Presentation Schedule - Autumn 2004
October 14
Wendy Watson
"The U.S. Supreme Court's Selection of Petitions In Forma Pauperis"
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Abstract: This paper explores the question of whether, how, and how much the U.S. Supreme Court’s selection of paid petitions differs from its selection of petitions in forma pauperis, or IFP petitions -- those petitions filed by individuals who are financially unable to pay the Court’s filing fee. Analyzing an original dataset based on a sample of paid and unpaid petitions disposed of during the 1976 through 1985 Terms of the Court, I find that IFP cases are less likely to be accepted for review even when analysis controls for the presence or absence of cue characteristics identified in prior studies. Moreover, the effects of cue characteristics vary between the paid and unpaid dockets, with the case characteristics having stronger effects in the context of the docket on which they are less prevalent. This finding indicates that the case characteristics identified as correlates of plenary review in past studies do, in fact, provide information to the Court during the agenda-setting process and are not merely correlates of some underlying quality of certworthiness.
(Practice Job Talk)October 21
Sam DeCanio
"State Autonomy and American Political Development: How Mass Democracy Promoted State Power."
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Abstract:Recent studies of American political development suggest that high levels of democratic participation ensured that voters directed public policy in the nineteenth century. These studies have underestimated the autonomy of elected officials by slighting the salience of ethnic and religious issues for nineteenth--century electoral behavior. This essay argues that elected officials were free to implement economic policies autonomously from social preferences because voters cast ballots on the basis of cultural issues that were only tangentially related to the regulatory issues dominating the legislative agenda.
October 28
Andrew Holbrook
"’Doctor Dramas’ as Political Cues: ‘ER’ and the Priming of Health Care as a Political Issue." (Download a Copy)Abstract: In this paper, we extend previous findings of agenda-setting and priming effects associated with crime dramas to another popular form of entertainment television: doctor dramas. Using a combination of data from a controlled laboratory experiment and the 1996 National Election Study, we examine whether exposure to the hugely popular NBC program, ER, increases perceptions that health care is one of the most important problems facing the nation (agenda-setting). We also examine whether exposure increases the importance of the president’s performance in addressing health care in determining his overall approval levels (priming). The survey evidence suggests that there are significant agenda-setting and priming effects associated with ER, but that these effects are limited to weekly watchers of the program. Evidence from the laboratory corroborate the priming effects findings, but offer no support for an agenda-setting effect. Together, these findings support previous work (Holbrook & Hill, in press) suggesting that entertainment media impact public opinion by making chronically, as opposed to temporarily, accessible certain issues in viewers’ minds. Most importantly, the results further our growing understanding of how non-news media impact the political attitudes of media consumers.
November 3, 11:30-1:00
Greg Gwiasda
"Ambivalence, Abstention & Independent Candidate Support."
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Abstract:The traditional view of political attitudes argues that people will be opposed, supportive, or indifferent to an issue or candidate. In contrast, ambivalence asserts that people can simultaneously support and oppose an issue or candidate. This paper explores one potential consequence of ambivalence that has received little attention in the literature, namely whether ambivalence about presidential candidates makes people more likely to abstain in elections. Specifically, I examine the effects of two types of ambivalence – ambivalence one feels about each candidate as well as the conflict one feels when choosing between the two main party candidates. I draw upon National Election Studies and original experimental data to test how ambivalence affects the probability that one will support a candidate as well as the likelihood that one abstains in the election. I find that ambivalence felt towards candidates does not decrease the likelihood that one abstains, but that people who are conflicted between the Democratic and Republican candidates are significantly more likely to abstain and support independent challengers when that option is available.
November 10
Andrew Holbrook
"Anxiety and Candidate Evaluation"
Abstract: Research in political affect suggests that anxiety increases attention to political candidates and, presumably, their campaign messages. While this would suggest that anxiety contributes to the public's ability to form political attitudes of candidates for elected office, research in psychology and communications suggests that anxiety inhibits information retention and contributes to attitude instability. This paper addresses these competing research traditions and answers the question, how does anxiety impact processes of candidate evaluation? Presenting evidence from an experiment in which the amount of anxiety-inducing information about a political candidate is manipulated within candidate-sponsored campaign materials (television commercials and brochures) I examine the individual-level impact of anxiety-inducing campaign information on information retention and candidate evaluation. This research is guided by my anxiety-driven model of candidate evaluation, which posits that anxiety’s tendency to focus attention actually impedes important processes of opinion formation. Anxiety in reaction to candidate messages is shown to inhibit recall, especially in regards to non-policy information, and to discourage on-line impression formation. The results suggest that anxiety’s contribution of generating increased attention to politics is trumped by the detrimental effects it has on attitude formation.
November 17
Ray Block
"Disillusionment with American Race Relations and Support for Black Nationalism: An Endogeneity Problem"
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Abstract:This project seeks to model the relationship between Blacks’ disillusionment with American race relations and their support for Black nationalism. Properly doing so requires that I confront the endogeneity inherent in this relationship. I analyze the endogenous link between disillusionment and Black nationalism by fitting a Two-Stage Least Squares regression model to data from the 1993-1994 National Blacks Politics Study (NBPS). Preliminary results suggest that disillusionment with race relations and support for Black nationalism are mutually-dependent sentiments: some of the same processes that shape the former contribute to the latter.
December 9Nancy Scherer
"Tracking Trouble: How Do Interest Groups Decide Which Judicial Nominations to Fight?" (Download a Copy)
Abstract: Interest groups have been key players in Supreme Court confirmation politics since the late 19th century. Given the infrequency of Supreme Court nominations, interest groups have the
resources to challenge each and every Supreme Court nominee deemed objectionable, which usually means the interest groups believe the nominee to be hostile to the activists' litigation strategies in federal court. However, unlike Supreme Court appointments, a president makes hundreds of lower court appointments in each four year term. Clearly, lacking the resources to challenge each and every objectionable nominee, interest groups have to choose carefully their lower court confirmation battles.
In this paper, my co-author, Amy Steigerwalt, and I examine, for the first time, the strategies used by interest groups in deciding when a lower court nominee warrants a confirmation challenge. What factors make one lower court nominee more likely to face interest group opposition than another nominee? Given that interest group objections have a significant impact on the path to confirmation in the Senate -- by delaying confirmation votes, by denying confirmation votes and/or by increasing the number of "no" votes in roll call -- it is critical to gain a better understanding of interest group behavior as it relates to appointment politics.
Assuming that the goal of interest groups is to keep an objectionable nominee off the federal bench, we hypothesize that interest groups use three strategies to maximize their chances of defeating an objectionable nominee: identifying the most ideologically extreme candidates; weighing the relative strength of sympathetic senators versus the strength of the president; and assessing the professional qualifications of the nominee. We then test these hypotheses using data about all nominations made to the courts of appeals in the 99th-108th Congresses (1985-2004).
