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I show that an alignment in partisan affiliation, between a firm's management and the president, is associated with higher levels of investment. Using insider trading data, I find that managers become more optimistic about their companies' prospects when their preferred party is in power. This optimism-driven increase in investment is amplified by herding and associated with both lower profitability and stock returns. Overall, managers' political beliefs produce heterogeneous expectations about future cash flows and distort investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Librarians are on the front lines of today's partisan and civic conflicts, fueled by fragmentation in ways different groups of citizens know the world, the shattering of common agreement about what it means to be an American, and loss of human connections across different epistemic communities. In this article, I argue that concepts of public work and its expression in "citizen professionalism" and the idea of nonviolent civic politics developed through decades of educational public work in the black freedom movement are profound resources for library professionals to use in addressing such conflicts. The article describes the little-known movement of Jeanes Teachers, who organized black communities to build thousands of Rosenwald libraries and schools and created interracial alliances in the American South. They had deep belief in the potential of everyone, black and white. Their pedagogical, political, and relational skills and constructive nonviolent philosophy have many lessons for librarians today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies demonstrate gender and partisan differences among Americans in COVID-19 socioeconomic consequences, attitudes, and behaviors. The authors of this study use six waves of panel survey data to explore the intersection of gender and party across COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences. The authors observe small gender gaps on several measures; however, partisan differences are larger than gender differences when considering the interaction between gender and partisanship. Democratic women are more similar to Democratic men on these measures than to Republican women. On virtually all measures, Republican women report lower levels of mitigation behaviors, worries, and support for expansive government policies compared to Democratic women and men. Analyzing the interaction of gender and partisanship illuminates how individuals navigated the pandemic with respect to identity factors that often pull in different directions. These findings suggest that one's partisan identity is more consequential than gender when it comes to COVID behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences.

Elite ideological polarization is rising in Western democracies. Is this elite ideological polarization associated with mass ideological polarization? I argue that when a party adopts a more extreme position, the masses polarize via two mechanisms. In‐partisans should follow the party and adopt a more extreme ideological stance while out‐partisans should backlash and move in the opposite direction. To test these expectations, I exploit a real‐world sudden party polarization when the Labour Party of the United Kingdom suddenly shifted to the left under new leadership. Using British Election Study Internet Panel data, I find limited evidence that elite polarization leads to mass polarization. Overall, neither in‐partisans followed the party, nor out‐partisans backlashed to it. Only ideologically out‐of‐touch in‐partisans adjusted their ideological stance to match their party, indicating the effectiveness of partisan cues, nonetheless. These findings provide insight into how the masses react to increasing party polarization, alleviating pundits' concerns that the masses are blind followers and bound to polarize if political parties polarize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political polarization of Sindh, where the Sindhi ethnicity dominates rural areas while urban areas are dominated by the “Muhajir”, leads to the political monopoly of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party in rural areas and the Muttahida Quami Movement in urban areas. Both parties have adopted similar strategies to achieve their goals after establishing their dominance in their respective areas. The current study analysed nine hypotheses, supporting five while rejecting the others. Adopting a quantitative approach, the study finds that partisanship increases voting behaviour by virtue of reducing voting deferral at the day of polling. In addition, young voters in Pakistan largely remain unattached to the traditional leaders or parties, mainly because this group has not personally experienced the tragedies that have historically shaped the partisanship among the old generation. Due to this detachment, they successfully maintain a neutral political stance, which makes them free to support any leader or party that meets their expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of generational labels like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z in popular discourse, most studies of generationalism have been restricted to content analyses of generational rhetoric. This study investigates the prevalence of negative generationalism, or negative affective sentiment towards perceived generational out‐groups within the US public and considers how it may be linked with partisan political identities. Using a nationally representative survey of 1232 Americans, this research examines the association between generational self‐identity and partisan identity using feeling thermometer scores for four generational groups (Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Z) and the two major political parties (Democrats and Republicans). I also report the findings of an experimental manipulation testing the extent to which generational priming exacerbates affective partisan polarization. The results reveal strong evidence of positive affect towards one's generational in‐group, but a less consistent pattern of negative generationalism. Neither the correlational nor the experimental outcomes support a strong and consistent link between generationalism and partisanship, though Republicans feel significantly warmer towards Baby Boomers and colder towards Gen Z than independents. Despite the largely null findings concerning partisanship, this study reveals that these generational labels do appear to bear some degree of social meaning as social identities for people, pointing to new directions for future sociological research on generationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has found that as the effective number of political parties increases, people are more likely to delay their voting decisions. Yet, since voters have different political predispositions, theory suggests that the effects of fragmentation are not equal for all, but stronger for non-partisans and low interest voters. The analysis of survey data from 24 countries shows that party fragmentation does increase the probability of a late voting decision of all partisan and non-partisan voters at all levels of political interest. A more detailed measure of time of voting decision, however, evidences