The American Political Science Review, the leading political science peer-reviewed journal, published “Social Capital, Institutional Rules, and Constitutional Amendment Rates,” a new research article by lead author William Blake, associate professor and associate chair of political science.
The study addressed why some constitutions are amended more frequently than others. The team gathered data from democratic constitutions worldwide and U.S. state constitutions for a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of the effect social capital has on how often constitutions are amended. The findings show social capital like group membership, civic activism, and political trust can create a more favorable political environment for amending constitutions.
“Unlike previous studies, we demonstrate how these factors affect constitutional reform over time and across the stages of the amendment process,” the authors write. “We also build upon prior research that finds social capital facilitates social movement organization and elite coalition formation.”
The research was inspired by Blake’s Contemporary Constitutional Conflict honors seminar. “The students read and critiqued a flawed article looking at the effect of constitutional culture on amendment frequency, which led me to think that I could conduct a better study,” says Blake. He also assigned a draft of the article the next time he taught the seminar. The students of the Honors College received an acknowledgment in the article.
Blake is the only UMBC faculty to publish in The American Political Science Review since Nicolas Miller, professor emeritus of political science, published “Pluralism and Social Choice” in 1983.
Blake’s co-authors for the journal article are Joseph Francesco Cozza, assistant teaching professor of political science and associate director of the Politics, Law, and Social Thought program at Rice University; David A. Armstrong II, associate professor of political science at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and Amanda Friesen, Canada research chair in political psychology at Western University in Canada.
Watch Blake’s “Women and Employment Laws in the Early 20th Century” class on laws regulating minimum wages and maximum hours for female workers on C-SPAN’s “Lectures in History” series. Enroll in his POLI 220: The Constitution and American Democracy summer course.
Tags: CAHSS, CAHSS_research, PoliticalScience, Research