Matthew M. Singer

The Sensitive Left and the Impervious Right Multilevel Models and the Politics of Inequality, Ideology, and Legitimacy in Europe

Recent years have seen increased attention to integrating what we know about individual citizens with what we know about macro-level contexts that vary across countries. This article discusses the growing literature on how peoples interpretations, opinions, and actions are shaped by variable contextual parameters and provides a novel substantive application. Using surveys conducted in 20 European democracies, the authors examine the effect of income inequality on peoples attitudes about the functioning of the political system and trust in public institutions. They find that citizens in countries with higher levels of income inequality express more negative attitudes toward public institutions. Moreover, they show that the negative effect of inequality on attitudes toward the political system is particularly powerful among individuals on the political left. In contrast, inequalitys negative effect on peoples faith in the system is muted among those on the right.

Who Says “It’s the Economy”? Cross-National and Cross-Individual Variation in the Salience of Economic Performance:

Theories of government approval usually assume that voters care about economic outcomes. This assumption frequently does not hold. Data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems demonstrate that although the economy is often the most important issue in an election, its place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and electoral contexts. The economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns under conditions of economic recession, volatility, and economic underdevelopment. Moreover, at the individual level the salience of economic performance rises with unemployment and economic vulnerability. Governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy, as do large-scale terrorist attacks. If the economy is not perceived as important, its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated. Thus, variations in the economy’s salience need to be further incorporated into studies linking economic and political outcomes.

Context Counts: The Election Cycle, Development, and the Nature of Economic Voting

Economic perceptions affect incumbent support, but debate persists over whether voters focus on past or future performance and whether they view the economy in primarily sociotropic or egotropic terms. We theorize the nature of economic voting depends on the context. Evidence from 18 Latin American countries (1995–2009) suggest prospective voting predominates early in the election cycle, but retrospective voting gains traction as the incumbent’s record develops. Voters emphasize the national economy over personal finances except in the least developed countries. Thus the contexts in which voters are embedded not only affect the degree of economic voting but also its very nature.

Support for Polyarchy in the Americas

This study measures support for the basic rights, liberties, and practices associated with polyarchy in 12 Latin American democracies. Specifically, it identifies five profiles of support for polyarchy’s core values and norms—public contestation, inclusive participation, limits on executive authority, and institutional checks and balances. Although citizens who fit the polyarch profile accept all of polyarchy’s principles, those who fit one of the four mixed support profiles (power constrainer, power checker, power delegator, power restrainer) accept only some of them while rejecting other core democratic principles. Long-run factors emphasized by modernization and cultural theories (e.g., education, wealth, political engagement) are closely associated with the polyarch support profile. However, short-range performance factors (e.g., economic perceptions; crime, discrimination, and corruption victimization; voting for losing presidential candidates; presidential approval) may better explain why citizens fit one particular mixed profile over another and particularly explain willingness to delegate authority to the executive at the expense of other institutions.

Inequality and Deliberative Development: Revisiting Bolivia's Experience with the PRSP

The deliberative-development approach to policy-making has gained popularity in both academic and policy circles. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the requirements necessary for deliberation to have beneficial effects on policy, some of which are detailed in this article, in particular the need for equality among deliberators. The article examines Bolivias 2000 National Dialogue and demonstrates the effects of inequality - not between elites and non-elites, but between groups within civil society - on the legitimacy of the outcome. Its findings have important implications for the design of deliberative-development institutions. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Field Research in Developing Countries: Hitting the Road Running

heavailabilityofrelativelyreliableandcompa-rabledataonlineandtheincreasingemphasisonstatisticalandformalresearchmethodshasledmanypoliticalscientiststodismissresearchin foreign countries as a waste of time andmoney.Weleavethatdebatetoothers(see,e.g.,ComparativePoliticsOrganizedSection2005;QualitativeMethodsOrga-nizedSection2004).Instead,weoffersuggestionsformaxi-mizing the contributions of fieldwork to the production oforiginalresearch.Wepayparticularattentiontoresearchindevelopingcountriesowingtotheuniquechallengesofunder-takingresearchthere,butwebelieveourinsightsareapplica-bletofieldresearchmoregenerally.Thisarticleisbasedonaworkshopwedesignedtoprovidepracticaladviceforgraduatestudentsandtosteerthemtowardexistingresourcesonthetopic.Wecovertheidentificationofshort-andlong-termgoals,thenecessarystepstoprepareforaproductivefieldvisit,theschedulingandconductofper-sonalinterviews,thechallengesoffocusgroupsandpartici-pantobservation,theobligationandopportunitytofacilitateaccesstoyourresearchresultsinyourfieldsite,aswellaspracticalandsecurityconsiderations.Throughoutthepiece,weareattunedtohowmultipleandoftenconflictingsourcesofidentitycaninhibitorinsomecasesenhancetheoverallexperienceoffieldworkinforeigncountries.Wespecificallyaddress power relations in interviews, focus groups, andfollow-upcommunicationwithinterviewees.

