Does Political Advertising Persuade?

Well over $1 billion was spent on televised political advertising in the U.S. in 2004. Given the ubiquity of the 30 second spot, one might presume that ads must affect viewers’ vote choices. Somewhat surprisingly, though, scholars have yet to make much progress in confirming this claim. In this paper, we leverage a comprehensive dataset that tracks political ads in the nation’s top media markets and a survey of presidential and U.S. Senate voters in 2004. We ask whether exposure to presidential and Senate advertising influences voters’ evaluations of candidates and the choices that they make at the ballot box. In the end, we find considerable evidence that advertising persuades—and that its impact varies depending on the characteristics of the viewer.

Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure

Today, people have ample opportunity to engage in selective exposure, the selection of information matching their beliefs. Whether this is occurring, however, is a matter of debate. While some worry that people increasingly are seeking out likeminded views, others propose that newer media provide an increased opportunity for exposure to diverse views. In returning to the concept of selective exposure, this article argues that certain topics, such as politics, are more likely to inspire selective exposure and that research should investigate habitual media exposure patterns, as opposed to single exposure decisions. This study investigates whether different media types (newspapers, political talk radio, cable news, and Internet) are more likely to inspire selective exposure. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, evidence supports the idea that people’s political beliefs are related to their media exposure—a pattern that persists across media types. Over-time analyses suggest that people’s political beliefs motivate their media use patterns and that cable news audiences became increasingly politically divided over the course of the 2004 election.

The Weakness of Our Political Parties

Whatever else the 2008 presidential election may result in, we can be sure that it will only contribute further to the steadily declining role of political parties in American politics, and the myriad negative consequences arising from that decline.

Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?

Scholars and political observers have suggested that television has “personalized” voting behavior in American presidential elections by encouraging citizens to cast ballots on the basis of candidate image and personality. Though an oft-heard assertion, little solid evidence exists that this is true, and the reinvigoration of partisanship and the persistence of ideological conflict suggest personalization may be less pervasive than supposed. In this paper, I use National Election Studies data to examine whether voters are more concerned with candidates’ personal characteristics now than they were at the outset of the television era. I find, however, that voters are no more likely today to mention candidate personality as a reason for their vote choice than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, while personality affects voting behavior, its influence on candidate choice is not significantly larger than it was a half-century ago. The results are not contingent on exposure to television or political awareness and are insensitive to different measures of perceptions of candidate image. The findings are consistent with the resurgence of partisan voting in American elections and suggest that some concerns about TV’s effects on political judgment are exaggerated.

The Freedom of Expression in Global Perspective

This paper presents recent events including the Danish cartoon crisis occasion—a re-examination of John Stuart Mill’s argument for freedom of expression. Despite the appeal of liberalism, Mill’s philosophy had from the start been subject to intense criticism. The rise of political Islam opens a new phase in the debate; the difficulties pointed out by Mill’s critics are indicative of the obstacles that liberalism still faces.

Elements of Negativity: Volume and Proportion in Exposure to Negative Advertising

Recent studies contend that negative advertising benefits voters. However, these studies only measure the volume of negativity in campaigns, often relying on survey data on voter behavior coupled with estimates of negative ad exposure. Theories of information processing indicate that the proportion of negativity may yield influences spanning a range of judgments related to candidate construction and voting behavior, yielding effects that are different from the influence of sheer volume. Thus, I argue that the proportion of negativity also has an influence, and that it is likely more often to be detrimental. I examine this claim using survey data and conclude that prevailing accounts of the effects of negative advertising campaigns are underspecified and, as a result, potentially overly optimistic. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Limits of Political Citizenship

Policy makers tend to focus on the extension of citizenship as the primary means by which new populations become incorporated into a society. Although acquiring formal citizenship is necessary in order to participate in many aspects of a state's civic, social, and political life, the extension of legal citizenship is far from a guarantee for full membership. Instead of focusing exclusively on naturalizing immigrants, we need to consider T.H. Marshall's three spheres of citizenship—the civil, political, and social. By extending social elements of citizenship prior to or at the same time as we extend other benefits, we will move towards more complete citizenship for and greater civil and political engagement among all residents in our society—non-citizens, naturalized, and native-born, alike.

Are There Any Global Egalitarian Rights?

This article considers whether or not there are any global egalitarian rights through a critical examination of the political philosophy of Ronald Dworkin. Although Dworkin maintains that equal concern is the special and indispensable virtue of sovereigns and the hallmark of a fraternal political community, it is far from obvious whether the demands of equality stop at state borders. While some scholars in the field—most notably Thomas Pogge—posit the existence of negative rights in relation to social and economic inequalities at the global level, here I try to defend the existence of positive global egalitarian rights by appealing to Dworkin’s own two principles of ethical individualism. I also set out the framework for a version of what I call global luck egalitarianism based on Dworkin’s equality of resources and try to respond to David Miller’s charge that comparative principles of justice do not apply at the global level.

Collective Action and Citizen Responses to Global Warming

This paper expands the relevance of the collective interest model of mass political action to explain collective-action behavior in the context of global warming and climate change. The analysis is an attempt to answer Ostrom’s call for a behavioral model of collective action that can be generalized beyond political protest to other collective-action problems. We elaborate, specify, and empirically test a collective interest model approach to citizen policy support, environmental political participation, and environmental behavior related to the issue of global warming. Key elements of the collective interest model—perceived risk, personal efficacy, and environmental values—are found to be directly, and positively, related to support of government policies and personal behaviors that affect global warming. We also discuss the links between the collective interest model and other important approaches to political behavior.

