R Urbatsch
Biographic Data
| ID | 341452 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Urbatsch |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Urbatsch |
| SIGNATURE | URBATSCH R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Iowa State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9874-6094 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 245 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Partisan Biases among the Unemployed
Unemployed people are relatively rarely studied in political science. Yet, with their economic significance and centrality to many political debates, they can provide insight on many questions, including just how far partisan biases – where opinions and even factual perceptions follow what reflects well on their holder's preferred political party – extend. The economic and emotional costs of joblessness make its evaluation an unlikely seeming cas…
Anti-transnationalist communities of Poland's diaspora
Voting with their dollars: Partisan donations of United States emigrants
Research about emigrant participation in origin-country politics most often studies voter turnout. But emigrants influence their origin countries’ politics in ever-increasing ways, including financial campaign donations. Who donates, and to whom, helps reveal distinctive phenomena in emigrant political behavior, shedding particular light on the relatively influential population with the resources and political interest to donate. This paper consi…
Institutional knowledge and perceived rural representation
Is populism popular abroad? Evidence from diasporas around the globe
Populist parties—which typically denounce migrants, globalization, and policy outcomes appreciated by emigrants, and which in turn typically make few efforts to persuade or mobilize expatriate citizens—are likely to see lower vote shares among those voting from abroad. Legislative election results from fifty countries worldwide confirm the hypothesis that more populist parties tend to receive lower shares of out-of-country than of in-country vote…
Humor in Supreme Court oral arguments
Humor in political communication can risk trivializing important issues or otherwise backfire. Still, comedy’s potential rhetorical power ensures its frequent use as a communication and persuasion strategy. This is true even in the Supreme Court of the United States, where oral-argument humor offers a window on thinking and communication strategies as justices deliberate and weigh contending arguments. Judicial humor at the Court may be likelier …
Physical formidability and acceptance of police violence
Are religious individuals against renewables? Exploring religious beliefs and support for government investment in energy transitions in the United States
Bean Counters: The Effect of Soy Tariffs on Change in Republican Vote Share between the 2016 and 2018 Elections
How do trade wars affect voting for the president's party? President Trump's aggressive tariffs on China, despite his largely rural electoral support base, provide a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between international trade policy and domestic support. If trade-related considerations were ever decisive to American voters, the stark decrease in soy prices, a direct effect of Trump-initiated tariffs immediately preceding the 2018 m…
Aversion to far-left parties among Europeans voting abroad
Rightward Leanings and Nonstandard Party-Position Perceptions
Some individuals defy the consensus as to parties’ relative ideological positions, asserting that a party is more left-leaning than its rivals even when most observers have the opposite view. Such discrepancies undercut spatial models of politics. Rightward leaners’ tendency to use different, more self-anchored, bases for assessing ideology may make them especially likely to dissent in this way, as might their attention to distinct issues. Result…
Emigrants vs. rural politics: Cosmopolitan outlooks and electoral opposition to agrarian parties
The Social Desirability of Rallying ’Round the Flag
European ruling parties’ electoral strategies and overseas enfranchisement policies
Emigrants’ ideologies and partisan attitudes may diverge from other voters’: overseas voters are ideologically self‐selected, receive distinctive information about campaigns and have experiences abroad that are likely to shape their political views. Parties, anticipating these emigrant attitudes, can manipulate overseas voting availability to give the vote primarily to their own supporters. Alternatively, parties may expect newly enfranchised vot…
Go Means Green: Diasporas’ Affinity for Ecological Groups
Recent expansions of diaspora rights have given overseas residents increasing political voice. This is particularly significant for environmental politics, because expatriates’ distinctive values, which are typically more cosmopolitan and multicultural than those of domestic voters, are likely to align with values of green organizations. Large- N analyses of an original, cross-national data set of election returns confirm this hypothesis: politic…
Trade connections’ effect on European regions’ interest in Brexit
The European Union’s deepening of international economic integration might be expected to correspondingly increase interest in policy (and news) related to trade partners. The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the organization through invocation of Article 50 offers a particularly clear case for such potential effects, since it directly implicates the relevant economic ties. Yet, evidence from Google searches shows no such effect: European regions…
Good Looks as a Source of Moral Permissiveness
