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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Measuring the Public's Ideological Preferences in the 50 States: Survey Responses Versus Roll Call Data
- Robert S. Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, John P. McIver
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- State Politics & Policy Quarterly / Volume 7 / Issue 2 / Summer 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 January 2021, pp. 141-151
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- Summer 2007
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5 - State parties and state opinion
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 96-119
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Summary
Political parties hold a special place in modern theories of democracy. They were not popular when anticipated by the founders of the U.S. Constitution (see Madison's Federalist Paper no. 10), and they are not generally thought well of by the general U.S. public today (Dennis, 1978; Wattenberg, 1986). Nevertheless, it is difficult to envision representative democracy in complex societies without competitive political parties.
Two different models of party competition are commonly presented, usually as if the two models are in direct competition with one another. One is the “responsible parties model, ” which as a prescriptive doctrine promotes ideologically distinct political parties. The other, sometimes called the “public opinion” model (Page, 1978), is more commonly called the “Downs” model after the theorist Anthony Downs (1957). While it is common to juxtapose these two models as competing with one another, they are in fact complementary, each drawing on different aspects of party motivation. The responsible parties model emphasizes the policy or ideological motivations of party elites, which push party positions away from center. The Downs model emphasizes the electoral incentives pushing politicians toward the center in order to get elected. As we will see, the positions of state political parties represent both sets of forces.
The responsible parties doctrine was a product of political science thinking in the 1940s and 1950s. Inspired by British electoral experience, its advocates (Schattschneider, 1942; Committee on Political Parties, 1950) favored strongly disciplined and cohesive political parties that would offer distinct policy programs. According to the design, responsible parties were to be internally democratic, so that party activists would control the content of party programs.
Contents
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp v-vi
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Statehouse Democracy
- Public Opinion and Policy in the American States
- Robert S. Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, John P. McIver
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994
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The importance of public opinion in the determination of public policy is the subject of considerable debate. Whether discussion centres on local, state or national affairs, the influence of the opinions of ordinary citizens is often assumed yet rarely demonstrated. Other factors such as interest group lobbying, party politics and developmental, or environmental, constraints have been thought to have the greater influence over policy decisions. Professors Erikson, Wright and McIver make the argument that state policies are highly responsive to public opinion, and they show how the institutions of state politics work to achieve this high level of responsiveness. They analyse state policies from the 1930s to the present, drawing from, and contributing to, major lines of research on American politics. Their conclusions are applied to central questions of democratic theory and affirm the robust character of the state institution.
6 - Legislative elections and state policy
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 120-149
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One central question about modern democracies is, How much do partisan elections contribute to the effective representation of public opinion? In theory, programmatic parties provide the electorate with a clear choice of policy options, with election results followed by predictable policy consequences. But empirically, does it matter which party (or coalition) governs? Most recent cross-national comparisons of Western democracies answer affirmatively. Socialist or leftist party participation in national governments is associated with a high inflation to unemployment tradeoff (Hibbs, 1977), growth of the governmental sector (Cameron, 1978; Lange and Garrett, 1985), high public expenditure (Tufte, 1978; Castles, 1982), welfare spending (Castles, 1982; Hicks and Swank, 1984), quality-of-life (Moon and Dixon 1985), and income equality/ redistribution (Tufte, 1978; van Arnhem, Corina, and Schotsman, 1982; but see also, Jackman, 1975, 1980). In sum, nations where leftist parties are most influential also tend to have the kinds of policies and policy consequences with the greatest appeal to leftist constituencies. Time-series analyses for individual nations also show policy consequences resulting from party control (Hibbs, 1977, 1987; Alt, 1985). Party control does matter.
It may be the case, however, that party control matters only in terms of the sharp divisions between European socialist parties of the left and parties of the right. In the U.S. context, it is by no means clear that major policy differences flow from variation in Democratic versus Republican control. At the national level, while some time series find policy consequences from party control of the presidency and/or Congress (Hibbs, 1977, 1987; Kiewiet and McCubbins, 1985), the role of parties remains in some dispute (Beck, 1982; Browning, 1985; Lowery, 1985).
