The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.     

Political Involvement and the Development of Political Attitudes

Political socialization research so far has focused primarily on the direction of attitudes among children and youngsters. The preconditions for the development of political attitudes among these age groups have been neglected. In theoretical discussions cognitive development has been offered as a major prerequisite. In the article it is posited that political involvement is a second major prerequisite.
The effects of political involvement are examined with respect to four aspects of political attitudes among Danish school children: the ability to express attitudes, the correlation between indicators of a particular attitude, the stability of attitudes, and the correlation between different attitudes. Except for the stability of attitudes, results are clear. Political involvement is related to the formation of attitudes. The effect of political involvement is stronger than the effect of any of the traditional socio-economic variables ordinarily considered in socialization research.     

The Political Consequences of the Crash

The financial crash of 2008 precipitated a major recession. It shattered the financial growth model that had dominated the previous twenty years and plunged the international economy into a period of economic and political restructuring of uncertain duration. The immediate origins of the crash lay in the lending practices associated with the sub-prime mortgages in the United States which produced the credit crunch in 2007, but the wider causes were the unbalanced character of growth in the international economy and the particular role played by finance. The crisis has been explained in a number of different ways, focusing on the behaviour of the financial markets, the institutional and policy conditions that made the boom possible and then undermined it, longer-term economic and policy cycles and the nature of uncertainty and risk in complex social systems. The political impact of the crash and the recession has not been uniform; it has been highly uneven, depending on the position of particular states in the international economy. The rapid interventions by governments to stave off financial collapse at the end of 2008 were successful, but at the cost of creating serious problems of adjustment for the future. The political debate around what were the causes, who should be blamed and what should be done is only just beginning, and the way this crisis comes to be understood will play a major part in determining how it is eventually resolved and how far-reaching will be the changes to the international economy and to domestic politics.     

Risk Attitudes and Political Participation

This article contributes to existing explanations of political participation by proposing that citizens’ attitudes towards risk predict participation. I argue that people who are risk accepting participate in political life because politics offers novelty and excitement. Analyses of two independent Internet surveys establish a positive, significant relationship between risk attitudes and general political participation. The analyses also suggest that the relationship between risk attitudes and action varies with the political act: people who are more risk accepting are more likely to participate in general political acts, but they are no more or less likely to turn out in elections. Further analyses suggest that two key mechanisms—novelty seeking and excitement seeking—underlie the relationship between risk attitudes and political participation.     

The Political Consequences of External Economic Shocks: Evidence from Poland

How do external economic shocks influence domestic politics? We argue that those materially exposed to the shock will display systematic differences in policy preferences and voting behavior compared to the unexposed, and political parties can exploit these circumstances. Empirically, we take advantage of the 2015 surprise revaluation of the Swiss franc to identify the Polish citizens with direct economic exposure to this exogenous event. Using an original survey fielded prior to the 2015 elections and an embedded survey experiment, we show that exposed individuals were more likely to demand government support and more likely to desert the government and vote for the largest opposition party, which was able to use the shock to expand its electoral coalition without alienating its core voters. Our article clarifies the connection between international shocks, voters’ policy preferences, partisan policy responses, and, ultimately, voting decisions.     

The Political Consequences of Policing: Evidence from New York City

Political Behavior - This paper explores the effect that municipal policing can exert on politics, and specifically investigates the effect that Stop, Question, and Frisk (SQF) policing has had on...     

Attitudes, No Opinions, and Guesses

This article presents a statistical model of the survey responsethat includes both a measure of the respondent's likely trueattitude and a measure of the probability that the respondentis uncertain about her or his attitude and is "guessing" ata response. This latter possibility introduces systematic measurementerror that may bias efforts to get unbiased estimates of attitudes.The model and the likely consequences of guessing are illustratedwith questions about Vietnam policy taken from the 1968, 1970,and 1972 National Election Studies (NES) surveys. The articleends with a discussion of the limitations and fragility of themodel.     

