Despite the compelling theoretical prediction that divided government decreases legislative performance, the empirical literature has struggled to identify a causal effect. We suspect that a combination of methodological challenges and data limitations are to blame. Here, we revisit this empirical relationship. Rather than relying on traditional measures of legislative productivity, however, we consider whether divided government affects the ability of lawmakers to meet critical deadlines — specifically, the ability of state lawmakers to adopt an on-time budget (as mandated by state law). By focusing on delay instead of productivity we avoid measurement problems, particularly the challenges inherent in measuring the supply of and demand for legislation. To assess the causal effect of divided government, we develop and implement a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that accounts for the multiple elections that produce unified or divided government in separation of powers systems. Our RDD approach yields compelling evidence that divided government is a cause of delay. We also evaluate and find support for a new hypothesis that divided government is more likely to lead to delay when the personal and political costs that stalemate imposes on politicians are low.
{"title":"Is Divided Government a Cause of Legislative Delay","authors":"Patricia A. Kirkland, J. Phillips","doi":"10.1561/100.00017041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00017041","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the compelling theoretical prediction that divided government decreases legislative performance, the empirical literature has struggled to identify a causal effect. We suspect that a combination of methodological challenges and data limitations are to blame. Here, we revisit this empirical relationship. Rather than relying on traditional measures of legislative productivity, however, we consider whether divided government affects the ability of lawmakers to meet critical deadlines — specifically, the ability of state lawmakers to adopt an on-time budget (as mandated by state law). By focusing on delay instead of productivity we avoid measurement problems, particularly the challenges inherent in measuring the supply of and demand for legislation. To assess the causal effect of divided government, we develop and implement a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that accounts for the multiple elections that produce unified or divided government in separation of powers systems. Our RDD approach yields compelling evidence that divided government is a cause of delay. We also evaluate and find support for a new hypothesis that divided government is more likely to lead to delay when the personal and political costs that stalemate imposes on politicians are low.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00017041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43035510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I develop a model in which a terrorist organization delegates tasks to recruits. The organization wants to assign sensitive tasks to the most reliable recruits but cannot perfectly identify commitment to the cause. In equilibrium, the organization interprets the desirability of a recruit’s opportunities in the civilian sector as a credible signal. When the recruit has attractive options available, the organization infers his commitment and gives him a sensitive task; when it is low, the organization conservatively assigns him a non-sensitive task. I then extend the model to allow for a third-party to endogenously improve economic conditions among the civilian population. Despite raising the opportunity cost of terrorism, such subsidies can increase violence because they help the organization identify committed types. ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh. (williamspaniel@gmail.com, http://williamspaniel.com). I thank Mia Bloom, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Martha Crenshaw, Mark Fey, Ben Graham, Connor Huff, Bethany Lacina, Alex Lee, Melia Pfannenstiel, Jack Paine, Branislav Slantchev, Andy Summer, and the participants of the 2016 FMIR conference for their comments. Compared to other types of political violence producers, terrorists have considerable autonomy over day-to-day operations (Shapiro and Siegel 2007; Shapiro 2013). For individuals selected to commit attacks, frequent communication with other agents risks exposing the operation or the network. Although operatives may receive orders from their commanders, they have substantial control over how to carry out those tasks. Lazy or sloppy execution can break an organization’s back. Similarly, terrorist organizations must fear defection. Whereas rebel groups can persist after losing a few comrades, a single defector can force the entire terrorist organization to restructure, change drop points, alter existing attack plans, and remain in stasis until the leaked information ceases to be useful. Consequently, in searching for the ideal recruit, organizations need to find individuals who will not defect at the first bribe