Social media echo chambers and satisfaction with democracy among Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections

There is widespread evidence that individuals select information that supports their convictions and worldviews. This behavior yields the formation of echo chambers – environments in which an individual’s own political beliefs are repeated and amplified and dissenting opinions are screened out. Recent research demonstrates that social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter can facilitate this selection into homogenous networks. Using data from a representative nation-wide online survey, we consider the degree to which respondents’ social media networks resemble virtual echo chambers. We then analyze the effect of these social media echo chambers on satisfaction with democracy among Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the 2016 US elections. Our findings reveal that virtual echo chambers boost democratic satisfaction among Republicans but they do not have an effect on system support by self-identified Democrats. Our paper therefore adds to a growing literature linking online behaviors to mass attitudes about politics.     

One anthropologist’s answer to Glenn D. Paige’s question challenging peace studies

ABSTRACT

Glenn D. Paige pioneered in the revolutionary development of a far-reaching transformation of science, academia, and society from a killing to a nonkilling worldview, values, and attitudes. For six decades, anthropology has been accumulating scientific empirical evidence and rational arguments demonstrating that nonkilling societies exist, thereby rebutting the simplistic biological determinist myth that human nature inevitably and universally generates violence and war. Nevertheless, Hobbessians persist in their echo chamber advertising and celebrating the innate depravity of the human species as apologists for war and peace resisters. This systemic bias operates in synergy with the American industrial-military-media-academic complex and culture, the latter exemplified by a revealing comparison of war and football. With great intellectual courage and creative thinking, Paige critically challenges the anachronistic Hobbesian paradigm and offers a far more compelling and positive alternative for sustainable peace in the future.     

37 years with Keith T. Poole

This piece contains slightly revised remarks made at the conference honoring Keith T. Poole held at the University of Georgia in May, 2017. Poole’s major contributions are summarized.     

Extreme idealism and equilibrium in the Hotelling–Downs model of political competition

In the classic Hotelling–Downs model of political competition, no pure strategy equilibrium with three or more strategic candidates exists when the distribution of voters’ preferred policies is unimodal. I study the effect of introducing two idealist candidates to the model who are non-strategic (i.e., fixed to their policy platforms), while allowing for an unlimited number of strategic candidates. Doing so, I show that equilibrium is restored for a non-degenerate set of unimodal distributions. In addition, the equilibria have the following features: (1) the left-most and right-most candidates (i.e., extremists) are idealists; (2) strategic candidates never share their policy platforms, which instead are spread out across the policy space; and (3) if more than one strategic candidate enters, the distribution of voter preferences must be asymmetric. I also show that equilibria can accommodate idealist fringes of candidates toward the extremes of the political spectrum.     

Saying versus doing: a new donation method for measuring ideal points

Scaling methods pioneered by Poole and Rosenthal (Am J Polit Sci 29(2):357–384, 1985) redefined how scholars think about and estimate the ideologies of representatives seated in the US Congress. Those methods also have been used to estimate citizens’ ideologies. Whereas studies evaluating Congress typically use a behavioral measure, roll call votes, to estimate where representatives stand on the left-right ideological spectrum, those of the public most often have relied on survey data of stated, rather than revealed, preferences. However, measures of individuals’ preferences and, accordingly, estimates of their ideal points, may differ in important ways based on how preferences are elicited. In this paper, we elicit the same individuals’ preferences on the same 10 issues using two different methods: standard survey responses measured on a Likert scale and a donation exercise wherein individuals are forced to divide $1.50 between interest groups with diametrically opposed policy preferences. Importantly, expressing extreme views is costless under the former, but not the latter, method. We find that the type of elicitation method used is a significant predictor of individuals’ ideal points, and that the elicitation effect is driven primarily by Democratic respondents. Under the donation method, the ideal points of Democrats in the aggregate shift left, particularly for those Democrats who are politically engaged. In contrast, wealthy Democrats’ ideal points shift to the right. We also document effects for Republicans and Independents and find that overall polarization is similar under both elicitation methods. We conclude with a discussion of our results, and the consequences and tradeoffs of each elicitation method.     

Bureaucratic institutional design: the case of the Italian NHS

We propose a model where a regional government’s choice of the number of bureaucratic agencies operating in a region depends upon the degree of substitutability and complementarity of the bureaucratic services being demanded. We show that, if the government perceives the citizens’ demand as a demand for substitutable services, it will choose provision by two independent agencies. If the government perceives the citizens’ demand as a demand for complementary services, it will choose provision by a single consolidated agency. Exogenous shocks to the number of citizens amplify these incentives. Evidence from the Italian National Health Service (NHS) supports this hypothesis. Results show a positive effect of proxies of substitutable services on the number of regional local health authorities and a negative effect of proxies of complementary services. The major immigration amnesties, taken as shocks to the number of citizens entitled to the service, magnify these effects.     

Constitutional political economy,democratic theory and institutional design

Democracy and constitutionalism are both central to the Western political tradition. And yet, constitutional restrictions are often perceived to be in tension with democratic commitments. I argue that the constitutional political economy approach developed by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan resolves the tension between constitutionalism and the values of democratic governance by shifting the analysis from a system-attributes perspective that focuses on the particular institutional properties of a political order to a system-legitimacy perspective that focuses on the manner in which political institutions gain democratic legitimacy. In so doing, the approach reveals that constitutionalism can be understood as a natural expression of democratic values.     

Dynamic estimation of ideal points for the US Congress

Theories of candidate positioning suggest that candidates will respond dynamically to their electoral environment. Because of the difficulty of obtaining “bridge votes”, most existing approaches for estimating the ideal points of members of Congress generate static ideal points or ideal points that move linearly over time. We propose an approach for dynamic ideal point estimation using Project Vote Smart’s National Political Awareness Test to construct bridge votes. We use our dynamic estimates to measure aggregate change, to measure individual-level change, and to study the institutional and structural factors that explain the changing positions of House candidates and members of Congress. We demonstrate that while the Republican Party has been selecting increasingly extreme candidates, Democratic incumbents have become more extreme while in office. We also find that the congruence between elected members of Congress and their constituents is mostly explained by the selection as opposed to the responsiveness of the candidate. Nonetheless, we find evidence of dynamic responsiveness of incumbents in specific circumstances. We find that competitiveness, midterm elections, and sharing the president’s party affiliation are associated with greater responsiveness. Conversely, retirement is not associated with a change in responsiveness. We find no evidence of responsiveness of challengers. Finally, we find that close elections draw challengers who are more in line with the district’s ideology.     

Public debt stabilization: the relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize the present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons, and as a result, policymakers often fail to use present opportunities to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision horizons matters under several dimensions.