The Moderating Effect of Debates on Political Attitudes

In theory, candidate debates can influence voters by providing information about candidates' quality and policy positions. However, there is limited evidence about whether and why debates influence voters in new democracies. We use a field experiment on parliamentary debates during Ghana's 2016 elections to show that debates improve voters' evaluations of candidates. Debates have the strongest effect on partisan voters, who become more favorable toward and more likely to vote for opponent-party candidates and less likely to vote for co-partisans. Experimental and unique observational data capturing participants' second-by-second reactions to the debates show that policy information was the most important causal mechanism driving partisan moderation, especially among strong partisans. A follow-up survey shows that these effects persist in electorally competitive communities, whereas they dissipate in party strongholds. Policy-centered debates have the potential to reduce partisan polarization in new democracies, but the local political context conditions the persistence of these effects.     

The Effects of Campaign Participation on Political Attitudes

Participatory democratic theorists have long claimed that political participation improves citizens and helps to integrate them into the political community. In recent years political participation has been advocated as a way of reducing alienation, particularly among the young. This experimental study assesses the effects of campaign participation on the attitudes and opinions of a group of young people, particularly attitudes of alienation. Employing Q methodology, this study examines the attitudinal impact of campaign participation on 57 subjects through the use of precampaign and postcampaign Q sorts. By comparing the results with a control group it was determined that campaign participation does result in greater attitudinal shift for participants than for nonparticipants; however, the changes that occurred resulted in shifts away from alienation (as democratic theorists predict) and shifts in the direction of greater alienation (contrary to predictions).     

Political Persuasibility: Dynamics of Attitudes towards Taxation of Old Age Pensioners

Opinion research has for long discussed the robustness of individuals' political opinions. Panel data have been a much used method to study opinion change and stability. This method can tell how many change position from one point of time to another, but it can hardly be used to tell why individuals change or maintain their attitudes. To be able to study the significance of information upon people's political views, opinion research has in recent years adopted an experimental approach. This article examines the results from a survey experiment, based on the counter-argument technique developed by Sniderman, Piazza and Kendrick. The technique makes it possible to study how readily people can be persuaded to leave a political position when confronted with a counter-argument. The subject of the experiment was taxation of old age pensioners. The analyses showed that it was easier to persuade respondents to abandon a position in old age pensioners' disfavour than a position in old age pensioners' favour. Respondents with a low educational level were easier to persuade than respondents with a high level of education.     

Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

The pervasive influence of partisanship on political evaluations is well known and understood. Whether citizens rely on their policy attitudes has received less attention, especially in the context of how people update and revise their evaluations. This paper focuses on presidential assessments and uses panel data covering three presidencies to model the determinants of opinion change. The results indicate that policy preferences (like partisanship) exert a regular and substantial influence on how citizens update their presidential evaluations.     

Spatial and Temporal Proximity: Examining the Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes

This article utilizes data from the Latino National Survey (2006) to analyze temporal and spatial variation in the effects of the immigrant rights marches in 2006 on Latino attitudes towards trust in government and self‐efficacy. Using a unique protest dataset, we examine the effects of proximity and scale by mapping respondents’ specific geographic location against the location of the marches as well as size of the protests using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). We find that local proximity to small marches had a positive impact on feelings of efficacy, whereas large‐scale protests led to lower feelings of efficacy. The results shed light on the role localized political events can play in shaping feelings towards government, the importance of conceptions of space and time to the study of social movements, and the positive outcomes that can result from contentious politics.     

Exploring the Consequences of Negative Political Advertising for Liberal Democracy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores existing thinking and research on the use of negative advertising strategies in political campaigning, and in particular examines their potential impact on liberal democracy. We ask what impacts negative forms of political communication may have on our system of government and democratic participation. Though political advertising makes up only a part of political discourse, an analysis of it is necessary given the increasing “marketisation” of political communication, coupled with concerns regarding the so called “democratic deficit.” In order to more truly evaluate its impact, the evidence pertaining to both the positive and detrimental consequences of employing negative ad strategies is examined. What emerges are some very real short-term benefits, some very real concerns over its use, and confusion over its “true” impact. Of particular note is the need for researchers and campaign managers to take a longer-term view of the potentially detrimental consequences of employing negative advertising strategies-to look beyond the short-term gains of winning elections and to consider the longer-term societal consequences of consistently employing advertising strategies characterised by the creation of doubt, fear, anxiety, violation and viciousness. We argue that the “winning” mentality of political ad campaigns needs to be balanced by a more “nurturing” orientation if the tenets of liberal democracy are to remain sustainable.