Alexander C. Furnas, Jesse M. Crosson, Geoffrey M. Lorenz
{"title":"Pandemic Pluralism: Legislator Championing of Organized Interests in Response to COVID-19","authors":"Alexander C. Furnas, Jesse M. Crosson, Geoffrey M. Lorenz","doi":"10.1561/113.00000028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000028","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic has induced a system-wide economic downturn disrupting virtually every conceivable economic interest. Which interests do legislators publicly champion during such crises? Here, we examine mentions of particular industries across thousands of press releases issued by members of Congress during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (January to June 2020). We show that members consistently emphasized interests significant to their constituency and party network, but less so their direct campaign contributors or ideological allies. This suggests that members believe that they must be seen as good district representatives and party stewards even when national crises could justifiably induce them to favor any number of interests.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"140 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131671113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The COVID-19 Pandemic and Public Support for European Integration: Evidence from Germany","authors":"Jay N. Krehbiel, Sivaram Cheruvu","doi":"10.1561/113.00000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000030","url":null,"abstract":"The European Union increasingly relies on the willingness of citizens to support the delegation of authority from their national governments to European institutions. Major policy crises have the ability to profoundly shape public support and opposition to greater European integration. In this article, we consider the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for public support of greater European integration. We build on the utilitarian approaches to develop an account of the pandemic's implications for citizens' views on the need for more EU-level policy making. We contend that higher levels of concern for COVID-19 correspond to higher support for further European integration. We then go on to argue that this relationship is conditioned by ideology. We find support for our hypotheses using a nationally-representative survey of 4400 German respondents fielded in April and May 2020.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116255858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elaine K. Denny, D. Dow, Diego Romero, Erik Wibbels
{"title":"Economic Insecurity and Deportees' Decision to Re-migrate in a COVID-19 Era","authors":"Elaine K. Denny, D. Dow, Diego Romero, Erik Wibbels","doi":"10.1561/113.00000027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000027","url":null,"abstract":"For potential immigrants, the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced economic opportunities and increased risks both at home and abroad. We seek to understand how COVID-19 has impacted the calculations that govern one's decision to emigrate. Leveraging a unique panel survey of Guatemalans recently deported from the U.S., we explore how COVID-19 has affected deportees' economic well-being and the intent to re-migrate. We find that while COVID-19 does not measurably decrease deportees' (already poor) current economic conditions, the pandemic increases expectations of being worse off in the next year and uncertainty about future economic conditions. Furthermore, the pandemic also increases uncertainty about whether deportees intend to re-migrate in the coming year. This increase in uncertainty reflects the increased difficulty potential migrants face in weighing relative opportunities and risks during a transnational crisis, even as one's expectations about economic well-being in the home country become more pessimistic.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114361265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Essential or Expedient? COVID-19 and Business Closures in the U.S. States","authors":"Jesse M. Crosson, Srinivas C. Parinandi","doi":"10.1561/113.00000031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000031","url":null,"abstract":"To what extent has political pressure or connectedness influenced governors' responses to public health recommendations regarding business closures? We investigate whether campaign contributions from particular industries track governors' designations of those industries as \"essential\" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing the initial iteration of states' lockdown orders, we find preliminary evidence linking receipt of gubernatorial campaign contributions from industry to an increased likelihood of designating that business area as essential. In other words, governors are more likely to designate a business area as essential if they received campaign contributions from that business area. Our result preliminarily suggests that money in politics plays a role in shaping public health responses, and we recommend further research on this matter.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128678421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pork during Pandemics: Federal Spending and Public Health Crises","authors":"Nicholas G. Napolio","doi":"10.1561/113.00000019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000019","url":null,"abstract":"The United States has faced four salient pandemics in the twenty-first century: H1N1 or Swine Flu in 2009, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2017, and COVID-19 in 2020. Each pandemic garnered signif-icant public attention, prompting Congress to act by allocating emergency funds to states, localities, and federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. This article asks: during pandemics, do actors in the Executive Branch continue to pursue parochial distributions of much needed funds? How, if at all, do the exigencies related to public health emergencies alter the distributive outputs of political institutions? Using spending data pursuant to four pandemics from eight federal agencies, I show that pandemic spending is less parochial than spending during normal times. I also contrast pandemic spending with other public health spending to isolate the effect of pandemics from general public health spending.