Jacob R Neiheisel
Biographic Data
| ID | 250052 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jacob R Neiheisel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jacob R |
| FAMILY NAME | Neiheisel |
| SIGNATURE | NEIHEISEL J R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, SUNY |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 338 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Introduction to the Special Issue
The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics
Background The recent jump to study worldviews like apocalypticism and Christian nationalism has left open questions about the social role of religion in the production of prejudice and politics. Objectives We take up the longstanding finding that social contact across lines of difference can tamp down prejudice, especially when such contact is goal‐driven. Specifically, we ask if this relationship holds in the context of apocalyptics– individual…
Attending Church Encourages Acceptance of Atheists? Suppression Effects in Religion and Politics Research
A proliferation of religion variables presents opportunities for those studying religion and politics in the U.S. However, many studies in this growing subfield demonstrate the pitfalls of reporting the “independent” effects of variables without qualification. This is especially evident in work on Christian nationalism where researchers often make the claim that worship attendance promotes more pro-social or liberal outcomes, while Christian nati…
The Rhetoric of Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a nationalist populist, to begin with. This point is central to Robert C. Rowland's latest book, The Rhetoric of Donald Trump, and a good number of pages within the work's introductory chapters are spent establishing that Trump's rhetorical style matches that of a nationalist populist. Throughout the book, Rowland takes great pains to distinguish nationalist populism from its more progressive variant en route to an in-depth invest…
The Religious Communication Approach and Political Behavior
The religious communication approach concerns the identification of causal explanations of political behavior through the explicit measurement of exposure to communication and the variable reception and adoption of the messages in a religious context. The approach requires more questions or different research designs than those on omnibus surveys, which focus on religious affiliation and religiosity. It is particularly amenable to experimentation…
The Dimensions and Effects of Reciprocity in Political Tolerance Judgments
Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
Presidential Rhetoric and Bureaucratic Enforcement
BILL CLINTON’S ENTIRE LIFE reflects a strong interest in civil rights. He learned the value of racial tolerance as a child in Arkansas, became a longtime supporter of civil rights policies to protect a wide variety of groups, and received solid political backing from racial minorities through the years.1 Understandably, then, Clinton is often portrayed as a leader on a number of civil rights issues during his two terms in the White House.2 As Ste…
Responsible Parties
Responsible parties? Again? Every couple of decades, the concept of responsible parties finds new life among a different generation of party scholars, and it would seem as though party responsibility is experiencing yet another renaissance. As has been the case with previous rebirths of this nature, some of the current work on responsible parties is largely retrospective and more narrowly focused on the history of the debate within the discipline…
Political Mobilization in American Congregations
It has become an article of faith that congregations in America play an important role in the political mobilization of the faithful, but the reasons why congregations themselves provide political opportunities are not well understood. We unite various strands of work about congregational political engagement under the canopy of the religious economies model. Using the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Study and 1998 National Congregations Study data…
The Dual Executive
In responding to Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power and the generation of scholarship on the presidency that followed its publication in 1960, students of what might be termed the “new paradigm” in the presidency studies literature sought to emphasize the tools that are at the president’s disposal that allow for the exercise of unilateral executive power. Although works in this vein exhibit a considerable degree of nuance, the main takeaway is…
Are the Politics of the Christian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Controversy
Hout and Fischer have made the repeated, controversial claim that the dramatic rise of “religious nones” in the United States is due to the prominence of the politics of the Christian Right. As the argument goes, the movement’s extreme stands on gay rights and abortion make religion inhospitable to those who take more moderate and liberal positions. We take another look at this proposition with novel data drawing on expert reports and interest gr…
Reconsidering the Role of Politics in Leaving Religion