that partisans and voters with high political interest are less influenced by the number of parties. All in all, these findings highlight an understudied consequence of party fragmentation: it impacts the time of voting decision for most voters in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historical trajectory of the women's movement in Belize, focusing on a critical period (1975–1993). We draw upon original sources from archival research coupled with interviews with Belizean women to interpret the rise and decline of the women's movement. The movement in Belize emerged in the late 1970s and peaked during the 1980s. At the height of the movement, female-led NGOs organized women across Belize with the goal of empowering women to better their communities and living conditions. Yet the outcomes of the movement dissipated in the 1990s. We interpret the vicissitudes of the movement against the backdrop of divisions generated during the years surrounding political independence (achieved in 1981). As Belize's struggle for independence from British colonialism reached its denouement in 1979–1981, the concerns of Belizean women came into public consciousness shaped by the U.N. Decade for Women, Cold War politics, and the politics of decolonization. These sparked a women's movement in the 1980s, albeit in a fashion that could not be sustained into the 1990s, an era of NGOs, neoliberalism, and clientelism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses Conversation Analysis to investigate an interactional practice in US Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) lower court nomination hearings. Drawing from 13 hr and 36 min of data from Q&A rounds across 12 SJC hearings during 2020 and 2022, I document how senators' invocations of the hearing's time limits function as a resource for managing judicial nominees' responses to their questions. I examine senators' time invocations (TIs) in two main sequential areas: (1) When designing questions, and (2) when pursuing or challenging nominees' responses. As a feature of question design, TIs help senators 'move things along' during their brief questioning time, as well as pin nominees to respond in ways preferable to the question. As a feature of pursuits or challenges, TIs help senators manage nominees' off-topic, evasive, or unsound responses, thus ascribing different levels of accountability onto both nominees (for their inadequate responses to senators' initial questions) and senators themselves (for the sequential and affiliative consequences associated with doing pursuing/challenging). Seven extracts are presented from a collection of 82 cases. Findings reveal how time limits can be leveraged by senators to advance various goals in this highly constrained and institutionalized context, including exhibiting and implicitly legitimizing partisan bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between personal traits, news use via YouTube algorithmic searches, and engagement with misinformation about U.S. Muslim congresswomen. Based on analyses of survey data, we find that those with lower cognitive ability and frequent algorithmic use were more likely to believe and share misinformation. Republicans and those with higher levels of nationalism and prejudice against Muslims were also more likely to believe the misinformation. Moderation findings suggest that higher algorithmic use strengthens belief in misinformation about U.S. Muslim congresswomen. The results highlight the importance of both individual ideologies and systematic factors in understanding misinformation engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide the first account of the culture wars in the political psychology and public opinion literature based on a theory of culture. Using innovative measures of grid‐group cultural theory (CT), we identify the cultures associated with ideological and partisan identifications in annual U.S. national surveys from 2011 to 2022, a unique data set of 24,870 respondents. As hypothesized, we find that the culture wars occur not just between ideologues and partisans but among them as they draw support from distinct, relatively stable yet shifting cultural coalitions. Egalitarian and, less often, fatalistic liberals and Democrats battle against individualistic and, less often, hierarchical, conservatives and Republicans. As hypothesized, fatalists are the least reliable coalition partners, and, as expected, they gravitate Republican and conservative in 2017, after Trump's election. However, fatalists who are strong partisan identifiers never defect. Moreover, our hypothesis that fatalist attraction to Trump would drive defections in their political identification is largely invalidated. Instead, fatalists mostly flee Trump in our aggregate analysis as well as in subanalyses of strong and weak ideological and partisan identifiers. In 2016 and 2018–2022, it appears that independent fatalists cause fatalists to gravitate liberal and Democrat. Unexpectedly, hierarchists also go liberal and Democrat in 2022, in apparent reaction to Trump's multifront attacks on the 2020 election that he lost. We identify the basis for cultural coalitions that can end particular culture wars, including the most significant one now occurring between egalitarians and individualists, and conclude with suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the expectation that welfare participation—because of its direct monetary payments—fosters strong attachments to the Democratic Party, the evidence to date suggests that welfare is unrelated to party identification. The majority of this research, however, focuses on adults, when partisan development is over. We argue that adolescent welfare participation may serve as a class-based signal that reinforces identification with the Democratic Party. Our inferences are generally consistent with this line of reasoning, but we also find important differences across race and ethnicity. Depending on the model, the likelihood of identifying with the Democratic Party in adulthood for white respondents is anywhere from 9 to 16% points higher for respondents who grew up in families that received welfare compared to those who did not have adolescent welfare participation. Other results, however, suggest a negative association between adolescent welfare use and identification with the Democratic Party for non-Hispanic black respondents. We conclude that despite the fact that adult welfare experiences lead to political disengagement, adolescent program participation can be sites of partisan learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the determinants of legislative overrides in multiparty legislatures, with a specific focus on the influence of partisan fragmentation within congress. Utilizing an original dataset spanning from 1995 to 2017, we examine the cases of Ecuador and Peru. Our argument posits that during lawmaking, a dispersed and fragmented party system prevents the president from anticipating the preferences of the congressional pivotal party. In such a scenario of incomplete information, the president's capacity to introduce selective incentives through vetoes is limited. In this way, the president is less likely to break the congressional majority supporting a bill. Consequently, the vetoed bill becomes less acceptable compared to the