Mark Pickup

Reversing the Causal Arrow: The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions in the 2000–2004 U.S. Presidential Election Cycle

Many economic voting models assume that individual voters’ reactions to incumbents are strongly conditioned by their perceptions of the performance of the macroeconomy. However, the direction of causality between economic perceptions and political preferences is unclear: economic perceptions can be a consequence of incumbent support rather than an influence on it. We develop the latter thesis by examining the dynamic relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and several measures of political preferences—approval, partisanship, and vote—in the 2000–2004 U.S. presidential election cycle using the ANES 2000-2002-2004 panel study to estimate structural equation model extensions of the Anderson and Hsiao estimator for panel data. Our findings confirm that the conventional wisdom misrepresents the relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and incumbent partisanship: economic perceptions are consistently and robustly conditioned by political preferences. Individuals’ economic percepti...

A Hierarchy of Preferences

Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a dense network of multiple ties between countries. The spread of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), however, is not uniform: some countries have signed a multitude of deals, while others remain much less involved. This article presents a longitudinal network analysis method to analyze the patterns of the formation of trade agreements, based on the mutual codetermination of network structure and agreement formation. The findings suggest that PTAs spread endogenously because of structural arbitrage effects in the network, and that they establish a hierarchy among countries. Rich countries form ties with each other and middle-income countries, who themselves create a horizontal layer of PTAs, but least-developed countries are left behind and do not form many ties. Supplanting the multilateral trade regime with preferential agreements therefore creates a system of highly asymmetrical relationships of weaker spokes around a few hubs.

The Coevolution of Trade Agreement Networks and Democracy

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if the PTA partners are themselves democracies.

Polls and the Vote in Britain

Little is known about the evolution of electoral sentiment over British election cycles. How does party support converge on the eventual election outcome? Do preferences evolve in a patterned and understandable way? What role does the official election campaign period play? In this article, we begin to address these issues. We outline an empirical analysis relating poll results over the course of the election cycle and the final vote for the three main political parties. Then we examine the relationship relying on vote intention polls for the seventeen British general elections between 1950 and 2010. Predictably, polls become increasingly informative about the vote over the election cycle. More surprisingly, early polls contain substantial information about the final outcome, much more than we see in presidential and congressional elections in the US. The final outcome in Britain comes into focus over the long campaign and is to a large extent in place well before the official election campaign begins. The findings are understandable, we think, but raise other questions, which we begin to consider in a concluding section.

Threat, prejudice and the impact of the riots in England

This paper examines how a major outbreak of rioting in England in 2011 impacted on prejudice toward three minority groups in Britain: Muslims, Black British and East Europeans. We test whether the riots mobilized individuals by increasing feelings of realistic and symbolic threat and ultimately prejudice, or whether the riots galvanized those already concerned about minorities, thus strengthening the relationship between threat and prejudice. We conducted three national surveys - before, after and one year on from the riots - and show that after the riots individuals were more likely to perceive threats to societys security and culture, and by extension express increased prejudice toward Black British and East European minorities. We find little evidence of a galvanizing impact. One year later, threat and prejudice had returned to pre-riots levels; however, results from a survey experiment show that priming memories of the riots can raise levels of prejudice.

Why did the polls overestimate Liberal Democrat support? Sources of polling error in the 2010 British general election

Abstract Pollsters once again found themselves in the firing line in the aftermath of the 2010 British general election. Many critics noted that nearly all pollsters in 2010 expected a substantial surge for the Liberal Democrats that did not materialize. Basing conclusions regarding the relative merits of pollsters or benefits of methodological design features on inspection of just the final poll from each pollster is inherently problematic, because each poll is subject to sampling error. This paper uses a state‐space model of polls from across the course of the 2010 election campaign which allows us to assess the extent to which particular pollsters systematically over‐ or under‐estimate each main party’s share of the vote, while allowing for both the usual margins of error for each poll and changes in public opinion from day‐to‐day. Thus, we can assess the evidence for systematic differences between pollsters’ results according to the use of particular methodologies, and estimate how much of the discrepancy between the final polls and the election outcome is due to methodological differences that are associated with systematic error in the polls. We find robust evidence of an over‐estimation in Liberal Democrat support, but do not find evidence to support the hypothesis that the polls erred due to a late swing away from the party, nor that any of the methodological choices made by pollsters were significantly associated with this over‐estimation.

