Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“Handicap Removed”: An Alternative Path To The Social Model, Craig M. Rustici

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article identifies an expression of a social model of disability in a 1966 film promoting Hofstra University’s Program for the Higher Education of the Handicapped and traces that model back to books published by the pioneering rehabilitation physician Henry H. Kessler in 1935 and 1947, decades before the UPIAS (Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation) Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976). In light of Kessler’s articulation of social and minority models, identification of contrasting religious, charity and medical models, and discussion of disability stigma, this article reassesses Ruth O’Brien’s critique, in Crippled Justice (2001), of Kessler and the twentieth-century …

Putin’S Key Mistake? Not Understanding Ukraine’S Blossoming National Identity - Even In The Russian-Friendly Southeast, Lowell Barrington

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Economic Anxiety Among Contingent Survey Workers, Meghan Condon, Amber Wichowsky

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Psychologists and other social scientists increasingly conduct experiments with online convenience samples from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Marketplace (MTurk). MTurk and population-based samples differ in well-documented ways, but whether or not compositional differences are problematic for experiments remains controversial. We highlight a critically important characteristic that is likely to interact with many experimental treatments in the psychological and behavioral sciences, and that has not been identified by other studies of MTurk samples: economic anxiety. We document a sizable difference between contingent survey workers and the general population and explain the ways in which economic anxiety is likely to interact with experimental …

Flexible Aid In An Uncertain World: The Coronavirus State And Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Program, Philip B. Rocco, Amanda Kass

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Emergency fiscal transfers to state, local, tribal, and territorial governments have been at the core of the U.S. federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The most extensive of these transfer programs is the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (CSLFRF) program, contained in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The CSLFRF is not only larger than prior rounds of emergency aid, it was also designed to address a broader series of crises, address pre-existing inequities, and provide greater discretion to public officials in deciding how to allocate funds. In this article, we consider the extent to which …

Multi-Label Prediction For Political Text-As-Data, Aaron Erlich, Stefano G. Dantas, Benjamin E. Bagozzi, Daniel Berliner, Brian Palmer-Rubin

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Political scientists increasingly use supervised machine learning to code multiple relevant labels from a single set of texts. The current “best practice” of individually applying supervised machine learning to each label ignores information on inter-label association(s), and is likely to under-perform as a result. We introduce multi-label prediction as a solution to this problem. After reviewing the multi-label prediction framework, we apply it to code multiple features of (i) access to information requests made to the Mexican government and (ii) country-year human rights reports. We find that multi-label prediction outperforms standard supervised learning approaches, even in instances where the correlations …

Work And Demand Making: Productionist And Consumptionist Politics In Latin America, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Ruth Berins Collier

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

How does the world of work in Latin America affect the way workers act to defend their interests? To what extent have “productionist” demands, those concerning jobs, work conditions, and wages, which are highly salient across the region, been “displaced” by consumptionist or political demands? While the literature has distinguished formal and informal work grosso modo, we explore individual traits of work, which cross-cut the formal-informal distinction. Analyzing survey data from four Latin American capital cities, we find, not surprisingly, that both work-based atomization and insecurity depress demand making in the work arena. But these traits of work also …

Call And Response? Neighborhood Inequality And Political Voice, Amber Wichowsky, Paru Shah, Amanda Heideman

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Over the past 20 years, many cities across the United States have adopted a range of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to make it easier for residents to get informed, communicate their preferences, and hold public officials accountable. In this paper, we ask two questions. First, are service requests and responses illustrative of existing neighborhood differences across a city? Second, do patterns of request and response differ by the type of complaint made to the city? We leverage data from the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to examine neighborhood variation in service requests and subsequent response times to those complaints. Our …

Obama’S Party? An Examination Of Whether A Reluctant Party Leader Transformed The Democratic Party In His Favor, Julia R. Azari, Seth Masket

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

We examine Barack Obama’s influence over the Democratic Party as an ex-president from three vantage points: his popularity among partisans, his control over party nominations, and his rhetorical influence over party platform stances. The findings are somewhat mixed. Compared with other contemporary presidents, Obama is far more popular among co-partisan voters. However, he has had only modest influence in presidential nominations, and, unlike other modern presidents, a waning influence on party platform stances. The findings are suggestive not only about Obama’s own interests but also about institutional constraints of modern presidents.

