Do U.S. Senators Moderate Strategically?

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Bernstein ◽  
Gerald C. Wright ◽  
Michael B. Berkman
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
General Direction ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Analytical Results ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Candidate Behavior

Do U.S. senators adjust their policy positions or voting behavior—engage in “strategic moderation”—in their quest for reelection? In the June 1986 issue of this Review, Gerald Wright and Michael Berkman sought to demonstrate that Senate incumbents moderate their ideological positions as elections near. This endeavor was part of their larger effort to show the importance of policy issues in the selection of members of Congress. Robert Bernstein takes the view that the claims about strategic moderation rest on methodological flaws. But Wright and Berkman argue that most investigators agree on the general direction of senatorial candidate behavior. The controversy turns on conception and interpretation of analytical results.

scholarly journals Yes, But Did They Learn Anything? An Experimental Investigation of Voter Decision Making on Foreign Policy Issues

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 880-884
Author(s):  
Jacqueline M. Sievert ◽  
Michael K. McDonald ◽  
Charles J. Fagan ◽  
Niall Michelsen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Young Voters ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
American Elections ◽  
Voter Decision Making

ABSTRACTDo non-graded, one-time, short presentations by a panel of professors on foreign policy issues affect voting behavior among students? Did the panel itself contribute to students’ understanding of the importance of foreign policy in evaluating candidates? Did presentations lead to changes in students’ candidate preferences? And, finally, did the event lead to sustained changes in students’ preferences? We find that even though issues of foreign policy tend not to be front and center in American elections, when young voters are presented with information about candidate’s foreign policy positions, as we did in this study, it does seem to have an impact on which candidate they plan on voting for.

How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jennifer Pan ◽  
Zijie Shao ◽  
Yiqing Xu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Composite Measures ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Tv News

Abstract Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.

scholarly journals Phase transition of the 2-Choices dynamics on core–periphery networks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Cruciani ◽  
Emanuele Natale ◽  
André Nusser ◽  
Giacomo Scornavacca
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Structural Parameters ◽  
Connected Subset ◽  
Transition Phenomenon ◽  
The Core ◽  
Analytical Results ◽  
Heterogeneous Behavior

AbstractThe 2-Choices dynamics is a process that models voting behavior on networks and works as follows: Each agent initially holds either opinion blue or red; then, in each round, each agent looks at two random neighbors and, if the two have the same opinion, the agent adopts it. We study its behavior on a class of networks with core–periphery structure. Assume that a densely-connected subset of agents, the core, holds a different opinion from the rest of the network, the periphery. We prove that, depending on the strength of the cut between core and periphery, a phase-transition phenomenon occurs: Either the core’s opinion rapidly spreads across the network, or a metastability phase takes place in which both opinions coexist for superpolynomial time. The interest of our result, which we also validate with extensive experiments on real networks, is twofold. First, it sheds light on the influence of the core on the rest of the network as a function of its connectivity toward the latter. Second, it is one of the first analytical results which shows a heterogeneous behavior of a simple dynamics as a function of structural parameters of the network.

scholarly journals Keeping Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer? Information Networks in Legislative Politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nils Ringe ◽  
Jennifer Nicoll Victor ◽  
Justin H. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Multilevel Modelling ◽  
Information Networks ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Modelling Approach

The authors contribute to the existing literature on the determinants of legislative voting by offering a social network-based theory about the ways that legislators’ social relationships affect floor voting behaviour. It is argued that legislators establish contacts with both political friends and enemies, and that they use the information they receive from these contacts to increase their confidence in their own policy positions. Social contacts between political allies have greater value the more the two alliesagreeon policy issues, while social contacts between political adversaries have greater value the more the two adversariesdisagreeon policy issues. To test these propositions, we use social network analysis tools and demonstrate how to account for network dependence using a multilevel modelling approach.

Selecting and Removing Arbitrators in International Investment Arbitration

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-93
Author(s):  
Chiara Giorgetti
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Working Group ◽  
International Investment ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Investment Arbitration ◽  
Selection And Appointment ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractThis book explores and assesses two essential features in investor state dispute resolution (ISDS): the selection and the removal of arbitrators. Both topics have received increasing scrutiny and criticism, that have in turn generated calls for reforms. In its first part, this book explains the selection of arbitrators procedurally and comparatively under the most-often used arbitration rules. It then reviews critically the necessary and desirable qualities for arbitrators’ selection and appointment, and addresses some important and related policy issues, such diversity and repeat appointments. Finally, it discusses the recent calls to review the methodologies used to appoint arbitrators, and specifically the proposal by the European Commission to create a permanent tribunal to resolve international investment disputes, the UNCITRAL Working Group III Reform Process and the rules amendment proposal undertaken by the Secretariat of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID Secretariat). In its second part, the book addresses the companion and similarly important issue of challenging and removing arbitrators. It does so by reviewing first the provisions that are appplied under a variety of arbitration rules to remove arbitrators who fail to possess the necessary qualities to sit in arbitral proceedings. It then evaluates the reasons for challenge and discusses some important cases that addressed challenges. The book assesses appointments and removals in a multifaceted and comprehensive way, and includes a critical assessment of the reasons and calls for reform of the ISDS system.

