American Journal of Political Science最新文献

In the original publication of Lupu and Peisakhin (2017), we miscoded one of the dependent variables in our analysis. Our measure of turnout is a factored index of two items from our survey asking about participation in the March 2014 referendum and the September 2014 local elections. Our survey instrument coded these two variables differently so that the turnout index is actually reversed, with higher values corresponding to individuals who were less likely to participate. This error was an oversight on our part—we incorrectly presumed that our instrument had used the same value labels for yes/no responses.

The result of this error is that the effect of turnout throughout the article is inverted. The magnitude and statistical significance of the effect remains unchanged. Corrected versions of Figures 2 and 5 from the original article can be found here:

As a result of this correction, we find mixed results regarding the effect of ancestor victimization on political engagement: while victimization reduced turnout in the two elections we examined, it increased respondents’ willingness to participate.

The article's main claim is that ancestor victimization strengthens ingroup attachment and animosity toward the perpetrator within families that experienced more state repression. We demonstrated how the mechanism behind this effect is the transmission of victim identities across multiple generations. The set of findings at the core of the original article is unaffected.

In measuring how victim identities affect political participation, one of the variables we examined was turnout in two 2014 elections. The other relevant variable was willingness to participate in other political activities, like protests and petitions. We found that ancestor victimization increases willingness to protest (this result is unchanged). Owing to the coding error, we reported that descendants of victims are more likely to turn out to vote when they are, in fact, less likely to do so.

In 2014, Crimean Tatar leaders urged their community to boycott the Russia-backed elections that followed the region's annexation. It makes sense that those with stronger group attachments (the descendants of more intensely victimized families) would have been more likely to heed the call for a boycott, and therefore, less likely to turn out, and we presented our incorrect positive result as somewhat surprising. As a result, the revised finding on political participation is in some ways more consistent with our core argument. At the same time, given their animosity toward Russian authorities, it also makes sense that the descendants of victims would be more willing to participate in protests and petitions in the future.

We have revised the supporting information and replication dataset to correct this error. We are grateful to Austin Wang for bringing it to our attention.

One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs’ role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power-sharing reforms contained in peace agreements, along with their broader peace processes. While peacekeeping troops can help belligerents refrain from violence, military force alone cannot explain how political elites implement redistributive reforms that threaten their status. We argue that UNPOs that have predominant peacebuilding (as opposed to peacekeeping) mandates help sustain political elites’ commitment to implementing peace agreement reforms and, thus, contribute to inclusive peace (increased political inclusion and reduced violence). We test our argument using a data set on UNPO mandates and original fieldwork on three sequential UNPOs in Burundi.

This study offers experimental tests of the “personal vote” in an era of heightened partisanship and polarization. Using three national surveys, we randomly present information about a hypothetical legislator's voting record, committee assignment, and district-oriented work. After evaluating the legislator, respondents are presented with information about a challenger running on a nationalized message. Respondents, especially out-partisans, report much greater satisfaction with the legislator when told about his district-oriented activities, but increased willingness to vote for the legislator is more limited and mostly reserved for independents. In varying information about the legislator's voting record, we also find scant evidence that bipartisan legislators are better at securing a personal vote. In two experimental extensions, we show that our findings generalize to evaluations of real senators, and that nationalizing elections is one possible way that opponents can thwart incumbent efforts at winning the votes of independents and out-partisans through traditional district-oriented appeals.

The political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual-level ethnic visibility is indeed strongly associated with ethnic party support. I provide further evidence that visibility induces party support instrumentally by shaping expectations about others’ ability to correctly infer ethnic belonging. I also show that the theory generalizes to the group level, with more visible ethnic groups across Africa being more likely to vote ethnically. These results qualify a central assumption in instrumental theories of ethnic politics—that ethnic identities are always visible—and help explain variation in the success of ethnic political mobilization.

Partisan Americans like members of their own party more than members of the opposing party. Scholars often interpret this as evidence that party identity or loyalty influence interpersonal affect. First, we reassess previous studies and demonstrate that prior results are also consistent with what we would predict if people cared only about policy agreement. Next, we demonstrate the difficulty of manipulating perceptions of party identity without also manipulating beliefs about policy agreement and vice versa. Finally, we show that partisans care much more about policy agreement than they do about party loyalty when the two come into conflict. Our analyses suggest that partisan Americans care about policy agreement; we have little convincing evidence that they care about partisan identity or loyalty per se, and scholars will have to find new research designs if they want to convincingly estimate the effects of identity or loyalty independent of policy substance.

Political scientists have long been interested in the persistent effects of history on contemporary behavior and attitudes. To estimate legacy effects, studies often compare people living in places that were historically exposed to some event and those that were not. Using principal stratification, we provide a formal framework to analyze how migration limits our ability to learn about the persistent effects of history from observed differences between historically exposed and unexposed places. We state the necessary assumptions about movement behavior to causally identify legacy effects. We highlight that these assumptions are strong; therefore, we recommend that legacy studies circumvent bias by collecting data on people's place of residence at the exposure time. Reexamining a study on the persistent effects of U.S. civil rights protests, we show that observed attitudinal differences between residents and nonresidents of historic protest sites are more likely due to migration rather than attitudinal change.

Why do local and state governments in the United States compete to attract and retain corporations in their jurisdictions even by offering generous incentives, which can jeopardize public spending on other needs? This research shows that the answer can lie in the electoral effects of headquarters (HQ) relocation. Using an original data set of interstate HQ relocation cases covered in the news media from 1995 to 2015, this research finds that interstate business location decisions affect gubernatorial election outcomes. However, empirical analyses provide evidence that voters use different attribution processes when considering HQ relocation-in versus relocation-out cases: HQ relocation-out results in greater support for Republican candidates, whereas HQ relocation-in increases support for the incumbent party. Supplementary analyses suggest that the perceptual effects and symbolic value of HQ relocation, rather than its immediate local economic effects, drive electoral outcomes. The findings have implications for electoral accountability and the political economy of business–government relationships.