offered. Generalizing, because terrorist organizations face monitoring issues (Chai 1993, 103), they have great incentive to separate reliable recruits from security risks. This is no simple task. Organizations may want to delegate tasks to ideologically extreme individuals. However, ideology is an inherently internal attribute, forcing organizations to instead select on observable characteristics. Consider forgone economic opportunities, for example. Only the most radical individuals would sacrifice a wealthy lifestyle to join a terrorist cause. In contrast, giving up a life of poverty sends little useful information to the organization. Scholars have noted that groups pay poverty wages (Bahney et al 2013), perhaps to discourage less motivated individuals from joining, but the literature has yet to fully address the ramifications of such a si
{"title":"Terrorism, Wealth, and Delegation","authors":"William Spaniel","doi":"10.1561/100.00017060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00017060","url":null,"abstract":"I develop a model in which a terrorist organization delegates tasks to recruits. The organization wants to assign sensitive tasks to the most reliable recruits but cannot perfectly identify commitment to the cause. In equilibrium, the organization interprets the desirability of a recruit’s opportunities in the civilian sector as a credible signal. When the recruit has attractive options available, the organization infers his commitment and gives him a sensitive task; when it is low, the organization conservatively assigns him a non-sensitive task. I then extend the model to allow for a third-party to endogenously improve economic conditions among the civilian population. Despite raising the opportunity cost of terrorism, such subsidies can increase violence because they help the organization identify committed types. ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh. (williamspaniel@gmail.com, http://williamspaniel.com). I thank Mia Bloom, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Martha Crenshaw, Mark Fey, Ben Graham, Connor Huff, Bethany Lacina, Alex Lee, Melia Pfannenstiel, Jack Paine, Branislav Slantchev, Andy Summer, and the participants of the 2016 FMIR conference for their comments. Compared to other types of political violence producers, terrorists have considerable autonomy over day-to-day operations (Shapiro and Siegel 2007; Shapiro 2013). For individuals selected to commit attacks, frequent communication with other agents risks exposing the operation or the network. Although operatives may receive orders from their commanders, they have substantial control over how to carry out those tasks. Lazy or sloppy execution can break an organization’s back. Similarly, terrorist organizations must fear defection. Whereas rebel groups can persist after losing a few comrades, a single defector can force the entire terrorist organization to restructure, change drop points, alter existing attack plans, and remain in stasis until the leaked information ceases to be useful. Consequently, in searching for the ideal recruit, organizations need to find individuals who will not defect at the first bribe offered. Generalizing, because terrorist organizations face monitoring issues (Chai 1993, 103), they have great incentive to separate reliable recruits from security risks. This is no simple task. Organizations may want to delegate tasks to ideologically extreme individuals. However, ideology is an inherently internal attribute, forcing organizations to instead select on observable characteristics. Consider forgone economic opportunities, for example. Only the most radical individuals would sacrifice a wealthy lifestyle to join a terrorist cause. In contrast, giving up a life of poverty sends little useful information to the organization. Scholars have noted that groups pay poverty wages (Bahney et al 2013), perhaps to discourage less motivated individuals from joining, but the literature has yet to fully address the ramifications of such a si","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00017060","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49637260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Does direct democracy affect the quality of government services? Numerous studies find that direct democracy reduces government revenues, but whether this reflects lower quality services, or simply reduced waste, is unknown. I use a local government reform to estimate the effect of mandatory tax referendums on both revenues and service quality, here measured using fire department response times. The introduction of referendums reduces revenue growth by 1.8%, while also increasing response times by half a minute. An analysis of precinct-level service utilization and electoral behavior suggests that this effect is driven not by voter myopia, but by selfinterest. Poor precincts, which are six times as likely to experience a structure fire, are also six times as likely to vote to increase taxes. Consistent with the precinct-level results, the effects of referendums are smallest in the poorest districts, and are largest in the wealthiest districts.
