When politicians use the new tools of social media to talk directly to voters, how strategic are these communications? Do lawmakers change how they present themselves in different situations, ...tweeting differently during campaigns and when their party is out of power, or tailoring their 'tweet style' to the preferences of constituents? I explore these questions by categorising 291,091 tweets by politicians in Australia, a nation that features variation in electoral systems in its two legislative houses and which held an election after widespread adoption of social media. When their party controls government, politicians tweet about their personal characteristics and events more often, avoiding clear ideological positions. When an election is called, politicians both in government and in the opposition rally their bases by tweeting toward their own sides of the ideological spectrum.
The wisdom of term limits and professional politics has been debated since the time of Aristotle, spurring 'reforms' of legislatures in Athens, Rome, Venice, and in the US under the Articles of ...Confederation. This book examines recent trends in American states in order to investigate the age-old question of how the rules that govern a legislature affect the behavior of its members and the policies that it produces. The clear and consistent finding is that the two reforms have countervailing effects: whatever professionalization has brought more of, term limits have reduced. This lesson comes from quantitative analyses of data from all fifty states and detailed examinations of legislative records from six states, informed by interviews with over one hundred legislators, staff assistants, lobbyists, journalists, and executive officials.
With limited authority over state lawmaking, but ultimate responsibility for the performance of government, how effective are governors in moving their programs through the legislature? This book ...advances a new theory about what makes chief executives most successful and explores this theory through original data. Thad Kousser and Justin H. Phillips argue that negotiations over the budget, on the one hand, and policy bills on the other are driven by fundamentally different dynamics. They capture these dynamics in models informed by interviews with gubernatorial advisors, cabinet members, press secretaries and governors themselves. Through a series of novel empirical analyses and rich case studies, the authors demonstrate that governors can be powerful actors in the lawmaking process, but that what they're bargaining over – the budget or policy – shapes both how they play the game and how often they can win it.
•Political divisions over policy options create barriers to addressing global warming.•Australian voters respond to the position of political leaders on climate change policy.•When leaders diverge, ...voter polarization increases, with leader consensus, polarization decreases.•Agreement between party leaders may help overcome gridlock on climate policy.
Is public opinion on global climate change stable, with voters holding deeply rooted attitudes that guide them to consistent policy positions? Or is public opinion malleable, with voters adjusting their environmental positions when they learn about the positions of political leaders? To explore whether leaders can influence mass opinion on climate change, we conduct a pair of survey experiments in Australia. Emissions trading plans and renewable energy targets have been central issues in Australian politics over the last decade, with the members of the major parties deeply polarized on these issues. Our experiments reveal that survey respondents take different positions on climate change policy when they learn what positions leaders hold. When respondents learn that leaders take divergent positions on addressing climate change, they become more polarized along party lines. But when leaders converge on a policy proposal, they also bring those who follow them into closer agreement, providing evidence that partisan polarization at the mass level can be overcome when leaders come together on environmental policies.
Did the new rules implemented by California's top-two system change the electoral game in the statewide primaries of 2014? This article looks first at overall turnout dynamics before focusing on the ...closely contested races to gain a spot on the November ballot in the governor's, secretary of state's, and controller's races. Drawing on an original analysis of polling data as well as interviews with candidates themselves, I find that the top-two shaped the field of candidates who entered the primary, the partisan ballot designations that they chose, and the campaign tactics that they employed. Yet the new rules did not, in the end, discernibly alter the outcomes of the 2014 primaries.
To inform the vital conversation among the nation’s political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article ...reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.
Examining historical budget and spending patterns from state legislatures, we show that inequality evident in other realms of American politics had a profound, dollars‐and‐cents, impact on the ...expenditures that flowed to political districts. Given the salience of race, class, and immigration status to American politics, we would expect that distributive spending reflects the same biases that shape voting patterns, representation, and policymaking. But, to our knowledge, this question has not previously been studied. Drawing on detailed, archival data from six states in the 1921–61 era, we uncover clear evidence of bias. Districts with more immigrants win significantly less money, controlling for a host of other factors. So do districts with large numbers of non‐whites. Thus residents of districts dominated by native‐born, Anglo constituencies receive more dollars than those in other districts, even when controlling for the identities of legislators and other characteristics of the districts.
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