original statute. This, in turn, provides the congressional majority with increased incentives to uphold the original bill, elevating the likelihood of a legislative override. In alignment with this rationale, our findings indicate that an increase in the effective number of parties (ENP) has a positive and significant impact on the probability of a legislative override. Additionally, our evidence underscores a noteworthy contrast between the relatively high rate of legislative overrides in Latin America and findings for the US case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in surveys of online respondents who participate absent random selection. Using an uncompensated, opt-in panel of 11,000 Pennsylvanians (2020–2022), we benchmark self-reports against vote histories, campaign contributions, election returns, and Census data. Ours is among the first such benchmarking exercises in more than a decade, a period when online survey research has transformed. It is also among the first analyzing a longitudinal panel. Our panelists are approximately balanced on partisanship; attrition is limited. Notably, respondents are very politically engaged, with high rates of turnout, campaign contributions, and rally attendance. Ethnic/racial minorities are under-represented. Political attitudes show high over-time stability, and an experiment uncovers few partisan differences in response rates. Such survey samples are cost-effective ways to track the views of highly engaged citizens over time, but less engaged citizens prove hard to recruit, even with supplemental efforts. Survey participation is itself a political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Federal Reserve plays a major role in the global economy, despite low public awareness of its functions and responsibilities. Scholars have recently noted three ongoing developments in the politics of the Fed: A dramatic increase in the size of the Fed's balance sheet, a decrease in the Fed's insulation from partisan politics, and evidence that the Fed has struggled to manage inflation in recent times. Despite the contributions of recent studies, little is known about how Americans' levels of diffuse and specific public support for Federal agencies are influenced by trends in agencies' size and scope, politicization, and performance. In this study, I use a survey experimental design to evaluate the effects of emphasis frames on support for the Federal Reserve. Results demonstrate that while specific support declines in reaction to frames that associate Fed actions with rising inflation, messages about the Fed's growing balance sheet erode diffuse support for the Fed. However, when reminded of the Fed's declining political independence, partisans' levels of support diverge. These results imply the potential for substantial future declines in public support for the operation of this critical, yet largely overlooked, Federal institution, especially among partisans of the presidential out-party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, Alaskans voted to adopt a nonpartisan top-4 primary followed by a ranked-choice general election. Proposals for "final four" and "final five" election systems are being considered in other states, as well as ranked-choice voting. The initial use of Alaska's procedure in 2022 serves as a test case for examining whether such reforms may help moderate candidates avoid being "primaried." In 2022, incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski held her seat against a Trump-endorsed Republican, Kelly Tshibaka. We use data from the 2022 election in Alaska, along with a mixed-mode survey of Alaskan voters before the general election, to test hypotheses about how voters behave in these kinds of elections, finding: (1) the moderate Republican candidate, Murkowski, likely would have lost a closed partisan primary; (2) some Democrats and independents favored the moderate Republican over the candidate of their own party, and the new rules allowed them to support her at all stages of the election, along with others who voted for her to stop the more conservative Republican candidate; and (3) that Alaskan voters are largely favorable toward the new rules, but that certain kinds of populist voters are likely to both support Trump and oppose the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Cancel culture" has become a prominent phrase in US political commentary, with supporters and opponents relying on different value-based arguments to express their views. At the same time, these camps often fall along predictable partisan political lines. What, then, are the real motivations for promoting and opposing behaviors sometimes labeled as "canceling" in contemporary American politics? We explore this question through survey data from Pew in 2020 and two original survey experiments, conducted on the 2021 CES and a 2023 online sample. We examine how Americans define the term "cancel culture," to what extent cancel culture is linked to both a range of core democratic values, and the role of partisanship in shaping support or opposition to specific behaviors. We observe a significant range of views about cancel culture and document connections to various political values. From our experiments, we find that partisanship is a potent driver of support for and understanding of cancel culture and that value-based framing has a weaker impact as compared to partisanship. Cancel culture provides an important case study of how Americans process conflicting norms and values, including free speech and political accountability, beyond the typical constraints of the formal political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The group-centered theory of party development provides a new theoretical framework for understanding early party development. Specifically, it provides a logical framework to understand why early state legislators were motivated to engage in partisan gerrymandering during a period without national organizations. I use Pennsylvania as a case study to determine if partisanship influenced the creation of congressional district maps in 1802, 1812, and 1822. Using county-level congressional election returns and state legislative journals, I provide evidence of strategic partisan gerrymandering by the Democratic-Republicans during each apportionment year. I also show that the Federalist minority in Pennsylvania knew the national political impact of the process and attempted to influence congressional maps for their own partisan advantage. Lastly, I demonstrate how multi-member districts were the Democratic-Republicans' weapon of choice to engage in partisan gerrymandering throughout the period. These results highlight the connection between state legislatures and congressional party politics during the first party era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore whether the effects of colorism on evaluations of politicians is moderated by shared partisanship. We hypothesize that colorism will lead Whites to rate darker elected officials of color more poorly. Additionally, we hypothesize that partisanship will moderate this relationship with Whites being less likely to engage in colorism when evaluating co-partisans. We test our hypotheses using a crowd-sourced measure of skin tone based on the Massey-Martin index and the 2016, 2018, and 