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Through the 2008 elections, the majority of Americans have favored “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza strip.” Reflecting such public opinion, after the “roadmap,” US foreign policy will continue the pursuit of that end, calling for “establishing two independent states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognized borders.” Consequently, the main question asked by this paper is why the US has shifted from an “Israel only” position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to supporting an “Israel and Palestine” formula for peace. In order to address this question, the pro-Arab lobby was examined for interactions with US decision-making toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before and after the end of the Cold War, specifically from the Camp David period of the late 1970s until the invasion and occupation of Iraq during the mid 2000s. Paper concludes that while international factors such as the end of the Cold War cannot be overlooked, changes in domestic public opinion and lobbying had significant impacts on the US led international community’s efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with two states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper augments existing theoretical treatments of executive compensation by developing a rationale for political factors to influence corporate decision-making. It assess whether either changes in public trust in corporate America or in the SEC’s enforcement activity affect the salaries and benefits awarded to CEOs, while controlling for sociological and management theories. Political science has recently emphasized questions of inequality, and this paper contributes by demonstrating that due to institutional constraints, public forces have a limited ability to check inequality at its root. I analyzed the CEO salaries provided by the S&P 500 from 2001 to 2005 using a panel analysis. The data were gathered from Gallup polling, the SEC’s enforcement division, and firms' statements. The results demonstrate no effect on compensation for shifts in public opinion. This finding is attributed to two institutional roadblocks. In contrast, regulatory threat in the form of increased SEC activity does appear to lead relatively more firms to limit compensation. Nevertheless, the paper concludes with a discussion of how few firms limit the compensation provided to their CEOs (less than one-quarter) and provides reform proscriptions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how European level deliberations affect individual opinions, and how this translates into domestic public policies. It looks at deliberation as a way to investigate non-coercive modes of governance in the European Union, in particular the Open Method of Coordination and uses the Bologna Process, designed to create a European Higher Education Area, as an example. This paper suggests a theoretical framework inspired by political philosophy to understand the impact of deliberation on individual attitudes and policies. It also uses multiple lenses of analyses, relying on participants' surveys, a case study of deliberations leading to the Sorbonne declaration of 25 May 1998 and an analysis of domestic implementation to understand how deliberation affects many levels of policy-making. Results show that individuals change opinions in Bologna Process deliberations toward a more economically liberal perspective. This change transfers into domestic reforms because European and domestic deliberations are connected: the arguments learnt in European deliberations are used in domestic deliberations. But the extent of change depends on the level of entrenchment of the issue and personal interests. Those results lead to inferences on the way to achieve consequential deliberative decision-making in the Open Method of Coordination in conclusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the organization of Chinese nationalist movements in 2008. I focus on online facilitation of offline activism for Chinese nationalists. The paper articulates the framing, organizing, financing, recruiting as well as reconfirming effect of cyberspace on social movement. First, the Internet plays a remarkable role in mobilizing collective action across boarders. The BBS forums broadcasts protest appeals and boycotting actions, provides follow-ups and feedbacks, and financially supports upcoming protests. Second, Cyberspace has recruiting effect among the politically inactive population, having engaged a large number of female Chinese. Finally, high technology diffuses nationalist emotions at a global base. The imagined “patriotic community” reconsolidates the nationalist identity in the overseas Chinese community. The data was collected through web-based surveys and content analysis of postings. The research enriches academic understanding of how virtual communities transform public opinion into a new form of globalized cultural trend for a cross-sectional ethnic community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses survey data from 2004 from eight democracies in Central America, Mexico and Colombia from the Latin American Public Opinion Project to explore political legitimacy and its links to political participation. Theory argues that political legitimacy is multidimensional; this proves empirically correct, producing six legitimacy dimensions. Six modes of political participation are also identified empirically. Prior research on Costa Rica had suggested that some legitimacy-participation functions are U-shaped, such that citizens with very high and very low legitimacy norms would take part in politics more than those with intermediate legitimacy norms. This paper employs OLS regression analysis to test for the effects of legitimacy upon participation, modeling the effect of both linear and quadratic forms of political legitimacy to test for the curvilinear relationships, as well as the influence of multiple intervening and control variables. By far the predominant form of relationship revealed is indeed U-shaped. The paper explores the implications of this finding for both the legitimacy research and for the potential stability of democracies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a quantitative content analysis of media coverage of ethanol appearing in the New York Times from 1998 to 2008, paying particular attention to changes overtime in the quantity, tone, and framing of coverage. The analysis also takes into account key political and economic events such as elections, economic downturns, and energy crises, and the role of various political actors. Lastly, the paper includes a discussion of the public opinion and policy implications of the trends in media coverage. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said '[e]very idea is an incitement,' and that, "[t]he only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result." Building off of Holmes, we suggest that the Court move away from incitement-based tests, including the Clear and Present Danger and Brandenburg standards, and create a new and more narrowly-tailored ex ante category to be beyond the reach of First Amendment protection. In order to do this the Court must move away from analyzing speech that is 'close to' crime as a matter of proximity, degree, or close temporal connection. Instead, the Court must focus on speech that is substantially and integrally related to the successful completion of a criminal enterprise. This category of speech is defined by UCLA Professor of Law, Eugene Volokh as crime-facilitating speech. In this paper, we argue that in order for speech to be a type of concrete advocacy that can be appropriately considered beyond the pale of First Amendment protection it must supply more than an underlying motivation for the commission of a crime. This requires that the speech take on a conduct-like character that facilitates or aids in a criminal enterprise.There is growing evidence that the courts have been heading in the direction of crime-facilitative speech standards. This paper draws from these experimentations in setting aside the Brandenburg standard, and suggests that the Court adopt the following standard: (1)The speech must rise to the level of facilitation/instruction of a crime serious enough to be categorized as a felony. Such facilitative/instructive speech must provide some 'essential' knowledge, beyond general knowledge widely accessible to the general public. (2)By providing this essential knowledge, the facilitative information provides the 'inextricable link' between the information that aids and abets the crime and the successful completion of the criminal enterprise, and; (3)The speaker/publisher must willfully provide the facilitative/instructional information to the principal with the purposeful intent of aiding and abetting a successful criminal enterprise. In the final section of this paper, we will address how our standard will stand up against potential challenges, including the special challenges related to published material, dual-use material, facilitative information that has entertainment value, severe harms related to terrorism and nuclear attacks, and finally the internet and 'dissemination-once-removed.' ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his Discourses Machiavelli claims that one of the best aspects of the Roman republic was that conflicts between the nobles and the plebs resulting from policies such as the agrarian laws helped to sustain the republic, and he recommends pitting different factions in society against one another as a method that should be employed by contemporary republics. This suggestion was not one shared by Machiavelli's Florentine contemporaries such as Savonarola, who asserted the opposite: that faction was the cause of all of the republic's ills. While scholars have given much attention to Machiavelli's analysis of the Roman republic, very little attention has been given to how Machiavelli's recommendations comported with the founders of the republic in which he lived, one of the most influential of whom was Savonarola. In this paper, I will compare and contrast Savonarola and Machiavelli's views on the causes and consequences of faction and argue that the distinct understanding that Savonarola and Machiavelli have of factions is deeply rooted in their different views of the interplay between politics and morality. This paper is part of a larger dissertation examining religion and republicanism in thought of Savonarola and Machiavelli. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black and mainstream media sources tend to cover political events and issues in a different fashion. On the one hand, the Black press emphasizes advocacy and correcting the inaccuracies and stereotypes presented in the mainstream media. On the other hand, the mainstream papers value objectivity and balance, which often leads them to ignore important stories and sources within the Black community. Black citizens turn to Black papers for critical information, especially when events of special interest occur. Thus, I hypothesize that exposure to Black newspapers will have an influence on Black issue attitudes. Because Blacks are likely to filter information from mainstream papers and because mainstream papers tend to ignore stories of interest to the Black community, I hypothesize that exposure to mainstream papers will have no effect on Black public opinion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of the specific claim that the events of September 11th have transformed and/or is largely driving politics and policy within the major immigration-receiving countries this paper poses two related questions. First, has European public opinion objectively become more illiberal on immigration-related questions since September 11, 2001? Specifically, is it significantly less receptive to new immigration and/or less accommodating towards settled immigrants than previously? Second and more subjectively, are Europe's political elites under unusual pressure to align public policy with the preferences of an increasingly illiberal electorate? Are the parameters of immigration policy making in Europe in the post-September 11th era more circumscribed by public opinion than previously? In addressing these questions this paper pushes as far back as possible in the respective national public opinion records, with special attention paid to the pattern of British, French, and Spanish public attitudes before and after September 11. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research identifies sources of interpersonal trust in Latin America by exploring why the most developed countries in the Americas, namely Canada and the United States, show higher levels of interpersonal trust than their neighboring countries. The findings of this paper suggest that Latin America's high economic inequality poses a challenge to democracy because it triggers interpersonal mistrust. This paper also finds that in Latin America interpersonal trust, rather than civic participation, ideology or trust in government, promotes citizens' support for the implementation of public policies aimed to close the gap between rich and poor. Taken together, the results suggest a vicious circle between Latin America's historically high economic inequality, low interpersonal trust, and low support for redistributive policies within certain segments of the population, especially the well-off. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that public opinion research would benefit from shifting its focus on the latent distribution of survey items, not point estimates thereof. The paper shows why this is desirable and how it can be done. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between government policy and public preferences is a core concern of democratic theorists. One particularly powerful method of relating policy to opinion is the 'dynamic representation' approach. Scholars in this tradition test to what extent current policy changes are a function of past public preferences. This paper derives hypotheses from the dynamic representation approach and tests them for the United Kingdom in a left-right context from 1976-2006. First, it is shown that government policy on the left-right scale changes as a consequence of changing public preferences (the direct mechanism of 'rational anticipation'). Second, a right-wing public results in the election of the Conservative Party, which consequently pursues right-wing policies in office (the indirect mechanism of 'electoral turnover'). Third, government responsiveness is found to be conditional on electoral vulnerability. Popular incumbents are less likely than unpopular incumbents to adjust their policy position to the public. While the Westminster system has received much criticism for its failure to reliably link rulers to the ruled, this paper finds that dynamic representation on the left-right scale in the United Kingdom functions quite admirably. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion and foreign policy in Latin America has been sparsely studied in its own right. This paper seeks to test hypotheses drawn from the study of American and comparativist politics. Since the 1920s the impact of public opinion on American foreign policy has been a point of both optimism and dismissal. Liberals have argued that public opinion has the potential to promote peace while pessimists have questioned the stability of public opinion and the ability of the public to make decisions toward foreign policy. Within Latin America, the study of public opinion and foreign policy has been largely overlooked as the emergence of the scientific study of public opinion occurred during a period of authoritarian rule. The rebirth of democracy and liberal economics in Latin America began within the "lost decade" of economic crises of the 1980s. Democratic and structural adjustment reforms since the 1990s have changed the region dramatically making issues of trade a potential touchstone for every citizen. This makes the present the opportune moment to study the public opinion and foreign policy nexus within the Latin American context. Specifically, this paper asks whether public opinion toward economic integration can be predicted by established hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the recent eletoral rise of anti-establishment parties in Eastern Europe in terms of voter rejection of mainstream political elites in third-generation post-communist elections. Using survey data from the 2000 and 2004 Romanian parliamentary elections, the paper identifies the circumstances under which prospective or retrospective considerations dominate electoral choices of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to test the plausibility of the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis (Page & Shapiro, 1992) using the agenda-setting model as a framework. One of the implicit assumptions of the agenda-setting model is that in the absence of a news story about a particular topic, such as stories about air quality, public concern about the topic is at equilibrium. In response to a media story or external events such as a public information campaign asking drivers to alter their driving behavior, concern about the topic of air quality may quickly diverge from the long-term equilibrium level of concern. This equilibrium state is similar to Downs’ (1972) pre-problem state or Baumgartner and Jones’ (1991; 1993) values consensus state. A focusing event or system shock punctuates the equilibrium state causing concern about air quality to rise. Eventually, after the media or the public becomes bored with the issue of air quality, concern will return to an equilibrium level of concern (Downs, 1972; Henry & Gordon, 2001; Neuman, 1990). This change in the level of concern about air quality in response to a system shock such as a news story or focusing event such as a public information campaign raises a fundamental question; do all members of the public respond similarly or in the parallel fashion predicted by Page and Shapiro to the system shock? That is, do men and women or do people who are college-educated or not college-educated respond in the same way at the same time to news stories or a public information campaign about air quality? The homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis suggests that all groups respond similarly. The heterogeneity hypothesis suggests that groups may differ in their response to a system shock with the public either converging or diverging. The results from the models tested in this paper provide strong evidence that the homogeneity or parallel publics hypothesis is untenable. The initial analysis, correlating the aggregate means and variances gave strong indication that there were different processes at work. The results of the vector autoregression analysis show significant differences in response patterns to the media coverage and public information campaign based on sex and education. The results provided support for what we will call the convergent heterogeneity hypothesis, though the sex series was more consistent with what we called the divergent heterogeneity hypothesis. In an attempt to explain the disparate findings between the people and group models, we simulated the effects of a public information campaign to demonstrate that different groups responded in systematically different ways to the system shock with the overall effect washing out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this proposed paper we expand on the earlier research by Garand and Procopio (1995), who used data from the 1992 American National Election Study (ANES) to model popular support for term limits as a function of a variety of variables, many of which are found in the scholarly literature. However, unlike previous work Garand and Procopio include independent variables representing the effect of characteristics of U.S. House members, especially seniority. Garand and Procopio suggest that, controlling for the effects of other variables, citizens will respond to the characteristics of their representatives and adjust their support for term limits accordingly. For instance, they find that citizens represented by House members with high seniority are less supportive of term limits than citizens represented by junior members. We propose to extend this general model to data from the 1994 and 1998 ANES surveys. We also propose to consider whether public opinion on congressional term limits is shaped by the configuration of partisan identification and partisan control of Congress. With rare exception, previous research on support for term limits in the mass public has focused on the pre-1994 period in Congress, during which time both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate were controlled by the Democrats. Such a focus does not allow for a full longitudinal test of the connection between partisan attitudes and attitudes toward term limits. Specifically, previous research has found that Republican identifiers are much more likely than Democrats to support term limits, but it is unclear if this is an integral part of being a Republican or if support for term limits would change once the Republicans are in control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. We speculate that Republican support for term limits in 1992 was based in part on self-interest, insofar as Republicans did not have majority status in the Congress at that time; on the other hand, we speculate that, once control of Congress shifted to the Republicans with the 1994 congressional elections, support for term limits among Republican citizens should have declined and support for term limits among Democrats should have increased. In this proposed paper we will utilize data from the 1992, 1994, and 1998 ANES surveys, which are the only ANES surveys that include items on support for term limits. We estimate a series of models to explain variation in individuals’ support for congressional term limits. Our core model includes demographic variables, as well as variables measuring political attitudes, system support, legislative support, and political knowledge. We also intend to include characteristics of respondents’ House members in our term limit model; these characteristics will include members’ seniority, the ideological distance between respondents and their House members, and estimates of grant funds brought to each district, among others. Moreover, we consider the mediating effect of political knowledge on the effects of these variables on support for term limits. Following Garand and Procopio, we suggest that high- and low-knowledge citizens use different kinds of information in shaping their attitudes toward term limits. Finally, we focus particular attention on how the effects of partisanship on support for term limits varies under periods of Democratic control of Congress (before 1994) and Republican control of Congress (after 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks impacted the United States as a nation, but also had implications for local government. In an earlier paper, I