Robert G Boatright
Biographic Data
| ID | 3876436 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert G Boatright |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert G |
| FAMILY NAME | Boatright |
| SIGNATURE | BOATRIGHT R G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Clark University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4770-393X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Metaphor and Allegory in the Relationship Between Donald Trump and Godzilla
It is common for journalists to compare Donald Trump to Godzilla. Most of the comparisons, however, do not take the next step of comparing aspects of the Trump presidency to episodes in Godzilla films – that is, they use the Godzilla metaphor but do not use them as allegorical representations. This article offers allegorical lessons that the Showa period Godzilla films (1954–1975) can provide for understanding the Trump presidency and presidentia…
Gender, Party, and Primary Turnout
A substantial literature documents persistent gender gaps in voter turnout in general elections, yet far less is known about whether these disparities extend to low-salience contests such as congressional primaries. This omission is consequential, as primary elections increasingly determine representation in Congress due to partisan gerrymandering and declining general election competitiveness. This study investigates whether a gender gap exists …
The Decline of Access Donors in Funding National Nominating Conventions
The US major-party presidential nominating conventions are an essential platform for a political party’s branding and messaging for upcoming presidential and congressional elections. The conventions also can provide revenue and media attention to their host cities and, consequently, convention fundraising has grown substantially in recent decades. Convention fundraising rules were changed in 2014, tripling the limit for contributions to a party’s…
Winning At All Costs? How Negative Partisanship Affects Voter Decision-Making
Gender, germs, and governors
This article describes how the concept of political masculinities helps explain public responses to US governors’ COVID-19 policies. We draw upon governors’ approval ratings, using a paired comparison of similar states with male and female governors, illustrating these findings with examples of citizens’ opinions on governors’ performance from local newspapers and social media. While the approval ratings data suggest citizens made few gender-base…
Public opinion on reforming U.S. primaries
Objective Few studies have measured public attitudes about reform proposals for changing direct primaries. Despite strong public support over the past century for holding primaries, does the public want to change the direct primary, given its very low voter turnout and its potential role in fostering political polarization? Method Using a unique nationally representative survey of 3000 U.S. adults conducted in March 2023 by YouGov, this study sho…
Election reform and campaign finance
Objective Ranked‐choice voting (RCV) is increasingly seen as a way to reduce political polarization and increase voter choice in elections, but little is known about its effect on candidate fundraising. In 2022, Alaska held its first election using a nonpartisan Top 4 primary followed by a ranked‐choice general election. We analyze the effect of this new system on campaign financing practices in state legislative elections. There are many reasons…
Factional Conflict and Independent Expenditures in the 2018 Democratic House Primaries
The 2018 House of Representatives elections were a historic victory for the Democratic Party. As has been the case in past “wave” elections, however, this victory has posed the risk of factionalism within the party. In this paper we draw upon data on primary competition and independent spending to assess claims that Democratic primaries showed signs of emerging factional conflict within the party, and we compare Democratic primary competition to …
Partisan Policymaking in the Extended Party Network
American political parties frequently advance contradictory arguments in policy debates, but scholars know relatively little about where these arguments originate. Outside research-producing institutions are likely culprits. Have the research and advocacy efforts of these groups helped structure policy discussions along party lines, thereby contributing to partisan polarization? I answer this question by tracing the diffusion of policy language r…
A Crisis of Civility
The state of political discourse in the United States today has been a subject of concern for many Americans. Political incivility is not merely a problem for political elites; political conversations between American citizens have also become more difficult and tense. The 2016 presidential elections featured campaign rhetoric designed to inflame the general public. Yet the 2016 election was certainly not the only cause of incivility among citize…
Retrenchment or Reform? Changes in Primary Election Laws, 1928–70
Although there is a substantial literature on the causes and consequences of the initiation of primary elections in the United States, there is little documentation of changes in primaries after the 1920s, and most research on the subject typically argues that political parties reasserted control over the candidate nomination process through changes to primary rules. In this article, I seek to make two contributions. First, I catalog and categori…
Routledge Handbook of Primary Elections
Opting Out of Congress
