Using Experiments to Estimate the Effects of Education on Voter Turnout

February 8, 2010 – 9:54 am
This is a review of Using Experiments to Estimate the Effects of Education on Voter Turnout. Sondheimer, Rachel Milstein and Donald P. Green. 2010. American Journal of Political Science 54 (January): 174-189. Find in Google Scholar

Education does, indeed, have a robust causal effect on voter turnout.

Suppose you’re in a room full of people and you want to know which of them are most likely to be active voters, but you’re not allowed to ask them about their political activity. The best question you can ask them: How many years of schooling they have. We’ve known for many years that education is among the best predictors of voting (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980).

But what hasn’t been clear until know is whether education caused voting, or whether it was merely correlated with voting. After all, education is caused by family background (parents’ education level, family wealth) and personal characteristics (intelligence). Does education cause voting, or do the things that cause education also cause voting? A major knock against the “education as cause” theory came when Brody (1978) pointed out that education levels have risen dramatically since the 1960s, but turnout has not.

So how can we figure out whether education causes turnout? Well, shoot, what if we did an experiment that randomly caused one group of kids to get more education than a control group of their peers? Then we could just see whether those who were randomly induced to get more education also ended up voting at higher rates.

Genius. In the current issue of AJPS, Sondheimer and Green have an article that does exactly that. Read More »

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By A.R.B. | Posted in American Politics | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures

February 2, 2010 – 11:00 am
This is a review of No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures. Masket, Seth E. 2009. University of Michigan Press. Find in Google Scholar

Parties control the public behavior of their office holders by acting as gatekeepers to political office

The debate on the influence of political parties on the political process until recently has been restricted to parties in government.  Scholars have focused their debate primarily on the impact of party on the actions of a legislator in the legislature.

Masket takes this a step further, arguing that local informal party organizations control nominations and through those nominations exert control over the legislative behavior of politicians.  He argues that “parties control the public behavior of their office holders by acting as gatekeepers to political office.”  While agreeing with Aldrich (1995), that parties help organizing the legislature, Masket argues that parties, and in conjunction party nominations, are primarily a mechanism by which concerned citizens hold legislators accountable for their actions. Read More »

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By hjghassell | Posted in American Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments

February 2, 2010 – 10:25 am
This is a review of Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments. Gerber, Alan S. and Gregory A. Huber. 2010. American Journal of Political Science 54 (January): 153-173. Find in Google Scholar

“For many Americans, there is no rational basis to suppose that one party is better than the other at managing the economy.” If that’s true, is our entire democratic process a farce?

We know that partisanship influences economic evaluations. In survey after survey, we have found that Republicans and Democrats rate the economy differently,1 yet we still don’t understand why.

More accurately, we don’t know which “why” is the real “why.” Folks who have published evidence of these perceptual biases have also offered lots of different reasons for them, and we have yet to see research that sorts those various reasons out.

In the current issue of AJPS, Gerber and Huber write an article that claims to do exactly that: Test the possible explanations of these perceptual biases against one another. At least, that’s what you would think their article does after reading the introduction. Once you get into it, you find that they really only test two of the possible theories against each other. The remaining theories that have been suggested go untested, meaning they may or may not be true.

Briefly, these are the six theories that have been given to explain why Republicans and Democrats rate the economy differently. I use boldface to indicate Gerber and Huber’s preferred label for each theory: Read More »

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By A.R.B. | Posted in American Politics | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Impartial Judges? Race, Institutional Context, and U.S. State Supreme Courts

January 27, 2010 – 9:55 am
This is a review of Impartial Judges? Race, Institutional Context, and U.S. State Supreme Courts. Bonneau, Chris W. and Heather Marie Rice. 2009. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 9 (winter): 381-403. Find in Google Scholar
A wise Latina

A wise Latina

We like to think that in our form of government, political officials represent the citizens at large. Trouble is, it’s hard to know what “represent” means. Often, we talk about representation through two major lenses. “Descriptive” representation refers to whether people in government look like Americans generally (in terms of race, gender, maybe even age, occupation, class). “Substantive” representation refers to whether people in government make the sorts of decisions that Americans generally would make.

In a recent article, Bonneau and Rice take those two concepts into the world of judicial politics. Their basic question: Do black judges make different decisions than white judges? Bonneau and Rice provide a nice empirical answer to the question, but their interpretation of what their findings mean is confusing and less than persuasive. Read More »

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By A.R.B. | Posted in American Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections

September 30, 2009 – 12:13 pm
This is a review of Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections. Druckman, James N., Martin J. Kifer, and Michael Parkin. 2009. American Political Science Review 103 (August): 343-366. Find in Google Scholar

The authors have identified a cheap, easy way to capture a fuller sample of current campaign messages.