2020 Congressional Election Studies. We find that darker-skinned elected officials of color from a different party receive less support among Whites. In contrast, we find that skin tone does not influence support for co-partisan elected officials of color. Additional analysis demonstrates that the effect of colorism on evaluation of out-group partisans is strongest for Whites who score high on a racial conservatism measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work suggests rural identity often stems from direct experience living in a rural area, and that categorical group membership occurs before social identification. Puzzlingly, however, some U.S. survey takers not living in a rural area indicate that being rural is part of their identity. Using ANES data from 2020 (N = 8280) and 2019 (N = 3165), as well as original survey data from YouGov (N = 2615), I find that these non-rural rural identifiers are similar to rural identifiers in rural areas in terms of group-based affect and values, and are more right-leaning and populist than people who do not identify as rural (regardless of their location). Few consistent demographic differences between rural and non-rural rural identifiers exist. I conclude that: (1) rural identification has similar political, attitudinal, and demographic tendencies regardless of respondent location, and (2) non-rural rural identifiers have either been socialized in a rural area but moved away, or they personally affiliate with values and norms of rural areas despite not categorically being part of the group. This study has implications for the study of urban–rural political behavior, and for our understanding of identity and politics more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central norm of democratic governance is that elected officials explain their behavior to constituents. Prior work shows that explanation giving can improve evaluations of the explainer and the decision they have reached. However, this work has not examined whether more frequent explanation giving is associated with higher levels of democratic satisfaction. We address this question using data from the European Social Survey and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. We find that democratic and government satisfaction is higher among individuals who believe the government explains its decisions and in countries rated as having a high level of explanation giving by expert raters. We further show that explanation giving is positively related to democratic and government satisfaction both for partisans who identify with a party in government and partisans who do not. In some cases, explanation giving thus narrows partisan gaps in political support. This is an important finding because explanation giving, unlike other moderators of partisan gaps in satisfaction, is something directly under the control of elected officials and thus a potentially potent remedy to partisan divisions in democratic satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent, high-profile acts of partisan violence have stimulated interest among academics and the public in the etiology of support for such violence. Here, we report the results of a study that measures support for partisan violence with both abstract items (e.g., support for general partisan violence) and those focused on more specific acts (e.g., support for a partisan motivated shooting). We additionally examine intra-individual and intergroup correlates of support for partisan violence. Across three data collections (total N = 2003) and using seven unique operationalizations of support for partisan violence, we find the most consistent and typically largest relationships with individuals' reported "need for chaos" (e.g., agreement with statements like: "Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things") and the extent to which they dehumanize members of the opposing party. System justification and social dominance orientation also consistently relate to support for partisan violence. These results suggest a common set of correlates for abstract and specific violence that reflect internal psychological (intra-individual) tendencies and intergroup evaluations. It also seems that partisan violence resembles other types of intergroup violence, as the relevant variables are not unique to the political domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accountability relies on voters accurately evaluating government performance in addressing the important issues of the day. This requirement arguably applies to an even greater extent when addressing fundamental societal crises. However, partisanship can bias evaluations, with government partisans perceiving outcomes more favorably, or attributing less responsibility for bad outcomes. We examine partisan motivated reasoning in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, using panel data and a survey experiment of over 6000 respondents in which vignettes prime respondents about the UK government's successes and failures in tackling the pandemic. We also propose a novel extension of the partisan bias thesis: partisans arrive at biased judgements of government competence by recalling the past performance of the government differently, according to whether or not their favored party held power at that time. We find that even in the relatively consensual partisan context of the UK's response to Covid-19, where both major parties endorsed both lockdown and vaccination programs, there is evidence of both current and recall partisan biases: Opposition partisans are more likely to blame the government for negative outcomes and less likely to recall positive aspects of the government's recent and past performance unless prompted to do so. Our findings have implications for understanding the limits of democratic accountability under crisis conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American political elites have increasingly polarized over the past decades, which has inspired much research into mass polarization. We study whether there is a generational component to mass polarization by disentangling period, age, and cohort differences while distinguishing two forms of mass polarization: partisan sorting and ideological divergence. Drawing from General Social Survey and American National Election Studies data, we find that partisan sorting has increased across long-standing and emerging issues, while ideological divergence has not. Contrary to expectations, over-time increases in sorting are clearly driven by changes within generations rather than by generational replacement. On several issues, newer generations turn out to be less sorted than those they replace. This tentatively suggests that, partially as a consequence of demographic changes, generational replacement will gradually lead to less polarization in American public opinion as it converges toward more liberal positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a joint application of online network analysis and NLP techniques to explore dynamics of "polarized intersectionality"—that is, how (mis)representations of women that develop online and at the intersection of different axes of discrimination entwine with ideological and affective polarization. We look in particular at whether and how digital (mis)representations change together