{"title":"Something for Something: How and Why Direct Democracy Impacts Service Quality","authors":"Michael W. Sances","doi":"10.1561/100.00017004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00017004","url":null,"abstract":"Does direct democracy affect the quality of government services? Numerous studies find that direct democracy reduces government revenues, but whether this reflects lower quality services, or simply reduced waste, is unknown. I use a local government reform to estimate the effect of mandatory tax referendums on both revenues and service quality, here measured using fire department response times. The introduction of referendums reduces revenue growth by 1.8%, while also increasing response times by half a minute. An analysis of precinct-level service utilization and electoral behavior suggests that this effect is driven not by voter myopia, but by selfinterest. Poor precincts, which are six times as likely to experience a structure fire, are also six times as likely to vote to increase taxes. Consistent with the precinct-level results, the effects of referendums are smallest in the poorest districts, and are largest in the wealthiest districts.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00017004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43452742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Do newspaper opinion pieces change the minds of those who read them? We conduct two randomized panel survey experiments on elite and mass convenience samples to estimate the effects of five op-eds on policy attitudes. We find very large average treatment effects on target issues, equivalent to shifts of approximately 0.5 scale points on a 7-point scale, that persist for at least one month. We find very small and insignificant average treatment effects on non-target issues, suggesting that our subjects read, understood, and were persuaded by the arguments presented in these op-eds. We find limited evidence of treatment effect heterogeneity by party identification: Democrats, Republicans, and independents all appear to move in the predicted direction by similar magnitudes. We conduct this study on both a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and a sample of elites. Despite large differences in demographics and initial political beliefs, we find that op-eds were persuasive to both the mass public and elites, but marginally more persuasive among the mass public. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence of the everyday nature of persuasion.
{"title":"The Long-lasting Effects of Newspaper Op-Eds on Public Opinion","authors":"A. Coppock, Emily E. Ekins, D. Kirby","doi":"10.1561/100.00016112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016112","url":null,"abstract":"Do newspaper opinion pieces change the minds of those who read them? We conduct two randomized panel survey experiments on elite and mass convenience samples to estimate the effects of five op-eds on policy attitudes. We find very large average treatment effects on target issues, equivalent to shifts of approximately 0.5 scale points on a 7-point scale, that persist for at least one month. We find very small and insignificant average treatment effects on non-target issues, suggesting that our subjects read, understood, and were persuaded by the arguments presented in these op-eds. We find limited evidence of treatment effect heterogeneity by party identification: Democrats, Republicans, and independents all appear to move in the predicted direction by similar magnitudes. We conduct this study on both a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers and a sample of elites. Despite large differences in demographics and initial political beliefs, we find that op-eds were persuasive to both the mass public and elites, but marginally more persuasive among the mass public. Our findings add to the growing body of evidence of the everyday nature of persuasion.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00016112","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43504042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-01Epub Date: 2018-03-29DOI: 10.1561/100.00016129
Darin Christensen, Francisco Garfias
Commentators covering recent social movements, such as the Arab Spring, commonly claim that cell phones enable protests. Yet, existing empirical work does not conclusively support this contention: some studies find that these technologies actually reduce collective action; many others struggle to overcome the selection problems that dog observational research. We propose two mechanisms through which cell phones affect protests: (1) by enabling communication among would-be protesters, cell phones lower coordination costs; and (2) these technologies broadcast information about whether a protest is repressed. Knowing that a larger audience now witnesses and may be angered by repression, governments refrain from squashing demonstrations, further lowering the cost of protesting. We evaluate these mechanisms using high-resolution global data on the expansion of cell phone coverage and incidence of protest from 2007 to 2014. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that cell phone coverage increases the probability of protest by over half the mean. Consistent with our second mechanism, we also find that gaining coverage has a larger effect when it connects a locality to a large proportion of other citizens.
{"title":"Can You Hear Me Now? How Communication Technology Affects Protest and Repression.","authors":"Darin Christensen, Francisco Garfias","doi":"10.1561/100.00016129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016129","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Commentators covering recent social movements, such as the Arab Spring, commonly claim that cell phones enable protests. Yet, existing empirical work does not conclusively support this contention: some studies find that these technologies actually reduce collective action; many others struggle to overcome the selection problems that dog observational research. We propose two mechanisms through which cell phones affect protests: (1) by enabling communication among would-be protesters, cell phones lower coordination costs; and (2) these technologies broadcast information about whether a protest is repressed. Knowing that a larger audience now witnesses and may be angered by repression, governments refrain from squashing demonstrations, further lowering the cost of protesting. We evaluate these mechanisms using high-resolution global data on the expansion of cell phone coverage and incidence of protest from 2007 to 2014. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that cell phone coverage increases the probability of protest by over half the mean. Consistent with our second mechanism, we also find that gaining coverage has a larger effect when it connects a locality to a large proportion of other citizens.</p>","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00016129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"37151608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A rich literature argues that electoral incentives lead candidates to take ambiguous positions on issues. Furthermore, empirical research suggests that ambiguity does not repel — and may actually attract — voters. This work, however, equates choosing a candidate with paying the costs of voting for that candidate. We reconsider the relationship between candidate ambiguity and candidate preference moving beyond candidate choice and considering turnout as well. Integrating political science with research on consumer decision-making and psychology, we argue that many who select an ambiguous candidate do not translate that choice into an actual vote for that candidate. We test this argument using three experiments which incorporate costly voting and other electoral conditions heretofore absent from research on ambiguity.
