Daniel C Lewis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3718025 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel C Lewis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel C |
| FAMILY NAME | Lewis |
| SIGNATURE | LEWIS D C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Siena College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8873-9007 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 533 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 37 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Policing gender in the bathroom
Play fair
Introduction Policies restricting sports participation by transgender youth have spread across the United States. The Trump administration has also taken a variety of executive actions to ban participation by transgender athletes. Methods Little research has examined how issue framing affects attitudes toward these policies. Some LGBT advocates recommend emphasizing egalitarian and loss-based arguments, as well as acknowledging discomfort regardi…
American Federalism
The development of transgender rights in the United States has been hobbled by a patchwork of inconsistent state laws. The irregularity is a function of the political opportunity structure in the United States, which is defined by a sharp partisan divide and by the federal system’s division of power. National policymaking on transgender rights has stalled in Congress. Executive branch policymaking is often subject to challenge in the federal cour…
Cultural Threat, Outgroup Discrimination, and Attitudes toward Transgender Rights
Scholars often highlight the roles that group threat and intergroup solidarity play in shaping attitudes toward outgroups. Competition among social groups, including over values and culture, can underlie negative attitudes toward outgroups. Meanwhile, perceptions of discrimination against outgroups can drive feelings of solidarity, sympathy, or empathy, which may foster more positive attitudes. These social identity concepts are often studied in …
Taking perspective of the stories we tell about transgender rights
Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorporate a perspective taking exercise to examine its effects on individual attitudes. Using an experiment…
Making the Vote (In)Accessible
Approximately 12.7% of Americans are considered to have a disability. Yet, despite belonging to a potentially significant voting bloc, people with disabilities report high rates of abstention from voting. Prior research examining difficulties those with disabilities can have in casting a ballot find that convenience voting reforms, such as mail-in voting rules, may increase the likelihood that an individual with a disability reports voting. State…
Transitioning Opinion
Few public opinion surveys addressed transgender rights prior to 2015, but scholarly attention to these issues began to proliferate with a series of surveys from 2015 and 2016 that identified a number of important variables shaping attitudes toward transgender people and policies. Yet, the political environment surrounding transgender rights has changed significantly since 2015, with increasing public attention to these issues, more prominent pos…
Public Attitudes on Transgender Military Service
Policy regarding the inclusion of transgender soldiers in the U.S. Military has shifted back and forth in recent years, with public opinion likely a significant factor shaping the eventual policy outcome. As such, this study examines the factors that shape public attitudes toward military service by transgender people. In particular, we examine the influence of sex, social gender roles, and attitudes toward gender in shaping transgender military …
Public Attitudes about Transgender Participation in Sports
Initiatives without Engagement
Do ballot initiatives create better citizens? Proponents of direct democracy institutions have long argued that they not only create a more democratically responsive government and public policy but also promote civic engagement in society. Giving citizens a direct role in the legislative process should enhance individuals’ political and policy knowledge, trust in government, political efficacy, and, importantly, participation in elections. Initi…
The Politics of Being “Cait
Celebrities saturate American culture and often become relevant in politics, yet political science has largely left unstudied how celebrities affect mass political behavior. We focus on the 2015 story of Caitlyn Jenner revealing her transgender identity. Using an original nationally representative survey from that summer, we examine whether following the Jenner story and evaluations of its social significance affected attitudes toward transgender…
LGBTQ State Legislative Candidates in an Era of Backlash
In 2017, transgender woman Danica Roem stunned political observers in Virginia by unseating a long-time anti-LGBTQ legislator from a conservative district in the Virginia House of Delegates.1 She was the first openly transgender person elected and seated to a state legislature. Delegate Roem’s election was historic in LGBTQ political representation, but it also occurred in a period when backlash against the LGBTQ community seemed to be growing (T…
Morality Politics and New Research on Transgender Politics and Public Policy