Antwort auf die Replik von Marc Bühlmann,Wolfgang Merkel,Lisa Müller und Bernhard Weßels zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Wie lässt sich Demokratie am besten messen? Zum Forumsbeitrag von Thomas Müller und Susanne Pickel

Ohne Zusammenfassung * Die vier Autor(inn)en arbeiten in einem gemeinsamen Forschungsprojekt des NCCR Democracy (vom Schweizerischen Nationalfonds finanziertes National Centre of Competence in Research: Challenges to Democracy in the 21^st Century) und des WZB an einem „Demokratiebarometer“ für die 30 OECD-Staaten, das die Ignoranz der 0-Varianz bei Polity und Freedom House aufkl?ren will.

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The Motivated Processing of Political Arguments

We report the results of an experiment designed to replicate and extend recent findings on motivated political reasoning. In particular, we are interested in disconfirmation biases—the tendency to counter-argue or discount information with which one disagrees—in the processing of political arguments on policy issues. Our experiment examines 8 issues, including some of local relevance and some of national relevance, and manipulates the presentation format of the policy arguments. We find strong support for our basic disconfirmation hypothesis: people seem unable to ignore their prior beliefs when processing arguments or evidence. We also find that this bias is moderated by political sophistication and strength of prior attitude. We do not find, however, that argument type matters, suggesting that motivated biases are quite robust to changes in argument format. Finally, we find strong support for the polarization of attitudes as a consequence of biased processing.

Stuck with Virtue in Our Pro-Life Future

Callahan is wrong to be pro-death, but he’s right to say that to live well—or for society to have a real future—we have to care about more than mere life. Futile attempts to stop the pursuit of extreme personal prolongevity are contrary to our rights-based way of life. It’s also contrary to human love and dignity to regard the old as a threat.

Rethinking the Relationship between Religion and Political Tolerance in the US

While there has been numerous empirical works on political tolerance in the United States, many of these studies have not: addressed the role of religion, used adequate measures of religion, incorporated advances in the measurement of political tolerance, and/or included all the psychological and political predictors of political tolerance. Correcting these deficiencies, I present and test a religious model of political tolerance utilizing structural equation modeling. I find that the negative relationship typically demonstrated between both religious commitment and doctrinal orthodoxy to political tolerance does not manifest and that religion is insignificant vis-à-vis political and psychological determinants of political tolerance.

When Did Health Care Become a Campaign Issue?

Most people mistakenly assume that health care first became a major political issue in 1945 because President Harry S. Truman’s special address to Congress on Nov. 19 of that year marked the first time a sitting president publicly endorsed a national health-care program. But the question of whether—or to what extent—it is the responsibility of government to subsidize health care for its citizens has been around for a much longer amount of time. Now that health care has become a major focus of domestic political debate, especially in light of the impending presidential election, this article, modified from an entry in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Campaigns, Elections, & Electoral Behavior (Sage Publications), serves to inform the reader of the origins and history of health care as a campaign issue.

Mobilizing the Seldom Voter: Campaign Contact and Effects in High-Profile Elections

Decades of research suggests that campaign contact together with an advantageous socioeconomic profile increases the likelihood of casting a ballot. Measurement and modeling handicaps permit a lingering uncertainty about campaign communication as a source of political mobilization however. Using data from a uniquely detailed telephone survey conducted in a pair of highly competitive 2002 U.S. Senate races, we further investigate who gets contacted, in what form, and with what effect. We conclude that even in high-profile, high-dollar races the most important determinant of voter turnout is vote history, but that holding this variable constant reveals a positive effect for campaign communication among “seldom” voters, registered but rarely active participants who—ironically—are less likely than regular or intermittent voters to receive such communication.

Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms

This article offers a thorough analysis of the unintended impact economic sanctions have on political repression—referred to in this study as the level of the government respect for democratic freedoms and human rights. We argue that economic coercion is a counterproductive policy tool that reduces the level of political freedoms in sanctioned countries. Instead of coercing the sanctioned regime into reforming itself, sanctions inadvertently enhance the regime’s coercive capacity and create incentives for the regime’s leadership to commit political repression. Cross-national time series data support our argument, confirming that the continued use of economic sanctions (even when aimed at promoting political liberalization and respect for human rights) will increase the level of political repression. These findings suggest that both scholars and policy makers should pay more attention to the externalities caused by economic coercion.

Symposium: Part I: Public Intellectuals Then and Now

The French political thinker Raymond Aron (1905–1983) provides the imitable model of the political philosopher as civic educator. Writing in an age of extreme ideological polarization, he aimed at a truly balanced approach to historical and political understanding. In a series of writings from the late 1930’s onward, Aron defended a principled middle way between Machiavellian cynicism and the “abstract moralism” so evident in the public engagement of modern intellectuals. Aron argued for the renewal of liberalism on the foundation of a broad-based “democratic conservatism” and displayed remarkable lucidity regarding the totalitarian temptation. This paper explores this distinctive notion of “democratic conservatism”—equally distant from revolutionary romanticism and reactionary nostalgia—that guided Aron’s public engagement over a fifty-year period and that was central to his idea of the political responsibility of intellectuals.

Tourism,Development, and Media

Tourism has long figured in municipal and state-wide plans for economic development and revitalization. Such plans often articulate themes subsequently used to organize tours, advertising campaigns, and merchandising. In the 1990s, some residents of Roswell, New Mexico, tried to build tourism using typical southwestern themes. Others capitalized on Roswell’s unique association with an alleged crash of an extraterrestrial craft. Early support from the New Mexico Tourism Department (NMTD) facilitated the success of Roswell’s UFO-based tourism. In 2007, NMTD launched its own alien-based advertising campaign promoting New Mexico as a tourist destination.

Political Disagreement in Context: The Conditional Effect of Neighborhood Context, Disagreement and Political Talk on Electoral Participation

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context moderates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person’s relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion.