http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/ucr_politicalscience/rss Recent eScholarship items from Department of Political Science Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:51:42 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/09h096mp Since the end of racial prerequisite cases in 1952, anyone born on US soil has been granted birthright citizenship. But, prominent political figures have recently questioned whether children born to undocumented immigrants should automatically receive citizenship. Despite the importance of this issue, there is limited research on public attitudes towards this policy, its determinants, and its consequences. We address these open questions using the 2020 CMPS, and find that while most support birthright citizenship, a significant minority favors its revocation. Support for a ban is higher among Whites than among minorities. Those with closer ties to the immigrant experience, more liberal attitudes, and lower Trump favorability are less likely to support a ban. Negative attitudes towards undocumented immigrants and racial attitudes are also strongly correlated with banning birthright citizenship. Finally, birthright citizenship attitudes are consequential: across each racial group,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/09h096mp Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lajevardi, Nazita Merolla, Jennifer L https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8257-7206 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kn5c2xd While the role of legislators in parliamentary systems may sometimes seem to involve little more than to support the government of the day, legislators in many parliaments regularly take advantage of their, often limited, opportunities to introduce members’ bills and parliamentary motions. The success of these efforts is typically limited, which raises the question of why legislators bother. We argue that the legislators’ behavior is in part driven by the incentives their parties present them with. Government and opposition MPs behave in a different manner because government and opposition parties value legislative activity and types of legislative activity differently. Government MPs are expected to stay out of the way of the government’s agenda or focus their attention on less salient issues. In contrast, opposition MPs are expected to do the opposite and to present their parties as viable government alternatives. Examining members’ bills and parliamentary motions in Iceland... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kn5c2xd Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Oh, Eunseong Indridason, Indridi H https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kr6w1zw Does Informing Partisans About Partisan Bias Reduce Partisan Bias? https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kr6w1zw Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1px0h8sp This study deals with South Korea’s foreign aid to African countries. Specifically, we discuss the impact of security concerns in determining official development assistance (ODA) policy focusing on the case of South Korea’s ODA policy in Africa. Based on a case study of South Korea’s ODA to African countries, we challenge the monistic approach in defining a donor’s aid motivation and highlight the diverse nature of a donor country’s motivation for giving aid. Theoretically, this study revisits the close interlink and nature of security and development and emphasizes the importance of bringing “security” back into the discussion of ODA. Based on a historical method, we analyze South Korea’s ODA policy from a security perspective and provide an in-depth discussion of South Korea’s aid for security in Africa. Specifically, we argue that a security goal, specifically, to support the US global strategy and check the expansion of North Korea’s influence in Africa has been one of the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1px0h8sp Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kalu, Kelechi A Kim, Jiyoung https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fp3j7fb Objective: We investigate the question: How should immigrants pursue policy in a system that privileges majority rule? Scholars suggest that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. That is, pushing too hard for policy leads to backlash, a sharp and sustained negative reaction among citizens that delays these groups’ ability to obtain their desired policy. Methods: Examining immigration, we develop and test two plausible alternatives to backlash: opinion elite cues and opinion stability. We use experimental and observational data. Results: We find no evidence of backlash. Instead, we find modest evidence attitudes move in the direction of the cues provided by party elites. Conclusion: Immigrants and other marginalized groups should pursue rights without fear of opinion backlash. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fp3j7fb Thu, 6 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Bishin, Benjamin G Hayes, Thomas J Incantalupo, Matthew B Smith, Charles Anthony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2082q6w0 Presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections in Malawi, May 2014 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2082q6w0 Sat, 4 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Dulani, Boniface Dionne, Kim Yi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65f0d669 The military in Latin America has been extensively involved in pandemic relief operations. This paper analyses the impact of militarization of pandemic relief operations on human rights. It argues that not all militarization is equally harmful to individuals in the region. When troops assume responsibilities regarding medical care and logistical support, human rights violations do not follow. When involved in policing the stay-at-home orders, the extent of human rights violations is explained by the level of operational autonomy the military has in public security operations. The more autonomous the military, more likely abuses