Calling In “Sick”: Covid-19, Opportunism, Pretext, And Subnational Autocratization, Philip B. Rocco, Matthew Stenberg, Safia Abukar Farole

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

As governments sought to manage the coronavirus pandemic, many pursed temporary increases in centralized authority, a general tactic of crisis management. However, in some countries, public health was not the only motive for centralization. The COVID-19 response coincided with broader worldwide trends toward autocratization. Some of these efforts happened while the world was preoccupied with responding to the pandemic without concretely referencing coronavirus; however, in other cases, public-health rationales are clearly and explicitly invoked as a pretext for actions that instead aid the consolidation of regime authority. This has been especially pernicious in subnational politics, where efforts have been made …

What Next In Ukraine?, Lowell Barrington

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Partisan Framing On Covid-19 Attitudes: Experimental Evidence From Early And Late Pandemic, Amber Wichowsky, Meghan Condon

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Political polarization has dominated news coverage of Americans’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research note, we report findings from two experimental studies, in which we present respondents with news stories about COVID-19 mitigation measures that emphasize partisan difference or accord. The stories present the same numeric facts about public opinion, but highlight either the partisan gap that existed at the time of the study, or the fact that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supported the measures at the time. Results from our first study, conducted late April 2020, show that a media frame drawing attention to …

Covid-19, Poverty Reduction, And Partisanship In Canada And The United States, Daniel Beland, Shannon Dinan, Philip B. Rocco, Alex Waddan

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Poor people proved especially vulnerable to economic disruption during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which highlighted the importance of poverty reduction as a policy concern. In this article, we explore the politics of poverty reduction during the COVID-19 crisis in Canada and the United States, two liberal welfare-state regimes where poverty reduction is a key policy issue. We show that, since the beginning of the pandemic, policies likely to reduce poverty significantly have been adopted in both Canada and the United States. Yet, this poverty reduction logic has emerged in different ways in the two countries—with the United States embracing …

Trump, Bolsonaro, And The Framing Of The Covid-19 Crisis: How Political Institutions Shaped Presidential Strategies, Daniel Beland, Philip B. Rocco, Catarina Ianni Segatto, Alex Waddan

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Background and Purpose:

Asymmetry during walking may be explained by impaired interlimb coordination. We examined these associations: (1) propulsive symmetry with interlimb coordination during walking, (2) work symmetry with interlimb coordination during pedaling, and (3) work symmetry and interlimb coordination with clinical impairment.

Methods:

Nineteen individuals with chronic stroke and 15 controls performed bilateral, lower limb pedaling with a conventional device and a device with a bisected crank and upstroke assistance. Individuals with stroke walked on a split-belt treadmill. Measures of symmetry (%Propulsion_walk, %Work_ped) and interlimb phase coordination index (PCI_walk, PCI_ped) were …

Explaining Intergovernmental Conflict In The Covid-19 Crisis: The United States, Canada, And Australia, Andre Lecours, Daniel Beland, Alan Fenna, Tracy Beck Fenwick, Mireille Paquet, Philip B. Rocco, Alex Waddan

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

The Covid-19 pandemic produced more significant immediate intergovernmental conflict in the U.S. than in Australia and Canada. This article considers three variables for this cross-national divergence: presidentialism versus parliamentarism; vertical party integration; and strength of intergovernmental arrangements. We find that the U.S. presidential system, contrary to parliamentarism in Canada and Australia, provided an opportunity for a populist outsider skeptical of experts to win the presidency and pursue a personalized style that favored intergovernmental conflict in times of crisis. Then, the intergovernmental conflict-inducing effect of the Trump presidency during the pandemic was compounded by the vertical integration of political parties, which …

Keeping Score: The Congressional Budget Office And The Politics Of Institutional Durability, Philip B. Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