Testing for Fractional Integration in Public Opinion in the Presence of Structural Breaks: A Comment on Lebo and Young

I must begin by stating that I very much like the article by Matthew Lebo and Everett Young (in this journal). I think the basic argument that leadership as a determinant of party support will matter less for some parties compared to others is fundamentally correct and an important point. At the same time, I feel it is important to sound a warning about the findings stated in this paper that party popularity is a fractionally integrated time series. These authors are not the first to make such a claim (Box-Steffensmeier & Smith, 1996, 1998), nor is this the first time that the lead author of this article has made this observation (Clarke and Lebo, 2003; Lebo et al. , 2000). Such claims are by no means innocuous. If they turn out to be true, they must be taken very seriously. A fractionally integrated time series is one that is neither I(0) stationary nor I(d) integrated for any integer value of d. It is an integrated series of a non-integer value of d. 1 This is important because to treat a fractionally integrated series as I(0) or I(1) could result in spurious findings. A time series with the value of d between 0 and 1 is considered intermediate between I(0) and I(1) series. If d <0.5 the series is mean reverting but at a much slower rate than a I(0) series, and if d >=0.5 it has infinite variance and is not stationary. Such time series processes provide a useful theoretical alternative to the stark either/or categorisation of time series as stationary or integrated. However, fractional integration is by no means a simple concept. Much of the literature on fractional integration is done in the frequency domain (rather than the time domain), in which very few political scientists are trained. Fractional integration is particularly difficult for models of cointegration, which have become increasingly important in political

Are they listening? Public opinion, interest groups and government responsiveness

Abstract What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. It is argued here that interest groups importantly influence government responsiveness to public opinion, but that the effect varies by type of interest group: while cause groups increase the responsiveness of governments to their electorate, sectional groups decrease government responsiveness. Drawing on a new and unique dataset, this article examines the relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government expenditure across 13 policy areas in Germany from 1986 until 2012 and shows that interest groups indeed have a differential effect on the responsiveness of governments. The article’s findings have important implications for understanding political representation and the largely overlooked relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government policy.

The Influence of Cause and Sectional Group Lobbying on Government Responsiveness

Voters are increasingly concerned that special interests control the policy process. Yet, the literature on representation is more optimistic: elected officials face strong incentives to listen to voters—not just lobby groups—and this makes for more responsive policies. Building on recent work, we argue a more nuanced point: different types of groups have different effects on responsiveness. We show empirically that lobbying from “cause” groups—representing diffuse interests like climate change—strengthens responsiveness, while lobbying from “sectional” groups—representing industry and professional associations—has no observable effect. Our project uses a novel data set of Canadian lobbying registrations spanning fifteen policy areas from 1990 to 2009. Using a dynamic panel model, we test how interest group lobbying moderates the effect of voter issue attention on government spending. Our findings contribute to contemporary debates over the influence of organized groups, suggesting some interest groups may improve representation.

Problem detection in legislative oversight: an analysis of legislative committee agendas in the UK and US

ABSTRACT This paper outlines a dynamic problem-detection model of legislative oversight where legislative committees engage in information-gathering to identify emerging policy problems. It is argued that activities of legislative committees are responsive to indicators of problem status across a range of policy domains. This enables committees to react to problems before, or at least simultaneously to, citizens. Our analyses use a new dataset on the policy agenda of UK Parliamentary Select Committees in combination with directly comparable data on US Congressional hearings. Aggregate measures of problem status (e.g., GDP, crime rates) and public opinion on the ‘most important problem’ facing the country are used as independent variables. The comparison between a well-established and developing committee system offers insights into common dynamics across institutional contexts. The findings show that committee agendas in both the UK and US are responsive to problem status for the majority of issues.