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AbstractResearch on public attitudes toward the death penalty has yet to systematically examine the role of race in the context of offense‐related attributes. This study uses a conjoint experiment randomly exposing a sample of 500 U.S. adults to different pairings of capital offenders to test the role of both offender and offense‐related attributes on beliefs about death penalty deservingness. The results show offense‐related factors play a significant role in who the public deems deserving of the death penalty, while the offender's race matters only for citizens holding prejudicial opinions towards Blacks or Latinos. Instrumental considerations typically outweigh racial considerations in death penalty judgments, although perceptions of those factors might be racialized as well. The results point to a potential disjuncture between the desires of citizens and the implementation of the death penalty.

African Americans often live in crime-ridden communities, where the need to deter crime is high. They are also likely to be unjustly stopped by law enforcement authorities, arrested, incarcerated, and sentenced to death by the criminal justice system. This research argues that these competing pressures increase the complexity of choices African Americans must make when forming their preferences toward the death penalty. African Americans who are cross-pressured by insecurity (i.e., fear of victimization) and discrimination (i.e., fear of racial biases within the criminal justice system) exhibit more variation in the range of death penalty laws they find acceptable. Support for this claim is provided by cross-sectional survey data ( N = 514) of African Americans within the United States. A heteroscedastic item response theory model using these data shows that cross-pressured African Americans demonstrate high response variability (i.e., inconsistencies) in their acceptance of death penalty laws. Subsequently, the unique experience that African Americans have with the criminal justice system contributes to complex policy opinions that are rarely reflected in public policy or opinion polls.

Scholarship has long noted the importance of understanding the changes that occur over time in aggregate public support for punitive criminal justice policies. Yet, the lack of a reliable and valid measure of this concept limits our understanding of this aspect of the criminal justice system. This research develops a measure of public support for punitive policies from 1951 to 2006 using 242 administrations of 24 unique survey indicators. It argues that punitive sentiment is politically constructed via frames focusing on the permissiveness of the criminal justice system. Punitive sentiment is estimated with an error‐correction model showing both the short‐ and long‐term relationships between punitive sentiment and presidential framing of crime, public dissatisfaction with social welfare policies, and perceptions of racial integration. The results highlight the complex dynamics responsible for the change over time in punitive sentiment as well as the possibilities of obtaining public support for alternative solutions to crime.

It is widely presumed that political support is contingent on satisfaction with the policy decisions made by political authorities. Yet, there is little evidence that support for the nation's chief legislative branch is a function of its policy outputs. This research shows that Congress' approval ratings are linked to the degree important legislation deviates from the public's ideological mood. The results of an error-correction model show that these policy origins of support are as important as other determinants of approval such as partisan conflict and the economy. The effect of policy divergence from public opinion is also accentuated during periods of unified government when there might be a normative expectation that shared partisan control should translate into policy success. The findings substantiate conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between congressional approval and policy, spatial theories of voting, and models of the electoral behavior of congressional members. Adapted from the source document.

Partisan divisions in American politics have been increasing since the 1970s following a period where scholars thought parties were in decline. This polarization is observed most frequently within the debates and deliberation across issues within Congress. Given that most studies of public opinion place the behavior of elites at the center of public attitudes, surprisingly little research examines the effect of partisan conflict on the mass public. This research examines quarterly congressional approval data from 1974 to 2000 to determine the consequences, if any, of party conflict on the dynamics of congressional approval. The findings indicate that over‐time changes in partisan conflict within Congress have a direct and lasting effect on how citizens think about Congress.

This paper examines public support toward the U.S. Supreme Court. Although previous scholars have rightly focused on policy outcomes in explaining public attitudes toward the Court, outcome‐based theories are unable to explain why support for the Court remains high despite public disagreement with Court decisions. Some scholars argue the low visibility of the Court shields it from public scrutiny. The exposure explanation, however, is inconsistent with the empirical finding that to know the Court is to love it. This paper reconciles these differences by showing how media coverage of the Court can influence procedural perceptions and subsequent support for the Court. Expanding on recent studies examining media coverage of the Court and perceptions of fairness, this study examines how procedural perceptions mediate support for the Court. An experimental design shows that the media's portrayal of procedural information as either fair or unfair influences public evaluations of procedural fairness and subsequently support for the Court as an institution and the individual justices serving on the Court's bench.