with political scenarios in which political parties, leaders, and partisan communities more in general swing from collaboration to hostility. Our analysis of two Twitter conversations that put women at the center of attention show that changing political scenarios generate different digital conversations which, in turn, reflect patterns of alliances and rivalry. Regardless of these changes, women are invariantly (mis)represented in narratives that are often weaponized against political enemies in ways that foster both ideological and affective political polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public agenda is an ecosystem in which public issues interact and compete to gain public attention. Whether this ecosystem is primarily competitive or cooperative is an unsettled question in the literature on agenda-setting. This study employs an ecological approach to explicate interissue relationships. It quantifies the nature and evolution of the issue ecosystem and examines the roles of the value orientations of issues and of individuals' education levels and political partisanship in interissue relationships. The study compiled and analyzed the Gallup Most Important Problem polls in the United States from 1958 to 2020. The findings indicate that the issue ecosystem of the American public is essentially competitive and that the balance of competition and cooperation has remained unchanged over time. The interaction between public issues involving materialistic values was more likely to be competitive and the interaction between issues involving postmaterialistic values was more likely to be cooperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this field note, we examine the changing distribution of TANF spending patterns across the states. Given the important shift from the more restrictive categorical grant of AFDC to the more flexible block grant of TANF, examining patterns of spending across program categories is an important facet for understanding states' welfare efforts. Overall, there has been a general decrease in the percentage of state TANF spending on cash assistance. Using a new measure of party dominance, we find that Democratic states initially spent a higher share of their TANF funds on cash assistance than Republican states. However, by the 2010s this partisan difference basically disappeared with Democratic states spending patterns matching those of Republican states, focusing less on cash assistance and giving greater priority to areas less reflective of TANF's principal objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how geopolitical forces motivate public support for foreign climate aid among US residents. This is timely: the US and other advanced economies have committed to large transfers of aid to developing economies in order to speed climate mitigation and adaptation, reflecting the deep climate injustice at the center of global climate policy. Using nationally representative data (n=917), our research advances the budding scholarship on foreign climate aid by using an experimental survey design that frames foreign climate aid in geopolitical terms by comparing US aid to that of (a) allied nations and (b) adversarial nations. We find that, relative to a baseline informational frame, comparing US aid levels to geostrategic allies (e.g., UK, France, Germany, and Japan) doubles support among US residents for providing greater aid levels. We also find that comparing US aid levels to a geostrategic competitor—in this case, China—does not increase support for foreign climate aid. In a secondary analysis, we find that the effect of comparison frame is isolated to Democrats, with Republicans showing no sign of increasing levels of support regardless of framing condition. These results indicate that it is possible to raise support for foreign climate aid among (Democratic) US residents, primarily by linking existing levels of support to geostrategic allies. These results suggest that donor competition between the US and its allies may provide activists and policymakers an opportunity to increase support for the US to meet its existing foreign climate aid obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how legislative representation and issue activism change as parties polarize on an issue by examining immigration politics in the U.S. House. Using an original data set of the policy positions in immigration bills from 1983 to 2014, an original coding of email newsletters from 2010 to 2020, and existing speech data, we show that increased partisan disagreement on immigration and the sorting of immigrants into the Democratic Party changed the way lawmakers represent their districts on that issue. Larger foreign‐born populations consistently have representatives who take pro‐immigration positions, but the effect has changed from a direct effect to one mediated by partisanship. Issue attention also became asymmetrical, with Democratic lawmakers who represent more immigrants being more active on immigration policy, but no such relationship for Republicans. This suggests that for Democrats, immigration is a distributive issue driven by geographically concentrated “policy demanders” but for Republicans, it is a partisan issue that is less connected to geography. These findings have implications for who and where new policy proposals come from. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate whether symptoms of depression affect the relationship between partisanship—one of the most important predictors of electoral behavior—and vote choice. Building on research from mood and depressive realism, we argue that symptoms of depression reduce the association between the strength of partisanship and vote choice because depressed mood can lead to better, clearer thinking. We evaluate and find support for this hypothesis using survey data from Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. Our findings improve our understanding of the political consequences of depression, one of the most prevalent mental health problems in contemporary democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world are experimenting with deliberative mini‐publics as a means of integrating public input into policymaking processes, including as a method for directly creating policy. This raises the important question of when ordinary people will judge the outputs of mini‐publics to be legitimate and support their use. We investigate how public support for mini‐publics is shaped by: (1) whether the mini‐public is held in response to calls from politicians or from the general public; (2) which political party sets up the mini‐public; and (3) whether there is partisan conflict surrounding the mini‐public's creation. To do so, we use two pre‐registered survey experiments fielded in the United Kingdom that focus on climate assemblies, a prominent form of deliberative mini‐public. Results are three‐fold. First, we find some evidence that assemblies are more positively evaluated when they stem from the demands of local residents rather than partisan actors, but this effect is relatively modest and does not emerge consistently across our analyses. Similar findings are noted with regard to partisanship. Partisan conflict, by contrast, has a more robust effect – leading respondents to adopt more ideologically stereotypical views of the