The relative weight of character traits in political candidate evaluations: Warmth is more important than competence,leadership and integrity

Decades of research has found that voters’ electoral decisions to a significant degree are affected by character evaluations of candidates. Yet it remains unresolved which specific candidate traits voters find most important. In political science it is often argued that competence-related traits are most influential, whereas work in social psychology suggests that warmth-related traits are more influential. Here we test which character trait is the more influential in global candidate evaluations and vote choice using observational data from the ANES 1984–2008 and an original experiment conducted on a representative sample of English partisan respondents. Across the two studies we find that warmth is more influential than competence, leadership and integrity. Importantly, results hold across a wide range of alternative specifications and robustness analyses. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications of the results.     

Nixon and the Jews

ABSTRACT

In public the 37th President of the United States did not express hostility or disparagement, or show any signs of religious prejudice towards Jews. But inside the White House, Richard M. Nixon's remarks were often scurrilous. His antisemitism was not casual; it was close to compulsive. And it could be coupled with other seething grievances, for example, towards liberals, radicals, the media, Blacks and Italian-Americans. Yet Nixon controlled his antisemitism. It had no adverse effect on Jewish life, either at home or abroad. The malice that he nurtured remained unmobilized. Apart from a few limited personnel instances (mostly but not completely ignored by Nixon's underlings), it is impossible to connect private resentment to public policy, probably because the barriers to the expression of antisemitism in the United States have been so high. The ugliness of his utterances in the Oval Office revealed his character, but did not extend outward to shape the processes of governance. A disconnect can therefore be discerned between what he felt and how he acted. Most American Jews voted for Nixon's Democratic opponents in 1968 and 1972. But even Jews who voted against him, even those who loathed him, have often acknowledged that Nixon's policies fortified the security of Israel; and he was proud of his support for the Jewish state during the Yom Kippur War. What betrayed Nixon, and what forced him to resign the presidency, was his decision to instal a secret taping system in the Oval Office. When the tapes were played in 1974, he showed himself to be conspiring to obstruct justice. In subsequent years, further exposure of the tapes revealed the extent and intensity of Nixon's antipathy to Jews. The expletives that had to be deleted did much to besmirch the dignity of the office. But such was the stigma the political culture attached to antisemitism that, had his bigotry become public before 1968, Nixon's career would have been over.     

Economic performance and presidential trait evaluations: A longitudinal analysis

Presidential traits (i.e. morality, intelligence, leadership) have generally been assumed to be idiosyncratic personal characteristics of the individual and are treated as exogenous from other political and economic factors. Prior literature has shown that presidential characteristics and economic performance are important elements of vote choice and approval. Using ANES data from 1984 to 2008, we demonstrate an important link between these factors, showing that objective and subjective indicators of economic performance are significant predictors of trait evaluations. Specifically, evaluations of the incumbent president at election time are directly related to changes in economic performance earlier in the year. The effects of economic performance are not isolated to retrospective policy evaluations, but also influence the overall evaluation of the president as a person.     

美国总统眼中的宪法及其启示（下）——以美国总统就职演说为分析范本

美国总统在就职演说中所体现出来的宪法观能给我们多方面启示,最重要的是必须更加注重并想方设法在全社会培养宪法信仰。因为美国总统的宪法观,最集中地说明了他们普遍具有宪法信仰,而这又在根本上受到美国社会宪法文化的深刻熏陶,是美国社会普遍具有宪法信仰的一个缩影。借鉴美国总统具有宪法信仰的表现与原因,在我国全社会培养宪法信仰,既要格外重视宪法,又要维护宪法权威,还要加强宪法教育。     

美国总统眼中的宪法及其启示新论——以美国总统的施政演说为分析范本

分析美国总统的宪法观,不仅有重要的实践意义,而且有着多方面的理论价值。美国总统在施政演说中对宪法的论述与他们在就职演说中对宪法的论述,既有相同点,也有不同点,能给我们多方面启示,其中很重要的一点是更加注重宪法思维。这既要求明晰宪法思维的含义,又要求反思宪法角色。     

Parliaments in Africa: Representative Institutions in the Land of the ‘Big Man’