Preface
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp vii-x
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In recent years, citizens of many nations have struggled to establish democratic institutions where none had existed before. As political scientists, we can ask what justifies this passion for “democracy?” Part of the answer is easy: political freedom. Empirically as well as in theory, where democratic institutions prosper, people are freer to speak and act without fear of arbitrary intrusion from government authority. But freedom from government intrusion is not the sole justification for democratic government. In theory, the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty means that collectively, citizens can actively shape what their governments do. The relevant empirical question becomes whether, in practice, democratic institutions allow public opinion to influence government policies very much. Modern political science is still working on the answer to this important question.
This book addresses the question of democratic representation for one set of democratic governments: those of the 50 separate states of the United States. The Constitution of the United States reserves many government powers to the states. The policies that states enact are often described in terms of their ideological content as relatively liberal or relatively conservative. We use this ideological dimension to assess the correspondence between public opinion and policies across the states.
We began this project several years ago, from a sense that public opinion had been seriously neglected in the political science literature on state policymaking. As we assembled our statistical evidence, we found a pattern that was even stronger than our initial suspicions: State ideological preferences appeared to dominate all other variables as a cause of the ideological tilt of a state's policies.
2 - Measuring state partisanship and ideology
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 12-46
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When analysts classify the citizens of the various American states in terms of their political differences and similarities, the standards most often imposed are in terms of partisanship and ideology. One can generally classify a state's partisan tendencies with some assurance, since we can make inferences from state voting patterns and, in some instances, party registration. Classifying electorates on the basis of ideology is riskier for the reason that available indicators of ideology are at best indirect. Politically knowledgeable observers do commonly attribute liberal or conservative tendencies to state electorates. Among the factors that enter into these impressionistic judgments are the states’ electoral affinities for liberal and conservative candidates, the ideological proclivities of their congressional delegations, and the general imprints of their unique political histories. Still, it is far from certain that state electorates’ ideological reputations are deserved. It may be an unwarranted leap of democratic faith to attribute ideological motive to ideological consequences.
For our investigation of the public opinion-policy connection in the U.S. states, the most crucial challenge is the measurement of state-level public opinion. This chapter presents our measures of state-level ideological identification and partisan identification, from CBS/NYT polls. Our overall strategy is straightforward. We simply aggregate by state the responses to the 122 national CBS/NYT telephone polls for the period 1976-88. These polls are conducted on a continuous basis, maintain the same questions for party identification and ideology throughout the time period, and use a sampling design that serves our purposes very well.
1 - Democratic states?
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 1-11
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Summary
Unless mass views have some place in the shaping of policy, all the talk about democracy is nonsense.
V.O. Key (1961, 7)Popular control of public policy is a central tenet of democratic theory. Indeed, we often gauge the quality of democratic government by the responsiveness of public policymakers to the preferences of the mass public as well as by formal opportunities for, and the practice of, mass participation in political life. The potential mechanisms of democratic popular control can be stated briefly. In elections, citizens have the opportunity to choose from leaders who offer differing futures for government action. Once elected, political leaders have incentives to be responsive to public preferences. Elected politicians who offer policies that prove unpopular or unpleasant in their consequences can be replaced at the next election by other politicians who offer something different.
Of course, this picture describes only the democratic ideal. A cynic would describe the electoral process quite differently: Election campaigns sell candidates in a manner that allows little intrusion by serious issues. Once in office, winning candidates often ignore whatever issue positions they had espoused. Voters, who seem to expect little from their politicians, pay little attention anyway.
The actual performance of any electoral democracy probably falls between these extremes. Acknowledging the factors that impede effective democratic representation, we can ask to what degree does public opinion manage to influence government decisions? This is an empirical question, often noted as the central question of public opinion research (Key, 1961; Converse, 1975; Burstein, 1981; Kinder, 1983; Erikson, Luttbeg, and Tedin, 1991).
Index
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 265-269
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7 - Political culture and policy representation
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 150-176
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In Chapter 3, we accounted for state differences in mass ideology and partisanship in terms of state differences in “political culture.” We found that state of residence matters as an influence on political attitudes, although we stopped short of identifying the underlying sources of this state variation. In this chapter, we explore a different usage of the concept “political culture.” Here, we examine “state political culture” as a determinant not of mass attitudes but, rather, of the expectations and values that citizens (but mainly elites) share as they conduct the business of governing. We do not attempt to measure this sort of variation directly, but rather turn to Daniel Elazar's (1966, 1972) typology of political subcultures among the American states. This chapter examines whether states classified differently by Elazar in terms of political culture display different styles of representation in terms of the causal pathways from state opinion to state policy.
