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This paper investigates the effect of media coverage of campaign advertising (controlling for advertising exposure) in shaping citizens' perceptions of advertising tone. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of a two-part study consisting of a content analysis of the Terri Schiavo case that identified the main media frames and an experiment testing the effectiveness of certain frames in determining opinon on similar issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on attitudes toward EU integration in Poland before and after accession, suggesting a model for Central and Eastern European countries. The aim is to present new research directions with the use of a mixed method approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the content and structure of party policies and individualopinions in advanced industrial countries on three common dimensions of left-rightdisagreement: wealth redistribution, immigration and moral outlooks. Opinions abouteach of these dimensions are widely associated with left-right self-placement, but theevidence suggests that these opinions are not connected to one another. This raises aquestion: if there is no logical or empirical relationship between the different dimensionsof opinion that give meaning to the language of left and right, then why do all of theseopinions predict left-right self-placement in many different countries?The analysis proceeds by examining individual-level public opinion data from theWorld Values Survey and the European Social Survey, as well as data from surveys ofexperts about party policies. The results of that analysis indicate that policies andopinions about wealth redistribution, immigration and morality are bundled together byleft-wing political parties and among their politically engaged supporters in theelectorate. For most respondents, however, these opinions are not at all organizedtogether in coherent left-right terms. Further analysis reveals that formal educationexplains a good deal of the fragmentation of left-right opinions in the electorate. Andthat the coherence of these opinions among the left-wing elite may stem from mass-elitedifferences in the kinds of factors that generate support for wealth redistribution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether and to what extent immigrants differ from US natives in their views on welfare. The political views of 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrants are explored in a conservative-liberal spectrum using ANES and CCES survey data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential effects of media framing of judicial activities (as revealed through content analysis of newspaper coverage) on over time public opinion measures of specific and diffuse support for the Supreme Court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the partisan divide on issues relating to torture and the War on terror using public opinion data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of income inequality on public opinion in the post-WWII United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how citizens reason about intertemporal policy tradeoffs. Using an experiment embedded in a nationally representative online survey of the US population, we address three questions. First, does the perceived timing of a policy's consequences affect citizens' willingness to support it? Second, if timing does affect levels of policysupport, under what conditions do timing perceptions matter most? Third, if and when citizens do discount future consequences, why do they do so? Focusing on attitudes toward a hypothetical proposed reform to the Social Security system involving an intertemporal trade-off between costs and benefits, we find that subjects do indeed discount the future, but neither radically so nor under all conditions. Under certain circumstances, the effect of timing would be sufficient to create or upset a majority coalition in support of such an intertemporal policy choice. At other times, however, the effect of timing is trivial to non-existent, especially when policy costs are made salient, suggesting important cognitive limitations on citizens' capacity to reason intertemporally. Critically, we also find that much of the effect of timing is a consequence of increasing uncertainty about policy outcomes as they become temporally distant. The implication is that temporal discounting does not reflect mere impatience, but uncertainty about whether governments can be trusted to make wise use of resources over the long-term. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines President Bush’s actions on stem cell research within the broader scope of changes in the party system. I provide evidence to show that President Bush's actions on stem cell research had an important impact on the public. I show that in this political confrontation with the public, Congress and the Republican leadership in Congress, President Bush's actions sent a clear signal to the Republican Party, which was picked up by rank-and-file Republicans and was translated into their shared policy preference. I argue that, from a party system perspective, when presidents go public they have an important impact on the public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages recent literature on competitive framing environments by testing attitudes towards same-sex marriage. I find support for the argument that respondent attitudes are more likely to be linked to core values when frames compete. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs data gathered in a 2006 national survey to study how the American electorate evaluates a tradeoff between competitive elections and winning to implement preferred policies. The results show that voters do not share in the prevailing elite consensus about the overriding virtues of competition. Analyses of a multilevel model of preferences for winning versus competition indicate that ideological extremism, partisanship, social trust and several other individual-level variables have predictable relationships with these preferences. Also, a contextual variable -- electoral margin in the 2006 congressional district election -- interacts with support for winning or losing candidates. Voters supporting candidates who lose big tend to take refuge in competition, whereas those who support big winners are prone to view victory as a means of implementing policy preferences. By emphasizing public involvement in policymaking, these voters are effectively echoing earlier "responsible party government" arguments that once were central features of democratic critiques of the American political system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to contribute to filling in the gaps on the knowledge of public opinion on the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and on the facets of support of European citizens for the ESDP. From a logt estimation based on the Eurobarometer survey 54.1, we test three sets of hypotheses to identify the determinants for support the ESDP. We find evidence that some threats, European decision-making architecture, amry percpetions are good estimates for ESDP's public support. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long debated Southern exceptionalismâ??whether the American South is political distinct from the rest of the nation. In this paper, I argue against Southern exceptionalism. Public opinion in the contemporary South is indistinguishable from public opinion in the other Red States, those that joined the South in voting for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. I present evidence of the similarity of the South and the Red States using a survey of voters in the 2006 election. On measures of party identification, ideology, issue positions, lifestyle and demographic factors, and vote choice, few differences exist between the two regions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the public's approval of the president in managing the economy as a context for testing therole of partisanship in aggregate opinion. Drawing on Bartels' (2002) notion of biased partisan updating andGerber and Green's (1999) model of unbiased Bayesian updating, we find consistent (although not uniform) evidence of partisan bias in aggregate opinion. These findings in support of partisan bias lead us to consider how partisanship can be incorporated into models of aggregate public opinion. Drawing on the work of Mankiw and Reis (2002,2006) and Carroll (2003), we develop a model of economic approval that takes seriously the role of partisanship--namely, the influence of partisanship is likely to create a public that respondsmore slowly and heterogenously to changes in the economic environment than one that updates in a --rational" and --unbiased" way. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how diversity and change are experienced by an ethnically diverse urban population scattered across an assortment of neighborhoods in various states of demographic change. We analyze the results of a public opinion survey conducted in Los Angeles to consider perceptions of the city's race relations across a range of neighborhoods using various measures of ethnic diversity. Using a number of strategies to cluster neighborhoods, we consider whether neighborhood composition alters the relationship between respondents' characteristics and their perceptions of race relations. We find no consistent pattern between racial identity, neighborhood diversity, and the potential for destabilizing inter-ethnic exchanges. The results suggest limitations to the assumed significance - either positive or negative - of neighborhood diversity on individuals of various races and ethnicities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the foundations of corruption perception. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How heterogeneous are the beliefs of citizens in a given state? Are citizens' views more diverse in some states than in others? While a number of methods exist for estimating the average liberalism of a state's population, there is no general method for estimating the heterogeneity of citizens' views. This paper provides a method to answer this question. In addition to providing this new measure, we make two additional contributions to the literature. First, we demonstrate that demographic variables are a poor proxy for opinion diversity, and actual opinion measures should be used whenever possible. Second, we illustrate how our measure problematizes much of the conventional wisdom about red and blue states. Together, our results show that the diversity of state opinion is both descriptively important and useful for solving a variety of substantive puzzles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using cognitive interviews to reveal what is understood by the concept of immigration in Germany, this paper suggests differentiating across immigrant groups in survey questions to avoid possible biases related to a general immigration question. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although some minority groups supported the policies of the War on Drugs it is unknown whether minority public opinion has shifted after years of disparate treatment under the policies. This paper attempts to address this unknown. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the political communication of opinion through social networks. Attention focuses on opinion variance within populations and networks, and how this variance conditions communication among individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of perceptions of threat on trade-offs between civil liberties and national security, and the role of these trade-offs in shaping public policy preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the mass public makes decisions on foreign policy during the post-Cold War era. It will show that humanitarianism and strategic considerations play a central role in shaping the public?s foreign policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of public opinion and interest groups on spending priorities in the American states, using data that cover the years 1990 through 2000. Results indicate that interest groups have a stronger impact than public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between public opinion and American foreign policy. The interaction of mass preferences and issue salience can provide variation in presidential responsiveness to public opinion within the same policy case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the best order for questions on abortion, based on a national survey that tests four possible orders. It examines the demographics of ideologically conflicted respondents to describe who is most likely to be confused on abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that terror alerts keep the public's attention on foreign affairs and off of domestic issues, which is favorable to the president?s approval ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which examined relations between income and presidential voting preference in rich and poor states in the U.S. at the individual, county and state levels. The aim of the paper is to provide a framework to understand Republican strength among richer votes and in poorer states. Survey data show a correlation between income and support for the Republican party, but at the aggregate level, it is the Democrats who do better in the richer states. The poor people red states tend to be Democrats; the rich people in blue states tend to be Republicans. Income matters within states and geography also matters. With the 2000 presidential election richer states voted for a Democrat.

For what kind of policies are elected officials more likely to be responsive to public opinion? The limited research in this area has found varying degrees of strength in the relationship between public opinion and policy on different policy domains. But scholarship about this important question has been handicapped by a lack of adequate measures and estimates of constituency opinion on policy issues. In this paper, I use the unprecedented statistical power and breadth of the 2000 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES) to explore the representation of constituency interests in Congress in greater detail than has previously been possible. I examine the relationship between congressional roll-call votes and constituency opinion on 20 different public policy issues. I find that in the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2000, the roll-call votes cast by members of Congress were responsive to public opinion was significant on a wide range of policy issues, including abortion, military spending, education, crime, taxes and the environment. Democratic and Republican lawmakers are responsive to public opinion on substantially different subsets of policies, suggesting a typology of issue responsiveness that is highly dependent on the varying levels of credibility that parties establish with voters on different issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether there has been a long-term change in public opinion towards national vs. supranational identities and how the structural transformation resulting from globalization affects citizens? territorial attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ANES panel data from 2000 and 2002, this paper shows how important individual-level factors and elite persuasion affected American opinion on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare two cases, welfare and health care, in order to investigate how elite discourse shaped public opinion in ways that facilitated or discouraged significant social policy reforms during the Clinton Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper prsents an approach to the study of urban politics that is distinct from regime theory by incorporating political culture and public opinion into the analysis. It is based on ongoing reserarch into the cases of Minneapolis and Gary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study of public opinion in the wake of 9/11. It is based on data from the initial two waves of a national survey fielded immediately following 9/11 and again several months later (How America Responds; ISR, University of Michigan). The interrelated concepts of ethnocentrism and authoritarianism are a central focus of the study. Some ethnocentric bias in the way Americans interpret the events of September 11 is revealed in an open-ended survey question. Furthermore, the survey data show indicators of ethnocentrism and authoritarianism strongly predict support for aggressive military action by the U.S. against countries thought to be involved in terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion research continues to have difficulty distinguishing between moderate, ambivalent, and indifferent policy attitudes. Krosnick (1991) notes that the number of respondents who appear to have moderate policy preferences is likely inflated because midpoint responses do not distinguish between those with meaningful moderate preferences and those who are simply indifferent towards the policy. Others may choose the midpoint because they are ambivalent: torn between good arguments on both sides of the policy debate. Distributions of policy preferences generally show an uptick at the midpoint, likely due to amalgamation of moderate policy preferences, policy ambivalence, and simply indifference. Even when respondents refuse to indicate a policy preference, scholars sometimes override this refusal and place them at the midpoint anyway. I argue, however, that this “muddle in the middle” (Converse 1995) masks important differences between these attitude attributes. Those with a true moderate policy preference favor a middle of the road approach. They want a specific policy enacted and their preference may be weak or strong. For example, they may feel strongly that abortion should be legal, but only in some circumstances (a strong preference for a moderate policy). Those with ambivalent policy preferences are internally conflicted and see the validity of arguments both for and against a policy. Faced with the choice between falsely claiming that they “haven’t thought much about it,” picking sides, or straddling the fence, the select the latter. Indifferent attitudes are those that are simply not that important or relevant to the respondent. Indifferent respondents simply don’t know enough or care enough about the issue to state meaningful preferences. Some will readily admit that they haven’t thought about