American Journal of Political Science最新文献

How do populations facing external aggression view the costs and benefits of self-defense? In Western countries, war support has been shown to follow cost–benefit calculations, resembling the moral principle of proportionality. A categorical position, in contrast, means supporting self-defense regardless of the costs. To evaluate which moral principle populations facing external aggression follow, we conducted a conjoint experiment with 1,160 Ukrainians in July 2022. We examine support for different strategies Ukraine could pursue against Russia, which vary regarding the political autonomy and territorial integrity they afford and three costs: civilian and military fatalities, and nuclear risk. We find that Ukrainians do not trade off autonomy or territory against these costs. A new method to rank conjoint-attributes, computing “nested” marginal means, shows that respondents categorically reject political or territorial concessions, regardless of costs. This provides first experimental evidence that populations resisting external aggression do not subject war outcomes to cost–benefit calculations.

The author thanks Hu, Tai, and Solt (2022) for identifying these errors.

These errors have been corrected, democratic support re-estimated, and the analyses employed in the Claassen (2020) rerun. The corrected Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 1 and 3 are provided below. The corrected replication data set is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HWLW0J, as is a document with corrected supplementary information and analyses.

The corrected results are similar to those reported in the original article. For example, in model 1.1., Claassen (2020) originally reported an effect of support on democracy of 0.267 with a standard error of 0.094. In the corrected results, the corresponding coefficient and standard error are 0.273 and 0.094. As such, the corrected analyses confirm the conclusions drawn in Claassen (2020).

In the article titled “The Well-Ordered Society Under Crisis: A Formal Analysis of Public Reason vs. Convergence Discourse,” which was published in January 2020 in Volume 64, Issue 1 of the American Journal of Political Science, an error has been identified in the payoffs attributed to the game tree presented in Figure 4, labeled as “The Well-Ordered Society under Crisis with Public Reason” (Chung 2020: 89). The corrected Figure 4, containing the corrected payoffs, is provided below:

The statement of Proposition 2 and Proposition 3 (Chung 2020: 90) along with their corresponding proofs (Chung 2020: 98) were all established on the basis of the correct payoffs delineated in the corrected Figure 4 provided above. Consequently, no revisions are required for the textual content or the formal analyses presented within the original paper.

Presidents occupy a unique role as both the head of the executive branch and a de facto party leader. They nationalize politics and polarize lawmaking. Members of Congress know this, and they leverage the president's symbolic power to heighten political conflict. I argue that lawmakers, particularly those in the nonpresidential party, invoke the president to nationalize legislative debate and polarize constituent opinion. Using the text of House and Senate floor speeches between 1973 and 2016 and a within-member panel design, I find that legislators reference the president more frequently in the out-party and increasingly so as a district's media environment becomes more nationalized. Presidential references are also moderated by constituency partisanship. I support the behavioral implications with a vignette experiment: when a Republican Senator invokes President Biden in a policy speech, Republican respondents increase approval of that Senator and oppose political compromise. This research highlights the institutional consequences of nationalization and negative partisanship.

Depression can affect individuals’ attitudes by enhancing cognitive biases and altering perceptions of control. We investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and Americans’ attitudes regarding domestic extremist violence. We develop a theory that suggests the association between depression and support for political violence depends on conspiracy beliefs, participatory inclinations, and their combination. We test our theory using a two-wave national survey panel from November 2020 and January 2021. We find that among those who hold conspiracy beliefs and/or have participatory inclinations, depression is positively associated with support for election violence and the January 6 Capitol riots. The participatory inclination dynamic is particularly strong for men. Our findings reveal how the intersection of two concerning features of American society—poor mental health and conspiratorial beliefs—strongly relate to another feature: support for political violence. The results also make clear that interventions aimed at addressing depression can potentially have substantial political consequences.

Contemporary American politics has been largely characterized by hyperpartisanship and polarization, with partisan-motivated reasoning a thematic concern. Theories of emotions in politics suggest that anxiety might interrupt partisan heuristics and encourage citizens to reason more evenhandedly—but in what domains and to what extent? We use original panel data to assess how anxiety about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 interacted with partisan attachments to shape political judgment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The structure of our data allows us to assess large-scale implications of politically relevant emotions in ways that so far have not been possible. We find large effects on policy attitudes: Republicans who were afraid of getting sick rejected signals from copartisan leaders by supporting mask mandates and the like. Effects on vote choice for Republicans were muted in comparison, but fear's large effect on independents may have been pivotal.

Presidents select from a range of instruments when creating new policies through executive action. We study strategic substitution in this context and argue that presidents use less visible means of unilateral instruments when Congress is likely to scrutinize presidential action. Using data on unilateral orders issued between 1946 and 2020, we report two main findings. First, analyzing presidents’ choice of instruments, we show that presidents are more likely to substitute memoranda and other less visible instruments for executive orders and proclamations during periods of divided government. Second, after accounting for the substitution of executive orders with other instruments, we find that presidents issue greater numbers of directives during divided government than during unified government. These findings provide new evidence about the limitations of the separation of powers as a constraint on presidential unilateralism and highlight the importance of accounting for the variety of instruments through which presidents create unilateral policies.

Three key characteristics of effective electoral mobilizers have been identified in the literature: reputation, embeddedness in the local community, and the ability to reward and sanction voters. Religious leaders may possess all these characteristics. Can they favor their preferred candidates? Using a novel data set of connections between politicians and Italian Catholic bishops throughout the twentieth century, I conduct the first quantitative assessment of the electoral returns of personal connections to a religious leader. Leveraging the timing of bishops’ nominations within a difference-in-differences strategy, I estimate that bishops born in the electoral district yield a 27% increase in the individual preference votes for their connected candidate. Additional analyses point to the provision of campaign opportunities as the main mechanism driving the effect. These findings suggest that religious authorities can use their local embeddedness to mobilize voters, eventually influencing the selection of representatives in democratic systems.