Benjamin G Bishin
Biographic Data
| ID | 100490 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin G Bishin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin G |
| FAMILY NAME | Bishin |
| SIGNATURE | BISHIN B G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Riverside |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7465-6860 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 402 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
LGBTQ Allies, Enemies, and Activists: Testing a Unifying Theory of Descriptive and Substantive Group Identity
When do group identities shape political attitudes and behavior? Despite a rich interdisciplinary literature on social identity, several of its insights are seldom applied to political science, leaving scholars vulnerable to incomplete or mistaken inferences about political behavior. I curate these insights to develop a unifying theory of Descriptive and Substantive Identity. Using the case of LGBTQ politics, where effects should be particularly …
Working-Class Legislators, Bill Writing, and Introduction: Limited Evidence of Substantive Representation in Congress
Few groups are as poorly represented in Congress relative to their prevalence in the population as are members of the working-class. While working-class members of Congress vote more economically liberally than do other members, the extent to which they are more likely to introduce or write legislation to benefit the working-class is unknown. We test whether legislators from a working-class background provide better substantive representation of …
The Substantive Effects of Descriptive Representation: Gay and Lesbian Members of Congress Are More Supportive of Gay Rights
The descriptive representation of stigmatized groups has numerous benefits both to group members and society at large. We study the extent to which LGB members of the US Congress provide increased support for LGBT rights. While LGBT substantive representation has been studied extensively, descriptive representation has been examined extensively at only the local and state levels. The absence of research at the federal level is important because f…
Response to Michael J. Nelson and James L. Gibson’s Review of Elite-Led Mobilization and Gay Rights: Dispelling the Myth of Mass Opinion Backlash
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Immigration and public opinion: Will backlash impede immigrants’ policy progress
Objective We investigate the question: How should immigrants pursue policy in a system that privileges majority rule? Scholars suggest that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. That is, pushing too hard for policy leads to backlash, a sharp and sustained negative reaction among citizens that delays these groups’ ability to obtain their desired policy. Methods Examining immigration, we develop and test two plausible altern…
The Power of Equality? Polarization and Collective Mis-representation on Gay Rights in Congress, 1989–2019
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent application of employment protections to gays and lesbians in Bostock v. Clayton County highlights the striking absence of policy produced by the U.S. Congress despite two decades of increased public support for gay rights. With the notable exceptions of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, and passing hate crimes legislation, every other federal policy advancing gay rights over the last three decad…
Do elected officials serve the poor on health care? Evidence from a field experiment on members of Congress and state legislators
To what extent do legislators respond to the poor? While extensive research demonstrates the poor are largely ignored in legislators’ policy calculations, little research examines the degree to which they discriminate against the poor with respect to providing constituency service. We examine this question using a series of correspondence experiments on both the offices of members of Congress and state legislators on the topic of health care. Con…
Elite Mobilization: A Theory Explaining Opposition to Gay Rights
Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread backlash described by the media with the growing body of academic research that finds no evidence of the opinion change thought to be its hallmark trait?…
Majority rule vs. minority rights: Immigrant representation despite public opposition on the 1986 immigration reform and control act
What explains legislators’ behavior when they are uncertain whether they will be rewarded or punished at re-election? Typically, politicians are incentivized to deliver policies preferred by the majority. Less well understood is what happens when legislators face decisions on issues on which their traditional supporters disagree. Owing to the unavailability of public opinion data for congressional districts, however, studies evaluating competing …
Women, Property Rights, and Islam
Opinion Backlash and Public Attitudes: Are Political Advances in Gay Rights Counterproductive
One long‐recognized consequence of the tension between popular sovereignty and democratic values like liberty and equality is public opinion backlash, which occurs when individuals recoil in response to some salient event. For decades, scholars have suggested that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. Public opinion research, however, suggests that widespread attitude change that backlash proponents theorize is likely to b…