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133991761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Makes a Good Local Leader? Evidence from U.S. Mayors and City Managers","authors":"Maria Carreri, Julia Payson","doi":"10.1561/113.00000035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000035","url":null,"abstract":"What are the traits of a good local leader? While most studies of local officials focus on the mayors of large cities, 85% of municipalities in the U.S. have a population of less than 20,000. We conduct in-depth phone interviews with nearly 300 mayors and city managers from predominantly small and mid-sized cities in the U.S. to learn about their backgrounds. We focus on two standard ability measures (education and prior occupation) and draw from research in public administration and economics to introduce two new dimensions of quality: public service motivation and managerial skill. We paint a comprehensive descriptive portrait of the respondents in our sample and the cities they represent, and we then examine whether these traits matter for the policy goals that local leaders choose to focus on during their time in office. These results offer a promising new approach for researchers studying political leadership and its consequences, both in the local context and beyond.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123819538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Local Political Economy: The State of the Field: Past, Present, and Future","authors":"Jessica Trounstine","doi":"10.1561/113.00000017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000017","url":null,"abstract":": Studying local politics is key to answering fundamental questions of who gets what, how, and when in the United States. And understanding institutions – the rules and structures that shape the aggregation of preferences and political outcomes – is crucial to this endeavor. In part this is because local governments are not sovereign in the federal structure and so naturally, studying cities requires understanding the context in which they are embedded. But it is also because cities feature endless variation in their formal and informal governing arrangements. These institutional differences affect representation, accountability, and the provision of public goods and services. In this essay, I offer an overview of what we know about the political economy of subnational governments, discuss some of the frontiers of knowledge still to be discovered, and put forth a plea for the importance of answering political economy questions at the local level. I argue that studying local institutional variation advances our understanding of institutional development, maintenance, and consequences more generally.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123344672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Administrative Presidency and Public Trust in Bureaucracy","authors":"Jon C. Rogowski","doi":"10.1561/112.00000006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/112.00000006","url":null,"abstract":"Bureaucratic agencies occupy a politically perilous position in the American federal government. As agents of both Congress and the president, agencies are responsible to principals who often perceive political incentives to manage them in ways that appear to undermine agencies' policy missions. In this paper, I study how presidents' administrative strategies affect public confidence in bureaucratic agencies. Survey experiments embedded on a national sample of Americans provide evidence that the loss of expertise significantly reduces public confidence in bureaucracy. These patterns are consistent across several agencies, but are relatively stronger among political Independents and weakest among Republicans. Moreover, I find no evidence that other potential mechanisms of presidential control of bureaucracy, including changes in capacity or its ideological composition, affect public confidence. The results provide new evidence about how information and expertise affect Americans' attitudes toward the federal bureaucracy and shape the incentives for criticism and oversight from political elites.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114433801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mass or Elite Polarization as the Driver of Authoritarian Backsliding? Evidence from 14 Polish Surveys (2005–2021)","authors":"İpek Çınar, M. Nalepa","doi":"10.1561/113.00000067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000067","url":null,"abstract":"Is elite or mass polarization the driver of the democratic backsliding? A number of recent papers in the political economy of backsliding have developed theoretical predictions about the effects of polarization in the electorate as well as elite polarization on the process of democratic backsliding. However, when tested, these predictions focus on the polarization of political elites, typically within the same country. Cross-national data is ill-suited for the purpose of testing these predictions as we have no common yardstick against which to measure what is a “dangerous” level of polarization or how to compare countries that use different electoral systems and, subsequently, have different party systems and democratic institutions. Yet scholars for the most part have avoided even describing the emergence of mass polarization outside of the US. We offer a longitudinal analysis of Polish public opinion data that anticipates the country’s downturn into authoritarianism by a few years to examine if polarization of the electorate preceded or followed the polarization of party elites. It focuses on a single, yet ultimately divisive issue—the costs and benefits of EU membership—five years prior to accession and five years following joining the international organization. Specifically, it makes use of annual and monthly data from CBOS Political Preferences of Poles Survey to provide evidence that polarized attitudes regarding EU membership followed, rather that preceded the polarization of parties on this issue.","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124553631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identifying the “Downsian Ceiling”: When Does Polarization Make Appealing to One’s Base More Attractive than Moderating to the Center","authors":"Samuel Merrill III, B. Grofman, Thomas L. Brunell","doi":"10.1561/113.00000060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1561/113.00000060","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":273358,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116252085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}