At first glance, the man selling limes on the busy street corner in Little Havana looked like any other vendor. But something set him apart. Perhaps it was the large bills passers-by stuffed in his pockets while leaving their limes behind. Or maybe it was the reverence with which the buyers treated him. No, this man wasn’t just a fruit peddler. This man was a hero. This man was Orlando Bosch.

Bosch took up selling fruit on the corner of Flagler and LeJeune in protest. After violating probation for firing a bazooka from MacArthur Causeway—the busy road linking downtown...

In the summer of 2000, in the midst of a tight campaign, the Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman prepared to do some television interviews. Just before going on the air, an aide suggested that Lieberman “brush the chest hair poking out of his open-necked shirt.” Lieberman responded, “Its OK. There’s a constituency for chest hair” (Connoly 2000).

While Lieberman’s droll response represented a moment of levity, for students of politics it symbolizes something of much greater significance. Lieberman’s quip speaks to a world in which candidates and campaigns view voters not as atomistic individuals, but as groups of individuals...

The uncertain role played by citizens in becoming informed consumers of political information is among the most serious challenges to explanations of how the representation process works. Extant theories of representation, summarized in the demand model, require levels of knowledge and interest far beyond citizens’ apparent capacity. Citizens’ failure to exhibit levels of knowledge or interest sufficient to constrain politicians’ behavior raises questions about the degree to which citizens have the ability to hold politicians accountable for their behavior and whether politicians, upon recognizing this fact, exploit it. Citizens’ ignorance leads us to question both the validity of explanations of...

In the fall of 1994, Senator Chuck Robb of Virginia faced a tight reelection contest against Oliver North. Robb, who was stumping for votes at a factory, stopped to take questions from the press when the following exchange withWashington Postreporter Don Baker occurred:

Senator Robb: At least give honest and realistic responses to the tough questions, because otherwise we are going to continue to up the national debt and the budget deficit is going to be almost impossible to solve.

Don Baker: Senator, in the spirit of your desire to talk about these things, we’re outside a unionized...

In the fall of 1989, following years of controversy surrounding deaths associated with an amino acid supplement called tryptophane, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) proposed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) of 1990. The bill required food labels to list nutritional content and prohibited manufacturers from making health claims until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined that “significant scientific agreement” justified them. The NLEA became law in November 1990.

Building on this success, Waxman turned his attention to increasing the FDA’s regulatory authority over vitamins and dietary supplements. In August 1992, Waxman proposed a bill extending the FDA’s authority...

Since the time of Aristotle, elites have claimed that diversity in a polity is an inherent good, with more always being preferred to less. James Madison saw diversity of peoples and interests as the solution to the problem of majority tyranny. In today’s society, American governmental and educational institutions promote policies designed to embrace, and enhance, diversity to take advantage of its benefits. Others suggest that increased diversity allows for the consideration of a greater range of potential solutions to the problems that face a polity (Sunstein 1993).

Social scientists routinely find, however, that the role of diversity is quite...

After years of opposition from the Clinton and Bush administrations and the Republican-controlled House, supporters of a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide mobilized in 2007.¹ The mobilization was sparked when Democrats took control of the House and elected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California’s 8th district, who supported the resolution, as speaker of the House (Huse 2007). House Resolution 106 was introduced on January 30, 2007, by Representative Adam Schiff of California’s 29th district. By late summer, 229 representatives had signed on as cosponsors. With only 218 votes necessary for passage, broad support expected even among those who were not co-sponsors,...

Annie Betancourt fared poorly in her race for Congress, despite taking the majority-preferred position on Cuba—the most visible issue in the election—because the constituents to whom she appealed were less intense than those who supported her opponent. To be sure, factors such as money and a Republican bias inherent in the district almost certainly mattered as well. But the fact that a Cuban American woman with name recognition and previous experience as a state legislator from the same area ran 12 points behind the 2000 Democratic presidential candidate in that district suggests that Betancourt fared especially poorly.¹ Mario...