Do Social Ties Encourage Immigrant Voters to Participate in Other Campaign Activities
Objective How do immigrants become politically active? While this process has been extensively studied, the role of ties to formal and informal institutions of society has been understudied. We test whether informal (political discussion) and formal (connections to community organizations) ties encourage immigrant voters to participate in other campaign activities. Methods Data were collected through a 2008 exit poll of Miami‐Dade County, Florida…
When Do Legislators Defy Popular Sovereignty? Testing Theories of Minority Representation Using Doma
What explains the behavior of legislators on bills that restrict the rights of marginalized minorities? Studies of representation typically focus on factors like party or public opinion but seldom account for theories of minority representation like electoral capture or subconstituency politics. One reason for this is that data allowing for the comparison of these theories are seldom available for U.S. House districts. We overcome this hurdle by …
Turf Wars: Local Context and Latino Political Development
Research demonstrates that competition over resources can have an important influence on minority political behavior. To date, however, the effects of these local conditions on Latino political behavior have gone largely unexamined. Employing a most similar case study design to overcome the lack of data on intragroup attitudes and political behavior nationally, we examine the voting behavior of Cubans and non-Cuban Hispanics in two Florida counti…
The Political Incorporation of Cuban Americans: Why Won’t Little Havana Turn Blue
This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, h…
Issue Salience, Subconstituency Politics, and Legislative Representation
To what extent are citizens able to control their elected officials? Does representation improve when issues become visible? Conflicting results in studies of legislative representation are frequently attributed to issue salience or subconstituency politics. However, most conclusions about the effect of issue salience rely on studies of responsiveness on issues held to be either important or visible. Consequently, we have little idea of how chang…
Exit and Entrance Polling: A Comparison of Election Survey Methods
We report the results of an experiment in which voters participating in the 2008 presidential election were surveyed either as they exited their voting places (a traditional exit poll) or as they waited in line to vote (an "entrance poll"). To the best of our knowledge, the efficacy of entrance polling has not been studied previously. Our data show that the entrance poll, when compared to the exit poll, produced a significantly higher cooperation…
Getting Out the Vote: Minority Mobilization in a Presidential Election
Deceit, diversity, or mobilization: Intra-ethnic diversity and changing patterns in Florida's Hispanic Vote
What explains President Bush's increased vote in the State of Florida in the 2004 election? A common perception is that implementation of electronic voting machines and a surge in GOP registration increased Bush's vote margins relative to the 2000 election. In this paper we offer an alternative explanation: massive Puerto Rican immigration combined with successful Republican mobilization of this group explains about 14% of the increase in Bush's …
Tyranny of the minority: The Subconstituency Politics Theory of Representation
Why do politicians frequently heed the preferences of small groups of citizens over those of the majority? Breaking new theoretical ground, Benjamin Bishin explains how the desires of small groups, which he calls "subconstituencies," often trump the preferences of much larger groups." "Tyranny of the Minority provides a "unified theory of representation," based in social psychology and identity theory, to explain how citizens' intensity fosters k…
Does democracy “suffer” from diversity? Issue representation and diversity in senate elections
Character Counts: Honesty and Fairness in Election 2000
This article examines the impact that voters' evaluations of the candidates' character had on their vote choice in the 2000 presidential election. We find that while the magnitude of the impact of character on the vote was roughly equal for both major party candidates, contrary to common perception, the substantive significance of character evaluations disproportionately affected George W. Bush. Our results indicate the need to account for the in…
Estimating legislators' preferences using background characteristics
This paper develops a way of thinking about and measuring private ideology by applying research on attitude formation to the measurement of political ideology. The measure, called FILTER, is widely generalizable to the study of political elites in and out of government, within and across countries. Application of this belief formation model of political ideology avoids several measurement problems that afflict commonly used action-based measures …
The Impact of Economic Versus Institutional Factors in Elite Evaluations of Presidential Progress Toward Democracy in Latin America
Elites’ support for democracy and their satisfaction with political leadership are important factors in evaluating Latin American leaders’ progress toward consolidating their democracies. However, we know surprisingly little about how elites understand or define democracy and thereby evaluate leaders in terms of progress toward democracy. Much literature on opinions of elites focuses on their relative interest in democratic values and formal inst…
