Blogging and political information: truth or truthiness?

Does the blogosphere generate truth, or what Stephen Colbert calls ‘truthiness,’ facts or concepts one only wishes or believes were true? Bloggers and the mainstream media face the same difficulties if they wish to rely on the blogosphere as a generator of truth. First, both bloggers and media converge on a small number of key blogs as sources of information. But the proprietors of these elite blogs are likely to resist information that doesn’t conform to their existing attitudes and beliefs, precisely because they are already highly aware of politics. Second, blogs and blog readers are likely to separate themselves into smaller networks according to their particular tastes. However, under some circumstances the blogosphere may still approximate a parallel processing statistical estimator of the truth with ‘nice’ properties. The key to this outcome is that judgments are independent, and that problems of polarization are mitigated.     

Polarization,Ideology, and Vote Choice in U.S. Congressional Elections

Despite the debate about mass polarization, most scholars agree that parties in Congress have become increasingly polarized over time. Scholars have sought to connect party polarization to the beliefs and perceptions of individual citizens, but little work exists on the relationship between polarization and the vote choices made by ordinary citizens. In this article, I examine the link between party polarization at the elite level, the use of ideology by citizens, and their vote choices in Congressional elections. I argue that the increased polarization that has occurred over time has led people to place more weight on ideology when casting their votes in U.S. House elections. My hypothesis stems from work on group conflict theory, which suggests that when people sense a high degree of conflict between two groups, a cue from elites, they will be more likely to rely on their own relevant characteristics or attitudes when making choices. This study differs from previous work on Congressional elections in that I examine variation in the effect of ideology on vote choice over multiple elections rather than just in one or two elections. I argue that an exploration of the political context (or the political context perceived by voters) is necessary in order to more fully understand the use of ideology in U.S. elections. To the extent that polarization facilitates the use of information shortcuts among voters, it might be viewed as a positive development within the context of electoral politics.     

Why states have no right to privacy,but may be entitled to secrecy: a non-consequentialist defense of state secrecy

ABSTRACT

Despite an increase in initiatives aimed at enhancing political transparency, democratic states claim the right to withhold information from citizens: classified intelligence and military programs, diplomatic discretion, closed-door political bargaining, and bureaucratic opacity are examples. Can the state’s claim to restrict access to information be justified? In the first part of the essay, I focus on the arguments that defend the state’s claim to restrict access in terms of the state’s right to privacy where the state privacy is presented as a species of group privacy. While I concede that group privacy may be defended, I argue that governments and parliaments are not the kind of groups that may exercise privacy against citizens because of the relation of accountability in which they stand to citizens. In the second part of the essay, I propose an alternative argument to the effect that the scope of openness required in democratic governance is less extensive than traditionally assumed. I focus on the concept of democratic authority and argue that we can understand the practices of classification as an exercise of a special right to secrecy that is implied in the democratic state’s right to rule in a content-independent way.     

Mill and the Value of Moral Distress

People are sometimes distressed by the bare knowledge that lifestyles are being practised or opinions held which they take to be immoral. Is this distress to be regarded as harm for the purposes of Mill's Harm Principle? I argue, first, that this is an issue that is to be resolved not by analysis of the concept of harm but by reference to the arguments in On Liberty with which the Harm Principle is supported. Secondly, I argue that reference to those arguments makes it clear beyond doubt that, since Mill valued moral confrontation and the shattering of moral complacency as means to social progress, he must have regarded moral distress as a positive good rather than as a harm that society ought to intervene to prevent. Thirdly, I relate this interpretation to Mill's points about temperance, decency and good manners. I argue, finally, that my interpretation is inconsistent with Mill's underlying utilitarianism only if the latter is understood in a crudely hedonistic way.     

Camps,not just parties. The dynamic foundations of affective polarization in multi-party systems

Concerns over affective polarization in Western democracies are growing. But which broader political distinctions are also affective demarcations? As inter-party cooperation is the rule in multi-party democracies, explaining affective polarization beyond partisan divisions is crucial. I argue that demarcations between political camps deepen affective polarization, and country-level factors influence the relevance of these affective divides. Based on survey data from 23 Western democracies (1996–2019), I demonstrate that affect is most polarized between Left and Right camps, and between the Radical Right and other camps. Further, these divides are dynamic and depend on different country-level outcomes. The Left/Right divide disappears when Left and Right parties govern together, while the Radical Right divide is fortified with Radical Right electoral success. These findings highlight that affective polarization’s group foundations extend beyond partisanship, and that affective polarization could even act as a defence mechanism against radical challengers.     

On the Second Edition of Lukes' Third Face

In this article I argue for two propositions. The first is that Lukes has established the possibility of power's third face, but that the most interesting social science questions about it are empirical: How often does it operate and under what conditions? These are topics for empirical research, not armchair reflection. The second proposition I defend is that the most interesting normative questions about power are best thought of as questions of institutional design geared to preventing domination without interfering with the legitimate exercise of power. Examples in support of both propositions are supplied.     

Conformity and Individuals’ Response to Information About Aggregate Turnout

Political Behavior - How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals’...     

Meet the bridgebloggers

As the blogosphere has expanded outside its original US context, it has changed from an extended community in which everyone shares a roughly similar set of suppositions and languages to a set of separate blogospheres characterized by different cultures and languages. Bridgebloggers—bloggers who seek to mediate between these cultures and languages—play an increasingly crucial role in connecting these disparate spheres of conversation and argument together. In this paper, I discuss the difficulties of quantifying the extent to which the blogosphere is characterized by different language communities and national communities. I employ qualitative evidence to examine blogospheres emerging in Asia, Southern Africa, the Arab-speaking world and elsewhere, and to assess the importance of bridgebloggers in drawing connections between them.     

The power and politics of blogs

The rise of bloggers raises the vexing question of why blogs have any influence at all, given their relatively low readership and lack of central organization. We argue that to answer this question we need to focus on two key factors—the unequal distribution of readers across weblogs, and the relatively high readership of blogs among journalists and other political elites. The unequal distribution of readership, combined with internal norms and linking practices allows interesting news and opinions to rise to the “top” of the blogosphere, and thus to the attention of elite actors, whose understanding of politics may be changed by frames adopted from the blogosphere.     

The Future of Socialism and New Labour: An Appraisal

Recently, much controversy has been generated about what Tony Crosland would have made of New Labour. Critics and supporters of the Blair project alike have laid claim to Crosland's legacy. For some it is evidence of New Labour's integrity; for others it confirms the party's betrayal of social democratic values. An examination of the arguments in The Future of Socialism indicates that it is neither. In this article, I offer a new appraisal of that text that challenges the orthodox analysis of it. Most accounts present the volume as a theoretical and original statement, one seeking to align British socialism with Swedish social democracy. I argue that the volume does not offer this kind of original contribution to debates about socialism. It is neither primarily a theoretical volume nor one that breaks decisively with the insularity that has shaped the trajectory of British socialism. I maintain that the importance of Crosland's legacy is emotional and symbolic: it offers Labour a charismatic and reassuring image of the party's past.     

The political geography of electoral autocracies: The influence of party strongholds on political beliefs in Africa

In electoral autocracies, why do some citizens view the state as autocratic, while others see it as democratic and legitimate? Traditionally, indicators such as income and education have been the most important factors to explaining how different types of citizens understand politics. This article argues that in electoral autocracies, we must also take into account the role of political geography. In these types of regimes, opposition parties are often one of the only actors that provide information about the authoritarian nature the government, but their message tends to get quarantined within their strongholds. I argue that regardless of income, education, ethnicity, access to government spending, or even partisanship, citizens living in opposition strongholds should be far more likely to view the state as autocratic and illegitimate than citizens living in ruling party strongholds. I find evidence for this theory using Afrobarometer survey data paired with constituency-level electoral returns from five electoral autocracies in sub-Saharan Africa.     

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.     

How Ideology Fuels Affective Polarization

Scholars have reached mixed conclusions about the implications of increased political polarization for citizen decision-making. In this paper, we argue that citizens respond to ideological divergence with heightened affective polarization. Using a survey experiment conducted with a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens, we find that increased ideological differences between political figures produce increasingly polarized affective evaluations, and that these differences are especially large among respondents with stronger ideological commitments and higher levels of political interest. We provide further support for these findings in an observational study of citizens’ evaluations of the U.S. Senators from their state. We also find that the polarizing effects of ideological differences can be largely mitigated with biographical information about the public officials, which suggests that the pernicious consequences of ideological polarization can be overcome by focusing on matters other than political disagreement.     

The rights of (future) humans qua humans

Human rights are rights held “simply in virtue of humanity.” In unpacking this claim, we find that theories of human rights disclose (1) something about what we understand a minimally decent human life to be and (2) who we consider to belong within a community of rights-bearers. In this article, I address two interrelated questions: When and why do future persons have standing as rights-bearing members of a shared moral community? Are the rights held by future generations best expressed in the “greening” of existing rights or in a new distinctly environmental right? I argue that human rights theorists miss an important element of the human qua human if they take ecological embeddedness to be contingently rather than necessarily relevant to human rights. I therefore argue that there are reasons to favor a new distinctly environmental human right.     

