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The political participation literature has documented a long-term trend of the normalization of noninstitutional participation that is often equated with the conventionalization of engagement in protest politics. Less is known on the extent to which noninstitutional forms are differentiated by their mobilization context. Population surveys find it difficult to contextualize individual engagement, and on-site surveys point to effects that are hard to generalize. This study fills this gap by emphasizing differentiation and distinguishing participation according to the issue of engagement. It introduces a conceptual distinction between political insiders and outsiders, defined based on the extent to which they are embedded in the organizational landscape of the dominant cleavage dimension. Using an original survey conducted in Germany during the Covid-19 crisis, the analysis demonstrates that general-population surveys are fit to examine issue-specific participation patterns. The results expose an insider and outsider divide, captured by the effect of attitudinal and behavioral indicators, and demonstrates that the two groups are equally likely to participate in noninstitutional forms. However, insiders engage on the established issues of climate and anti-racism, whereas outsiders engage on the new issues of Covid-19 related economic assistance and civil liberties restrictions. In addition, dynamic models reveal that noninstitutional participation is rooted in volatile issue preferences. Overall, the paper argues that participation during the Covid-19 crisis has furthered the trend towards a differentiated protest arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uncovers determinants of turnout in Iran by studying the role of institutional and socio-economic variables in parliamentary politics since the 2000s. The paper argues that Iran's electoral system has dichotomized the pattern of participation between center and periphery. The dynamic of participation in the center stems primarily from national shifts in the factional rule. However, in provincial peripheries, Iran's electoral system promotes the personal particularistic demands of voters in the MP-citizen linkage. In this environment, the discretionary power of local state machinery over the daily lives of provincial citizens lays the ground for the role of local bureaus to influence participation. This argument draws on statistical analysis of parliamentary turnout and the study of several Iranian newspapers and official reports. The findings of the paper suggest a new mechanism by which institutional settings may shape the pattern of participation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the behavioral consequences of municipal identity? A long tradition of public policy theory has emphasized how municipal policymaking is shaped by local residents' shared interest in the prestige, power, and economic growth of their cities. A separate tradition of social identity theory shows that perceived membership in politically salient groups, including place-based identities, shapes political behavior, particularly in the context of intergroup rivalry. This paper integrates insights from these two traditions, providing a novel analysis of municipalities as a source of meaningful group identity. Using two large Canadian surveys, we measure municipal identity as a social identity, demonstrating that municipalities provide a meaningful basis of social identity for many individuals. We then show that municipal identity has important political correlates: strong municipal identifiers have higher levels of interest in municipal politics, higher participation in municipal elections, and distinctive policy preferences on issues related to municipal status and intermunicipal competition. We discuss the implications of our findings for political behavior, municipal politics, and social identity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how social media affects general voting patterns. Unlike previous studies investigating whether citizens' use of social media affects political participation, this paper considers the connections that social media users have with political activists on social media, and how this connectedness influences general voting patterns, using data from Ghana. With contemporary theoretical perspectives and exploratory techniques, trends from past literature are presented, from a social media-based propagated survey with 420 valid responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual model, which demonstrates that the connectedness with political and social media activists is significant and positively influences modifications in voting patterns. Online political participation and political affect also present an effect on voting patterns. The relationship between connections with social media political activists and online political participation is significant, as indicated by a strong covariance observed in the model. The results of the multigroup analysis also indicate some cultural and social issues to shape the phenomena for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few political systems are completely closed to citizen participation, but in nondemocratic systems and developing democracies, such participation may come with risks. In these contexts where fear and uncertainty may be high, why do some citizens still take action and make complaints to authorities? The resource mobilization model identifies the importance of time, money, and civic skills as resources that are necessary for participation. In this paper, we build on this model and argue that political connections—close personal ties to someone working in government—can also constitute a critical resource, especially in contexts with weak democratic institutions. Using data from both urban and rural China, we find that individuals with political connections are more likely to contact authorities with complaints about government public services, despite the fact that they do not