Authoritarian Attitudes, Democracy, and Policy Preferences among Latin American Elites
This article examines the prevalence and consequences of authoritarian attitudes among elites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. We focus on the connection between antidemocratic elite attitudes and support for democracy; the causes and effects of authoritarian attitudes among elites and their implications for authoritarianism; and the impact of authoritarian attitudes beyond social policy preferences to other policy ar…
Opinion Backlash and Public Attitudes: Are Political Advances in Gay Rights Counterproductive
One long‐recognized consequence of the tension between popular sovereignty and democratic values like liberty and equality is public opinion backlash, which occurs when individuals recoil in response to some salient event. For decades, scholars have suggested that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. Public opinion research, however, suggests that widespread attitude change that backlash proponents theorize is likely to b…
Constituency Influence in Congress: Does Subconstituency Matter
Representation in Congressional Campaigns: Evidence for Discounting/Directional Voting in U.S. Senate Elections
Several recent studies suggest that voters may prefer candidates who propose policies that are similar to, but more extreme than, the voters' sincere policy preferences. This may arise either because voters vote directionally based on the direction and intensity of candidates' proposals or, alternatively, because voters recognize that elected officials face obstacles to implementing their policy agenda and therefore discount the candidates' polic…
Authoritarian Attitudes, Democracy, and Policy Preferences among Latin American Elites
This article examines the prevalence and consequences of authoritarian attitudes among elites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. We focus on the connection between antidemocratic elite attitudes and support for democracy; the causes and effects of authoritarian attitudes among elites and their implications for authoritarianism; and the impact of authoritarian attitudes beyond social policy preferences to other policy ar…
Character Counts: Honesty and Fairness in Election 2000
This article examines the impact that voters' evaluations of the candidates' character had on their vote choice in the 2000 presidential election. We find that while the magnitude of the impact of character on the vote was roughly equal for both major party candidates, contrary to common perception, the substantive significance of character evaluations disproportionately affected George W. Bush. Our results indicate the need to account for the in…
The Political Incorporation of Cuban Americans: Why Won’t Little Havana Turn Blue
This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, h…
When Do Legislators Defy Popular Sovereignty? Testing Theories of Minority Representation Using Doma
What explains the behavior of legislators on bills that restrict the rights of marginalized minorities? Studies of representation typically focus on factors like party or public opinion but seldom account for theories of minority representation like electoral capture or subconstituency politics. One reason for this is that data allowing for the comparison of these theories are seldom available for U.S. House districts. We overcome this hurdle by …
The Power of Equality? Polarization and Collective Mis-representation on Gay Rights in Congress, 1989–2019
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent application of employment protections to gays and lesbians in Bostock v. Clayton County highlights the striking absence of policy produced by the U.S. Congress despite two decades of increased public support for gay rights. With the notable exceptions of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, and passing hate crimes legislation, every other federal policy advancing gay rights over the last three decad…
Does democracy “suffer” from diversity? Issue representation and diversity in senate elections
Issue Salience, Subconstituency Politics, and Legislative Representation
To what extent are citizens able to control their elected officials? Does representation improve when issues become visible? Conflicting results in studies of legislative representation are frequently attributed to issue salience or subconstituency politics. However, most conclusions about the effect of issue salience rely on studies of responsiveness on issues held to be either important or visible. Consequently, we have little idea of how chang…
Getting Out the Vote: Minority Mobilization in a Presidential Election
Elite Mobilization: A Theory Explaining Opposition to Gay Rights
Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread backlash described by the media with the growing body of academic research that finds no evidence of the opinion change thought to be its hallmark trait?…
Women, Property Rights, and Islam
Turf Wars: Local Context and Latino Political Development
Research demonstrates that competition over resources can have an important influence on minority political behavior. To date, however, the effects of these local conditions on Latino political behavior have gone largely unexamined. Employing a most similar case study design to overcome the lack of data on intragroup attitudes and political behavior nationally, we examine the voting behavior of Cubans and non-Cuban Hispanics in two Florida counti…