Studies have pointed to politics as an important force driving people away from religion—the argument is that the dogmatic politics of the Christian Right have alienated liberals and moderates, effectively threatening organized religion in America. We argue that existing explanations are incomplete; a proper reconsideration necessitates distinguishing processes of affiliation (with specific congregations) from identification (with religious tradi…
Censor Morum? The 17th Amendment, Religious Diversity, and Ideological Extremism in the Senate
The Madisonian formulation suggests that (religious) pluralism is linked to moderate representation when filtered through republican selection. We leverage the quasi-experiment afforded by the ratification of the 17th Amendment to explore whether religious diversity shapes how senators vote. The shift from indirect to direct elections, coupled with roll-call and religious Census data, allows us to test hypotheses derived from differing conception…
What Happens at the Polling Place
Tremendous attention has been paid to local election administration since the 2000 presidential election meltdown, yet policy makers still lack basic information about what happens at the polling place. One strategy to understand the interactions between citizens and street‐level election bureaucrats is to turn to administrative data. Using logs collected by polling place workers, the authors analyze more than 66,000 individual incidents recorded…
Reconciling Legal-Institutional and Behavioral Perspectives on Voter Turnout
Foundational studies in political science endeavored to explain the dynamics of voter turnout in America over time. Two theories, one focused on legal-institutional factors and the other on behavioral elements such as party mobilization strategies, were born from the need to account for temporal fluctuations in aggregate voter turnout. A comprehensive test of these competing theories has been hindered by the fact that reliable measures of the beh…
The “L” Word
In recent years, the electorate has sorted along ideological lines. Republican identifiers have grown more likely to self-identify as conservatives. Democrats, however, have been slow to embrace the liberal label. And while many Americans are operationally liberal and express support for liberal policy positions, in symbolic terms, the American electorate is much more conservative in nature and appears reluctant to hew to the liberal label. The u…
On the Limits of Persuasion
Political candidates employ campaign advertising in an attempt to persuade, and there is mounting evidence that such efforts can be successful in influencing voters' decisions at the polls. In this article we explore the limits of the persuasive power of campaign advertising and examine the ways in which voters' interpersonal discussions shape their susceptibility to persuasion. Foundational works in the study of media effects argued that interpe…
Election Administration and the Pure Effect of Voter Registration on Turnout
Voter registration is thought to have a substantial negative effect on American voter turnout. The authors clarify this understanding in two ways. First, using a natural experiment in Wisconsin, they estimate the pure effect of registration, stripped of aspects such as the closing date. Registration lowers turnout by about 2 percentage points. Second, the authors argue that administrative capacities of local election officials are important moder…
The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns
In spite of the centrality of partisanship to many theories of lawmaking, and the important role that party cues play in shaping voters' evaluations of political candidates, remarkably little is known about the circumstances under which congressional candidates use partisan symbols on the campaign trail. Employing data on candidates' televised advertisements over six elections (1998–2008), the present study explores the “supply side” of partisan …
How Religious Communities Affect Political Participation Among Latinos
Objective We revisit several longstanding controversies in the study of how religion affects political participation among L atinos, examining the influence of religious affiliation, church attendance, and involvement in the “ancillary” activities of the church on three types of participation: voting, community problem solving, and contacting public officials. Methods Data from the 2001 U.S. C ongregational L ife S urvey and hierarchical methods …
The Impact of Election Day Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes
Voter registration is widely viewed as a barrier to voter participation in general, and especially so for likely Democratic voters. A popular remedy for both turnout effects is election day registration (EDR), which eliminates the closing date by permitting registration at the polls. Following earlier research we posit a small positive effect of EDR on turnout. But contrary to conventional wisdom, we theorize that individuals most likely to take …
Veni, Vidi, Disseri
As the most popular voluntary association in the United States, churches are sometimes touted as saviors of democracy. However, those who espouse deliberative models of democracy rarely see churches as nurturing the decision-making abilities of attenders. Thus, the authors examine the extent to which church small group sessions fulfill the conditions for deliberation as set forth by political theorists. Using a combination of quantitative and qua…