assembly, with left‐wing (right‐wing) respondents being more supportive of Labour‐sponsored (Conservative‐sponsored) assemblies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important, but poorly understood issue in modern American politics is the conservative wing of the Republican party's interest in repealing legislation. Although existing work shows that conservative Republican elites focus more on repeals than in past decades, it remains unclear what the public thinks about this governance approach. We examine this issue with a survey experiment asking respondents to evaluate four policy proposals in Congress, holding the “ends” constant but randomizing whether they are achieved by enacting a new law or repealing an existing law. Our results show that conservatives favor repeals as a legislative tool more so than liberals and moderates. We also show that this is the result of ideological, rather than partisan considerations. Our findings shed light on both the modern Republican party's approach to governance and a key issue at the nexus of mass attitudes, ideology, and legislative procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political elites use contrasting narratives about immigrants to shape public attitudes and influence immigration policy support. This study examines how pro- and anti-immigrant narratives affect public preferences for reducing immigration in the United States. Using two distinct samples – a non-Hispanic White sample from YouGov and a racially diverse sample from NORC – the experiment reveals that exposure to these narratives significantly shapes attitudes toward immigration. Effects vary depending on the type of narrative, as well as respondents’ political affiliations and racial backgrounds. Specifically, the pro- (‘worthy’) immigrant narrative, which portrays immigrants as hardworking, law-abiding members of the in-group, reduces support for lowering immigration levels, especially among White respondents, with Republicans and Independents showing the greatest shift. In contrast, the anti-immigrant narrative, which characterizes unauthorized immigrants as undeserving outsiders, increases support for reducing immigration across racial groups. This research advances our understanding of how political rhetoric shapes public attitudes toward immigration by employing large, diverse samples and realistic portrayals of pro- and anti-immigrant narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are not a demographic minority, but they certainly are a minority in politics. Most legislative bodies across the world are still overwhelmingly male. Female candidates cite lack of resources as one of the main deterrents to run. Using data on candidates encompassing twenty‐eight elections in sixteen countries between 2006 and 2017, we examine the role of electoral institutions, partisanship and candidates’ political profile in mitigating – or aggravating – the gender resource gap. We find that female candidates systematically avail of significantly lower campaign budgets. This is true across different electoral systems and on the left as well as on the right. The gap is larger in size among incumbents. It is also wider in parties that use voluntary quotas and put forward more female candidates. Moreover, the budget composition of male and female candidates varies considerably. Male candidates tend to use higher proportions of their own resources, while female candidates rely on proportionally higher party contributions, that are, however, smaller in size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some interest groups have policy positions on one or more policy dimensions in partisan policy space while others do not. In this paper we examine explanations for differences in interest group position-taking across policy dimensions. While group characteristics are likely to explain parts of such variation in interest group position-taking, we hypothesise that the salience and polarisation among parties and citizens of the respective policy dimension also matter. By utilising novel survey data on interest group positions (within a predefined policy space) in six different countries as well as survey data on citizen and party positions, we investigate interest group position-taking across policy dimensions. The analysis shows that interest groups with more resources, core interests linked to the examined policy dimensions and a connection to the traditional party system are more likely to have policy positions than other groups. Furthermore, we find evidence of groups supplementing citizens and parties in policy space by articulating positions on policy dimensions that the average citizen and party pays less attention to. Moreover, when party polarisation increases on a dimension, greater party salience is negatively associated with group position taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIdeal point estimation methods in the social sciences lack a principled approach for identifying multidimensional ideal points. We present a novel method for estimating multidimensional ideal points based on l1 distance. In the Bayesian framework, the use of l1 distance transforms the invariance problem of infinite rotational turns into the signed perpendicular problem, yielding posterior estimates that contract around a small area. Our simulation shows that the proposed method successfully recovers planted multidimensional ideal points in a variety of settings including non-partisan, two-party, and multi-party systems. The proposed method is applied to the analysis of roll call data from the United States House of Representatives during the late Gilded Age (1891–1899) when legislative coalitions were distinguished not only by partisan divisions but also by sectional divisions that ran across party lines. Supplementary materials for this article are available online, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even before its founding, town hall meetings have been woven into the fabric of American politics as a quintessential tool in a representative democracy. We might expect legislators would host these events with routine frequency; however, our research shows this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. While town halls may strengthen the legislator‐constituent relationship, they also carry risk, especially in our polarized political climate. We argue the decision to engage with constituents in this way is a two‐step process: first, legislators decide whether to participate in town halls or not; second, they determine the frequency (and modality) of these interactions. We consider several factors to explain the variation of town hall participation among members of Congress, including partisanship and gender, as well as several electoral and district‐level factors. By combining a unique data set of nearly 11,000 congressional town hall meetings from 2017 to 2022 (115th–117th Congresses) with biographical and political information about legislators and their districts, we uncover compelling evidence to suggest legislators make strategic calculations of whether to participate in town hall meetings and how to do so. In the end, our work adds to the growing literature on the modern electoral connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party unity is central to studying legislative politics