the issue, while others will place themselves at the midpoint to avoid perceived negative stigma attached to indifference. This paper attempts to disentangle moderate, ambivalent, and indifferent policy attitudes. The above discussion suggests that moderate preferences are likely just as informed and likely to affect other attitudes and behaviors as more extreme preferences. While ambivalent attitudes are unlikely to affect other attitudes and behaviors, they should nonetheless be informed attitudes. Indifferent attitudes are likely uninformed and unlikely to influence other attitudes and behaviors. There are several design features built into the 2000 NES that are particularly helpful for this task. First, the policy preferences are measured using both traditional seven-point scales and a series of branching questions. The former allow respondents to give moderate policy preferences while the latter do not (by narrowing the permissible policy preferences to four). The branching format also measures the strength of a binary policy preference, rather than measuring a more precise location on a policy preference continuum. Second, two versions of these questions are included for some policies: one that explicitly allows respondents to say that they “haven’t thought much about it” and another that doesn’t. The first version allows respondents to express indifference, while the second discourages doing so. This research provides important insights into the substantive meaning of policy preferences and carries implications for their proper measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major changes are affecting how juries, prosecutors, state legislators, and governors think about death penalty issues, with increased concern to ensuring that no innocent individuals are wrongly executed. This change shifts the debate from one about the morality and effectiveness of the punishment to one about the fairness of and possibility of error in the criminal justice system. We have analyzed every New York Times article on capital punishment since 1960 (over 3,500 stories) and can demonstrate changes in media coverage corresponding to these shifting frames. Since 1996, there have been dramatic changes in media coverage towards the death penalty, with increasing numbers of stories and with an unprecedented rise in stories focusing on characteristics of the defendant and the possibility of executing the innocent. In this paper we focus on public opinion, asking whether it reflects these shifting elite and media issue-framing effects. Our analysis is two-fold. First, we construct a quarterly time-series model of attitudes toward the death penalty from 1973 to present, based on responses in over 270 surveys. We use Stimson’s (1999) dimensional analysis algorithm to extract the shared movement in attitudes across these survey questions and over time, producing a time series that is both richer in information and also covers a longer time period than any single indicator. At the aggregate level, we use these data to assess whether changes in media coverage have had a discernable impact on public opinion, controlling for the crime rate and other relevant variables. Second, at the individual level, we assess the correlates of support for the death penalty in a pooled time-series format. If the traditional issue-frame surrounding the issue of capital punishment related to moral / religious reasoning and to an issue of efficacy in fighting crime (e.g., deterrence), then an individual-level model of support for the death penalty should reflect these attitudinal predispositions. If this traditional frame has been replaced by a new one focusing on the possibility of errors in the system, then the same predictive model should no longer hold. We model this process with an analysis of over 43,000 survey interviews in 24 surveys from 1972 to 2002 using the General Social Survey. Our study will have broad implications concerning the links between elite-level discussion, media coverage, and public opinion. The death penalty appears to be undergoing significant change in its public understanding and the frames that are used to describe and understand it. Public policy is changing on capital punishment issues, and public opinion is changing as well. However, in contrast to typical models of representation, it appears that both public policy and public opinion are being affected by a similar set of elite-level changes occurring within professional communities of defense and prosecution attorneys. Thus, our detailed study of capital punishment in America allows an unusual opportunity to assess the reactions of public opinion to changing elite discourse. The fact that the issue is so charged morally also makes the implications of our study relevant to the study of other and divisive social issues more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

George W. Bush enjoyed an historic rally effect, in the aftermath of 9/11 that is widely regarded as the basis for public and elite support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This paper applies the affective intelligence model of political judgment to explore the impact of attitudes toward Bush upon support for the pending invasion, as of late February 2003. Three hypotheses are examined: first, that enthusiasm (E) for Bush was associated with receptivity to pro-war rhetoric and support for hawkish policies; second, that anxiety (A) about Bush was related with receptivity to anti-war rhetoric and support for dovish policy options; and third, that emotional responses to Bush on these dimensions interacted to yield four distinct orientations – Hawk (high E, low A), Dove (low E, high A), Ambivalent (high E, high A), and Apathetic (low E, low A) In the pretest phase of a quasi-experimental design, 157 undergraduate respondents were recruited from three locations. They completed questionnaires in late Feb. 2003, including items for evaluating: approval of presidential job performance, affective responses to Bush, four Iraq policy options (ranging from no use of force through unilateral invasion), and 16 items evaluating pro-war and anti-war rhetoric. Findings regarding attitudes towards George W. Bush include: the expected two dimensional structure of emotional responses to Bush, that emotional enthusiasm for Bush played a critical role in overall approval ratings of the president and was far more important than domain specific performance ratings, and that anxiousness played little role in presidential approval. With respect to the pending war, findings are that: (1) enthusiasm for Bush was strongly associated with hawkish attitudes, (2) that anxiousness about Bush, even among his supporters and those who approved of the invasion options, was associated with receptivity to anti-war rhetoric (e.g. concerns about the costs of war), and (3) that enthusiasm and anxiousness interacted in their effects on attitudes in a manner consistent with the hypotheses. These results hold with controls for the effects of ideology, partisan identification and gender. A principal finding is that feelings of anxiousness about Bush, regardless of partisan or ideological agreement, were significantly and substantially associated with consideration of arguments and policy options in opposition to unilateral invasion of Iraq. Unbridled enthusiasm, on the other hand, was associated with rejection of concerns about American casualties, Iraqi civilian deaths, domestic economic costs, or destabilization of the Middle East. These findings support the affective intelligence proposition that anxiety arousal stimulates attention to alternative choices and reflective political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What variables determine the extent to which individuals feel anxious about presidential candidates, and what effect does this anxiety have on political participation? An emerging stream of research suggests that emotion plays a significant role in political judgment (Damasio, 1994; Damasio, 1999; Marcus et al., 2000; Marcus & MacKuen, 1993). Marcus et al.’s (2000) theory of affective intelligence suggests that anxiety in particular has a powerful effect on the level of attention that we pay to political information By this theory, new and/or threatening stimuli activate the brain’s surveillance system, causing feelings of anxiety and motivating the individual to seek more information. Thus far, evidence suggests that new and ominous political information – such as the NAFTA debate and the 1992 Gulf War – does indeed have this effect on those who receive it (Marcus et al., 2000). However, many questions remain. This paper seeks first to discover whether any particular issue domain causes more anxiety than others. Are certain types of messages more unique or threatening, either universally or during specific presidential campaigns? I examine the comparative impact of issues that reflect three fundamental antecedents of public opinion: self interest, inter-group relations, and values. Using American National Election Studies data from 1988, 1992 and 2000, I assess the degree to which concern with economic, racial and moral issues predicts anxiety about presidential candidates. In 1988, racial animosity produced by the “Willie Horton” advertisements may have been more powerfully implicated in creating public anxiety than any other type of issue. In 1992, by contrast, more citizens may have agreed with James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Finally, in the wake of the accusations that colored President Clinton’s second term, moral issues may have come to the fore in the 2000 election. I find conditional support for each of these hypotheses. However, economic issues appear to be more universally correlated with anxiety, regardless of the campaign specifics. I then examine the impact of anxiety on interest in the campaign, finding that indeed, those individuals most anxious about a given presidential candidate are most likely to report greater interest. I conclude that particular issue domains are more predictive of anxiety depending on the specifics of the presidential election campaign, although the state of the economy is universally important Further, I conclude that political participation and interest in the campaign is increased by anxiety about presidential candidates, motivated by concerns with these different issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of an effort to understand the changing political landscape of China, this study uses data from the most recent wave of World Values Surveys, conducted on a national representative sample of China in 2001, to examine citizen’s trust on the government. I find that, while thinking of government, citizens in China have two very distinctive sets of objects. Their trust on the national institutions (the Communist Party, the parliament, and the national government) is significantly higher than that on the institutions that they deal with in their daily life (mainly the police and the government bureaucracy). I contend that these two sets of institution represent the state in two forms: one abstract and the other concrete. I then examine the factors that affect individual’s trust on both forms of state. Most importantly, people with a democratic outlook----that is, people who value individual liberty and participation in governance, among others----tend to hold lower trust on the government. And this relationship holds firmly even after controlling other factors, such as level of education, interest in politics, and financial well-being as well as overall life satisfaction. On the contrary, people who follow news more frequently appear to hold higher level of trust on the national institutions (the abstract state) than others, but not on the concrete state. This finding has many important implications for the prospect of political change in China, which I discuss in the paper. (238 words) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we seek to describe, explain, and compare attitudes toward abortion in the United States and Poland over time. While our preliminary results suggest that abortion attitudes have remained quite stable in both countries, this result is somewhat perplexiing. Numerous demographic and cultural changes have taken place in both countries which would normally be expected to push the population in a pro-choice direction. We plan to compare the actual distributions