Recent political debate over transgender military service and gendered bathroom use highlights a dramatic increase in salience over transgender issues in the US. In this essay, we examine a potential new front in the culture wars by reviewing recent empirical research in social science on the politics of transgender rights in the context of morality politics. Research on morality politics has often focused on LGBT rights, with an emphasis on gay …
Organization and advocacy for LGBTQ rights
The Remarkable Rise of Transgender Rights
While medical identification and treatment of gender dysphoria have existed for decades, the development of transgender as a "collective political identity" is a recent construct. Over the past twenty-five years, the transgender movement has gained statutory nondiscrimination protections at the state and local levels, hate crimes protections in a number of states, inclusion in a federal law against hate crimes, legal victories in the courts, and …
Transgender prejudice reduction and opinions on transgender rights
Fears, phobias, and dislikes about minorities should be strong determinants of whether Americans support policies protecting such minorities. Studies suggest that discussions and information about transgender people can reduce transphobia. However, these studies also indicate that experimental treatments do not necessarily affect individual attitudes on policies concerning transgender rights. Scholars contend that durably reducing prejudice shoul…
Challenged Expectations
Social categorization processes may be initiated by physical appearance, which have the potential to influence how people evaluate others. Categorizations ground what stereotypes and prejudices, if any, become activated. Gender is one of the first features people notice about others. Much less is known about individuals who may transgress gender expectations, including people who are transgender. Using an experiment, this study investigates wheth…
Home Rule Be Damned
Contribution to spotlight in PS: Political Science & Politics: Home Rule Be Damned: Exploring Policy Conflicts between the Statehouse and City Hall
Bringing “T” to the table
Of central importance to groups is the representation of their interests in government. A direct strategy for representation is to elect officials that identify with the group. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement has increasingly been successful in fielding LGB candidates for local, state, and national offices, even though these candidates face barriers. But while many lesbian and gay candidates have achieved electoral suc…
Transgender politics as body politics
Transgender identity inherently involves body politics, specifically how transgender people may physically represent gender in ways that do not match their assigned sex at birth and how some may alter their bodies. Yet, political behavior research on transgender rights attitudes leaves unaddressed the role of transgender bodies in shaping those attitudes. Using an original, representative national survey of American adults, we analyze how authori…
Degrees of Acceptance
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community includes a diverse set of groups, including distinct groups based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, but it is not clear whether the public makes distinctions in their attitudes toward these subgroups. If they do, what factors motivate individuals to evaluate gays and lesbians differently from transgender people? This study analyzes Americans’ attitudes toward these communities, …
Legislative Term Limits and Voter Turnout
According to reformers, legislative term limits should increase voter turnout by enhancing electoral competitiveness for legislative seats. However, this claim has been largely untested. The only existing study of the effect of legislative term limits on voter turnout, to date, finds that turnout in California did not increase after the imposition of term limits and may have decreased turnout. Yet, it is unclear whether this result generalizes to…
Evaluating Policy Representation with Dynamic MRP Estimates
Does direct democracy strengthen popular control of public policy in the United States? A major challenge in evaluating policy representation is the measurement of state-level public opinion and public policy. Although recent studies of policy responsiveness and congruence have provided improved measures of public opinion using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) techniques, these analyses are limited by their static nature and cro…
Testing Contact Theory and Attitudes on Transgender Rights
Most of the public opinion research about sexual and gender minorities has focused on attitudes about lesbians and gay men, support for gay rights policies, and the factors that affect these attitudes. In particular, interpersonal contact with gay and lesbian individuals consistently is shown to positively affect attitudes toward these groups. Comparable studies about transgender people and transgender rights are few in number, and these studies …
Institutional Characteristics and State Policy Priorities
This article examines how the institutional characteristics of state legislatures and governors affect state policy priorities. We argue that differences in the nature of their respective constituencies lead legislators to press for particularized benefits while governors favor collective goods. Empirical analysis of state-level data from 1982 through 2011 confirms that this is the case. The organizational arrangements of the two branches of gove…