The Impact of Economic Versus Institutional Factors in Elite Evaluations of Presidential Progress Toward Democracy in Latin America
Elites’ support for democracy and their satisfaction with political leadership are important factors in evaluating Latin American leaders’ progress toward consolidating their democracies. However, we know surprisingly little about how elites understand or define democracy and thereby evaluate leaders in terms of progress toward democracy. Much literature on opinions of elites focuses on their relative interest in democratic values and formal inst…
The Determinants of Racial Disparities in Perceived Job Insecurity: A Test of Three Perspectives
Why do African Americans report higher levels of perceived job insecurity than whites? We analyze data from the 1996 and 1998 General Social Survey to test alternative predictions from the compositional, inclusive-discrimination, and dispositional perspectives concerning the sources of the racial gap in perceived insecurity. Results from ordered probit regressions provide most support for the inclusive-discrimination perspective, which maintains …
Independently Validating Ideology Measures: A Look at Nominate and Adjusted ADA Scores
Measures of political ideology are central to a broad range of political science scholarship. However, despite extensive evaluation of the relative characteristics of vote-based ideology measures, little scholarship examines their validity independent of legislator behavior. Ideological validity is overlooked because all existing measures are action based. To address this gap, this article applies an instrumental-variables technique called FILTER…
Do Social Ties Encourage Immigrant Voters to Participate in Other Campaign Activities
Objective How do immigrants become politically active? While this process has been extensively studied, the role of ties to formal and informal institutions of society has been understudied. We test whether informal (political discussion) and formal (connections to community organizations) ties encourage immigrant voters to participate in other campaign activities. Methods Data were collected through a 2008 exit poll of Miami‐Dade County, Florida…
Heterogeneity and Representation Reconsidered: A Replication and Extension
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Do elected officials serve the poor on health care? Evidence from a field experiment on members of Congress and state legislators
To what extent do legislators respond to the poor? While extensive research demonstrates the poor are largely ignored in legislators’ policy calculations, little research examines the degree to which they discriminate against the poor with respect to providing constituency service. We examine this question using a series of correspondence experiments on both the offices of members of Congress and state legislators on the topic of health care. Con…
Exit and Entrance Polling: A Comparison of Election Survey Methods
We report the results of an experiment in which voters participating in the 2008 presidential election were surveyed either as they exited their voting places (a traditional exit poll) or as they waited in line to vote (an "entrance poll"). To the best of our knowledge, the efficacy of entrance polling has not been studied previously. Our data show that the entrance poll, when compared to the exit poll, produced a significantly higher cooperation…
Immigration and public opinion: Will backlash impede immigrants’ policy progress
Objective We investigate the question: How should immigrants pursue policy in a system that privileges majority rule? Scholars suggest that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. That is, pushing too hard for policy leads to backlash, a sharp and sustained negative reaction among citizens that delays these groups’ ability to obtain their desired policy. Methods Examining immigration, we develop and test two plausible altern…
Deceit, diversity, or mobilization: Intra-ethnic diversity and changing patterns in Florida's Hispanic Vote
What explains President Bush's increased vote in the State of Florida in the 2004 election? A common perception is that implementation of electronic voting machines and a surge in GOP registration increased Bush's vote margins relative to the 2000 election. In this paper we offer an alternative explanation: massive Puerto Rican immigration combined with successful Republican mobilization of this group explains about 14% of the increase in Bush's …
Estimating legislators' preferences using background characteristics
This paper develops a way of thinking about and measuring private ideology by applying research on attitude formation to the measurement of political ideology. The measure, called FILTER, is widely generalizable to the study of political elites in and out of government, within and across countries. Application of this belief formation model of political ideology avoids several measurement problems that afflict commonly used action-based measures …
The Substantive Effects of Descriptive Representation: Gay and Lesbian Members of Congress Are More Supportive of Gay Rights
The descriptive representation of stigmatized groups has numerous benefits both to group members and society at large. We study the extent to which LGB members of the US Congress provide increased support for LGBT rights. While LGBT substantive representation has been studied extensively, descriptive representation has been examined extensively at only the local and state levels. The absence of research at the federal level is important because f…