have higher levels of dissatisfaction with public service provision. We conduct various robustness checks, including a sensitivity analysis, and show that this relationship is unlikely to be driven by an incorrect model specification or unobserved confounding variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political participation is often conceived of as a largely individual act. In this paper we emphasize the context in which that choice is made: features of that context make some choices more likely than others both in terms of the decision to participate but also in terms of the kinds of participation in which to engage. In particular, we examine the role that social capital plays in shaping political participation in Latin America. We show that higher levels of social capital promote more conventional forms of political participation such as voting and contacting elected representatives. Given marked differences in levels of social capital across rural and urban areas we are therefore able to show that there exists a geography of political participation across Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effect that municipal policing can exert on politics, and specifically investigates the effect that Stop, Question, and Frisk (SQF) policing has had on voter turnout and candidate choice in New York City. While extant studies of the American criminal justice system have found that mass incarceration and felon disenfranchisement negatively impact political participation and engagement, few have explicitly explored policing's relationship with politics and fewer still consider its mobilizing potential. Mobilizing data from over 2.7 million geo-coded police stops and data from a series of national and municipal elections this paper uncovers a pattern of voter demobilization, voter mobilization, and candidate choice that cannot be anticipated from extant studies in the literature. Specifically, it finds that while concentrated policing was associated with reductions in voter turnout in the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections, it was associated with higher rates of turnout in the 2008 presidential election and 2013 Democratic primary and general mayor. Further analysis demonstrates that stopping intensity was strongly associated with candidate choice in the 2013 Democratic mayoral primary, such that higher rates of policing were positively associated with support for the candidate (John Liu) who advocated for eliminating SQF and less support for the candidate (William Thompson) who supported SQF. Together, these findings highlight the impact that policing can exert on political behavior, characterize the impact that harmful policing policies can play in instigating policing participation and engagement, and foreground the importance of considering local criminal justice policy and political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their partisan and ideological attachments? The "backfire effect," described by Nyhan and Reifler (Polit Behav 32(2):303-330. 10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2, 2010), says no: rather than simply ignoring factual information, presenting respondents with facts can compound their ignorance. In their study, conservatives presented with factual information about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq became more convinced that such weapons had been found. The present paper presents results from five experiments in which we enrolled more than 10,100 subjects and tested 52 issues of potential backfire. Across all experiments, we found no corrections capable of triggering backfire, despite testing precisely the kinds of polarized issues where backfire should be expected. Evidence of factual backfire is far more tenuous than prior research suggests. By and large, citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their ideological commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the effect of a procedural information cost on the electoral registration of young first-time voters. We exploit the fact that information about when the minimum age eligibility requirement is due, either at registration or election-day, is only meaningful for those turning 18 after registration closing day. Using a national dataset on Chilean registration over four elections, we provide evidence of a sharp discontinuity in the registration rate of those youngsters turning 18 at closing date. The effect is both sizable and robust, persists over time, and is similar across income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning through social communication is promoted when citizens are able to identify which of their associates is likely to possess the necessary political information. This paper examines the factors that influence individuals' evaluations of political expertise. Actual political expertise plays a large role in perceived expertise, but mistakes are made. These are largely the result of assuming that those engaged in politics must also be knowledgeable about politics. This paper uses the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Study and the 2000 National Election Study to identify factors that bias levels of perceived political knowledge. The paper concludes by demonstrating that perceived expertise plays a larger role than actual expertise in the social influence process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Americans without prestigious educational or professional backgrounds hold offices throughout the American government. Yet we know little about how these ordinary Americans developed political ambition or whether gender differences in ambition are present among this population. This paper uses a national sample of 1240 Americans to fill these gaps, identifying how political ambition develops differently for ordinary men and women, and drawing on this knowledge to help explain the surge in female candidates following the 2016 election. In contrast with elite samples, I show that the factors determining men's political ambition are almost entirely