Political Research Quarterly Research Articles

She works hard for the money: explaining racial and gender disparities in candidate success in primary elections

ABSTRACT In 2020, voters and party leaders came to the consensus that a white moderate man would be the most likely candidate to defeat Trump (Masket. 2020. Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020. Cambridge University Press). Yet, the logic behind the “viability consensus” lacks empirical support and has rendered numerous challenges for marginalized candidates. We focus on a couple of challenges in particular – the social and psychological mechanisms behind racial/gender disparities in candidate success in primary elections. Scholarship on campaign finance and congressional elections has shown gender, race, and partisanship interact to shape candidates' contribution totals and vote shares (Sorensen and Chen. 2021. “Identity in Campaign Finance and Elections: The Impact of Gender and Race on Money Raised in 2010-2018 U.S.” House Elections. Political Research Quarterly 75 (3): 738–753). It has yet to examine, however, how voters' social identities and attitudes about social groups contribute to disparities in candidate success and how the relationship between social identity and voter support, fundraising, and electability varies by electoral environment. In this paper, we assess the interaction of candidate and voter characteristics on campaign fundraising, voter support, and perceived candidate viability in primary elections. We uncover potential explanations for why candidates from marginalized groups find it more difficult to raise campaign funds and gain electoral support compared to other candidate demographic groups. The results of our conjoint experiment reveal that Black women in particular struggle to find support among white voters and donors.

Media and Confidence in the Police: Differences across Race/Ethnicity

A substantial body of literature connects direct experience with crime and the criminal justice system to public confidence in the police (Bradford Policing and Society, 24(1): 22-43, 2014; Gibson et al. American Journal of Political Science 47: 354-367, 2003, Political Research Quarterly, 58: 187-201, 2005; Sargeant Policing and Society 27: 927-940, 2017). However, most citizens have limited direct interaction with the police (Roberts & Doob Law and Human Behavior 14: 451-468 , 1990; Surette, 2007), justifying research exploring the impact of media consumption on attitudes toward the police. This study examines the impact of news consumption through television, the internet, and social media on confidence in the police across race/ethnicity. The study utilizes a national non-full probability sample of 500 White, Black, and Hispanic/Latinx respondents. Findings suggest that race/ethnicity mediates the relationship between news source and attitudes toward the police. Implications are discussed.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Power and Politics in America’s Private Governments

Previous article No AccessReview EssayPower and Politics in America’s Private Governments Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It). By Elizabeth Anderson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. By Jane McAlevey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada. By Barry Eidlin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Alexander Hertel-FernandezAlexander Hertel-FernandezColumbia University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 82, Number 1January 2020 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/706455 Views: 582Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryPublished online December 06, 2019 © 2019 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Gregory Lyon, Brian F. Schaffner Labor Unions and Non-member Political Protest Mobilization in the United States, Political Research Quarterly 74, no.44 (Aug 2020): 998–1008.https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912920950826Jacob S. Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Paul Pierson, Kathleen Thelen The American Political Economy, 115 (Nov 2021).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009029841

Erratum

Saiya, Nilay, Tasneem Zaihra, and Joshua Fidler. 2017. “Testing the Hillary Doctrine: Women’s Rights and Anti-American Terrorism.” Political Research Quarterly 70 (2): 421–32. (Original DOI: 10.1177/1065912917698046) In the above-referenced article, there was an error in the “Acknowledgments” section of the published version. The corrected “Acknowledgments” section is given below. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Tambria Schroeder for her research assistance on and contributions to the Gender Inequality and Violence section of this article. They would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this article.

