Do Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Minority Children Depend on Their Age? Evidence From a Public Housing Natural Experiment

We analyze data from a natural experiment involving Denver public housing that quasirandomly assigns low-income Latino and African American youth to neighborhoods. Intent-to-treat and treatment-on-treated models reveal substantial effects of neighborhood socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and safety domains on youth and young adult educational, employment, and fertility outcomes. Effects are contingent on when a youth was first assigned to public housing and the neighborhood characteristic in question. Benefits from neighbors of higher occupational prestige are stronger if a child begins experiencing them at a younger age, whereas negative consequences of neighborhood crime are only manifested for teens. Neighborhood effect sizes apparently depend on the interaction among exposure duration, disruption effects of mobility, and developmental stage-specific differences in vulnerability to the given neighborhood effect mechanism operative. Our results hold powerful and provocative implications for where assisted housing should be developed and how applicants should be assigned to neighborhoods.     

The What,Where, and When of Place-Based Housing Policy’s Neighborhood Effects

Ever-scarce affordable housing production resources, in addition to their primary function of providing housing for those in need, are increasingly enlisted for the dual goals of strengthening distressed communities and increasing access to higher opportunity neighborhoods. Information on spillovers can inform investment decisions over time and across communities. We leverage recent, high-quality research on neighborhood effects of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) production, synthesizing evidence according to neighborhood context. We also summarize the evidence on project features moderating impacts of publicly subsidized, place-based rental housing, in general. We conclude that context matters. Producing LIHTC housing in distressed neighborhoods positively impacts the surrounding neighborhood—in terms of modest property value gains and increased safety. By contrast, higher opportunity neighborhoods experience small property value reductions, and no impacts on crime. Big questions remain, however, about impact heterogeneity—via tenant mix, property design, and ongoing property management, as examples—with the scarcity of systematic data representing one of the field’s largest constraints.     

Consequences of Forced Residential Relocation: Early Impacts of Urban Renewal Strategies on Forced Relocatees’ Housing Opportunities and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Policymakers have actively pursued urban renewal and dispersal programs to deconcentrate poverty in urban neighborhoods. Relocation strategies lead to new housing opportunities and may encourage employment opportunities for relocated residents if resourceful contacts and job information become more easily available after the move. This study provides an innovative evaluation of the early impacts of involuntary relocation programs in the Netherlands on the housing careers, earnings and employment rates of forced relocatees. It establishes a quasi-experimental design by employing unique longitudinal individual-level population registry data from Statistics Netherlands: forced relocatees are tracked and matched to a control group consisting of similar residents that were not forced to move. A difference-in-difference design shows that forced relocatees are living in less deprived neighborhoods after the move. However, we find no conclusive evidence that this upgrade in housing leads to more socioeconomic opportunities for the forced relocatees.     

The Effects of ‘Social Expectation’ on the Development of Civil Society in Japan

The European Union (EU) stands out among the major trading powers for its significant and dramatic response to new demands for access and participation in its external trade policymaking process. A spectacular range of mechanisms designed to increase the involvement of civil society organizations, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have been introduced recently. This article examines whether these new political opportunities in the EU have an impact on the trade processes and policy outcomes by revisiting a case that has been celebrated as indicative of the potential of global civil society to promote social justice—the Access to Medicines campaign. The findings show that although NGOs were instrumental in providing education, raising awareness, and giving a voice to broader societal concerns about the social and health-related aspects of the proposed trade deals, their impact on policy outcomes was limited. EU policymakers did not pursue policies that placed public health concerns over stringent intellectual property right protection, despite NGO involvement in the external trade policymaking process. I argue that the robust liberal and legal epistemic foundations of the international trade regime effectively hamstrung NGO efforts to move the external trade policies in more sustainable and just directions. These findings have broad implications for the power of epistemes and their ability to enable and delimit NGO agency in global economic governance.     

