Journal ArticleDOI
Sociotropic Politics: The American Case
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The authors examine two contrasting depictions of individual citizens -one emphasizing the political significance of citizens own economic predicaments, the other stressing the political importance of citizens' assessments of the nation's economic predicament -that might underlie the aggregate entwining of economics and politics.Abstract:
American elections depend substantially on the vitality of the national economy. Prosperity benefits candidates for the House of Representatives from the incumbent party (defined as the party that controls the presidency at the time of the election), whereas economic downturns enhance the electoral fortunes of opposition candidates. Short-term fluctuations in economic conditions also appear to affect the electorate's presidential choice, as well as the level of public approval conferred upon the president during his term. By this evidence, the political consequences of macroeconomic conditions are both pervasive and powerful. But just how do citizens know whether the incumbent party has succeeded or failed? What kinds of economic evidence do people weigh in their political appraisals? The purpose of our paper is to examine two contrasting depictions of individual citizens – one emphasizing the political significance of citizens' own economic predicaments, the other stressing the political importance of citizens' assessments of the nation's economic predicament - that might underlie the aggregate entwining of economics and politics. Ours is an inquiry into the political economy of individual citizens.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital
John Brehm,Wendy M. Rahn +1 more
TL;DR: This article analyzed the pooled General Social Surveys from 1972 to 1994 in a latent variables framework incorporating aggregate contextual data and found that the relationship between community involvement and interpersonal trust is in a tight reciprocal relationship, where the connection is stronger from participation to interpersonal trust rather than the reverse.
Book
Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House
Gary W. Cox,Mathew D. McCubbins +1 more
TL;DR: Cox and McCubbins as mentioned in this paper view the majority parties in the House as a species of "legislative cartel" and argue that the majority party has all the structural advantages.
Journal ArticleDOI
Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes
TL;DR: The authors found that voters hold the government responsible for economic performance, rewarding or punishing it at the ballot box, regardless of the democracy they vote in, and that good times keep parties in office, bad times cast them out.
Book
Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited
TL;DR: In this article, Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era.
Journal ArticleDOI
Public Attitudes Toward Immigration
TL;DR: The authors found that immigration attitudes are shaped by sociotropic concerns about its cultural impacts and to a lesser extent its economic impacts on the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, and this pattern of results has held up as scholars have increasingly turned to experimental tests.
References
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Book
Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences
TL;DR: In this article, the Mathematical Basis for Multiple Regression/Correlation and Identification of the Inverse Matrix Elements is presented. But it does not address the problem of missing data.
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An Economic Theory of Democracy
TL;DR: Downs presents a rational calculus of voting that has inspired much of the later work on voting and turnout as discussed by the authors, particularly significant was his conclusion that a rational voter should almost never bother to vote.
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The American Voter
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Congress: The Electoral Connection
TL;DR: Mayhew argues that the principal motivation of legislators is reelection and that the pursuit of this goal affects the way they behave and the way that they make public policy as mentioned in this paper, and he argues that this is the case in many cases.