are to occur. Additionally, military exposure to judicial prosecution for human rights offenses contributes to the explanation. After gathering original empirical evidence from 14 Latin American democracies on military presence in pandemic relief, we draw our inferences from process tracing on four comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65f0d669 Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Acacio, Igor Passos, Anaís M Pion-Berlin, David https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9887-7083 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68d4b7z9 Abstract: While acting officials in federal agencies have become more common in recent years, presidents still utilize the traditional nomination process, which constrains presidents' choices, for most executive branch appointments. Recent work emphasizes presidents' incentives for using acting officials, but few scholars have considered what keeps presidents from using them even more often. We argue presidents' use of acting officials, like other forms of unilateral action, is constrained by public opinion; while actings may be expeditious policy tools for presidents, the public perceives them to undermine the executive branch's legitimacy and competence and punishes presidents accordingly. Through three survey experiments leveraging real‐world instances of President Joe Biden's usage of acting officials, we find little evidence the public reacts negatively to acting officials in agency leadership. While some institutional forces must encourage presidents to seek senatorial... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/68d4b7z9 Fri, 7 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Miller, David R Piper, Chris https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0xr7d72r Abstract: As many American states have considered policies consistent with democratic backsliding in recent years, political elites and scholars have speculated on the consequences of these policies for political behavior. We examine the effect of backsliding policies on Americans’ preferences over leisure travel destinations; because vacationing is transitory, this focus allows us to isolate the role of individuals’ democratic predispositions and values in preference formation from the implications of these policies on their self-interest that they would experience from living under those policies themselves. Through pre-registered conjoint and vignette survey experiments, we find that Americans, and especially Democrats, express less interest in vacationing in states that recently adopted backsliding policies. Our results spotlight an accountability mechanism by which Americans may sanction backsliding states, though the modest magnitude of these sanctions – less than 1%... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0xr7d72r Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Miller, David R Smith, Serena D https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8kb6p2ng Research has demonstrated that resentful emotions toward the politics and perceptions of being culturally and econom-ically threatened by immigration increase support for populist parties in some European countries, and that macro‐level economic conditions engender those perceptions and emotions and increase populist support. This article reveals that household‐level economic conditions also affect perceptions that immigrants represent a threat to a country’s culture and economy. Low‐ and middle‐income populations are more vulnerable to suffer economic distress due to macro‐level factors such as import shock, which can increase their resentment toward democracy, and their perceptions that immigration is a cultural and economic threat, therefore increasing the likelihood to vote for populist parties. A mediation analysis using the European Social Survey data from 2002 to 2018 provides evidence for the argument. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8kb6p2ng Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8cb9k2jh hdpGLM: An R Package to Estimate Heterogeneous Effects in Generalized Linear Models Using Hierarchical Dirichlet Process https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8cb9k2jh Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80c88212 Resumo As crises política e econômica que assolaram o Brasil nos últimos anos do governo Dilma resultaram em uma queda substancial nos níveis de confiança no governo central. Estes caíram de 57,10% em 2013, com Dilma Rousseff (PT) como presidente, para 13,35% em 2018. Este artigo investiga o impacto desse fenômeno sobre as atitudes dos eleitores em relação à distribuição de poder entre os níveis de governo no Brasil. Com base em dois surveys inéditos com representatividade nacional, mostramos que a queda de confiança no governo central reduziu o apoio ao aumento do poder da União na federação brasileira, mas, contraintuitivamente, não resultou em crescimento de atitudes descentralistas, em direção distinta da encontrada para o caso norte-americano. A crise de confiança no governo central que se instalou entre esses dois pontos no tempo mudou significativamente a importância da confiança como um fator preditivo de atitudes centralistas. Em conjunto, esses resultados mostram que... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80c88212 Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo Schlegel, Rogerio Marta Arretche https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63x3x5rw Many multitier polities have some scheme of territorial-based redistribution, which plays a crucial role in mitigating territorial inequality. This article looks at the public opinion on inter-regional transfers and argues that: (1) perceptions of aggregate electoral support for interpersonal redistribution in the region affect support for inter-regional redistribution independently of perceptions about the region’s economic conditions and (2) perceptions of high electoral support for interpersonal redistribution among the region’s affluent can lead them to favor territorial transfers, because these transfers may work as a mechanism for local redistribution cost displacement. We test our argument using a survey experiment in which we provide information about regional economic conditions and aggregate demand for interpersonal redistribution. Our contribution highlights that the aggregate demand for interpersonal redistribution within regions is not necessarily endogenous to regions... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63x3x5rw Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo Arretche, Marta https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qg8k252 Material Heuristics and Attitudes Toward Redistribution https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qg8k252 Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Ferrari, Diogo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t3168b3 Across sub-Saharan Africa agricultural subsidy programs have again become a common strategy for combatting rural poverty, increasing agricultural production, and reducing food insecurity. Despite a large literature examining subsidies' effects on output and welfare, little is known about their political effects. This paper examines Malawi's Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme, one of the largest and most expensive programs implemented, which was launched by the government in 2005. We examine whether the incumbent party, the Democratic Progressive Party headed by president Bingu wa Mutharika, benefited from Malawi's subsidy program by examining a longitudinal dataset of 1,846 rural Malawians interviewed in 2008 and again in 2010. The individual-level data show no evidence that the subsidy program was targeted to Mutharika's co-ethnics or co-partisans. Our analysis further demonstrates that the subsidy program increased support for the incumbent party. These results suggest that... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8t3168b3 Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Dionne, Kim Yi Horowitz, Jeremy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1v35d700 Do international reputational concerns constrain governments’ economic policy choices? We assess this question by analyzing emerging market decisions to tighten restrictions on capital outflows. While policymakers should be more likely to tighten restrictions to protect their economies as capital flow volatility (CFV) increases, investors view outflow controls as heterodox policies that violate investment contracts. We argue that the effect of CFV on outflow controls depends on the use of controls in peer markets. When peers are open, governments anticipate that controls will come at a high cost to their market reputations as heterodox measures send a negative signal to investors among a crowd of liberal peers. Conversely, when peers are closed, using controls should do less damage to an economy’s reputation. For 25 emerging markets from 1995–2015, we show that CFV is associated with outflow controls, but only when market peers are already closed, suggesting reputational concerns... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1v35d700 Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Liao, Steven McDowell, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ct8x4h9 Intensifying concerns about online platform firms’ rapid rise, expansion, and growing asymmetric power have attracted political scrutiny and undermined the legitimacy of a minimalist regulatory regime that is giving way to intense debate and increasingly interventionist governmental policies and enforcement actions. First, we view the rise of, and recent political responses to, the often-predatory power and manipulative conduct of platform firm in terms of a ‘Polanyian’ double movement in which the destabilising and destructive effects of unchecked corporate activities and market development eventually generates political and regulatory responses to constrain private power that threaten the social, political, and economic order. Second, incipient legal changes, most notably the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, indicate a shift in regulatory emphasis from competition (and antitrust) policy and law towards more intensive and encompassing forms of socio-economic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ct8x4h9 Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Cioffi, John W Kenney, Martin F Zysman, John https://escholarship.org/uc/item/82v302bq Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread backlash described by the media with the growing body of academic research that finds no evidence of the opinion change thought to be its hallmark trait? We argue that rather than widespread opinion change, what appears to be backlash against gay rights is more consistent with elite-led mobilization—a reaction by elites seeking to prevent gays and lesbians from achieving full incorporation in the polity. We present evidence from what is widely considered to be a classic case of anti-gay backlash, the 2010 Iowa Judicial Retention Election. Analysis of campaign contribution data in Iowa versus other states between 2010 and 2014, and voter roll-off data exploiting a unique feature of the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/82v302bq Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Bishin, Benjamin G Hayes, Thomas J Incantalupo, Matthew B Smith, Charles Anthony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hv4b9dm Women, Property Rights, and Islam https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hv4b9dm Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Bishin, Benjamin G Cherif, Feryal M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qd70383 To what extent do legislators respond to the poor? While extensive research demonstrates the poor are largely ignored in legislators’ policy calculations, little research examines the degree to which they discriminate against the poor with respect to providing constituency service. We examine this question using a series of correspondence experiments on both the offices of members of Congress and state legislators on the topic of health care. Consistent with previous studies we find no evidence that members of Congress discriminate by economic class and only mix edevidence that state legislators discriminate along these lines. We also find limited, but potentially important, evidence of partisan bias in service responsiveness for state legislators. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0qd70383 Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Hayes, Thomas J Bishin, Benjamin G https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14g7f37b Recent political events have prompted an examination of the analytical tools and conceptual frameworks used in political science to understand voting and candidate choice. Scholars in the behavioral tradition have highlighted the empirical relationship between racial resentment and anti-black affect among white voters during and after President Obama’s successful run for re-election. The theoretical role of white identity within the context of the privileged status of this racial group has seen much less scholarly attention by political scientists, particularly with respect to racial group identification and its implications. To address this lacuna, we argue that racial identification among white voters can be conceived of as a utility-based trait relevant to candidate choice, combining a social-psychological approach of group membership together with a rational choice perspective. This conceptualization of the political utility of white racial identity provides wider conceptual... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/14g7f37b Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Weller, Nicholas Junn, Jane https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63z4k9s7 In this article, we study protest participants in the May 2006 immigration rights marches in Los Angeles. Analysis of original survey data of 876 march participants yields five main results. First, despite substantial dispute among organizers on how to frame the marches, we find protest participants were similar across march locations organized by different coalitions. Second, we find Spanish-English bilingual participants seemed to benefit from being in two media environments, as they reported more information sources about the protest events than monolingual participants. Third, women reported hearing about the protest events from more information sources, and Spanish-English bilingual women reported hearing from more information sources than any other group, suggesting they acted as social connectors behind the massive participation. Fourth, we confirm the importance of Spanish-language radio as an information source, but our data also point to the significance of television... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63z4k9s7 Mon, 9 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Dionne, Kim Yi DeWitt, Darin Stone, Michael Chwe, Michael Suk-Young https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h59d83k The occupation of Crimea and part of the Donbas will prevent roughly 12 percent of Ukrainian voters from participating in elections. These voters voted disproportionately for candidates and parties that supported closer ties with Russia. This article quantifies the changes to the electorate and projects the likely partisan impact. The changes decisively tip the Ukrainian electorate away from the east and south. Candidates and parties can no longer expect to build a national majority primarily in eastern and southern Ukraine, as Viktor Yanukovych did in 2010 and the Party of Regions did in 2012. Anticipating these effects, Ukraine’s government could seek to prolong these voters’ exclusion, while Russia could actually seek to end the occupation to get them re-included. The implication is that various actors could try to “gerrymander” the entire Ukrainian state, a phenomenon that previously has only been explored at the district level, within states. This raises the broader question... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h59d83k Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 D’Anieri, Paul https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7p65v0fm Magical realism: assumptions, evidence and prescriptions in the Ukraine conflict https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7p65v0fm Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 D’Anieri, Paul https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4js4x4ss Ukraine after five years of conflict https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4js4x4ss Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000 D’Anieri, Paul Kuzio, Taras https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cv38573 Sometimes democratic political leaders voluntarily cede the armed forces too much authority, assigning them positions that should have gone to civilians. The over-delegation of posts to soldiers can invite problems of dependency, as civilians grow accustomed to the military handling defense policy. This study investigates the delegation of leadership positions in six advanced democracies: Israel, Taiwan, Spain, the US, the UK, and France. It finds that in the first three countries officers dominate many top-tier positions within the defense ministries, while in the latter three, civilians do. Deficiencies in civilian control are unexpected since these countries either face serious external threats or are members of NATO. It is argued that what links the three countries with civilian deficiencies is the presence of wide and longstanding gaps between military and civilian expertise and an absence of incentives to close them. Where civilians suffer from serious knowledge deficits,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cv38573 Tue, 9 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Pion-Berlin, David https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9887-7083 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46h5c68d Over the past two decades, the armed forces have increasingly been asked to take an active role in the fight against the rampant crime in Latin America. Since the militaries in this region are not always trained to conduct themselves with restraint, the possibility of excesses and human rights violations is always latent. Despite that prospect, there is a high level of public support for military counter-crime interventions throughout the region. The key argument in this article is that when the Latin American public supports military interventions to combat crime, it makes a comparative judgment call about the relative efficacy of military vs. police conduct in domestic security roles. Latin American citizens have very low confidence in the capacity of the police to fight crime effectively and to respect human rights. They place more trust in the armed forces as an institution capable of performing effectively and in accordance with human rights standards and the rule of law.