This paper analyses the perceptions among survey participants, of African parliaments and presidents and examines their citizens’ attitudes towards the coexistence of these two institutions. It aims to determine the way citizens rate their parliaments compared with their presidents. It further seeks to answer the question of whether Africa remains the continent of the ‘big man’, where absolute power lies with an individual, feeding clientelistic relationships. In the decades following the transitions to independence, most of the continent was marked by a proliferation of monoparty regimes; in many cases, these were almost one-man regimes. A majority of the leaders symbolised, at an early stage of independence, the birth of the nation itself. Many times these presidents have sought to extend their incumbency perpetually. However, over the last two decades this scenario has changed considerably. Monoparty parliaments have been replaced by multiparty parliaments and executives, and presidents have found themselves needing to share their leadership of the nation with parliamentarians. Not much is known about how these emerging parliaments have been operating, but the little that is known tells us that they have faced a lack of institutionalisation and still struggle to assert their independence from strong executives. It is therefore reasonable to expect that parliaments will be perceived as dormant institutions in the public eye.     

Semi-presidentialism,moderating power and inclusive governance. The experience of Timor-Leste in consolidating democracy

The relationship between the choice of a government system, namely semi-presidentialism, and the performance of democracy is the subject of current debate. This article considers Elgie's proposal for a positive correlation between premier-presidential forms of semi-presidentialism and the success of democratic transitions, and discusses the way in which Timor-Leste fits the model as well as the need for a clear view of the incentive mechanisms at play. It further analyses the importance of “independent” presidents with “moderating powers” as a way of achieving inclusive governance and to facilitate democratic consolidation. Contrary to suppositions that attribute a tendency for president-parliamentary regimes to succumb to conflict between the main political actors, the case of Timor-Leste suggests that the definition of the president's role as a “moderator”, and the exercise of the function by “independent”, non-party personalities counteracts such inclinations with positive effects on democratic consolidation.     

Exploring the invocation of emotion in presidential speeches

Scholars have long explored why presidential rhetoric is important and how it matters for public leadership and policy-making. However, relatively few works have considered the role that emotion plays in leadership communication and no research has conducted a thorough examination of the various types of emotions invoked in presidential rhetoric, their frequency, or how they have shaped presidential discourse over time. In this study, presidential speeches across 13 administrations (1933–2011) are examined to provide a first assessment of the extent to which US presidents have invoked fear, anger, and hope across policy domains and key types of speeches.     

Populism and democratic crisis in semi-presidential countries

This article demonstrates how different political opportunity structures in semi-presidential countries either enable or inhibit the overreach of populist presidents. In Turkey, for example, political leverage has been used to hamstring the opposition and transform a democratic regime into an authoritarian one. In Bulgaria, democracy also faded under a populist prime minister. Ukraine’s democracy had a checkered history, with frequent changes of power culminating in presidential breakdown. The Czech Republic introduced popular elections for the president to strengthen legitimacy, but that exposed the regime to conflict between the president and the prime minister.     

The Agenda-Setting Impact of Major Presidential TV Addresses

New media dramatically increase citizens' access to information and decrease governments' ability to control the flow of communication. Although human rights nongovernmental organizations have advocated that access to independent news media will improve government respect for human rights, recent empirical studies have shown this is not always the case. We posit that media independence and the presence or absence of democratic characteristics, in particular political competition, have substantial effects on government repression because these factors determine the degree to which the government is vulnerable to public pressures. The model developed here includes three equations that encompass the impact of interaction between and among the news media, citizens, and government. The first equation specifies the influences on the news media's decision whether or not to perform a “watchdog” role regarding government repression. The second equation represents public reaction to the news media's coverage of government repression (i.e., protest). Here access to news media via traditional and new media is an important factor. The third equation represents government repression. Solutions to the system of equations are derived for four scenarios (a) Democracy and media independence are both present, (b) democracy is present but media independence is absent, (c) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is present, and (d) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is absent. We then consider interesting properties of the anticipated behavior from the government, media, and general public through case illustrations for the Netherlands and Myanmar/Burma.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: two additional case illustrations (Tanzania and Brazil).]