analyzed the impact of the terrorist attacks on the 2001 New York City Mayoral election. While proximity to the terrorist attacks increased the probability of voters expressing uneasiness about new mayoral leadership, voters were not willing to overturn term-limits and continue with Giuliani as mayor. Partisan identification remained an important indicator analyzing favorability for Giuliani and the new mayoral candidates. Many questions remain to be answered in the realm of public opinion on local government, particularly during a time of crisis. In 2001, despite heavy Democratic Party identification in New York City, the Republican candidate for mayor, Michael Bloomberg won with just over 50 percent of the vote. Public support for Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was very high following the September 11 terrorist attacks. As a co-partisan of Giuliani, did Bloomberg benefit from the rally of support for the Republican incumbent? In this paper, I ask did the September 11 terrorist attacks increase the probability of cross-over voting in the 2001 New York City mayoral election? Alternately, did individual-level perceptions of the ideological positions of the candidates influence cross-over? Are Democratic Party identifiers who perceive Bloomberg as a moderate more likely to offer him their vote? Are candidate-specific characteristics, such as a “business” versus “political” background important in the analysis of cross-over? To study cross-over voting and the impact of the terrorist attacks on local elections, New York Times survey data on deposit with the ICPSR will be used. A poll of New York City residents conducted from October 27 through 31, 2001 provides the data necessary for this inquiry. I anticipate that concern about terrorist attacks and security will have a positive impact on the probability of voting for Bloomberg. Democratic voters impacted by the terrorist attacks will have a higher probability of issuing a cross-over vote. Further, Democratic Party identifiers with a history of voting support for Mayor Giuliani will also be more likely to support Bloomberg. In other words, in the context of a large city local election, cross-over should be a function of prior cross-over voting behavior. The presence of crisis should have an added effect. The co-partisan of the incumbent mayor will gain support from those impacted by crisis and by those concerned about additional attacks. This study will advance our understanding of how crisis impacts public opinion about local government and how local electorates behave immediately following a terrorist attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of public opinion on presidential decision-making in foreign policy. Although a good deal of research looks at this general question, beyond the broad distinction between crisis and non-crisis decisions, the literature is largely inconclusive. We begin from this central distinction, utilizing the International Crisis Behavior Project’s criteria as the starting point for case selection. To observe in detail how differing patterns of public attentiveness influence foreign policymaking, we compare four cases: the 1991 Gulf War; the 1999 U.S. intervention in Kosovo; the U.S. response to Ethiopian famine in the mid-1980s; and U.S.-Japanese economic relations between 1988-1992. To move beyond the broad question of “public opinion and foreign policy,” we propose a more precisely specified analytical model, conceptualizing foreign policy decision making as a five-stage process: problem representation, option generation, policy selection, implementation, and policy review. At each decision stage, the question is asked: How influential was public opinion on a president’s decision? The model generates several testable hypotheses. For instance, foreign policy crises tend to produce a public that is highly attentive throughout all stages of the decision process. While strategic imperatives often overwhelm domestic political considerations in the early stages of a crisis, the relative importance of public opinion as a decision premise tends to increase during later stages, with presidents apt to sacrifice strategic effectiveness to pacify a highly attentive domestic audience during the implementation phase. Conversely, salient non-crisis foreign policies produce a selectively attentive public, whose greatest influence is likely to be on the president’s selection of policy rather than the manner in which that policy is implemented. Freed from the constraints of an attentive public, presidents are afforded considerable autonomy in implementing non-crisis policy in a manner consistent with their vision of the national interest, even if the general public does not share that same vision. This paper outlines the model and provides a brief overview of each of the cases, then assembles data on aggregate public opinion from a wide range of surveys and polls, and analyzes the resulting time series to compare the pattern of public involvement to the model’s predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes people care about issues? Why do some issues act as agents of change in the electorate while many others are swallowed up by existing cleavages or just fade away altogether? Is there any way to predict which issues will stick, which will die, and which might instigate gradual, mass partisan transformation? In their model of partisan change, Carmines and Stimson (1989) note that elites establish and shape the reputation of political parties on issues. But what mechanisms do elites use to do that? A great deal of work has established the media’s role as an agenda setter (Iyengar and Kinder 1987), but less is known about the impact of second level agenda-setting, or framing (Nelson and Kinder 1996, McCombs, Weaver, and Shaw 1997). I demonstrate that the framing of issues impacts the public’s belief that an issue is important. Additionally, partisan framing appears to impact opinion formation and change on political issues. After analyzing coverage of President Bush’s tax cut, the California energy crisis, and coverage preceding the latest war in Iraq, this paper demonstrates that one answer to the question of what mechanisms do elites use to shape the reputation of political parties on issues lies in the way that political issues are framed in mass media coverage. This paper uses content analysis of four major newspapers to show that at times of low mass salience, issues receive coverage that include several, often disparate frames. As the number of frames for issues are winnowed down in mass media coverage, the salience of the issue increases. Further, opinion change appears to be linked to the winnowing down of frames into two dominant, partisan ways of characterizing a particular issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows that the public knows the least about the Supreme Court, but affords the Court more favorable ratings than it does to the legislative and executive branches. We ask: Is the Supreme Court?s legitimacy, in part, a function of public uncertainty about its decisions? This paper examines the effects of increased information about the Supreme Court on public confidence in the Court. Specifically, the paper seeks to understand how, if at all, public confidence in the Court changes after individuals are presented with information and asked their opinions about multiple Court decisions on salient issues. The paper analyzes the results of a June 2003 split-ballot national telephone survey. Employing an experimental design that measures public confidence in the Court after exposing a randomly assigned group of respondents to information about six Court decisions across a range of salient issues, compared to