For the past decade, political scientists have raised concerns about the partisan polarization that has gripped our Congress. While we know what has happened, we still know little about why polarization has increased and persisted. Many researchers have focused on election laws, such as those that pertain to campaign finance, primary elections, and the drawing of congressional districts. Yet, as Danielle M. Thomsen notes in Opting Out of Congress…
The transformation of partisan rhetoric in American presidential campaigns, 1952–2012
What are the dynamics of partisan rhetoric in presidential campaigns? (How) has presidential candidate partisanship changed over time? Analyzing a comprehensive dataset of party-related statements in presidential campaign speeches over the 1952–2012 period, we show that Democratic and Republican candidates have taken distinctive approaches to partisanship. Overall, Democratic candidates have been partisans, while Republicans have largely refraine…
Dark Money
Independent expenditures in congressional primaries after Citizens United
Buying the Vote
Journal Article Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform Get access Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform by Robert E. Mutch. New York, Oxford University Press, 2014. 380 pp. $34.95. Robert G. Boatright Robert G. Boatright Clark University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 130, Issue 3, Fall 2015, Pages 552–553, https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.123…
Congressional Primary Elections
Congressional primaries are increasingly being blamed for polarization and gridlock in Congress. Most American states adopted congressional primaries during the first decades of the 20th century as a means of breaking the hold of political "bosses" on the nomination of candidates. Yet now, many contend that primaries have become a means by which the most dedicated party activists choose candidates unrepresentative of the electorate, and so genera…
James Farney, Social conservatives and party politics in Canada and the United States, reviewed by Robert G Boatright
Getting Primaried
Each of the past few election cycles has featured at least one instance of "primarying," a challenge to an incumbent on the grounds that he or she is not sufficiently partisan. For many observers, such races signify an increasingly polarized electorate and an increasing threat to moderates of both parties. In Getting Primaried, Robert G. Boatright shows that primary challenges are not becoming more frequent; they wax and wane in accordance with p…
Teaching Redistricting
The 2012 congressional redistricting was the first for which census data and mapmaking software were available to and easily useable by undergraduate students. We discuss our experience teaching the redistricting process to undergraduates and having our students draw constitutionally and statutorily valid congressional districts for Massachusetts. Bringing students into the process is a valuable teaching tool, and it also provides unbiased redist…
The Place of Québec in Canadian Interest Group Federalism
This article employs literature on federalism to explore the ways in which national Canadian interest groups develop federative structures in order to conduct advocacy work within Québec. It first identifies institutional reasons for the development of federalist structures for Canadian groups, and it then explores asymmetries between the treatment of Québec chapters of these groups and of chapters elsewhere in Canada. Drawing on interviews with …
Cross-Border Interest Group Learning in Canada and the United States
Many of the most prominent US interest groups have formal or informal relationships with Canadian groups. Yet groups in the two countries often have little incentive to share political strategies – to learn from each other. This article proposes that such learning can take place only when four factors are present: a stable relationship with governmental institutions; the resources to acquire useful political information; shared issues of concern;…
Interest Group Adaptations to Campaign Finance Reform in Canada and the United States
The United States and Canada enacted similar campaign finance reforms in the early 2000s. This article draws upon interviews with leaders of the major Canadian interest groups to explore similarities and differences in the responses of Canadian and American interest groups to reform. While groups in both countries shared an increased emphasis on mobilization and communication with members, the Canadian reforms were more effective at removing many…
Who are the spatial voting violators
A Crisis of Civility
The state of political discourse in the United States today has been a subject of concern for many Americans. Political incivility is not merely a problem for political elites; political conversations between American citizens have also become more difficult and tense. The 2016 presidential elections featured campaign rhetoric designed to inflame the general public. Yet the 2016 election was certainly not the only cause of incivility among citize…
Who are the spatial voting violators
Static Ambition in a Changing World
How do members of Congress anticipate and prepare for redistricting? I present data from the 1992 redistricting cycle that indicate that one reason why we rarely see changes in representation after redistricting is that incumbents change both their legislative activities and their campaigning prior to the first post-redistricting election. To examine incumbents' behavioral anticipation of redistricting in more detail, I also present a case study …
The Personal and the Political in Repeat Congressional Candidacies