Objective Establishing what leads people to particular moral beliefs is complicated by potential predictors being themselves caused by moral attitudes. This problem is less acute when considering the effects of good looks, which, by expanding sexual opportunities, shift incentives for beliefs regarding the morality of sexual activities. Methods Regressions predict responses to morality‐related questions in the 2016 General Social Survey and the 1…
Gun-shy: Refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership
In recent years, surveys in the United States have faced increasing refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership, even as other similar questions see no comparable up-tick in item nonresponse. Asymmetrical polarization, elite messaging, and changing media institutions all suggest that the surging nonresponse concerning gun-ownership questions may be increasingly concentrated among those with rightward political and partisan leanings, poten…
Immigrant Out-Groups and Voting against Free Trade
Resistance to trade and demands for protectionist policy can derive from social as well as economic factors. A sense of cultural threat surrounding immigrants, especially immigrants visibly from groups that are widely stigmatized among the local population, may potentially stimulate such recoiling from exposure to the world. Voting patterns in the 1889 election in New South Wales, Australia, confirm this hypothesis: in a contest between the Prote…
Endogenous borders and access to the sea
Feminine-sounding names and electoral performance
Things are looking up: Physical beauty, social mobility, and optimistic dispositions
Youthful hours: Shifting poll-opening times manipulates voter demographics
People vary in their preferred times of day for activity. Notably, as individuals age, their daily energy and attention typically peaks earlier in the day. When voting is permitted may then affect voters’ age distribution, even when holding constant the number of hours polls are open. Data from along the time-zone border in Kentucky, where poll-availability hours vary, supports this hypothesis: places where voting hours are later see higher turno…
Entertainment and the Opportunity Cost of Civic Participation: Monday Night Football Game Quality Suppresses Turnout in US Elections
Raising the opportunity cost of people's time may reduce their commitment to social obligations such as voting. Notably, entertaining sporting events can be strong civic distractions, as commentators throughout history have lamented. To consider sporting events' influence on political behavior, this paper examines the effect of Monday Night Football games the day before US general elections from 1970 to 2014. More attractive games, such as those …
Influenza and Voter Turnout
Disease makes performing civic obligations more difficult both for the afflicted and those around them. Elections held when infectious diseases are locally prevalent are therefore likely to see lower voter turnout than are those held in healthier times. This is especially notable given the strongly seasonal incidence of influenza, which coincides with election season in some countries. This article examines the relationship between regional turno…
Diffusion of Diaspora Enfranchisement Norms: A Multinational Study
States have increasingly granted voting rights to their citizens overseas. Traditional accounts of franchise extension suggest that governments’ motivations are either political (new voters are expected to support the incumbent government) or, in the case of citizens abroad, materialist (a fortified link to migrants encourages remittance flows). Although these factors doubtless matter, they overlook the tendency for liberal norms to diffuse throu…
European ruling parties’ electoral strategies and overseas enfranchisement policies
Emigrants’ ideologies and partisan attitudes may diverge from other voters’: overseas voters are ideologically self‐selected, receive distinctive information about campaigns and have experiences abroad that are likely to shape their political views. Parties, anticipating these emigrant attitudes, can manipulate overseas voting availability to give the vote primarily to their own supporters. Alternatively, parties may expect newly enfranchised vot…
A Referendum on Trade Theory: Voting on Free Trade in Costa Rica
Research on mass opinion in international political economy overwhelmingly relies on survey data. This poses problems of external validity, especially for a frequently low-salience issue such as trade policy. To examine whether survey findings about attitudes toward economic openness apply outside of surveys, this note considers patterns of voting in the 2007 Costa Rican plebiscite about joining the Central American Free Trade Area. Several extan…
Is populism popular abroad? Evidence from diasporas around the globe
Populist parties—which typically denounce migrants, globalization, and policy outcomes appreciated by emigrants, and which in turn typically make few efforts to persuade or mobilize expatriate citizens—are likely to see lower vote shares among those voting from abroad. Legislative election results from fifty countries worldwide confirm the hypothesis that more populist parties tend to receive lower shares of out-of-country than of in-country vote…
There Can Be Only One (Woman on the Ticket): Gender in Candidate Nominations
Gun-shy: Refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership
In recent years, surveys in the United States have faced increasing refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership, even as other similar questions see no comparable up-tick in item nonresponse. Asymmetrical polarization, elite messaging, and changing media institutions all suggest that the surging nonresponse concerning gun-ownership questions may be increasingly concentrated among those with rightward political and partisan leanings, poten…
Go Means Green: Diasporas’ Affinity for Ecological Groups