Threats, institutions and regulation in common pool resources

Can bureaucracies respond to threats marked by both potentially high costs and fundamental uncertainty? Standard guidelines such as maximizing expected value to the society over a period of time may be ineffective; yet, state action is often most demanded for such situations. I argue that the precautionary principle of reserved rationality helps explain the ability of bureaucracies to choose appropriate actions under uncertainty. Such bureaucracies are empowered when there is sufficient informal institutional support for their expertise and the bureaucracy has the discretion to take necessary precautions. I draw historical information from the case of Singapore's regulation of the formerly common pool resource of water catchment areas. This case reveals decision making when it is not clear that the expected-value criterion would support action, as well as the importance of political and institutional support for such action.     

News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

Despite dramatic increases in available political information through cable television and the Internet, political knowledge and turnout have not changed noticeably. To explain this seeming paradox, I argue that greater media choice makes it easier for people to find their preferred content. People who like news take advantage of abundant political information to become more knowledgeable and more likely to turn out. In contrast, people who prefer entertainment abandon the news and become less likely to learn about politics and go to the polls. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of people's media content preference and include it in a representative opinion survey of 2,358 U.S. residents. Results show that content preference indeed becomes a better predictor of political knowledge and turnout as media choice increases. Cable TV and the Internet increase gaps in knowledge and turnout between people who prefer news and people who prefer entertainment.     

Clearer Cues,More Consistent Voters: A Benefit of Elite Polarization

Scholars typically argue that elite polarization has only negative consequences for American politics. I challenge this view by demonstrating that elite polarization, by clarifying where the parties stand on the issues of the day, causes ordinary voters to adopt more consistent attitudes. Scholars have made such claims in the past, but because only observational data has been available, demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship has proven to be difficult. I use original experiments to verify that there is a small but significant causal link between elite polarization and voter consistency. These findings have important normative implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization, the role of political parties in a modern democracy, and the standards scholars use to assess citizen competence and participation.     

Secularism vs. Post-Secularism: A Critical Examination of Cooke’s Post-Secular Alternative

In recent work, Maeve Cooke has criticised Jürgen Habermas’s post-metaphysical model in order to motivate an alternative “post-secular” conception of the state, which involves the replacement of the “institutional translation proviso” with the “nonauthoritarian reasoning requirement”. I provide a qualified defence of the Habermasian model by arguing that it does not lead to the kind of negative consequences regarding legitimacy and solidarity Cooke attributes to it. This, in turn, means that Cooke’s proposal for the secular foundation of political authority on a post-secular basis is insufficiently motivated. In the process, I argue that the point of departure for the debate about religion in the public sphere shared by both Habermas and Cooke – the picture of the “total” religious citizen – should be rejected because it presupposes an overly simplistic view of religions and religious identities.     

Elite communication and affective polarization among voters

How does elite communication influence affective polarization between partisan groups? Drawing on the literature on partisan source cues, we expect that communication from in- or outgroup party representatives will increase affective polarization. We argue that polarized social identities are reinforced by partisan source cues, which bias perceptions of elite communication and result in increased intergroup differentiation. Further, we expect that the effect of such source cues is greater for voters with stronger partisan affinities. To evaluate our hypotheses, we performed a survey experiment among about 1300 voters in Sweden. Our analyses show that individuals who received a factual political message with a source cue from an in- or outgroup representative exhibited higher affective polarization, especially when they already held strong partisan affinities. This suggests that political elites can increase affective polarization by reinforcing existing group identities, and that this occurs in conjunction with biased interpretation of elite communication. The results improve our understanding of how political elites can influence affective polarization and add to previous research on party cues and attitude formation by demonstrating that such source cues can also increase intergroup differentiation.     

What Do We Learn from Graduate Admissions Committees? A Multiple Rater, Latent Variable Model, with Incomplete Discrete and Continuous Indicators

What do we really know about applicants to graduate school?How much information is in an applicant's file? What do we learnby having graduate admissions committees read and score applicantfiles? In this article, I develop a statistical model for measuringapplicant quality, combining the information in the committeemembers' ordinal ratings with the information in applicants'GRE scores. The model produces estimates of applicant qualitypurged of the influence of committee members' preferences overostensibly extraneous applicant characteristics, such as genderand intended field of study. An explicitly Bayesian approachis adopted for estimation and inference, making it straightforwardto obtain confidence intervals not only on latent applicantquality but over rank orderings of applicants and the probabilityof belonging in a set of likely admittees. Using data from applicationsto a highly ranked political science graduate program, I showthat there is considerable uncertainty in estimates of applicantquality, making it impossible to make authoritative distinctionsas to quality among large portions of the applicant pool. Themultiple rater model I develop here is extremely flexible andhas applications in fields as diverse as judicial politics,legislative politics, international relations, and public opinion.