Presidential Popularity and Presidential Vote

The president's popularity rating is highly predictive of hisvote share in a reelection bid, especially when popularity isassessed in June of that year. This June popularity-vote modelpredicts about as well as the Gallup final preelection poll,and a 50 percent approval rating will ensure reelection.     

‘Autograph of a Nation’: The Daughters of the American Revolution and the National Old Trails Road, 1910–1927

In 1912, a group of women within the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) undertook to become architects of the first continuous transcontinental automobile route, to be called the ‘National Old Trails Road’ highway. Consistent with many of the private road improvement initiatives during the heyday of America's good roads movement, ‘Daughters’ in many states were involved in mapping the route and posing a variety of marking schemes that would etch upon the landscape the DAR's sponsorship of the route. In doing so, the Daughters staked an explicit claim for the DAR and for American women in the project of nation‐building, by promoting their National Old Trails Road as a culmination of Manifest Destiny. This episode highlights the interrelationship of gender and the nation. This article argues that while women function passively in nationalist rhetoric to symbolise the nation, one must also acknowledge the agency of conservative women's groups in constructing and perpetuating nationalist narratives in ways that were often surprisingly complex and not simply imitative of men.     

Social Work, Social Science and Practice Wisdom

Correspondence to Michael Sheppard, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA. Summary Social work has for some time had an ambiguous and ambivalentrelationship with its social science knowledge base. However,this has arisen, at least in part, because of the emphasis onthe outcome or product of social science rather than the processby which research is conducted. This paper, focusing on assessment,argues that an emphasis on process goes some way to closingthe gap between social science and social work, that the methodsused by social researchers are, in many respects, simply refinementsof the methodology of everyday life, and that social workers,when conducting assessments operate rather like practical qualitativeresearchers. Using Analytical Induction as an heuristic device,it proceeds to explore critical characteristics of good practicein social work assessments. It concludes that practice shouldbe characterized by critical awareness, involving imaginativedevelopment of alternative hypotheses, a sceptical attitudetowards case assessments and a principle of adopting hypothesesleast likely to be in error.     

A COUNTRY RISK INDEX: ECONOMETRIC FORMULATION AND AN APPLICATION TO MEXICO

Dynamic factor analysis is used to estimate a monthly country risk index for Mexico. This method extracts the unobservable risk information contained in deviations from interest rate parity and allows for hypothesis tests regarding the important determinants of such risk. The results suggest that the ratios of imports to reserves and debt to exports are important determinants of Mexican country risk. The estimated risk index correctly anticipates the Mexican capital controls and financial crisis of August 1982. In addition, the index significantly leads the country risk rating published by Institutional Investor based on commercial bank surveys.