Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T18:47:15.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mobilize for Our Lives? School Shootings and Democratic Accountability in U.S. Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2020

HANS J. G. HASSELL Open the ORCID record for HANS J. G. HASSELL [Opens in a new window] ,
JOHN B. HOLBEIN Open the ORCID record for JOHN B. HOLBEIN [Opens in a new window]  and
MATTHEW BALDWIN
HANS J. G. HASSELL*
Affiliation:
Florida State University
JOHN B. HOLBEIN*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
MATTHEW BALDWIN*
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
*
Hans J. G. Hassell, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Florida State University, hans.hassell@fsu.edu.
John B. Holbein, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Politics and Education, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia, holbein@virginia.edu.
Matthew Baldwin, B.A. Student, Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University, littlebaldwin@gmail.com.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Gun violence is a large and growing problem in the United States. Many reformers look towards elections to spur policy change in this area. In this paper, we explore the effects of school shootings on electoral mobilization and election outcomes. We pair data from several sources that measure validated voter registration; validated voter turnout; and the electoral performance of officials at the local, state, and federal levels with regression discontinuity and panel methods. Our effects show that shootings have little to no effect on electoral outcomes in the United States. Our work demonstrates that even when tragic events occur that are squarely in the realm of elected officials’ responsibility, have high levels of issue salience, are highly-covered by the media, draw citizens’ attention, and (perhaps) shift public opinion, these seemingly favorable conditions may not be enough to elicit democratic accountability.

Type
Letter
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1375 - 1385
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We wish to thank the Data Trust for sharing access to their data and to Matt Easton, Chase Fowers, Brittany Bair, Drew Brown, and Madeline Beck for their research assistance. We also wish to thank the National Science Foundation (SES-1657821) for funding this project. We are grateful to Jack Beaumaster, Delton Daigle, Bradley Jones, Cecillia Mo, Judith Torney-Purta, Dan Smith, and Michael Herron and audiences at Brigham Young University, the University of Virginia, as well as and the 2019 MPSA and APSA conferences for feedback on this paper. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YF761K.

References

Achen, Christopher H., and Bartels, Larry M.. 2017. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D., and Pischke, Jörn-Steffen. 2008. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, R. Douglas, and Carnes, Nicholas. 2012 “Holding Mayors Accountable: New York’s Executives from Koch to Bloomberg.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (4): 949–963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, Scott, de Mesquita, Ethan Bueno, and Friedenberg, Amanda. 2018. “Learning about Voter Rationality.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 37–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, Scott. 2012. “Electoral Accountability: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Work.” Annual Review of Political Science 15: 183–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barney, David J., and Schaffner, Brian F.. 2019. “Reexamining the Effect of Mass Shootings on Public Support for Gun Control.” British Journal of Political Science 49 (4): 1555–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bateson, Regina. 2012. “Crime Victimization and Political Participation.” American Political Science Review 106 (3): 570–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, Adam J. 1999. “The Two Faces of Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 43 (4): 1209–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Christopher R., and Howell, William G.. 2007. “Accountability and Local Elections: Rethinking Retrospective Voting.” Journal of Politics 69 (3): 844–858.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birkhead, Thomas A. 1998. After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events. Washington, DC: Georgetown University PressGoogle Scholar
Burns, Ronald, and Crawford, Charles. 1999. “School Shootings, the Media, and Public Fear: Ingredients for a Moral Panic.” Crime, Law, and Social Change 32: 147–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocio. 2014. “Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs.” Econometrica 82 (6): 2295–2326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chyi, Hsiang Iris and McCombs, Maxwell. 2004. “Media Salience and the Process of Framing: Coverage of the Columbine School Shootings.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81(1): 22–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, Dennis, and Druckman, James N.. 2007a. “Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies.” American Political Science Review 101 (4): 636–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, Dennis, and Druckman, James N.. 2007b. “Framing Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (1):103–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, Dennis, and Druckman, James N.. 2007c. “A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments.” Journal of Communication 57 (1): 99–118.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1969. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.Google Scholar