{"title":"Choice vs. Action: Candidate Ambiguity and Voter Decision Making","authors":"Yanna Krupnikov, J. Ryan","doi":"10.1561/100.00016051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016051","url":null,"abstract":"A rich literature argues that electoral incentives lead candidates to take ambiguous positions on issues. Furthermore, empirical research suggests that ambiguity does not repel — and may actually attract — voters. This work, however, equates choosing a candidate with paying the costs of voting for that candidate. We reconsider the relationship between candidate ambiguity and candidate preference moving beyond candidate choice and considering turnout as well. Integrating political science with research on consumer decision-making and psychology, we argue that many who select an ambiguous candidate do not translate that choice into an actual vote for that candidate. We test this argument using three experiments which incorporate costly voting and other electoral conditions heretofore absent from research on ambiguity.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2017-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00016051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43762415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We argue that local, long-term exposure to a centralized political authority determines sub-national patterns of contemporary economic development. Older research on economic development has focused on cross-national income accounts, often ignoring the large sub-national variation in income differences. Likewise, research on the effects of political institutions on development has mostly neglected sub-national variation in the institutional environment. Yet a growing body of work shows that the geographic reach of states within countries and their ability to foster economic exchange have varied dramatically through history. We contribute to recent research on sub-national development by creating a new measure of local historical exposure to state institutions that codes geographic distance to historical capital cities and use highly spatially disaggregated data on economic development, based on satellite data, to test their relationship. We find clear evidence, using fixed-effects estimations for both European and global data, that local historical proximity to capital cities is associated with higher levels of economic development. This finding is further substantiated through a number of robustness checks covering alternative measures, specifications, and sensitivity analyses.
{"title":"Order, Distance, and Local Development over the Long-Run","authors":"Jan H Pierskalla, Anna Schultz, Erik Wibbels","doi":"10.1561/100.00016020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016020","url":null,"abstract":"We argue that local, long-term exposure to a centralized political authority determines sub-national patterns of contemporary economic development. Older research on economic development has focused on cross-national income accounts, often ignoring the large sub-national variation in income differences. Likewise, research on the effects of political institutions on development has mostly neglected sub-national variation in the institutional environment. Yet a growing body of work shows that the geographic reach of states within countries and their ability to foster economic exchange have varied dramatically through history. We contribute to recent research on sub-national development by creating a new measure of local historical exposure to state institutions that codes geographic distance to historical capital cities and use highly spatially disaggregated data on economic development, based on satellite data, to test their relationship. We find clear evidence, using fixed-effects estimations for both European and global data, that local historical proximity to capital cities is associated with higher levels of economic development. This finding is further substantiated through a number of robustness checks covering alternative measures, specifications, and sensitivity analyses.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2017-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00016020","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43239776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1953, Congress supplanted the tribal civil law on some American-Indian reservations with the civil law of the US state in which they are located. In the vein of cross-national literature on law and finance, I demonstrate that Congress's action reduced external financial actors' uncertainty over the enforcement of contracts on some reservations. Using novel data on 20,000 home loans to tribal members guaranteed by a US Housing and Urban Development program (1996–2013), I find a causal effect at the individual level: mortgage holders governed by US state civil law pay consistently lower interest rates. Thus, externally imposed law generates long-term benefits for tribal members. Nonetheless, qualitative extensions suggest that neither the presence nor the magnitude of the effect offsets many tribes' prioritization of their sovereignty, rather than the individual-level economic benefits that can result from compromising it.
