Public opinion and regulatory behavior

This paper measures the responsiveness of a public agency to changes in public opinion. In particular, it shows that the number of compulsory directives issued by the Federal Aviation Administration to the airline industry (a) rises following an increase in public concern over aviation safety, as measured by the amount of newspaper coverage accorded the issue; (b) falls following a presumed increase in industry opposition to such directives, as measured by the number of aircraft accidents that occurred in previous periods; (c) does not increase following an increase in the number of safety defects discovered, as measured by the number of accidents and flights occurring in earlier periods.     

Public opinion polarisation and protest behaviour

Does an increasing divide in normative notions within a population influence citizens’ political protest behaviour? This article explores whether public opinion polarisation stimulates individuals to attend lawful demonstrations. In line with relative deprivation theory, it is argued that in an environment of polarisation, individuals’ normative notions are threatened, increasing the probability that they will actively participate in the political decision‐making process. Using the European Social Survey from the period 2002–2014 and focusing on subnational regions, multilevel analyses are conducted. Thereby a new index to measure public opinion polarisation is introduced. Depending on the issue, empirical results confirm the effect of polarisation. While average citizens are not motivated to demonstrate over the issue of whether people from other countries are a cultural threat, they are motivated by the issues of reducing inequality and of homosexuality. The article goes on to examine in a second step whether ideological extremism makes individuals more susceptible to environmental opinion polarisation. Findings show that members of the far left are more likely to protest when their social environment is divided over the issue of income inequality. In contrast, members of the far right are motivated by rising polarisation regarding homosexuality. In sum, citizens become mobilised as their beliefs and values are threatened by public opinion polarisation.     

Public opinion about social assistance in Sweden

Abstract. When studying public opinion about income-tested programmes, it is important to distinguish between expenditures and parameters regulating supply of social assistance. We suggest that the latter might be the most interesting. Using data from a survey study over a Swedish sample, we investigate public opinion about income thresholds in Swedish welfare programmes. The results show the public as being in favour of rather higher income thresholds, as compared to that decided by the politicians. We found that public opinion is more homogeneous concerning the income needs of adults than those of children. Although data on several background characteristics were available, we had difficulties in relating the answers to systematic factors of the individuals in the sample. Thus, we conclude that the Swedish population is rather homogeneous in their opinions about income thresholds in welfare programmes.     

Public opinion polls on Jews in France and Austria

Harris surveys a number of overlapping debates relating to 'difference' and the 'public/private' distinction, including: positions that perceive differences only as labels to secure governmentality; that treat difference as something to be consumed; that accept but confine difference to the private domain; that attempt to reconcile collective difference to the demands of a liberal theory of individual rights; that counter this by suggesting a need to rethink the relationship between state and society to allow for the creation of multicultural public forms; that insist that the option of difference should be enlarged to embrace the fundamental differences of economic inequality; that would see the appeal to cultural differences as only an ideology that masks the contradictions of modern liberal capitalism; and those, like Harris's own, that want to focus on the multifaceted, interactive and relational nature of difference. Identity and culture, he argues, are achieved processes deriving from a specific praxis of interpretation and enforcement located within the field of historically constituted social relations shaped by grids of meanings, access to resources and power. Once we give up the idea of cultures as sealed entities and recognize that even within cultural boundaries communication is essentially about difference and requires translation, then the problematic nature of the constituent elements of 'multiculturalism' - multi-, -cultural-, -ism - renders the whole concept questionable. Undoubtedly, most avowed multiculturalists are committed to some sense of the 'good' or 'better' society, but it will simply not do to overburden the notion of multiculturalism, however radically conceived and well intentioned, with the task of achieving social justice.     

Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic

Public attitudes towards welfare policy are often explained by political values and perceptions of deservingness of welfare recipients. This article addresses how the impact of values and perceptions varies depending on the contextual information that citizens have available when forming welfare opinions. It is argued that whenever citizens face deservingness‐relevant cues in public debate or the media, a psychological ‘deservingness heuristic’ is triggered prompting individuals spontaneously to think about welfare policy in terms of who deserves help. This is an automatic process, equally influential among the least and the most politically sophisticated. Moreover, when clear deservingness cues are present, the impact of values on opinions vanishes. These arguments are supported by data from two novel experimental studies embedded in separate nationwide opinion surveys. The findings revise conventional wisdom of how values and heuristics influence public opinion and have major implications for understanding dynamics in aggregate welfare opinion and attempts from political elites to manipulate public opinion.     

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.     