Corrigendum to “The Complicated Partisan Effects of State Election Laws”

Burden, Barry C., David T. Canon, Kenneth R. Mayer, and Donald P. Moynihan. 2017. “The Complicated Partisan Effects of State Election Laws.” Political Research Quarterly 70 (3): 564–76. (Original DOI: 10.1177/1065912917704513)

Corrigendum to “Who Favors al-Qaeda? Anti-Americanism, Religious Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes toward Terrorist Organizations”

Ciftci, Sabri, Becky O’Donnell, and Allison Tanner. 2017. “Who Favors al-Qaeda? Anti-Americanism, Religious Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes toward Terrorist Organizations.” Political Research Quarterly 70 (3): 480–94. (Original DOI: 10.1177/1065912917702498)

Corrigendum to How the Flattened Costs of Grassroots Lobbying Affect Legislator Responsiveness

Cluverius, John. 2017. “How the Flattened Costs of Grassroots Lobbying Affect Legislator Responsiveness.” Political Research Quarterly 70 (2): 279–90. Original doi: 10.1177/1065912916688110 When the article first published OnlineFirst, the right chart of Figure 1 was missing the line indicating the information costs and production in a cost-flattened environment. Figure 1 has been updated in the latest online version and in print.

Corrigendum

Smith, Jeff. 2015. “Passion or Dollars? How Mobilization Can Spoil the Mother’s Milk of Politics.” Political Research Quarterly 68 (2): 253–65. Original doi: 10.1177/1065912915578920 .

Curation on Campus: An Exhibition Curatorial Experiment for Creative Industries Students

Curation on Campus: An Exhibition Curatorial Experiment for Creative Industries Students

Corrigendum

Mahler, Vincent A., David K. Jesuit, and Piotr R. Paradowski. 2014. “Electoral Turnout and State Redistribution: A Cross-National Study of Fourteen Developed Countries.” Political Research Quarterly 67:361–73. Original doi: 10.1177/1065912913509306 The authors would like to report a minor error in their article “Electoral Turnout and State Redistribution: A Cross-National Study of Fourteen Developed Countries.” The error is in the bottom row (USA) of Table 1, under the column “Turnout/Eligible.” The value reported is 68.8; the correct value is 60.7. This error does not affect our statistical results. Specifically, the figures in the dataset on which our analysis is based are correct, as are those in other columns of the USA row and in the more detailed tables reported in the online appendix.

Corrigendum

Weber, Christopher. 2013. “Emotions, Campaigns, and Political Participation.” Political Research Quarterly 66:414–28. Original doi: 10.1177/1065912912449697 .

God and Man at a Southern Appalachian Community College: Cognitive Dissonance and the Cultural Logics of Conservative News Talk Radio Programming

God and Man at a Southern Appalachian Community College: Cognitive Dissonance and the Cultural Logics of Conservative News Talk Radio Programming

New Directions in the Logic of Social Inquiry: Political Research Quarterly

AbstractThis essay contrasts conventional template for conducting social inquiry and alternate template provided by configurational, case-oriented analytic methods, first formalized in The Comparative Method. The essential contrasts address fundamental building blocks of social research, ranging from definition of relevant cases to understanding of social causation. The alternate template described in this essay provides a much stronger basis for articulation of within-case and cross-case analysis than is offered by conventional template.My initial goal in writing The Comparative Method was to formalize logic of comparative analysis as practiced by case-oriented comparative researchers and to unveil set-theoretic foundation of comparative analysis. The key step was to make explicit configurational thinking that undergirds comparative inquiry. Making this logic explicit also provided a way to address many communication breakdowns that occur when quantitative and qualitative comparativists venture out of their narrow methodological confines and talk to their colleagues in the other camp. It soon became apparent, however, that my formalization of comparative inquiry offered than a systematization of a specific type of macrosocial inquiry and also than a window on important aspects of qualitative research. It also provided foundation for a new way of conducting social research, especially inquiry involving examination of cross-case patterns. This essay presents an overview of alternate template spawned by The Comparative Method.The conventional template for social research, especially quantitative cross-case analysis, is straightforward. It starts with specification of a dependent variable and various independent variables thought to explain variation in dependent variable. Ideally, these specifications are based on theory and existing research literature. The preferred situation is one where researcher can link different independent variables to different theoretical perspectives. Researchers typically test their theories by collecting relevant data from taken-for-granted, given populations of observations, focusing either on entire population, if number of cases is small, or on a sample of observations, if number is very large. The researcher then develops and tests one or models. The focus of each test is typically on relative explanatory power of competing independent variables. Explained variation in dependent variable is partitioned according to independent variables associated with different theoretical perspectives.Table 1 lists seven key elements of conventional template and corresponding elements of alternate template prompted by The Comparative Method. The remainder of this essay sketches these seven contrasting features.Variables versus SetsThe life blood of conventional template is variable. A variable captures a dimension of variation, an aspect that varies by level, degree, or type across cases. Variables sort, rank, or array cases relative to each other. For example, some are more and some are less democratic. Some individuals have more income and some have less income. A set, by contrast, is a grouping and is case-oriented than a variable because sets entail membership criteria and have classificatory consequences. While a variable can be labeled of democracy, a set cannot, because this label does not group cases using membership criteria. However, it is possible to define and construct the set of democratic countries and to list relevant members of this set.This is not to say that a set is a mere nominal-scale classification, which is usual preconception. Cases can vary in degree to which they satisfy membership criteria, which is inspiration behind fuzzy sets. With fuzzy sets, membership scores can range from 0. …