distinct from those shaping women's ambition among the mass public. I theorize that ordinary women's ambition is particularly affected by the gendered expectations of those around them and the challenges they face balancing caregiving, work, and political engagement without the experience and resources possessed by elite women. I find support for this theory; ordinary women's ambition is particularly dependent on the support of personal and political sources who can help them manage the demands of candidacy. In contrast, ordinary men's ambition depends far less on encouragement from others, and instead increases with levels of education, political participation, and marriage. These results, and the distribution of the factors shaping ambition among Americans, help explain women's low descriptive representation among American candidates and elected officials. They also provide a potential explanation for the unusual increase in women's candidacies in 2017 and 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public attention to transgender (trans) politics has increased dramatically in recent years, the scholarly community still has a limited understanding of how trans and gender non-conforming (GNC) individuals participate in the political system. Trans/GNC individuals are faced with a dual reality. On one hand, they are part of a highly organized and activated group whose rights depend on political engagement; on the other hand, individuals often face barriers to political participation including a lack of proper identification and low socioeconomic status. In this paper, we explore the effects of these competing forces on trans/GNC voter registration. We use the theory of oppositional consciousness to hypothesize that being part of a political and highly mobilized population helps trans/GNC individuals overcome barriers to participation. Using data on over 5000 self-identified trans/GNC individuals from the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey we show that, though individuals are less likely to participate if they lack gender-conforming identification, on the whole trans/GNC individuals in this survey register at rates that are consistent with or higher than the general population. The evidence points to the importance of the trans political movement in activating and developing oppositional consciousness in its members. We explore the implications of these findings and what they mean for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the foreclosure crisis continuing to impact individuals and communities across the country, understanding the extent of its effect on political life is tantamount. In this paper, we ask how political behaviors are influenced by the economic adversities created by this crisis: loss of home, loss of resources, and perhaps loss of political efficacy. Previous research on economic adversity focuses almost exclusively on unemployment. Here we explore the demobilizing effects of foreclosures at the individual level, community levels, and the intersection of individuals nested in communities. With a unique dataset that matches voter file data to a database on individual foreclosures, we show that the foreclosure crisis was associated with a decline in voter turnout, both individually and for those in neighborhoods hit harder by the foreclosure crisis. We find that homeowners facing the loss of their homes were less likely to go to the polls. Consistent with previous research, we also show that turnout was suppressed in neighborhoods with higher rates of foreclosure. Taken together, our results suggest that political elites were less likely to hear from constituents most directly impacted by the foreclosure crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly all studies that seek to uncover the effects of military service on the individual are plagued with the self-selection bias that comes with studying the all-volunteer force. To solve this problem, this paper takes advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the suspension of the French National Service program to produce unbiased causal analyses of the effect of national service on a range of civic engagement measures. Results generated using Instrumental Variables estimation indicate that there is little difference in individual-level civic engagement between service participants and their non-serving peers. However, when potential mediators are taken into account, the ensuing results imply that the substantial increase in the likelihood of having children associated with national service participation has a suppressive effect on service participants' overall level of civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Latino National Political Survey, this paper tests the hypothesis that military service serves to stimulate electoral and nonelectoral political participation by Latinos. The results are compared with those for Anglos (non-Hispanic whites). The data show that Latino veterans, and particularly draftees, exhibited higher levels of voting and low-intensity nonelectoral political activities. Anglo veterans did not increase their participation to the same extent. Service in the volunteer army was a much less important explanatory factor of both Latino and Anglo political participation. Military experience therefore has a greater impact on Latinos than Anglos, and the draft experience was more important than volunteer service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an experimental design, this paper addresses a few basic, but important, questions about the influence of televised political advertising. How effective are different kinds of political spots in creating impressions of a candidate among viewers? Do negative ads work better than positive ads in creating favorable impressions? Do spots that focus on issues create more favorable impressions than spots that stress the traits of a candidate? Do two ads work better than one ad in creating impressions? Can the effects of a spot be undercut by a follow-up advertisement from the opposition? This