Path-to-Citizenship or Deportation? How Elite Cues Shaped Opinion on Immigration in the 2010 U.S. House Elections

The ascendency of immigration as an issue in elections has been concomitant with massive increases in the Hispanic population in the U.S. We examine how immigration cues prompt greater or lesser levels of restrictionist sentiment among individuals, showing demographic context conditions the effect of candidates cues. Using data from the 2010 U.S. House elections, we illustrate cues presented in new destination states—states with massive increases in the size of the Hispanic population from 1990 to 2010—have a larger impact on individuals’ immigration preferences than cues presented in non-new destination contexts. We show candidates with more extreme immigration positions are more likely to prioritize the issue of immigration in their campaigns, suggesting campaign prioritization of immigration has a directional cue. We conclude these directional cues from Republican candidates in new destination contexts move individual attitudes toward restrictionist preferences.     

Who Votes for the Future? Information,Expectations, and Endogeneity in Economic Voting

Voters’ four primary evaluations of the economy—retrospective national, retrospective pocketbook, prospective national, and prospective pocketbook—vary in the cognitive steps necessary to link economic outcomes to candidates in elections. We hypothesize that the effects of the different economic evaluations on vote choice vary with a voter’s ability to acquire information and anticipate the election outcome. Using data from the 1980 through 2004 US presidential elections, we estimate a model of vote choice that includes all four economic evaluations as well as information and uncertainty moderators. The effects of retrospective evaluations on vote choice do not vary by voter information. Prospective economic evaluations weigh in the decisions of the most informed voters, who rely on prospective national evaluations when they believe the incumbent party will win and on prospective pocketbook evaluations when they are uncertain about the election outcome or believe that the challenger will win. Voters who have accurate expectations about who will win the election show the strongest relationship between their vote choice and sociotropic evaluations of the economy, both retrospective and prospective. Voters whose economic evaluations are most likely to be endogenous to vote choice show a weaker relationship between economic evaluations and their votes than the voters who appear to be more objective in their assessments of the election. Economic voting is broader and more prospective than previously accepted, and concerns about endogeneity in economic evaluations are overstated.     

Why do Legislators Skip Votes? Position Taking Versus Policy Influence

A legislator’s duty is to vote on legislation, yet legislators routinely miss votes. Existing studies of absenteeism have focused on the US Congress, producing useful but partial explanations. We provide added insight by examining absenteeism in American state legislatures. Our data include 2,916,471 individual votes cast by 4392 legislators from 64 legislative chambers. This rich, multistate dataset produces insights that build on and sometimes conflict with Congressional research. We use a multilevel logistic model with nested and crossed random effects to estimate the influence of variables at five different levels. In particular, we investigate whether state legislators miss unimportant votes or important votes. Contrary to what Congressional studies have found, we find that state legislators avoid participating in close or major votes, favoring reelection concerns over policy influence. We also find that state-to-state variations in legislative professionalism—in particular, the length of the session—affect absenteeism, with shorter sessions leading to higher absenteeism.     

Explaining Public Support for Counterproductive Homelessness Policy: The Role of Disgust

Federal, state, and city governments spend substantial funds on programs intended to aid homeless people, and such programs attract widespread public support. In recent years, however, state and local governments have increasingly enacted policies, such as bans on panhandling and sleeping in public, that are counterproductive to alleviating homelessness. Yet these policies also garner substantial support from the public. Given that programs aiding the homeless are so popular, why are these counterproductive policies also popular? We argue that disgust plays a key role in the resolution of this puzzle. While disgust does not decrease support for aid policies or even generate negative affect towards homeless people, it motivates the desire for physical distance, leading to support for policies that exclude homeless people from public life. We test this argument using survey data, including a national sample with an embedded experiment. Consistent with these expectations, our findings indicate that those respondents who are dispositionally sensitive to disgust are more likely to support exclusionary policies, such as banning panhandling, but no less likely to support policies intended to aid homeless people. Furthermore, media depictions of the homeless that include disease cues activate disgust, increasing its impact on support for banning panhandling. These results help explain the popularity of exclusionary homelessness policies and challenge common perspectives on the role of group attitudes in public life.     

At the Nexus of Observational and Experimental Research: Theory,Specification, and Analysis of Experiments with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

Experimentalists are increasingly examining heterogeneous treatment effects, in which observed individual-level characteristics are hypothesized to moderate an experimental treatment effect. Such work places researchers at the nexus of experimental and observational approaches. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and statistical issues that can arise in testing such hypotheses. We note that inclusion of an observed (as opposed to randomly-assigned) moderator introduces the possibility of confounds that are commonplace in observational data analysis but too-easily ignored in experimental data analysis. We simulate several different data generating processes that include heterogeneous treatment effects, and we discuss the implications of various statistical models. We aim to provide researchers who examine heterogeneous treatment effects with background and advice that enable them to identify where common issues may arise and to develop research designs and implement statistical tests that will mitigate them.     

The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: Comparing the United States,United Kingdom,France and Germany

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts.     

Governance in the Age of Digital Media and Branding

The politicization of government communications requires intense control. Centralization of government power accompanies advances in information and communications technology, as political elites use branding strategy in an attempt to impose discipline on their messengers and on media coverage. The strategic appeal of public sector branding is that it replaces conflicting messages with penetrating message reinforcement. Among the notable features are central control, a marketing ethos, a master brand, communications cohesiveness, and message simplicity. Together these features work to conflate the party government and the public service, which perpetuates trends of centralization. Using Canada's Conservative government (2006–2015) as a case study, public sector branding explains the hyper control over government communications and demonstrates why these developments can be expected to last, regardless of which party or leader is in control.     

Shaping the Evolution of the Information Flow: The Centralizing Mechanisms in the Evolution of the North American Tobacco Quitline Consortium

The research reported here is an analysis of the evolution of the relationships that comprise a single public health network, focusing especially on the position of the network administrative organization (Provan and Kenis 2008 Provan, K. G. and P. Kenis. 2008. “Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18(2): 229–252.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the flow of knowledge among a large number of organizations providing similar services. Our study examines the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC), a multi-sector network that spans the US and Canada and whose members provide telephone-based tobacco cessation services to anyone interested in quitting smoking. Data were collected using web-based surveys at three different points of time. Implications are discussed for network organizing, for both theory and practice, focusing especially on the importance of the network administrative organization in shaping the evolution of the whole network information flow.     

The Characteristics and Unmet Housing Program Needs of Disabled HUD-Assisted Households

The mismatch between the housing needs of persons with a disability and the housing programs designed to accommodate those needs is an important housing policy concern. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsors several programs designed to improve the housing conditions of persons with a disability, but we know little about the characteristics of persons with a disability, among those receiving federal housing assistance, or the degree to which persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored housing programs that are designed to meet the needs of persons with a disability. Our study relies on administrative data from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau to address this research gap. We find that many persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored programs that are not designated for persons with a disability, even when disability accommodations have been requested, and a similarly large share of persons with a disability live in potentially eligible low-income households that do not receive HUD assistance.