Conformity in Groups: The Effects of Others’ Views on Expressed Attitudes and Attitude Change

Two experiments demonstrate the powerful influence of others’ views on individual attitudes and attitude expression. Those around us can influence our views through persuasion and information exchange, but the current research hypothesizes that exposure to alternate views even without discussion or exchange of persuasive arguments can also alter what attitudes are expressed, and even generate long term shifts in attitudes. In an initial study, naïve participants were asked their attitudes on a range of standard survey items privately, publicly in a group with trained confederates, and again privately following the group setting. Findings indicate significant attitudinal conformity, which was most pronounced when participants were faced with a unanimous (versus non-unanimous) group. The group experience continued to influence participants’ views when they were again asked their views in private. A second experiment varied whether participants heard views from live confederates or via computer, demonstrating that these effects could not be attributed only to issue-relevant information provided by or inferred from group members, and that attitude change persisted long after participants had left the laboratory. In summary, when people are asked their attitudes publicly, they adjust their responses to conform to those around them, and this attitude change persists privately, even weeks later. Accordingly, such purely social processes of attitude change may be every bit as important as more traditional cognitive informational processes in understanding where people’s political attitudes come from, and how they may be changed.     

When Will Public Officials Listen? A Vignette Experiment on the Effects of Input Legitimacy on Public Officials’ Willingness to Use Public Participation

Public officials can be reluctant to use citizens’ input in decision-making, especially when turnout is low and participants are unrepresentative of the wider population. Using Fritz Scharpf's democratic legitimacy approach, the authors conducted a survey-based vignette experiment to examine how the input legitimacy of participatory processes affects (1) public officials’ willingness to use public participation in administrative decision-making, (2) their assessment of the quality of the policy decision, and (3) their anticipation of popular support for the policy outcome. The study shows that turnout and participants’ representativeness have a positive and significant effect on public officials’ attitudes toward public participation. Specifically, participants’ representativeness influences public officials’ willingness to use citizens’ inputs more than turnout.     

Variability or Moderation? The Effects of Ambivalence on Political Opinions

Prior research theorizes that ambivalence makes opinions about an object unreliable in the sense of being haphazard, unpredictable, or variable. As such, ambivalence is a prominent explanation for seeming nonattitudes in opinion surveys. This study proposes an alternative account of the effects of ambivalence on attitudes. It posits that people who are ambivalent about an issue split the difference between their conflicting considerations by taking a position near the middle of the bipolar opinion scale, which reflects a moderate attitude. I show how the widely-used method of modeling the supposed variability of ambivalent opinions conflates variability and moderation. This problem is addressed by modeling variability and moderation of attitudes separately, without this confound. Using this strategy in analyses involving four datasets and three policy domains, the results show that ambivalence is associated with moderate, not variable, attitudes. Ambivalence does not increase the variability of opinions but, rather, moves them quite predictably toward the middle of the response scale. The results recast our understanding of the effects of ambivalence on political opinions and raise questions about the ability of ambivalence to explain nonattitudes in surveys.     

The Effects of détente on the two German states

In non-presidential systems the head of state is either a monarch or a president elected directly by the voters or by an assembly. The political powers of heads of state in non-presidential systems vary from being powerful to being just a symbolic figure of representation and integration. In response to the disastrous experience of the Weimar Republic, in the Federal Republic the choice fell on the latter with the result that the political powers of the President were significantly reduced. Hence, his role is usually described as largely ceremonial and representative and he is expected to be a figure of integration rather than divisiveness. However, the role of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany seems to have changed significantly under the Presidency of Horst Köhler who appears to have made considerable use of his powers and decisively exercised his role as one of the veto players of the German political system. This article examines to what extent the German Presidency has indeed undergone an increased politicisation under Horst Köhler since 2004.     

