Matthew R Miles
Biographic Data
| ID | 383196 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew R Miles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew R |
| FAMILY NAME | Miles |
| SIGNATURE | MILES M R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brigham Young University - Idaho |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8165-0851 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Personality Traits and Agency Politicization
Not all federal employees experience the presence of political appointees in their agencies in the same way. Drawing on a 2022 survey of 1,306 federal bureaucrats in the United States, we show that personality traits—especially Neuroticism—condition how formal politicization translates into perceived political influence. Ordered logistic regression models reveal that, when formal politicization increases, more Neurotic employees are significantly…
Gendered Barriers to Entry
Not Just Elections
Seeking the Public Good
Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service
Perhaps because scholars of political ambition have focused almost entirely on electoral ambition, the presence of elections has been thought to play a major role in shaping who expresses interest in public service. In this article, we examine whether the presence or absence of elections changes women’s political ambition. Using surveys of law students, federal bureaucrats, and the general public, we find the relationship between gender and ambit…
The Burden of Bad Intentions
Using a survey of nearly 2,000 federal government employees, we test the extent to which civil servants are willing to use their position to impose administrative burdens on political opponents. Such an act would create a burden of bad intentions. Rather than discovering that administrators are partisan actors through their use of burdens, we find that federal public employees support administrative burdens when they reduce fraud and waste. Furth…
Campaign Principal-Agent Problems
Newsroom Ideological Diversity and the Ideological Sorting of Journalists
In efforts to curb ideological bias in the news, citizens, academics, and journalists have highlighted the importance of newsroom ideological diversity. Using a large-scale survey of newspaper political journalists in the United States, we examine the diversity of ideological perspectives of political journalists across newspapers and communities and how ideological misalignments with the newsroom and the local community relate to those journalis…
Personality Traits and Approaches to Political Representation and Responsiveness
The Presidency
The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads." Congress & the Presidency, 49(1), pp. 126–127
Does the Ideology of the Newsroom Affect the Provision of Media Slant
Although research on the provision of ideologically slanted news has focused on consumers' demands or news ownership's profit margins and political agendas, little focus has been paid to those individuals who create the news content: the political journalists. We use a new measure of newspaper ideology derived from a large scale survey of journalists to estimate the ideology of almost 700 newsrooms, a substantial increase over previous efforts. B…
Personality and Gendered Selection Processes in the Political Pipeline
Most research on the causes of women's underrepresentation examines one of two stages of the political pipeline: the development of nascent political ambition or specific aspects of the campaign and election process. In this article, we make a different kind of contribution. We build on the growing literature on gender, psychology, and representation to provide an analysis of what kinds of men and women make it through the political pipeline at e…
(Un)Informed Voting? A Test of Compulsory Voting Feedback Effects
Compulsory voting is known to increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate, but there is considerable debate about whether it stimulates political learning. Analyses of political knowledge using cross‐national and intranational observational data arrive at mixed conclusions. Experimental research is similarly inconclusive. We attempt to reconcile these disparate results by employing a novel experiment that tracks political learni…
Political Ambition and Constituent Service
Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with …
Waiting to Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election
This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted. We report results about four specific polling place operations and practices: the length of the che…
Religious Identity in U.S. Politics
While existing scholarship addresses the influence of religious affiliation on political attitudes and behaviors in the United States, a number of puzzling questions remain unanswered. In response, Matthew Miles demonstrates that a more complete conceptualization of religion as a social identity can help to explain many of those puzzles. As he explores the impact, both positive and negative, of religious identity on political attitudes, he also s…
Polls and Elections Trump, Twitter, and Public Dissuasion
Research suggests that the ability of the president to influence public attention to issues and shape public opinion is limited. Recently, presidential efforts at persuasion have expanded to social media, but presidential persuasion has yet to be explored in this medium. We address two relevant questions. First, what effects does a presidential tweet have on public interest in the issue discussed in the tweet? Second, what effect does a president…
Why Public Employees Rebel
Employee recalcitrance and employer reprisal are ever‐present conditions in public service. Yet we have limited knowledge of the forces that move administrators away from acquiescence and toward antagonism. The authors follow the theoretical thrust of behavioral public administration to better understand administrative behavior by targeting the determinants of guerrilla government actions. They do so by presenting the results of a conjoint experi…
The Personality of the Politically Ambitious
Personality and Genetic Associations With Military Service
Existing literature connects military service to regional characteristics and family traditions, creating real distinctions between those who serve and those who do not. We engage this discussion by examining military service as a function of personality. In the second portion, we examine military service as predisposed by genetics. Our findings indicate there is a significant heritability component of serving in the military. We find a significa…
Pedagogical Value of Polling-Place Observation by Students
