Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics

Political science generally treats identities such as ethnicity, religion, and sexuality as “unmoved movers” in the chain of causality. I hypothesize that the growing salience of partisanship and ideology as social identities in the United States, combined with the increasing demographic distinctiveness of the nation's two political coalitions, is leading some Americans to engage in a self-categorization and depersonalization process in which they shift their identities toward the demographic prototypes of their political groups. Analyses of a representative panel data set that tracks identities and political affiliations over a 4-year span confirm that small but significant shares of Americans engage in identity switching regarding ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and class that is predicted by partisanship and ideology in their pasts, bringing their identities into alignment with their politics. These findings enrich and complicate our understanding of the relationship between identity and politics and suggest caution in treating identities as unchanging phenomena.     

Electoral Backlash against Climate Policy: A Natural Experiment on Retrospective Voting and Local Resistance to Public Policy

Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed. This spatial distribution of weak supporters and strong local opponents mirrors opposition to other policies with diffuse public benefits and concentrated local costs. I use a natural experiment to investigate whether citizens living in proximity to wind energy projects retrospectively punished an incumbent government because of its climate policy. Using both fixed effects and instrumental variable estimators, I identify electoral losses for the incumbent party ranging from 4 to 10%, with the effect persisting 3 km from wind turbines. There is also evidence that voters are informed, only punishing the government responsible for the policy. I conclude that the spatial distribution of citizens' policy preferences can affect democratic accountability through ‘spatially distorted signalling’, which can exacerbate political barriers to addressing climate change.     

Partisanship,attribution and approval in a public health shock

Political scientists have long agreed that partisanship can bias how voters evaluate government performance and attribute responsibility. However, less is known about how – and to what extent – these biases work across different types of voters, or how they respond to positive or non-partisan policy outcomes. In this research note we address these questions, focusing on how voters respond to a positive, non-partisan public health shock: the successful early rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations in England. Through a pre-registered information experiment embedded in the British Election Study (N > 6000), we test how voters respond to claims that the quasi-independent National Health Service, rather than the government, deserved credit for the success of the programme. On average, subjects do attribute less responsibility to government, but this has no downstream effect on general approval. Exploratory heterogeneity analyses suggest that government and opposition supporters, as well as historic swing voters, respond homogeneously to our intervention. Our findings are not fully explained by rational or selective frameworks of responsibility attribution, and add nuance to existing experimental work on the political effects of the pandemic.     

Individual Differences in Group Loyalty Predict Partisan Strength

The strength of an individual’s identification with their political party is a powerful predictor of their engagement with politics, voting behavior, and polarization. Partisanship is often characterized as primarily a social identity, rather than an expression of instrumental goals. Yet, it is unclear why some people develop strong partisan attachments while others do not. I argue that the moral foundation of Loyalty, which represents an individual difference in the tendency to hold strong group attachments, facilitates stronger partisan identification. Across two samples, including a national panel and a convenience sample, as well as multiple measures of the moral foundations, I demonstrate that the Loyalty foundation is a robust predictor of partisan strength. Moreover, I show that these effects cannot be explained by patriotism, ideological extremity, or directional effects on partisanship. Overall, the results provide further evidence for partisanship as a social identity, as well as insight into the sources of partisan strength.     

Who's to blame? How performance evaluation and partisanship influence responsibility attribution in grand coalition governments

This article examines a neglected but fundamental facet of electoral accountability: responsibility attribution under grand coalition governments. Contrary to much of the existing literature that focuses on retrospective voting, this article focuses on responsibility attribution testing the effect of perceived performance of the government and partisan attachments for parties in grand coalition governments. Novel survey questions on responsibility attribution from Austria and Germany show that when the lines of responsibility are blurred, partisanship functions as an important heuristic for all voters including supporters of opposition parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of electoral accountability and political representation in grand coalition governments.     

Justifying Party Identification: A Case of Identifying with the “Lesser of Two Evils”

Despite the centrality of party identification to our understanding of political behavior, there remains remarkable disagreement regarding its nature and measurement. Most scholars agree that party identities are quite stable relative to attitudes. But do partisans defend their identities, or does this stability result from Bayesian learning? I hypothesize that partisans defend their identities by generating ??lesser of two evils?? justifications. In other words, partisan identity justification occurs in multidimensional attitude space. This also helps to explain the weak relationship between attitudes toward the two parties observed by proponents of multidimensional partisanship. I test this hypothesis in an experiment designed to evoke inconsistency between one??s party identity and political attitudes. To establish generalizability, I then replicate these results through aggregate level analysis of data from the ANES.     

