Levy yeyati, Moscovich, Abuin Leader over Policy The Scope of Elite Influence on Policy Preferences (original) (raw)
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Leader over policy? The influence of political leaders on policy preferences
2017
To extend the existing literature on political polarization beyond the traditional setup (an ideologically well-defined two-party setup), we run survey experiments in the great Buenos Aires area of Argentina to explore the role of leader and party endorsement in shaping public opinion over policies, in a context of a weak and ideologically elusive party system dominated by strong personalistic leaders. We find evidence of a significant (leader as well as party) endorsement effect, regardless of the degree of ex ante polarization (so that sponsorship may introduce polarization on ex ante unpolarized issues). In addition, we document asymmetries relative to party and leader (some leaders have larger polarizing effects than others; negative identification with a leader seems to prevail over positive identification) and the ineffectiveness of co-sponsorship and "against-character" endorsement to broaden policy support.
Leader over policy? The influence of political leaders on policy preferences 1
Word count: 7411 To extend the existing literature on political polarization beyond the traditional setup (an ideologically well-defined two-party setup), we run survey experiments in the great Buenos Aires area of Argentina to explore the role of leader and party endorsement in shaping public opinion over policies, in a context of a weak and ideologically elusive party system dominated by strong personalistic leaders. We find evidence of a significant (leader as well as party) endorsement effect, regardless of the degree of ex ante polarization (so that sponsorship may introduce polarization on ex ante unpolarized issues). In addition, we document asymmetries relative to party and leader (some leaders have larger polarizing effects than others; negative identification with a leader seems to prevail over positive identification) and the ineffectiveness of co-sponsorship and " against-character " endorsement to broaden policy support.
Varied Effects of Policy Cues on Partisan Opinions
Although citizens often arrive at the same views as their political party"s leaders, they also respond to information about policy targets and effects. Accounting for political context encourages a variable view of how partisanship shapes opinions in policy debates. In three survey experiments associated with policies supported by both Democrats and Republicans, I find that both aspects of policy argumentation and the actors making the arguments can enable partisanship to affect public opinion. This process is highly conditional, however: sometimes polarization occurs only with the presence a single politician; in other areas, polarization is likely following presentation of evidence by either partisan side. The effect of policy information on partisan polarization is variable across political and policy contexts.
Elite Polarization and Public Opinion: How Polarization Is Communicated and Its Effects
Political Communication, 2015
Elite polarization has reshaped American politics and is an increasingly salient aspect of news coverage within the United States. As a consequence, a burgeoning body of research attempts to unravel the effects of elite polarization on the mass public. However, we know very little about how polarization is communicated to the public by news media. We report the results of one of the first content analyses to delve into the nature of news coverage of elite polarization. We show that such coverage is predominantly critical of polarization. Moreover, we show that unlike coverage of politics focused on individual politicians, coverage of elite polarization principally frames partisan divisions as rooted in the values of the parties rather than strategic concerns. We build on these novel findings with two survey experiments exploring the influence of these features of polarization news coverage on public attitudes. In our first study, we show that criticism of polarization leads partisans to more positively evaluate the argument offered by their non-preferred party, increases support for bi-partisanship, but ultimately does not change the extent to which partisans follow their party's policy endorsements. In our second study, we show that Independents report significantly less political interest, trust, and efficacy when polarization is made salient and this is particularly evident when a cause of polarization is mentioned. These studies have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization-and how polarization is communicated-for public opinion and political behavior in democratic politics.