a control group not given such information, allows us to see how political information affects public opinion toward the Court in the aggregate and across subgroups. While overall it seems, not inconsistent with prior research, that public confidence in the Court is largely unaffected by the new information, we do find noticeable differences among certain subgroups that indicate that public opinion toward the Court is more complex than has been shown thus far but in ways that are readily explicable. In particular, confidence in the Court may decline as the public acquires information on the Court’s rulings that contradict the preferences of a very large and longstanding majority of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of individual attitudes on the relationship between presidential rhetoric and the public agenda. Extant research on presidential agenda setting relies almost exclusively on data collected at the aggregate level and, as a result, is incapable of capturing much of the variation in individual reactions to presidential speeches. The available evidence indicates that individual attitudes, such as presidential approval and partisan identification, can play a critical role in determining whether presidential speeches succeed in influencing the public’s policy preferences (e.g. Meernik and Ault 2001; Page, Shapiro, and Dempsey 1987; Page and Shapiro 1992). But it is much less clear whether such attitudes influence the dynamics of presidential agenda setting. Relying on individual-level survey data collected immediately following four State of the Union Addresses delivered by four different presidents, this paper estimates the relationship between presidential rhetoric and the public agenda as a function of exposure to the president’s speech, presidential support, political predispositions, and demographic characteristics. The results indicate that presidential rhetoric is an important determinant of the public agenda across all respondents, but an even more powerful determinant among those who voted for the president and approve of his performance, among those who share partisan and ideological predispositions consistent with the president’s, and among those who belong to demographic groups traditionally supportive of the president’s party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure of beliefs, the role of ideology as an influence on policy preferences, and the connections between foreign and domestic beliefs have motivated analyses of public and elite opinion. To this point the findings of empirical research in this area have been limited largely to American survey data. There has been little cross-country and cross-region comparative research to examine the generality of American findings. In this paper, we will report the findings of an analysis of foreign policy beliefs of technically sophisticated elite communities drawn from the member countries of the European Union and the United States. To what extent do elites in other countries display a similar organization of belief systems and arrive at similar policy preferences? Are policy preferences influenced by ideology and situational differences, even among a group internationalized by training, professional socialization, and to a large extent by language, and even within technically sophisticated issue areas? To answer these questions we administered an identical survey in sixteen different national settings (translated into French, German, and Italian) to scientific elite subsets of the population in 2002. The paper will explore the role of ideological constraints and geopolitical context in models of foreign and domestic policy preferences toward nuclear weapons and energy respectively. We examine the Atlantic divide and compare superpower United States with European Union responses. Second, we examine national samples for the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and “other EU” countries. Preliminary analysis of the data suggests strong support for the general hierarchical pattern of beliefs, with important cross-country differences within a hierarchical pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do relatively low-income rural people tend to vote Republican? Why do some people who call themselves conservatives vote Democrat? In this paper, I investigate these mysteries by analyzing the conversations from a series of listening investigations I conducted in 23 communities throughout a Midwestern state. I examine how groups of people conceptualize their partisanship while talking within one another in informal groups in which they regularly meet in settings in their communities. I find that geographic considerations of urban versus rural are central to their partisanship, as are attitudes toward government spending, to particular policies, as well as to social groups. The most striking categorization, however, is not Republican vs. Democrat, or urban vs. rural, but the people versus their government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where does the information that changes opinion come from? One conjecture states that public opinion changes through a top-down process of mass-mediated "elite discourse." A competing conjecture is that public opinion is a bottom-up process of individual "thermostatic" observation. This paper adjudicates those claims using statistical techniques from the field of voice recognition and natural language processing. Using a hidden Markov model of aggregate opinion change, I analyze data from the 2000 and 2004 Annenberg Election Study. These rich samples include millions of survey responses collected from hundreds of thousands of respondents in daily rolling cross sections spanning dozens of weeks. Within this data, I examine whether changes in opinion occur in sudden bursts, consistent with the top-down claim, or steady trickles, consistent with the bottom-up claim. The result: opinion burstiness depends on the issue. For example, assessments of challengers are top-down, but assessments of incumbents are bottom-up. These results have important implications for theories of aggregate opinion change, electoral learning, and societal information flow. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, there is a rich and diverse literature that advances numerous models of how “ideas” â€" e.g. shared norms, national identities, or strategic cultures â€" drive foreign policy. These approaches look at the arrows that flow from ideational variables at the domestic level toward the international level. My paper sets out to explore the extent to which national identities and ideas themselves derive from the exigencies of the international system. It argues that material pressures and incentives arising in the international arena often profoundly affect the (re)production of societal norms and identities. First, the clearest example of external influence on norm (re)production is the attempt of states to influence societal discourses in other countries through propaganda efforts and cultural diplomacy. Second, exogenous shocks such as defeat in war or severe foreign policy crises can precipitate the rapid and drastic transformation of societal norms. Third and most important, the distribution of material capabilities or changes thereof affects the way a society constructs its foreign policy identity. The plausibility of my theoretical considerations is substantiated by examples taken from different regional and historical settings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper test the utility of using non-response rates to measure state penetration in cross-national research. We first establish a classification of state apparatus autonomy and elite interest protection in 17 Latin