Public support for electoral reform: The role of electoral system experience

What affects public support for electoral reform? How does experience with different electoral systems affect people's willingness to support electoral reform? Given the salience of changes to election rules even when they are passed via the legislature and the increasing use of referenda as alternative mechanisms for change, these questions are critical to understanding when electoral reform will occur. I argue that experience (specifically, with an electoral system similar to that under consideration) affects public opinion by reducing uncertainty about the likely effects of reform and thus affects support for reform (although the direction of the effect depends on partisan bias). Moreover, I argue that experience is most important in the absence of strong party cues. I leverage subnational electoral system variation in the United Kingdom and find that experience does affect support for reform — negative experiences decrease support for reform. The results have implications for the possibility of electoral reform in the UK and beyond.     

Motivated Reasoning and Political Parties: Evidence for Increased Processing in the Face of Party Cues

Extant research in political science has demonstrated that citizens’ opinions on policies are influenced by their attachment to the party sponsoring them. At the same time, little evidence exists illuminating the psychological processes through which such party cues are filtered. From the psychological literature on source cues, we derive two possible hypotheses: (1) party cues activate heuristic processing aimed at minimizing the processing effort during opinion formation, and (2) party cues activate group motivational processes that compel citizens to support the position of their party. As part of the latter processes, the presence of party cues would make individuals engage in effortful motivated reasoning to produce arguments for the correctness of their party’s position. Following psychological research, we use response latency to measure processing effort and, in support of the motivated reasoning hypothesis, demonstrate that across student and nationally representative samples, the presence of party cues increases processing effort.     

Are they listening? Public opinion,interest groups and government responsiveness

What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. It is argued here that interest groups importantly influence government responsiveness to public opinion, but that the effect varies by type of interest group: while cause groups increase the responsiveness of governments to their electorate, sectional groups decrease government responsiveness. Drawing on a new and unique dataset, this article examines the relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government expenditure across 13 policy areas in Germany from 1986 until 2012 and shows that interest groups indeed have a differential effect on the responsiveness of governments. The article’s findings have important implications for understanding political representation and the largely overlooked relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government policy.     

The Epistemic Value of Public Opinion: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

Abstract

This paper discusses the claim that citizens lack sufficient political knowledge to make sound judgements on public matters. It is contended that practical judgements raise essentially two types of claims, namely a claim to empirical truth and a claim to normative rightness, and that there are good reasons to believe that people's insufficient political knowledge undermines both of them. Yet, an examination of the dynamics of public opinion formation reveals that there is an epistemic potential in public opinion, though it is dependent upon the quality of public debate. Building on this idea and on the concept of deliberative responsiveness, two paths of political reform are proposed, which should illustrate the practical implications of the theoretical argument made in this paper by demonstrating how the quality of public debate and, thus, the epistemic value of public opinion could be enhanced.     

Age‐based self‐interest,intergenerational solidarity and the welfare state: A comparative analysis of older people's attitudes towards public childcare in 12 OECD countries

When faced with the necessity of reforming welfare states in ageing societies, politicians tend to demand more solidarity between generations because they assume that reforms require sacrifices from older people. Political economy models, however, do not investigate such a mechanism of intergenerational solidarity, suggesting that only age‐based self‐interest motivates welfare preferences. Against this backdrop, this article asks: Does the experience of intergenerational solidarity within the family matter for older people's attitudes towards public childcare – a policy area of no personal interest to them? The statistical analysis of a sample with individuals aged 55+ from twelve OECD countries indicates that: intergenerational solidarity matters; its effect on policy preferences is context‐dependent; and influential contexts must – according to the evidence from twelve countries – be sought in all societal spheres, including the political (family spending by the state), the economic (female labour market integration) and the cultural (public opinion towards working mothers). Overall, the findings imply that policy makers need to deal with a far more complex picture of preference formation toward the welfare state than popular stereotypes of ‘greedy geezers’ suggest.     

The Sophisticated Public: The Effect of Competing Frames on Public Opinion

Deliberation is the current buzzword among democratic thinkers. Deliberative democracy assumes that deliberation has an effect on the people engaging in the deliberative process. Several studies have demonstrated that this is indeed the case: deliberation increases political knowledge and opinion consistency, as well as mutual understanding and broader tolerance among citizens. In order to verify the findings from these studies and to confront the problems of internal and external validity in the previous studies of deliberation, alternative methodological designs must be applied. Applying an experimental split-sample design using CATI on the Danish electorate reveals how arguments and frames influence public opinion. Across various frames and arguments and political issues, positive (negative) arguments tend to push opinions in a positive (negative) direction. When competing frames are presented to the public, people submit to neither ambivalence nor non-attitudes. Quite to the contrary, people tend to follow their predisposition and provide more consistent opinions. Thus, deliberation composed of various competing frames and arguments facilitates – rather than distorts – sophisticated and considered public opinion.     

