Philip Edward Jones

Which Buck Stops Here? Accountability for Policy Positions and Policy Outcomes in Congress

What do constituents hold their representatives accountable for? Previous work outlines two distinct but often conflated theories of accountability: democratic theory suggests that voters respond to the policy positions representatives take; retrospective voting theories suggest that they respond to the outcomes of these policies. Using new survey data, this article demonstrates that perceived congruence with their senators’ policy positions influences voters’ decisions much more than do perceptions of peace and prosperity. This finding holds when correcting for endogeneity using instrumental variables analysis, when considering members of the majority and minority parties separately, and when looking at specific policy areas. Replicating previous studies of retrospective voting suggests that they overstated the importance of policy outcomes for congressional elections due to omitted variable bias. The buck that stops with Members of Congress is for the positions they take, not for the policy outcomes the...

Online emotional appeals and political participation: The effect of candidate affect on mass behavior

The role that emotions play in shaping mass political behavior is increasingly well researched. This study refocuses the debate to explore the effect that the emotions expressed by candidates (target affect) through new media have on participation, rather than the effect of emotions felt by voters (observer affect). A unique experiment embedded in a nationally representative online survey demonstrates that appeals invoking target affect can strongly increase citizens’ political participation both online and offline. Contrary to fears that the use of emotions by political elites will agitate the least knowledgeable citizens, however, the results demonstrate that it is the most politically-engaged citizens who are mobilized by such appeals. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the participatory consequences of emotional political messages on the Internet.

Organizations and the Democratic Representation of Interests: What Does It Mean When Those Organizations Have No Members?

This article documents the prevalence in organized interest politics in the United States of organizations—for example, corporations, think tanks, universities, or hospitals—that have no members in the ordinary sense and analyzes the consequences of that dominance for the democratic representation of citizen interests. We use data from the Washington Representatives Study, a longitudinal data base containing more than 33,000 organizations active in national politics in 1981, 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011. The share of membership associations active in Washington has eroded over time until, in 2011, barely a quarter of the more than 14,000 organizations active in Washington in 2011 were membership associations, and less than half of those were membership association with individuals as members. In contrast, a majority of the politically involved organizations were memberless organizations, of which nearly two-thirds were corporations. The dominance of memberless organizations in pressure politics raises important questions about democratic representation. Studies of political representation by interest groups raise several concerns about democratic inequalities: the extent to which representation of interests by groups is unequal, the extent to which groups fail to represent their members equally, and the extent to which group members are unable to control their leaders. All of the dilemmas that arise when membership associations advocate in politics become even more intractable when organizations do not have members.

Revisiting Stereotypes of Non-White Politicians’ Ideological and Partisan Orientations

This research revisits when and how voters use race as a cue for politicians’ ideological and partisan orientations. Using an embedded survey experiment that manipulates the race and policy positions of a (fictitious) Member of Congress, I provide a more comprehensive view of the role of ideological and partisan stereotypes in impression formation. Voters perceive non-White politicians as more liberal and more likely to be Democrats than otherwise-identical White politicians. This stereotyping persists even when the politician takes counter-stereotypical positions (e.g., a Black or Hispanic politician with a conservative record), and shapes non-White legislators’ approval ratings in significant ways.

Interactivity between Candidates and Citizens on a Social Networking Site: Effects on Perceptions and Vote Intentions

Voters and political candidates increasingly use social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. This study uses data from an online posttest-only experiment ( N = 183) in analyzing how exposure to supportive or challenging user comments on a fictional candidates Facebook page influenced participants’ perceptions of and willingness to vote for the candidate, as well as whether candidate replies to each type of user comments affected these outcomes. Participants who viewed a page with supportive comments and “likes” reported more favorable perceptions of and greater support for the candidate, relative to participants who viewed a page with challenging comments. Thus, the appearance of interactivity between a candidate and other users on the candidates Facebook page can shape the responses of those viewing the page. However, exposure to candidate replies to either supportive or challenging comments did not lead to significantly more favorable perceptions or a greater likelihood of voting for the candidate.