Analyses of the decision to run for the U.S. House are generally based on the self-reported motivations of a sample of candidates or potential candidates. In this article we take a different approach. We use a quasi-experimental design to model the decision of a losing candidate to initiate or reject an immediate repeat match-up against the person to whom they lost in the general election of the previous cycle. Of these potential repeaters we loo…
Independent expenditures in congressional primaries after Citizens United
Partisan Policymaking in the Extended Party Network
American political parties frequently advance contradictory arguments in policy debates, but scholars know relatively little about where these arguments originate. Outside research-producing institutions are likely culprits. Have the research and advocacy efforts of these groups helped structure policy discussions along party lines, thereby contributing to partisan polarization? I answer this question by tracing the diffusion of policy language r…
The transformation of partisan rhetoric in American presidential campaigns, 1952–2012
What are the dynamics of partisan rhetoric in presidential campaigns? (How) has presidential candidate partisanship changed over time? Analyzing a comprehensive dataset of party-related statements in presidential campaign speeches over the 1952–2012 period, we show that Democratic and Republican candidates have taken distinctive approaches to partisanship. Overall, Democratic candidates have been partisans, while Republicans have largely refraine…
Factional Conflict and Independent Expenditures in the 2018 Democratic House Primaries
The 2018 House of Representatives elections were a historic victory for the Democratic Party. As has been the case in past “wave” elections, however, this victory has posed the risk of factionalism within the party. In this paper we draw upon data on primary competition and independent spending to assess claims that Democratic primaries showed signs of emerging factional conflict within the party, and we compare Democratic primary competition to …
Situating the New 527 Organizations in Interest Group Theory
This article seeks to reconcile the activities of several of the groups organized during the 2004 election cycle under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code with existing theories of party and interest group behavior. While 527 groups have frequently been categorized as extensions of traditional advocacy groups or party networks, I argue that existing theories do not account for the functional differentiation between these groups. This functio…
Political Contribution Tax Credits and Citizen Participation
This article discusses political contribution tax credits, a campaign finance reform that seeks to encourage participation. Several states provide citizens with tax credits for part or all of their contributions to state or local candidates. Although a fewstudies have tried to estimate the budgetary impact of such programs, none has analyzed the effects of these tax credits on the propensity of citizens to contribute. We discuss the results of tw…
Winning At All Costs? How Negative Partisanship Affects Voter Decision-Making
Public opinion on reforming U.S. primaries
Objective Few studies have measured public attitudes about reform proposals for changing direct primaries. Despite strong public support over the past century for holding primaries, does the public want to change the direct primary, given its very low voter turnout and its potential role in fostering political polarization? Method Using a unique nationally representative survey of 3000 U.S. adults conducted in March 2023 by YouGov, this study sho…
Retrenchment or Reform? Changes in Primary Election Laws, 1928–70
Although there is a substantial literature on the causes and consequences of the initiation of primary elections in the United States, there is little documentation of changes in primaries after the 1920s, and most research on the subject typically argues that political parties reasserted control over the candidate nomination process through changes to primary rules. In this article, I seek to make two contributions. First, I catalog and categori…
Interest Group Adaptations to Campaign Finance Reform in Canada and the United States
The United States and Canada enacted similar campaign finance reforms in the early 2000s. This article draws upon interviews with leaders of the major Canadian interest groups to explore similarities and differences in the responses of Canadian and American interest groups to reform. While groups in both countries shared an increased emphasis on mobilization and communication with members, the Canadian reforms were more effective at removing many…
Gender, germs, and governors
This article describes how the concept of political masculinities helps explain public responses to US governors’ COVID-19 policies. We draw upon governors’ approval ratings, using a paired comparison of similar states with male and female governors, illustrating these findings with examples of citizens’ opinions on governors’ performance from local newspapers and social media. While the approval ratings data suggest citizens made few gender-base…
Opting Out of Congress
For the past decade, political scientists have raised concerns about the partisan polarization that has gripped our Congress. While we know what has happened, we still know little about why polarization has increased and persisted. Many researchers have focused on election laws, such as those that pertain to campaign finance, primary elections, and the drawing of congressional districts. Yet, as Danielle M. Thomsen notes in Opting Out of Congress…
Dark Money
Buying the Vote
