Black-box models of candidate evaluation

All contemporary models of candidate evaluation are memory-based models in that they treat the direction and strength of evaluation as a function of the mix of positively and negatively valued (valenced) information retrieved from memory. Yet, oddly enough, despite the assumption that memory mediates judgment, none of the major models looks at the processes involved in what information voters recall and how that evidence was integrated into a summary evaluation. In this sense then, political science models of vote choice are black-box models: They are silent about how voters actually go about interpreting information and integrating the evidence into a summary evaluation of the candidates. In this article we critique the major political science models, call attention to the implicit assumptions they make about what evidence is assumed to be in memory, and conclude with an argument for introducing process into our explanations of vote choice.     

Defining “images” of presidential candidates from televised political spot advertisements

The proliferation in the use of televised political spot advertisements by presidential candidates justifies the increasing attention given to assess their value for the political system. Some controversy surrounding the value of their content concerns their reliance on image material. Yet the concept of candidate images has been ambiguous since images can refer to either graphic display of candidates or to candidates' character attributes. This study assesses candidates' character attributes in televised political commercials for 1980's American presidential primaries and finds that political spots offer useful and accurate profiles of candidates in campaigns and are helpful sources for the electorate to use in weighing the various strengths and weaknesses of presidential hopefuls.     

The meaning of party labels

To determine the meaning(s) of the concepts Republican, Democrat, and Independent, the most frequently cited attributes of each party label were scaled in terms of their semantic centrality. An analysis of the magnitude scale values demonstrates that the labels Republican and Democrat have unique cognitive properties which easily discriminate one label from another. The most characteristic and discriminating properties refer to (1) voting, (2) electioneering, and (3) other forms of electoral behavior. Although these two labels have many strong properties over which there is considerable agreement, such consensus is lacking for the fewer and weaker properties which characterize and discriminate the label Independent. Whereas Republican and Democrat are sharply delineated, semantic inversions of one another, the concept Independent is ambiguously defined and only weakly distinguishable from other concepts.     

Policymaking and technology transfer: The need for national thinking laboratories

The objectives of this paper are to understand what is meant by better policymaking and more efficient technology transfer, to explore what is needed for their achievement, and to suggest an operational mechanism for improving the two processes.The author introduces a few new terms: (1) Inter-context information is defined, and its importance in decisionmaking, policymaking, technology transfer and education is pointed out; (2) a distinction is drawn between incidental technology transfer—initiated by the donor—and organized technology transfer—initiated by the recipient.The author suggests that National Thinking Laboratories should be established to promote organized technology transfer and to act as catalysts to organized policymaking. Their charter should be to match needs in one context to capabilities in another context. This charter is outlined in operational terms by five general objectives listed by the author. The National Thinking Laboratories are most urgently needed, particularly in the developing countries.     

Partisanship and the vote in Australia: Changes over time 1967–1990

This study investigates the influence of partisanship on the vote in Australia between 1967 and 1990. The investigation is the context of a model of electoral choice based on the revisionist elaboration of the Michigan model of electoral choice. The model specifies direct effects of partisanship, issues and leader evaluations on vote and reciprocal relations between partisanship and both issues and leader evaluations. The major finding is a decline in the influence of partisanship on the vote. This decline occurred in the presence of stable levels of partisanship in the electorate. Furthermore, the decline in the impact of partisanship appears to precede the declines in the proportion of strong identifiers. This decline was coincident with a moderate increase in the influence of issues with issues particularly strong at the 1990 election. The effects of leader evaluations show no consistent patterns over time suggesting that Australian politics has not become more presidential. The reciprocal effects of issues and leader evaluations on partisanship, were greater during the 1980s than during the late 1960s. The decline in the partisanship-vote relation was steeper when these reciprocal effects are taken into account.     

Policy termination as a political process

The problem of how to terminate ineffective or outdated public policies, programs, or organizations is increasingly important. This paper argues that it is helpful to conceive of termination as a special case of the policy adoption process: there is a struggle to adopt a policy A, the substance of which is to eliminate or curtail policy B. The main distinguishing feature of this class of policy contests is the activity of vested interests who are able to advance a peculiarly powerful moral claim concerning the inequity or unfairness of change.     