Public opinion, party messages, and responsibility for the financial crisis in Britain

The political consequences of the crisis in world financial markets are only beginning to be understood. In this article, we take up one of these many repercussions by examining public beliefs of who’s to blame for a complex and unparalleled set of events. Analyses of survey data from Britain find that while most assign responsibility for the crisis to market actors, the likelihood of blaming governments, as opposed to blaming banks and investors, is greater among low sophisticates and Conservative Party identifiers. We further show how elite messages from competing political elites evolved over-time and were reflected in mass beliefs about the crisis. Results highlight the centrality of partisan cues and, in particular, of political sophistication in understanding the dynamics of responsibility attributions. Lastly, we estimate the consequences of blaming the government for the crisis for voter choice.     

Public opinion during a presidential campaign: Distinguishing the effects of environmental evolution and attitude change

This paper develops a spatial model which distinguishes between different sources of temporal variability in public opinion over the course of an election campaign. Candidates and citizens are shown as points within a space. The candidate points are fixed, but their relative positions can change as a result of change over time in the dimension weights. If this occurs, it represents environmental evolution. The individual citizens' points also can move within the space, independently of the external environment. To the extent this occurs, it represents attitude change. The model is tested with data from the CPS 1980 National Election Study. The empirical results show that much of the variability in public evaluations of the candidates is due to evolutionary changes in the electoral environment, rather than individual-level attitude changes. Furthermore, that attitudinal change which does occur is strongly delimited by factors like partisan strength, interest in the campaign, and political participation.     

Public support for coercive diplomacy: Exploring public opinion data from ten European countries

Scholarship has increasingly acknowledged the importance of public attitudes for shaping the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. Economic sanctions emerged as one of CFSP's central tools. Yet despite the emergence of sanctions as a popular instrument in the EU foreign policy toolbox, public attitudes towards sanctions are yet to be studied in depth. This article explains public support for EU sanctions, using the empirical example of sanctions against Russia. It looks at geopolitical attitudes, economic motivations and ideational factors to explain the variation in public support for sanctions. The conclusion suggests that geopolitical factors are the most important, and that economic factors matter very little. Euroscepticism and anti‐Americanism play an important role in explaining the support for sanctions at the individual level.     

Public opinion for sale: The role of policy marketers in Greater Yellowstone policy conflict

This article develops a macro-level theory of framing to explain the intractable or ‘icked’ nature of environmental policy. Using conflict in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) as a case study, we review how proposed solutions – technical, scientific, and economic – and cultural issues often lead to inadequate policy solutions. We then propose that interest groups, the media, and elected officials do not act solely as linkage mechanisms, but, rather, as policy marketers who market public opinion to citizens. The macro-level trends of a marketing culture in tandem with the rise of consumerism are explored in the context of GYA politics. Finally, we describe how our proposed macro-level theory of framing points to a rich research agenda for empirically testing questions about issue framing, policy marketers, and public opinion formation in environmental policy conflict.     

Facets of nativism: a heuristic exploration

ABSTRACT

Contemporary radical right-wing populism is an ideational compound of anti-elite populism and nativism, the latter encapsulated in the notion that ‘the own people’ should come first. Like populism, nativism has proven to be a rather elusive concept, particularly when it comes to its relationship to related concepts, such as patriotism, nationalism and particularly racism. Originally developed to analyse anti-immigrant sentiments in the United States and Canada, the term ‘nativism’ has recently been increasingly used to understand the success of the radical populist right in Europe and elsewhere. In this article, Betz present three facets of nativism: economic nativism, centred on the notion that jobs should be reserved for native citizens; welfare chauvinism, based on the notion that native citizens should be accorded absolute priority when it comes to social benefits; and symbolic nativism, advancing the notion that government should do everything to defend the cultural identity of a given national society. Whereas, in the past, economic considerations, including concerns about the viability of the welfare state, were central to anti-immigrant sentiment, in recent years, symbolic nativism, grounded in a defence of national cultural identity, is central to the success of radical right-wing populist mobilization.     

公民社会和舆论监督

本文从新闻学的角度阐释了公民社会和舆论监督的概念及关系,探讨了公民社会的成长对舆论监督的促进作用,并通过具体新闻实例展望了我国公民社会逐步影响、推动舆论监督的前景。     

Information and opinion change on ballot propositions

This paper examines mobilization and conversion perspectives of opinion change during election campaigns. We demonstrate that opinion volatility during ballot proposition contests often reflects mobilization of awareness more than conversion of opinions. Furthermore, we find little support for the hypothesis that media spending affects opinions on the propositions examined here. An examination of other information sources suggests that many voters are able to use cues other than advertising when making decisions.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Western Political Science Association meeting, Pasadena, California, March 22, 1993. The authors names are listed in alphabetical order.