Suchergebnisse

Although Latinos are now the largest non-majority group in the United States, existing research on white attitudes toward Latinos has focused almost exclusively on attitudes toward immigration. This book changes that. It argues that such accounts fundamentally underestimate the political power of whites' animus toward Latinos and thus miss how conflict extends well beyond immigration to issues such as voting rights, criminal punishment, policing, and which candidates to support. Providing historical and cultural context and drawing on rich survey and experimental evidence, the authors show that Latino racism-ethnicism is a coherent belief system about Latinos that is conceptually and empirically distinct from other forms of out-group hostility, and from partisanship and ideology. Moreover, animus toward Latinos has become a powerful force in contemporary American politics, shaping white public opinion in elections and across a number of important issue areas - and resulting in policies that harm Latinos disproportionately.

Empathic ability is the ability to interpret the emotional state of others. In today's highly partisan and polarized environment, empathic ability may play a key role in determining how partisans respond emotionally to changes in public policy and those helped or harmed by the policy. Utilizing Baron‐Cohen et al.'s (Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251, 2001) "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test to measure empathic ability, we conduct a survey experiment where we asked participants to read about a partisan individual who may lose their health insurance if the Affordable Care Act were to be repealed. We show that empathic ability shapes attitudes about people and policies, but that the effects are contingent upon the respondent's partisanship, the target's partisanship, and an interaction of the two. Empathic ability produces more positive affect and policy support among Democrats but reduces positive affect among Republicans. The divergent effects of empathic ability on Democrats and Republicans are further exacerbated when the target is an out‐partisan.

Despite the 2016 election being more than a year away the presidential primary season appears to be in full swing, especially for the Republican Party, with its plethora of candidates. With the possibility of a scandal breaking for at least one candidate before the primary a seeming near certainty, it's useful to examine why voters react to scandals in the way that they do. David A. M. Peterson and Beth Miller Vonnahme investigate the scandal around allegations of sexual harassment in 2012 that ended Herman Cain's bid for the nomination. They find that those who watched network news declined the most in their assessment of Cain after the scandal, and cable news watchers, the least.

The study of state legislative change is dominated by concerns with the development of professional legislatures, but do the components of a professional legislature develop in the sameway? If not, what accounts for change in state legislative institutions? We separate legislative staff from the larger concept of professionalism and offer a theory that explains staff development and its impact on both legislative activity and conflict with the governor. We demonstrate that staff size and organizational structure respond to internal and external competitive pressures and they in turn have an affect on the larger policy environment separate from professionalism.

Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of Figures; List of Tables; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1 A Single Time in a Single Place; 2 The Evolution of Mandates; 3 Members of Congress Respond; 4 The Pattern of Congressional Response; 5 Consequences; 6 The Irresistible Meets the Unmovable; 7 Conclusion: A Mandate View of Normal American Politics; Bibliography; Index.

Whether or not voters consciously use their votes to send messages about their preferences for public policy, the Washington community sometimes comes to believe that it has heard such a message. In this 2006 book the authors ask 'What then happens?' They focus on these perceived mandates - where they come from and how they alter the behaviors of members of Congress, the media, and voters. These events are rare. Only three elections in post-war America (1964, 1980 and 1994) were declared mandates by the media consensus. These declarations, however, had a profound if ephemeral impact on members of Congress. They altered the fundamental gridlock that prevents Congress from adopting major policy changes. The responses by members of Congress to these three elections are responsible for many of the defining policies of this era. Despite their infrequency, then, mandates are important to the face of public policy

Political science has not come to terms with the idea of electoral mandates. The discipline's view is a hodgepodge of competing claims. In this article we review the empirical issues about mandates asking whether or not mandates occur and with what effect. We observe evidence of mandates as social constructions, as dialogues in the Washington community and in the press which serves it.We find that these dialogues accurately reflect election results – consensus emerges from actual sweeping election victories and not from mere strategic attempts to claim policy mandates. We find that Congress is highly responsive to the consensus interpretation. It engages in bursts of unusual policy activity which run for some months and then cease. And we find that these have a substantial policy legacy, that the changes that occur in these bursts produce some of the most important movements in American public policy.