Degrees of Acceptance
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community includes a diverse set of groups, including distinct groups based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, but it is not clear whether the public makes distinctions in their attitudes toward these subgroups. If they do, what factors motivate individuals to evaluate gays and lesbians differently from transgender people? This study analyzes Americans’ attitudes toward these communities, …
Challenged Expectations
Social categorization processes may be initiated by physical appearance, which have the potential to influence how people evaluate others. Categorizations ground what stereotypes and prejudices, if any, become activated. Gender is one of the first features people notice about others. Much less is known about individuals who may transgress gender expectations, including people who are transgender. Using an experiment, this study investigates wheth…
Public Opinion Toward Intergovernmental Policy Responsibilities
This study examines public opinion toward the policy responsibilities of the national, state, and local governments. We use new data from a national survey to analyze citizens' attitudes toward the general and policy-specific activities of the respective governmental levels. We find that people want all levels of government to do more. But, they also differentiate among national, state, and local responsibilities for particular policy areas. In f…
Testing Contact Theory and Attitudes on Transgender Rights
Most of the public opinion research about sexual and gender minorities has focused on attitudes about lesbians and gay men, support for gay rights policies, and the factors that affect these attitudes. In particular, interpersonal contact with gay and lesbian individuals consistently is shown to positively affect attitudes toward these groups. Comparable studies about transgender people and transgender rights are few in number, and these studies …
Bringing “T” to the table
Of central importance to groups is the representation of their interests in government. A direct strategy for representation is to elect officials that identify with the group. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement has increasingly been successful in fielding LGB candidates for local, state, and national offices, even though these candidates face barriers. But while many lesbian and gay candidates have achieved electoral suc…
Content and Complexity in Policy Reinvention and Diffusion
This article sheds new light on policy diffusion by exploring policy complexity in state-level lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) antidiscrimination policies. The multiple component event history approach taken in this research allows for the concurrent study of both policy content and the factors that affect policy adoption. Results reveal that the factors influencing policy adoption vary depending on both the content and scope of th…
Transgender politics as body politics
Transgender identity inherently involves body politics, specifically how transgender people may physically represent gender in ways that do not match their assigned sex at birth and how some may alter their bodies. Yet, political behavior research on transgender rights attitudes leaves unaddressed the role of transgender bodies in shaping those attitudes. Using an original, representative national survey of American adults, we analyze how authori…
Public Attitudes about Transgender Participation in Sports
Transitioning Opinion
Few public opinion surveys addressed transgender rights prior to 2015, but scholarly attention to these issues began to proliferate with a series of surveys from 2015 and 2016 that identified a number of important variables shaping attitudes toward transgender people and policies. Yet, the political environment surrounding transgender rights has changed significantly since 2015, with increasing public attention to these issues, more prominent pos…
Legislative Term Limits and Fiscal Policy Performance
Do term limits impede the ability of legislators to effectively set fiscal policy? To address this question, I examine state bond ratings from 1996 to 2009. Bond ratings serve as a valuable indicator of a state's fiscal performance, gauging the risk and uncertainty that investors face when buying these bonds. In addition, bond ratings are important policy ends in themselves. High bond ratings make it easier for states to borrow and raise revenue,…
Taking perspective of the stories we tell about transgender rights
Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorporate a perspective taking exercise to examine its effects on individual attitudes. Using an experiment…
Public Attitudes on Transgender Military Service
Policy regarding the inclusion of transgender soldiers in the U.S. Military has shifted back and forth in recent years, with public opinion likely a significant factor shaping the eventual policy outcome. As such, this study examines the factors that shape public attitudes toward military service by transgender people. In particular, we examine the influence of sex, social gender roles, and attitudes toward gender in shaping transgender military …
Direct Democracy and Minority Rights