of abortion attitudes for both countries with a set of expected values. The latter will be computed by assuming constant relationships between the dependent variable and important predictors of abortion attitudes,while allowing the marginal distributions of such variables to change over time. Based on these comparisons, we hope to account fot the reasonf or the anomalous stability of abortion attitudes in the two nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on citizen support for European integration has primarily focused on individuals? evaluations of the process of integration or its institutions, with emphasis on the importance of direct benefits and costs integration can confer. Explanations focus on overall support for integration and little work has been done on explaining public opinion on specific policy areas, such as the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Prior work also does not consider individuals? evaluations of member states in models. This paper will fill this gap in the research by formulating and testing a political cohesion model, which can be considered complementary to preexisting models. The analysis synthesizes systems theory with social identity theory to produce a core claim that the probability of supporting the CFSP increases with greater levels of political trust in the European Union member-states. The development of political cohesion, as measured by the amount of trust in member-states, is assumed to be reflective of a positive perception. Positive perceptions of member-states are critical because integration?s development is influenced strongly by and dependent upon the resources of the relatively more powerful European member-states. Therefore, positive perceptions of the top EU powers, namely Germany and France, improves the probability of holding a European identity and support integration, more so than trusting the remaining members. The results hold even when controlling for demographic variables, political values, ideology, and the democratic deficit. Binary logistic regression analysis using pooled repeated cross-sectional data from the Eurobarometer surveys conducted in 1992 through 1997 among individuals of 11 member-states largely support these claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On June 23, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court issued landmark rulings on the University of Michigan’s use of affirmative action in its admissions policies. The Court’s decisions presented a unique opportunity to systematically examine the relationship between both the opinion of black Americans toward a policy articulated by the Court and the Court as an institution. In this paper, we report the results of a panel survey of black Americans’ reactions to the Court and its rulings. Specifically, we analyze public opinion data from a national representative sample of black Americans. This unique data set (funded by the National Science Foundation) includes measures of attitudes toward affirmative action policy, diffuse support for the Court, racial identification and group consciousness, as well as exposure to a variety of media sources. The inclusion of these measures and the survey’s panel design yields substantial intellectual payoffs. These data provide us with significant analytical leverage on the Court’s capacity to move public opinion with respect to a policy it has articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have examined the economic status of immigrants, most studies of immigration have neglected immigrant opinions. When immigration is addressed at all using survey data, studies almost exclusively focus on native attitudes toward immigration and not on attitudes of immigrants themselves. In this paper, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes toward social spending and redistribution. We employ surveys from Germany and Great Britain that sample a relatively large number of immigrants compared to typical national election surveys. In addressing this potential “opinion gap,” we control for socioeconomic characteristics, such as income and education as well as immigrants’ ability to assimilate into their new country’s labor market by comparing an immigrant’s skill level with his or her actual occupation in the new country. We also include contextual covariates to account for potential network effects. Our statistical analyses use ordered logistical regressions and are fully interactive (following Franzese 1999), consistent with our theoretical expectation that the models’ independent variables affect natives differently than they do immigrants. Once these controls are included, we observe that immigrants are never more likely than natives to favor increases in social spending or to endorse redistributive measures. In instances where we do find a significant opinion gap between natives and immigrants, the latter tend to support more conservative positions, favoring tax cuts at the expense of social spending. While some of our findings are preliminary in nature, they nevertheless represent a significant contribution to the extant literature, which, to our knowledge, does not include comparative studies on the political attitudes of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are 14 million Medicare beneficiaries, mostly elderly, who lack prescription drug coverage, and their number is increasing. Living on fixed incomes, many of them are often forced to choose between food and life-saving medicines. Polls show that, across the board, Americans recognize the burden that expensive prescriptions represent for the most vulnerable groups. Survey results describe adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare as the most important health policy issue the Administration and the Congress should address. However, despite numerous attempts over the last three Congresses, no legislation has been enacted to date. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the debate on Medicare prescription drugs over three Congresses (106th to 108th). Methodologically, a modified Kingdonian framework will be used to study the specifics of the policy formulation process and to predict the most likely policy outcome. In addition to the three ‘streams’ defined by Kingdon –problem, policy, and political streams—particular attention will be given to the influence of public opinion and media coverage throughout the process. The role played by the White House will also be considered. The analysis will rely on multiple data sources, from legislative history and CQ analyses to public opinion polls, media coverage indices, as well as public statements put forward by various interest groups involved in the debate. Prescription drug coverage for Medicare enrollees is not just another topic among the numerous health policy issues confronting the American society today. Due to the millions of people that could be affected by the outcome and the powerful interest groups involved in the debate, finding a solution to this crisis will play an important role in the 2004 presidential campaign, and cannot be ignored without serious political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Presidential power in an era of divided government”. While this may sound paradoxical, the modern governmental context highlights the reality of this statement. Given the modern political environment where public opinion is the currency of individualized pluralism, Samuel Kernell (1997) claims that ‘going public’ represents the most effective strategy for presidential influence. Paul Light (1999) asserts that agenda setting can be a formidable source of presidential influence: “…control of the agenda becomes a primary tool for securing and extending power” (2). Although a rich agenda setting literature exists which is frequently utilized to examine congressional policy making and its subsequent implications for representation writ large (e.g. Cobb and Elder 1983; Kingdon 1984; Baumgartner and Jones 1993), studies of presidential agenda setting are more sparse (Light 1999; Cohen 1995). The presidencies of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon present a unique opportunity to explore problem definition and agenda setting in the context of the domestic policy arena. Intriguing aspects of the policy process are overlooked when scholars myopically hone in on the legislative branch to the (relative) exclusion of the executive branch. This paper endeavors to illuminate the important role that two presidents played in setting the welfare reform agenda. As such, an exploration of Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan as a case of policy failure and Clinton’s Welfare Reform as a case of policy success will undoubtedly shed new theoretical insight and raise questions for future research in the areas of problem definition and presidential agenda setting. Indeed, these two policy cases amply demonstrate the inseparability of the concepts of problem definition and agenda setting. Finally, a ‘window of opportunity’ exists to test different theories of agenda setting for efficacy with regard to the president. A perusal of presidential rhetoric, in the form of speeches, press releases, and other public statements, will be utilized to determine the extent to which welfare reform permeated Nixon and Clinton’s public strategies. Furthermore, Deborah Stone’s theory of causal stories will serve as an analytical framework whereby an examination of competing efforts to define the problem both within and outside the presidential arena will be conducted. Since the initial framing and definition of a policy problem has a significant impact on the shape and tenor of a policy, presidential agenda setting has real implications for public opinion concerning and congressional estimations about public policies, particularly salient ones like welfare reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970’s, the Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) framework has been a critical component of the authoritative allocation of value, and has been the foundation for many of our public policy decisions. However, there has been some controversy over the appropriateness of this framework. Proponents of the benefit/cost framework have argued that it is a quantifiable method that makes it possible to include a full range of benefits and costs, it ensures that the values of the less politically powerful (or politically vocal) are included, it helps to distance policy decisions from the political process, and it puts the benefits and the costs into a common framework: dollars. When pointing out the shortcomings of the BCA framework, detractors usually describe the difficulty of comparing soft benefits and hard costs, missing data on the private valuation of policy proposals, and the enormous and expensive efforts required to try and fill some of these gaps. Others have questioned the appropriateness of using a method based on utilitarian assumptions for assisting in making policy choices, particularly when deontological questions are part of the issue. In trying to fill these data gaps, the field of economics has focused on two primarily utilitarian techniques, the first is hedonic analysis whereby actual market transactions are used to estimate the value of a particular "good"or "bad"; and contingent valuation (CV), an interview based method, which uses individuals’ stated preferences (as opposed to preferences that are revealed in market transactions) to estimate willingness to pay for an hypothetical public good. Contingent valuation is currently the only avenue available for the inclusion of ‘soft benefits’ in a BCA framework. This method has been prominently used in many public policy arenas particularly in environmental policymaking and damage assessments (like the Exxon Valdez case). Given that CV has evolved into a prominent, widely used policy tool for making collective decisions, I am interested in the following questions: Does the economic valuation of public goods carry "political" baggage? Does the nature of the economic valuation change the value of the good? Can we model the political foundations of economic valuation and come up with a "correction"? This paper applies the CV method to the issue of global climate change, where the "good" is the implementation of the Kyoto protocol as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I test the hypothesis that if the CV method