Blessing La Política: The Latino Religious Experience and Political Engagement in the United States (review)

Reviewed by: Blessing La Política: The Latino Religious Experience and Political Engagement in the United States Timothy Matovina Blessing La Política: The Latino Religious Experience and Political Engagement in the United States. Edited by Carlos Vargas-Ramos and Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012. 224 pp. $48.00. This book’s unifying thread is its response to the influential 1995 work of Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Scholzman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Contributors to the current volume endorse the “civic voluntarism” model that Verba and his colleagues proposed. But they offer counterevidence to Verba et. al.’s explanations vis-à-vis why Latinos are less likely than African Americans to hone their civic skills through participation in church activities, especially the contention that, among Latinos and other groups, Catholicism tends to foster less participation in democratic political systems than Protestantism. Anthony Stevens-Arroyo introduces Blessing La Política with a critical assessment of the thesis that Protestant religious practice predisposes its adherents to modernity more ably than Catholicism, tracing the etymology of this thesis from the famous work of Max Weber down to present debates about the political participation of U.S. Latinos. In another chapter, Stevens-Arroyo presents the findings of a 2001 study on Latino congregations and leadership of the Program for the Analysis of Religion among Latinos (PARAL). On a number of indicators the PARAL study showed that the political involvement of Latino Catholics and Protestants is much more comparable than the Verba et. al. research would lead one to surmise, though unfortunately the PARAL data does not encompass analysis of the growing numbers of Latino Pentecostals and evangelicals. Carlos Vargas-Ramos expounds similar conclusions in a chapter on Latinos, religion, and political participation in New York City. While offering little comparative analysis with Latino Protestants, two other case studies explore the public face of Latino Catholic communities, one the Puerto Rican festival for Santiago Apóstol (St James the Apostle) in New Haven, Connecticut, and the other the civic engagement of [End Page 72] Mexican immigrants of the Catholic Charismatic group Sangre de Cristo en el Barrio (Blood of Christ in the Neighborhood) in Los Angeles. Investigations of Latino voting in the 2004 presidential race and subsequent national elections conclude the volume. Finally, an essay of Michael Jones-Correa and David Leal contests the findings of Verba et. al. with data from national surveys and is prominently cited and summarized in the volume, but “for technical reasons” (ix) could not be included. Readers are advised to consult these scholars’ “seminal article” (ix) in the Political Research Quarterly (December 2001). One key distinction presented in the book that this reviewer would like to see developed further is the tendency for Latino Protestants to engage more directly in partisan political activities than Latino Catholics. A Catholic Charismatic Renewal informant from Los Angeles captured this distinction well in her statement that church leaders should not seek to influence partisan elections, but rather be advocates for community issues and marginal peoples. In her view, “this is not called politics, this is called defending one’s pueblo” (131). While distinctions such as these merit further exploration in future research, Blessing La Política presents important insights that ably address its intention to demonstrate “Latino Catholics and Protestants move through diverse paths on the way to political activism” (xi). Timothy Matovina University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2012 American Catholic Historical Society

