Political Research Quarterly

Debate about the sources of intelligence leading to bin Laden’s location has revived the question as to whether interrogational torture is effective. Answering this question is a necessary—if not sufficient—condition for any justification of interrogational torture. Given the impossibility of approaching the question empirically, I address it theoretically, asking whether the use of torture to extract information satisfies reasonable expectations about reliability of information as well as normative constraints on the frequency and intensity of torture. I find that although information from interrogational torture is unreliable, it is likely to be used frequently and harshly.

The authors examine how changes in perceptions of threat affect individuals’ policy views as well as the political implications of this relationship. They administered a survey experiment to a representative sample of the U.S. population in which they exogenously manipulated individuals’ perceived likelihood of a future terrorist attack on American soil and assessed subsequent changes in support for terrorism-related public policies. They find that reducing perceived threat substantially decreases support for policies intended to combat terrorism and that this effect is concentrated among Democrats who believe another terrorist attack is likely to occur. These results suggest that threat, as part of the larger information environment, can alter partisan divisions on controversial policies.

This article examines the influence of national government activity on the politics of embryonic stem cell research in the American states. Its analysis of bill introduction patterns between 1999 and 2008 suggests that President Bush’s nationally televised address on stem cell research and the debate over the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act increased the probability that officials in a state would introduce stem-cell-related legislation in a given year. National activity also seemed to increase the number of bills that legislators introduced. These results illustrate how political forces can increase the salience of public policies and thereby serve as diffusion mechanisms during the agenda-setting process.

The authors investigate whether the news media and the tone of actual ads aired during a political campaign influence people’s perceptions of campaign ad tone. Using data on the content of political advertising, local television news coverage, and local newspaper coverage in nine races in five midwestern states in 2006, the authors discover that perceptions of ad tone respond to both exposure to advertising and exposure to local news media. Both positive and negative advertising drive tone perceptions, and the impact of ad coverage depends not on its volume or mentions of tone but on whether that coverage is framed strategically or not.

Explanations for differences in political preferences between men and women continue to be debated, generating more heat than light in attempts to locate their source and potential influence. The reason for this confusion rests on the lack of conceptual clarity concerning the difference between sex, typically referring to biological differences, and gender, assumed to result from socialization, and the difference these constructs might elicit in political outcomes. Utilizing two gender scales, the authors find gender identity exerts an impact on voter preferences above and beyond sex. They also find that individual differences in gender identity are not found to result from social influences but largely derive from unique experiences and innate disposition. The results have substantial implications for social scientists who theorize about and investigate sex and gender in studies of political attitudes and behaviors.

Using data from 1870 to 2008, the authors attempt to resolve competing claims about the nature of how citizen initiatives affect turnout in the American states. They provide evidence that mobilization is the mechanism through which direct democracy increases turnout. Contrary to previous research, they show that the adoption of the initiative and past usage of the process do not lead to higher turnout in a given election. Citizen initiative campaigns mobilize the electorate in current elections, and the number of competitive initiative elections has a greater effect on turnout than uncompetitive races.

Studies comparing the ideological leanings of voters and elected officials are often hampered by the lack of a common measure. The authors use legislative referenda—on which state legislators and voters both vote on the same issue—as bridging observations to develop a common measure for both. They use this measure to help assess two theories of legislative representation, the well-known dyadic model and a partisan model that assumes legislators are also accountable to a collective party agenda. Examining referenda votes during several sessions of the California Assembly, the authors report several findings that are consistent with the partisan model. They find that legislators are significantly more ideologically extreme than the median voter in their districts. They also find that members of the majority party are considerably more extreme relative to their districts than members of the minority party are and that the majority party becomes even more extreme the longer it maintains control of the chamber.