American countries. In this classification, the majority of these countries fall in two categories: State/Low Protection and Non-state/High Protection. We then use responses to two battery of questions to construct a non-response ratio measure: one about the functions of the state apparatus (State battery); and one about public opinion toward foreign relations (IR battery). Using this nonresponse ratio, we find that countries in which elite interest was lowly protected have higher non-response ratios. That is, persons in these low protection countries are disproportionately less likely to nonrespond to state-related questions. Accordingly, citizens have greater identification with a state apparatus that has established some autonomy from the dominant economic and political elite, and citizens’ orientations toward the state influence the “form of response” they make to state-related questions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a group-based analysis of Chinese public opinion towards policy legitimacy. I address how people's collective memories of economic development between the hometown and the rival city cause conflicting feelings towards the rival group and the central authorities. I focus on the data collected from web surveys and content analysis, for the cases of Tianjin vs. Beijing and Chengdu vs. Chongqing. I argue that the public remains complicated feelings in accordance with their judgment of relative economic status across rival cities during the recent history. I name this as “memory effect hypothesis.” People's city identity is hereby consolidated through social narratives and historical memories of the economic vicissitudes. Due to social comparisons, the relatively disadvantaged groups maintain a strong feeling of relative deprivation. The sense of deprivation is aggravated when people believe their disadvantage is caused by policy injustice from the central government. The constructed city identity becomes a significant predictor of people's positions towards the legitimacy of the administrative hierarchy and government policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of public opinion has a long, rich history in political science in the advanced industrialized world. Over the past several years, scholars have increased efforts to collect similar data from the developing and/or autocratic world. One such effort has been realized by WorldPublicOpinion.org, in collaboration with the U.S. Institute for Peace and Search for Common Ground, by the completion of two rounds of public opinion surveys in Iran spanning the years 2006 and 2008. To date, there has been no rigorous analysis of the descriptive and potential inferential properties of the data set. In this paper, we supply the first such analysis and examine the relationship between and among responses to a variety of questions ranging from support of the government regime to attitudes toward foreign leaders. We hope to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of data collection in Iran and other developing/autocratic countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on how candidates choose which issues to emphasize has largely ignored questions of policy positions. Instead, an alternative theory of issue ownership has arisen, which posits that the typical voter "lacks a clear preference about social and policy issues." (Petrocik 1996) These voters simply care about each party's reputation for being able to "handle" particular issues, and in turn, candidates choose to emphasize the issues on which their party holds the greatest advantage. This paper looks to bring the idea that issue positions matter back into the study of issue emphasis, by comparing three alternative hypotheses of whom candidates choose to cater to. Do candidates seek to capture the center, as the traditional spatial literature would suggest, by appealing to independent voters? Do they instead focus on satisfying their base, in order to maximize resources and turnout? Or do they attempt to poach voters from the other party who hold heretical views on particular policy issues?To find out, I create positional measures for respondents in the 2000 National Annenberg Election Surveys on a variety of issues, using a range of question responses for each issue to construct a single variable. I then aggregate these responses by partisan group in each state, and use the distribution of opinions within these groups to explain issue emphasis in US Senate campaigns' television advertising, as recorded in the CMAG dataset. I find significant support for all three hypotheses, with the critical intervening variable being the size of each group. US Senate candidates tailor their issue emphasis strategies to the policy preferences of the most prominent groups in the electorate, even after controlling for issue ownership. This finding gives strong support to the idea that policy positions really do matter in crafting issue agendas, and shows that there is a role for spatial considerations in the study of issue emphasis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this paper is to stress the topic of reparations in processes of transitional justice from the perspective of political science. In a specific way, we intend to establish an analytical framework of reparations in the context of transitional justice in three levels: justice, administrative dimension and political dimension. Using the results of the review of different international cases and the tools of game theory, we present the ‘reparations game’ from a strategic perspective that copes with context and actors. Two strategies are outlined in order that the victims could overcome the constraints established by the previous political game that arises among government and wrongdoers. Finally we outline some conclusions and recommendations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assimilation of immigrant minorities into their host societies has become a critical issue in the past several decades. Some call for increased recognition of cultural distinctiveness, arguing that “multicultural” policies will lead to greater tolerance of and support for ethnic differences. Others argue for more political and economic assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream, and that emphasis on preserving cultural difference risks mainstream backlash. An important question, therefore, is: are these different types of policy regimes related to the acceptance of diversity among the masses, and if so in what direction?.x000d..x000d.This paper examines the link between “multicultural”and “assimilationist” policy regimes, on the one hand, and mass opinion on a range of attitudes vis-à-vis immigrants, immigration, and ethnic minorities on the other. I employ country-level measures of multiculturalism and political/economic integration, as well as survey measures taken from the European Social Survey..x000d..x000d.I find that multiculturalism policy is negatively related to tolerance of immigration, immigrants, and support for anti-discrimination laws across EU countries, whereas policies promoting integration have the opposite effect. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senator Barack Obama combated false claims about his religious affiliations and patriotism while trying to secure the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The inaccuracies and rumors Obama faced are significantly different in kind from those candidates have encountered in the past: the major medium of distribution of this misinformation is no longer the leaflet, newspaper, radio or TV, but the World Wide Web, which offers the capacity to replicate message upon message and â€Å"go viral.” In what ways, if any, might these types of attacks sway American public opinion about candidates in a national election? And more importantly, when and how might these types of slanderous messages persuade recipients to change their votes? Our work incorporates much of the content found in the Obama smear emails into two experiments that address the questions postulated above. We conducted a pilot study attempting to examine the affect of these internet smears on citizen attitudes about the U.S. Senator for Illinois, knowledge about the candidate, and intended vote choice. This paper presents the results of an experimental study involving over 350 subjects at a private liberal arts college in Illinois. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have started to analyze how politician behavior and rhetoric can prime certain image dimensions, leading citizens to evaluate politicians along these dimensions. This incipient body of work provides intriguing evidence that politicians can and do change image perceptions through speeches and policy activity, especially in the foreign policy domain. In this paper, I contribute to this literature by assessing the image persuasive and image priming effects of presidential responsiveness and unresponsiveness. I argue that changes in public perceptions of the extent to which a politician possesses a certain trait (image persuasion) do not necessarily change the weight given to that trait in overall approval evaluations (image priming). I report the results of an original experiment manipulating whether a president is responsive or unresponsive to public opinion, either on a foreign policy issue or on a domestic issue. This allows me to compare the differential effects of (un)responsiveness in the different issue domains. My findings confirm that image persuasion does not necessarily lead to image persuasion. I discuss the implications for research on politician strategy, presidential politics, priming, and persuasion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous models of sequential veto bargaining in the United States do not include public opinion as a significant predictor of policy outcomes, yet work on presidential agenda setting (Kernell 1993; Canes-Wrone 2001a) suggests that public opinion can be an important factor in determining policy outcomes when the president and Congress have opposing preferences. In this paper, I argue that some instances of veto bargaining occur, in part, because the actors are uncertain about how the public will respond to an extended period of gridlock. When the public finds gridlock unacceptable, the actor(s) who receive most of the blame will be forced to make concessions in subsequent rounds of bargaining. After presenting a theory of public opinion and sequential veto bargaining, I analyze two cases in recent American history in which public opinion played an important role in the outcome of veto bargaining. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study utilized a deliberative democracy methodology to measure the impact that deliberation has on attitudes towards health care. We enlisted three distinct samples and phases of data collection utilizing the same instrument: .x000d.1.A telephone-based, survey of randomly selected adults in Delaware County, IN, Indiana (also known by the pseudonym “Middletown” and long a source for survey samples as a typical American community). sample (N=557) to obtain baseline data, .x000d.2.A paper-and-pencil version of the same survey for participants who agreed (at the time of the initial phone survey) to attend a one-day deliberative event (N=33) and .x000d.3.A follow-up telephone call with the same survey to attendees of the deliberative event (N=22) to assess the longevity of potential change in attitude(s)..x000d.Most studies involving deliberative democracy stop at the second phase of data collection; so our study promises to add to the literature’s understanding of how enduring deliberation’s impact on public opinion is..x000d.Since stage two was a focus-group type study, and since stage three stemmed from stage two, our analysis in these sections is more qualitative and suggestive than our analysis of our stage one findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I show how a theory of collective political rationality can be formulated using a Bayesian updating model. With this model, it is possible to examine more fully the nature of collective political rationality by looking at the effects of random error and partisanship in macro-level public opinion. I begin by describing the Bayesian updating model and show the logic of the model is consistent with political rationality-- that is updating is the byproduct of citizens who vary in their knowledge and attention to politics and in their partisan allegiances. In order to assess the utility of this model, I examine the extent to which aggregate opinion is influenced by random error, information (using education as a proxy), and the interaction of information and partisanship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a quest to maximize revenues, sports franchises have pursued the construction of new state of the art facilities. Frequently, they have sought public support for these projects. In this paper we utilize data from the 2005 New York Times New York City Poll to explore what factors help shape support or opposition to new stadiums and arenas. We are able to compare levels of support for a number of different venues across sports including football, baseball, and basketball. In particular, we are interested in the impact that race and place have on levels of support. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I test whether treatment group subjects' political awareness, partisanship, and media trust moderates the persuasive impact of positive news about the UN, and different media sources reporting that information, on subjects' UN policy preferences. Of particular interest is whether subjects' level of trust in the news media moderates the impact of the treatments on subjects' stated UN policy preferences. Building on the Reception-Acceptance-Sample model's theoretical axioms (Zaller 1992), this paper hypothesizes that media trust plays a central role in moderating the persuasive impact of political messages shaping political opinions. OLS regression results suggest that treatment group subjects' policy preferences were generally more positive compared to the control group, taking into consideration the relevant moderators. The strongest positive policy preferences were associated with strong Democratic treatment group subjects with high political awareness and high general media trust. OLS regression analysis did not indicate any statistically significant interaction effect among treatment group subjects' political awareness, partisanship, and trust in specific media sources that they were exposed to in the experiment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How will the current financial crisis affect American foreign policy? Reviewing the literature, it is initially unclear how domestic events can systematically affect foreign policy. Examining the role of public opinion, threat of electoral punishment and interest groups offer unsatisfactory explanations as to why domestic politics matters to foreign policy. Moving beyond these alternative explanations, careful examination of psychological factors, mainly risk expectations derived from prospect theory, provide a compelling explanatory narrative. This paper asserts that the financial crisis will eventually drive the US towards higher levels of engagement in international crises. Case studies of the 1930s and 1970s substantiate this hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do