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46h5c68d Wed, 6 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Pion-Berlin, David Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5402t6bd Luck of the Draw? Private Members’ Bills and the Electoral Connection https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5402t6bd Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Williams, BD Indridason, IH https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97b144st Previous studies of voter turnout in Latin America have found weak and inconsistent evidence for the link between political institutions and electoral participation. In this article, I use data from an expanded dataset of voter turnout in Latin America (1980–2016) to show that institutions do have an impact on citizens’ decisions on whether or not to participate in concurrent elections. Whereas previous studies analyzed the effect of legislative institutions on voter turnout, this article estimates a series of models that demonstrate the impact of presidential institutions and the political context surrounding presidential elections on electoral participation. The findings suggest that when first-order (presidential) and second-order (legislative) elections take place concurrently, electoral participation is influenced primarily by presidential institutions (term length, presidential powers, and electoral rules) and the electoral context in which the presidential elections take... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97b144st Wed, 15 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tq4r9wd The legislative agenda in most parliamentary systems is controlled tightly by the government and bills offered by individual members of parliament have low rates of success. Yet, members of parliament (MPs) do seek to present (private) members' bills even where the rate of adoption is very low. We argue that members' bills serve as an electoral connection but also as an opportunity for MPs to signal competence to their co-partisans. To demonstrate the presence of an electoral connection we take advantage of the random selection of private members' bills in the New Zealand House of Representatives and show that survey respondents approve more of electorate MPs whose bills were drawn on the ballot. In addition, we show that MPs respond to the incentives created by the voters and parties' willingness to reward legislative effort and, consequently, that electorally vulnerable legislators are more likely to place members' bills on the ballot. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tq4r9wd Tue, 22 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Williams, Brian D Indridason, Indridi H https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mb4p6pn Game-Theoretic Target Selection in Contagion-Based Domains https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mb4p6pn Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Tsai, J Nguyen, TH Weller, N Tambe, M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dh0t39h Abstract Many theories of policy diffusion contend that the flow of information is the driving force in the diffusion process. Prior scholarship has identified at least two types of information: information about policy and information about political viability. Few empirical approaches have been able to distinguish between these separate mechanisms. The authors argue that an analysis of policy proposals can untangle political information from policy-based information. They employ their strategy with data on the proposal of tax and expenditure limits (TELs) in the U.S. states since 1970 through direct democracy. The authors find that states in close geographic proximity to states that have rejected TELs are significantly less likely to propose TELs themselves. Since this event does not reveal information about policy effectiveness, the authors conclude that information about political viability systematically diffuses from state to state at the proposal stage... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dh0t39h Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Seljan, Ellen C Weller, Nicholas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2198-5625 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1g7710mv Knowledge and networks: An experimental test of how network knowledge affects coordination https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1g7710mv Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Enemark, Daniel McCubbins, Mathew D Weller, Nicholas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1423q1z4 The study of causal mechanisms interests scholars across the social sciences. Case studies can be a valuable tool in developing knowledge and hypotheses about how causal mechanisms function. The usefulness of case studies in the search for causal mechanisms depends on effective case selection, and there are few existing guidelines for selecting cases to study causal mechanisms. We outline a general approach for selecting cases for pathway analysis: a mode of qualitative research that is part of a mixed-method research agenda, which seeks to (1) understand the mechanisms or links underlying an association between some explanatory variable, X1, and an outcome, Y, in particular cases and (2) generate insights