Good education requires student experiences that deliver lessons about practice as well as theory and that encourage students to work for the public good—especially in the operation of democratic institutions (Dewey 1923; Dewy 1938). We report on an evaluation of the pedagogical value of a research project involving 23 colleges and universities across the country. Faculty trained and supervised students who observed polling places in the 2016 Gen…
Religious Identity and Descriptive Representation
Drawing on the descriptive representation literature, we argue that religious identity is a social identity similar to gender or race, which leads a person to feel represented by someone who shares their religious identity. We argue that religious identity motivates approbation for public officials that is distinct from partisanship. We find that constituents who share the religious identity of their congressional representatives are significantl…
Presidential Appeals to Moral Foundations
Many assume that modern presidents cannot persuade cross‐ideologues to support their policy proposals. The idea that a conservative would support a liberal policy advocated by a cross‐partisan president seems ludicrous. However, recent research suggests that conservatives will support liberal policies that are framed consistent with moral foundations. Using a national survey experiment that carefully manipulates the actual text of a speech given …
Polls and Elections Some Folks You Just Can't Reach
Among the more robust fields of study in American politics is presidential approval. The influence of rally events, the economy, political sophistication, and partisanship on political attitudes began with explorations into the dynamics of presidential approval. Despite this, we lack a complete understanding of the processes through which people evaluate presidential performance. This article proposes a theoretical model that explains how preside…
Representation through parties? Environmental attitudes and party stances in Europe in 2013
Public demand for environmental policies can only influence policies when political parties incorporate environmentalism into their platforms. The economic downturn that began in 2009 may have caused European parties to abandon their commitment to environmentalism as they focused on solutions to the economic crisis. Particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where commitment to the environment is not as central to party competition, public envir…
The Personality of the Politically Ambitious
Waiting to Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election
This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted. We report results about four specific polling place operations and practices: the length of the che…
Personality and Gendered Selection Processes in the Political Pipeline
Most research on the causes of women's underrepresentation examines one of two stages of the political pipeline: the development of nascent political ambition or specific aspects of the campaign and election process. In this article, we make a different kind of contribution. We build on the growing literature on gender, psychology, and representation to provide an analysis of what kinds of men and women make it through the political pipeline at e…
Representation through parties? Environmental attitudes and party stances in Europe in 2013
Public demand for environmental policies can only influence policies when political parties incorporate environmentalism into their platforms. The economic downturn that began in 2009 may have caused European parties to abandon their commitment to environmentalism as they focused on solutions to the economic crisis. Particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where commitment to the environment is not as central to party competition, public envir…
Does the Ideology of the Newsroom Affect the Provision of Media Slant
Although research on the provision of ideologically slanted news has focused on consumers' demands or news ownership's profit margins and political agendas, little focus has been paid to those individuals who create the news content: the political journalists. We use a new measure of newspaper ideology derived from a large scale survey of journalists to estimate the ideology of almost 700 newsrooms, a substantial increase over previous efforts. B…
Presidential Appeals to Moral Foundations
Many assume that modern presidents cannot persuade cross‐ideologues to support their policy proposals. The idea that a conservative would support a liberal policy advocated by a cross‐partisan president seems ludicrous. However, recent research suggests that conservatives will support liberal policies that are framed consistent with moral foundations. Using a national survey experiment that carefully manipulates the actual text of a speech given …
Turnout as Consent
The dominant view assumes that people vote to influence election outcomes. As such, most assume that campaign contact, election competitiveness, and the probability of one’s voting influencing the outcome of an election are the primary forces motivating voter participation. However, some people may view elections as a referendum on system performance and may participate in elections regardless of the electoral outcome. Voting is one means for the…
Personality Traits and Approaches to Political Representation and Responsiveness
(Un)Informed Voting? A Test of Compulsory Voting Feedback Effects
Compulsory voting is known to increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate, but there is considerable debate about whether it stimulates political learning. Analyses of political knowledge using cross‐national and intranational observational data arrive at mixed conclusions. Experimental research is similarly inconclusive. We attempt to reconcile these disparate results by employing a novel experiment that tracks political learni…
Process over outcome
Though majorities of Americans express support for redistributive tax policies as a cure for income inequality in the United States, this general support tends to dissipate when the public evaluates their support for specific proposals. The dominant explanations emphasize elite behavior and the disconnect between American values and political representation. An alternative view is that this counter-intuitive finding is entirely consistent with in…
Campaign Principal-Agent Problems
Personality and Genetic Associations With Military Service
Existing literature connects military service to regional characteristics and family traditions, creating real distinctions between those who serve and those who do not. We engage this discussion by examining military service as a function of personality. In the second portion, we examine military service as predisposed by genetics. Our findings indicate there is a significant heritability component of serving in the military. We find a significa…
