Do climate change-related extreme weather events affect public concern, knowledge, and attention to climate change in China? Matching extreme weather events data from the Emergency Events Database with the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey, we first test whether people in prefectures with more extreme weather events consider climate change more damaging and have a better knowledge of it. We find no such associations. Moreover, we collect 2020 data on extreme whether events from local newspapers for five Eastern and Southeastern Chinese provinces and test whether these events increase public attention to climate change, measured by Baidu search volume index. No associations are found. Interestingly, in prefecture-days with more Covid cases, local population conducted more Baidu searches on climate change and the environment, supporting the ‘great reflection’ thesis, i.e., major shocks like the pandemic put a spotlight on fundamental challenges facing the humanity and have gotten us to reassess our priorities.

Does prosecuting perpetrators of repression under a dictatorship promote public support for human rights and the courts? We argue that convicting perpetrators in human rights trials reduces public acceptance of these violations. However, while convictions signal judicial efforts to end impunity, they may also call attention to the politicized process by which transitional justice begins. We estimate the effects of human rights trial verdicts on attitudes in Argentina, a country ruled by a military dictatorship from 1976–1983 that, twenty-five years later, initiated sweeping human rights trials for past repression. Using observational day-level opinion data from a survey fielded around the guilty verdict for one of the dictatorship’s top-ranking generals, we find the trial verdict increased the public’s rejection of torture and political killings. Yet belief in judicial fairness declined. These results suggest that trials solidify public commitments to human rights, but confidence in the judiciary is not a necessary condition for this effect.

How does party support for gender equality in the labour market affect the gender voting gap? A well-established argument from the literature on gender and political behaviour states that working women tend to vote for left-wing parties more than men because they are stronger supporters of the welfare state. However, no study has assessed whether parties’ welfare positions affect the gender voting gap. Leveraging three decades of public opinion data from sixteen Western democracies, I provide evidence in support of that claim: increases in women’s labour force participation are associated with higher female/male voter ratios for the left, but only when those parties strongly support gender-egalitarian policies in the labour market. These findings confirm and add nuance to the previous understanding of the gap: by focusing on public opinion, previous research overlooked party behaviour. Therefore, my evidence elevates the importance of party strategy in explaining gender differences in voting.

Public opinion surveys are vital for informing democratic decision-making, but responding to rapidly changing information environments and measuring beliefs within hard-to-reach communities can be challenging for traditional survey methods. This paper introduces a crowdsourced adaptive survey methodology (CSAS) that unites advances in natural language processing and adaptive algorithms to produce surveys that evolve with participant input. The CSAS method converts open-ended text provided by participants into survey items and applies a multi-armed bandit algorithm to determine which questions should be prioritized in the survey. The method’s adaptive nature allows new survey questions to be explored and imposes minimal costs in survey length. Applications in the domains of misinformation, issue salience, and local politics showcase CSAS’s ability to identify topics that might otherwise escape the notice of survey researchers. I conclude by highlighting CSAS’s potential to bridge conceptual gaps between researchers and participants in survey research.

How elected representatives think about public opinion affects the degree to which policies are congruent with the public’s policy preferences. This is especially true for politicians occupying leadership positions, their perceptions matter even more. Extant work concluded that politicians in general do not exhibit a high perceptual accuracy, but direct evidence of the relative accuracy of leaders’ perceptions of public opinion is missing. Drawing on surveys among politicians and citizens in four countries, this study examines the accuracy of the public opinion perceptions of leaders and backbenchers. Irrespective of how leadership is defined and operationalized – executive or party leadership, formal or informal leadership, current or past leadership – we find low perceptual accuracy levels among leading politicians. Compared to backbenchers, and although politicians themselves consider leaders to have a special nose for public opinion, leading politicians do not possess a special public opinion rating skill.

Why do US voters allow politicians to hold the country’s economy hostage during debt ceiling negotiations? In this research note, we argue that ignorance and uncertainty over the consequences of a debt ceiling breach play a nontrivial role in public support for hard-line negotiating positions. In a pre-registered survey experiment, two weeks before the June 2023 deadline to raise the US debt ceiling, we show that providing credible information about the consequences of default increases support for concessions among both Democrats and Republicans. Further, more certain information about the consequences of a debt ceiling breach has a larger effect than less-certain information suggesting that the unpredictable consequences of the crisis also help explain voter reluctance to accept concessions. The findings have implications for understanding debt ceiling negotiations and other crisis bargaining situations where the public serves as a relevant third party.