Recent expansions of diaspora rights have given overseas residents increasing political voice. This is particularly significant for environmental politics, because expatriates’ distinctive values, which are typically more cosmopolitan and multicultural than those of domestic voters, are likely to align with values of green organizations. Large- N analyses of an original, cross-national data set of election returns confirm this hypothesis: politic…
Isolationism and Domestic Politics
Isolationism has long been seen as a reaction against domestic economic conditions or a threatening international environment, but domestic politics could equally spur such a reaction. Disagreement with current foreign policy or opposition to political parties directing foreign policy may provoke negative feelings on the general prospect of international engagement. Some of what appears to be isolationism, then, is not a universal rejection of in…
Bean Counters: The Effect of Soy Tariffs on Change in Republican Vote Share between the 2016 and 2018 Elections
How do trade wars affect voting for the president's party? President Trump's aggressive tariffs on China, despite his largely rural electoral support base, provide a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between international trade policy and domestic support. If trade-related considerations were ever decisive to American voters, the stark decrease in soy prices, a direct effect of Trump-initiated tariffs immediately preceding the 2018 m…
Entertainment and the Opportunity Cost of Civic Participation: Monday Night Football Game Quality Suppresses Turnout in US Elections
Raising the opportunity cost of people's time may reduce their commitment to social obligations such as voting. Notably, entertaining sporting events can be strong civic distractions, as commentators throughout history have lamented. To consider sporting events' influence on political behavior, this paper examines the effect of Monday Night Football games the day before US general elections from 1970 to 2014. More attractive games, such as those …
Emigrants vs. rural politics: Cosmopolitan outlooks and electoral opposition to agrarian parties
Sibling Ideological Influence: A Natural Experiment
Siblings are a potentially important source of political socialization. Influence is common, especially among younger siblings and those close in age, who tend to interact most frequently. This suggests that the positions of an individual's next-older sibling will hold particular sway. In policy questions with a gender gap, then, those whose immediately older sibling is a sister will be more likely to absorb the typically female preference; those…
Aversion to far-left parties among Europeans voting abroad
Gender, Partisanship, and Candidate-Selection Mechanisms
How candidates are selected, such as through nomination by party elites or election by primary voters, potentially influences the underrepresentation of women in political office. Partisan differences suggest that primary voters in right-leaning parties might select fewer female nominees than would their left-leaning counterparts even if both parties' elites are equally likely to select female nominees. This hypothesis is confirmed by an analysis…
Feminine-sounding names and electoral performance
Judgement days: Moral Attitudes in the Wake of Local Disasters
The deaths and destruction stemming from a disaster are traumatic enough to implicate victims' beliefs not only about disasters themselves but also about other social and political concerns. In particular, disasters are associated with the scapegoating of out-groups, suggesting that even deep-rooted moral concerns may shift, at least temporarily, after disasters. This study uses exposure to local natural disaster fatalities to examine moral judge…
Influenza and Voter Turnout
Disease makes performing civic obligations more difficult both for the afflicted and those around them. Elections held when infectious diseases are locally prevalent are therefore likely to see lower voter turnout than are those held in healthier times. This is especially notable given the strongly seasonal incidence of influenza, which coincides with election season in some countries. This article examines the relationship between regional turno…
Industries, Occupations, and Trade Policy Preferences
Interdependent Preferences, Militarism, and Child Gender
Selection effects make it difficult to determine whether concern for other people genuinely affects individuals' policy preferences. Child gender provides a conveniently exogenous means of exploring the issue, especially in contexts such as military policy where girls and boys face different risks; in many countries male children are disproportionately likely to become soldiers and thus bear the costs of militarism. This creates divergent effects…
Humor in Supreme Court oral arguments
Humor in political communication can risk trivializing important issues or otherwise backfire. Still, comedy’s potential rhetorical power ensures its frequent use as a communication and persuasion strategy. This is true even in the Supreme Court of the United States, where oral-argument humor offers a window on thinking and communication strategies as justices deliberate and weigh contending arguments. Judicial humor at the Court may be likelier …
Are religious individuals against renewables? Exploring religious beliefs and support for government investment in energy transitions in the United States
Movers as early adopters of linguistic innovation
Long-distance migration is a primary source of language contact. Those who voluntarily migrate, though, may not resemble the broader population: psychological research suggests some factors that predispose people to become migrants also tend to lead to more openness to trying new things, potentially including linguistic features. This implies differential reactions to language contact, so inferences drawn from migrants may not generalize to the l…