paper offers some tentathe answers to these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two influences on an individual's decision to vote or not to vote on election day: the partisan door-to-door canvass and the social setting. Because that decision is important to political parties and candidates, they do what they can to influence the individual's decision, with the campaign canvass being one of the most important and effective methods. However, the decision also takes place in a social setting and is influenced by others in that setting. This paper examines these two influences on the individual and finds how they interact and that one conditions the other; the paper argues that the conditioning occurs because the social setting and canvass share a similarity in mechanism in the way that each exerts influence on the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the gender gap literature focuses on women's greater average liberalism relative to men. This approach masks considerable heterogeneity in political identity and behavior among women based on race, class, and other key socio-demographic characteristics. In the 2016 Presidential contest, political divisions among women were evident in exit polling, which demonstrated that a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump. This was not an anomaly but reflects a more long-standing distinction between white women and women of other racial and ethnic identifications. In this paper, we draw on intersectionality and system justification theory as frameworks for exploring the distinctive political behavior of white women. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we evaluate the factors that attracted white women voters to the GOP and kept them in the fold in spite of expectations that sexism in the campaign would drive women away from the party during the 2016 Presidential race. Our analyses show that many white women endorse sexist beliefs, and that these beliefs were strong determinants of their vote choice in 2016, more so than in 2012. Our findings also point to important divisions among white women based on educational attainment and household income in terms of both the endorsement of sexism and vote choice. These results shed new light on white women's political behavior and qualify the existing gender gap literature in important ways, offering new insights into the ways whiteness, gender, and class intersect to shape political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education has consistently been found to be positively related to political participation, electoral turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes and opinions. Previous research has, however, not sufficiently acknowledged the large existing between- and within-country variations in institutional quality when studying this relationship. This study asks the question: how do highly educated, well-informed, and critical citizens react to a political system with low-quality institutions; a system with high levels of corruption? Researchers have in recent years started to acknowledge corruption as a relevant factor in explaining democratic attitudes and behavior. However, how corruption interacts with individual characteristics in shaping political behavior is largely unexplored in the literature. This paper focuses on the interaction between corruption and education with regard to different political attitudes and democratic behavior. Using both individual- and country-level data from 31 democracies the results show that corruption thwarts many of the positive effects of education with regard to politics: The results indicate that when corruption is high, educated and politically sophisticated citizens are as likely as low-educated citizens to feel resignation with regard to formal political institutions. This, in turn, is likely to affect patterns of political participation among these citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisanship in the United States in the contemporary era is largely characterized by feelings of anger and negativity. While the behavioral consequences of this new style of partisanship have been explored at some length, less is known about how the anger that is at the root of this growing partisan antipathy affects Americans’ views of the national government. In this paper, I utilize data from the 2012 American National Election Studies to show that higher levels of anger are associated with a greater level of distrust in government across a variety of metrics. I then present evidence from a survey experiment on a national sample of registered voters to show that anger has a causal effect in reducing citizens’ trust in government. Importantly, I find that anger is able to affect an individual’s views of the national government even when it is aroused through apolitical means. I also find that merely prompting individuals to think about politics is sufficient to arouse angry emotions. In total, the results suggest that anger and politics are closely intertwined, and that anger plays a broad and powerful role in shaping how Americans view their governing institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to conventional wisdom in political behavior research, education has a direct causal effect on political participation. However, a number of recent studies have questioned this established view by arguing that education is not a direct cause of political participation but only a proxy for other factors that are not directly related to the educational experience. This paper engages in a current debate regarding the application of matching techniques to assess whether there is a direct causal effect of education on political participation. It uses data from a British cohort study that follows everyone born during 1 week in the UK in 1970. The data includes a rich set of variables measuring factors through childhood and adolescence such as cognitive ability and family socioeconomic status. This data provides the opportunity to match on a number of important variables that are not included in the US datasets used by previous studies in the field. Results show that after matching there are no significant effects of education on political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use comparative study of electoral systems data to understand the variation in citizens’ perceptions of political party placements on the left-right scale. We estimate multilevel models to assess the extent to which individual characteristics, party characteristics, and institutional designs contribute to variability observed in citizens’ perceptions of party placements. Because lack of information on the part of the citizens may be revealed through failure to respond to the left-right scale questions or through random components to actual placements, we develop models that include assessments of both types of responses to reduce bias from considering only one source. We find that individual-, party-, and institutional-level variables are relevant to understanding variation in citizens’ perceptions of party placements. Finally, we demonstrate that an inability to cognize the left-right scale (incognizance) and a deviation in the perceptions of party positions (perceptual deviation) have important consequences for citizens’ thermometer evaluations of political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rates of invalid voting in Latin America are among the highest in the world. Yet, scholars have not reached an agreement about whether these votes are driven by voter protest and, if so, what voters are protesting. Understanding whether these high invalid vote rates signify anti-democratic tendencies is particularly relevant given recent recessions in democratic quality across the region. This paper presents a theoretical framework and empirical tests using individual level data from 14 Latin American countries to show that invalid voting in presidential contests is used by individuals, particularly those high in knowledge, to protest poor government performance. However, invalid voting is not, on balance, an anti-system behavior. While political alienation differentially predicts invalid voting in countries with mandatory vote laws, the link between performance assessments and self-reported invalid voting is consistent across various contextual features that scholars link to invalid voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the various patterns of political participation among Latinos, Blacks and Asians Americans. To assess these patterns of political participation among these three groups, I employ the Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS) 2016. I use two key measures: one is the original measure of linked fate and the other is immigrant linked fate, both which are available in the CMPS. This allows for a comparison of two measures of linked fate on political participation across racial and ethnic groups. To test the impact of linked fate on political participation, I present several negative binomial regressions. The results show that the original measure of linked fate is a strong predictor for political participation for Latinos and Blacks but does not predict political participation for Asians. The measure for immigrant linked fate predicts political participation for Latinos and Blacks but not for Asians. The results suggest that participating in politics to represent the interests of their racial or ethnic group is very important for Latinos and Blacks. Additionally, participating in politics to represent the interests of immigrants is also strongly pronounced among Blacks and Latinos and shows a motivation for these two groups to engage in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of registration deadlines on voter turnout. The theoretical explanation considers how registration deadlines affect turnout when individuals influence the participation of others. The theoretical model leads to a novel empirical hypothesis, that deadlines can have both a direct and indirect effect on turnout through a behavioral contagion process. The paper reports empirical findings that confirm the theoretical expectations. These results have important implications for future research on registration deadlines and Election Day registration as the effects of these reforms depend on the specific social context in which they are adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When considering elections in multi-level contexts, scholars have typically assumed-in line with second-order election theory-that the way voters approach an election depends on their attributions of responsibility, that is, on what they see as being at stake in that election. This assumption is questionable. The formal position is not always clear, and is further blurred by parties and the media. Moreover, many voters pay little attention to politics and have little incentive to trace constitutional responsibilities. In this paper I use data from election studies in two multi-level contexts, Ontario and Scotland, to explore the nature and impact of voters' attributions of responsibility. The evidence suggests that, when called upon in surveys to do so, many voters can confidently and fairly accurately assign issues to different levels of government. Yet they do not seem to consider these attributions much at elections. There is very little indication that issues weighed heavier in the decision-making of those who regarded them as the responsibility of that electoral arena. A plausible explanation is that most voters sidestep the cognitive demands imposed by multi-level elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of message delivery in political campaigns is a key component of strategy. Yet studies that examine the impact of message timing on political behavior are surprisingly rare. Although one recent study finds that appeals delivered closer to Election Day will be most effective (Nickerson, American Journal of Political Science 51(2):269-282, ), methodological considerations render this conclusion tentative and suggest the impact of message timing remains an open