and explaining the organization of legislative chambers, passage of policy, and even electoral outcomes. Its effect has been shown at the subnational, national, and international levels. While party unity has been used to explain many phenomena in legislative politics, there is much less known about the determinants of party unity, especially at the subnational level. We leverage a dataset of party unity in 95 U.S. state legislative chambers from 2002 to 2014, to test the impact of party structures, institutional rules, and contextual factors on the level of party unity. We find that majority status, party seat share, and the other party's unity impact party unity similarly for both parties, but the effect of inter‐party heterogeneity differs by party. These findings offer a new and unique insight to how partisan theories operate differently within state legislative versus Congressional parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research advancing our understanding of partisan cognitive differences finds symmetrical partisan routes to epistemic hubris: intellectual identity and anti-intellectual affect. These researchers conclude that epistemic hubris is largely due to intellectual identity among Democrats and anti-intellectual affect among Republicans. I investigate whether these relationships are purely due to a greater prevalence of intellectual identity among Democrats and anti-intellectual affect among Republicans or if these constructs are particularly potent in producing epistemic hubris among those who identify with their associated parties. I present observational evidence that partisanship conditions the influence of anti-intellectual affect on epistemic hubris but do not find that partisanship conditions the influence of intellectual identity. Based on these findings, we can expect Red America's increasing anti-intellectualism to contribute to increasing epistemic hubris. More broadly, I provide empirical support for understanding intellectual identity and anti-intellectualism as distinct concepts based on their differing relationships with other fundamental political concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know that political parties play a crucial role in the electoral processes of established democracies. However, we know much less about how this role fades away. In this paper, we study the case of Chile, a country that, until a few years ago, was cited as an example of a stable and institutionalized party system. We study how the phenomenon of independent candidates has shaken the national party system. We use two separate strategies to study this phenomenon. First, we measure the marginal effect of the independent label, compared to other party labels, using a conjoint experiment. Our findings show that candidates who are presented as independents have a significant increase in their probability of being chosen. Second, we measure whether this electoral effect relates to party identification. We find that respondents show low animosity towards independent candidates and high animosity towards traditional parties. Furthermore, a majority of the studied population can be classified as negative partisans. These findings suggest that the recent emergence of independent candidates is a result of negative views on parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gap between women's representation in the Democratic and Republican parties has grown significantly in the last three decades. We argue existing explanations undervalue voters' contributions to this trend by focusing on voter responses to candidate sex rather than candidate gender. We theorize that Republican voters (especially the most conservative) prefer masculine candidates in intraparty and entry-level elections. Because sex and gender are correlated, this limits the number of Republican women who advance through the political pipeline. Experimental vignettes from two rounds of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (N  = 2,000) and two large surveys of Republicans (N  > 10,000) show that Republican (but not Democratic) voters penalize candidates with "feminine" self-presentation regardless of the candidate's sex. Original data on the self-presentation of Republican candidates for entry-level office (N  = 459) confirm Republican candidates often present themselves in gender-stereotypical ways. In short, voters play an underappreciated role in the partisan gap in women's representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisanship plays a central role in the policy process, but its impact on the adoption of collaborative strategy by policymakers remains unknown. To fill this gap, I conducted a conjoint experiment involving municipal officials across the United States, examining the effect of co‐partisanship on policy collaboration and its moderating impact on collaborative attributes such as resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcome. The findings reveal that a collaborating partner's co‐partisanship status increases the likelihood of local policymakers adopting a program by 12.75 percentage points. Moreover, co‐partisan program proposals generally enhance the favorability of collaborative attributes. Finally, the consistency of the co‐partisanship effect across ideologies and various subgroups demonstrates that party identity is rooted in in‐group loyalty and fundamentally affects the collaborative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted a preregistered field experiment examining racial discrimination in tie formation on social media. We randomly assigned research accounts varying on race (Black, White) and politics (liberal/Democrat, conservative/Republican, neutral) to follow a politically balanced sample of Twitter (i.e., X) users (N = 5,951) who were unaware they were in a research study. We examined three predictions from the social and political psychology literatures: i) individuals favor White over Black targets, ii) this tendency is stronger for conservatives/Republicans than for liberals/Democrats, and iii) greater discrimination by conservatives/Republicans is explained by the assumption that racial minorities are liberal/Democrat. We found evidence that individuals were less likely to reciprocate social ties with Black accounts than White accounts. However, this tendency was not moderated by individuals' political orientation, shared partisanship, or partisan mismatch. In sum, this work provides field experimental evidence for racial discrimination in tie formation on social media by individuals across political backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to many discussions of motivated reasoning is the idea that it runs afoul of epistemic normativity. Reasoning differently about information supporting our prior beliefs versus information contradicting those beliefs, is frequently equated with motivated irrationality. By analyzing the normative status of belief polarization, selective scrutiny, biased assimilation and the myside bias, I show this inference is often not adequately supported. Contrary to what's often assumed, these phenomena need not indicate motivated irrationality, even though they are instances of belief-consistent information processing. Second, I engage with arguments purporting to show that belief-consistent information processing does not