Despite extensive literatures on the impact on children of exposure to violence in families, neighborhoods, and peer groups, there has been relatively little effort evaluating their cumulative impact. There also has been less attention to the effects of exposure to political conflict and violence. We collected data from a representative sample of 600 Palestinian youths (3 age cohorts: 8, 11, an...

How does social exclusion on the basis of racial/ethnic identity a↵ect partisanship and political attitudes? Drawing on sociological research on the group basis of partisanship and psychological theories of social identity, we contend that exclusion at the individual level stemming from racial/ethnic group membership can a↵ect political identity. People who feel that a political party excludes ...

This paper is a response to Pan Wei’s rule of law regime reform proposal. It agrees with Pan that the direction of political reform taken and discussed inside China is indeed different from the democratization that has been pushed by outside pro-democracy activists, including Chinese dissidents. While some Chinese scholars and think-tank analysts talk about political reform, they are not propos...

An Empirical Analysis of Trade-Related Redistribution and the Political Viability of Free Trade Even if free trade creates net welfare gains for a country as a whole, the associated distributional implications can undermine the political viability of free trade. We show that trade-related redistribution increases the political viability of free trade in the US. We do so by assessing the causal ...

The body of content available on Twitter undoubtedly contains a diverse range of political insight and commentary. But, to what extent is this representative of an electorate? Can we model political sentiment effectively enough to capture the voting intentions of a nation during an election capaign? We use the recent Irish General Election as a case study for investigating the potential to mode...

Religiosity, especially religious fundamentalism, is often assumed to have an inherent connection with conservative politics. This article proposes that the relationship varies by race in the United States. In Study 1, race moderated the relationships between religiosity indicators and political alignment in a nationally representative sample. In Study 2, the effect replicated in a student samp...

How does political competition shape legislative influence over regulatory decision making? This study shows that in a democracy with pervasive patronage politics, political competition can undermine the strengthening of regulations due to heightened incentives to influence regulators. We propose a probabilistic voting model in which politicians compete for parliamentary seats by promising grea...

Even though visual images and television are ubiquitous in politics, surveys rarely use visuals to assess what people know about politics. I measure visual political knowledge in a series of experiments that ask otherwise identical questions using either relevant visual elements or words only. These experiments were embedded in two representative surveys of U.S. residents conducted in 2003 and ...

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS ARE THE SMALLEST AND MOST BASIC UNIT OF representative democracy (Dahl and Tufte 1973, 13). Politicians serving in these governments—mayors and members of municipal assemblies—perform important functions in the policy process by meeting residents on a regular basis, discussing policy matters with them, and making policy decisions that affect the communities in which they r...

Evidence for political effects from fictional programming remains thin. In this study we offer a conservative test of the political power of fictional television dramas by evaluating whether minor differences in character portrayals and plot details affect viewers’ attitudes and policy preferences. We rely on a variation on the switching replications design in which a representative sample watc...