Cook, Philip J. and Ludwig, Jens. 2000. Gun Violence: The Real Costs. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de Benedictis-Kessner, Justin, and Warshaw, Christopher. Forthcoming. “Politics in Forgotten Governments.” Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1086/706458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demszky, Dorottya, Garg, Nikhil, Voigt, Rob, Zou, James, Gentzkow, Matthew, Shapiro, Jesse, and Jurafsky, Dan. 2019. “Analyzing Polarization in Social Media: Method and Application to Tweets on 21 Mass Shootings.” arXiv:1904.01596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duwe, Grant. 2000. “Body-Count Journalism: The Presentation of Mass Murder in the News Media.” Homicide Studies 4 (4): 364–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dynes, Adam M., and Holbein, John B.. 2020. “Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes.” American Political Science Review 114 (1): 237–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enos, Ryan D. 2017. The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fair, C. Christine, Kuhn, Patrick M., Malhotra, Neil, and Shapiro, Jacob N.. 2017. “Natural Disasters and Political Engagement: Evidence from the 2010–11 Pakistani Floods.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 12 (1): 99–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1978. “Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 22 (2): 426–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Anthony, and Hall, Andrew B.. 2018. “Do Shark Attacks Influence Presidential Elections? Reassessing a Prominent Finding on Voter Competence.” Journal of Politics 80 (4): 1423–1437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraga, Bernard L., Holbein, John B., and Skovron, Christopher. 2018. “Using Nationwide Voter Files to Study the Effects of Election Laws.” Working Paper, University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Gallup. 2019. “Guns | Gallup Historical Trends.” Gallup. Retrieved February 11, 2019. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx.Google Scholar
Gasper, John T., and Reeves, Andrew. 2011. “Make it Rain? Retrospection and the Attentive Electorate in the Context of Natural Disasters.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (2): 340–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald P., McGrath, Mary C., and Aronow, Peter M.. 2013. “Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 23 (1): 27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grose, Christian R., and Oppenheimer, Bruce I.. 2007. “The Iraq War, Partisanship, and Candidate Attributes: Variation in Partisan Swing in the 2006 US House Elections.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 32 (4): 531–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman-Bacon, Andrew. 2018. “Difference-in-Differences with Variation in Treatment Timing.” National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper No. 25018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goss, Kristin A. 2010. Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Erin, and Hidalgo, F. Daniel. 2018. “An Equivalence Approach to Balance and Placebo Tests.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (4): 1000–1013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, Catherine, and Rapson, David S.. 2018. “Regression Discontinuity in Time: Considerations for Empirical Applications.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 10: 533–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawon, James, Räsänen, Pekka, Oksanen, Atte, and Ryan, Josh. 2012. “Social Solidarity and Wellbeing After Critical Incidents: Three Cases of Mass Shootings.” Journal of Critical Incident Analysis 3(1): 2–25.Google Scholar
Healy, Andrew, and Lenz, Gabriel S.. 2014. “Substituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election-Year Economy.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (1): 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Andrew, and Lenz, Gabriel S.. 2017. “Presidential Voting and the Local Economy: Evidence from Two Population-Based Data Sets.” Journal of Politics 79 (4): 1419–1432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Andrew, and Malhotra, Neil. 2009. “Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy.” American Political Science Review 103 (3): 387–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Andrew, and Malhotra, Neil. 2013. “Retrospective Voting Reconsidered.” Annual Review of Political Science 16: 285–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, Andrew J., Malhotra, Neil, and Mo, Cecilia Hyunjung. 2010. “Irrelevant Events Affect Voters’ Evaluations of Government Performance.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (29): 12804–12809.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heersink, Boris, Peterson, Brenton D., and Jenkins, Jeffery A.. 2017. “Disasters and Elections: Estimating the Net Effect of Damage and Relief in Historical Perspective.” Political Analysis 25 (2): 260–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, and Kim, In Song. 2019. “On the Use of Two-Way Fixed Effects Regression Models for Causal Inference with Panel Data.” Harvard University IQSS. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igielnik, Ruth, Keeter, Scott, Kennedy, Courney, and Spahn, Bradley. 2018. Commercial Voter Files and the Study of U.S. Politics. Pew Research Center (Feb. 15) https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2018/02/15/commercial-voter-files-and-the-study-of-u-s-politics/.Google Scholar
