Suchergebnisse

The rise of global private environmental governance has inspired substantial research assessing whether organizations like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are legitimate. These organizations address global challenges and help overcome collective action problems, but public opposition can severely curb their effectiveness. Yet, we do not know whether the public supports such organizations and perceives them as legitimate. This article draws on diverse political science literatures to outline why a focus on public opinion is important. The article tests two competing arguments explaining potential opposition toward organizations like the ISO and the FSC: accounts centered on the role of sincere preferences over the legitimate locus of authority and on the influence of domestic elite rhetoric. Results suggest that public opinion is generally positive and that elite rhetoric about a potential democratic deficit rather than simple information about the bodies' governance structures decreases favorability.

Cities face numerous environmental challenges. Local governments need the public's support to tackle these problems, and scholars and practitioners have suggested that framing initiatives around resilience, as opposed to sustainability, reducing vulnerability, or adaptation, may increase public support for local action. Resilience, they argue, has a better social connotation, is more positive, and less polarizing than related concepts. Empirical evidence supporting these claims is lacking. In three online survey experiments, we test whether the public is more likely to support policies when they are framed in terms of "resilience." We also examine public conceptualizations of these different terms and whether resilience has a more positive connotation. We find significant differences in policy support, perceived importance, and interpretations of the concepts. The study confirms that framing affects policy support, but complicates claims that resilience is inherently more appealing. These findings have implications for urban research and policymaking.

Since 2002, 26 U.S. states have passed laws that enhance restrictions on voters who intend to register and vote. Most have been sponsored by Republican legislators and passed by states with large Republican majorities. Proponents of such identification requirements argue that they are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral system by reducing voter fraud. Many Democrats have cried foul, arguing these laws are motivated by crass partisanship at best, and racial bias at worst, because they disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect. We find support for this conjecture in a nationally representative survey and an experiment where news frames about voter identification (ID) laws are carefully manipulated.

Recent scholarship has documented changing norms toward political tolerance and an increase in intolerant beliefs in the United States. Descriptive norm theory attributes attitudinal and behavioral changes to beliefs about how we perceive other people think and act. Applied to political tolerance, increasing the perception that society is more or less tolerant should result in corresponding changes among individuals. Neglected from this discussion, however, is the distinction between norms that are applied universally and norms that are applied to specific targets. Four studies show mixed support for descriptive norm theory with norms altering individual tolerance judgments mostly when applied universally. Norms aimed at a particularistic group fail to change tolerance judgments suggesting an important limitation to norm influence. Contrary to expectations, we uncover a reversal effect among Democrats whereby exposure to universalistic norms of intolerance leads to higher levels of tolerance.

Following racially charged events, individuals often diverge in perceptions of what happened and how justice should be served. Examining data gathered shortly after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri alongside reactions to a novel officer-involved shooting, we unpack the processes by which racial divisions emerge. Even in a controlled information environment, white Americans preferred information that supported claims of a justified shooting. Conversely, Black Americans preferred information that implied that the officer behaved inappropriately. These differences stemmed from two distinct processes: we find some evidence for a form of race-based motivated reasoning and strong evidence for belief updating based on racially distinct priors. Differences in summary judgments were larger when individuals identified strongly with their racial group or when expectations about the typical behaviors of Black Americans and police diverged. The findings elucidate processes whereby individuals in different social groups come to accept differing narratives about contentious events.

This study explores the antecedents of public support for government surveillance of the private electronic communications and internet browsing of American citizens. The National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, famously hoped that uncovering surveillance by the state would create awareness of those practices that would be sufficient to induce public opposition. Other theories suggest that support for these policies might be driven by perceptions of terrorist threat or personal risk of surveillance. We suspect, however, that most citizens do not imagine their own privacy rights to be at risk due to government surveillance, but instead believe members of other groups will be targeted. Therefore, we hypothesize that empathy toward vulnerable outgroups should strongly dampen enthusiasm for surveillance, above and beyond awareness and personal concerns and interests. A nationally representative survey finds knowledge about government surveillance to be higher than many presume, but variation in knowledge or personal interests are largely uncorrelated with support. As hypothesized, empathy for outgroups strongly predicts opposition to these policies, above and beyond a host of other factors. Two experiments further corroborate the result: Outgroup empathy, not exposure to information about actual surveillance practices, boosts public opposition.

ABSTRACTIn 2017, the American Political Science Association (APSA) Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession launched an initiative to lower the cost of Division (i.e., organized section) membership for students to promote graduate students' professional development and to advance Division interests. This article assesses the effect of this intervention on Division membership. Using APSA membership data, we find that almost two thirds of Divisions that charged fees in 2017 reduced or eliminated student fees between 2017 and 2019, nearly halving the average student dues (i.e., from $11.57 in 2017 to $5.84 in 2019). As a result, average student membership increased by more than 300% in Divisions that reduced fees (i.e., from 79.5 in 2017 to 248.7 in 2019), compared to a marginal 30% increase in those that did not reduce fees. These outcomes of the initiative support additional efforts to reduce the costs of APSA participation for graduate students.