Partisan Opinion Research Articles

Voices without votes: women and politics in antebellum New England

Based on meticulous and original archival research, this study definitively shows that despite contemporary woman's sphere prescriptions advising them to stay out of public affairs, a number of New England women in the antebellum era amply demonstrated political consciousness and proffered partisan opinions with little social reprobation for having overstepped their proper role. Voices without Votes rescues the voices of these women who, though barred from voting, nevertheless thought and acted in a deeply political manner. This long-awaited volume offers a startling counter to the traditional view that antebellum politics was solely a man's world.

Principles for the best multidisciplinary meetings

Several years ago, one of our mentors said, “I do not like to make rounds: at the end of the day the sum of everyone's opinions is not superior to the single best decision taken by the smartest doctor of the pack”. Clinical practice has changed over the years, and, thanks to the application of evidence-based methods, subjective and often partisan opinions are being replaced with reliance on unbiased facts. Nowadays, the value of every investigation can be measured according to a scale of evidence,1,2 and a series of guidelines, meta-analyses, consensus among experts, and composite scores are produced, enhancing medical judgment and allocating every patient to the best available treatment option.

Public Reactions to Innovations in Science: Genomics, Race, and Identity

Although science and technology are touching people's lives in ways unimaginable only decades ago, political scientists and policy analysts are still exploring how the public understands and assesses new, highly technical scientific information. This study uses a new public opinion survey to examine Americans’ reactions to and understanding of one scientific innovation: the use of genomics technology to trace ancestry, typically defined as race or ethnicity. This arena has three analytic virtues. First is its importance: genetics research may soon revolutionize medical practice in the United States, and possibly decisions in the criminal justice system as well as the way Americans understand race. Second is its novelty: elite or partisan opinion on genomic science has yet to coalesce, and policies of support or regulation are just beginning to be developed. Our study can thus capture the early stages of opinion formation on a new issue. Third is its popular appeal: many Americans are being introduced to genomic science through racial ancestry tests, as seen in popular television shows or direct-to-consumer ads. Our goal is to refine existing models of public trust in science and technology by adding a new substantive focus, and placing two analytic elements at center stage: racial or ethnic identity as a lens through which other individual characteristics are channeled, and the relationships among emotional, cognitive, and salience responses to scientific innovation. More broadly, we argue that people with different immutable characteristics (such as race, gender, and age) respond to scientific innovation in intelligibly different ways, and that types of response to scientific innovation are related but vary in intelligible and important ways. We posit, although we cannot show it in this paper, that all of these reactions inform support for science funding or regulation.

The Neglected Power of Elite Opinion Leadership to Produce Antipathy Toward the News Media: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Today, most Americans dislike the news media as an institution. This has led to considerable debate about why people dislike the media and how their public standing could be improved. This paper contributes to this literature by using a survey experiment to test the effect of several different considerations on evaluations of the media. It finds, consistent with the broader literature on political persuasion, that elite partisan opinion leadership can powerfully shape these attitudes. Additionally, it finds that tabloid coverage creates antipathy toward the press regardless of predispositions and that horserace coverage has a negative effect on opinions among politically aware citizens on both sides of the political spectrum. Contrary to some claims in the literature, this study finds no detectable effect of news negativity.

Marriage and Gender Effects on Political Communication

This paper examines politics and marriage, with particular attention directed toward gender effects on the political communication that occurs between husbands and wives. Three different models of political interdependence within marriages are considered - social cohesion, self-selection, and structural equivalence - and in this context we address several questions. How extensive are the levels of political agreement between marriage partners? Do similar levels of agreement extend across various opinions and behaviors? To what extent do gender-based asymmetries exist in the communication of political information? While levels of marital agreement regarding highly salient partisan opinions are very high, results taken from a 1992 study show that: (1) these levels of agreement are attenuated for other political opinions, (2) husbands and wives are frequently unaware of their spouses' opinions, and (3) in other instances they recognize and acknowledge disagreement. Moreover, the results do not support an interpretation which suggests that husbands uniformly occupy the leading role in political communication within marriages.

