The Evolving Influence of Psychometrics in Political Science

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith T. Poole
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Scaling Factor ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ideal Points ◽  
Development Evaluation

This article outlines how the measurement of political issue spaces has developed in the past eighty years through borrowings from psychometrics (scaling, factor analysis, and unfolding), additions from political science theories (the spatial theory of voting and ideal points), and confronting the special problems of political survey, roll-call, and interest-group ratings data. Psychometrics is a subfield of psychology devoted to the development, evaluation, and application of mental tests of various kinds. In the 1980s, political scientists began combining techniques from econometrics and statistics with approaches developed by psychometricians. The effect of psychometrics displays no sign of abating in political science. The level of sophistication of psychometric applications in political science has steadily increased in the past twenty years.

scholarly journals More Than a Score: Interest Group Ratings and Polarized Politics

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-78
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Objective Metrics ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Over Time

This article examines the origins and influence of ideological index scores—where liberal and conservative interest groups rate legislator performance on selected roll call votes. Two such groups founded in the mid-twentieth century—the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA)—were crucial to the development of this type of metric, transforming roll call analysis from detailed tabular scorecards into streamlined percentage scores showing how often a lawmaker voted “right.” ADA and ACA scores have been heavily utilized in political science as proxies for liberalism and conservatism and used to demonstrate the growing polarization of the congressional parties. Archival evidence suggests, however, that those scores were intended to create the very phenomenon they have been used to measure. They were deeply political rather than objective metrics, which the ADA and ACA used to guide their electoral activities in accordance with an increasingly partisan strategic plan. Each group directed campaign resources toward incumbent lawmakers they rated highly, but they did so unevenly—with the ADA favoring liberal Democrats over Republicans and the ACA showing a preference for conservative Republicans over time. By rewarding favored lawmakers in their preferred party, and using scores to highlight and discourage ideological outliers, they hoped to reshape the parties along more distinct and divided ideological lines—to create more “responsible” parties, as prominent political scientists then desired.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Policy Space ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conventional Models

Spatial theory is divided between models of elections and models of roll call voting, neither of which alone can explain congressional polarization. This chapter discusses the history of spatial theory, why it is important to link the two strands of spatial models, and the value of reversing the order of conventional models. Conventional models place an election before policy decisions are made. This chapter proposes a unified spatial model of Congress in which the conventional order is reversed. First, there is a legislative session, then an election in which voters respond retrospectively, not to the locations candidates claim to hold, but to the bundles of roll call votes that incumbents cast to incrementally adopt their locations in the policy space. Such a model is best suited to explaining three puzzles: why do legislators adopt extreme positions, how do they win, and what role do parties play in the process?

The Future of Work and the Changing Workplace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh K. Joshi ◽  
J.R. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Machine Intelligence ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Digital Innovation ◽  
Future Of Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Future ◽  
Market Opportunities

The world of work has been impacted by technology. Work is different than it was in the past due to digital innovation. Labor market opportunities are becoming polarized between high-end and low-end skilled jobs. Migration and its effects on employment have become a sensitive political issue. From Buffalo to Beijing public debates are raging about the future of work. Developments like artificial intelligence and machine intelligence are contributing to productivity, efficiency, safety, and convenience but are also having an impact on jobs, skills, wages, and the nature of work. The “undiscovered country” of the workplace today is the combination of the changing landscape of work itself and the availability of ill-fitting tools, platforms, and knowledge to train for the requirements, skills, and structure of this new age.

The Primacy of Politics

1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
James K. Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Important Work ◽  
The Past ◽  
Generous Time ◽  
The Status ◽  
Do So

In presenting my valedictory to this distinguished Association which has honored me by selecting me as its President, I should like to point out by way of introduction what has happened to this office, and therefore to me, during the past year. I have heard of one of my distinguished predecessors some twenty-five years ago who had little else to do as President of this Association than work all year on his presidential address. This was important work and I have no word of criticism of it. But the Association has changed, and today it leaves to the harried wearer of its presidential toga little time to reflect about the status of political science and his own impact, if any, upon it. An active Association life, now happily centered in our new Washington office, is enough to occupy the full time of your President, and universities as well as this Association might well take note. Therefore, in presenting my own reflections to you this evening in accordance with the custom of our Association, I do so without the benefit of the generous time and scholarly leisure which were the privileges of some of my distinguished predecessors.Nevertheless I do base my presidential address today upon my own active participation in the problems of government, as well as upon my scholarly experience. I have extracted it in part from the dynamics of pulsating political life. It has whatever authority I may possess after having been exposed these twenty-five years to the cross-fire of politics, domestic and foreign, as well as to the benign and corrective influences of eager students and charitable colleagues.

