Political Analysis - current issue

Modeling Macro-Political Dynamics

Brandt, P. T., Freeman, J. R. — 2009-04-24

Analyzing macro-political processes is complicated by four interrelated problems: model scale, endogeneity, persistence, and specification uncertainty. These problems are endemic in the study of political economy, public opinion, international relations, and other kinds of macro-political research. We show how a Bayesian structural time series approach addresses them. Our illustration is a structurally identified, nine-equation model of the U.S. political-economic system. It combines key features of the model of Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson (2002) of the American macropolity with those of a leading macroeconomic model of the United States (Sims and Zha, 1998; Leeper, Sims, and Zha, 1996). This Bayesian structural model, with a loosely informed prior, yields the best performance in terms of model fit and dynamics. This model 1) confirms existing results about the countercyclical nature of monetary policy (Williams 1990); 2) reveals informational sources of approval dynamics: innovations in information variables affect consumer sentiment and approval and the impacts on consumer sentiment feed-forward into subsequent approval changes; 3) finds that the real economy does not have any major impacts on key macropolity variables; and 4) concludes, contrary to Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson (2002), that macropartisanship does not depend on the evolution of the real economy in the short or medium term and only very weakly on informational variables in the long term.

Treatment Spillover Effects across Survey Experiments

Transue, J. E., Lee, D. J., Aldrich, J. H. — 2009-04-24

Embedding experiments within surveys has reinvigorated survey research. Several survey experiments are generally embedded within a survey, and analysts treat each of these experiments as self-contained. We investigate whether experiments are self-contained or if earlier treatments affect later experiments, which we call "experimental spillover." We consider two types of bias that might be introduced by spillover: mean and inference biases. Using a simple procedure, we test for experimental spillover in two data sets: the 1991 Race and Politics Survey and a survey containing several experiments pertaining to foreign policy attitudes. We find some evidence of spillover and suggest solutions to avoid bias.

The Microfoundations of Mass Polarization

Levendusky, M. S. — 2009-04-24

Although there has been considerable attention to the question of how much polarization there is in the mass electorate, there has been much less attention paid to the mechanism that causes polarization. I provide evidence demonstrating the occurrence of individual-level conversion—individual Democrats and Republicans becoming more liberal and conservative. Although over the short term most of the observed changes are quite small and cannot be distinguished from measurement error, over time and many respondents, these movements aggregate to generate polarization. Small individual-level preference shifts provide an important foundation for aggregate polarization.

Modeling Certainty with Clustered Data: A Comparison of Methods

Arceneaux, K., Nickerson, D. W. — 2009-04-24

Political scientists often analyze data in which the observational units are clustered into politically or socially meaningful groups with an interest in estimating the effects that group-level factors have on individual-level behavior. Even in the presence of low levels of intracluster correlation, it is well known among statisticians that ignoring the clustered nature of such data overstates the precision estimates for group-level effects. Although a number of methods that account for clustering are available, their precision estimates are poorly understood, making it difficult for researchers to choose among approaches. In this paper, we explicate and compare commonly used methods (clustered robust standard errors (SEs), random effects, hierarchical linear model, and aggregated ordinary least squares) of estimating the SEs for group-level effects. We demonstrate analytically and with the help of empirical examples that under ideal conditions there is no meaningful difference in the SEs generated by these methods. We conclude with advice on the ways in which analysts can increase the efficiency of clustered designs.

Political Science, Biometric Theory, and Twin Studies: A Methodological Introduction

Medland, S. E., Hatemi, P. K. — 2009-04-24

As political scientists begin to incorporate biological influences as explanatory factors in political behavior, the need to present a methodological road map for utilizing biometric genetic theory and twin data is apparent. The classical twin design (CTD) remains the most popular design for initial examinations of the source of variance among social and political behaviors, and a vast majority of advanced variance components models as well as some molecular analyses are extensions of the CTD. Thus, it is appropriate to begin a series of works with the CTD and its most common variants. The CTD has strong roots in biometrical genetic theory and provides estimates of the correlations between observed traits of monozygotic and dizygotic twins in terms of underlying genetic and environmental influences. The majority of these analyses utilize SEMs of observed covariances for both twin types to assess the relative importance of these "latent" factors.