The Captive or the Broker? Explaining Public Agency–Interest Group Interactions

The literature offers individually valid yet collectively inconsistent hypotheses concerning the nature of public agencies' responsiveness to interest groups. This article analyzes the nature of this responsiveness by examining the brokerage potential of public agencies among interest groups. Such a brokerage potential is hypothesized to follow from agencies' preferences for policy goods as well as the tendency of interest groups to seek access to public agencies. It combines analyses of agencies' demand for policy goods with interest groups preferences for seeking access to specific policy venues. The analyses are based on survey data of national civil servants and interest groups in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. The findings suggest that both strategic preferences as well as organizational routines positively correlate with a brokerage potential while interaction patterns within and with the organizational environment of public agencies can constrain their brokerage potential in several distinct ways.     

Migration and public trust in the commonwealth of independent states

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet space has seen regional integration in the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The CIS while moribund has affected migration in the post-Soviet space. Despite its persistence and effect on migration, few studies have sought to explore public perceptions towards the CIS. We address this limitation by developing several arguments, anchored on the literature on public opinion and European integration, to explain how perceptions towards migrants and employment status affect public trust in the CIS. Our analyses make use of the sixth wave of the World Values Survey that includes seven CIS member-states and finds strong support for our hypotheses. Our contribution lies in the investigation of public attitudes in a non-EU setting while applying arguments from EU literature and the wide coverage of our study compared to the extant literature on the CIS and public opinion.     

Earth Day and Its Precursors: Continuity and Change in the Evolution of Midtwentieth‐Century U.S. Environmental Policy

Earth Day 1970's legacy overshadows two earlier events resulting in popular misconceptions about U.S. environmental politics: that environmental policy began with Earth Day and that Congress and the president were not concerned with the environment until public opinion and interest groups pressured them. These misconceptions increase public opinion ambivalence and frustrate environmental leaders. This paper describes Earth Day 1970, the congressionally established Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission established in 1958, and President Kennedy's Natural Resources Tour of September 1963, arguing the latter two prepared for the convergence of multiple streams of policy change that resulted in the first Earth Day.     

Just sick of it? Health and political trust in Western Europe

This article explores two theoretical possibilities for why personal health may affect political trust: the psychological‐democratic contract theory, and the role of personal experience in opinion formation. It argues that citizens with health impairments are more likely to experience the direct effects of political decisions as they are more dependent on public health services. Negative subjective evaluations of public services can lower trust levels, especially if people's expectations are high. Using European Social Survey data, the association between health and trust in 19 Western European states is analysed. The results indicate that people in poor health exhibit lower levels of trust towards the political system than people in good health. The differences in trust between those in good and poor health are accentuated among citizens with left‐leaning ideological values. The results suggest that welfare issues may constitute a rare context in which personal, rather than collective, experiences affect opinion formation.     

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.     

Politicians,voters and democracy: The 2011 UK referendum on the Alternative Vote

At the 2010 UK election, Labour proposed a referendum on changing the House of Commons electoral system from single member plurality to the Alternative Vote. Subsequently, a coalition was formed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, yet it was Labour's policy on electoral reform that was implemented. The paper explains why this proved to be politically convenient for Labour's opponents. At the same time, however, holding the referendum reflected an emergent de facto convention that significant constitutional change should only be introduced after it has secured popular endorsement. The paper assesses whether the dynamics of public opinion during the AV referendum suggests that voters' eventual decisions about constitutional questions reflect their views about the merits of the relevant arguments.     

Does Public Opinion Affect Political Speech?

Does public opinion affect political speech? Of particular interest is whether public opinion affects (i) what topics politicians address and (ii) what positions they endorse. We present evidence from Germany where the government was recently forced to declassify its public opinion research, allowing us to link the content of the research to subsequent speeches. Our causal identification strategy exploits the exogenous timing of the research's dissemination to cabinet members within a window of a few days. We find that exposure to public opinion research leads politicians to markedly change their speech. First, we show that linguistic similarity between political speech and public opinion research increases significantly after reports are passed on to the cabinet, suggesting that politicians change the topics they address. Second, we demonstrate that exposure to public opinion research alters politicians' substantive positions in the direction of majority opinion.     

Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina's Cultural Arenas

Abstract

The international community has long been criticized for its lack of social legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina and its creation of a dysfunctional public space in the light of people's everyday experiences of peace. This article contends that, as a result, legitimacy has been moved from such public spaces to semi-public spaces, wherein the public and the private are interrelated. One example is local cultural arenas, where hopes emerging in people's everyday lives are projected onto alternative visions of peace and a corresponding social contract. In that sense, cultural agencies have served as alternative social locations of legitimacy due to their closer connection to people's lives and needs.     

They Come over Here … 300 Years of Xenophobic Propaganda in England

England's rulers, merchants, and organized labor in the early modern period (from the 16th to the 18th centuries) were all actively using what today we would call propaganda. Each group appreciated the need to get popular opinion on its side, or at the least to convince other groups it was in the public interest to act in a particular way. This study focuses on the use of xenophobic narratives by these actors in order to further their political, economic, or cultural objectives. The targets were economic rivals including the Dutch, but most particularly ethnic and religious outgroups, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Although there were public relations win-wins for anyone who was able successfully to demonize foreigners, racist and xenophobic propaganda was often more pernicious than the tellers realized, in many cases extending its influence over several generations. In addition, it is clear that many narratives failed to engage with public opinion, for reasons that were not always clear to the groups responsible for them.     

The Conditional Nature of Presidential Responsiveness to Public Opinion

How does public opinion affect presidential policymaking? We address this issue by testing a diverse set of hypotheses with data concerning a set of individual policies across time. In particular, the data revolve around presidential budgetary proposals on a set of major policy issues for which there are recurring surveys on citizens' preferences over spending. The analysis suggests that presidents are more responsive to mass opinion on issues that are familiar to citizens in their everyday lives. Also, for reelection‐seeking presidents, responsiveness is shown to depend upon two key political factors. First, presidents are more responsive to public opinion when the next election is imminent. Second, the effect of presidential popularity is nonmonotonic; presidents with average approval ratings are most likely to adopt policy positions congruent with public opinion, whereas presidents with approval ratings that are significantly above or below average have the greatest propensity to take unpopular positions.     

Preferences,beliefs, and values in negotiations concerning aid to Nicaragua

The paper argues that in the context of public choice for non-market goods, two assumptions of the simple model of the rational economic actor may not hold. The assumptions are that there is a direct connection between choice and outcome, and that preferences are not affected by the act of making a choice. Consequently, to understand people's preferences for public goods, it is important to measure their beliefs and values separately rather than simply to observe their choice behavior or to ask them what they would be willing to pay for the public good. In an example study, people's preferences for U.S. policies toward Nicaragua were measured and further analyzed into their beliefs about the effects of those policies on Nicaraguan outcomes, and their evaluations of the Nicaraguan outcomes. It was shown that the process of making a two-person choice changed the preferences, and that the separate measures or beliefs and values gave insight into the process of the change that would not have been available had only the preferences been measured. Implications for the contingent valuation method are explored and an alternative approach is proposed.     

If you can't please everyone,must you only please yourself?

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 8221, U.S.A. Shirking models, especially those of Kalt and Zupan, have demonstrated that Senators often vote contrary to their constituents' ideology. These models establish two components of Senators' ideology through a regression of constituency demographics on interest group ratings. The predicted scores are constituency attitudes while the residuals are Senators' personal ideologies. Senators' personal ideology is presumed to be independent of constituency factors. The use of demographics is problematic, because it is unclear that they are good surrogates for attitudes. Using statewide estimates of ideology from public opinion surveys, I show that demographics provide reasonable estimates of public attitudes. However, estimates of shirking from public opinion depend upon constituency characteristics, a finding that is inconsistent with shirking models based upon residualization. The existing shirking models depend heavily upon a legislator's party as a key component of constituency opinion. But party is an attribute of the Senator and not of the electorate. A better interpretation is that Senators respond to their fellow partisans in the electorate.     

Constituency Opinion and PAC Contributions: A Case of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League

To test whether interest group politics doharm to a representative democracy, thispaper simulates congressionaldistrict-level constituency opinion onabortion. Analyzing the relationshipbetween the constituency opinion andNARAL's contributions in the 102nd and103rd Congresses, this paper presentsempirical evidence that NARAL'scontribution decision is influenced byconstituency opinion. The evidence,however, is mixed. Constituency opinioninfluences NARAL's decision on who will getits money. Constituency opinion, however,does not influence NARAL's decision on whowill get more money. According to theseresults, financial representation byinterest groups does not seriously causeharm to a representative democracy, but itcan still bias the representativeness tosome extent. An interest group may selectlegislators whose districts support itsposition less strongly and contribute agreater amount of money to the legislators.     

The Democratic Deficit in the States

We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state‐level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy‐specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking “democratic deficit”: policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.