Objectives. A common critique of direct democracy posits that minority rights are endangered by citizen legislative institutions. By allowing citizens to directly create public policy, these institutions avoid the filtering mechanisms of representative democracy that provide a check on the power of the majority. Empirical research, however, has produced conflicting results that leave the question of direct democracy's effect on minority rights op…
Transgender prejudice reduction and opinions on transgender rights
Fears, phobias, and dislikes about minorities should be strong determinants of whether Americans support policies protecting such minorities. Studies suggest that discussions and information about transgender people can reduce transphobia. However, these studies also indicate that experimental treatments do not necessarily affect individual attitudes on policies concerning transgender rights. Scholars contend that durably reducing prejudice shoul…
Institutional Characteristics and State Policy Priorities
This article examines how the institutional characteristics of state legislatures and governors affect state policy priorities. We argue that differences in the nature of their respective constituencies lead legislators to press for particularized benefits while governors favor collective goods. Empirical analysis of state-level data from 1982 through 2011 confirms that this is the case. The organizational arrangements of the two branches of gove…
Bypassing the Representational Filter? Minority Rights Policies under Direct Democracy Institutions in the U.S. States
One common critique of direct democracy posits that minority rights are endangered by institutions like ballot initiatives and referenda. Empirical research testing this claim, however, has produced conflicting results that leave the question of direct democracy's effect on minority rights open to debate. This study extends previous research by providing a more direct test of this criticism—it compares anti-minority policy proposals from direct d…
The Politics of Being “Cait
Celebrities saturate American culture and often become relevant in politics, yet political science has largely left unstudied how celebrities affect mass political behavior. We focus on the 2015 story of Caitlyn Jenner revealing her transgender identity. Using an original nationally representative survey from that summer, we examine whether following the Jenner story and evaluations of its social significance affected attitudes toward transgender…
Morality Politics and New Research on Transgender Politics and Public Policy
Recent political debate over transgender military service and gendered bathroom use highlights a dramatic increase in salience over transgender issues in the US. In this essay, we examine a potential new front in the culture wars by reviewing recent empirical research in social science on the politics of transgender rights in the context of morality politics. Research on morality politics has often focused on LGBT rights, with an emphasis on gay …
Evaluating Policy Representation with Dynamic MRP Estimates
Does direct democracy strengthen popular control of public policy in the United States? A major challenge in evaluating policy representation is the measurement of state-level public opinion and public policy. Although recent studies of policy responsiveness and congruence have provided improved measures of public opinion using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) techniques, these analyses are limited by their static nature and cro…
Advocacy and influence
Cultural Threat, Outgroup Discrimination, and Attitudes toward Transgender Rights
Scholars often highlight the roles that group threat and intergroup solidarity play in shaping attitudes toward outgroups. Competition among social groups, including over values and culture, can underlie negative attitudes toward outgroups. Meanwhile, perceptions of discrimination against outgroups can drive feelings of solidarity, sympathy, or empathy, which may foster more positive attitudes. These social identity concepts are often studied in …
Legislative Term Limits and Voter Turnout
According to reformers, legislative term limits should increase voter turnout by enhancing electoral competitiveness for legislative seats. However, this claim has been largely untested. The only existing study of the effect of legislative term limits on voter turnout, to date, finds that turnout in California did not increase after the imposition of term limits and may have decreased turnout. Yet, it is unclear whether this result generalizes to…
Public Opinion and Judicial Behavior in Direct Democracy Systems
Although the U.S. judiciary is designed to be an independent and counter-majoritarian arbiter of the law, many states feature electoral institutions that may expose judges to public pressure. Scholars have demonstrated that judicial elections provide a clear link between public opinion and judicial decision making that may undermine the ability of courts to act in counter-majoritarian ways to protect minority rights. We extend this line of inquir…
LGBTQ State Legislative Candidates in an Era of Backlash
In 2017, transgender woman Danica Roem stunned political observers in Virginia by unseating a long-time anti-LGBTQ legislator from a conservative district in the Virginia House of Delegates.1 She was the first openly transgender person elected and seated to a state legislature. Delegate Roem’s election was historic in LGBTQ political representation, but it also occurred in a period when backlash against the LGBTQ community seemed to be growing (T…
