Adam J. Berinsky

Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict

Many political scientists and policymakers argue that unmediated events—the successes and failures on the battlefield—determine whether the mass public will support military excursions. The public supports war, the story goes, if the benefits of action outweigh the costs of conflict. Other scholars contend that the balance of elite discourse influences public support for war. I draw upon survey evidence from World War II and the current war in Iraq to come to a common conclusion regarding public support for international interventions. I find little evidence that citizens make complex cost/benefit calculations when evaluating military action. Instead, I find that patterns of elite conflict shape opinion concerning war. When political elites disagree as to the wisdom of intervention, the public divides as well. But when elites come to a common interpretation of a political reality, the public gives them great latitude to wage war.

The Two Faces of Public Opinion

presented at the 1998 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. For many helpful discussions regarding this project and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Jake Bowers, Fred Cutler, Paul Freedman, Kim Gross, Vince Hutchings, John Jackson, Mark Joslyn, Cindy Kam, Ken Kollman, Nick Winter, seminar participants at Harvard University, Princeton University, The University of Chicago, and The University of Minnesota, and especially Nancy Burns and Donald Kinder. I, of course, am responsible for any errors that remain. The data used in this paper were made available by the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research. Neither the collector of the original data nor the consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. This material is based upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. All data and documentation necessary to replicate this analysis can be obtained from the author. The data analysis presented in this paper was conducted using LIMDEP 7.0.

Making Sense of Issues Through Media Frames: Understanding the Kosovo Crisis

How do people make sense of politics? Integrating empirical results in communication studies on framing with models of comprehension in cognitive psychology, we argue that people understand complicated event sequences by organizing information in a manner that conforms to the structure of a good story. To test this claim, we carried out a pair of experiments. In each, we presented people with news reports on the 1999 Kosovo crisis that were framed in story form, either to promote or prevent U.S. intervention. Consistent with expectations, we found that framing news about the crisis as a story affected what people remembered, how they structured what they remembered, and the opinions they expressed on the actions government should take.

The Perverse Consequences of Electoral Reform in the United States

A number of electoral reforms have been enacted in the United States in the past three decades that are designed to increase turnout by easing restrictions on the casting of ballots. Both proponents and opponents of electoral reforms agree that these reforms should increase the demographic representativeness of the electorate by reducing the direct costs of voting, thereby increasing turnout among less-privileged groups who, presumably, are most sensitive to the costs of coming to the polls. In fact, these reforms have been greatly contested because both major political parties believe that increasing turnout among less-privileged groups will benefit Democratic politicians. I review evidence from numerous studies of electoral reform to demonstrate that reforms designed to make it easier for registered voters to cast their ballots actually increase, rather than reduce, socioeconomicbiases in the composition of the voting public. I conclude with a recommendation that we shift the focus of electoral reform from an emphasis on institutional changes to a concentration on political engagement.

Transitional winners and losers: Attitudes toward EU membership in post-communist countries

Joshua A. Tucker is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs, PrincetonUniversity, 322 Bendheim Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 (jtucker@princeton.edu).Alexander C. Pacek is Associate Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University,College Station, Texas 77843 (e339ap@polisci.tamu.edu). Adam J. Berinsky is AssistantProfessor of Politics, Princeton University, 41 Corwin Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544(berinsky@princeton.edu).We thank Guy Whitten, Randy Stevenson, Christopher Anderson, Jan Leighley, andBenjamin Radcliff for useful comments and support and Sara De Master and JamesMcGhee for research assistance. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers fortheir helpful comments and suggestions. All data analysis was conducted using Stata 6.0and Clarify 1.3. A previous version of this article was presented at the 2001 Annual Con-ference of the Midwest Political Science Association. Authors’ names are listed in reversealphabetical order.

Who votes by mail? A dynamic model of the individual-level consequences of voting-by-mail systems

Election administrators and public officials often consider changes in electoral laws, hoping that these changes will increase voter turnout and make the electorate more reflective of the voting-age population. The most recent of these innovations is voting-by-mail (VBM), a procedure by which ballots are sent to an address for every registered voter. Over the last 2 decades, VBM has spread across the United States, unaccompanied by much empirical evaluation of its impact on either voter turnout or the stratification of the electorate. In this study, we fill this gap in our knowledge by assessing the impact of VBM in one state, Oregon. We carry out this assessment at the individual level, using data over a range of elections. We argue that VBM does increase voter turnout in the long run, primarily by making it easier for current voters to continue to participate, rather than by mobilizing nonvoters into the electorate. These effects, however, are not uniform across all groups in the electorate. Although VBM in Oregon does not exert any influence on the partisan composition of the electorate, VBM increases, rather than diminishes, the resource stratification of the electorate. Contrary to the expectations of many reformers, VBM advantages the resource-rich by keeping them in the electorate, and VBM does little to change the behavior of the resource-poor. In short, VBM increases turnout, but it does so without making the electorate more descriptively representative of the voting-age population.

Silent Voices: Social Welfare Policy Opinions and Political Equality in America

For many helpful discussions regarding this project and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Michael Alvarez, Larry Bartels, Jake Bowers, Nancy Burns, Jamie Druckman, Stanley Feldman, Fred Greenstein, John Jackson, Donald Kinder, Ken Kollman, Tali Mendelberg, Jonathan Nagler, Mike Traugott, Joshua Tucker, Cara Wong, and seminar participants at New York University, Princeton University, and Yale University. I would also like to thank Paul Gerber for research assistance. I, of course, am responsible for any errors that remain. The data used in this article were made available by the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research. Neither the collector of the original data nor the consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

Rumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation

This article explores belief in political rumors surrounding the health care reforms enacted by Congress in 2010. Refuting rumors with statements from unlikely sources can, under certain circumstances, increase the willingness of citizens to reject rumors regardless of their own political predilections. Such source credibility effects, while well known in the political persuasion literature, have not been applied to the study of rumor. Though source credibility appears to be an effective tool for debunking political rumors, risks remain. Drawing upon research from psychology on ‘fluency’ – the ease of information recall – this article argues that rumors acquire power through familiarity. Attempting to quash rumors through direct refutation may facilitate their diffusion by increasing fluency. The empirical results find that merely repeating a rumor increases its power.

Political Context and the Survey Response: The Dynamics of Racial Policy Opinion

Several recent studies suggest that the social dynamics at work in the survey interview may play a significant role in determining the answers individuals give to survey questions, most notably on questions relating to racial policies. In this note I reexamine and extend the conclusions of my previous study (1999) that finds opinion polls overstate support for policies designed to promote racial equality. I use data from the early 1970s to show that the strong social desirability effects I find in the 1990s do not characterize opinion in earlier eras. The analyses reported here indicate that while we need to pay attention to and account for the social context surrounding sensitive issues when gauging public opinion, we must also pay attention to changes in that context over time.

The science of fake news

Addressing fake news requires a multidisciplinary effort The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, we discuss extant social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanisms by which it spreads. Fake news has a long history, but we focus on unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation. Beyond selected references in the text, suggested further reading can be found in the supplementary materials.