{"title":"Sovereignty, Law, and Finance: Evidence from American Indian Reservations","authors":"R. Wellhausen","doi":"10.1561/100.00016131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016131","url":null,"abstract":"In 1953, Congress supplanted the tribal civil law on some American-Indian reservations with the civil law of the US state in which they are located. In the vein of cross-national literature on law and finance, I demonstrate that Congress's action reduced external financial actors' uncertainty over the enforcement of contracts on some reservations. Using novel data on 20,000 home loans to tribal members guaranteed by a US Housing and Urban Development program (1996–2013), I find a causal effect at the individual level: mortgage holders governed by US state civil law pay consistently lower interest rates. Thus, externally imposed law generates long-term benefits for tribal members. Nonetheless, qualitative extensions suggest that neither the presence nor the magnitude of the effect offsets many tribes' prioritization of their sovereignty, rather than the individual-level economic benefits that can result from compromising it.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2017-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00016131","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46404894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Claire L. Adida, J. Gottlieb, Eric Kramon, Gwyneth H. McClendon
Social scientists often characterize identity politics as a threat to democracy and growth, and recent scholarship investigates factors that could exacerbate or alleviate it. A dominant view — that shared social identity acts as a heuristic in low-information contexts — implies that information access could reduce social identity voting. But this view contrasts with evidence that identity often conditions information processing, potentially in ways that amplify in-group preferences. We test these expectations with a field experiment around Benin's 2015 legislative elections. Behavioral and attitudinal data reveal that voters reward good-performing incumbents only if they are coethnics, and punish bad performers only if they are noncoethnics. Coethnics are also more (less) likely to accurately recall performance information if it is positive (negative). These results are consistent with a theory of motivated reasoning whereby voters act on new information only when it allows them to reaffirm their social identity. These findings improve our understanding of comparative ethnic politics, identity and information processing, and information and accountability.
{"title":"Reducing or reinforcing in-group preferences? An experiment on information and ethnic voting","authors":"Claire L. Adida, J. Gottlieb, Eric Kramon, Gwyneth H. McClendon","doi":"10.1561/100.00017018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00017018","url":null,"abstract":"Social scientists often characterize identity politics as a threat to democracy and growth, and recent scholarship investigates factors that could exacerbate or alleviate it. A dominant view — that shared social identity acts as a heuristic in low-information contexts — implies that information access could reduce social identity voting. But this view contrasts with evidence that identity often conditions information processing, potentially in ways that amplify in-group preferences. We test these expectations with a field experiment around Benin's 2015 legislative elections. Behavioral and attitudinal data reveal that voters reward good-performing incumbents only if they are coethnics, and punish bad performers only if they are noncoethnics. Coethnics are also more (less) likely to accurately recall performance information if it is positive (negative). These results are consistent with a theory of motivated reasoning whereby voters act on new information only when it allows them to reaffirm their social identity. These findings improve our understanding of comparative ethnic politics, identity and information processing, and information and accountability.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2017-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00017018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49599691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Feigenbaum, Alexander Fouirnaies, Andrew B. Hall
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage . To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of close elections to obtain as-if random variation in majority-party status. We argue that the results from this approach are consistent with a phenomenon of inter-temporal balancing, which we link to other forms of partisan balancing in U.S. elections. The article thus necessitates revisions to our theories of legislative organization, offers new arguments for balancing theories, and lays out an empirical technique for studying the effects of majority-party status in legislative contexts.
{"title":"The Majority-Party Disadvantage: Revising Theories of Legislative Organization","authors":"J. Feigenbaum, Alexander Fouirnaies, Andrew B. Hall","doi":"10.1561/100.00015112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00015112","url":null,"abstract":"Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage . To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of close elections to obtain as-if random variation in majority-party status. We argue that the results from this approach are consistent with a phenomenon of inter-temporal balancing, which we link to other forms of partisan balancing in U.S. elections. The article thus necessitates revisions to our theories of legislative organization, offers new arguments for balancing theories, and lays out an empirical technique for studying the effects of majority-party status in legislative contexts.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2017-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00015112","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44276512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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