Political Science and Changing Politics

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Adolescent Daughter ◽  
Football Coach ◽  
Power And Influence

Politics is about conflict, struggle, decision-making, power and influence. But not every conflict and not every situation in which power is exercised is widely regarded as politics. A football coach who decides to leave a player on the bench because he has given him a bit of lip, is exerting power, and there is conflict here, too. However, few people would consider this a political issue. The same applies to a mother who quarrels with her adolescent daughter about going to a house party, a schoolteacher who gives a student detention, and so on. But if we were to limit our understanding of politics to official decisions that are taken by governments, in parliaments or on municipal councils, we would fail to recognise the political meaning of trade unions, lobbyists, protest groups, corporations and other more-or-less organised groups that influence collective decision-making.

scholarly journals Memory: The Means of Psychological Domination—A Study of Harold Pinter’s Old Times

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Xuan Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Theory ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Spatial Characteristics ◽  
Harold Pinter ◽  
Temporal Characteristics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Special Quality ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Traditional Understanding

<p>In the late 1960s and early 1970s, with his memory plays Harold Pinter staged his own aesthetic revolution by breaking out of the traps represented by the Comedies of Menace. Pinter, as Noël Coward said, is a genuine original and a superb craftsman. In <em>Old Times</em>, he drastically breaks our traditional understanding of “time” and “memory”, endowing memory with a special quality. It becomes a net which can be weaved randomly. From the perspective of spatial theory, the paper aims at analyzing the temporal characteristics and spatial characteristics of <em>Old Times </em>and exploring the inner world of modern people. It comes to a conclusion that characters create the past story according to their psychological or tactical needs of the moment; in other words, memory is the means of psychological domination. The play also intends to reveal something universal: the sense of crisis and loneliness. Deeley and Anna trap themselves in power struggle because they see each other as a threat to their relationship with Kate. So it suggests that each man is an island.</p>

Progress of Psychiatry in 1902

1903 ◽  
Vol 49 (204) ◽  
pp. 152-154
Author(s):  
H. M. Bannister
Keyword(s):  
Financial Management ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Special Events ◽  
American Psychiatry ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The One

The past year has not been notable for any special events in American psychiatry, though the usual amount of activity has existed. There has been no retrogression, and signs of a better future ahead as regards political control of charitable institutions have appeared in quarters where they are most welcome. In Illinois, for example, where for ten years past politicians have controlled the institutions, recent events have made reform in this regard a political issue, and both parties are, so to speak, tumbling over each other in their zeal to utilise it to their own advantage. The scandal that excited this was not abuse of patients or bad financial management, for neither of these has been proven, but the assessment of employés for political purposes, which has at last aroused the public conscience. The outcome can hardly fail to be good, and we may hope at least for a better state of affairs than existed even before the politicians took control. It is a slow work educating the public as to the political neutrality of hospitals for the insane, but it is being done, and the prospect is that they will before very long be as free from the abuses of partisan politics in Illinois as in any of the older states of the Union. I have spoken of this matter in previous letters, but it is right that I mention it again, for it is the chief fault of our public institutions, and the one that is more than everything else responsible for their failings.

A Response to Jeffrey Isaac

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 739
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Kasza
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Association ◽  
American Political Science

The purpose of the present symposium was to evaluate Perestroika's impact. Since theAmerican Political Science Review(APSR), theAmerican Journal of Political Science(AJPS), and theJournal of Politics(JOP) were all targets of criticism in the movement, whereas other national and regional association journals such asPerspectives on PoliticsandPolitical Research Quarterlywere not, I looked for change in the former. Comparable data on the past contents of theAPSRandAJPShad already been published, so I focused my recent surveys on those two. This focus implies no judgment as to the relative prestige of these journals. They pretend to represent the discipline as a whole and are paid for by all association members, and these are sufficient reasons to address their editorial biases.

Gary C. Jacobson and the Politics of Congressional Elections

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Carson
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
The Past

AbstractGary Jacobson is one of the world’s leading experts studying US congressional elections. This essay examines his contributions to political science over the past 40 years.

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