is viewed as inappropriate, it will bias the estimated value of the good downward, resulting in a "tainted good". We also test for the effects of equity concerns, the appropriateness of reliance on public opinion for decision making, and deontological views on the estimated value of the public good. Preliminary results indicate that respondent perceptions of the appropriateness of CV has an effect on stated willingness to pay. Those individuals that see the method as inappropriate are, on average, willing to pay less. This has far reaching implications both for the BCA framework in general and the contingent valuation method in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has documented that public attitudes toward the news media have become dramatically more negative over that past 35 years. At the same time that public confidence in the press has declined, political scientist have become increasingly adept at demonstrating the massive influence the media exert over public opinion. This paper examines the question of what effect public attitudes towards the press have on the news media?s ability to influence the public beliefs. To do this, I utilize a Bayesian model of persuasion to develop predictions of the consequences if source judgments do play an important role in media influence. I then test these predictions using three very different datasets: a cross-sectional survey, a panel survey, and an experiment. The results from all three datasets confirm that those with positive feelings towards the media are more influenced by media messages than those with negative feelings. I briefly discuss the implications of these findings for democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For years, political scientists conducting quantitative analyses of the U.S Supreme Court have proceeded on the assumption that the justices make their voting decisions based upon their locations on an ideological continuum relative to the location of case stimuli along the same dimension. Thus, an individual case is located somewhere in ideological space, and a justice’s vote is determined by whether that justice is to the left or to the right of that case. As illuminating as our empirical models have been, the assumption driving them is, we believe, incorrect. Instead, we posit that in any give case the justices choose between two competing policy alternatives --- the policy offered by the petitioner and the policy offered by the respondent --- with each justice voting in favor of the alternative to which he or she is more proximate. In short, we offer a spatial model of Supreme Court voting. We offer and test a formal model of our theory. The results derived from our analysis provide a drastically different picture of the Court’s behavior. On the one hand, we find that the justices’ preferences do a better job of explaining their votes than even the strongest proponents of the attitudinal model claim. On the other hand, we find that the Court is far from one dimensional in its behavior, responding to such external forces as public opinion and the political composition of the elected branches of the federal government. Given the clarity and strength of our empirical results, the paper suggests the need to rethink not only our theory of the Court but also how we model its behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and compares occasions when foreign/defense policy has become atypically salient in British Public opinion by examining public opinion data on the Suez crisis, the Falklands war, the Gulf War, Kossovo, and the Iraq war. Our preliminary finding is that these issues are not generally seen as significant by UK voters, but surge to the fore in crisis periods, usually, but not always, to the benefit of the government of the day. The effect on public opinion tends to be short-term however, and foreign policy has not been a decisive issue in recent British General elections [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed work explores public perceptions of the severity of terrorism and the degree of support given to government policy initiatives designed to combat it. Recent terrorist events in the United States have led to sweeping legislation that gave law enforcement agencies substantially more latitude in countering both domestic and international terrorism (for example, the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996). Opposition to these and other pieces of legislation have come from groups on both the political left and right who are concerned about a potential erosion of individual civil liberties and the empowering of governmental agencies. Our data come from two public opinion surveys of the attitudes of respondents in Fargo, North Dakota, a modest sized Great Plains community. The first was conducted in Spring 1998 and the second in Fall 2002. In both surveys we asked our subjects the extent to which they believe that terrorism presents a threat and their reactions toward specific counter-terrorist policies (both international and domestic). We also collected socio-economic demographics, political affiliations, and attitudes toward politics in general. Because we are in a unique position of having both pre-and-post September 11, 2001 data, we are particularly interested in exploring whether that event has increased public attitudes toward support for terrorist countermeasures and/or has caused concern for the potential erosion of civil liberties. We believe that the proposed conference paper has both academic and policy significance. First, the study of terrorism is still in its formative stages in terms of theory development. This is especially true for such areas as public opinion whose link to the policy process in a democracy is of crucial importance. Second, the project is an interdisciplinary one, combining the views of a Political Scientist who teaches and researches both in Constitutional Law and Terrorism with those of a Sociologist who specializes in Political/Social Psychology. We hope to enhance theory building within both of these areas. Last, practitioners can use the findings to gauge support of public policy initiatives in the area of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]