The production of policy knowledge in the United States is typically described as fractured and contentious. Yet since 1974, the production of fiscal knowledge in the federal budget process has become more centralized and coordinated. And even as Congress has retrenched other analytic institutions, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has endured. Dominant explanations for the CBO’s durability point to its reputation for neutral competence. This argument, however, fails to acknowledge that Congress has retrenched other institutions with similar reputations. Drawing on theories of policy durability and change, I argue that the CBO’s endurance has depended on the existence of a …

Media Attention And Bureaucratic Responsiveness, Aaron Erlich, Daniel Berliner, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Benjamin E. Bagozzi

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

How does media attention shape bureaucratic behavior? We answer this question using novel data from the Mexican federal government. We first develop a new indicator for periods of anomalously heightened media attention, based on 150,000 news articles pertaining to 22 Mexican government ministries and agencies, and qualitatively categorize their themes. We then evaluate government responsiveness using administrative data on roughly 500,000 requests for government information over a 10-year period, with their associated responses. A panel fixed-effects approach demonstrates effects of media attention on the volume of outgoing weekly responses, while a second approach finds effects on the “queue” of information …

Getting Tough On China: Are Campaign Ads A Signal Of Future Policy Or Just Cheap Talk?, Amber Wichowsky, Jessica Chen Weiss

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Is tough-on-China campaign rhetoric cheap talk or a signal of policy attention? Analyzing China-related campaign advertisements during the 2010 midterm elections and subsequent cosponsorship of China-related bills, we find that campaign ads are a noisy predictor of legislative attention. Challengers who attacked on China were more likely to cosponsor China-related legislation, while incumbents who were attacked for being soft on China took tougher positions on China after reelection. By demonstrating the correspondence between anti-China campaign appeals and subsequent legislative attention, our findings add to a growing body of evidence linking campaign rhetoric to members’ legislative agendas. This research note provides …

Fiscal Federalism And Economic Crises In The United States: Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic And Great Recession, Mariely Lopez-Santana, Philip B. Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

The architecture of fiscal federalism in the United States represents an obstacle for prompt and comprehensive policy responses to economic crises, especially by subnational levels of government. As both a public health and economic crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has put unique fiscal pressures on subnational governments. This article reviews the pandemic’s fiscal effects on these governments, as well as the federal government’s response. By comparing the response to the COVID-19 crisis during the Trump administration with the response to the Great Recession during the Obama administration, we show that while the speed and magnitude of federal aid was unprecedented in …

Social Policy Responses To Covid-19 In Canada And The United States: Explaining Policy Variations Between Two Liberal Welfare State Regimes, Daniel Beland, Shannon Dinan, Philip Rocco, Alex Waddan

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Canada and the United States are often grouped together as liberal welfare-state regimes, with broadly similar levels of social spending. Yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic reveals, the two countries engage in highly divergent approaches to social policymaking during a massive public health emergency. Drawing on evidence from the first 5 months of the pandemic, this article compares social policy measures taken by the United States and Canadian governments in response to COVID-19. In general, we show that Canadian responses were both more rapid and comprehensive than those of the United States. This variation, we argue, can be explained by analysing …

The Political Logic Of Government Disclosure: Evidence From Information Requests In Mexico, Daniel Berliner, Benjamin E. Bagozzi, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Aaron Erlich

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

When citizens ask questions, how does their government answer? Requests for government information confront officials with incentives both for and against disclosure. We argue that officials seek to manage political risks in ways that favor requests from government-aligned regions. We study responsiveness in the context of Mexico’s access-to-information law, using publicly available data from several hundred thousand information requests filed with Mexican federal government agencies between 2003 and 2015. Our empirical strategy makes comparisons only among requests sent to similar agencies on similar topics at similar times, while accounting for the complexity, sophistication, and sensitivity of individual requests. We find …

Una Hacienda Local Pobre: ¿Qué Explica La Recaudación Predial En México? Poor Local Finances: What Explains Property Tax Collection In Mexico?, Monica Unda-Gutierrez

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Este artículo analiza los principales determinantes de la recaudación predial en México de 1990 a 2010. A través de un estudio estadístico, con base en datos a esca- la municipal, se examinan las principales hipótesis sugeridas por la literatura para entender los niveles de recaudación; es decir, se evalúa la capacidad explicativa de factores económicos, políticos y administrativos. Por un lado, se analiza qué tan- to las variables socioeconómicas del municipio, así como el monto de transferen- cias que reciben, influyen en la recaudación. Y por otro, se sopesa si la capacidad institucional del municipio y el nivel de competencia …

