American Government

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Lowi13BriefSupplementaryData.ppt

Supplementary Data Slides

American Government

Compiled by

Kevin M. Esterling

University of California, Riverside

For more instructor’s resources for American Government, go to wwnorton.com/instructors.

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Introduction. Here are the counts of selected organized sections of the American Political Science Association (APSA). These sections give a sense of how political science is different from journalism, in that the sections focus on institutions that solve collective-action problems (such as elections, legislatures, courts, and federalism), and the policies that result (public policy and political economy). Notice the relative importance of the sections that are focused on research methods: “Political Methodology,” “Qualitative and Multi-Method Research,” and “Politics and History.” The data come from www.apsanet.org/sectioncounts.cfm,accessed May 24, 2013. The section counts for all organized sections.


 

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Introduction. The rationality principle states that all political behavior has a purpose. The history principle states that the past can affect the choices politicians make. This figure shows that, according to an article by Richard Fox and Jennifer Lawless (published in 2004), men are more likely to consider running for public office than women. Why do you think that is? Does either principle of politics help us to understand the difference?

 

Source: Richard L. Fox and Jennifer L. Lawless, "Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office." American Journal of Political Science 48 (April): 264–80.

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The Founding and the Constitution. In states that have ratified a constitutional equal rights amendment (ERA), courts tend to apply a higher standard of law in discrimination cases, which in turn increases the probability of a decision siding with the litigants making an equality claim. Question: Is this difference due to the law itself or to differences in attitudes and cultures between states that do and do not enact an ERA?

The data come from Lisa Baldez, Lee Epstein, and Andrew D. Martin. 2006. “Does the U.S. Constitution Need an ERA?” Journal of Legal Studies. 35: 243–83.

Vote Number 147 at the Constitutional Convention

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The Founding and the Constitution. The Great Compromise at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 apportioned representation for each state according to its population in the House of Representatives (which favored large states) and equally in the Senate (which favored small states). States voted as a delegation at the convention, and there were more small states than large states. To win the votes of small southern states in favor of proportional representation in the House, the framers included a provision to count three-fifths of each state’s slaves as part of the state’s population (see below). This rule helped to codify the property rights of slaveholders for their slaves. Notice that only two small states voted against this provision, both small northern states. The winning coalition comprised large states and small southern states. (Note: Current state boundaries are represented.)

 

Vote Number 147: To proportion representatives and direct taxes on the number of Whites and 3/5 of the Black inhabitants; and then require a Census in six years—and every ten years afterward. . . . The status quo was apportioning representatives equally among states and taxing according to land values, as under the Articles of Confederation. A yea vote is both pro–large state and pro-slavery.

Source: Keith L. Dougherty and Jac C. Heckelman, "Voting on Slavery at the Constitutional Convention," Public Choice 136 (2008): 293–313.

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The Founding and the Constitution. The framers intended the House of Representatives to be more connected to the people than the Senate. As a result, they chose to make the House larger than the Senate so that House members would have smaller districts. The size of the House, however, has not grown proportionately with the population, and, indeed, was (more or less) capped at 435 in 1910. In this view, how much closer are House members to their constituents compared to senators?

Sources:

www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html (accessed 07/29/13);

http://history.house.gov/Institution/Apportionment/Apportionment/ (accessed 07/29/13);

http://senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm (accessed 07/29/13).

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Federalism. Medicaid is a means-tested health insurance program that is jointly financed by the federal government and the states. The federal share for each state is set according to the Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP), and these percentages vary across the states. The minimum FMAP is 50 percent. Question: Why do some states have a low FMAP and others have a high one? The data come from the Kaiser Family Foundation (www.statehealthfacts.org).

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Federalism. Some states allow citizens to vote by mail without having to give a specific reason or “excuse” for why they want to vote by mail—the “no excuses” policy. Do you see a pattern to which states have adopted this policy? Why do you think some states adopt this policy and others don’t?

 

Source:www.longdistancevoter.org/absentee_voting_rules http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx(accessed July 1, 2013).

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Federalism. A similar figure in the text shows that the percentage of states’ budgets accounted for by federal grants-in-aid has remained relatively constant over time. This graph shows, however, that the absolute difference between state expenditures and federal grants-in-aid has grown dramatically over time.

 

Source: White House Office of Management and Budget, Table 15.2, www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals (accessed 07/29/13).

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Civil Liberties. Each year, Freedom House conducts a survey measuring the observed political rights and civil liberties in each country. Democracies tend to score higher on both measures than non-democracies, and civil rights and political liberties tend to go hand in hand.