Comparing absentee and precinct voters: Voting on direct legislation

This paper addresses issues related to how absentee voters actually cast their ballots on propositions. If the liberalization of absentee laws changed either the composition or behavior of the electorate, then the outcome of the election may be affected. This paper tests whether the electoral behavior of absentee and precinct voters differs in regards to voting on propositions. The analysis is based on a sample of actual absentee and precinct voter ballots drawn from the approximately three million ballots cast in Los Angeles county for the 1992 general election. The analysis uses a nested model of voter participation and is estimated using the weighted exogenous sampling maximum likelihood method. We find that precinct and absentee voters do differ on both the propositions on which they cast votes and in their propensity to vote Yes for a proposition. For example, absentees appear to vote on fewer bonds and initiatives than do precinct voters. They also vote on fewer propositions dealing with state taxes, food taxes, and property taxes. In addition, given that a voter casts a valid vote, the propensity for absentee voters to vote Yes is higher on initiatives and propositions related to education, welfare, and health care than it is for precinct voters.     

Are social class measures interchangeable?

This study analyzes the internal and external consistency of standard and alternative measures of stratification position. Researchers and theorists have used a number of concepts to describe individual's position within the stratification system, e.g., level of education, occupational prestige, and Marxist class position. The central issues of this paper are the degree to which each of the operationalizations of these concepts (current in the literature) are related to one another, the degree to which the operationalizations of each concept are related to the operationalizations of other concepts that measure stratification position, and the extent to which these operational measures are interchangeable. Using data collected in the SRC/CPS 1980 American National Election Study, we find the strongest relationships to exist among those indicators which measure the same concept (e.g., the NORC Prestige Scale and the Duncan SEI), although all indicators are positively related. Regression analyses employing different criterion variables as dependent variables and several measures of stratification position as independent variables reveal that these measures are not interchangeable.The authors are involved in an ongoing research project; the order in which their names appear is rotated.     

Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions

I examine the impact of long-term partisan loyalties on perceptions of specific political figures and events. In contrast to the notion of partisanship as a simple running tally of political assessments, I show that party identification is a pervasive dynamic force shaping citizens' perceptions of, and reactions to, the political world. My analysis employs panel data to isolate the impact of partisan bias in the context of a Bayesian model of opinion change; I also present more straightforward evidence of contrasts in Democrats' and Republicans' perceptions of objective politically relevant events. I conclude that partisan bias in political perceptions plays a crucial role in perpetuating and reinforcing sharp differences in opinion between Democrats and Republicans. This conclusion handsomely validates the emphasis placed by the authors of The American Voter on the role of enduring partisan commitments in shaping attitudes toward political objects.     

Crime,punishment and human nature

In Thinking About Crime James Q. Wilson brings a new dimension to crime policy research by explicating the failure of criminologists to adequately consider the philosophical perspectives on man and society which underlie alternate policy options. As a result, they rarely appreciate the inherent limits on government efforts to deal with crime. Wilson's consideration of these limitations, together with a critique of causal analysis in criminological thinking, lead him to propose an alternate conceptual framework, policy analysis. Our inspection of Wilson's own thinking reveals, however, that policy analysis is no less problematic and shortsighted than causal analysis, a result we attribute to serious flaws in his critique of criminological thinking and to the incorporation of his own biases about human nature into his conceptual framework. We seek in the concluding section to remove this bias and to demonstrate how policy analysis may be expanded into a more flexible, multi-dimensional framework, one which accounts for different assumptions about human nature and different policy goals.     

Systems approaches to urban planning: Mixed,conditional, adaptive and other alternatives

Systems approaches possess an ability to deal with large numbers of interacting variables and relations. They are here connected tocitizen information systems (distinguished frommanagement information systems) and to mixed, adaptive, conditional models for urban planning. The latter permit flexible and continuing responses to dynamically changing urban conditions, including citizen attitudes and reactions, as well as to changing economics and technologies. These models are mixed in that they allow actions and reactions from a multiplicity of decisionmakers. The resulting decisions are made only conditionally, rather than once-and-for-all, on a comprehensive basis as in the customary master city plan. Proceeding in this conditional manner, the model then permits adaptation to changing values and objectives as, at each stage, it makes the systems consequences apparent.The systems approach is related to a host of important methodological developments in mathematics, statistics, etc., as well as in electronic computers and their use. These distinguish modern systems approaches from predecessors like the holism of Jan Christiaan Smuts and others in pre-war science. The mixed, conditional, adaptive models suggested here are compared with other approaches like advocacy planning, the comprehensive master city plan and ad hoc planning. It is found to be possible at least in principle, to accommodate all of these and even to extend matters further to include day-to-day as well as longer range facilities plans in the indicated systems approach by virtue of the improved methodologies that may now be used or developed for these purposes.This paper was prepared for presentation before the Division 1 (General), American Psychological Association Meetings in Miami Beach, Florida on September 5, 1970.Also, Joint Urban Sciences Information Institute, Research Report No. 5.     