The Superfluous Congress: Executive Dominance And Business Lobbying In Mexico’S 2013 Tax Reform, Monica Unda-Gutierrez

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

This paper analyzes the roles played by the legislative, executive, and business sector in Mexico’s 2013 tax reform, drawing on original field-research findings. I examine each of these actors’ influence over the public period of congressional debate, as well as the typically invisible agenda-setting stage and the adoption of executive decrees following the legislative process. I find that Congress remains subordinated to the executive in budgetary matters and that business is more central in shaping the details of the tax bill. The tax reform achieved little, leaving the overall fiscal capacity of the Mexican State largely unchanged.

Este artículo analiza …

Incentives For Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment In Mexico, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Candelaria Garay, Mathias Poertner

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

While the presence of a strong civil society is recognized as desirable for democracies, an important question is what motivates citizens to join organizations. This article presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers promoting a new local interest organization. These fliers contain one of four randomly selected recruitment appeals. We find evidence that both brokerage of state patronage and demand-making for local public goods are effective recruitment appeals. The effect for patronage brokerage is especially pronounced among respondents with prior organizational contact, supporting our …

Organizational And Partisan Brokerage Of Social Benefits: Social Policy Linkages In Mexico, Candelaria Garay, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Mathias Poertner

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

The expansion of large-scale non-discretionary social policy has been one of the most important policy innovations in Latin America in recent decades. While these benefits have reduced the political manipulation of low-income citizens, discretionary social programs—whose distribution follows opaque criteria and are often allocated according to political considerations—continue to exist. Employing an original survey in Mexico, we explore how citizens, both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, experience and perceive access to discretionary social programs. While the literature on clientelism emphasizes the distribution of discretionary benefits by party agents in exchange for electoral support, a number of recent studies have found that access …

Ending Federalism As We Know It: Review Of The Divided States Of America By Donald F. Kettl, Philip B. Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Revising The "Hibernation" Narrative: Technocratic Legal Experts And The Cold War Origins Of The "Justice Cascade", Mark S. Berlin

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Accounts of the rise of atrocity justice often characterize the Cold War decades as a time of "hibernation." I argue that this hibernation narrative, and explanations for the rise of atrocity justice in general, overlook important developments during the Cold War period that later helped facilitate the so-called "justice cascade." Specifically, this period witnessed consequential advancements in the institutionalization, domestication, and professionalization of international criminal law. In contrast to studies that emphasize the roles of civil society activists or policymakers in the rise of atrocity justice, the developments I highlight were often driven by the work of technocratic legal experts.

Trump Is Attempting A Brazen, Anti-Democratic Power Grab. And It Has Nothing To Do With The Election, Philip B. Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Organizing Twenty-First-Century Activism: From Structure To Strategy In Latin American Social Movements, Jessica Rich

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

This article examines how the organizational structure of a social movement affects the tactics it is likely to adopt. Hybrid movements gained prominence at the start of the twenty-first century. Like movements of the past, they protested on the streets; but unlike the movements of the past, they also acted like interest groups by lobbying government over policy. Considered through the lens of traditional scholarship, this phenomenon presents a puzzle. Loose networks of activists are thought to be good at contentious politics but incapable of negotiating with government. By contrast, federations of interest groups are seen to be good at …

Direct Democracy And The Fate Of Medicaid Expansion, Philip Rocco

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Affordable Care Act In The States: Fragmented Politics, Unstable Policy, Daniel Beland, Philip Rocco, Alex Waddan

Political Science Faculty Research and Publications

Many argue that the frustrated implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) stems from the unprecedented level of political polarization that has surrounded the legislation. This article draws attention to the law's “institutional DNA” as a source of political struggle in the 50 states. As designed, in the context of US federalism, the law fractured authority in ways that has opened up the possibility of contestation and confusion. The successful implementation of the ACA varies not only across state lines but also across the various components of the law. In particular, opponents of the ACA have experienced their greatest …