Time Regulations as Electoral Policy
Having had more or less sleep changes mood and behavior; for example, more sleep associates with greater productivity and a perception that more time is available. This changes the time cost of voting in ways particularly important for the United States, where the general elections are sometimes but not always held 2 days after a 25-hr day, when people typically have had more time to catch up on sleep. Election returns and surveys confirm that ci…
The paradox of voting intelligently
Institutional knowledge and perceived rural representation
Location and Policy Preferences
Individuals with access to multiple jurisdictions can choose to distribute their consumption of many government policies across various polities to avoid costs imposed by their own government. This alters preferences over their own government’s policies, suggesting such voters should disproportionately favor policies whose costs are evadable. Referendum voting from the Switzerland and the United States confirms this theorizing: border areas, wher…
Interdependent Preferences, Militarism, and Child Gender
Selection effects make it difficult to determine whether concern for other people genuinely affects individuals' policy preferences. Child gender provides a conveniently exogenous means of exploring the issue, especially in contexts such as military policy where girls and boys face different risks; in many countries male children are disproportionately likely to become soldiers and thus bear the costs of militarism. This creates divergent effects…
Isolationism and Domestic Politics
Isolationism has long been seen as a reaction against domestic economic conditions or a threatening international environment, but domestic politics could equally spur such a reaction. Disagreement with current foreign policy or opposition to political parties directing foreign policy may provoke negative feelings on the general prospect of international engagement. Some of what appears to be isolationism, then, is not a universal rejection of in…
Sibling Ideological Influence: A Natural Experiment
Siblings are a potentially important source of political socialization. Influence is common, especially among younger siblings and those close in age, who tend to interact most frequently. This suggests that the positions of an individual's next-older sibling will hold particular sway. In policy questions with a gender gap, then, those whose immediately older sibling is a sister will be more likely to absorb the typically female preference; those…
The paradox of voting intelligently
Industries, Occupations, and Trade Policy Preferences
A Referendum on Trade Theory: Voting on Free Trade in Costa Rica
Research on mass opinion in international political economy overwhelmingly relies on survey data. This poses problems of external validity, especially for a frequently low-salience issue such as trade policy. To examine whether survey findings about attitudes toward economic openness apply outside of surveys, this note considers patterns of voting in the 2007 Costa Rican plebiscite about joining the Central American Free Trade Area. Several extan…
Nominal Partisanship: Names as Political Identity Signals
Sending a signal of partisan identity carries greater expressive benefit, but also greater expected cost, for members of the public when they are more exposed to adherents of the other party. To see whether the cost or the benefit dominates in the decision to send partisan signals, this article considers partisan signals sent by names of newborns, particularly girls named “Reagan,” in US state-years from 1976 to 2011. Results indicate that the be…
Alphabetical Effects on Political Careers
Personal names have important consequences for many life outcomes, but their influence on political success is relatively unexplored. Yet widespread biases towards outcomes early in the alphabet and the propensity for some seniority lists (such as those in the United States House of Representatives) to privilege alphabetical position when politicians assume office simultaneously suggest that alphabetically early surnames may promote electoral suc…
Historical Regional Variation in Census Occupation Terms
Censuses offer bountiful but underexploited sources for studies of linguistic usage, especially with their detailed geographic and demographic information about respondents. To demonstrate potential uses of census data, this study explores the regional variation in 1880 U.S. Census respondents when referring to establishments serving alcoholic beverages and to those establishments’ employees. The analysis shows distinct regional patterns of using…
Time Regulations as Electoral Policy
Having had more or less sleep changes mood and behavior; for example, more sleep associates with greater productivity and a perception that more time is available. This changes the time cost of voting in ways particularly important for the United States, where the general elections are sometimes but not always held 2 days after a 25-hr day, when people typically have had more time to catch up on sleep. Election returns and surveys confirm that ci…
Temperature Biases in Public Opinion Surveys
The quasi experiment of deviations from normal temperatures shows how local temperature conditions bias selected survey results. Responses in eight CBS News surveys from 2001 to 2007 change with the weather, with unseasonable temperatures reducing concern about climate change and unusually warm temperatures increasing presidential approval. Unusual temperatures also influence who answers surveys; wealthier respondents are overrepresented in warme…
There Can Be Only One (Woman on the Ticket): Gender in Candidate Nominations
Diffusion of Diaspora Enfranchisement Norms: A Multinational Study