Clergy Deliberation on Gay Rights and Homosexuality
In examining the increasingly popular concept of deliberative democracy, social scientists most often look to "cross-cutting" elements within discussion networks. Studies of deliberation in networks, however, preclude a number of other sources of deliberative discourse, and ignore the important role that some theorists claim for elites, like clergy, in fostering debate in group settings. To this effect we ask: Do clergy model the deliberative pro…
Reconsidering the Role of Politics in Leaving Religion
Studies have pointed to politics as an important force driving people away from religion—the argument is that the dogmatic politics of the Christian Right have alienated liberals and moderates, effectively threatening organized religion in America. We argue that existing explanations are incomplete; a proper reconsideration necessitates distinguishing processes of affiliation (with specific congregations) from identification (with religious tradi…
Election Administration and the Pure Effect of Voter Registration on Turnout
Voter registration is thought to have a substantial negative effect on American voter turnout. The authors clarify this understanding in two ways. First, using a natural experiment in Wisconsin, they estimate the pure effect of registration, stripped of aspects such as the closing date. Registration lowers turnout by about 2 percentage points. Second, the authors argue that administrative capacities of local election officials are important moder…
Clergy Deliberation on Gay Rights and Homosexuality
In examining the increasingly popular concept of deliberative democracy, social scientists most often look to "cross-cutting" elements within discussion networks. Studies of deliberation in networks, however, preclude a number of other sources of deliberative discourse, and ignore the important role that some theorists claim for elites, like clergy, in fostering debate in group settings. To this effect we ask: Do clergy model the deliberative pro…
Are the Politics of the Christian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Controversy
Hout and Fischer have made the repeated, controversial claim that the dramatic rise of “religious nones” in the United States is due to the prominence of the politics of the Christian Right. As the argument goes, the movement’s extreme stands on gay rights and abortion make religion inhospitable to those who take more moderate and liberal positions. We take another look at this proposition with novel data drawing on expert reports and interest gr…
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
The Impact of Election Day Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes
Voter registration is widely viewed as a barrier to voter participation in general, and especially so for likely Democratic voters. A popular remedy for both turnout effects is election day registration (EDR), which eliminates the closing date by permitting registration at the polls. Following earlier research we posit a small positive effect of EDR on turnout. But contrary to conventional wisdom, we theorize that individuals most likely to take …
Veni, Vidi, Disseri
As the most popular voluntary association in the United States, churches are sometimes touted as saviors of democracy. However, those who espouse deliberative models of democracy rarely see churches as nurturing the decision-making abilities of attenders. Thus, the authors examine the extent to which church small group sessions fulfill the conditions for deliberation as set forth by political theorists. Using a combination of quantitative and qua…
How Religious Communities Affect Political Participation Among Latinos
Objective We revisit several longstanding controversies in the study of how religion affects political participation among L atinos, examining the influence of religious affiliation, church attendance, and involvement in the “ancillary” activities of the church on three types of participation: voting, community problem solving, and contacting public officials. Methods Data from the 2001 U.S. C ongregational L ife S urvey and hierarchical methods …
Political Mobilization in American Congregations
It has become an article of faith that congregations in America play an important role in the political mobilization of the faithful, but the reasons why congregations themselves provide political opportunities are not well understood. We unite various strands of work about congregational political engagement under the canopy of the religious economies model. Using the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Study and 1998 National Congregations Study data…
The Religious Communication Approach and Political Behavior
The religious communication approach concerns the identification of causal explanations of political behavior through the explicit measurement of exposure to communication and the variable reception and adoption of the messages in a religious context. The approach requires more questions or different research designs than those on omnibus surveys, which focus on religious affiliation and religiosity. It is particularly amenable to experimentation…
The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns
In spite of the centrality of partisanship to many theories of lawmaking, and the important role that party cues play in shaping voters' evaluations of political candidates, remarkably little is known about the circumstances under which congressional candidates use partisan symbols on the campaign trail. Employing data on candidates' televised advertisements over six elections (1998–2008), the present study explores the “supply side” of partisan …
Intra-Organizational Constraints on Churches' Public Witness
We examine the effects of some oft-overlooked influences on clergy public speech, an important component of a church's public witness. While there are many studies of denominational conflict, few studies connect denominational-level conflict with the ways in which clergy address salient public issues to their congregations. We also explore the impact that the presence of a congregant who has struggled with his or her sexuality, that is, the conta…
On the Limits of Persuasion
Political candidates employ campaign advertising in an attempt to persuade, and there is mounting evidence that such efforts can be successful in influencing voters' decisions at the polls. In this article we explore the limits of the persuasive power of campaign advertising and examine the ways in which voters' interpersonal discussions shape their susceptibility to persuasion. Foundational works in the study of media effects argued that interpe…
The “L” Word
In recent years, the electorate has sorted along ideological lines. Republican identifiers have grown more likely to self-identify as conservatives. Democrats, however, have been slow to embrace the liberal label. And while many Americans are operationally liberal and express support for liberal policy positions, in symbolic terms, the American electorate is much more conservative in nature and appears reluctant to hew to the liberal label. The u…
What Happens at the Polling Place
Tremendous attention has been paid to local election administration since the 2000 presidential election meltdown, yet policy makers still lack basic information about what happens at the polling place. One strategy to understand the interactions between citizens and street‐level election bureaucrats is to turn to administrative data. Using logs collected by polling place workers, the authors analyze more than 66,000 individual incidents recorded…
The Dimensions and Effects of Reciprocity in Political Tolerance Judgments
Attending Church Encourages Acceptance of Atheists? Suppression Effects in Religion and Politics Research
A proliferation of religion variables presents opportunities for those studying religion and politics in the U.S. However, many studies in this growing subfield demonstrate the pitfalls of reporting the “independent” effects of variables without qualification. This is especially evident in work on Christian nationalism where researchers often make the claim that worship attendance promotes more pro-social or liberal outcomes, while Christian nati…
Reconciling Legal-Institutional and Behavioral Perspectives on Voter Turnout
Foundational studies in political science endeavored to explain the dynamics of voter turnout in America over time. Two theories, one focused on legal-institutional factors and the other on behavioral elements such as party mobilization strategies, were born from the need to account for temporal fluctuations in aggregate voter turnout. A comprehensive test of these competing theories has been hindered by the fact that reliable measures of the beh…
The Dual Executive
In responding to Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power and the generation of scholarship on the presidency that followed its publication in 1960, students of what might be termed the “new paradigm” in the presidency studies literature sought to emphasize the tools that are at the president’s disposal that allow for the exercise of unilateral executive power. Although works in this vein exhibit a considerable degree of nuance, the main takeaway is…
Censor Morum? The 17th Amendment, Religious Diversity, and Ideological Extremism in the Senate
The Madisonian formulation suggests that (religious) pluralism is linked to moderate representation when filtered through republican selection. We leverage the quasi-experiment afforded by the ratification of the 17th Amendment to explore whether religious diversity shapes how senators vote. The shift from indirect to direct elections, coupled with roll-call and religious Census data, allows us to test hypotheses derived from differing conception…
Introduction to the Special Issue
The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics
Background The recent jump to study worldviews like apocalypticism and Christian nationalism has left open questions about the social role of religion in the production of prejudice and politics. Objectives We take up the longstanding finding that social contact across lines of difference can tamp down prejudice, especially when such contact is goal‐driven. Specifically, we ask if this relationship holds in the context of apocalyptics– individual…
Clergy Deliberation on Gay Rights and Homosexuality
In examining the increasingly popular concept of deliberative democracy, social scientists most often look to "cross-cutting" elements within discussion networks. Studies of deliberation in networks, however, preclude a number of other sources of deliberative discourse, and ignore the important role that some theorists claim for elites, like clergy, in fostering debate in group settings. To this effect we ask: Do clergy model the deliberative pro…