Polls and Elections Trump, Twitter, and Public Dissuasion
Research suggests that the ability of the president to influence public attention to issues and shape public opinion is limited. Recently, presidential efforts at persuasion have expanded to social media, but presidential persuasion has yet to be explored in this medium. We address two relevant questions. First, what effects does a presidential tweet have on public interest in the issue discussed in the tweet? Second, what effect does a president…
The Bully Pulpit and Media Coverage
Though modern presidents seem to be less persuasive in their public campaigns for policy, they are more likely to go public. In addition, they publicly campaign for policies that they could enact without the support of Congress or the public. The dominant view emphasizes the persuasive capacity of the president or his ability to set the agenda of various government institutions; however, this neglects one of the more powerful components of the bu…
Does the Presence or Absence of Elections Remove Gender Differences in Ambition for Public Service
Perhaps because scholars of political ambition have focused almost entirely on electoral ambition, the presence of elections has been thought to play a major role in shaping who expresses interest in public service. In this article, we examine whether the presence or absence of elections changes women’s political ambition. Using surveys of law students, federal bureaucrats, and the general public, we find the relationship between gender and ambit…
Newsroom Ideological Diversity and the Ideological Sorting of Journalists
In efforts to curb ideological bias in the news, citizens, academics, and journalists have highlighted the importance of newsroom ideological diversity. Using a large-scale survey of newspaper political journalists in the United States, we examine the diversity of ideological perspectives of political journalists across newspapers and communities and how ideological misalignments with the newsroom and the local community relate to those journalis…
Political Ambition and Constituent Service
Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with …
Gendered Barriers to Entry
Not Just Elections
Pedagogical Value of Polling-Place Observation by Students
Good education requires student experiences that deliver lessons about practice as well as theory and that encourage students to work for the public good—especially in the operation of democratic institutions (Dewey 1923; Dewy 1938). We report on an evaluation of the pedagogical value of a research project involving 23 colleges and universities across the country. Faculty trained and supervised students who observed polling places in the 2016 Gen…
Religious Identity and Descriptive Representation
Drawing on the descriptive representation literature, we argue that religious identity is a social identity similar to gender or race, which leads a person to feel represented by someone who shares their religious identity. We argue that religious identity motivates approbation for public officials that is distinct from partisanship. We find that constituents who share the religious identity of their congressional representatives are significantl…
Polls and Elections Some Folks You Just Can't Reach
Among the more robust fields of study in American politics is presidential approval. The influence of rally events, the economy, political sophistication, and partisanship on political attitudes began with explorations into the dynamics of presidential approval. Despite this, we lack a complete understanding of the processes through which people evaluate presidential performance. This article proposes a theoretical model that explains how preside…
The Bully Pulpit and Media Coverage
Though modern presidents seem to be less persuasive in their public campaigns for policy, they are more likely to go public. In addition, they publicly campaign for policies that they could enact without the support of Congress or the public. The dominant view emphasizes the persuasive capacity of the president or his ability to set the agenda of various government institutions; however, this neglects one of the more powerful components of the bu…
Process over outcome
Though majorities of Americans express support for redistributive tax policies as a cure for income inequality in the United States, this general support tends to dissipate when the public evaluates their support for specific proposals. The dominant explanations emphasize elite behavior and the disconnect between American values and political representation. An alternative view is that this counter-intuitive finding is entirely consistent with in…
Polls and Elections Some Folks You Just Can't Reach
Among the more robust fields of study in American politics is presidential approval. The influence of rally events, the economy, political sophistication, and partisanship on political attitudes began with explorations into the dynamics of presidential approval. Despite this, we lack a complete understanding of the processes through which people evaluate presidential performance. This article proposes a theoretical model that explains how preside…
Representation through parties? Environmental attitudes and party stances in Europe in 2013
Public demand for environmental policies can only influence policies when political parties incorporate environmentalism into their platforms. The economic downturn that began in 2009 may have caused European parties to abandon their commitment to environmentalism as they focused on solutions to the economic crisis. Particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where commitment to the environment is not as central to party competition, public envir…
Turnout as Consent
The dominant view assumes that people vote to influence election outcomes. As such, most assume that campaign contact, election competitiveness, and the probability of one’s voting influencing the outcome of an election are the primary forces motivating voter participation. However, some people may view elections as a referendum on system performance and may participate in elections regardless of the electoral outcome. Voting is one means for the…
Presidential Appeals to Moral Foundations
Many assume that modern presidents cannot persuade cross‐ideologues to support their policy proposals. The idea that a conservative would support a liberal policy advocated by a cross‐partisan president seems ludicrous. However, recent research suggests that conservatives will support liberal policies that are framed consistent with moral foundations. Using a national survey experiment that carefully manipulates the actual text of a speech given …