Subformal warning systems in the species Homo politicus

A political activist needs to pick up early warning signals that something is happening which might require his attention. The something could be an emergent danger or opportunity. An ideal-typical warning system is postulated to account for what is believed to be the extraordinary infrequency of activists being caught off guard under most routine conditions. Such a system would ideally meet four criteria: rapidity, comprehensiveness, validity, and selectivity. The postulated system rests on what Anthony Downs has called subformal communications channels among individuals and groups interrelated by principles of specialization and the division of labor.I am very grateful to Janice Holve for her valuable assistance in gathering data and in helping to sharpen my ideas. In the early stages of this project, Gene Bretton helped conduct a review of the literature. Aaron Wildavsky, David Kirp, Marcel Teitler, and Jack Citrin read and commented on various drafts. Financial support from the National Institute of Mental Health is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Selective adaptation

This paper is critical of some loose speculations about cybernetics, computers and systems, especially as to their role in organization and planning. There is a widespread tendency to believe that human and organizational vagaries can be eliminated by some combination of the former techniques. This tendency is encouraged by a bias towards mechanistic and abstract solutions for social problems. Further, there is a failure to properly take into account natural laws, in the sense of limitations on human and organizational ability, when developing normative models for policy and planning problems. Viable holistic models, supposedly, should replace human and organizational haphazardness; attention has been devoted tosubstituting the machine-techniques for the man, rather than concentrating on man-machine interactions, based on selective adaptations to natural laws.     

Management strategy for economic and social development: Part I

The new and rapidly changing environment of development administrators includes (1) the emergence of a world society of interdependent nations, (2) a rapid and confusing technological and scientific revolution, (3) the expansion of service societies in industrialized countries, (4) new major alternatives for war, neocolonialism, despotism and materialism, and (5) development problems of ascending complexity and difficulty.Post-industrial beginnings in modern management arise from a background of management thought and technique in agriculturla epochs and the more recent industrial revolution. They encompass computer technology; operations research; systems approaches, including systems engineering, management information systems, and general systems research; cost-effectiveness analysis and PPBS; social indicators; and futurecasting. Their development has contributed to a growing gulf between technique and capability, to a triumph of technique over strategy and a retreat from human values.Attention is directed to specific strategies and tactics of introducing modern management techniques in developing nations. The efforts to do this during the 1960 Development Decade are reviewed. The prospects for the 1970's are previewed, and suggestions offered for problem area task forces and the expansion of U.N. activities in advancing, not merely diffusing, the current state of the art.Since the most significant modern management advances have been tactical, a dozen principles of strategic decisionmaking are suggested: (1) responsible decisionmaking, (2) the conflict essence of problems, (3) selectivity, (4) total system appreciation, (5) relative proportions, (6) sequential model-using, (7) problem interrelationships, (8) jointed incrementalism, (9) organized and unorganized interests, (10) the emotional basis of rational action, (11) investment in future capabilities, and (12) power mobilization and use.The paper ends by raising vital questions on the improvement of managerial values. This is done by specific proposals for a code of managerial ethics and the formulation of more humanistic management goals.     

Ideology and the construction of nationality: The Canadian elections of 1993

Canada is one nation, but it is in many ways two communities, one Francophone and the other Anglophone. We employ a formal model of ideology and analyze how nationality is constructed in people's minds. The magnitude of the changes in expressed preferences in terms of ideology depends on the salience of the new issue, the extent to which it confirms with the existing ideological cleavage, and the difference between the perceived status quo on the new dimension and the voter's most preferred alternative. Using data from the 1993 Canadian National Election Study, we consider the relative importance of different policy dimensions in explaining voting decisions among educated Canadians. The issue of Quebec sovereignty, alone, is shown to have significant power for predicting vote choice. A plausible explanation, confirmed here by regression analysis, is that Quebec sovereignty stands for other issues in voters' conception of Canadian politics.     

