Does the Ideological Proximity Between Candidates and Voters Affect Voting in U.S. House Elections?

Do citizens hold congressional candidates accountable for their policy positions? Recent studies reach different conclusions on this important question. In line with the predictions of spatial voting theory, a number of recent survey-based studies have found reassuring evidence that voters choose the candidate with the most spatially proximate policy positions. In contrast, most electoral studies find that candidates’ ideological moderation has only a small association with vote margins, especially in the modern, polarized Congress. We bring clarity to these discordant findings using the largest dataset to date of voting behavior in congressional elections. We find that the ideological positions of congressional candidates have only a small association with citizens’ voting behavior. Instead, citizens cast their votes “as if” based on proximity to parties rather than individual candidates. The modest degree of candidate-centered spatial voting in recent Congressional elections may help explain the polarization and lack of responsiveness in the contemporary Congress.     

Kazin’s Trilling: A Cold War Portrait

This essay describes the eminent Americanist, critic, and New York intellectual, Alfred Kazin’s creation of a Lionel Trilling “character” in his 1978 autobiography, New York Jew, and his use of that character to critique significant features of the country’s Cold War literary culture. Among these are: the narrowing and hardening of intellectual discourse in a cultural-political climate dominated by the “liberal consensus,” the discrediting of the progressive impulse in American writing, the subordination of “class” to “culture” in evaluations of American writers, and the changing status of Jews and Jewish writers in post-war America. Tapping into strong personal feelings, Kazin creates in Trilling a harsh, thoughtful and compelling portrait of an era.     

Missions Impossible: Prospects and Planning in American Higher Education

Most colleges and universities in the United States face serious questions about missions, money, and morale in the 21st century. Some recent excellent books are useful for showing divergent perspectives on these problems. To one extreme, an historian tends to see that lack of planning has been an unexpected, enduring positive force. To another extreme, a high profile state university president draws on innovations in structure to deal with changes in demographics and academic fields. This review essay provides a balanced exploration of the disparate approaches, leading to the conclusion that American higher education is in need of a substantive "New Deal" in purposes and policies.     

What is Issue Ownership and How Should We Measure It?

Recently, the concept of issue ownership has attracted increasing attention by students of electoral behaviour as well as party competition. However, both the definition and measurement of issue ownership—often drawn from Petrocik’s seminal 1996-article—is unclear. This constitutes a serious drawback to the further development and understanding of issue ownership itself and its purported effects. The paper addresses these problems by, first, establishing a definition of issue ownership at the individual level. On this basis, the standard ‘which party is best at handling issue X’ measure of issue ownership is assessed. The analyses using experiments embedded in a nationally representative panel survey indicate that the measure lacks validity and is partially redundant. Consequently, its replacement with a better performing alternative is recommended.     

Judging the “Vapid and Hollow Charade”: Citizen Evaluations and the Candor of U.S. Supreme Court Nominees

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been famously called a “vapid and hollow charade” by Elena Kagan. Indeed, perceptions of nominees’ refusal to answer questions about pending cases, prominent political issues, or give any hint of their ideological leanings have become a cornerstone of the modern confirmation process. We investigate the extent to which this reticence to speak of their ideological views, or candor, influences how individuals evaluate the nominee. To this end, we present the results of a survey experiment which examines how support for a hypothetical Supreme Court nominee is affected by information, especially when a nominee is presented to be very forthright or very reticent in answering ideological questions during the confirmation hearings. We find that while partisan compatibility with the president is the main determinant of support for a nominee, nominees who refuse to answer ideological questions can bolster support from respondents who would not support them on partisan grounds. We supplement these findings with observational state-level support data from real nominees over the last 40 years.     

Linking Race-Based Perceptions of Gangs to Criminals and Athletes

This articles uses the work of Pyrooz and Densley as a springboard for a larger discussion of race-based perceptions from gangs to criminals to athletes. It concludes by showcasing how perceptions do not always equate with reality and the consequences of doing so.     

Is Antifa a Terrorist Group?

Starting in 2016, a number of protests and physical confrontations aimed at individuals and groups associated with right wing politics in the United States have been attributed to an ill-defined entity called “antifa”: short for anti-fascist. A high profile example took place in Charlottseville, Virginia on August 11-12, 2017. During two days of conflict and violence, anti right wing protesters clashed with right wing supporters. During the second day of the confrontation, a right-wing supporter drove a car into a crowd of protesters, killing one person and injuring 35 others. While many antifa supporters see it as a defense against right wing extremism, some on the right view supporters instead as terrorists. I tackle these issues in this essay by applying the guidelines of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to determine whether the actions by antifa supporters during the Charlottesville incident consitute terrrorism. I conclude that while the events share many characteristics of terrorist attacks, they do not include all of the elements of terrorism required by the GTD. I also question whether antifa can be considered to constitute a “group” at this point in time. My essay highlights how complicated it is to distinghish terrorism from other forms of illegal violence.     

Antifa,Street Gangs,and the Importance of Group Processes

This essay reviews David Pyrooz and James Densley’s “On Public Protest, Violence, and Street Gangs” and raises new questions about the ways in which Antifa is similar to and different from social movements; the processes by which “factions within Antifa” become gangs; and the dynamic nature of relationships and interactions between and among violent and non-violent segments. It concludes with a note about the everchanging nature of social life and importance of flexibility in the design and execution of research in capturing this reality.