question. In this paper I report the results of a randomized field experiment designed to compare the mobilization effects of nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks at different points during a campaign cycle. The results of the experiment, conducted during the November 2005 municipal elections in Rochester, New York, suggest calls delivered early on during a campaign cycle can also be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous inflow of new immigrants, political participation of Latinos and Asian Americans has become increasingly important for understanding the American electoral politics. A few previous studies examining how political participation of Latinos and Asian Americans is contextually determined reported mixed empirical findings, and this paper re-examines the issue by considering how different features of racial contexts interact to influence the voting turnout of individual Latinos and Asian Americans. Theoretically, we present a model of turnout where a rational individual is motivated to participate, not only by individualistic benefits accrued to him- or herself, but also by perceptions of group-level benefits—concerns regarding the welfare of other members of the racial group. We argue that racial contexts provide distinctive (dis-)incentives to participate, by influencing their perception of participatory benefits at the group level. Empirically, we find that the size of the group exerts a significant effect on turnout decisions of Latino and Asian American individuals, and, particularly for Latinos, its effect interacts with the economic status of the group and the overall racial heterogeneity in the county of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although robust citizen participation is fundamental to a healthy democracy, we still lack a clear sense of how to motivate participation. This paper presents the results of an experimental study designed to see if the content of political appeals matters in motivating participation. Previous research in this area has had mixed results. This paper finds that political appeals that include some self-disclosure about the person making the request triggers a liking heuristic that causes subjects to be more likely to comply with a request for action. Subjects receiving the treatment appeal are significantly more likely to donate money to support a political cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the role that political scandals play in eroding regard for government and political institutions in general. We know that scandals can lower regard for individual politicians and government leaders. Yet, less is known about how scandal influences attitudes toward institutions and the political process. It has been widely assumed that such attitudes are influenced by factors that lie largely beyond the control of individual politicians. Using data from the U.S. and the U.K. we show that scandals involving legislators can have a negative influence on their constituent's attitudes toward institutions and the political process. One consequence of this finding is that, instead of looking for scapegoats in Hollywood or among the failings of voters themselves, politicians should first get their own House in order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers suggest that white evangelical Protestant churches serve to mobilize their members into politics, while others argue that they encourage withdrawal from political life. This paper reconciles these two claims. I hypothesize that the time members of evangelical Protestant denominations spend in service to their church comes at the expense of participation in the wider community, contrary to the way mainline Protestant and Catholic churches foster civic activity among their members. However, I further hypothesize that the tight social networks formed through this intensive church activity can at times facilitate rapid and intense political mobilization. Data from the Citizen Participation Study supports the first hypothesis, while applying King's method of ecological inference to two elections in Alabama supports the second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances demonstrate that individuals think and act differently depending upon the political views of their discussion partners. However, issues of both conceptualization and measurement remain. We argue that some of these issues result from conflating what are two distinct characteristics of political discussion: disagreement and diversity. The purpose of this paper is to provide clarity to this literature by more formally distinguishing these two concepts. In doing so, we recommend a preferred measure of each. Substantively, we demonstrate that although exposure to disagreement is associated negatively with political participation, including the decision to vote, exposure to diversity is unrelated to participation. The evidence supports our argument that more formally separating the concepts of disagreement and diversity will help scholars better identify how and when social networks matter for political attitudes and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which attention to television news impacted affective evaluations of presidential candidates during the last two months of the 1992 campaign. Our analyses show that attentiveness to campaign news significantly influenced evaluations in a manner consistent with the tone of news coverage for each candidate. We disaggregate the data by party and ideology, however, and discover this effect to be conditional, depending critically on the character and intensity of political predispositions. Throughout the paper we emphasize the interplay between political predispositions and the valence of network coverage, underscoring the contingent effect of media messages. We conclude with a brief discussion of our results and stress the importance of partisan reinforcement, which we found was a major consequence of news media reception during the fall 1992 campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has