Steven Greene

Understanding Party Identification: A Social Identity Approach

Social identity theory holds that individuals derive their self-concept from knowledge of their membership in a group (or groups) and that they place value and emotional significance on that group membership, with resulting perceptual and attitudinal biases. Individuals favor the in-group to which they belong which they define against a relevant out-group. In this study, a partisan social identity scale was used to reinterpret perceptual features of partisanship through the lens of social identity theory. The social identity of political independents was also examined in an effort to explain the anomalous behavior and identity of partisan leaners. Social identity theory provided a viable alternative framework for understanding the common bipolarity of perceptions regarding the two major U.S. political parties. In addition, an independent social identification may, in part, explain the identity of partisan leaners.

The Social-Psychological Measurement of Partisanship

This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of the social-psychological theory behind the concept of partisanship and addresses how well contemporary measures, especially the ubiquitous NES/Michigan measure, accord with contemporary theories of measurement, attitudes, and group identification. A number of shortcomings with the NES measure are discovered and more recent, psychologically informed measures that address these shortcomings are explored. After a brief empirical demonstration of the utility of these newer measures, recommendations are made for using new theory and new measures to improve our understanding of the role of partisanship in influencing political behavior.

One Vote Out of Step? The Effects of Salient Roll Call Votes in the 2010 Election

We investigate the relationship between controversial roll call votes and support for Democratic incumbents in the 2010 midterm elections. Consistent with previous analyses, we find that supporters of health care reform paid a significant price at the polls. We go beyond these analyses by identifying a mechanism for this apparent effect: constituents perceived incumbents who supported health care reform as more ideologically distant (in this case, more liberal), which in turn was associated with lower support for those incumbents. Our analyses show that this perceived ideological difference mediates most of the apparent impact of support for health care reform on both individual-level vote choice and aggregate-level vote share. We conclude by simulating counterfactuals that suggest health care reform may have cost Democrats their House majority.

Party Attachments and State Election Laws

This article examines the influence that state party registration laws have on individual-level party attachments. It tests the hypothesis that individuals living in states with party registration laws are more likely than those living in states without such laws to identify themselves as partisans. This occurs primarily because of self-perception processes by which registrants infer their party attitudes from their own behaviors. Using the state-based Senate Election Study data to test this expectation, we find strong evidence for both statistically and substantively significant effects of party registration on individual partisanship. Registered indviduals living in states with party registration are, by about ten percenage points, more likely to identify as partisans than those in other states even when controlling for alternative hypotheses dealing with state cuture, attitudes toward the parties, retrospective evaluations, interest in politics, and demographic factors. Importantly, the effect is not observed for individuals who are not registered to vote but is for registered novoters. However, registration-induced party identification is shallow, as individuals living in registration states are also more likely to vote for candidates from the other party.

The Politics of Parenthood Parenthood Effects on Issue Attitudes and Candidate Evaluations in 2008

This project employs 2008 National Election Study (NES) data to explore whether parents are different than nonparents in terms of their political attitudes and candidate evaluations. We find that parenthood does have political consequences although often not in ways suggested by conventional wisdom. Rather than finding parents to be a conservative group, our results support the idea that raising children has liberalizing effects on the attitudes of women. Fatherhood shapes attitudes less than motherhood, but these fewer effects are in a conservative direction. We argue that the distinctive politics of mothers and fathers reflects the impact of parenting as a gendered socialization experience combined with the contrasting parenthood themes articulated by the Republican and Democratic parties. Finally, despite media coverage suggesting Sarah Palin’s “Hockey Mom” image would attract parents, especially mothers, to her candidacy and the Republican ticket we find no support for this idea.

The Politics of Walmart Moms: Parenthood and Political Attitudes in the 2012 Election

ABSTRACT This research uses 2012 National Election Studies data to explore how parenthood shapes the public opinion of women and men. Our analyses show that being a parent shapes attitudes on issues directly connected to children, such as government funding for education and day care, but also on issues less connected to the day-to-day activities of parenting, including the appropriate role of government and abortion. While the label “Walmart Mom” captures the reality that a large and growing number of mothers are struggling economically, the effect of motherhood, on most issues, holds for all women, regardless of socioeconomic status. This article discusses the implications of our findings concerning the politics of motherhood and fatherhood in light of the changing structure of America’s families.