Constituency Influence in Congress: Does Subconstituency Matter
Heterogeneity and Representation Reconsidered: A Replication and Extension
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Independently Validating Ideology Measures: A Look at Nominate and Adjusted ADA Scores
Measures of political ideology are central to a broad range of political science scholarship. However, despite extensive evaluation of the relative characteristics of vote-based ideology measures, little scholarship examines their validity independent of legislator behavior. Ideological validity is overlooked because all existing measures are action based. To address this gap, this article applies an instrumental-variables technique called FILTER…
Representation in Congressional Campaigns: Evidence for Discounting/Directional Voting in U.S. Senate Elections
Several recent studies suggest that voters may prefer candidates who propose policies that are similar to, but more extreme than, the voters' sincere policy preferences. This may arise either because voters vote directionally based on the direction and intensity of candidates' proposals or, alternatively, because voters recognize that elected officials face obstacles to implementing their policy agenda and therefore discount the candidates' polic…
Dormant Delegation: Evidence on the Conflicting Findings of Research on Legislative Representation
Empirical studies of legislative representation often reach conflicting conclusions about the degree to which legislators reflect the voters' preferences. Given the importance of representation as a keystone of democracy, these results demand explanation. I argue that these conflicting results stem from scholars' failure to adequately account for the complexity of the representation process. Specifically, scholars generally account for neither th…
Does democracy “suffer” from diversity? Issue representation and diversity in senate elections
Character Counts: Honesty and Fairness in Election 2000
This article examines the impact that voters' evaluations of the candidates' character had on their vote choice in the 2000 presidential election. We find that while the magnitude of the impact of character on the vote was roughly equal for both major party candidates, contrary to common perception, the substantive significance of character evaluations disproportionately affected George W. Bush. Our results indicate the need to account for the in…
Estimating legislators' preferences using background characteristics
This paper develops a way of thinking about and measuring private ideology by applying research on attitude formation to the measurement of political ideology. The measure, called FILTER, is widely generalizable to the study of political elites in and out of government, within and across countries. Application of this belief formation model of political ideology avoids several measurement problems that afflict commonly used action-based measures …
The Impact of Economic Versus Institutional Factors in Elite Evaluations of Presidential Progress Toward Democracy in Latin America
Elites’ support for democracy and their satisfaction with political leadership are important factors in evaluating Latin American leaders’ progress toward consolidating their democracies. However, we know surprisingly little about how elites understand or define democracy and thereby evaluate leaders in terms of progress toward democracy. Much literature on opinions of elites focuses on their relative interest in democratic values and formal inst…
Authoritarian Attitudes, Democracy, and Policy Preferences among Latin American Elites
This article examines the prevalence and consequences of authoritarian attitudes among elites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. We focus on the connection between antidemocratic elite attitudes and support for democracy; the causes and effects of authoritarian attitudes among elites and their implications for authoritarianism; and the impact of authoritarian attitudes beyond social policy preferences to other policy ar…
The Determinants of Racial Disparities in Perceived Job Insecurity: A Test of Three Perspectives
Why do African Americans report higher levels of perceived job insecurity than whites? We analyze data from the 1996 and 1998 General Social Survey to test alternative predictions from the compositional, inclusive-discrimination, and dispositional perspectives concerning the sources of the racial gap in perceived insecurity. Results from ordered probit regressions provide most support for the inclusive-discrimination perspective, which maintains …
Deceit, diversity, or mobilization: Intra-ethnic diversity and changing patterns in Florida's Hispanic Vote
What explains President Bush's increased vote in the State of Florida in the 2004 election? A common perception is that implementation of electronic voting machines and a surge in GOP registration increased Bush's vote margins relative to the 2000 election. In this paper we offer an alternative explanation: massive Puerto Rican immigration combined with successful Republican mobilization of this group explains about 14% of the increase in Bush's …
Tyranny of the minority: The Subconstituency Politics Theory of Representation