Elazar's typology undoubtedly is the most prominent contribution to the study of “political culture” in state politics. Elazar divides the U.S. states – and areas within states – according to their dominant political culture: moralistic, individualistic, or traditionalistic (MIT). In capsule form, the moralistic culture emphasizes the concern for the public welfare, the individualistic culture emphasizes politics as a marketplace, and the traditionalistic culture emphasizes the protection of traditional elites. Geographically, Elazar's moralistic states are mainly the northern tier of states settled by New England emigrants; traditionalistic states comprise southern and border states plus those settled by southern emigrants; individualistic states tend to be those geographically in-between.
3 - Accounting for state differences in opinion
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 47-72
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Chapter 2 described state-to-state differences in ideological and partisan identifications. With reasonable precision, that chapter identified which state electorates are most liberal and which are most conservative, as well as which state electorates are most Democratic and which are most Republican. Still to be answered, however, is why these state differences in mass preferences exist. The question is, Where do state-to-state differences in ideology or partisanship come from? Why, for instance, is Indiana more Republican than Missouri? Or for instance, why is Oklahoma more conservative than New York?
To some degree, state differences in political preferences follow simply from the states’ group compositions. Each state electorate is a unique composite of political groupings, and these help to determine the state's political views. For instance, if a state electorate is composed primarily of the kinds of people who lean in the liberal direction, we would expect the state as a whole to tilt in the liberal direction. But collective sentiment can be more than the sum of views of the represented groups. A second potential source of state attitudes is state residence itself. It could be that from exposure to the predominant political culture of their state, citizens are influenced to hold political views they otherwise would not. For instance, if a state electorate is composed of groups that typically lean in the liberal direction, the state electorate could still tilt conservative due to a (perhaps intangible) conservative political culture in the state.
Political scientists often assume that political attitudes are shaped by the local political culture or the commonly shared and reinforced political values within the local community.
4 - Public opinion and policy in the American states
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 73-95
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In theory, one major advantage of the U.S. federal system is that rather than always having one national policy to fit all circumstances, individual states can tailor their policies to local needs and preferences. Of course, federal guidelines and regulations sometimes structure a certain uniformity of state policy. The states’ common participation in programs like Medicaid or AFDC are cases in point. Even where states are quite free (within constitutional constraints) to experiment boldly, innovation is often the exception. Observers generally depict the state policy process as a pattern of occasional innovation by some states followed by widespread copying by others (e.g., Walker, 1969; Gray, 1973). Still, even though states may seem more similar than different in terms of the policies they enact, the differences that do exist are often important. Moreover, these differences reflect more than random policy mutations. Behind many differences in state policy one can detect differences in the policy preferences of state citizens.
To illustrate, we select the states of Oklahoma and Oregon for comparison. These two states are similar in many respects besides adjacency in alphabetical order. They are both in the West and similar in size, urbanism, and average income levels. Yet when we compare their policies in force in or about the year 1980, we find many differences.
We can begin with spending for public schools, an important matter that normally accounts for about a quarter of a state's spending. Oregon chose to spend about 40 percent more per pupil than did Oklahoma ($3, 130 vs. $2, 230), suggesting a considerable difference in the two states’ interest in investing in education.
8 - Partisanship, ideology, and state elections
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 177-211
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Among state political analysts, a common pastime is classifying the states according to their degree of Republican or Democratic partisanship. The most frequently cited is Ranney's (1976) classic measure of interparty competition. The Ranney index is a combination of the two parties’ relative legislative strength and the two-party vote for governor. Used as a directional measure, the Ranney index arrays the states on a continuum from safely Democratic to safely Republican. “Folded,” the index measures the distinction between “competitive” states and “one-party” states. Others, notably David (1972), have developed indexes of state partisanship based on the vote for a wide variety of state offices. The rationale for classifying the states on the basis of partisanship is the measurement of meaningful differences in the two parties’ relative chances of winning elections. Presumably, some states almost always elect Democrats and others almost always elect Republicans, with others in the middle enjoying the presumed ideal condition of “competitive” elections.
To what extent are statewide election outcomes determined by state levels of Democratic versus Republican partisanship? Our measure of state party identification can help to answer this question. In Chapter 6, we saw that the correlation between state party identification and legislative partisanship was a quite high 87. This strong correlation was to be expected, because the measure of legislative partisanship is the net balance of all legislative races, averaged for each chamber over eight election years.