Are Voters Mobilized by a ‘Friend-and-Neighbor’ on the Ballot? Evidence from a Field Experiment

In his seminal work on Southern politics, V.O. Key observed that voters disproportionately support local candidates at the ballot box. While empirical analyses have confirmed “friends-and-neighbors” voting across numerous electoral contexts, no one has directly examined voter turnout as the mechanism linking place of residence to vote choice. We argue that place of residence is a social identity that incentivizes citizens to turn out to vote on behalf of the local candidate. We test this mobilization mechanism using a randomized field experiment conducted during a 2014 state legislative primary election. Our results show that county ties between candidates and voters likely boost turnout. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the importance of place identity for turnout decisions in low-information elections.     

Transforming Scotland's Public-sector Housing through Community Ownership: The Reterritorialisation of Housing Governance?

In recent decades, UK public-sector housing has increasingly been problematised, with government solutions focusing on modernising the sector by transferring ownership of the housing from the public to the voluntary sector through stock transfer. This promises to transform the organisation of social housing by devolving control from local government to housing organisations located within, and governed by, the communities in which they are based. The Scottish Executive's national housing policy of community ownership is the epitome of this governmental rationale par excellence. Drawing upon empirical research on the 2003 Glasgow housing stock transfer, this paper argues that, whilst community ownership is underpinned by governmental rationales that seek to establish community as the new territory of social housing governance, the realisation of these political ambitions has been marred by emergent central–local conflict. Paradoxically, the fragmentation of social housing through the break-up of municipal provision, co-exists with continued political centralisation within the state apparatus.     

Where Does Location Affordability Drive Residential Mobility? An Analysis of Origin and Destination Communities

Abstract

Despite an overall decrease in residential mobility after the 2007 housing crisis, many households, particularly those that are low income, continue to move in pursuit of a better life. Traditional theories of residential mobility suggest that mobility will occur when housing and transportation costs are cumulatively greater than the cost of moving to a new location. At the same time, the influence of these factors is not likely to be uniform across geographic contexts or for moves up or down the metropolitan hierarchy. Our analysis examines how well affordability measures explain patterns of county-level residential mobility. Specifically, we contrast conventional measures of affordability focused on the ratio of income to housing expense with measures of location affordability that factor in both housing and transportation costs. We find that whereas households tend to move from lower to higher cost locations, transit affordability at the destination plays an important role in mobility decisions.     

Towards a Gender-Equal Bundestag? The Impact of Electoral Rules on Women’s Representation

Cross-sectional research designs show that proportional representation (PR) tends to produce more equitable outcomes in terms of gender representation. While existing research provides valuable insights into the covariates of gender representation, such cross-sectional designs fail to provide a definitive test of the influence of electoral rules both over time and in the case of mixed systems. Addressing this gap, this article proposes a longitudinal research design using the case of Germany, because half the Bundestag’s seats are allotted through majoritarian first-past-the-post methods, while the other half are allotted through proportional methods. The main findings point towards heavy interaction between the two electoral tiers that becomes visible in party quotas, double nominations and increased competitiveness of female candidates.     

The New White Flight?: The Effects of Political Appeals to Latinos on White Democrats

Political Behavior - One explanation for the post-1965 shift in the vote choice of White Americans posits that it was driven by a shift in the racial imagery of the two major parties. The growing...     

“The Big Mo”: The Early Days of Housing Policy Debate

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary year of Housing Policy Debate, this article details the circumstances and the political climate of the late 1980s that led to the origin of this journal. I review the influence and the confluence of the National Housing Task Force of 1987, Jim Rouse (CEO of the Rouse Corporation), the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, and David O. Maxwell, then the chairman of Fannie Mae, to create the Office of Housing Research (OHR) within Fannie Mae. The article also highlights the role of the National Housing Task Force and the first Fannie Mae Housing Conference in expanding high-quality housing research in the 1990s through the MIT Housing Policy Project and the research and convening efforts of the OHR in Fannie Mae, which included this journal and a continuance of the Annual Housing Conference thereafter.     

