Political Research Quarterly

Most decisions about policy adoption require preference aggregation, which makes it difficult to determine how and when an individual can influence policy change. Examining how frequently a judge is cited offers insight into this question. Drawing upon the psychological concept of social identity, we suggest that shared group memberships can account for differences in policy influence. We investigate this possibility using the demographic and professional group memberships of federal circuit court judges and an original dataset of citations among all published search and seizure cases from federal circuit courts from 1990 to 2010. The results indicate that shared professional characteristics do tend to lead to ingroup favoritism in citation decisions while only partial evidence of such a pattern emerges for demographic group memberships. There is evidence of ingroup favoritism among female and minority judges but none for male or white judges. Overall, judges appear to generally have greater influence on judges with shared characteristics. The findings have vital implications for our understanding of the diversification of policy-making institutions.

Despite coalition governments being the most widespread form of government, many aspects of coalition politics are still poorly understood. This is especially true for questions relating to the role of the prime minister party within the coalition. Being the prime minister party seems to imply considerable influence, but little evidence actually exists as to the factors shaping the influence of the prime minister. This paper offers a new approach to studying the factors conditioning the influence of the prime minister party in a coalition. The approach is focused on the extent of issue overlap between the party manifesto of the prime minister party and the first government speech after the election. This approach makes it possible to actually analyze the factors shaping the influence of the prime minister party. The results show that the PM party is constrained by the issue emphasis of its coalition partners but less so when it holds dissolution power and more, also when it has many coalition partners when controlling for the seat share of the PM party. The paper, thus, both offers a new approach to study the coalition compromise and new evidence on the factors shaping the influence coming from holding the PM position.

This study explores the perplexing role of the Internet in authoritarian settings. We disentangle the political impact of the Internet along two distinct dimensions, indirect effects and direct effects. While the direct effects of the exposure to the Internet shape political attitudes in a manifest and immediate way, the indirect effects shape various political outcomes via instilling fundamental democratic orientations among citizens. In authoritarian societies such as China, we argue the indirect effects of the Internet as a value changer tend to be potent, transformative, and persistent. But the direct effects of the Internet as a mere alternative messenger are likely to be markedly contingent. Relying on the newly developed method of causal mediation analysis and applying the method to data from a recent survey conducted in Beijing, we find strong empirical evidence to support our argument about the two-dimensional impacts of the Internet in authoritarian countries.

One of the most important questions in the study of democratic politics centers on how citizens consider issues and candidate positions when choosing whom to support in an election. The proximity and directional theories make fundamentally different predictions about voter behavior and imply different optimal strategies for candidates, but a longstanding literature to empirically adjudicate between the theories has yielded mixed results. We use a survey experiment to show that the way that candidates’ issue positions are described can cue citizens to choose a candidate that is preferred under the expectations of either the proximity or the directional theory. We find that directional voting is more likely when the issue scale is understood to represent degrees of intensity with which either the liberal or the conservative side of the issue is expressed and that proximity voting is more likely when an issue scale is understood to be a range of policies.

On the basis of a candidate’s sex, voters ascribe particular personality traits, capacities, and opinions to candidates (often to the detriment of women), which are referred to as political gender stereotypes. The prevalence of political gender stereotypes has almost exclusively been investigated in the United States. As the presence of these stereotypes is highly dependent on contextual factors, we switch the context and investigate whether they are also present in a List-Proportional Representation (PR) system with a high share of women in parliament spread over different parties. The results of our experimental study, conducted in Flanders (Belgium), provide evidence for the existence of stereotypical patterns. The differences in perceived issue competence are, however, rather small and not always unequivocal, but larger differences were found in terms of ideological position. This leads us to conclude that misperceptions about women’s ideological orientation might be persistent and difficult to overcome. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the argument that female politicians are perceived as more leftist because they disproportionately belong to leftist parties does not hold, as female politicians are rather equally spread over the different parties in Belgium.

We explore the role of partisanship in policy diffusion. Previous studies suggest that partisanship may influence the willingness of public officials to learn from the experience of their peers. Officials’ willingness to consider policies endorsed by copartisans can arise either because party labels are used as informational cues or simply due to copartisan imitation. In the latter case, knowing more about the policy trade-offs should have no effects on politicians’ preferences. Based on two experiments with local public officials where both the party endorsing a policy and the type of information provided were manipulated, we find consistent partisan bias. When a policy is endorsed by copartisans, public officials are more likely to consider pursuing it, and additional policy information does not mitigate this bias. Exploratory analyses of the information-seeking behavior of officials suggest that the partisan bias is not due to differential exposure or attention to policy trade-offs.