Religious Identity and Descriptive Representation
Drawing on the descriptive representation literature, we argue that religious identity is a social identity similar to gender or race, which leads a person to feel represented by someone who shares their religious identity. We argue that religious identity motivates approbation for public officials that is distinct from partisanship. We find that constituents who share the religious identity of their congressional representatives are significantl…
Pedagogical Value of Polling-Place Observation by Students
Good education requires student experiences that deliver lessons about practice as well as theory and that encourage students to work for the public good—especially in the operation of democratic institutions (Dewey 1923; Dewy 1938). We report on an evaluation of the pedagogical value of a research project involving 23 colleges and universities across the country. Faculty trained and supervised students who observed polling places in the 2016 Gen…
Religious Identity in U.S. Politics
While existing scholarship addresses the influence of religious affiliation on political attitudes and behaviors in the United States, a number of puzzling questions remain unanswered. In response, Matthew Miles demonstrates that a more complete conceptualization of religion as a social identity can help to explain many of those puzzles. As he explores the impact, both positive and negative, of religious identity on political attitudes, he also s…
Polls and Elections Trump, Twitter, and Public Dissuasion
Research suggests that the ability of the president to influence public attention to issues and shape public opinion is limited. Recently, presidential efforts at persuasion have expanded to social media, but presidential persuasion has yet to be explored in this medium. We address two relevant questions. First, what effects does a presidential tweet have on public interest in the issue discussed in the tweet? Second, what effect does a president…
Why Public Employees Rebel
Employee recalcitrance and employer reprisal are ever‐present conditions in public service. Yet we have limited knowledge of the forces that move administrators away from acquiescence and toward antagonism. The authors follow the theoretical thrust of behavioral public administration to better understand administrative behavior by targeting the determinants of guerrilla government actions. They do so by presenting the results of a conjoint experi…
The Personality of the Politically Ambitious
Personality and Genetic Associations With Military Service
Existing literature connects military service to regional characteristics and family traditions, creating real distinctions between those who serve and those who do not. We engage this discussion by examining military service as a function of personality. In the second portion, we examine military service as predisposed by genetics. Our findings indicate there is a significant heritability component of serving in the military. We find a significa…
Waiting to Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election
This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted. We report results about four specific polling place operations and practices: the length of the che…
Personality and Gendered Selection Processes in the Political Pipeline
Most research on the causes of women's underrepresentation examines one of two stages of the political pipeline: the development of nascent political ambition or specific aspects of the campaign and election process. In this article, we make a different kind of contribution. We build on the growing literature on gender, psychology, and representation to provide an analysis of what kinds of men and women make it through the political pipeline at e…
(Un)Informed Voting? A Test of Compulsory Voting Feedback Effects
Compulsory voting is known to increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate, but there is considerable debate about whether it stimulates political learning. Analyses of political knowledge using cross‐national and intranational observational data arrive at mixed conclusions. Experimental research is similarly inconclusive. We attempt to reconcile these disparate results by employing a novel experiment that tracks political learni…
Political Ambition and Constituent Service
Theoretically, political ambitions paired with elections generate more responsive elected officials. In this paper, we test whether the progressive political ambitions of public officials affect whether and how they respond to their constituents by conducting a experimental audit study where local public officials receive both an electorally related service request and a generic service request. We combine their responses (or non-responses) with …
The Presidency
The Presidency: Facing Constitutional Crossroads." Congress & the Presidency, 49(1), pp. 126–127
Does the Ideology of the Newsroom Affect the Provision of Media Slant
Although research on the provision of ideologically slanted news has focused on consumers' demands or news ownership's profit margins and political agendas, little focus has been paid to those individuals who create the news content: the political journalists. We use a new measure of newspaper ideology derived from a large scale survey of journalists to estimate the ideology of almost 700 newsrooms, a substantial increase over previous efforts. B…
Newsroom Ideological Diversity and the Ideological Sorting of Journalists
In efforts to curb ideological bias in the news, citizens, academics, and journalists have highlighted the importance of newsroom ideological diversity. Using a large-scale survey of newspaper political journalists in the United States, we examine the diversity of ideological perspectives of political journalists across newspapers and communities and how ideological misalignments with the newsroom and the local community relate to those journalis…
Personality Traits and Approaches to Political Representation and Responsiveness
The Burden of Bad Intentions
Using a survey of nearly 2,000 federal government employees, we test the extent to which civil servants are willing to use their position to impose administrative burdens on political opponents. Such an act would create a burden of bad intentions. Rather than discovering that administrators are partisan actors through their use of burdens, we find that federal public employees support administrative burdens when they reduce fraud and waste. Furth…
Campaign Principal-Agent Problems
Gendered Barriers to Entry
Not Just Elections
Political science (27 works) · Politics (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Public Administration (9 works)