The impact of anti-democratic actions on a country’s international image,as projected in the foreign press and on social media: The case of Israel

The notion of soft power suggests that actions that contradict international standards will harm a country’s international image. The current study focuses on the impact of anti-democratic action taken by Israel during 2015 on its international image, as projected in the foreign press (N = 4,425 articles) and on social media (N = 23,797 tweets). The findings indicate that anti-democratic actions did not have an immediate or long-term effect on the tone of coverage toward Israel, while other factors, such as the circumstances and the topics discussed, did influence the tone of coverage.     

Do Corrective Effects Last? Results from a Longitudinal Experiment on Beliefs Toward Immigration in the U.S.

Political Behavior - Although interest in the efficacy of efforts to correct false beliefs has peaked in recent years, the extent to which corrective effects endure over time remains understudied....     

Counterterrorism Policies and Attitudes Towards Out-Groups: Evidence from a Survey Experiment on Citizens’ Attitudes Towards Wiretapping

Political Behavior - Terrorism often leads to increased stigmatization of groups perceived as “out-groups”. We test two versions of out-group theory and ask whether citizens clearly...     

Changing your political mind: The impact of a metaphor on citizens’ representations and preferences for federalism

Federalism is often presented through metaphors, but little is known about the impact of such metaphors. Two experiments were conducted in Belgium presenting federalism as Tetris – with control and treatment groups – in order to grasp the influence of this metaphor. The first experiment reveals that being exposed to text with the Tetris metaphor influences respondents’ representations of federalism towards a more institutional representation and towards more regional autonomy. The second experiment confirms the importance of the text, and more specifically of the metaphor, if political knowledge is taken into account. Respondents with a lower level of political knowledge are those who are influenced by the metaphor, whereas respondents with a higher level are not. Therefore, framing the future of Belgian federalism using the metaphor of Tetris does matter: it affects both individuals’ representations of the federalization process and, consequently, their preferences vis-à-vis the institutional future of the country.     

The Priming Effect of Corruption and Bureaucracy Bashing on Citizens’ Perceptions of an Agency’s Performance

Priming theories suggest that negative stories or events can affect how citizens feel about public organizations. However, research concerning the priming impact of both corruption and bureaucracy bashing—two relevant topics today—on how citizens perceive the performance of agencies is lacking. To close this lacuna in the literature, an experimental survey was conducted where respondents in the United States were randomly assigned to one of five performance vignettes. The results demonstrate that when participants were assigned to the vignettes containing the corruption and bureaucracy bashing cues, perceptions of performance were lower. This finding is consistent with priming theories. Moreover, differences within the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes as well as between the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes were not found. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the article.     

Ties That Bind? Effects of Inter‐level Mobility on MP Attitude to Local Government in Two Scandinavian Countries

The aim of this article is to examine to what degree the movement of elected representatives from local to central level affects the outlook of the ones who move ‘upwards’. Two Scandinavian countries – Sweden and Norway – serve as comparative cases. In both countries a high share of members of parliament (MPs) has served as local councillors before being elected to parliament. According to conventional wisdom, this high share of inter‐level mobility would strengthen ties between government tiers. Hence, parliamentarians with local political background are assumed to have greater confidence in the capacities of local government. It turns out that Sweden corresponds to this assumption, while the Norwegian results to some extent contradict the same hypothesis. In the Norwegian case, MPs who previously held office as local councillors are actually more sceptical towards local government than MPs with no experience from local politics. In the last section of the article a number of explanations for the disparate findings are being discussed. For one, it appears to be a higher level of controversy related to local government in Norway than in Sweden. In turn, this accounts for some of the scepticism being expressed by the very MPs who themselves have held local office. Second, greater financial dependency in the Norwegian case creates incentives for strategic action which, in turn, might undermine confidence between levels of government. These are strategies that are harder to conceal vis‐à‐vis MPs who have themselves gained experience from local politics.