Democratic Values? A Racial Group-Based Analysis of Core Political Values,Partisanship, and Ideology

Research on American core political values, partisanship, and ideology often concludes that liberals and Democrats believe equality to be one of the most important values while conservatives and Republicans place greater emphasis on social order and moral traditionalism. Though these findings are valuable, it is assumed that they generalize across various groups (e.g. socioeconomic classes, religious groups, racial groups, etc.) in society. Focusing on racial groups in contemporary American politics, I challenge this assumption. More specifically, I argue that if individuals’ value preferences are formed during their pre-adult socialization years, and if the socialization process is different across racial groups, then it may be the case that members of different racial groups connect their value preferences to important political behaviors, including partisanship and ideology, in different ways as well. In the first part of this study, I fit a geometric model of value preferences to two different data sets—the first from 2010 and the second from 2002—and I show that although there is substantial value disagreement between white Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives, that disagreement is smaller in Latinos and almost completely absent in African Americans. In the second part of this study, I demonstrate the political implications of these findings by estimating the effects of values on party and ideology, conditional on race. Results show that where whites’ value preferences affect their partisan and ideological group ties, the effects are smaller in Latinos and indistinguishable from zero in African Americans. I close by suggesting that scholars of values and political behavior ought to think in a more nuanced manner about how fundamental political cognitions relate to various attitudes and behaviors across different groups in society.     

The normalization of intolerance: The 2019 presidential election in Indonesia

The perceived social acceptability of intolerance is believed to drive individual intolerance, a process we refer to as normalization. Social intolerance can be particularly high during election campaigns, when divisive candidates are likely to disparage minorities and outgroups in their rhetoric. Despite the electoral connection, it remains unclear how normalization interacts with partisanship. Does normalization only affect supporters of intolerant candidates, or does normalization spread across the population—even among supporters of the opposition? Relatedly, are the targets of intolerance group-specific, or are all minorities and outgroups at risk? To address these questions, this paper draws on results from a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Indonesian presidential election. Our findings suggest that normalization affects all voters, albeit in ways that reflect partisan affiliation and rhetoric, which has implications for the study of identity politicization and the conditions under which intolerance is likely to propagate.     

Party Brands and Partisanship: Theory with Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Argentina

Scholars disagree about the nature of party attachments, viewing partisanship as either a social identity or a rational maximization of expected utility. Empirically, much of this debate centers on the degree of partisan stability: findings of partisan fluctuations are taken as evidence against the social‐identity perspective. But drawing such conclusions assumes that the objects of identity—parties—are fixed. If we instead allow party brands to change over time, then partisan instability is consistent with a social‐identity conception of partisanship. To demonstrate this, I develop a branding model of partisanship in which voters learn about party brands by observing party behavior over time and base their psychological attachment to a party on these brands. The model suggests that convergence by rival parties, making their brands less distinguishable, should weaken party attachments. I test this implication using a survey experiment in Argentina and find evidence consistent with the model.     

Party Identification and Core Political Values

Party identification and core political values are central elements in the political belief systems of ordinary citizens. Are these predispositions related to one another? Does party identification influence core political values or are partisan identities grounded in such values? This article draws upon theoretical works on partisan information processing and value‐based reasoning to derive competing hypotheses about whether partisanship shapes political values or political values shape partisanship. The hypotheses are tested by using structural equation modeling techniques to estimate dynamic models of attitude stability and constraint with data from the 1992–94–96 National Election Study panel survey. The analyses reveal that partisan identities are more stable than the principles of equal opportunity, limited government, traditional family values, and moral tolerance; party identification constrains equal opportunity, limited government, and moral tolerance; and these political values do not constrain party identification.     

Pass the Buck If You Can: How Partisan Competition Triggers Attribution Bias in Multilevel Democracies

Voters’ ability to hold politicians accountable has been shown to be limited in systems of multilevel government. The existence of multiple tiers of government blurs the lines of responsibility, making it more difficult for voters to assign credit or blame for policy performance. However, much less is known about how the vertical division of responsibility affects citizens’ propensity to rationalize responsibility attributions on the basis of group attachment. While these two processes have similar observable implications, they imply markedly different micro-mechanisms. Using experimental and observational data, this paper examines how the partisan division of power moderates the impact of voters’ partisanship and feelings of territorial attachment on attributions of responsibility for the regional economy. Our analyses show that partisan-based attribution bias varies systematically with the partisan context, such that it only emerges in regions where a party other than the national incumbent controls the regional government. We also find that responsibility judgments are rationalized on the basis of territorial identities only when a regional nationalist party is in control of the regional government. Our results contribute to explaining the contextual variations in the strength of regional economic voting and more generally to understanding one of the mechanisms through which low clarity of responsibility reduces government accountability.     

The political geography of electoral autocracies: The influence of party strongholds on political beliefs in Africa

In electoral autocracies, why do some citizens view the state as autocratic, while others see it as democratic and legitimate? Traditionally, indicators such as income and education have been the most important factors to explaining how different types of citizens understand politics. This article argues that in electoral autocracies, we must also take into account the role of political geography. In these types of regimes, opposition parties are often one of the only actors that provide information about the authoritarian nature the government, but their message tends to get quarantined within their strongholds. I argue that regardless of income, education, ethnicity, access to government spending, or even partisanship, citizens living in opposition strongholds should be far more likely to view the state as autocratic and illegitimate than citizens living in ruling party strongholds. I find evidence for this theory using Afrobarometer survey data paired with constituency-level electoral returns from five electoral autocracies in sub-Saharan Africa.     