The impact of direct democracy on state spending priorities
Direct Democracy and Minority Rights
Objectives. A common critique of direct democracy posits that minority rights are endangered by citizen legislative institutions. By allowing citizens to directly create public policy, these institutions avoid the filtering mechanisms of representative democracy that provide a check on the power of the majority. Empirical research, however, has produced conflicting results that leave the question of direct democracy's effect on minority rights op…
Bypassing the Representational Filter? Minority Rights Policies under Direct Democracy Institutions in the U.S. States
One common critique of direct democracy posits that minority rights are endangered by institutions like ballot initiatives and referenda. Empirical research testing this claim, however, has produced conflicting results that leave the question of direct democracy's effect on minority rights open to debate. This study extends previous research by providing a more direct test of this criticism—it compares anti-minority policy proposals from direct d…
Public Opinion Toward Intergovernmental Policy Responsibilities
This study examines public opinion toward the policy responsibilities of the national, state, and local governments. We use new data from a national survey to analyze citizens' attitudes toward the general and policy-specific activities of the respective governmental levels. We find that people want all levels of government to do more. But, they also differentiate among national, state, and local responsibilities for particular policy areas. In f…
Say it, Don't Do It”
Alan Sillitoe's 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning explores shifting masculine roles for working and middle-class men in England following the Second World War and the Korean War. I propose a reading of Sillitoe's novel that focuses on the abilities and the limits of male speech in the construction of a working-class masculine gender identity, including how those utterances work to establish differences and similarities. Furthermore, I …
Content and Complexity in Policy Reinvention and Diffusion
This article sheds new light on policy diffusion by exploring policy complexity in state-level lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) antidiscrimination policies. The multiple component event history approach taken in this research allows for the concurrent study of both policy content and the factors that affect policy adoption. Results reveal that the factors influencing policy adoption vary depending on both the content and scope of th…
Legislative Term Limits and Fiscal Policy Performance
Do term limits impede the ability of legislators to effectively set fiscal policy? To address this question, I examine state bond ratings from 1996 to 2009. Bond ratings serve as a valuable indicator of a state's fiscal performance, gauging the risk and uncertainty that investors face when buying these bonds. In addition, bond ratings are important policy ends in themselves. High bond ratings make it easier for states to borrow and raise revenue,…
Direct Democracy and Minority Rights
This book conclusively demonstrates that direct democracy—institutions like the ballot initiative and the referendum—endangers the rights of minorities and perpetuates a tyranny of the majority. While advocates of direct democracy advocate that these institutions protect citizens from corrupt lawmakers beholden to special interests, Daniel Lewis's thorough investigation shows how such mass participation exposes minority groups to negative policy …
Advocacy and influence
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
In “The Dog that Didn't Bark: The Role of Canines in the 2008 Campaign,” Diana Mutz (2010) argues that dog ownership made voters significantly less likely to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. We examine this claim further. Although President Obama has owned a dog since shortly after his 2008 election, we argue that Bo's presence most likely did little to improve his owner's chances of being reelected in 2012. Rather, the ap…
Teaching Interest Groups & Advocacy
Public Opinion and Judicial Behavior in Direct Democracy Systems
Although the U.S. judiciary is designed to be an independent and counter-majoritarian arbiter of the law, many states feature electoral institutions that may expose judges to public pressure. Scholars have demonstrated that judicial elections provide a clear link between public opinion and judicial decision making that may undermine the ability of courts to act in counter-majoritarian ways to protect minority rights. We extend this line of inquir…
Institutional Characteristics and State Policy Priorities
This article examines how the institutional characteristics of state legislatures and governors affect state policy priorities. We argue that differences in the nature of their respective constituencies lead legislators to press for particularized benefits while governors favor collective goods. Empirical analysis of state-level data from 1982 through 2011 confirms that this is the case. The organizational arrangements of the two branches of gove…
The impact of direct democracy on state spending priorities
