Browsing by Subject "Partisanship"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Constituency cleavages and partisan outcomes in the American state legislatures
(2011-05) Myers, Adam Shalmone; Jones, Bryan D.; Trubowitz, Peter
I focus on three district-level demographic variables indicative of contemporary social cleavages, and construct measures of their influences on partisan representation in American state legislatures during the 1999-2000 years. Using these measures, I examine a series of questions concerning the relationship between social cleavages and state legislative outcomes. I find that district racial composition is the most important constituency-based factor influencing partisan representation and voting in legislatures, but that other constituency variables are also important under various circumstances. I also present OLS regression analyses demonstrating the independent effect of the overall representation of social cleavages on levels of legislative polarization.
How political identities are developed and maintained
(2021-08-02) Ashokkumar, Ashwini; Swann, William B.; Pennebaker, James W.; Gosling, Samuel D.; Boyd, Ryan
In a time of heightened partisanship and political polarization, people’s political identities are increasingly producing detrimental outcomes. To address the dangers of extreme political identities, we need to understand how such identities form and are maintained. My overarching goal is to examine how people’s political identities develop and how people protect such identities from threat. Specifically, after an introductory chapter (Chapter 1), I examine how political identities develop via everyday social interactions with fellow group members (Chapter 2), and how people protect their political identities when they are faced with threat from political opponents (Chapters 3) or from fellow partisans (Chapter 4). The dissertation features several distinct methodological approaches. In Chapter 2, I analyze daily conversations occurring within three large online political groups to understand the processes through which people’s political identities develop over time. Chapter 3 examines how people protect their political identities from identity-threatening content on social media. Chapter 4 examines how people strategically respond to reputational threat caused by the moral transgressions of fellow partisans. Each of these chapters is comprised of an article that either has been published at peer-reviewed journals or is in preparation for submission (Ashokkumar & Pennebaker, in prep; Ashokkumar et al., 2020; Ashokkumar et al., 2019). Bringing together insights from the three sets of studies, the dissertation concludes with a discussion of dynamic processes associated with political identities and argues for taking a multimethod approach to studying identity.
Partisanship as a motivation for incivility against women in politics
(2021-12-03) White, Benjamin Tracy; Albertson, Bethany
Politicians who use social media often experience incivility from the public. Anecdotal evidence and recent scholarship find that female politicians are particularly likely to experience incivility online. Although women are no longer a rarity in politics, traditional gender norms still portray politics as a masculine domain. In breaking these norms, women in politics experience incivility, online abuse, and other forms of psychological or symbolic violence. However, we do not yet understand how partisanship shapes female politicians’ experiences with incivility on social media. Partisanship is a strong social identity, encouraging affective polarization and outright hostility against those from the opposing party. Recent work suggests that extreme politicians are more likely to experience incivility, but I expect that the effect of partisan extremity on incivility is stronger for women. Women in politics experience a variety of sanctions as they break traditional gender norms, but gender scholars argue that these sanctions are more likely when individuals can justify their behavior. In an age of partisan hostility, partisanship may allow individuals to justify incivility against female politicians across the aisle. I examine approximately 660,000 tweets sent to members of the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2019, and in October 2020 during the height of the presidential election campaign. Contrary to expectations, extreme female members are no more likely to experience incivility compared to moderate female members, and partisanship generally does not increase the risk of experiencing incivility. These null results persist even when considering data from two different points in time (during the 2020 campaign and a year prior), and despite operationalizing incivility in three different ways. Null results notwithstanding, this study offers an informative first look at how partisanship affects member’s experiences with incivility
Problem Solvers or Problem Creators: The Problem Solvers' Caucus and Polarization in the United States House of Representatives
(2019-12) Neely, Scarlett A.
In 2017, No, Labels, an organization dedicated to a return to bipartisan behavior in the United States House of Representatives spurred the creation of the Problem Solvers’ Caucus. The caucus established bylaws to encourage collaboration between parties, including forcing a bipartisan voting bloc and requiring each prospective caucus member to bring a member of the opposite party to join as well. Upon its creation, the caucus had different reputations—some thought it a refreshing group with a promising future, while others were skeptical about the group’s true motives. Despite any criticisms of the way caucus members conduct themselves, it is important to recognize how imperative its proclaimed goal is: a return to a Congress that collaborates, works through differences, and creates lasting, sustainable policy for our nation. In my thesis, I first explore the history of caucuses and the formation of the Problem Solvers Caucus. Then, I look at the bipartisan measures and methods of lawmaking the caucus is employing in order to steer the House to bipartisan behaviors. I next attempt to find the caucus’s effect on its members by examining the DW-Nominate Scores and Lugar Bipartisan Scores of members of the Problem Solvers’ Caucus before and after its creation to ensure that members are truly exhibiting bipartisan voting behavior as compared to the rest of the House. Ultimately, I find that the caucus and its members truly are more moderate and bipartisan non-caucus members, but that membership in the caucus has no significant effect on the level of bipartisanship in the House overall. Finally, I discuss the implications of my findings, and what it could mean for the future of our democracy.
Public opinion, partisanship, and public policy
(2019-06-19) Branham, James Alexander; Wlezien, Christopher; Albertson, Bethany; Jessee, Stephen; Soroka, Stuart
What is the relationship between public opinion and public policy? This question is at the heart of representative democracy. This dissertation attempts to enhance our understanding of the role that partisanship plays in the opinion-policy process. We proceed in four steps. First, section 1 situates the analyses that follow in the current literature. Section 2 uses data on spending preferences to estimate general spending preferences of individuals and congressional candidates in a shared dimension. The approach employed allows for direct comparison between those two groups, and between the groups and where they perceive policy to be. Section 3 investigates whether partisans respond to policy changes similarly. Findings indicate that partisans react differently to policy change in issue areas with relatively large disagreement. Finally, Section 4 flips the equation and considers policy as the dependent variable. Are partisans more likely to get their preferred policies when they control the White House? The answer, it seems, is yes. Policy responds primarily to partisans of the same party as the president.
Us vs. them : online incivility, black sheep effect, and more
(2016-05) Kim, Ji won; Coleman, Renita; Stroud, Natalie; Chen, Gina; McCombs, Maxwell; Lasorsa, Dominic
This dissertation investigated how an individual’s political identity as a partisan leads to incivility among others who participate in online news comment board discussions. In particular, this dissertation focused on how responses to uncivil comments differ when the uncivil comments are made by in-group members who share the same partisanship in contrast to situations when uncivil comments originate from out-group members whose political identities are in opposition. Specifically, it explored whether, why, and how uncivil comments of in-group member stimulate the feeling of vicarious shame that, in turn, leads to different perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral responses among those who observe the uncivil expressions. Furthermore, this study examined how the effects of political identity on incivility are moderated by the strength of group identity as well as by social influence exerted via “recommendations” in response to uncivil. Given these goals, two experimental studies were conducted to investigate conditions and mechanisms that underlie the effects of uncivil expressions enacted by ingroup members as well as out-group members, based on several sequential mediation models that were developed for this study. Results of the both studies provided strong support for in-group favoritism whereby participants were more lenient in judging uncivil comments and uncivil commenters when they were associated with their own group. Study 1 further showed that this tendency was stronger when group identity of participants was stronger. Results of neither study showed support for the black sheep effect. Nevertheless, a high level of vicarious shame was observed when individuals witnessed uncivil comments coming from in-group members that, in turn, encouraged participants to engage in two types of coping strategies: situation-reparation and situation-avoidance. However, no evidence for social influence was found. Overall, findings of this research contribute to development of a big picture perspective of online incivility and suggest ways that civil and healthy online discussions may be promoted in the future.