Introducing Class Actions in Finland - Lawmaking Without Economic Analysis

Finnish Parliament accepted in February 2007 a new law on class actions (literally group actions), which entered into force 1 October, 2008. The legislative process was particularly slow. Finland has been preparing a law on class actions since the early 1990s and this was - depending on the criteria of counting - the fourth try. Some fifteen years ago the idea of class actions was something new in Europe. Time passes quickly however, and the new Finnish law cannot be described as radical by any meaning of the word. Many European countries have changed their existing procedural codes and enacted new laws to make class action litigation possible. The new Finnish class action law differs from the mainstream in fundamentally limiting its scope of application. Although the law is titled as being a general law on class actions, it only applies to consumer cases where the government-funded Consumer Ombudsman is acting as the lead counsel. This was not the case in the beginning. Years ago, the first law proposals had much broader scope of application but as the lobbying between potential defendants (the industry) and plaintiffs (consumer agencies etc.) became polarized, it became evident that there can be either a major compromise or no law at all. This article analyses the Finnish lawmaking process from comparative and economic policy viewpoints. First, the article discusses how did the Finnish legislative process end up with a certain outcome. It is argue that neither well-founded economic nor empirical arguments had any relevant role. Instead, partisan claims on class action cases in the United States and their potential implications to companies were used as a strong argument to restrict the law's scope of application. The official preparatory documents did not present any study on experiences from the United States. There was non-partisan empirical evidence of the use of class actions only from Sweden. Second, this article compares the claims presented in the Finnish lawmaking process to studies and legislative work made in other countries. The article concludes that the most of the claims were based on partisan opinions, not on well-founded studies. The examples of other Nordic countries however show that there is nothing uncommon in implementing class actions in a Northern European legal system. Misuse of class actions is not likely due to e.g. fundamental differences in the substance of accident law and the rules regarding the indemnification of legal costs in litigation. Third, this article argues that the main reason why the Finnish class action law failed was the dynamics of the legislative process. The idea of reaching a consensus in preparatory work before a law is submitted to the parliament means that if certain interest groups are able to form a strong opposition, the law may never enter the parliament no matter of the substantial arguments. The result is that an unknown number of cases are not litigated at all in Finland because the scope of application of the law is restricted. Regulatory authorities have no resources to provide as extensive preventive threat as would a complementary private mechanism.

Elections in Post-Communist Ukraine, 1994–2004: An Overview

The paper attempts a comprehensive and theoretically grounded analysis of all parliamentary and presidential elections carried out in Ukraine in the decade 1994 to 2004. It is organized into four sections. The first deals with the electoral system, how it came into being and has been amended, how it translates votes into seats, the "effective number" of political parties in the electorate and the legislature, and the battle over the electoral system itself during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma. In the second section, voting behaviour of the Ukrainian electorate is examined. Using voting data, along with the results of public opinion surveys and reports on the conduct of the various election campaigns, the paper sorts through the relevant determinants of voting choice to identify the most pertinent ones as they operate in the Ukrainian context. Generally speaking, such determinants are: (1) background social characteristics of the voters, including the regional and ethnic factors; (2) the public's assessments of the current political and economic conditions in the country; (3) individual voters' partisan identification and opinions on prominent issues; (4) their retrospective evaluations of the incumbents; (5) leadership qualities of the contenders; and (6) prospective evaluations of parties and candidates as to their expected performance in office. To determine which of these are consistently more important is an essential aim of the paper. The third section assesses the degree to which accountability has been achieved in any of these elections—those to the Verkhovna Rada of 1994, 1998, and 2002, and the presidential elections of 1994, 1999, and 2004. A penultimate section is devoted to evaluating the policy consequences of these elections: what difference have Ukraine's elections made to policies over the past decade? In the concluding portion, a characterization of the emerging party system is given along with a summing-up on the voting behaviour of Ukrainians in the post-communist era.

The President, Congress, and Tax Reform: Patterns over Three Decades

Both Congress and the president have taken the lead on tax reform at different times in the more than three decades between full-scale revisions of the tax code in 1954 and 1986. This article traces four forces that shaped executive-legislative relations on tax policy during that period: partisan politics, economics, public opinion, and policy experts and entrepreneurs. It concludes that Congress's ability to lead is greatest when economic forces—inflation, recession, and budget deficits—help push tax reform onto the agenda. Presidents retain a natural advantage in agenda setting, however; they are able to put tax reform on the agenda when pressures for reform are weak, and sometimes they can keep it off when pressures are stronger. Tax-policy experts can have a major impact when political and economic forces provide an opening and when skilled entrepreneurs forge links between their prescriptions and political needs and concerns.

On United Nations Economics

The United Nations has made a vital contribution to economic intelligence and analysis through the publications of its Bureau of Economic Affairs as well as those of its regional commissions. The prestige of its professional staff is so high that their pronouncements find a respectful audience all over the world. This well-merited recognition, however, burdens the staff with heavy responsibilities. An academic economist may well indulge in political advice or economic forecasting, even though proficiency in economic theory guarantees neither sound political judgment nor the possession of prophetic gifts. It is different with staff members of a public agency, and especially with those of one of the foremost international institutions. Any advice they give should be based on generally accepted theories and values rather than on controversial hypotheses or partisan opinions. And, since they are as unable to foresee the future as other human beings, they should withstand the temptation to make predictions.