How does the mass public form attitudes on electoral rules and reforms? Existing research on this question reveals a trade-off between principles, such as fairness, and partisan self-interest. I use two survey experiments on state legislative redistricting to explore how voters weigh principles against partisan self-interest when forming opinions on electoral reforms. First, I ask whether the public’s partisan self-interest motivation stems more from individual representation considerations or broader partisan power considerations. I find that both considerations provide a powerful enough incentive to activate partisan self-interest regarding preferences for state legislative district maps. Unexpectedly, the two considerations have quite similar effects on public support for redistricting reforms. Second, I explore the principles versus partisan self-interest trade-off through the lens of loss aversion, a concept developed in behavioral economics. In line with expectations, I find that preventing loss provides a more powerful incentive for Americans to violate democratic principles than achieving partisan gain. In sum, this research sheds light on voters’ decision between principles and partisan self-interest in the formation of opinion on electoral reform.

Does shaming human rights violators shape attitudes at home? A growing literature studies the effect of shaming on public attitudes in the target state, but far less is known about its effect in countries initiating the criticism – that is the shamers. In this article, I theorize that when governments shame human rights violators they shape both government approval and human rights attitudes at home. Utilizing two US-based survey experiments, I demonstrate that by shaming foreign countries, governments can improve their image at home and virtue signal their dedication to human rights. At the same time, shaming can modestly shape tolerance towards certain domestic human rights violations. I consider the generalizability of my results through comprehensive supplementary analyses, where experimental insights are corroborated with cross-national observational data. Overall, my findings can provide valuable insight into governments’ incentives to engage in foreign criticism.

We examine factors that explain differences in opinions among Asian Americans and Latinos regarding the government’s responsibility in addressing economic inequality. We utilize a subjective social position framework to better understand variations in attitudes about the role the government should play in addressing the differences in income between people with high and low incomes. We use ordered logit models to assess 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey data. Respondent’s age, feelings of marginalization, perceptions of local context, and use of alternative financial services are more important for predicting support or opposition to the government addressing income inequality. Taken together, the subjective social position of individuals goes a long way in explaining individuals’ attitudes regarding this matter.

China has taken significant steps to combat corruption since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, whether and how the anti-corruption efforts influence the public's evaluation of local government performance remain understudied. Using multiple data sources, including panel survey data taken from the China Family Panel Studies from 2010 to 2018, this research examines how anti-corruption efforts improve evaluations of local government performance by reducing public perception of existing corruption. Additional analysis reveals that anti-corruption efforts reduce perceived corruption primarily when the public trusts officials or has had positive experiences with them. The positive impact on local government evaluations has been more pronounced in provinces with high levels of pre-existing corruption and since the 18th CCP National Congress in 2012. Moreover, the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts has remained consistent across all time periods since 2012.

Antitrust policy aims to reduce market concentration and increase competition among firms. Contemporary antitrust is sensitive to both domestic and international considerations. Internationally, the market is dominated by the largest firms, raising questions about the competitiveness of domestic firms and the application of antitrust against foreign firms. Domestically, public support for antitrust is needed for continued enforcement. This paper examines how international markets shape public support for antitrust in the United States. Using media analysis, we find that antitrust is increasingly in the news, and that international competition is referenced in antitrust debates. We theorize that support for antitrust is shaped by concerns for the competitiveness of domestic firms, relative to foreign competition, and that these concerns vary based on individuals’ levels of nationalism. We test our theory using a survey experiment and find that individuals are especially concerned with being placed at a disadvantage relative to foreign competitors. Interestingly, we find that using antitrust laws against foreign firms yields divergent reactions—highly nationalistic Americans increase their support for strong antitrust laws, while those with low levels of nationalism decrease support. The paper highlights the importance of global competition in shaping preferences for domestic regulation.

Researchers regularly use large survey studies to examine public political opinion. Surveys running over days and months will necessarily incorporate religious occasions that can introduce variation in public opinion. Using recent survey data from Israel, this study demonstrates that giving surveys on religious occasions (e.g., the Sabbath, Hannukah, Sukkot) can elicit different opinion responses. These effects are found among both religious and non-religious respondents. While incorporating these fluctuations is realistic in longer-term surveys, surveys fielded in a short window inadvertently drawing heavily on a holiday or holy day sample may bias their findings. This study thus urges researchers to be cognizant of ambient religious context when conducting survey studies.