Journal Article Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform Get access Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform by Robert E. Mutch. New York, Oxford University Press, 2014. 380 pp. $34.95. Robert G. Boatright Robert G. Boatright Clark University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 130, Issue 3, Fall 2015, Pages 552–553, https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.123…
Does Publicizing a Tax Credit for Political Contributions Increase Its Use
We present the results of an experiment using nonpartisan, informational direct mail—of the sort that a public relations–conscious government agency might use—to encourage Ohio voters to contribute money to political candidates. Ohio provides full tax credits of up to $50 to citizens who make contributions to state candidates. We found that the mailing produced a modest and marginally significant increase in the number of citizens who filed for t…
Biennial budgeting debates in congress
Biennial budgeting and appropriations cycles have been a popular idea among many members of Congress for the past twenty years. Despite widespread bipartisan support for biennial budgeting in the 1980s, the first House vote on the subject, in 2000, resulted in a narrow defeat for biennial budgeting. This article analyzes the merits of biennial budgeting and the reasons for its defeat, arguing that during the 1990s biennial budgeting lost its sens…
Static Ambition in a Changing World
How do members of Congress anticipate and prepare for redistricting? I present data from the 1992 redistricting cycle that indicate that one reason why we rarely see changes in representation after redistricting is that incumbents change both their legislative activities and their campaigning prior to the first post-redistricting election. To examine incumbents' behavioral anticipation of redistricting in more detail, I also present a case study …
The Personal and the Political in Repeat Congressional Candidacies
Analyses of the decision to run for the U.S. House are generally based on the self-reported motivations of a sample of candidates or potential candidates. In this article we take a different approach. We use a quasi-experimental design to model the decision of a losing candidate to initiate or reject an immediate repeat match-up against the person to whom they lost in the general election of the previous cycle. Of these potential repeaters we loo…
The Personal and the Political in Repeat Congressional Candidacies
Analyses of the decision to run for the U.S. House are generally based on the self-reported motivations of a sample of candidates or potential candidates. In this article we take a different approach. We use a quasi-experimental design to model the decision of a losing candidate to initiate or reject an immediate repeat match-up against the person to whom they lost in the general election of the previous cycle. Of these potential repeaters we loo…
Political Contribution Tax Credits and Citizen Participation
This article discusses political contribution tax credits, a campaign finance reform that seeks to encourage participation. Several states provide citizens with tax credits for part or all of their contributions to state or local candidates. Although a fewstudies have tried to estimate the budgetary impact of such programs, none has analyzed the effects of these tax credits on the propensity of citizens to contribute. We discuss the results of tw…
Does Publicizing a Tax Credit for Political Contributions Increase Its Use
We present the results of an experiment using nonpartisan, informational direct mail—of the sort that a public relations–conscious government agency might use—to encourage Ohio voters to contribute money to political candidates. Ohio provides full tax credits of up to $50 to citizens who make contributions to state candidates. We found that the mailing produced a modest and marginally significant increase in the number of citizens who filed for t…
Situating the New 527 Organizations in Interest Group Theory
This article seeks to reconcile the activities of several of the groups organized during the 2004 election cycle under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code with existing theories of party and interest group behavior. While 527 groups have frequently been categorized as extensions of traditional advocacy groups or party networks, I argue that existing theories do not account for the functional differentiation between these groups. This functio…
Who are the spatial voting violators
Cross-Border Interest Group Learning in Canada and the United States
Many of the most prominent US interest groups have formal or informal relationships with Canadian groups. Yet groups in the two countries often have little incentive to share political strategies – to learn from each other. This article proposes that such learning can take place only when four factors are present: a stable relationship with governmental institutions; the resources to acquire useful political information; shared issues of concern;…
Interest Group Adaptations to Campaign Finance Reform in Canada and the United States
The United States and Canada enacted similar campaign finance reforms in the early 2000s. This article draws upon interviews with leaders of the major Canadian interest groups to explore similarities and differences in the responses of Canadian and American interest groups to reform. While groups in both countries shared an increased emphasis on mobilization and communication with members, the Canadian reforms were more effective at removing many…
The Place of Québec in Canadian Interest Group Federalism