Intra-Organizational Constraints on Churches' Public Witness
We examine the effects of some oft-overlooked influences on clergy public speech, an important component of a church's public witness. While there are many studies of denominational conflict, few studies connect denominational-level conflict with the ways in which clergy address salient public issues to their congregations. We also explore the impact that the presence of a congregant who has struggled with his or her sexuality, that is, the conta…
Veni, Vidi, Disseri
As the most popular voluntary association in the United States, churches are sometimes touted as saviors of democracy. However, those who espouse deliberative models of democracy rarely see churches as nurturing the decision-making abilities of attenders. Thus, the authors examine the extent to which church small group sessions fulfill the conditions for deliberation as set forth by political theorists. Using a combination of quantitative and qua…
How Religious Communities Affect Political Participation Among Latinos
Objective We revisit several longstanding controversies in the study of how religion affects political participation among L atinos, examining the influence of religious affiliation, church attendance, and involvement in the “ancillary” activities of the church on three types of participation: voting, community problem solving, and contacting public officials. Methods Data from the 2001 U.S. C ongregational L ife S urvey and hierarchical methods …
The Impact of Election Day Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes
Voter registration is widely viewed as a barrier to voter participation in general, and especially so for likely Democratic voters. A popular remedy for both turnout effects is election day registration (EDR), which eliminates the closing date by permitting registration at the polls. Following earlier research we posit a small positive effect of EDR on turnout. But contrary to conventional wisdom, we theorize that individuals most likely to take …
Election Administration and the Pure Effect of Voter Registration on Turnout
Voter registration is thought to have a substantial negative effect on American voter turnout. The authors clarify this understanding in two ways. First, using a natural experiment in Wisconsin, they estimate the pure effect of registration, stripped of aspects such as the closing date. Registration lowers turnout by about 2 percentage points. Second, the authors argue that administrative capacities of local election officials are important moder…
The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns
In spite of the centrality of partisanship to many theories of lawmaking, and the important role that party cues play in shaping voters' evaluations of political candidates, remarkably little is known about the circumstances under which congressional candidates use partisan symbols on the campaign trail. Employing data on candidates' televised advertisements over six elections (1998–2008), the present study explores the “supply side” of partisan …
On the Limits of Persuasion
Political candidates employ campaign advertising in an attempt to persuade, and there is mounting evidence that such efforts can be successful in influencing voters' decisions at the polls. In this article we explore the limits of the persuasive power of campaign advertising and examine the ways in which voters' interpersonal discussions shape their susceptibility to persuasion. Foundational works in the study of media effects argued that interpe…
What Happens at the Polling Place
Tremendous attention has been paid to local election administration since the 2000 presidential election meltdown, yet policy makers still lack basic information about what happens at the polling place. One strategy to understand the interactions between citizens and street‐level election bureaucrats is to turn to administrative data. Using logs collected by polling place workers, the authors analyze more than 66,000 individual incidents recorded…
Reconciling Legal-Institutional and Behavioral Perspectives on Voter Turnout
Foundational studies in political science endeavored to explain the dynamics of voter turnout in America over time. Two theories, one focused on legal-institutional factors and the other on behavioral elements such as party mobilization strategies, were born from the need to account for temporal fluctuations in aggregate voter turnout. A comprehensive test of these competing theories has been hindered by the fact that reliable measures of the beh…
The “L” Word
In recent years, the electorate has sorted along ideological lines. Republican identifiers have grown more likely to self-identify as conservatives. Democrats, however, have been slow to embrace the liberal label. And while many Americans are operationally liberal and express support for liberal policy positions, in symbolic terms, the American electorate is much more conservative in nature and appears reluctant to hew to the liberal label. The u…
Censor Morum? The 17th Amendment, Religious Diversity, and Ideological Extremism in the Senate