One reason given for declining levels of trust in politicians and institutions is the incidence of scandals involving voters' representatives. Politicians implicated in scandals, especially financial scandals, typically see their constituents' support for them decrease. It has been suggested that these specific negative judgements about a representative's misconduct spill over onto diffuse political trust in the system as a whole. We argue that the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal in the United Kingdom is a strong test of these scandal spillover effects in a non-experimental context. Yet, using a multilevel analysis of survey and representative implication data, we find no evidence for these effects. This is despite voters being aware of their MP's scandal implication, and this awareness affecting voters' support for their own MP. We conclude that voters' judgements about their constituency representatives are unlikely to affect their diffuse political trust.

Separate from their feelings of national pride, Americans may also feel proud of the state where they live. I explore the political consequences of these feelings of state pride. I propose that when people feel proud of the state they reside in, they are more willing to empower their state governments to take action to address state challenges. Using survey responses from a module of the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, I find that people who express greater pride in their state are more likely to advocate for state spending on social programs. Feelings of state pride are also associated with support for policy devolution and the belief that state governments should have more influence over policymaking within the federal system. State governments have incentives to try to cultivate feelings of state pride, as those who feel proud of their state are more willing to empower their state government to effect change.

Dynamic models of aggregate public opinion are increasingly popular, but to date they have been restricted to unidimensional latent traits. This is problematic because in many domains the structure of mass preferences is multidimensional. We address this limitation by deriving a multidimensional ordinal dynamic group-level item response theory (MODGIRT) model. We describe the Bayesian estimation of the model and present a novel workflow for dealing with the difficult problem of identification. With simulations, we show that MODGIRT recovers aggregate parameters without estimating subject-level ideal points and is robust to moderate violations of assumptions. We further validate the model by reproducing at the group level an existing individual-level analysis of British attitudes towards redistribution. We then reanalyze a recent cross-national application of a group-level item response theory model, replacing its domain-specific confirmatory approach with an exploratory MODGIRT model. We describe extensions to allow for overdispersion, differential item functioning, and group-level predictors. A publicly available R package implements these methods.

Are people's priorities associated with their income and education levels? There is a long history in political science of claims that priorities are driven by economic interests, but also that low-income and low-education people fail to prioritize their economic interests. In this paper we use measures of revealed importance from [Sides J, Tausanovitch C and Vavreck L (2023) The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the hallenge to American Democracy. Princeton University Press.] to evaluate the priorities of high- and low-income/education voters with respect to 44 different policies. It is well known that there are substantial differences in the preferences of people with lower incomes or education levels and people with higher incomes or education levels, but conditional on preferences we find very small differences among education and income groups in terms of priorities. Like high-income and high-education voters, lower-income and education voters care most about the major issues of the day. They do not care systematically more or less than other voters about policies that expand social welfare, redistribution, or labor rights.

Since the end of World War II, the US government has spent nearly $4 trillion on humanitarian, economic, and military assistance to other countries. Despite the myriad benefits of such programs, mass support has long been lacking. Here, I argue that low citizen trust in government can help us to understand why. Using cross-sectional and panel survey data from the United States, I find a positive and substantively significant relationship between political trust and support for government spending on foreign aid. Overall, these findings underscore the relevance of political trust and further illustrate the drivers of U.S. public opinion toward foreign aid, something that has implications for whether America should turn inward or continue its long-standing role of global leadership.

In this paper, I examine the factors associated with public attitudes toward foreign policy among white Americans and argue that racial attitudes play an important role. To test this hypothesis, I perform quantitative studies across four iterations of the American National Election Survey (ANES)—(1) 2012, (2) 2016, (3) 2020, and (4) the Cumulative Survey (1986–2020). While the results include white public opinion across several different areas of foreign policy across several decades of data, the findings are consistent: American foreign policy opinion among white Americans is highly racialized—meaning that their views on foreign policy are strongly associated with their views on race and racism. This study contributes to our knowledge of a relatively poorly understood phenomenon in American politics: how the American public forms their attitudes on foreign policy. Overall, I find strong evidence that racial attitudes play an important yet understudied role in the foreign policy attitudes of white Americans. This study also extends our knowledge of the role of racialization in public opinion and reminds us that while racism is one of the most central problems for U.S. domestic politics, we should also be wary of how these hierarchies of domination extend beyond our borders through its foreign relations.

Proposals to change the institutional features of national high courts have been on the agenda recently in the United States and Israel. Using insights about endowment effects and prospect theory from behavioral economics, we theorize about how citizens may think about benefits from high courts and how those views can influence their support for change to those institutions. Mindful of differences across these countries, we employ a comparative experimental design to explore how people think about personal and societal benefits emanating from the Israeli and United States Supreme Courts. We find interesting differences in how experimental participants think about benefits from courts and how those views shape feelings about recent proposals to alter judicial institutions in each national context.