Executive-legislative interactions operate with cost-benefit trade-offs. Presidents possess several material options in granting Congressional requests to leverage Congressional support but must also marshal these scarce resources. We argue presidents should strategically grant requests from members of Congress for a range of executive actions based upon the cost of the request and the political context. Using an original data set of nearly 4,000 internal Congressional requests made during the Eisenhower, Ford, and H. W. Bush administrations, we find that presidents are strategic in granting requests, where the cost of the request is an important consideration when deciding whether or not to approve a legislator request, especially on executive appointments but not on legislative matters. Ideological proximity to the president matters more than partisanship in granting requests. Presidents are sensitive to cost when ideology is concerned but less so when granting requests to committee chairs. We conclude by highlighting the implications for interbranch bargaining.

Cross-national studies of turnout find that compulsory voting has the strongest impact on participation, boosting turnout by 10 to 18 percent. We argue that in the absence of compulsory voting, other institutional factors such as small district size, strong electoral competition, and moderate candidate fragmentation may be similarly effective at mobilizing turnout. Where voting is mandatory, these factors should instead primarily influence how people vote once they are at the polls—diminishing levels of invalid voting, and consequently increasing effective turnout. We take advantage of the abolition of compulsory voting in Chile to test our expectations immediately before and after reform, in the exact same electoral districts. Using this unique subnational research design, we leverage data from more than 1,000 mayoral elections over the course of three electoral cycles and across 345 municipalities to examine patterns of turnout and invalid voting. Results show that small district size, strong electoral competition, and moderate candidate fragmentation are effective at reducing invalid voting when turnout is compulsory, and fostering higher levels of turnout when voting is voluntary.

Inspired by the late medieval doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, the idea of the People’s Two Bodies has been so far used lightly by scholars, mostly to point out a supposed contradiction in our shared assumptions about “the people.” The essay argues that the People’s Two Bodies paradigm is more than a mere linguistic artifice, proving useful for dealing with the pitfalls of elitism and populism while taking advantage of both approaches. It shows that the dual understanding of “the people,” both as a multitude and as a corporate whole, enjoys actually a long pedigree in the history of political thought. As such, the paradigm of the People’s Two Bodies helps address some of the major theoretical and practical challenges that liberal democracies are facing today.

The 2016 presidential election provided a unique opportunity to revisit two competing hypotheses for how voters establish their perceptions of electoral integrity. First, mass public opinion is believed to derive from elite messages. In the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump maintained that the election system was “rigged,” while election administration experts and officials received considerable media coverage in their efforts to counter Trump’s claims. Second, literature on voter confidence has established a “winner effect”—voters who cast ballots for winners are more likely than voters on the losing side to believe their vote was counted correctly. Thus, voters were exposed to two theoretically opposite effects. In this paper, we find that the “winner” effect mitigates the effects from strong pre-election cues from elites. We also show the effect of pre-election attention to the rigging issue, find a symmetry of the election outcome effect for winners and losers, and reconsider our explanations of the winner effect. Finally, we go beyond the existing studies of the winner effect to consider the kind of citizens who are most susceptible to that effect.

Do legislators and lobbyists trade favors? This study uses uncommon data sources and plagiarism software to detect a rarely observed relationship between interest group lobbyists and sitting Members of Congress. Comparison of letters to a Senate committee written by lobby groups to legislative amendments introduced by committee members reveals similar and even identical language, providing compelling evidence that groups persuaded legislators to introduce amendments valued by the group. Moreover, the analysis suggests that these language matches are more likely when the requesting lobby group hosts a fundraising event for the senator. The results hold while controlling for ideological agreement between the senator and the group, the group’s campaign contributions to the senator, and the group’s lobbying expenditures, annual revenue, and home-state connections.

Interest group participation in state courts of last resort has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the scope of this litigation activity has expanded to include a wider range of group participation. Despite the fact that organized interests increasingly recognize state high courts as legitimate policy venues, little is known about how interest groups choose the specific cases in which they participate. Beginning with the assumption that interest groups seek policy influence, this paper tests the hypothesis that groups strategically target cases that will best serve the policy and institutional interests of the group, while focusing group resources on cases and courts where they are most likely to be successful. Using an original dataset assembled from content analysis of more than 2,300 state supreme court decisions handed down between 1995 and 2010 and spanning three distinct areas of law—products liability, environmental law, and free speech and expression—this paper investigates the case-level and court-level factors that attract interest group participation as amicus curiae in state high courts.

Research on campaign strategies generally assumes that political parties avoid campaigning on issues that are internally divisive. However, this strategy might not always be viable, especially when parties attack each other in high-stake elections. This article provides novel evidence on the effects of campaigning on cross-cutting issues by focusing on the 2015 U.K. general election in Scotland. Results based on an experiment and a nationally representative survey show that the strategy to criticize the Scottish National Party (SNP) with regard to the cross-cutting issue of Scottish independence polarized voters along national identity lines. Among British voters, attack statements and perceived negativity increased support for some of the parties sponsoring the attacks, whereas among Scottish voters they actually increased support for the target of the attacks. In addition, experimental results indicate that attack statements affected mainly ideologically close parties (the Labour Party and the SNP). At the theoretical level, these findings indicate that the strategy to attack opposite parties on divisive issues can lead to both electoral gains and losses depending on voters’ “identification” with such issues.