Elite Polarization and the Electoral Impact of Left-Right Placements: Evidence from Latin America, 1995–2009

While political polarization may lead to gridlock and other negative policy outcomes, representation is likely to be enhanced when parties differentiate themselves from each other and make it easier for voters to see the connection between their personal ideologies and the electoral offerings. These differences between parties may be especially important in developing democracies, where voters are still learning parties’ priorities and where parties do not always emphasize issues when campaigning. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of elite polarization in Latin America since the early 1990s based on legislative surveys. Individual-level voting patterns from mass survey data confirm that the connection between voters’ self-placement on the left-right scale and their electoral choice is stronger in polarized party systems, even when controlling for other party system factors like the age of the party system or electoral fragmentation. This effect on voting behavior is not immediate, however, as voters take time to recognize the new cues being provided by the changing party system.

Public support for Latin American presidents: The cyclical model in comparative perspective

What characterizes the dynamics of presidential popularity? Research based on the United States of America finds popularity exhibits an almost law-like cyclicality over a president’s term: high post-election “honeymoon” approval rates deteriorate before experiencing an end-of-term boost as new elections approach. We contend that cyclical approval dynamics are not specific to the USA, but rather characteristic of presidential systems more generally, despite heterogeneity in their socio-economic and political contexts. Testing this proposition requires overcoming a key empirical problem: lack of comparable data. We do so by employing time-series inputs from 324 opinion surveys from a new publicly available database—the Executive Approval Database 1.0—to craft quarterly measures of popularity across 18 Latin American contemporary presidential democracies. Our analysis strongly confirms the cyclical approval model for the region. The conclusion identifies avenues for future research on the relationships across approval, presidentialism, and electoral, institutional, and socio-economic factors afforded by the new data resource we present here.

Delegating Away Democracy: How Good Representation and Policy Successes Can Undermine Democratic Legitimacy

Theories of democratic legitimacy argue that people who believe the government is well managed and represents their interests are likely to defend the democratic status quo. Principal-agent theory predicts, however, that these same groups are also more likely to support executive actions that threaten vertical or horizontal accountability. Citizens who feel represented by an ideologically sympathetic and competent executive may be willing to delegate the president additional authority to enact their agenda, even at the expense of democratic principles. Survey data from Latin America are largely consistent with the principal-agent hypothesis; those who voted for the ruling party in the previous election or who perceive that the economy is strong say they not only like democracy and oppose coups but also support limits on critical actors and opposition parties and are willing to let the president bypass the legislature and court. Thus to understand the breakdown of democracy, we must not only examine the conditions that leave the losers of political and economic processes satisfied with the process that culminated in their defeat but also identify conditions when winners tolerate electoral and institutional challenges and are willing to protect space for public criticism.

Mobilizing the young vote: Direct mail voter guides in the 2015 Chicago mayoral election*:

Previous studies have shown nonpartisan direct mail interventions have a small turnout effect. It is less clear, however, what effect these interventions have with regard to cognitive mobilization of young voters. We report the results of a large (N=52,324) experiment conducted during the February 2015 mayoral election in Chicago. A random sample of 22,179 registrants between 18 and 30 were sent a voter guide containing two sets of orienting political information for the five candidates: a list of their endorsements and their policy positions on five issues in the campaign. We find turnout among the treated group was 0.9 points higher than the control group which did not receive a guide (33.6% compared with 32.7%; SE is 0.003). We find, however, that treated registrants in above-median household income census tracts are significantly more likely to vote than treated registrants in lower-income census tracts.