UCLA

The dominant theories in the study of political partisanship and policy attitude formation tend to focus on the role of either individual-level processes or large-scale political events. The series of studies that comprise this dissertation project seek to bridge that divide -- highlighting the interaction of individual variation in social identities with external political events -- to explain differences in partisanship and policy attitudes among members of three groups: white Catholics, Latinos, and Jewish Americans. The three studies show that the strength with which a person identifies as a member of each group is consequential to their issue priorities, and subsequently to their partisanship under conditions of partisan differentiation. Taken together, these studies provide a well-supported theoretical framework that connects and builds on research from political science, psychology, and communication studies.