the policy positions of parties change? We have good theoretical reasons to expect that political parties adopt policy positions in response to the preferences of voters, since voters are likely to prefer parties that have ideological positions that most resemble their own. At the aggregate level, this leads to the prediction that parties shift their positions towards the median voter's bliss point. Extensive research has documented that parties adjust their ideological position in response to public opinion shifts. Yet, such empirical research has tended to lack sufficiently long time-series of party positions to systematically examine the dynamics of party positions over time. This leaves a number of questions still to be further explored, such as: when do parties shift their ideological positions? Are parties more responsive to the median voter or to party supporters? Does the responsiveness of parties to voters depend on the electoral cycle? This paper examines these questions using time-series data on party leader positions from 1973-2008 in Denmark and Britain. We find that party leaders adjust their positions in the direction of the median voter, and that the extent of this adjustment is greater in election years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a sizeable literature on the elite-public link, few of these studies have been cross-national. In this paper I apply multilevel ordered logit models to investigate mass opinion toward redistribution in 23 European countries. Political elites have the opportunity to influence the media agenda, and consequently also to reach out to the public. In this respect, I argue that higher education has a twofold nature, consisting of both an interest to provide one owns self-interest, yet also a critical thinking component. Elite opinion is quantified through a measure constructed from the party manifestos of incumbent parties, and tested against data from the European Social Survey. After including relevant controls, I find no significant direct effect of political elite-views on public opinion. There is strong support for the self-interest argument, yet the rightist tendency for within higher educated persons is significantly smaller if their government is economically conservative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certainly, one way for the will of the people to be expressed, in this modern world, is through voting. More recently, a place has been made in the democratic arena for public opinion polling data as well. How does public opinion fit within the literature of democratic theory? How is it used in practice? Does public opinion data reflect the will of the people better than voting? What are the limitations of survey research and of equating its results with the voice of the people? This paper seeks to propose answers to these questions and unite all of these perspectives into an initial examination and evaluation of the possibilities presented by public opinion data in both the American and generally democratic context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can international organizations affect public opinion, and thus indirectly influence states’ foreign policies? Recent work claims either that people are influenced by IO decisions because some organizations are imbued with symbolic importance, or that people are sometimes influenced by IO decisions because they convey information about the merits of proposed policies or the intent of leaders to domestic and foreign audiences. Existing work relies on observational data to examine the implications of these claims. This paper presents an experiment that allows us to examine these claims directly. The experimental results show that citizens' foreign policy preferences can be influenced by IO decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 2008 public opinion surveys in eighteen Latin American countries, the paper investigates the parameters of the gender gap in political participation and finds evidence that it is modest. It then explores the relative effects of political context, resources, agency, and political attitudes on women's and men's political involvement. Separate regression equations for women and men allow for investigation of whether different social processes influence the kind and extent of political engagement undertaken by the two sexes. The study utilizes data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project which surveys public opinion and behavior in the Americas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A line of psychological research has examined the belief in a just world and how this psychological belief may influence attributions of blame regarding vulnerable populations. The psychological belief in a just world may be an important determinant of public opinion regarding health and social policies. In this paper, I seek to ascertain the extent to which the belief in a just world is related to public opinion in support of health and social policies. I estimate a series of ordered probit models in order to test this core hypothesis. Data are drawn from The National Election Study (NES) which is conducted regularly in the United States in order to compile data regarding public opinion and its determinants. In 2006 the NES conducted a pilot survey. This pilot survey collects further information from a subsample of the 2004 NES and includes a question regarding the belief in a just world. Data from the 2004 NES are merged with data from the 2006 NES pilot survey. These models, as applied to this data, suggest that belief in a just world, while related to decreased support for government securing a standard of living and government spending for aid to poor people, is not related to support for government provision of services, government provision of health insurance, and government spending for welfare, social security, public schooling, and child care services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do regional achieve electoral success? Using Italian national electoral survey data, this paper examines how voter perceptions on patronage as well as the interaction of national and regional party platforms impact regional party success. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 2004 ANES data, this paper explores whether support for immigration has changed since 9/11. More so than economic factors, race seems to be the most reliable guide for indicating whether a respondent will support immigration restriction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an experimental design to investigate whether the positions of other political elites on Supreme Court cases influences the effect of receiving the justices' cues on public opinion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine several factors that are expected to influence individual attitudes toward the use of harsh interrogation techniques constituting torture. Three factors are proposed as particularly salient and provide a number of testable hypotheses: the nature of the combatant (regular soldier versus insurgent), international law, and reciprocity. The hypotheses are then evaluated using an experimental design involving a student sample. Although there are some exceptions, the results are generally supportive of all three hypotheses: support for the use of torture tends to increase when dealing with insurgents, decrease when respondents are told the practices are prohibited under international law, and increase when the other side is already engaging in the same practices. The findings thus have implications for our understanding of the intersection between public opinion and foreign policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]