Presidential coattails, incumbency advantage, and open seats: A district-level analysis of the 1976–2000 U.S. House elections

This study extends the analysis of presidential coattails to the most recent U.S. House elections. Building upon previous research on this subject, it draws a clear distinction between open and incumbent-held seats and presents evidence about several measures of presidential coattails. In particular, the analysis attempts to estimate, controlling for incumbency, the strength of presidential coattails (the proportion of the vote received by a congressional candidate that is due to the presence of the presidential nominee on the ballot) and the effectiveness of a president's coattails (the number of districts gained or retained by a party because of the net influence of presidential candidates). The results show that, contrary to earlier findings and trends, the unique impact of presidential coattails in open seat races did not decline. The results also suggest that several representatives who played a very prominent role in crafting the Republican strategy to win back control of the House in 1994 were the beneficiaries of the coattail effect.     

Books in review

He is author of Reversing Language Shift; Yiddish: Turning to Life;and most recently, The Earliest Stage of Language Planning.     

Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization

Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with some individuals valuing and using academic research more than others. Furthermore, this relationship is complicated by the internal division between the political and administrative components of the public policy process.     

Elite Polarization and Public Opinion: How Polarization Is Communicated and Its Effects

Elite polarization has reshaped American politics and is an increasingly salient aspect of news coverage within the United States. As a consequence, a burgeoning body of research attempts to unravel the effects of elite polarization on the mass public. However, we know very little about how polarization is communicated to the public by news media. We report the results of one of the first content analyses to delve into the nature of news coverage of elite polarization. We show that such coverage is predominantly critical of polarization. Moreover, we show that unlike coverage of politics focused on individual politicians, coverage of elite polarization principally frames partisan divisions as rooted in the values of the parties rather than strategic concerns. We build on these novel findings with two survey experiments exploring the influence of these features of polarization news coverage on public attitudes. In our first study, we show that criticism of polarization leads partisans to more positively evaluate the argument offered by their non-preferred party, increases support for bi-partisanship, but ultimately does not change the extent to which partisans follow their party’s policy endorsements. In our second study, we show that Independents report significantly less political interest, trust, and efficacy when polarization is made salient and this is particularly evident when a cause of polarization is mentioned. These studies have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization—and how polarization is communicated—for public opinion and political behavior in democratic politics.     

Presence to Press: How Campaigns EarnLocal Media

Today’s campaigns have ample resources with which to influence the media, while plummeting revenue, readership, and reporting staffs make local newspapers more vulnerable than ever. This imbalance raises an important question: if a campaign invests more resources in an area, can it earn positive media coverage? In this article, I propose a strategic relationship between campaigns and local media. Newspapers offer campaigns credibility and exposure, while campaigns offer local newspapers easy-to-report stories that will appeal to their readers. Campaign messages are more impactful when communicated through the local press, so campaigns will try to influence local news coverage (when they have the resources to do so) by establishing a local presence. When newspapers are vulnerable, they should be more likely to accept campaign prompting and provide campaigns with positive earned media. I employ an original data set of newspaper content and campaign investment from the 2004 and 2008 elections. I utilize a within-state matched-pairs design of newspapers from the state of Florida and a detailed content analysis of stories from 21 randomly selected days from each election cycle. I find that regional campaign presence generates positive earned media, but only in smaller newspapers. This article contributes to the fields of campaign and media effects by demonstrating how campaigns’ calculated decisions influence the construction of local political news. It is the first study to describe the connection between the voter contact and campaigns’ earned local media strategy.     

Waldron, Waluchow and the Merits of Constitutionalism

In this article, I critically evaluate the positions of ProfessorsJeremy Waldron and W.J. Waluchow on the right-based merits ofentrenched constitutions and strong judicial review. I supportWaluchow in arguing that (i) prohibitions on the constitutionalentrenchment of rights and resultant prohibitions of strongjudicial review may be only superficially fair or democratic,since fair procedure alone can neither eliminate pre-existinginequalities nor ultimately take the autonomy vital to self-governanceseriously (whether individual or collective). Secondly, (ii)if deep dissensus fails to exist on all substantive mattersof rights, the constitutional entrenchment of rights combinedwith strong judicial review can indeed be achieved fairly. Ithen propose that (iii) the anti-constitutionalist concern aboutbeing governed by the ‘dead hand of the past’ isself-refuting, for the alternative is simply another constrainton autonomy. While this is largely consistent with Waluchow'sposition vis-à-vis Waldron's majoritarianism, I end byexpressing serious concerns regarding whether the common law(and the ‘constitutional morality’ that Waluchowclaims can be derived from it) can act as a sufficiently robustbasis for the protection of liberal and egalitarian rights.     

Use of the SIRS in Compensation Cases: An Examination of Its Validity and Generalizability

The Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; Rogers et al., Structured interview of reported symptoms (SIRS) and professional manual, 1992) is a well-validated psychological measure for the assessment of feigned mental disorders (FMD) in clinical, forensic, and correctional settings. Comparatively little work has evaluated its usefulness in compensation and disability contexts. The present study examined SIRS data from 569 individuals undergoing forensic neuropsychiatric examinations for the purposes of workers’ compensation, personal injury, or disability proceedings. Using bootstrapping comparisons, three primary groups were identified: FMD, feigned cognitive impairment (FCI), genuine-both (GEN-Both) that encompasses both genuine disorders (GEN-D) and genuine-cognitive presentation (GEN-C). Consistent with the SIRS main objective, very large effect sizes (M Cohen’s d = 1.94) were observed between FMD and GEN-Both groups. Although not intended for this purpose, moderate to large effect sizes (M d = 1.13) were found between FCI and GEN-Both groups. An important consideration is whether SIRS results are unduly affected by common diagnoses or clinical conditions. Systematic comparisons were performed based on common disorders (major depressive disorder, PTSD, and other anxiety disorders), presence of a cognitive disorder (dementia, amnestic disorder, or cognitive disorder NOS), or intellectual deficits (FSIQ < 80). Generally, the magnitude of differences on the SIRS primary scales was small and nonsignificant, providing evidence of the SIRS generalizability across these diagnostic categories. Finally, the usefulness of the SIRS improbable failure-revised (IF-R) scale was tested as a FCI screen. Although it has potential in ruling out genuine cases, the IF-R should not be used as a feigning screen.

How the Public Defines Terrorism

Every time a major violent act takes place in the United States, a public debate erupts as to whether it should be considered terrorism. Political scientists have offered a variety of conceptual frameworks, but have neglected to explore how ordinary citizens understand terrorism, despite the central role the public plays in our understanding of the relationship between terrorism and government action in the wake of violence. We synthesize components of both scholarly definitions and public debates to formulate predictions for how various attributes of incidents affect the likelihood they are perceived as terrorism. Combining a conjoint experiment with machine learning techniques and automated content analysis of media coverage, we show the importance not only of the type and severity of violence, but also the attributed motivation for the incident and social categorization of the actor. The findings demonstrate how the language used to describe violent incidents, for which the media has considerable latitude, affects the likelihood the public classifies incidents as terrorism.     

The National Context of Wicked Problems: Comparing Policies on Gun Violence in the US,Canada, and Australia

Scholars and practitioners have always been dogged by problems that are so complex that no practical solution appears to be possible. These have been referred to in the academic literature as “wicked” problems. However, it is possible that a problem’s “wickedness” depends in part on its context and on the vantage point of the observer, meaning that at least some aspects of wickedness can be thought of as being relative rather than absolute. In this article, the complex policy problem of gun control is examined across multiple national contexts to show how a problem that is perceived as being wicked in one jurisdiction can be seen as manageable in another.