suggested that women with a feminist consciousness differ from non-feminists in their attitudes and values. This paper investigates the impact of feminist consciousness on candidate preference and vote choice in presidential elections from 1972 to 1988. In those elections in which candidates took divergent positions on feminist issues, feminism was a significant predictor of candidate preference after controls for demographic variables, political attitudes, and partisanship. In elections in which the candidates took similar positions, however, feminism did not affect candidate preference. The 1980 election was the exception: in that election, feminists cast reluctant ballots for Carter, while rating John Anderson higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a model of political participation and political protest that includes the several well-established modes of orthodox participation as well as a number of dimensions of political protest, and also takes account of the causal order between conventional participation and protest. The analysis indicates that previous findings demonstrating a substantial positive association between unidimensional measures of conventional and unconventional political behavior are incomplete and indeed somewhat mis-leading. The connection between orthodox participation and protest weakens as the style of protest becomes more unorthodox, to such an extent that none of the separate modes of conventional participation are directly related to "radical" protest. Using sheaf coefficients, the paper also tests the relative explanatory power of three sets of determinants of participation and protest: social background characteristics, general orientations toward politics, and attitudes toward issues. Issues are repeatedly weaker than the other two groups of variables in predicting conventional participation but have relatively strong effects on political protest, particularly compared with political orientations, while social structure is consistently influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronic accessibility refers to a long-term bias to notice, process, and have available for recall certain types of information across a variety of different stimulus objects in a variety of different situations. This paper illustrates the usefulness of studying the chronic accessibility of political constructs in the field of political behavior. The chronic accessibility of four generic political constructs are operationalized: candidates, issues, groups, and parties. The accessibility of these four political constructs is shown to be relatively stable over time and to guide the processing of information about a wide variety of political objects. Next, a voting model is tested that identifies which voters will rely chiefly on issue orientations, group orientations, candidate orientations, and/or party orientations in making their vote decision. The voting model is validated across two distinct ways of operationalizing the political chronicities and three different election studies spanning a 28-year period. Finally, although this paper has focused on individual political behavior, several ways that an information processing approach could shed light on macrolevel political questions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Key's argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Key's formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Key's perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical utility of a new theoretical model of elections developed by Enelow and Hinich (1982, 1984a, 1984b) and Hinich and Pollard (1981). At the heart of this model is the assumption that candidate positions on campaign issues can be reduced to a set of positions on a smaller set of predictive dimensions. Factor analysis can be used to test the empirical adequacy of this assumption. Further, factor scores can be used as estimates of each voter's linear translation coefficients, measuring the linkage between candidate positions on the underlying dimensions of the campaign and candidate positions on real campaign issues. To obtain estimates of these translation coefficients, we factor analyze six candidate variables, using voter perceptions of each candidate's issue positions in the 1980 Pre-Election NES Survey. We then assign scores to each voter-issue pair on each of two underlying factors and examine group differences in these scores. We find systematic differences in mean factor scores among racial, ideological, partisan, educational, and income groups. These differences are consistent with the results obtained from a direct examination of perceived issue differences between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the effect of disgruntlement among those primary voters who supported U.S. presidential nomination losers. It analyzes the general election voting behavior of primary voters in the last five presidential elections in order to determine if differences exist between those supporters of the winning nominee in each party and backers of other candidates who also sought the nomination. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of voter turnout shows significant results only for the Democrats in 1972, when primary voters who supported candidates other than George McGovern were more likely to abstain in the general election. Taking into account the option of defecting to another party in November, both parties appear to have been plagued by a considerable amount of disloyalty on the part of supporters of candidates who failed to win the nomination, although for the Republicans this type of response is confined to the 1980 election. The existence of a third party or independent candidacy may be an important variable influencing the behavior of these disgruntled primary voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest revisionism in the study of political tolerance has produced some of the most provocative well-designed research in the field of political science. In particular. the work by Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus offers one of the most fully specified and rigorously executed models of public opinion formation. Yet this contemporary revisionism is flawed. This paper argues that these researchers misconceptualize tolerance, that this misconception contaminates their measurement process, that the resulting model is misspecified, and that the political conclusions offered are not supported in fact or principle. More generally this paper argues that the field of public opinion as a whole has been trapped by limited conceptions about the nature of cognitive constraint and by simplistic and inadequate methods for measuring and identifying this constraint. To remedy this, a developmental measure of cognitive moral stages is fashioned along lines suggested by Kohlberg. This measure satisfies a number of tests for both validity and reliability and appears to be one of the most powerful predictors of tolerance and intolerance - if not the most powerful single predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies certain characteristics of field experimentation that if more widely appreciated could persuade more political scientists — especially behavioralists — to consider adopting a field experimental strategy in dealing with the testing of their theoretical models. Specifically, this paper identifies the greater ease of analysis provided by experiment-generated data and certain improvements in the design and execution of field experiments that ease the burden of the researcher at the most difficult phase of such research, that is, at the design and data collection stages of the research. These improvements involve the integration of more than one test design into a field experiment such that a given field experiment can be used to answer a multiplicity of questions. This can include situations where two or more researchers work their own tests into a given experimental occasion such that the magnitude of effort is reduced for all involved - and thus the final product will not only be more methodologically defensible but also more practical to accomplish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of personal economic self-Interest - people responding politically to changes in their financial well-being-has been a central focus In the economic voting literature. In a recent article, Kramer (1983) contended that people may be acting in a personally self- interested manner despite findings to the contrary from survey research analyses. In another article, Sears and Lau (1983) argued that findings of economic self-Interest from survey data may be artifactual and that self-Interested behavior may be even weaker than previously thought. In this paper I review the literature on economic self-f nterest and attempt to deter- mine to what extent people do act on the basis of their financial well-being and under what conditions this Is most likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the concept of uncertainty regarding for whom a citizen should vote is developed and is shown to be an important component of rational choice models of decision making. Uncertainty is measured using the 7-point issue scales from the 1980 Center for Political Studies survey. A nonrecursive, simultaneous-equation model of the determinants of uncertainty and turnout is developed and is estimated using a "modified" two-stage least squares technique. Among other results, we find that uncertainty is the most important determinant of whether or not citizens vote-stronger than civic duty, education, or strength of partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A state supreme court, in making and justifying choices, uses a variety of sources of information and authority--its own precedents, scholarly commentaries, articles in law reviews, encyclopedias, restatements, and so forth. Quite often a state supreme court appeals to the wisdom or rejects the lack of it in the decision of a sister court in order to arrive at or buttress reasoning in a particularly problematic case. These citations--construed as derogation or deference--yield very handy and nonreactive indicators of hierarchies of prestige between and among the highest appellate courts of the several states. In this paper, I develop a simple and general measure of judicial reputation, present evidence on the hierarchy of state supreme courts as of 1975, show how this ranking has changed in the last 50 years, and examine competing and sometimes complementary explanations of judicial prestige. Taken together, social diversity, judicial professionalism, political ideology, and the size of case load provide an impressive explanation of the reputation of state supreme courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multivariate predictions of party identification have been based on father's party and social or demographic characteristics in past studies. This paper uses two policy attitudes to predict party along with the usual predictors of partisanship, from 1956 to 1980. The policy attitudes--domestic welfare policy opinion and civil rights policy opinion--have theoretical links to partisanship stemming from the New Deal and the 1960s. Domestic welfare policy opinion is found to be a major predictor of party identification. Despite the inclusion of the two policy attitudes and correction for attenuation caused by measurement error, only about 50% of the variance in party identification can be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the abortion and E.R.A. issues as examples of single-issue politics, as well as the nature of single-issue politics in general. We argue that many single issues are what others have called "easy" issues but that "hard-issue" voting as well as "easy-issue" voting may be occurring on both issues. We test this hypothesis using both "mass" and "elite" data sets. Our findings suggest that political activists may be cuing the masses into a pattern of single-issue voting, and hence keeping the battle over abortion and the E.R.A. intense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]