Single-issue voting: Elite-mass linkages

In this paper we consider the abortion and E.R.A. issues as examples of single-issue politics, as well as the nature of single-issue politics in general. We argue that many single issues are what others have called easy issues but that hard-issue voting as well as easy-issue voting may be occurring on both issues. We test this hypothesis using both mass and elite data sets. Our findings suggest that political activists may be cuing the masses into a pattern of single-issue voting, and hence keeping the battle over abortion and the E.R.A. intense.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1981 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 3–6, 1981.     

Impersonal influence: Effects of representations of public opinion on political attitudes

Many phenomena of interest to political scientists involve what may be termed impersonal influence; that is, influence that derives from individuals' perceptions of others' attitudes, beliefs, or experiences. Others in this case refers not to the close friends and acquaintances that concerned the authors of classics such asThe People's Choice andPersonal Influence, but rather to the anonymous others outside an individual's realm of personal contacts. Modern mass media facilitate the influence of anonymous others by devoting considerable time and attention to portraying trends in mass opinion. This study explores the rationale for theories of impersonal influence, synthesizing existing research findings falling under this general theoretical framework, and investigating its psychological underpinnings using experiments embedded in representative surveys.     

Management strategy for economic and social development: Part II

The new and rapidly changing environment of development administrators includes (1) the emergence of a world society of interdependent nations, (2) a rapid and confusing technological and scientific revolution, (3) the expansion of service societies in industrialized countries, (4) new major alternatives for war, neocolonialism, despotism and materialism, and (5) development problems of ascending complexity and difficulty.Post-industrial beginnings in modern management arise from a background of management thought and technique in agricultural epochs and the more recent industrial revolution. They encompass computer technology; operations research; systems approaches, including systems engineering, management information systems, and general systems research; cost-effectiveness analysis and PPBS; social indicators; and future-casting. Their development has contributed to a growing gulf between technique and capability, to a triumph of technique over strategy and a retreat from human values.Attention is directed to specific strategies and tactics of introducing modern management techniques in developing nations. The efforts to do this during the 1960 Development Decade are reviewed. The prospects for the 1970's are previewed, and suggestions offered for problem area task forces and the expansion of U.N. activities in advancing, not merely diffusing, the current state of the art.Since the most significant modern management advances have been tactical, a dozen principles of strategic decisionmaking are suggested: (1) responsible decisionmaking, (2) the conflict essence of problems, (3) selectivity, (4) total system appreciation, (5) relative proportions, (6) sequential model-using, (7) problem interrelationships, (8) jointed incrementalism, (9) organized and unorganized interests, (10) the emotional basis of rational action, (11) investment in future capabilities, and (12) power mobilization and use.The paper ends by raising vital questions on the improvement of managerial values. This is done by specific proposals for a code of managerial ethics and the formulation of more humanistic management goals.     

Political information processing: Question order and context effects

Data from two independent field experiments indicate that changes in question order and context may well account for an apparently precipitous decline of interest in politics at the time of the CPS 1978 American National Election Study. Evidence from a question order experiment with the SRC/CPS feeling thermometers also suggests that such contextual artifacts may not be atypical. Indeed, because of the many changes in the content and organization of the election studies over the years, context effects represent plausible rival hypotheses for a number of inexplicable shifts and trends in the time-series. In testing these hypotheses the authors derive and validate an information-processing model of how respondents infer their political states of mind from observations of their own question-answering behavior in the survey interview. In addition, the authors illustrate the wide applicability of the model tosubstantive problems in the discipline and its implications for the survey-based paradigm in political behavior research.     

Issue Convergence in Presidential Campaigns

This effort seeks to expand our understanding of the supply-side of the campaign process by investigating how candidate competition for agenda control affects occurrences of issue convergence (the discussion of the same issues by competing candidates) in campaigns for the presidency. More specifically, I integrate hypotheses suggested by extant literature into a framework that captures the factors that motivate presidential candidates selection of issues and the factors that affect their decisions to address issues also discussed by their opponents. These hypotheses are tested with duration analysis and data gathered from all available campaign advertisements produced by candidates competing in the 1976 through 1996 presidential elections. The results indicate that occurrences of issue convergences are quite frequent in presidential campaigns and that candidates decisions to address the same issues are affected by an issues saliency and partisan ownership, as well by changes in the campaign environment.