Why do politicians frequently heed the preferences of small groups of citizens over those of the majority? Breaking new theoretical ground, Benjamin Bishin explains how the desires of small groups, which he calls "subconstituencies," often trump the preferences of much larger groups." "Tyranny of the Minority provides a "unified theory of representation," based in social psychology and identity theory, to explain how citizens' intensity fosters k…
Getting Out the Vote: Minority Mobilization in a Presidential Election
Turf Wars: Local Context and Latino Political Development
Research demonstrates that competition over resources can have an important influence on minority political behavior. To date, however, the effects of these local conditions on Latino political behavior have gone largely unexamined. Employing a most similar case study design to overcome the lack of data on intragroup attitudes and political behavior nationally, we examine the voting behavior of Cubans and non-Cuban Hispanics in two Florida counti…
The Political Incorporation of Cuban Americans: Why Won’t Little Havana Turn Blue
This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, h…
Issue Salience, Subconstituency Politics, and Legislative Representation
To what extent are citizens able to control their elected officials? Does representation improve when issues become visible? Conflicting results in studies of legislative representation are frequently attributed to issue salience or subconstituency politics. However, most conclusions about the effect of issue salience rely on studies of responsiveness on issues held to be either important or visible. Consequently, we have little idea of how chang…
Exit and Entrance Polling: A Comparison of Election Survey Methods
We report the results of an experiment in which voters participating in the 2008 presidential election were surveyed either as they exited their voting places (a traditional exit poll) or as they waited in line to vote (an "entrance poll"). To the best of our knowledge, the efficacy of entrance polling has not been studied previously. Our data show that the entrance poll, when compared to the exit poll, produced a significantly higher cooperation…
When Do Legislators Defy Popular Sovereignty? Testing Theories of Minority Representation Using Doma
What explains the behavior of legislators on bills that restrict the rights of marginalized minorities? Studies of representation typically focus on factors like party or public opinion but seldom account for theories of minority representation like electoral capture or subconstituency politics. One reason for this is that data allowing for the comparison of these theories are seldom available for U.S. House districts. We overcome this hurdle by …
Do Social Ties Encourage Immigrant Voters to Participate in Other Campaign Activities
Objective How do immigrants become politically active? While this process has been extensively studied, the role of ties to formal and informal institutions of society has been understudied. We test whether informal (political discussion) and formal (connections to community organizations) ties encourage immigrant voters to participate in other campaign activities. Methods Data were collected through a 2008 exit poll of Miami‐Dade County, Florida…
Opinion Backlash and Public Attitudes: Are Political Advances in Gay Rights Counterproductive
One long‐recognized consequence of the tension between popular sovereignty and democratic values like liberty and equality is public opinion backlash, which occurs when individuals recoil in response to some salient event. For decades, scholars have suggested that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. Public opinion research, however, suggests that widespread attitude change that backlash proponents theorize is likely to b…
Majority rule vs. minority rights: Immigrant representation despite public opposition on the 1986 immigration reform and control act
What explains legislators’ behavior when they are uncertain whether they will be rewarded or punished at re-election? Typically, politicians are incentivized to deliver policies preferred by the majority. Less well understood is what happens when legislators face decisions on issues on which their traditional supporters disagree. Owing to the unavailability of public opinion data for congressional districts, however, studies evaluating competing …
Women, Property Rights, and Islam
Do elected officials serve the poor on health care? Evidence from a field experiment on members of Congress and state legislators
To what extent do legislators respond to the poor? While extensive research demonstrates the poor are largely ignored in legislators’ policy calculations, little research examines the degree to which they discriminate against the poor with respect to providing constituency service. We examine this question using a series of correspondence experiments on both the offices of members of Congress and state legislators on the topic of health care. Con…
Elite Mobilization: A Theory Explaining Opposition to Gay Rights
Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread backlash described by the media with the growing body of academic research that finds no evidence of the opinion change thought to be its hallmark trait?…
Electoral Systems and Political Participation (27 works) · Political science (27 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (22 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Economics (13 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)