This article employs literature on federalism to explore the ways in which national Canadian interest groups develop federative structures in order to conduct advocacy work within Québec. It first identifies institutional reasons for the development of federalist structures for Canadian groups, and it then explores asymmetries between the treatment of Québec chapters of these groups and of chapters elsewhere in Canada. Drawing on interviews with …
Getting Primaried
Each of the past few election cycles has featured at least one instance of "primarying," a challenge to an incumbent on the grounds that he or she is not sufficiently partisan. For many observers, such races signify an increasingly polarized electorate and an increasing threat to moderates of both parties. In Getting Primaried, Robert G. Boatright shows that primary challenges are not becoming more frequent; they wax and wane in accordance with p…
Teaching Redistricting
The 2012 congressional redistricting was the first for which census data and mapmaking software were available to and easily useable by undergraduate students. We discuss our experience teaching the redistricting process to undergraduates and having our students draw constitutionally and statutorily valid congressional districts for Massachusetts. Bringing students into the process is a valuable teaching tool, and it also provides unbiased redist…
Congressional Primary Elections
Congressional primaries are increasingly being blamed for polarization and gridlock in Congress. Most American states adopted congressional primaries during the first decades of the 20th century as a means of breaking the hold of political "bosses" on the nomination of candidates. Yet now, many contend that primaries have become a means by which the most dedicated party activists choose candidates unrepresentative of the electorate, and so genera…
James Farney, Social conservatives and party politics in Canada and the United States, reviewed by Robert G Boatright
Buying the Vote
Journal Article Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform Get access Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform by Robert E. Mutch. New York, Oxford University Press, 2014. 380 pp. $34.95. Robert G. Boatright Robert G. Boatright Clark University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 130, Issue 3, Fall 2015, Pages 552–553, https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.123…
Dark Money
Independent expenditures in congressional primaries after Citizens United
The transformation of partisan rhetoric in American presidential campaigns, 1952–2012
What are the dynamics of partisan rhetoric in presidential campaigns? (How) has presidential candidate partisanship changed over time? Analyzing a comprehensive dataset of party-related statements in presidential campaign speeches over the 1952–2012 period, we show that Democratic and Republican candidates have taken distinctive approaches to partisanship. Overall, Democratic candidates have been partisans, while Republicans have largely refraine…
Routledge Handbook of Primary Elections
Opting Out of Congress
For the past decade, political scientists have raised concerns about the partisan polarization that has gripped our Congress. While we know what has happened, we still know little about why polarization has increased and persisted. Many researchers have focused on election laws, such as those that pertain to campaign finance, primary elections, and the drawing of congressional districts. Yet, as Danielle M. Thomsen notes in Opting Out of Congress…
A Crisis of Civility
The state of political discourse in the United States today has been a subject of concern for many Americans. Political incivility is not merely a problem for political elites; political conversations between American citizens have also become more difficult and tense. The 2016 presidential elections featured campaign rhetoric designed to inflame the general public. Yet the 2016 election was certainly not the only cause of incivility among citize…
Retrenchment or Reform? Changes in Primary Election Laws, 1928–70
Although there is a substantial literature on the causes and consequences of the initiation of primary elections in the United States, there is little documentation of changes in primaries after the 1920s, and most research on the subject typically argues that political parties reasserted control over the candidate nomination process through changes to primary rules. In this article, I seek to make two contributions. First, I catalog and categori…
Partisan Policymaking in the Extended Party Network
American political parties frequently advance contradictory arguments in policy debates, but scholars know relatively little about where these arguments originate. Outside research-producing institutions are likely culprits. Have the research and advocacy efforts of these groups helped structure policy discussions along party lines, thereby contributing to partisan polarization? I answer this question by tracing the diffusion of policy language r…
Factional Conflict and Independent Expenditures in the 2018 Democratic House Primaries
The 2018 House of Representatives elections were a historic victory for the Democratic Party. As has been the case in past “wave” elections, however, this victory has posed the risk of factionalism within the party. In this paper we draw upon data on primary competition and independent spending to assess claims that Democratic primaries showed signs of emerging factional conflict within the party, and we compare Democratic primary competition to …
Political science (29 works) · Politics (27 works) · Law (25 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (22 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Economics (12 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (12 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Public Administration (11 works)