indicate motivated irrationality because of its mere differential treatment of confirming and non-confirming evidence, but rather because it reveals the undermining presence of an irrelevant influence, such as a desire or partisan identity-driven cognition. While linking belief-consistent reasoning to a deeper source of directional motivation to make good on the claim that it indicates motivated irrationality is indeed what's needed, two prominent such arguments fail. The non-normativity of many reasoning processes often taken to indicate motivated irrationality is not in fact well established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that swept across the nation, this study aims to identify potential cognitive-motivational factors that account for the increased likelihood among pro-movement citizens to engage in BLM activism. Using a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults, we examine a theoretical model grounded in the Orientation-Stimuli-Orientation-Response framework in which the racial empathy that may emerge from perceptions of a hostile information environment plays a pivotal mediating role in the path from partisan support to peaceful/confrontational forms of BLM action. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary U.S. media environment is characterized by a strong partisan divide. Both Democrats and Republicans express strong distrust in oppositional media and accuse them of showing partisan bias. Clearly, this public opinion climate is not helpful to a healthy democracy. Unlike the common wisdom, these news outlets do provide neutral political coverage. Based on propositions from expectancy violation theory and hostile media perceptions, we test the effects of exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet on violation interpretation and attitudes toward oppositional media. An online experiment (N = 610) shows that exposure to neutral news from an out-party outlet leads to violation unexpectedness and valence for Democrats and violation valence for Republicans. We also find an indirect positive effect of exposure to neutral news on attitudes toward an out-party outlet through violation valence for Democrats and Republicans. Unlike what can be expected of hostile media perceptions, these effects are more noticeable for stronger partisans. Our study also reveals different patterns of partisan reactions to neutral news from in-party outlets. Theoretical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the relationships between racial resentment and use of partisan media in the U.S. Our paper first examines the correlation between these two variables then tries to assess whether there are over-time relationships between them. Our paper first establishes that racial resentment is indeed associated with higher levels of using conservative media and lower levels of using liberal media. We then examine whether people's level of racial resentment drives their use or avoidance of specific media content or if using these different outlets changes people's levels of racial resentment. We find some evidence that racial resentment tends to be associated with avoiding liberal media outlets. By contrast, racial resentment does not predict changes in conservative media use. Moreover, we do not find that media use affects racial resentment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does gender shape how conservatives "do partisanship"? This paper draws on interviews with a group of conservative Americans—gun sellers—during a year of record gun sales amid a global pandemic, civil unrest, and democratic instability. In 2020, gun sellers navigated an increasingly diverse clientele, including what they understood as an increase in liberal, progressive, and leftist gun buyers. This unique influx bucked decades-long trends of partisan sorting in America and compelled gun sellers to "do partisanship" as they fielded the new gun buyers in their stores. Integrating the literatures on the gender gap in partisanship with scholarship on hegemonic masculinity, this paper examines how gun sellers mobilized masculinity as a means of expressing and engaging in partisanship. Our analysis details how interviewees (1) embrace a brand of hegemonic masculinity that champions self-preservation and preparedness, (2) define themselves against liberal politics and policies they deem emasculating, and (3) draw partisan boundaries around gun ownership that reinforce conservatives as responsible gun owners while denigrating liberals as emotional, impressionable, and incompetent. We argue that partisanship can be understood as a gendered practice that provides insight into how conservatives make political meaning in their everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US populace appears to be increasingly polarized on partisan lines. Political fissures bifurcate the country even on empirical matters like vaccine safety and anthropogenic climate change. There now exists an ever-expanding interdisciplinary research program in which theorists attempt to explain increases in political polarization and myriad other phenomena collected under the "post-truth" heading by appeal to social-epistemic structures, like echo chambers and epistemic bubbles, that affect the flow and uptake of information in various communities. In this paper, I critically analyze C. Thi Nguyen's important and popular analysis of echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. As I demonstrate, the explanatory mechanisms on which Nguyen focuses are, arguably, overly cognitive and obscure significant effects of social-epistemic structures on our affective lives. The broader lesson to draw from my discussion is the following: commonly used expressions intended to refer to social-epistemic problems, like "political polarization", possess no univocal definition across theorists, and various ways of making the terms precise are differentially successful in characterizing verifiable phenomena. Theorizing about social-epistemic structures should be responsive to relevant empirical work on various phenomena that we have good reason to believe constitute real and substantive problems that result from the flow and uptake of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have long debated whether citizens meet the expectations of a 'folk theory' of democratic representation, in which voters correctly reward and punish politicians for their actions, make choices primarily on the basis of policy preferences and orient their decisions to the future rather than the past. But how do elected politicians themselves theorize voting behaviour? In this paper, we report results from an original survey of more than 2000 elected local politicians in Canada and the United States which allows us to characterize politicians' own democratic theories. We uncover substantial variation in politicians' theories of democracy, and we find examples of a number of well‐known theoretical traditions (democratic realism, partisan retrospection, folk theory) among politicians themselves. We also show that politicians' theoretical perspectives are related to how they undertake representation when in office. We conclude with an outline of a comparative research agenda on the causes and consequences of politicians' democratic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]