Thematic memory for politics in children

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test the way (fourth grade) children congnitively process various kinds of information about politics. Our findings provide evidence that children integrate symbols from their immediate political environment into themes. These themes may then serve to organize their political knowledge and mediate receipt of new information. We did not find similar evidence of thematic integration for adult political symbols. These findings raise questions about the degree to which events in the adult political world will directly affect children's developing orientations toward that world.     

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.     

Democratic Political Competence: Clearing the Underbrush and a Controversial Proposal

Though the link between democracy and an appropriately trained citizen is obvious, the theoretical and empirical nature of this association is murky despite mountains of scholarship addressing this topic. Part of this problem is that the term democratic competence has been stretched almost to the point of uselessness. This constant adding of desired traits—many of which are ideologically driven—misdirects effort away from such complex problems as the relationship between individual attributes and collective capacities. Moreover, recent research has often been guilty of using data of uncertain relevance to demonstrate a competence that seems largely an analytical artifact. We conclude by offering an approach that stresses old- fashioned traits such as patriotism that seem necessary to the existing, and quite democratic, status quo.     

Public opinion and presidential responsibility for the economy: Understanding personalization

The general mechanisms which underlie the psychological phenomenon ofpersonalizing (cognitive simplification and defensive attribution) would seem to have great utility in explaining attributions of presidential control over the economy. Yet previous research has generated inconsistent and inconclusive empirical results. This study identifies several sources of inconsistency and then attempts to clarify the approach by focusing separately on the object and the subject of personalizing. Our findings suggest that the determinants of personalizing to the president are different from the factors that explain personalizing to the incumbent. In addition, we find that the impact of the two psychological mechanisms differs substantially within economic subject areas.Paper prepared for delivery at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association, Fort Worth, Texas.     

Psychodynamics,symbolism, and socialization: “object relations” perspectives on personality,ideology, and political perception

Psychodynamic aspects of the perceptual process by which individuals relate to the distal symbolism of the political environment are explored through a conjunction of object relations theory and intensive analysis methodology. Drawing upon the joint theoretical perspective that object relations theory and the transference postulate bring to bear on personality and perception, a psychodynamic account of the attributional interface that exists between political symbols aspublic objects, on the one hand, andprivate symbolic meanings, on the other, is advanced and the dynamics at play demonstrated through detailed consideration of selected specimen cases. The individual dynamics demonstrated in each of the cases were found to obtain as well in the cases of others holding similar political views; moreover, certain of these group-wide personality patterns were discovered to have predictive significance in distinguishing radical ideologues from individuals subscribing to more moderate political views. Finally, the implications for a psychodynamic theory of political perception and socialization are considered.A revised and abbreviated version of a paper presented before the panel on Intensive Analysis in Political Psychology at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 20–22, 1978, under the title, Personality, Perception, and Political Ideology: Psychodynamic Aspects of Political Socialization and Symbolism.     

The dynamics of interpersonal attitudinal influence: Some additional evidence

The process by which one individual or group of individuals influences the attitudes of another is an important area of concern for students of political behavior. A few years ago a major political science journal published an article pointing to the salience of perceptual accuracy and issue salience in this regard. Interpersonal affective relationships were also considered but dismissed as lacking independent causal significance.Through parallel analysis of a separate data base, along with additional insights from a social conditioning approach, this report attempts to show that affectis an important variable mediating interpersonal attitudinal influence. It does so in multiplicative interaction with measures of parental cue-giving, such as issue salience. Hence, adding affect to the statistical modelafter removing the effects of cue-giving masks the joint effects.     

Candidates and issues in the 1980 campaign: The ideological connection

The notion that ideological perceptions in the mass public are shaped to some extent by elites and political candidates is widespread in the public opinion literature. However, there has been a lack of empirical research directly demonstrating the links between elites and the masses whose thinking they supposedly cue and structure. This paper attempts to show, through magnitude scale data collected over time in the 1980 campaign, the significant impact of political candidates in altering ideological perceptions of political stimuli. The chief carrier of ideology in 1980 is shown to be Ronald Reagan, whose strong issue stands and ideological label influenced perceptions of specific issues' ideological content. The findings are discussed in terms of both measurement problems in the ideology literature and more general theories of elite and environmental influences on mass political thought.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

A Competing Risks Model of Supreme Court Vacancies, 1789–1992

We hypothesize that Supreme Court justices will consider the likely ideological disposition of their successor in their decision to retire or remain on the Court. Furthermore, because a justice's decision to remain on the Court places him or her at risk of dying in office, it is necessary to consider a model of both voluntary and involuntary vacancies. Our study examines three broad classes of factors influential to Supreme Court vacancies: personal considerations, institutional context, and political influences. We assess the factors that affect the probability of a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court due to mortality and retirement at the individual level from 1789 to 1992, using a competing risk duration model and incorporating time-varying covariates. We find significant differences in the hazards of vacancy due to these two causes, and a number of factors are shown to influence the probability of a vacancy, including a general propensity to retire near the beginning of presidents' second terms. However, we find little evidence of the influence of political factors in either retirement-or death-related vacancies, suggesting that justices who retire do not generally do so for expressly political reasons and those who die in office rarely do so as a result of holding out for a like-minded replacement.     

