership of
Robespierre
. Closed after his fall from power in 1794, it later reopened until its definitive closure in 1799. Its ideas centred on democracy and centralization of all power under the one and indivisible Republic. The name Jacobin is still given to politicians and parties which adopt this centralist view in opposition to independent local government. Although Jacobinism was left-wing during the Revolution, it was later adopted by the right and (some of) the extreme-right as well as by the French Communist Party, and this ideological transfer continues.
CS 

 
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Jacobites were the followers of James II (Latin:
Jacobus
), deposed in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688–9, and his heirs. There was some overlap between Jacobitism and the early Tories; Jacobites rejected the succession arrangements of 1689 and 1714, whereas Tories tended to be doubtful and troubled about them. During the Hanoverian period the main areas of support for the Stuart ‘Pretenders’ were outside England, principally in the Highlands of Scotland. The Jacobite cause was effectively dead after the last and greatest of rebellions, the ‘45’, which was ended by the government victory at Culloden, in April 1746. Since that time political theorists have continued to cite Jacobitism as an example of a body of belief which rejects the technical legitimacy of a particular system of government even if it is, in other respects, far from radical.
LA 

 
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(1743–1826)
American politician, scientist, educationalist, library cataloguer, architect, ambassador, winegrower, and writer. Born and brought up in Virginia, Jefferson was educated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, then the state capital. Here he was introduced both to pre-Revolutionary politics and to the ideas of the Scottish
Enlightenment
. He was elected as a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress of 1776. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, a statement of claims derived from Locke of the equal right of all men to self-government. ‘All men’ did not include Indians or slaves, and Jefferson was never able to reconcile the universality of the Declaration with his practical views on either relationships between settlers and Indians or on slavery. (It would have been very difficult to run his marvellous and beautiful house at Monticello without slaves.)
Jefferson was disillusioned by the legislature of independent Virginia: ‘All the powers of government… result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government… 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one.’ Some of his ideas on restraint of government, such as the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, found their way into the First Amendment of the US Constitution. He was also much affected by the death of his wife in 1782. He therefore accepted with alacrity the offer of a post as American Minister in Paris (1785–9). Here he was a bridge between the American and French Revolutions. He coached the Marquis de Lafayette in writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), which Jefferson regarded as a somewhat inferior copy of the Declaration of 1776 necessitated by the survival of feudalism in Europe. He formed a close association with
Condorcet
, with whom he shared beliefs in the perfectibility of mankind and the applicability of scientific method to solving political problems. Jefferson succeeded in some of his Enlightenment-inspired plans for the United States (for instance, in the North-West Ordinance of 1787, which laid out the plans for future white settlement, reserving one block of land in each settlement for the support of education), but failed in others, including metrication.
Jefferson served in the administrations of George Washington from 1789 to 1793 and was President himself from 1801 to 1809. He was responsible for the system of
apportionment
of House seats to states after each census which was used until the census of 1830, and is mathematically the same as the d'Hondt system of proportional representation. In the first US party system, he was the leader of the Republican-Democratic party, which stood for rural self-sufficiency and (relative) trust in the ordinary voter as against the urban and pro-business policies of the Federalists ( see Adams and
Hamilton
). He is regarded as the co-founder (with Andrew Jackson , President 1829–37) of the Democratic coalition-rural, populist, embracing North and South until 1860. After his retirement, Jefferson was intensely active, and left his mark on architecture, garden design, universities, and librarianship through his oversight of the building of the University of Virginia and his books and cataloguing system which formed the nucleus of the Library of Congress. His epitaph, chosen by himself, describes him as ‘author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia’.