The Madisonian formulation suggests that (religious) pluralism is linked to moderate representation when filtered through republican selection. We leverage the quasi-experiment afforded by the ratification of the 17th Amendment to explore whether religious diversity shapes how senators vote. The shift from indirect to direct elections, coupled with roll-call and religious Census data, allows us to test hypotheses derived from differing conception…
The Dual Executive
In responding to Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power and the generation of scholarship on the presidency that followed its publication in 1960, students of what might be termed the “new paradigm” in the presidency studies literature sought to emphasize the tools that are at the president’s disposal that allow for the exercise of unilateral executive power. Although works in this vein exhibit a considerable degree of nuance, the main takeaway is…
Are the Politics of the Christian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Controversy
Hout and Fischer have made the repeated, controversial claim that the dramatic rise of “religious nones” in the United States is due to the prominence of the politics of the Christian Right. As the argument goes, the movement’s extreme stands on gay rights and abortion make religion inhospitable to those who take more moderate and liberal positions. We take another look at this proposition with novel data drawing on expert reports and interest gr…
Reconsidering the Role of Politics in Leaving Religion
Studies have pointed to politics as an important force driving people away from religion—the argument is that the dogmatic politics of the Christian Right have alienated liberals and moderates, effectively threatening organized religion in America. We argue that existing explanations are incomplete; a proper reconsideration necessitates distinguishing processes of affiliation (with specific congregations) from identification (with religious tradi…
Presidential Rhetoric and Bureaucratic Enforcement
BILL CLINTON’S ENTIRE LIFE reflects a strong interest in civil rights. He learned the value of racial tolerance as a child in Arkansas, became a longtime supporter of civil rights policies to protect a wide variety of groups, and received solid political backing from racial minorities through the years.1 Understandably, then, Clinton is often portrayed as a leader on a number of civil rights issues during his two terms in the White House.2 As Ste…
Responsible Parties
Responsible parties? Again? Every couple of decades, the concept of responsible parties finds new life among a different generation of party scholars, and it would seem as though party responsibility is experiencing yet another renaissance. As has been the case with previous rebirths of this nature, some of the current work on responsible parties is largely retrospective and more narrowly focused on the history of the debate within the discipline…
Political Mobilization in American Congregations
It has become an article of faith that congregations in America play an important role in the political mobilization of the faithful, but the reasons why congregations themselves provide political opportunities are not well understood. We unite various strands of work about congregational political engagement under the canopy of the religious economies model. Using the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Study and 1998 National Congregations Study data…
Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
The Rhetoric of Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a nationalist populist, to begin with. This point is central to Robert C. Rowland's latest book, The Rhetoric of Donald Trump, and a good number of pages within the work's introductory chapters are spent establishing that Trump's rhetorical style matches that of a nationalist populist. Throughout the book, Rowland takes great pains to distinguish nationalist populism from its more progressive variant en route to an in-depth invest…
The Religious Communication Approach and Political Behavior
The religious communication approach concerns the identification of causal explanations of political behavior through the explicit measurement of exposure to communication and the variable reception and adoption of the messages in a religious context. The approach requires more questions or different research designs than those on omnibus surveys, which focus on religious affiliation and religiosity. It is particularly amenable to experimentation…
The Dimensions and Effects of Reciprocity in Political Tolerance Judgments
Introduction to the Special Issue
The Failure of the Contact Hypothesis—Exposure to Religious Diversity Conditions Apocalyptic Politics
Background The recent jump to study worldviews like apocalypticism and Christian nationalism has left open questions about the social role of religion in the production of prejudice and politics. Objectives We take up the longstanding finding that social contact across lines of difference can tamp down prejudice, especially when such contact is goal‐driven. Specifically, we ask if this relationship holds in the context of apocalyptics– individual…
Political science (25 works) · Politics (25 works) · Law (24 works) · Law (20 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (13 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (12 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Public Administration (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works)