Introduction

Intersectionality has long been a cornerstone of feminist discussion and scholarship around the world (McClintock 1995; Rao 2012). But the concept itself—intersectionality—continues to demand additional explication, interrogation, and development. In 2005, Politics & Gender published a Critical Perspectives on intersectionality that generated a great deal of interest and debate. A recent mini symposium in Political Research Quarterly coedited by Evelyn Simien and Ange-Marie Hancock (2011) further extended this discussion, providing contributions from across subfields in political science to enrich the theoretical arguments and empirical explorations of topics that intersect and combine issues of sexual orientation, race, gender, class, and national origin across the world. This Critical Perspectives seeks to build on these foundations by contributing additional empirical and theoretical attention to the ways in which intersectional analysis can render certain experiences of oppression invisible or seemingly out of the bounds of politics.

A Response to Jeffrey Isaac

The purpose of the present symposium was to evaluate Perestroika's impact. Since the American Political Science Review (APSR), the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), and the Journal of Politics (JOP) were all targets of criticism in the movement, whereas other national and regional association journals such as Perspectives on Politics and Political Research Quarterly were not, I looked for change in the former. Comparable data on the past contents of the APSR and AJPS had already been published, so I focused my recent surveys on those two. This focus implies no judgment as to the relative prestige of these journals. They pretend to represent the discipline as a whole and are paid for by all association members, and these are sufficient reasons to address their editorial biases.

Cooperation and Integration: Recommendations for Transatlantic Energy Security

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Where We Came from: Defining the Western Political Science Association

history of the formation and early years of the Political Science Association (WPSA) has been well documented by G. Homer Durham, the founding President of the WPSA in his June 1956 Political Quarterly article, The WPSA: First Ten Years and the Next Ten. Durham described discussing organization during the 1946 annual meeting of the APSA at the Statler Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. He reported that details of this postwar association were hammered out by a small group of colleagues in the club car of the train returning the founding group from Cleveland to the West. So the WPSA was conceived in a club car, and its first meeting took place in November of 1947 at the University of Utah. At that 1947 meeting, the constitution was adopted and officers were elected. It didn't take long, though, for the WPSA to move from constitutional consensus to division. first identity crisis of the organization occurred in the early 1950s. crisis concerned the meaning of the region. Was WPSA to be a Rockies organization (of mountain men) or a fully Western organization that would include the coastal states? Inclusiveness won out. A crisis of another sort followed on the heels of the first. In 1955, the Executive Council was faced with a difficult choice: Should the meeting scheduled in Logan, Utah, be cancelled or moved to another state because smoking inside public buildings was discovered to be illegal in the state of Utah? To quote the secretary treasurer: [The prohibition of smoking] might cause some consternation among the ranks of the heavy smokers. After much debate, the decision was made to hold the meeting in Logan. 1961 presented the WPSA with yet another crisis, this one constitutional: Should non-Westerners be allowed to chair panels of the WPSA? Showing its tolerant side, the WPSA knowingly permitted a nonWestern colleague (Professor William J. Gore of the University of Indiana) to chair a panel on Metro-Urban Issues. Gore was referred to in a letter to WPSA officers as an outsider. annual meeting in 1964, located in Salt Lake City, offered participants a change of pace from the usual. Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed for attendees at the meeting that year. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was in attendance at the performance. His thank you letter is among the documents in the archives of the WPSA. 1967 marked the beginning of era of resolutions from the floor of WPSA business meetings. Jumpstarting this new tradition, the membership passed a resolution denouncing the threat to academic freedom posed by the CIA's covert financing of academic research. WPSA members were offered opportunity in 1969 that has yet to be repeated. WPSA met that year at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii. Although the WPSA had a long-standing involvement with the shaping and growth of the Political Quarterly (now the Political Research Quarterly), the relationship between the WPSA and the WPQ was not codified until 1971 when the Council adopted the Mann Report, which formally set out the terms of this relationship. In the early 1970s, a concern with diversity and diversity-related issues became a major theme for WPSA, a theme that it has consistently embraced ever since. Caucuses were formed, studies were conducted, and official reports were written regarding the status of women, Chicanos, Blacks, and part-time faculty in the profession. Specialized awards were established to honor scholars focusing on these issues. Concern with the rights of women led to a major floor fight at the business meeting in Phoenix in 1977. A resolution was presented there that proposed barring the WPSA from meeting in states that had not approved Equal Rights Amendment or its equivalent. It passed, but not before some very harsh words were exchanged between members of the organization. Mann Report of 1971 did not anticipate some complexities of the relationship between the WPSA and the WPQ, so in 1979 the Executive Council commissioned a report and recommendations from a specially created committee. …