from these cases about mechanisms in the unstudied population of cases featuring the X1/ Y relationship. The gist of our approach is that researchers should choose cases for comparison in light of two criteria. The first criterion is the expected relationship between X1/ Y,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1423q1z4 Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Weller, Nicholas Barnes, Jeb https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12v885sd Trading Policy: Constituents and Party in U.S. Congressional Trade Voting https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12v885sd Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Weller, N https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11t4q09j AbstractState capacity is a key concept for research in public policy and political science. Despite its importance, there is no broadly accepted measure of state capacity in the existing literature, and frequently used measures of capacity have not been examined for their validity. We begin with an explicit definition of state capacity – the state's ability to implement public policy – and connect this definition to a measurable outcome of state capacity – the state's taxation of income. We show that this measure, income taxes as a percentage of total tax revenue, is a useful indicator of state capacity and meets higher standards of measurement validity than other tax-based indicators. We also compare our measure to the most common existing indicators of state capacity to show that income taxation is a better theoretical and statistical measure of states’ effectiveness in policy implementation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11t4q09j Fri, 8 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Rogers, Melissa Ziegler Weller, Nicholas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qb6v9zp Institutions, governmental performance and the rise of political newcomers https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qb6v9zp Tue, 9 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000 CARRERAS, MIGUEL https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d08k6tr The number of salient female executive leaders has dramatically increased over the last two decades. In many countries, executive politics is no longer an exclusive male domain. Using data from the four waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems surveys and from several waves of the AmericasBarometer surveys, I investigate whether the presence of salient female executive candidates in high-profile national elections influences women’s political engagement in the electoral process. The analysis reveals that the presence of viable female candidates has no immediate impact on women’s political engagement at the mass level. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d08k6tr Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wb9r5m8 One long-recognized consequence of the tension between popular sovereignty and democratic values like liberty and equality is public opinion backlash, which occurs when individuals recoil in response to some salient event. For decades, scholars have suggested that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. Public opinion research, however, suggests that widespread attitude change that backlash proponents theorize is likely to be rare. Examining backlash against gays and lesbians using a series of online and natural experiments about marriage equality, and large-sample survey data, we find no evidence of opinion backlash among the general public, by members of groups predisposed to dislike gays and lesbians, or from those with psychological traits that may predispose them to lash back. The important implication is that groups pursuing rights should not be dissuaded by threats of backlash that will set their movement back in the court of public opinion. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wb9r5m8 Tue, 14 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Bishin, Benjamin G Hayes, Thomas J Incantalupo, Matthew B Smith, Charles Anthony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/48h123j8 Compulsory voting and political engagement (beyond the ballot box): A multilevel analysis https://escholarship.org/uc/item/48h123j8 Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32h3d281 Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits. By Alexander Baturo. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014. 350p. $50.00. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32h3d281 Tue, 25 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zv8981k Group-based appeals and the Latino vote in 2012: How immigration became a mobilizing issue https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zv8981k Wed, 3 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Barreto, Matt A Collingwood, Loren https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9151x5q4 Refining the theory of partisan alignmentsEvidence from Latin America https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9151x5q4 Sun, 6 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7r6726q5 Outsiders and Executive-Legislative Conflict in Latin America https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7r6726q5 Sun, 6 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5s45x0r6 Who Votes in Latin America? A Test of Three Theoretical Perspectives https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5s45x0r6 Sun, 6 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel Castañeda-Angarita, Néstor https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xr1j5mg Trust in elections, vote buying, and turnout in Latin America https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1xr1j5mg Sun, 6 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel Irepoglu, Yasemin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3pk9f980 Presidentes outsiders y ministros neófitos en América Latina (1980-2010) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3pk9f980 Thu, 3 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Carreras, Miguel