Characteristics of migrants within the framework of current migration direction in the United States: Some evidence from micro-data analysis

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the phenomenon of an apparent population distribution reversal in the United States. This paper examines the characteristics of migrants participating in such moves between 1969 and 1977, based on data from a longitudinal nationwide household sample survey conducted by the University of Michigan. The data show that the amount of ruralward migration outweighs that of urbanward migration. While the ruralward migration was particularly prevalent in the Northeast, the direction of migration in the South was predominantly urbanward. Ruralward migrants appeared to be young single people and young married people without children, as well as stable families. The most ruralward migrants tended to be from the most highly urban environments. This new pattern of migration is independent of both white suburban flight and the sun-belt phenomenon. The findings suggest an important societal reorganization towards a newer post-industrial and less urban population distribution.     

Asked and Answered: Knowledge Levels When We Will Not Take “Don't Know” for an Answer

A pivotal claim in research on citizen competence is that the typical citizen knows very little about politics. Public opinion surveys provide a considerable body of evidence in support of this position. However, survey protocols with respect to factual questions about politics violate established norms in psychometric research on educational testing in that don't know answers are encouraged rather than discouraged. Because encouraging don't know responses potentially confounds efforts to identify substantive understanding, this practice may lead to the systematic understatement of political knowledge. We explore this possibility with data drawn from three split-ballot tests: one conducted as part of a survey in the Tallahassee, Florida, metropolitan area, one conducted as part of the 1998 NES Pilot, and one conducted as part of the 2000 NES. Results reveal that the mean level of political knowledge increases by approximately 15% when knowledge questions are asked in accordance with accepted practices in educational testing.     

A second best mechanism for marketing emissions reductions

The purpose of this paper is to present a strategy for pollution control, representing a hybrid of conventional emission fees and standards approaches, which is designed to meet the dual needs of many localities for sustained industrial growth and compliance with air quality standards. We evaluate several second best policy mechanisms and extend our focus from questions of relative efficiency loss to concerns for feasibility, compliance incentives, and local objectives. For each non-attainment area, we suggest that a Clean Air Management Unit (CAMU) be established to formalize and oversee markets in emissions reductions.This work was supported by the Office of Environmental Affairs, City of New Orleans. The City Administration assumes no liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of this information.     

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.     

What's in a word?

In this paper, we argue that citizens' views about the personality characteristics of their political leaders are subject to systematic bias, motivated by the desire to maintain existing impressions. We report two studies designed to explore how such trait biases, involving judgments of real politicians, are manifested. Drawing on work in social psychology (John, Hampson, and Goldberg, 1991), we hypothesize, and demonstrate experimentally, that traitbreadth plays a critical role in the judgment process. Specifically, people tend to select broad positive traits (e.g., kind) and narrower negative traits (gullible) to describe politicians that they like; conversely, people tend to select broad negative traits (unintelligent) and narrower positive traits (soft-hearted) to describe politicians that they dislike. This trait breadth attribution bias was much stronger among those who had a positive, rather than negative, impression of the politician, a result we discuss in the context of related evidence of affective asymmetries in political judgment (e.g., Kinder, 1986; Marcus and Mackuen, 1993). More generally, these studies illustrate the potential associated with integrating cognitive, affective, and motivational factors in the service of fully understanding political judgment and choice.     

Evolution,consciousness, and political thinking

Evolutionary theory is utilized to sketch the outline of a performance-based perspective of political thinking. It is argued that human consciousness evolved as an emergent and interactive mechanism for enabling the individual to cope strategically with environmental exigencies. Within the context of this evolutionary perspective, consciousness at the individual level is shown to develop in patterned yet flexible and individually variable ways as a result of the interaction of biological and environmental variables including, among the latter, those elements of the social environment like ideas, values, and intentions, as well as institutional patterns of conflict, affiliation, and authority, which are themselves products of coping strategies. Political thinking, it is suggested, is a strategic coping enterprise involving equilibration between the individual's own strivings and social demands for conformity in collective affairs.     

Interpreting model results — examples from an energy model

With the increasing use of complex computer models for high-level policy decisionmaking, the problem of correctly interpreting and communicating model results becomes a more general concern. This paper traces misconceptions about the use of models to the existence of different conceptions of the term model. Policy models are quite often less theory-based than models in the traditional disciplines, especially in cases where the policy models deal with the long-term developments of sociotechnical systems. The authors examine the use of an example of one such model. Generalising from the authors' experiences in other fields of application, e.g., global modeling, the problems of interpreting model results are discussed. The proper use of future-oriented policy models is clarified by the introduction of typologies implying distinctions, e.g., between forecasting, what-if, and learning models, and between different levels of results, viz. model outcomes, model inferences and policy-issue oriented interpretations.     

The design and use of questionnaires for participation practices in town planning—Lessons from the United States and Britain

One means by which planning agencies may hear the constructive views of the public is the questionnaire technique. A questionnaire is not just a list of questions...;. It is essentially a scientific instrument for measurement and for correlation of particular kinds of data ...; it has to be specially designed. (Oppenheim). This paper considers the problems of questionnaire design, a number of examples of the use of the questionnaire in the United States and Britain, and attempts to draw lessons and profit from experience for those people committed to the use of the technique in exercises of public participation in the planning process.     

Governance dilemmas in an age of ambiguous authority

A convergence of functions, financing and governance arrangements between public and private sectors of society cloud the study and understanding of policy making, implementation and evaluation. Forces creating and shaping the interpenetrated society are trends toward professionalism and corporatism. The health industry provides an example. Increasingly, but with little formal guidance from political theory, the American system has authorized privately constituted citizen governing boards to spend tax dollars, make and implement policy choices, and evaluate outcomes. This essay argues for closer examination of the nature of representation and accountability in these little studied creatures of governance and introduces the subsequent articles addressed to the subject.