The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century

One of the most important developments affecting electoral competition in the United States has been the increasingly partisan behavior of the American electorate. Yet more voters than ever claim to be independents. We argue that the explanation for these seemingly contradictory trends is the rise of negative partisanship. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we show that as partisan identities have become more closely aligned with social, cultural and ideological divisions in American society, party supporters including leaning independents have developed increasingly negative feelings about the opposing party and its candidates. This has led to dramatic increases in party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, a steep decline in the advantage of incumbency and growing consistency between the results of presidential elections and the results of House, Senate and even state legislative elections. The rise of negative partisanship has had profound consequences for electoral competition, democratic representation and governance.     

Technocratic attitudes and voting behaviour ten years after the Eurozone crisis: Evidence from the 2019 EP elections

The onset of the Great Recession raised the profile of technocracy, or government by experts, as a contrasting model to democracy. Yet, there is little research on how attitudes towards technocracy may impact European citizens' political behaviour. Moreover, the consistency of technocracy supporters' political attitudes, especially towards the EU, is questionable. This paper uses new survey panel data collected before and after the European parliament elections in May 2019 in six countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain). We investigate how citizens’ technocratic attitudes affect their voting behaviour in the European elections. We find evidence that citizens with technocratic attitudes are less likely to support mainstream parties, and tend to either abstain or, if they vote, to give their vote to anti-system parties, especially from the populist right. In addition, by distinguishing technocracy supporters according to their partisanship, we conclude that technocracy is a thin ideology that can be combined with different patterns of political support: while many technocracy supporters have no party identification or support non-mainstream parties and show dissatisfaction with democracy and the EU, another subgroup of technocracy supporters identifies with a mainstream political party and show above average political support and support for the EU.     

Floating policy voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Much of the political science literature is skeptical that issue content matters for presidential voting behavior, with partisanship, social identity, and group attitudes providing the vast majority of explanatory power for two-party vote choice at the individual level. This literature stands in contrast with work on issue cross-pressuring, which argues that voters who disagree with their party on salient issues they care about are more likely to either vote for the opposing party's candidate or not participate in the two-party contest at all. Using the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project's 2016 survey, which includes within-subject responses from early June and November–December of 2016, I find support for both of these literatures in the context of the 2016 presidential election. Group attitudes, particularly with respect to race, were strongly associated with changes in voting behavior between 2012 and 2016. However, some voters, in some cases, seem to have deviated from their 2012 voting behavior based on policy issues they considered important to their vote. While issue cross-pressuring as measurable on the 2016 CCAP was relatively rare, I find that those who were cross-pressured were significantly more likely to change their voting behavior in 2016 relative to 2012.     

Partisanship in a Social Setting

No factor appears more powerful in explaining how individuals evaluate political information and form political preferences than partisanship. Yet, virtually all work on the effects of partisanship on preference formation neglects the crucial role of social settings. In this study, I examine how social settings can fundamentally change the influence of partisanship on preferences. I demonstrate that, in fact, social settings exert an independent influence over preference formation—one that is even larger than the influence of partisan ambivalence. The central implication of these findings is that, going forward, we cannot fully explore how citizens apply their partisanship in evaluating political information without also accounting for the social settings in which individuals find themselves.     

On claims of culture and duties of recognition in democratic states

One important way in which individuals and groups express their ideas and principles, and present their proposals and demands, is in the language of identity or difference. They argue that what they value and what they deserve are related to their distinctive identities. Working within the framework of a political theory of recognition, I argue in this article that particular cultural communities may have reasonable expectations that their distinctive identities receive public recognition, and that others may therefore have good reasons to give those identities such recognition. To be specific, I contend that there are distinct and complementary ways in which the state and its citizens should respond to identity-related demands for public recognition. Using terms introduced by Axel Honneth, I argue that the state should give ‘public attention’ to some cultural communities, and that citizens should show one another ‘well-meaning attention’. I conclude that both these forms of attention can be justified by reference to a new, fourth principle of recognition, so long as this is understood as a principle of political inclusion rather than one of cultural recognition.     

American Republican Religion? Disentangling the Causal Link Between Religion and Politics in the US

Recent research in American political behavior has examined at length the link between evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party. These works however do not consider the idiosyncratic nature of religiosity in the US, and insist on treating religion as an ‘unmoved mover’ with respect to political contexts. The question posed herein is: during the participation of religious communities in partisan politics, should we expect politics to eventually constrain religious behavior? Motivated by a political social identity approach, I use American National Election Study panel data and structural equation modeling techniques to explore the untested possibility that religious and political factors are linked through reciprocal causation. Conditional upon religious and temporal context, findings highlight the causal impact of ideology and partisanship in shaping religious behavior.     

Equilibria of collective action in different distributions of protest thresholds

To understand why political protests show the effects of tipping over into revolution – effects that stun observers, participants, and even the opposition or incumbent government – scholars have constructed threshold models of revolt to illustrate that an important feature of collective rebellion is people deciding to join based on knowing how many others have already participated. I conduct equilibrium analyses to observe the effects of normal, bimodal, and skewed distributions of thresholds upon the dynamics of opposition movements. The results shed some light on how various patterns of domestic confrontation affect the outcome of collective dissent.     

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.