This article employs data gathered in a 2006 national survey to study how the American electorate evaluates a trade-off between competitive elections and winning to implement preferred policies. The results show that voters do not share in the prevailing elite consensus about the overriding virtues of competition. A multilevel model indicates that ideological extremism, partisanship, social trust, and several other individual-level variables have predictable relationships with preferences for winning or competition. In addition, electoral margin in the 2006 congressional district election interacts with support for winning or losing candidates. Voters supporting candidates who are soundly defeated take refuge in competition, whereas those supporting candidates who win decisively view victory as a means of implementing policy preferences. Additional analyses show that preferences for winning and competition influence various forms of political participation. By emphasizing public involvement in policy making, voters expressing a preference to win echo “responsible party government” critiques of the democratic shortcomings of the American political system.

Observers of U.S. elections have reason to believe that third parties are not relevant political actors since they rarely win many votes or influence which major party wins an election. Researchers should use dependent variables besides vote choice and vote share to find third party effects that are a normal aspect of the American two-party system. A spatial model of elections motivates the hypothesis that a higher likelihood of third party entry induces greater major party candidate divergence. An empirical test that uses candidate positioning data in the 1996 U.S. House elections provides evidence of this third party effect.

“New paternalist” welfare programs are premised on the idea that service users lack certain capacities and require “supervisory” programs to guide them toward self-sufficiency. The author argues that the use of new paternalist programs is incompatible with what she claims to be a just state’s obligation to foster autonomy. This is best understood in light of a notion of paternalism as implicated in oppressive power relations rather than solely as interventionist policy. By examining workfare and pregnancy prevention programs, the author sheds light on underlying gendered assumptions about the relationship between the autonomous self and both paid employment and care work.

This article tests theories of group threat, competition, contact, and shared pain. The author argues that economic downturns undermine rather than increase support for prejudice. The absolute pain of a recession is felt by all groups in society, even if the relative costs are often distributed unevenly across groups. While nationalists can scapegoat minorities for economic woes, competing elites have incentives to adopt economic frames that focus on individual suffering. Empirical support comes from a subnational research design that includes quantitative data from Latvia’s 565 localities and from a qualitative analysis of the framing techniques adopted by Latvian political parties.

The expansion of Indian gaming has produced significant financial gains for Indian nations across the United States. In response to this influx of revenue, tribes have expanded their political activity, particularly in those areas that are heavily resource dependent. In this article the authors argue that adopting an organized interests perspective enhances scholars’ understanding of tribal political activity. To demonstrate this, they study Indian gaming contributions received by senators from 1990 to 2004. The authors apply broadly utilized theories of contribution patterns based on the value of access for a group and the cost of access to a member, focusing on ideology, access, electoral security, and constituency characteristics. The results indicate that tribes respond to all of these factors in ways similar to more traditional organized interests.

This article describes a field experiment designed to test the efficacy of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) techniques in a new context and for an understudied population. It evaluates the effectiveness of nonpartisan GOTV messages delivered via personal contact and mail in a heavily Latino community during the 2004 presidential campaign. It proposes and tests an alternative model of voter turnout based on Zaller’s receive–accept–sample model of public opinion. The findings are consistent with the authors’ predictions; mobilization efforts increase turnout, but mobilization effects vary across citizens based on their propensity to vote. There is a large increase among episodic voters but little increase among habitual or registered nonvoters.

Is Supreme Court legitimacy affected by the way justices explain their decisions to the public? Existing work shows a link between legitimacy and case outcomes but often overlooks the impact of opinion content. Using a novel experimental design, the author measures the effect of three different types of judicial arguments on public support for the Court. The results suggest that the rationales used by justices in their opinions can affect institutional legitimacy, but to a lesser degree than conventional wisdom suggests. Taken together with other recent legitimacy research, these findings have important implications and set the stage for follow-up research.

Typologies are well-established analytic tools in the social sciences. They can be “put to work” in forming concepts, refining measurement, exploring dimensionality, and organizing explanatory claims. Yet some critics, basing their arguments on what they believe are relevant norms of quantitative measurement, consider typologies old-fashioned and unsophisticated. This critique is methodologically unsound, and research based on typologies can and should proceed according to high standards of rigor and careful measurement. These standards are summarized in guidelines for careful work with typologies, and an illustrative inventory of typologies, as well as a brief glossary, are included online.