The Scientific Analysis of Politics: Important Contributions from Some Overlooked Sources

What are the best approaches and methodologies toward a scientific study of politics? During the professional lifetimes of most readers of Political Research Quarterly, that question has received a variety of answers, with the debate frequently generating more heat than light. While the minisymposium presented here does not attempt to resolve the important issues surrounding these challenges, it does suggest a body of work that is often overlooked in these discussions. In particular, the contributors suggest several areas of literature from other sciences, including ethology, biology, behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience, that could benefit analysts working on a wide range of topics within political science and broaden the boundaries of acceptable political science research modalities. While theoretical and methodological traditions in political science have typically stressed the importance of socialization and learning in human political behavior, the approaches offered here encourage a more serious consideration of the interaction of the environment with the innate side of human nature. To be clear, we do not discount in any way the critical role played by socialization in instructing and informing human political behavior. Rather, we wish to emphasize the importance of incorporating more biological information into our explanations of the sources and operation of these activities as well. We do not mean to reactivate a no longer productive debate about nature versus nurture, since it now seems clear that both forces operate in tandem in ways that are inextricably intertwined. Rather, by encompassing both facets - nature and nurture - into an integrated perspective, we believe it is possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of human political behavior. With this goal in mind, we offer a series of papers that provides a fresh approach to the study of politics from a serious evolutionary psychological and biological framework. symposium contains four papers that suggest how diverse theories, approaches and/or tools of biology and psychology - broadly defined - can prove useful to scholars concerned with the analysis of political behavior. first paper, Mutual Interests: Case for Increasing Dialogue between Political Science and Neuroscience by Rose McDermott (2009) explores recent work in cognitive neuroscience to suggest how evolutionary models can help illuminate topics of interest in political science. second paper, Is There a Party in Your Genes? by Peter K. Hatemi, John R. Alford, John R. Ribbing, Nicholas G. Martin, and Lindon J. Eaves (2009), explores the relationship between genetics and the strength of partisan attachments, as distinct from party identification. In similar fashion, Jamie Settle, Christopher Dawes and James Fowler (2009) use twin studies to examine The Heritability of Partisan Attachments. final paper by Kristen Renwick Monroe, Adam Martin and Priyanka Ghosh (2009), Politics and An Innate Moral Sense: Scientific Evidence for an Old Theory? draws on work from animal ethology, child development, neuroscience, and primatology to address ethical issues involved in positing an innate moral sensibility. papers presented here thus employ a wide range of theoretical literatures, research methods, and empirical data more traditionally associated with biology or psychology to suggest how political scientists can gain additional purchase into investigations of enduring political problems if they broaden the theoretical, methodological and empirical boundaries of conventional research in political science. goals of this minisymposium are four-fold. We wish to: (1) introduce a potentially exciting area of research to new scholars; (2) widen the range of theoretical and methodological work deemed acceptable in political science; (3) confer professional legitimacy on work that explores endogenous approaches/ techniques/theories/bodies of literature in political science; and (4) broaden discourse about what is considered appropriate research in the scientific study of political activities. …