Hout and Fischer have made the repeated, controversial claim that the dramatic rise of “religious nones” in the United States is due to the prominence of the politics of the Christian Right. As the argument goes, the movement’s extreme stands on gay rights and abortion make religion inhospitable to those who take more moderate and liberal positions. We take another look at this proposition with novel data drawing on expert reports and interest group counts that capture the prominence of the movement in each American state from 2000 to 2010. We attach these data to decennial religious census data on the unchurched, as well as estimates of the nones from Cooperative Congressional Election Study data. At stake is whether religion is independent of political influence and whether American religion is sowing its own fate by failing to limit taking extreme stands. Rising none rates are more common in Republican states in this period. Moreover, when the Christian Right comes into more public conflict, such as over same-sex marriage bans, the rate of religious nones climbs.

In recent years, some cities and localities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere have adopted or intend to adopt one potential solution to the difficulties inherent in addressing the needs of street beggars: diverted giving schemes (DGSs). A DGS is an institutional response designed to motivate people to donate money in charity boxes or donation meters rather than directly to street beggars. Their advocates believe that DGSs are both more efficient and more ethically permissible than direct giving to individual beggars. This article asks whether and how a DGS can be justified. It offers a normative evaluation of the main idea behind this policy, namely, that anonymous and spontaneous donations to charity boxes are in themselves an adequate policy instrument to address the problem of street begging. Ultimately, the paper argues against this idea and develops the case that DGSs can potentially compromise our ability to act on our moral duties toward truly needy beggars. Moreover, it explains why and under which circumstances this kind of program can potentially and seriously interfere with the freedom and opportunities of individuals in the begging population.

Is a federal prosecutor’s decision whether to pursue violent crime charges political? While prosecutors frequently assert their decision-making independence, their selection and operational constraints suggest a very different story. We assess whether political factors related to the prosecution priorities of the president, Congress, and the local public affect federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline charges in violent crime matters. To empirically examine this, we utilize data from 89 U.S. Attorneys offices from 1996 to 2011. The results provide rich new insight into when and why federal prosecutors’ decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions are driven by the preferences of the president, Congress, and the local public. The findings also have important broader implications for the role of political factors in a U.S. criminal justice system believed by many to be in crisis.

What is the relationship between the priorities expressed in party platforms before an election and the subsequent legislative agenda? The agenda setting literature often deemphasizes the role of political parties in agenda setting, instead focusing on the importance of problems bubbling up to the surface and demanding attention from policymakers. However, parties will often express different issue priorities during elections, and compete based on those priorities. If those promises are credible, voters should be able to choose between different sets of priorities during elections. The paper utilizes new data from the U.S. Policy Agendas Project and Wolbrecht on policy attention in U.S. party platforms to study the relationship between U.S. parties and legislative activities in Congress. A time-series cross-sectional analysis finds strong evidence to support the proposition that legislative agendas are influenced by the platform of the President’s party in the short term, although the relationship differs for different types of agendas and by issue, and fades over time.

In-group identity is particularly important in understanding political behavior among minority populations living in the United States. Despite its importance, we know relativity little about what explains variation in perceptions of group identity among U.S.-based minority groups. I develop a theoretical framework drawing extensively for social identity theory to explain development of in-group identities among Latinos in the United States. I suggest the availability of neighborhood-level ethnic stimuli increases the likelihood that Latinos will come to see themselves a part of pan-ethnic group rather than a unique individual. I use the 2008 Collaborative Multi-Racial Political Survey (CMPS), a nationally representative public opinion poll of registered voters with oversamples of Latino respondents. I find that the availability of ethnic stimuli positively associates with stronger perceptions of group identity among Latinos. Latinos who live in contexts rich with ethnic stimuli and cues are more likely to adopt in-group identities than those who live in environments lacking ethnically salient resources.

According to minimalist theories of democracy, the reason why civil conflicts are less frequent in democracies is that opposition parties can reasonably expect to win the next elections: they then prefer to wait than to rebel. In dictatorships, waiting until the dictator dies is generally much costlier. This waiting time, however, is considerably shortened when the dictator is old. Therefore, the risk of domestic conflict should decrease along with the age of autocratic leaders. Based on 160 countries from 1960 to 2008, our empirical analysis shows that the leader’s age decreases the likelihood of violent rebellion in dictatorships, but not in democratic regimes.

Do economic performance and economic news coverage influence public perceptions of the economy? Efforts to assess the effects are hampered by the interrelationships among the variables. In this paper, we bring to bear a more careful accounting of available economic variables than previous studies have used. We find that both media tone and economic attitudes are strongly related to actual economic performance. Moreover, after taking into account the economy itself, a substantial relationship between media tone and economic attitudes persists. Given that economic attitudes influence a wide variety of political outcomes, this finding carries important normative and political significance.