Karol, David, and Miguel, Edward. 2007. “The Electoral Cost of War: Iraq Casualties and the 2004 US Presidential Election.” Journal of Politics 69 (3): 633–648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kriner, Douglas L., and Shen, Francis X.. 2007. “Iraq Casualties and the 2006 Senate Elections.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 32 (4): 507–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kropko, Jonathan, and Kubinec, Robert. 2020. “Interpretation and Identification of Within-Unit and Cross-Sectional Variation in Panel Data Models.” PloS One 15 (4): e0231349.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heyman, Steven J. 1991. “The First Duty of Government: Protection, Liberty and the Fourteenth Amendment.” Duke Law Journal 41: 507–571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holbein, John B. 2016. “Left Behind? Citizen Responsiveness to Government Performance Information.” American Political Science Review 110 (2): 353–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holbein, John B., and Hassell, Hans J. G.. 2019. “When Your Group Fails: The Effect of Race-Based Performance Signals on Citizen Voice and Exit.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 29 (2): 268–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igielnik, Ruth, Keeter, Scott, Kennedy, Courtney, and Spahn, Bradley. 2018. “Commercial Voter Files and the Study of U.S. Politics” Pew Research Center Methods Report (February 15).Google Scholar
Joslyn, Mark R., and Haider-Markel, Donald P.. 2018. “The Direct and Moderating Effects of Mass Shooting Anxiety on Political and Policy Attitudes.” Research and Politics 5 (3): 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingdon, John W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.Google Scholar
Kwon, Roy, and Cabrera, Joseph F.. 2019a. “Socioeconomic Factors and Mass Shootings in the United States.” Critical Public Health 29 (2): 138–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwon, Roy, and Cabrera, Joseph F.. 2019b. “Income Inequality and Mass Shootings in the United States.” BMC Public Health 19 (1): 1147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luca, Michael, Malhotra, Deepak, and Poliquin, Christopher. 2020. “The Impact of Mass Shootings on Gun Policy.” Journal of Public Economics 181: 104083.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madestam, Andreas, Shoag, Daniel, Veuger, Stan, and Yanagizawa-Drott, David. 2013. “Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (4): 1633–1685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maguire, Brendan, Weatherby, Georgie Ann, and Mathers, Richard A.. 2002. “Network News Coverage of School Shootings.” The Social Science Journal 39(3): 465–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne. 2011. The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millán-Quijano, Jaime. Forthcoming. “Fuzzy Difference in Discontinuities.” Applied Economics Letters. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2019.1696930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, John E. 1973. War, Presidents, and Public Opinion. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Muschert, Glenn W., and Carr, Dawn. 2006. “Media Salience and Frame Changing across Events: Coverage of Nine School Shootings, 1997-2001.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 83(4): 747–766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nass, Daniel. 2018. “Parkland Generated Dramatically More News Coverage than Most Mass Shootings.” The Trace. (May 17). https://www.thetrace.org/2018/05/parkland-media-coverage-analysis-mass-shooting/.Google Scholar
Newman, Benjamin J., and Hartman, Todd K.. 2017. “Mass Shootings and Public Support for Gun Control.” British Journal of Political Science 49 (4): 1527–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Benjamin, and Hartman, Todd K.. 2019. “Accounting for Pre-Treatment Exposure in Panel Data: Re-Estimating the Effect of Mass Public Shootings.” British Journal of Political Science 49 (4): 1567–76.Google Scholar
Park, Sung-Yeon, Holody, Kyle J., and Zhang, Xiaoqun. 2012. “Race in Media Coverage of School Shootings: A Parallel Application of Framing Theory and Attribute Agenda Setting.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 89(3): 475–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1993. “When Effect becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change.” World Politics 45 (4): 595–628.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sances, Michael W. 2017. “Attribution Errors in Federalist Systems: When Voters Punish the President for Local Tax Increases.” Journal of Politics 79 (4): 1286–1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogowski, Jon C., and Tucker, Patrick D.. 2019. “Critical Events and Attitude Change: Support for Gun Control after Mass Shootings.” Political Science Research and Methods 7 (4): 903–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wing, Coady, Simon, Kosali, and Bello-Gomez, Ricardo A.. 2018. “Designing Difference in Difference Studies: Best Practices for Public Health Policy Research.” Annual Review of Public Health 39: 453–469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, Yini, Wang, Yidong, Foley, Jordan, Suk, Jiyoun, and Conathan, Devin. 2017. “Tweeting Mass Shootings: The Dynamics of Issue Attention on Social Media.” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society Article 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Hassell et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Hassell et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 993.9 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Hassell et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YF761K
Link