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Existing theories of foreign policy opinion formation tend to treat elites as a black-box category for members of the nonpublic. This misses important nuances in public perceptions of elites. We argue that elite vocation serves as an important source cue, signaling elite access to information and elite knowledge that can be brought to bear on that information. We use a survey experiment to evaluate our hypotheses comparing four types of elites: elected officials, academics, career professionals, and members of the media. We find that, even accounting for partisanship, people still evaluate elites as knowledgeable and credible. There are also important differences in public perceptions of elites that should be accounted for in our theories of opinion formation. These findings have important implications for the in vogue death of expertise argument as well as research on public perceptions of foreign policy and public opinion formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on political methodology courses being among the most difficult political science courses. Topics include conducting a survey of the membership of the American Political Science Association (APSA) Political Methodology section; and data analysis, measurement, programming, statistics, theory, and writing.

Debate on the use of lagged dependent variables has a long history in political science. The latest contribution to this discussion is Wilkins (2018, Political Science Research and Methods, 6, 393–411), which advocates the use of an ADL(2,1) model when there is serial dependence in the outcome and disturbance. While this specification does offer some insurance against serially correlated disturbances, this is never the best (linear unbiased estimator) approach and should not be pursued as a general strategy. First, this strategy is only appropriate when the data-generating process (DGP) actually implies a more parsimonious model. Second, when this is not the DGP—e.g., lags of the predictors have independent effects—this strategy mischaracterizes the dynamic process. We clarify this issue and detail a Wald test that can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of the Wilkins approach. In general, we argue that researchers need to always: (i) ensure models are dynamically complete and (ii) test whether more restrictive models are appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are sanctions and sanctions threats costly for the sanctioning state? The costs of sanctions for the sender are an important feature of many theories developed to explain the use and utility of economic sanctions. Despite the prominence of this assumption in existing research, there are only a handful of studies that have endeavored to analyze or estimate the economic consequences of sanctions for sender states. This paper builds a theoretical framework that connects the costs of sanctions for sender firms with a phenomenon that can be observed, stock market data. Sanctions and sanctions threats should create market uncertainty that is reflected in stock price volatility for firms with commercial interests in targeted states. Comparisons are made using stock price data for firms within sectors at the same point in time, within sectors over time, and across sectors over time. The stock prices for firms with commercial interests in targeted states are more volatile than stock prices for comparable firms without commercial interests in targeted states. These spells of uncertainty not only reflect the costs of sanctions and sanctions threats for firms caused by interruptions in commercial activities but represent important costs for firms in-and-of themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about international affairs. These arguments imply competing identification restrictions. I test these competing models using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression (B-SVAR) model. The results show that sanctions have a moderate negative effect on presidential approval. I use these findings as a basis for a broader set of auxiliary analyses. Despite received wisdom, sanctions imposed for different reasons against different target states do not produce disparate effects on public opinion. These analyses resolve an important empirical dilemma that weighs on a range of theoretical perspectives in the sanctions literature and highlights fruitful avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication amplifies threat perceptions independent of group reputation, fatality rate, or target location because sophistication suggests a greater capability to inflict harm. We provide experimental evidence of the relationship between coordination and threat perceptions. Our results contribute to a growing literature looking at the features of terrorist attacks and public perceptions of terrorism, and lay the groundwork for future research on the political and security consequences of coordinated terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars generally agree that political elites in the US are polarized. Yet most of our evidence, especially longitudinal evidence, is built on proxy measures of elite ideology that fail to identify the unique dimensions that drive the cleavages between the parties. And our understanding of when elite polarization reemerged is also unclear. This study leverages the party platforms, along with the tools of content analysis, to shed new light on elite polarization. We find that, consistent with the literature, elite polarization is an asymmetric phenomenon driven by Republicans primarily motivated by economic issues. Further, we show that modern elite polarization emerged starting with the 1980 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]