The Children Gap on Social Welfare and the Politicization of American Parents, 1984–2000

Having and raising children bring about tremendous change in the lives of parents, and it seems likely that these changes may have a political dimension to them. In this article, we use National Election Studies data from 1984 to 2000 to explore the impact of children on social welfare policy attitudes, with special focus on how children influence the sexes differently. Our findings show that having children does have a significant effect and affects the views of men and women differently. Women with children were significantly more liberal on social welfare issues than those without, whereas children had either no effect or possibly a conservative impact on the views of men. Moreover, the impact of parenthood grows stronger across the 1990s. We argue that two factors lie behind the increased and gendered impact of parenthood: the changing nature of the American family, particularly the role of mothers, and the politicization of the American family.

Parenthood and the polarisation of political attitudes in Europe

Becoming a parent can affect the lives of men and women by introducing salient new social roles and identities, altered social networks and tighter constraints on financial resources and time. Even though modern family life has evolved in many important respects, parenthood continues to shape the lives of men and women in very different ways. Given that parenthood can change the lives of men and women in profoundly different ways, it seems that it would bring about changes in the way women and men think about politics and policy issues. Using data from the Wave 4 of the European Social Survey, this article investigates how parenthood, and the distinctions of motherhood and fatherhood, influence attitudes. The findings suggest that parenthood can have a polarising effect on attitudes, and that the polarising effect is most evident in countries where there is less support from the state for parental responsibilities.

Red Parents, Blue Parents: The Politics of Modern Parenthood

Abstract Over the past several decades the major parties in the US have not only politicized parenthood, but have come to offer increasingly polarized views of the ideal American family. This study builds on recent scholarship exploring the political impact of parenthood (e.g. Elder, Laurel, and Steven Greene. 2012a. The Politics of Parenthood: Causes and Consequences of the Politicization and Polarization of the American Family. Albany, NY: SUNY Press; Greenlee, Jill. 2014. The Political Consequences of Motherhood. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.) by comparing Republican and Democratic parents in terms of family structure as well as attitudes about parental roles and child rearing. This study draws on a fairly unique data set, the Pew Research Center’s Gender and Generations Survey, as well as more traditional data sets, to further our understanding of the politics of modern parenthood in the United States. We find that the starkly contrasted red families versus blue families painted in some research and news commentary does not hold up when examined with individual level data. On average, Republican and Democratic parents start their families at the same age and have the same number of kids. And despite the parties’ polarized messages about the ideal family structure, Republican moms are just as likely to be working as Democratic moms. Where partisanship does divide red and blue families is on attitudes about working mothers and perhaps most interestingly, when it comes to the way men conceptualize their roles and performance as fathers. Democratic dads possess more egalitarian attitudes about parenting and less authoritarian attitudes about child-rearing, and, perhaps because they expect more from themselves as care-givers, they struggle more with work-family balance and are less satisfied with themselves as parents. In contrast, Republican fathers embrace more traditional views about parenting and parental authority and rate themselves more highly as parents. This study concludes by exploring the implications of the politics of modern parenthood for the 2016 presidential election and beyond.

The gender gap on public opinion towards genetically modified foods

Abstract Ever since genetically modified (GM) foods were introduced into the food supply in the 1990s they have provoked debate and concern. The number of GM foods approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and offered on supermarket shelves has steadily grown at the same time that public wariness about the safety of GM foods has increased. Studies within the scientific literature show a strikingly large gender gap in attitudes towards GM foods with women consistently more skeptical than men. However, there have been few efforts to understand the determinants of the gender gap on GM foods within the political science literature. This study employs a 2014 Pew Research Center survey on science issues to test several possible explanations for the gender gap in attitudes towards GM foods rooted in the different life experiences of women and men. The results show that while being a parent predicts more skeptical views about genetically modified foods overall it does not explain the gender gap in attitudes. In contrast, knowledge about science and having confidence in science do play a significant role in mediating the gender gap. By exploring the robust and pervasive gender gap on the issue of GM foods, this study sheds light on the fundamentally different ways men and women approach political issues.