States have increasingly granted voting rights to their citizens overseas. Traditional accounts of franchise extension suggest that governments’ motivations are either political (new voters are expected to support the incumbent government) or, in the case of citizens abroad, materialist (a fortified link to migrants encourages remittance flows). Although these factors doubtless matter, they overlook the tendency for liberal norms to diffuse throu…
Movers as early adopters of linguistic innovation
Long-distance migration is a primary source of language contact. Those who voluntarily migrate, though, may not resemble the broader population: psychological research suggests some factors that predispose people to become migrants also tend to lead to more openness to trying new things, potentially including linguistic features. This implies differential reactions to language contact, so inferences drawn from migrants may not generalize to the l…
The American Public's Attention to Politics in Conflict and Crisis, 1880-1963
Parental naming practices in the United States have much to reveal about public attitudes, preoccupations, and reactions to current events. Evidence from the 2011 version of the Social Security Master Death File-a database that includes nearly all of the Americans who were alive between World War II and 2011-reveals that newborns are more likely to acquire the name of a president after elections, assassination attempts, and declarations of war. R…
Protectionist Executives
The trade policy literature long presumed that legislatures favor relatively more protectionist policies than executives do, but more recent studies have found little evidence to support the idea. This article clarifies these mixed results with a simple formal model. It finds that legislative protectionism requires very specific circumstances involving the combination of universalistic legislative norms and a particular economic geography, with t…
Gendered electoral systems in the French Sénat
A longstanding but contested hypothesis in political science suggests that proportional (rather than majoritarian) electoral systems tend to increase the share of legislative seats held by women. While scholars have used a variety of empirical methodologies to test this hypothesis, they have mostly neglected legislatures where different parts of the country use different electoral systems. This note looks at women’s election to the longest-establ…
Gender, Partisanship, and Candidate-Selection Mechanisms
How candidates are selected, such as through nomination by party elites or election by primary voters, potentially influences the underrepresentation of women in political office. Partisan differences suggest that primary voters in right-leaning parties might select fewer female nominees than would their left-leaning counterparts even if both parties' elites are equally likely to select female nominees. This hypothesis is confirmed by an analysis…
Judgement days: Moral Attitudes in the Wake of Local Disasters
The deaths and destruction stemming from a disaster are traumatic enough to implicate victims' beliefs not only about disasters themselves but also about other social and political concerns. In particular, disasters are associated with the scapegoating of out-groups, suggesting that even deep-rooted moral concerns may shift, at least temporarily, after disasters. This study uses exposure to local natural disaster fatalities to examine moral judge…
Youthful hours: Shifting poll-opening times manipulates voter demographics
People vary in their preferred times of day for activity. Notably, as individuals age, their daily energy and attention typically peaks earlier in the day. When voting is permitted may then affect voters’ age distribution, even when holding constant the number of hours polls are open. Data from along the time-zone border in Kentucky, where poll-availability hours vary, supports this hypothesis: places where voting hours are later see higher turno…
Entertainment and the Opportunity Cost of Civic Participation: Monday Night Football Game Quality Suppresses Turnout in US Elections
Raising the opportunity cost of people's time may reduce their commitment to social obligations such as voting. Notably, entertaining sporting events can be strong civic distractions, as commentators throughout history have lamented. To consider sporting events' influence on political behavior, this paper examines the effect of Monday Night Football games the day before US general elections from 1970 to 2014. More attractive games, such as those …
Influenza and Voter Turnout
Disease makes performing civic obligations more difficult both for the afflicted and those around them. Elections held when infectious diseases are locally prevalent are therefore likely to see lower voter turnout than are those held in healthier times. This is especially notable given the strongly seasonal incidence of influenza, which coincides with election season in some countries. This article examines the relationship between regional turno…
Long-term effects of ethnic cleansing in the former Polish-German borderlands
Gun-shy: Refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership
In recent years, surveys in the United States have faced increasing refusal to answer questions about firearm ownership, even as other similar questions see no comparable up-tick in item nonresponse. Asymmetrical polarization, elite messaging, and changing media institutions all suggest that the surging nonresponse concerning gun-ownership questions may be increasingly concentrated among those with rightward political and partisan leanings, poten…
Political science (41 works) · Law (39 works) · Politics (36 works) · Economics (33 works) · Law (31 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Voting (16 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Social Psychology (14 works)