Partisanship and Policy Choice: Issue Preferences in the British Electorate, February 1974

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Alt ◽  
Bo Särlvik ◽  
Ivor Crewe
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Electoral Behaviour ◽  
Issue Knowledge ◽  
New Literature ◽  
Party Policy Positions

Inherent in many models of voting, as well as in defences of representative democracy, is the assumption that the voting public has knowledge of and opinions about public policy issues. In recent years in the United States a stream of scholarly articles has been devoted to assessing not just the extent to which issue knowledge and opinions exist but also the extent to which they influence electoral decisions. This new literature suggests that issue-related perceptions and attitudes are rather more important in the electoral process than earlier studies had suggested. This increased focus on issues appears to reflect both methodological changes in the analysis of them and also real changes in the importance of policy issues in American electoral politics. By contrast, students of British electoral behaviour have made few systematic attempts to assess the fit between popular attitudes and knowledge of party policy positions on issues. Instead, the conventional wisdom is repeated which holds that ‘a majority of people are either ignorant of, or disagree with, the specific policies of the party they support’. The implication of this seems to be that electors' familiarity with issues is so low, and the holding of policy attitudes by them so uncommon, that rigorous analysis of issues in the context of electoral politics is unnecessary.

Of Horse Race and Policy Issues: A Study of Gender in Coverage of a Gubernatorial Election by two Major Metropolitan Newspapers

1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley A. Serini ◽  
Angela A. Powers ◽  
Susan Johnson
Keyword(s):  
News Coverage ◽  
Horse Race ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Advertising Strategy ◽  
Gubernatorial Election ◽  
Selection Of

This study of news coverage of a gubernatorial race suggests (1) gender may be a larger factor in selection of policy stories than in selection of horse race stories; (2) coverage of the horse race, particularly news coverage of advertising strategy, appears to have greater impact on the outcome of the election than coverage of policy issues; (3) a woman will be more successful in a political race if she presents herself as a man.

scholarly journals Top-down or bottom-up? The selection of shadow rapporteurs in the European Parliament

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 706-727
Author(s):  
Frank M Häge ◽  
Nils Ringe
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Principal Agent Theory ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Selection Of

Shadow rapporteurs play an important role in developing the European Parliament’s collective policy positions and in defending them in inter-institutional negotiations. This study sheds light on the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of shadow rapporteur selection. Qualitative insights from practitioner interviews and a quantitative analysis of shadow rapporteur data from the 7th European Parliament (2009–2014) indicate that the appointment process is primarily one of bottom-up self-selection by group members based on their policy interests. The party group leadership, in the form of group coordinators, plays an important coordinating role when there is competition for a shadow rapporteurship. However, the role of group coordinators is more akin to a third-party arbiter of competing demands than a mechanism of top-down control by the leadership, as suggested by principal-agent theory.

Compared to What? A Comment on “A Robust Transformation Procedure for Interpreting Political Text” by Martin and Vanberg

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Benoit ◽  
Michael Laver
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
New Method ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Transformation Procedure ◽  
Alternative Method ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Original Reference ◽  
Selection Of

In “A Robust Transformation Procedure,” Martin and Vanberg (2007, hereafter MV) propose a new method for rescaling the raw virgin text scores produced by the “Wordscores” procedure of Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003, hereafter LBG). Their alternative method addresses two deficiencies they argue exist with the transformation of virgin text scores proposed by LBG: First, that the LBG transformation is sensitive to the selection of virgin texts, and second, that it distorts the reference metric by failing to recover the original reference scores when reference texts are scored and transformed as if they were virgin texts. Their proposed alternative is “robust” in the sense that it avoids both shortcomings. Not only is MV's transformation a welcome contribution to the Wordscores project but also the critical analysis on which it is based brings to light a number of assumptions and choices that face the analyst seeking to estimate actors' policy positions using statistical analyses of the texts they generate. When first describing the possibility of rescaling the raw virgin text estimates, we emphasized that ourparticular approach to rescaling is not fundamental to our word-scoring technique but, rather, is a matter of substantive research design unrelated to the validity of the raw virgin text scores… Other transformations are of course possible. (LBG, 316)To explore more fully into the assumptions and choices behind alternative transformations and the research designs which motivate them, we offer the following comments.

The Preference for Moderation Scale

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimee Drolet ◽  
Mary Frances Luce ◽  
L I Jiang ◽  
Benjamin C Rossi ◽  
Reid Hastie
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Consumer Decision Making ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Representativeness Heuristic ◽  
Individual Difference Variables ◽  
Behavior Study ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
Heuristic Study ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract We propose that individual differences in the value placed on the principle of moderation exist and influence many aspects of consumer decision-making. The idea that moderation is an important guiding norm of human behavior is prevalent throughout history and an explicit theme in many philosophies, religions, and cultures. Yet, moderation has not been studied as an individual-level determinant of consumer behavior. We develop a scale that measures the degree to which individuals have a Preference for Moderation (PFM). The PFM scale predicts consequential behavior in many decision contexts. We first report on scale development, including the generation and selection of items. We then report analyses showing that PFM is distinct from several popular individual-difference variables. Related to cultural background, PFM reliably predicts the use of compromise (study 1) and balancing (vs. highlighting) strategies (study 2), as well as various decision-making behaviors, including reliance on the representativeness heuristic (study 3), self-reported financial habits and outcomes (studies 4–5), real-world online-reviewing behavior (study 6), and split-ticket voting behavior in the 2018 US midterm elections (study 7).

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