José D. Villalobos

Group Empathy Theory: The Effect of Group Empathy on US Intergroup Attitudes and Behavior in the Context of Immigration Threats

Group Empathy Theory posits empathy felt by members of one group can boost support for another even when the groups are in direct competition for rights, security, and resources. We employ our theory to explain divergent reactions of majority versus minority groups to immigration threats. We conduct a two-wave national survey experiment with 1,799 participants consisting of a randomized sample of Anglos and randomized, stratified oversamples of African Americans and Latinos. The experiment manipulates racial/ethnic cues in a vignette depicting an ambiguous yet potentially threatening incident at an immigrant detention center. African Americans and Latinos are significantly more likely to side with minority detainees and support pro–civil rights policies and actions. The theory’s presumed causal mechanism—group empathy—is substantially stronger among African Americans and Latinos and has a significant mediating effect on such distinct reactions.

Manager-in-Chief: Applying Public Management Theory to Examine White House Chief of Staff Performance

In an effort to examine the causal determinants of performance dynamics for the administrative presidency, the authors apply empirical public management theory to White House administration to explain managerial performance. Utilizing original survey data that measure the perceptions of former officials from the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, we conduct quantitative analyses to determine the extent to which a chief of staff’s background, relationship with the president, and internal as well as external management approaches shape overall perceptions of White House administrative efforts. The authors find that managerial dimensions matter considerably when explaining the dynamics of White House organizational performance.

Presidential Staffing and Public Opinion: How Public Opinion Influences Politicization

Scholars traditionally frame presidential efforts to politicize the federal bureaucracy as the result of divergence between the presidents preferences and an agencys output. The authors argue that presidential concern with agency output is dynamic and is in part conditioned by the presidents relationship with the public. To assess the relationship between politicization and public opinion, the authors use a data set that combines information on presidential efforts to politicize the Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 2004 with that of public attitudes concerning the presidents handling of the economy. Their results indicate that public opinion does indeed bear a marginal, yet statistically significant, influence on presidential efforts to manage the federal bureaucracy, thus, providing a new contribution to the debate concerning presidents and the politics of bureaucratic structure.

Group Empathy in Response to Nonverbal Racial/Ethnic Cues: A National Experiment on Immigration Policy Attitudes

In this study, we argue that nonverbal racial/ethnic cues can activate one’s empathy toward disadvantaged out-groups, particularly when such cues resonate with one’s own in-group cultural experiences with discrimination. To explain this phenomenon, we propose Group Empathy Theory and test our expectations via a national survey experiment on undocumented immigration. We find trait-level group empathy is strongly linked with empathic reactions to vignettes depicting immigrant detainees in distress, which in turn affect immigration policy attitudes. We also find African Americans and Latinos are considerably more likely than Anglos to exhibit empathy for disadvantaged groups other than their own and oppose deportation policies aimed at undocumented immigrants.

Agency Input as a Policy Making Tool: Analyzing the Influence of Agency Input on Presidential Policy Success in Congress

This study posits a theoretical framework for understanding the role and value of agency input in presidential-legislative policy making. The author asserts that by using agency input for policy development, presidents instill their proposals with a degree of bureaucratic objectivity, expertise, process transparency, and agency support, which aids their legislative passage while lowering the extent of changes made to policy substance in the process. To test his hypotheses, the author conducts binary and ordered logistic regression analyses using pooled cross-sectional data across 12 administrations from 1949 to 2010. The author finds that agency input serves as a key component for increased presidential-legislative success.

Exploring the invocation of emotion in presidential speeches

Scholars have long explored why presidential rhetoric is important and how it matters for public leadership and policy-making. However, relatively few works have considered the role that emotion plays in leadership communication and no research has conducted a thorough examination of the various types of emotions invoked in presidential rhetoric, their frequency, or how they have shaped presidential discourse over time. In this study, presidential speeches across 13 administrations (1933–2011) are examined to provide a first assessment of the extent to which US presidents have invoked fear, anger, and hope across policy domains and key types of speeches.

Political information and emotions in ethnic conflict interventions

Purpose – This study aims to explore the effects of political information and anger on the publics cognitive processing and foreign policy preferences concerning third‐party interventions in ethnic conflict.Design/methodology/approach – The study employs an experimental design, wherein the authors manipulate policy‐specific information by generating ad hoc political information related to ethnic conflict. The statistical methods of analysis are logistic regression and analysis of covariance.Findings – The results demonstrate that both political information and anger have a significant impact on an individuals cognitive processing and policy preferences regarding ethnic conflict interventions. Specifically, political information increases ones proclivity to choose non‐military policy options, whereas anger instigates support for aggressive policies. Both factors result in faster decision making with lower amounts of information accessed. However, the interaction of political information and anger is not...

Obama's Empty Cupboard: Contending with Vacancies and the Threat to Neutral Competence

Abstract In this essay, we focus on the public administration challenge concerning the rising number of politically motivated administrative vacancies resulting from George W. Bushs tenure in office with which President Barack Obama must now contend. We argue that the hyper-politicization of personnel decision-making during the presidency of George W. Bush left many parts of the federal bureaucracy understaffed, yet more densely populated by staffers chosen more for ideological and political congruence than administrative competence. For President Obama to achieve key aspects of his policy agenda, he must first attend to fixing these staffing problems and then to reforming the personnel process to prevent similar problems from plaguing future presidential administrations.