We’ve long known that most voters pay little attention to campaign rhetoric; they pay far more attention to partisanship, incumbency, and other easily accessible considerations (although rhetoric certainly has its place).1 Still, candidates work hard to develop arguments that, they hope, will sway voters to their side.

The question: How do candidates decide what to emphasize in their campaign communications? When do they go negative? When do they stick to the issues? When do they emphasize their experience and community ties? And given how many thousands of campaigns are run around this country each election cycle, how can we possible study all this?

There has been some previous work on this question, but most of it has looked at television ads or media coverage. Both sources have flaws. Television ads and media coverage are more common in the most competitive races, since safe incumbents don’t spend money on ads. They are also more common in Senate races than House races. How, then, can we use television ads to see how rhetoric is different in competitive races or in House races than in other races?

In a recent article, Druckman et al. avoid these problems by looking instead at rhetoric in Congressional campaign websites in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Although not all candidates had websites in 2002, by 2004 and 2006 just about every major-party Congressional candidate had a website. And what do we learn? Read More »

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Do Electoral Quotas Work after They Are Withdrawn? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India

September 16, 2009 – 11:29 am
This is a review of Do Electoral Quotas Work after They Are Withdrawn? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India. Bhavnani, Rikhil R. 2009. American Political Science Review 103 (February): 23-35. Find in Google Scholar

Women are five times more likely to win in post-quota seats than in other seats. Chew on that. Five times more likely.

Women and minorities have a tough time winning American elections. Although half of Americans are female, only 15% of Congress is. Although only 69% of Americans are white, 89% of state legislators and 84% of House members are white.

This problem is not unique to the states. Some countries have adopted a quota system to combat such underrepresentation. Obviously, if you reserve a quarter of Congressional seats for women, then you’ll end up with more women in Congress. But the question is, do these quotas actually help change the status of women in politics? What if we imposed a quota for a while and then withdrew it–would women see an enduring improvement?

Turns out we would. Read More »

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By A.R.B. | Posted in Comparative Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence

September 9, 2009 – 11:46 am
This is a review of Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence. Feddersen, Timothy, Sean Gailmard, and Alvaro Sandroni. 2009. American Political Science Review 103 (May): 175-192. Find in Google Scholar
Howard Dean with a confederate flag on his truck

Howard Dean and his truck (kidding, kidding)

In late 2003, Howard Dean lamented that southern white guys with confederate flags on their trucks ought to be voting for Democrats1; after all, it’s the Democrats who want to help the working classes. Folks like Dean think that these southern white guys are being duped by wealthy upper-crust Republicans, who trick the southerners into voting for them by tossing them just enough symbolic “red meat” (pro-life, anti-gay, anti-immigrant) to keep them under control.

I just read Feddersen et al’s article, in which the authors attempt to explain exactly why this “red meat” tactic works–that is, why southern evangelicals keep casting a “values vote” for Republicans instead of casting a materially rational vote for Democrats. Okay, in fairness, the authors don’t come out and say it that way, but it sure sounds like that’s what they’re trying to explain. As such, this study is loaded with potential controversy.

I’ll say that again. Feddersen and his colleagues didn’t say a word about Dean or confederate flags. What they authors really say in their analysis is something closer to this: Read More »

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Does Voting History Matter? Analysing Persistence in Turnout

March 4, 2009 – 11:52 am
This is a review of Does Voting History Matter? Analysing Persistence in Turnout. Denny, Kevin and Orla Doyle. 2009. American Journal of Political Science 53 (January): 17-35. Find in Google Scholar

Yes, voting is habit-forming, but to a lesser extent than reported previously.

Denny and Doyle have a straightforward point in this article: Yes, voting is habit-forming, but to a lesser extent than reported previously. In a widely discussed article, Gerber, Green, and Shachar (2003) reported that voting in one election raises the probability of voting in subsequent elections by 47%.1 Denny and Doyle argue that the correct figure is closer to 13%. The difference, they claim, arises from methodological problems in the Gerber et al. article.

Given that this dispute revolves mostly around methodological (not theoretical) differences, one wonders why this article did not appear as a reply to Gerber et al, followed by a response from the original authors. As my critique at the end of this review will make clear, there are many holes that Gerber et al could poke in Denny and Doyle’s approach. Read More »

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