Bringing “T” to the table
Of central importance to groups is the representation of their interests in government. A direct strategy for representation is to elect officials that identify with the group. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement has increasingly been successful in fielding LGB candidates for local, state, and national offices, even though these candidates face barriers. But while many lesbian and gay candidates have achieved electoral suc…
Transgender politics as body politics
Transgender identity inherently involves body politics, specifically how transgender people may physically represent gender in ways that do not match their assigned sex at birth and how some may alter their bodies. Yet, political behavior research on transgender rights attitudes leaves unaddressed the role of transgender bodies in shaping those attitudes. Using an original, representative national survey of American adults, we analyze how authori…
Degrees of Acceptance
The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community includes a diverse set of groups, including distinct groups based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity, but it is not clear whether the public makes distinctions in their attitudes toward these subgroups. If they do, what factors motivate individuals to evaluate gays and lesbians differently from transgender people? This study analyzes Americans’ attitudes toward these communities, …
Legislative Term Limits and Voter Turnout
According to reformers, legislative term limits should increase voter turnout by enhancing electoral competitiveness for legislative seats. However, this claim has been largely untested. The only existing study of the effect of legislative term limits on voter turnout, to date, finds that turnout in California did not increase after the imposition of term limits and may have decreased turnout. Yet, it is unclear whether this result generalizes to…
Evaluating Policy Representation with Dynamic MRP Estimates
Does direct democracy strengthen popular control of public policy in the United States? A major challenge in evaluating policy representation is the measurement of state-level public opinion and public policy. Although recent studies of policy responsiveness and congruence have provided improved measures of public opinion using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) techniques, these analyses are limited by their static nature and cro…
Testing Contact Theory and Attitudes on Transgender Rights
Most of the public opinion research about sexual and gender minorities has focused on attitudes about lesbians and gay men, support for gay rights policies, and the factors that affect these attitudes. In particular, interpersonal contact with gay and lesbian individuals consistently is shown to positively affect attitudes toward these groups. Comparable studies about transgender people and transgender rights are few in number, and these studies …
The Remarkable Rise of Transgender Rights
While medical identification and treatment of gender dysphoria have existed for decades, the development of transgender as a "collective political identity" is a recent construct. Over the past twenty-five years, the transgender movement has gained statutory nondiscrimination protections at the state and local levels, hate crimes protections in a number of states, inclusion in a federal law against hate crimes, legal victories in the courts, and …
Transgender prejudice reduction and opinions on transgender rights
Fears, phobias, and dislikes about minorities should be strong determinants of whether Americans support policies protecting such minorities. Studies suggest that discussions and information about transgender people can reduce transphobia. However, these studies also indicate that experimental treatments do not necessarily affect individual attitudes on policies concerning transgender rights. Scholars contend that durably reducing prejudice shoul…
Challenged Expectations
Social categorization processes may be initiated by physical appearance, which have the potential to influence how people evaluate others. Categorizations ground what stereotypes and prejudices, if any, become activated. Gender is one of the first features people notice about others. Much less is known about individuals who may transgress gender expectations, including people who are transgender. Using an experiment, this study investigates wheth…
Home Rule Be Damned
Contribution to spotlight in PS: Political Science & Politics: Home Rule Be Damned: Exploring Policy Conflicts between the Statehouse and City Hall
Morality Politics and New Research on Transgender Politics and Public Policy
Recent political debate over transgender military service and gendered bathroom use highlights a dramatic increase in salience over transgender issues in the US. In this essay, we examine a potential new front in the culture wars by reviewing recent empirical research in social science on the politics of transgender rights in the context of morality politics. Research on morality politics has often focused on LGBT rights, with an emphasis on gay …
Organization and advocacy for LGBTQ rights
Political science (33 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (25 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (19 works) · Transgender (19 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (13 works)