American Voters and Elections

Transcription

1 American Voters and Elections Instructor Information: Taeyong Park Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis 1. COURSE DESCRIPTION This course will provide you with a new lens to view American voters and the American electoral system more broadly. We will consider cutting-edge research on voters and elections. In the first part of the course, we will learn about voters, the decisions they make, and the forces that influence them. We will discuss recent scholarship in political science, psychology, economics, and even genetics. A persistent question to democratic theorists is whether voters possess the capacity to obtain the knowledge required to contribute to democratic politics. We will examine research that finds that voters irrationally reward presidents when their hometown sports teams win, and other research that suggests voters do a fine job using informational shortcuts to make choices about candidates. Second, we will explore electoral politics. Presidential campaigns today are entirely new enterprises from what they were just a decade ago in the era before new media and big data. We will examine how these new influences shape modern campaign behavior and how long-present factors like the ground game, money, and news media determine how presidents and members of Congress campaign. Finally, we will examine the consequences of elections. Do they really make a difference for policy outcomes? 2. EVALUATION Attendance and Participation (10%): At each meeting, I will take attendance. If you miss a class, you are responsible for going over the lecture material and asking me any questions you may have. If you are more than fifteen minutes late to a class, you will not get credit for attendance for that day. Two Response Papers (30%): You will write two 3 to 4 double-spaced page papers that respond to prompts provided by me. You will these papers to me by 5PM the day before we meet. Midterm Exam (30%): The midterm exam will be during class time. The exam will be closed book and it will cover the material discussed until the exam day. Make-up exams will only be given in cases of 1

2 health or family emergencies. Final Term Project Presentation (30%): During the last week, you will make a 7 to 10 minute presentation based on your term project. You should use presentation software (keynote or powerpoint). Details about the final project are as follow: The final project is Introducing My Congressional District. The presentation should include An introduction. Where is your district? Describe the district s characteristics that are most relevant for the congressional race. If you are an international student, select a district interesting to you for any reason. The incumbent. Who is the incumbent? Is he or she well-suited to represent the district? What is her background? What is his electoral outlook for the upcoming election. If there is no incumbent, you can describe who the last office holder was and explain why the seat is open. Local issues. Describe the local issues that will play the largest role in the congressional race. Why are these issues important? National issues. Describe the national issues that will be most influential in the congressional race. Explain why you think they will be important. The race. How do you see the race shaping up? Will local or national issues be most relevant? Why? Research question. Based on your research on the district, what testing would you like to do? You might, for example, develop and test different messages to judge their effectiveness in the campaign. A chance for the audience to ask questions. 3. COURSE OUTLINE Week 1: Introduction Hans Noel Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don t. The Forum 8(3). Week 2: Voters and Participation Alan S. Gerber and Donald P. Green Does Canvassing Increase Voter Turnout? A Field Experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96(19):

3 Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle, and James H. Fowler A 61-million-person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization. Nature 489: Betsy Sinclair The Social Citizen: Peer Networks and Political Behavior. University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1 and 2. Week 3: Voters and Knowledge Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. Yale University Press. Chapter 2. Samuel Popkin The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1, 2, and 3. Andrew J. Healy, Neil Malhotra,, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. Irrelevant Events Affect Voters Evaluations of Government Performance Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(29): Week 4: Voters and Partisanship Angus Campbell et al The American Voter. University of Chicago Press. Chapter 6. William G. Jacoby The Impact of Party Identification on Issue Attitudes. American Journal of Political Science 32: Jaime F. Settle, Christopher T. Dawes, and James H. Fowler. The Heritability of Partisan Attachment. Political Research Quarterly 62(3): Week 5: Patterns of Voting Angus Campbell Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change. Public Opinion Quarterly 24(3): Eitan D. Hersch and Clayton Nall The Primacy of Race in the Geography of Income- Based Voting: New Evidence from Public Voting Records. American Journal of Political Science 60(2): Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen The Political Legacy of American Slavery. Journal of Politics 78(3): Week 6: Economic Voting I Response Paper 1 Due Before Class Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Mary Stegmaier Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes. Annual Review of Political Science 3:

4 Andrew Healy and Neil Malhotra Retrospective Voting Reconsidered. Annual Review of Political Science 16: Gregory A. Huber, Seth J. Hill, and Gabriel S. Lenz Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters Limitations in Controlling Incumbents. American Political Science Review 106(4): Week 7: Economic Voting II Donald R. Kinder and D. Roderick Kiewiet Economic Discontent and Political Behavior: The Role of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgments in Congressional Voting. American Journal of Political Science 23(3): Brad T. Gomez and J. Matthew Wilson Political Sophistication and Economic Voting in the American Electorate: A Theory of Heterogeneous Attribution. American Journal of Political Science 45(4): Michael Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau Obama and the Economy in PS: Political Science & Politics. Week 8: Review and Midterm Exam Week 9: Presidential Primaries Thomas Patterson Out of Order. Alfred A. Knopf. Chapters 1 and 2. Kathleen Bawn, Martin Cohen, David Karol, Seth Masket, Hans Noel and John Zaller A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics. Perspectives on Politics 10(3): Week 10: Campaigns and Big Data Daron Shaw The Race to 270. University of Chicago Press. Chapter 4. James N. Druckman The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited. Journal of Politics 65(2): David W. Nickerson and Todd Rogers Political Campaigns and Big Data. Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(2): Joseph DiGrazia, Karissa McKelvey, Johan Bollen, and Fabio Rojas More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior. PLOS One 8(11). Week 11: Congressional Elections Gary Jacobson and Jamie Carson The Politics of Congressional Elections. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Chapters 2, 3, and 6. 4

5 Week 12: Elections and Representations Bernard Manin, Adam Przeworski, and Susan C. Stokes Elections and Representation. In Democracy, Accountability, and Representation, eds. Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes,and Bernard Manin. Cambridge University Press. James A. Stimson, Michael B. Mackuen, and Robert S. Erikson Dynamic Representation. American Political Science Review 89(3): Jane Mansbridge Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent Yes. Journal of Politics 61(3): Week 13: Policy Consequences Response Paper 2 Due Before Class Timonthy Besley and Anne Case Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States. Journal of Economic Literature 41(1): Douglas L. Kriner and Andrew Reeves Presidential Particularism and Divide-the-Dollar Politics. American Political Science Review 109(1): Week 14: Election Cycles and Economy Larry Bartels Unequal Democracy. Princeton University Press. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4. Week 15: Presentations 5