10 - Conclusions: Democracy in the American states
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 244-253
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This book has argued that public opinion is the dominant influence on policy making in the American states. In this concluding chapter, we summarize our evidence for strong democratic representation in the states, place our findings in the context of the behavioral literature on democratic politics, and discuss the implications for the understanding of representative democracy.
Our story depends on the distillation of policy questions to a single dimension of ideology, what is commonly called liberalism-conservatism. Ideology – whether one dimension or many – does not neatly account for all government policies or all public preferences or even keep its precise meaning from one decade to the next. But the simplification of policy to one ideological dimension provides powerful leverage for understanding the ideological connection between public preferences and government policy in the U.S. states. Representation in the states works not necessarily in terms of government compliance with specific public demands (although this assertion is largely untested) but rather in terms of public opinion controlling the general ideological direction of state policy.
Our project was set in motion by the availability of state-level samples of ideological preference. Aggregation of opinion from the CBS/NYT surveys provided plausible scores for the states in terms of ideological identification plus the important variable of party identification. Given the sample sizes, these measures are highly reliable from a statistical standpoint. Moreover, for the 1976-88 period for which we collected state opinion data, the ideological orderings of state electorates appear extremely stable. States moved around only slightly on the scale of relative Democratic versus Republican partisanship and hardly at all on ideology.
Frontmatter
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp i-iv
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References
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 254-264
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9 - State opinion over time
- Robert S. Erikson, University of Houston, Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, John P. McIver, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Statehouse Democracy
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- 04 August 2010
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- 28 January 1994, pp 212-243
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Summary
So far, our discussion has focused solely on political life in the states as it is quantified for the late 1970s and the 1980s. The present chapter expands the focus backward in time, in order to place our findings in historical perspective. For this task, we assemble measures of state ideology and partisanship from earlier eras. These measures, drawn from Gallup polls from 1936 to 1963, are far noisier than the contemporary measures of state ideology and partisanship that have dominated our discussion so far.
Measurement error demands that our indicators of “historical” ideology and partisanship be analyzed with considerable care. Still, Gallupbased measures of early ideology and partisanship provide helpful leverage for understanding the historical continuity of state-level public opinion and its consequences – from the times of the New Deal to the Reagan presidency. In the following pages, we will see that earlier state-level ideological sentiment may have been less stable than we found for the more recent period, 1976-1988. We will also see evidence that even for the 1930s to the 1960s, state ideology was an important influence on state policy.
HISTORICAL MEASURES OF STATE OPINION
Chapter 2 demonstrated that for the 13 years from which our CBS/NYT survey data were collected, states moved very little in terms of their relative positions on the scales of net ideological identification and partisan identification. The stability of the states was particularly evident in the case of ideology.
Political Parties, Public Opinion, and State Policy in the United States
- Robert S. Erikson, Gerald C. Wright, Jr., John P. McIver
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- American Political Science Review / Volume 83 / Issue 3 / September 1989
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- 01 August 2014, pp. 729-750
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- September 1989
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When comparing states in the United States, one finds little correlation between state opinion and party control of the state legislature or between party control and state policy. Although these low correlations seeming to indicate that partisan politics is irrelevant to the representation process, the opposite is true. State opinion influences the ideological positions of state parties, and parties' responsiveness to state opinion helps to determine their electoral success. Moreover, parties move toward the center once in office. For these reasons, state electoral politics is largely responsible for the correlation between state opinion and state policy.
State Political Culture and Public Opinion
- Robert S. Erikson, John P. McIver, Gerald C. Wright, Jr.
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- American Political Science Review / Volume 81 / Issue 3 / September 1987
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- 01 August 2014, pp. 797-813
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- September 1987
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Do the states of the United States matter (or are they of no political consequence)? Using a data set with over 50 thousand respondents, we demonstrate the influence of state political culture on partisanship and ideology. For individuals, we find that the state of residence is an important predictor of partisan and ideological identification, independent of their demographic characteristics. At the aggregate level, state culture dominates state demography as a source of state-to-state differences in opinion. In general, geographic location may be a more important source of opinion than previously thought. One indication of the importance of state culture is that state effects on partisanship and ideology account for about half of the variance in state voting in recent presidential elections.