Political Research Quarterly, 2009
This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party-policy linkages among political elites influences party-policy linkages in the mass public. The results show that only the well informed responded to the growing elite polarization by becoming more partisan in their opinions. Apparently, in the absence of the motivation to develop coherent opinions, even a simplification of the political environment does not close the gaps between those who are more and less aware about politics.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
A growing body of research shows the influence of political elites on the public's policy preferences. Yet we know little about the dynamics of elite influence or the cognitive mechanisms through which elite signals are interpreted in "real time"-that is, as public deliberation over a policy initiative actually evolves. In this paper, we present preliminary results from a longer-term project that explores elite influences on the dynamics of public support on policy proposals. Conceptually, we hypothesize how elite influences on mass opinion may change during the course of a policy debate. We pay especial attention to partisanship as a central contextual mediator of elite signals. Empirically, we exploit the unusual circumstances involving the health care reform debate in 1993-94, where debate was salient, elite signals were clear, and opinion polling was abundant. Methodologically, we propose a novel means of examining elite influences in real time. Using pooled data from 53 opinion polls fielded between August 1993 and August 1994, we find substantial evidence that elite signaling shaped public views on President Clinton's Health Security Act. This elite influence is often distinctly partisan in effect. But its influence varies in form, being sometimes informative, sometimes symbolic. And the duration of signaling effects too appears to vary depending on the nature of the signal and the predisposing characteristics of the respondent. We conclude with some thoughts on future directions for research in this area.
Silent promotion of agendas: campaign contributions and ideological polarization
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Until recently, both Republican and Democratic administrations have been promoting free trade and market deregulation for decades without intensive policy debates. We set up a two-party electoral competition model in a two-dimensional policy space with campaign contributions by an interest group that promotes a certain agenda. Assuming that voters are impressionable to campaign spending for/against candidates, we analyze incentive compatible contracts between the interest group and the candidates on agenda policy positions and campaign contributions. The interest group asks the candidates to commit to its agenda in exchange for campaign contributions, letting them compete over the other (ideological) dimension only. It is shown that, as the agenda is pushed further by the interest group, ideological policy polarization and campaign contributions surge. (JEL Codes C72, D72, F02, F13)
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COVID-19 compelled government officials in the U.S. and elsewhere to institute social distancing policies, shuttering much of the economy. At a time of low trust and high polarization, Americans may only support such disruptive policies when recommended by same-party politicians. A related concern is that some may resist advice from “elite” sources such as government officials or public health experts. We test these possibilities using novel data from two online surveys with embedded experiments conducted with approximately 2,000 Pennsylvania residents each, in spring 2020 (Study 1 in April and Study 2 in May-June). We uncover partisan differences in views on several coronavirus-related policies, which grew larger between surveys. Yet overall, Study 1 respondents report strong support for social distancing policies and high trust in medical experts. Moreover, an experiment in Study 1 finds no evidence of reduced support for social distancing policies when advocated by elites, broadl...
Kingmakers or Cheerleaders? Party Power and the Causal Effects of Endorsements
Political Research Quarterly, 2015
When parties make endorsements in primary elections, does the favored candidate receive a real boost in his or her vote share, or do parties simply pick the favorites who are already destined to win? To answer this question, we draw on two research designs aimed at isolating the causal effect of Democratic Party endorsements in California’s 2012 primary election. First, we conduct a survey experiment in which we randomly assign a party endorsement, holding all other aspects of a candidate’s background and policy positions constant. Second, we use a unique dataset to implement a regression discontinuity analysis of electoral trends by comparing the vote shares captured by candidates who barely won or barely lost the internal party endorsement contest. We find a constellation of evidence suggesting that endorsements do indeed matter, although this effect appears to be contingent upon the type of candidate and voter: endorsements matter most for candidates in their party’s mainstream, ...
PS: Political Science & Politics, 2013
Many scholars argue that retrospective voting is a powerful information shortcut that offsets widespread voter ignorance. Even deeply ignorant voters, it is claimed, can effectively punish incumbents for bad performance and reward them if things go well. But if voters' understanding of which officials are responsible for which outcomes is systematically biased, retrospective voting becomes an independent source of political failure rather than a cure for it. We design and administer a new survey of the general public and political experts to test for such biases. Our analysis reveals frequent, large, robust biases in voter attributions of responsibility for a variety of political actors and outcomes with a tendency for the public to overestimate influence, although important examples of underestimation also exist.