Louder Chorus — Same Accent: The Representation of Interests in Pressure Politics, 1981–2011

What kinds of interests are represented by organizations in Washington? A half century ago, E.E. Schattschneider warned famously that “the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with an upper-class accent.” In particular, he argued that organizations on behalf of both broad publics and those who lack resources are relatively rare. Subsequent empirical investigations have confirmed Schattschneider’s observation. In this paper, we examine how the growth and changing composition of the pressure system have affected the extent to which it is representative of the American public. This paper draws upon an extensive data base assembled by our research team and used in our recent book, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2012). Since the completion of that project we have added data about 2011 so that the data base includes nearly 35,000 organizations, comprising all the organizations listed at least once in the Washington Representatives directories (Columbia Books) published in 1981, 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011 as having been active in Washington politics. We have categorized these organizations into 96 categories based on their organizational structure and the nature of the interest being represented (for example, business, an occupation, a blue-collar union, a foreign government, a group of universities, a religious or ethnic group, or a conservative think tank). In addition, for each organization, we have collected information about such matters as its founding date and its spending on lobbying.These data permit us to shed light on the fundamental aspect of democratic equality, the question of who has voice in national politics. Tracing organizations active in Washington politics over a thirty-year period, we are able to ascertain how the Washington pressure system has grown over the decades and to determine whether that growth represents newly founded organizations or the entry into politics of previously existing organizations. Furthermore, by asking whether that growth has been uniform across sectors we are able to trace the changing distribution of both the kinds of organized interests and spending on lobbying. In particular, we are able to inquire whether the much-noticed increase in the number of citizen organizations has been matched by equivalent growth in the kinds of organizations -- for example, corporations, trade associations, professional associations, and unions -- that have traditionally formed the backbone of the pressure system, thus, leaving the overall distribution of organizations, and the distribution of lobbying spending, fundamentally unchanged.

Campaign News Genres, Audience Characteristics, and Media Perceptions A Field Experiment

This study builds on theories of “relative hostile media perceptions” to assess how audience characteristics and the ideological content of programming interact to shape media perceptions across different news genres. It uses a field experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to watch coverage of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses on broadcast network evening news (ABC World News), a conservative-oriented political talk show (Fox News Channel’s Hannity), or a political satire show (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart). Partisanship and age shaped evaluations of coverage across these different genres: Partisans held more favorable views of news aligned with their own views, older participants favored network news, and younger participants favored political comedy. Additionally, viewing network news or political satire—but not conservative opinion talk—fostered more positive evaluations of the news media in general. The results illuminate how viewers form media perceptions in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Elite cues and public polarization on transgender rights

ABSTRACT This study adds to the emerging literature explaining public opinion toward transgender rights by demonstrating the importance of elite cues for such an opinion. Data from two cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016 measure public opinion on several policies affecting transgender people. Consistent with Zaller [1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press], the results indicate “polarization effects” whereby the most politically aware citizens followed increasingly divided elite cues along ideological lines. The future trajectory of public opinion on transgender rights would thus seem to depend significantly on the behavior of elites.

The effects of traditional news, partisan talk, and political satire programs on perceptions of presidential candidate viability and electability

ABSTRACT This study examines how exposure to network news, partisan opinion talk, and political satire programs during the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses affected viewers’ perceptions of candidate viability (likelihood of capturing the party nomination) and electability (likelihood of winning the general election). Programs representing these genres—ABC World News, Fox News’s Hannity, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—all framed the same candidate as the front-runner for the nomination, though each framed this candidate’s general election prospects in distinctive ways. A randomized field experiment assigned respondents to view one (or none) of the three programs as they aired. Assessments of the front-runner were significantly shaped by assignment to view television coverage, hence demonstrating the potential importance of all three media genres for the presidential nomination process.

Economic Voting Appeals in Congressional Campaigns

Although they agree that economics and elections are intertwined, theories of economic voting disagree on the policy focus (on positions taken or outcomes achieved) and time horizon (retrospective or prospective) that guides voters’ decisions. Most research on these debates looks at the considerations voters weigh. Instead, I explore the types of economic voting that candidates encourage through their campaign appeals. Content-coded advertising data from the 2004 congressional elections show that appeals focus more on policy positions than outcomes and more on the past than the future. Consistent with predictions from emphasis allocation theory, strategic incentives and electoral context shape the exact mix of economic appeals campaigns make. When promoting their own candidacy, politicians ask voters to think about (more unifying) future economic outcomes; when attacking their opponent’s candidacy, they ask voters to think about (more divisive) past policy positions. In districts experiencing worsening economic conditions, voters are exposed to more information about policy outcomes; in districts where the incumbent is ideologically “out of step,” they hear more about policy positions. Studies that seek to evaluate competing theories of economic voting are thus likely to draw misleading conclusions if they treat the information environment as a homogeneous constant: Campaigns in different districts, facing different strategic incentives, encourage significantly different types of economic voting.