 

Source: Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FIW%202013%20Charts%20and%20Graphs%20for%20Web_0.pdf (accessed 07/29/13;

recoded so 7 is most free and 1 is least free).

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2012, through December 31, 2012.

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Civil Rights. The period between 1955 and 1973 was one of transition during which American society became more integrated. What are the consequences of integration? Using data from the 2012 CCES, this graph shows responses to the question, “Affirmative action programs give preference to racial minorities in employment and college admissions in order to correct for discrimination. Do you support or oppose affirmative action?” The graph divides the responses by those who attended elementary school before, during, and after the transition in 1971, when the Supreme Court held that state-imposed desegregation could be brought about by busing children across school districts (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education). Do you notice any trends?

Source: 2012 CCES Common Content.


 

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Congress. Here is a spatial representation of the 112th Senate. In this case, assume Sen. Franken wishes to propose a new policy. If the status quo policy is SQ1, the median voter (Sen. Pryor) would vote for the proposal, but the filibuster pivot (Sen. Alexander) would be inclined to block the proposal. However, if Sen. Franken’s proposal were the same distance from the filibuster pivot as the more extreme SQ2, then Sen. Alexander would be indifferent toward the proposal. Sen. Alexander would favor any proposal that landed between Sen. Franken’s proposal and SQ2. The data come from Poole and Rosenthal’s DW-Nominate scores, available at www.voteview.com.

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Congress. Your textbook discusses the advantage incumbents have over challengers in the amount of money they can raise. This figure demonstrates more specifically the incumbent advantage in fund-raising in the 2012 elections. It also shows, however, that candidates running for open seats in 2012, or seats where the incumbent was not running, tended to raise more money than candidates who challenged incumbents (but not as much as incumbents themselves). Why do you think that was?

 

Source: Federal Elections Commission, www.fec.gov/data/CandidateSummary.do?format=html (accessed June 7, 2013).

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The Presidency. Presidential approval by the population fluctuates over time. One major determinant of presidential approval is citizens’ perception of economic performance. In the 2012 CCES, respondents were asked how they viewed the nation’s economic performance over the past year, as well as their approval of President Barack Obama. This graph helps to show how these two variables relate to each other.

 

Source: 2012 CCES Common Content.

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The Presidency. Presidents can issue executive orders to direct agency actions. These orders have much of the force of legislation but do not require the approval of Congress. This pie chart shows the relative number of executive orders issued since 1946 by the topic of the order. Does the relative number of executive orders tell us about the priorities of presidents? The data come from the executive order dataset of the “Policy Agendas Project” (www.policyagendas.org).

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The Executive Branch. All government spending has increased since World War II, but the growth in Medicare expenditures has increased dramatically. This chart shows that while the United States has spent considerable sums on the military over the past half century, Medicare spending has increased even more dramatically since its inception in 1965. Why do you think this is? The data come from the budget (All Subfunctions in FY 2009 dollars) dataset of the “Policy Agendas Project” (www.policyagendas.org).

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The Executive. Federal agencies have field offices in each state. This graph shows the relation of the state population to the number of federal employees that work in each state. Notice that the largest states (NY and CA) tend to have fewer federal employees than one would expect, perhaps indicating gains from scale. DC, MD, and VA house many federal agency home offices and so are overrepresented in this graph. The national rate of 5.7 employees per 1,000 citizens is calculated by discarding all states with a colored dot in the graph.

 

Source for federal civilian employment numbers:

www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/federal_govt_finances_employment/federal_civilian_employment.html (accessed 07/29/13). State populations from U.S. Census Bureau ACS 1 Year Estimates for 2009.

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The Executive. This graph shows the change in the federal employee workforce of the executive departments and independent federal agencies from the Bush 43 administration in 2006 to the Obama administration in 2010. Administrations may favor some agencies for ideological reasons and others owing to circumstances that arise during the administration.

 

Source for federal civilian employment numbers:

www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/federal_govt_finances_employment/federal_civilian_employment.html (accessed 07/29/13).

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The Executive. Many employees of the federal executive branch are classified into a pay scale, where the higher the pay “grade,” the higher the salary. This graph shows the distribution of federal employees broken out by race. To what extent are social disparities reflected in the federal system?

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract 2012, Table 501, www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/federal_govt_finances_employment/federal_civilian_employment.html (accessed 07/29/13).

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The Federal Courts. The Supreme Court typically issues decisions by majority rule. We know from the median voter theorem that the deciding justice on a given case will be the justice with the most central preference. When the justices’ positions on cases cannot be predicted based on ideology, the identity of the median justice will shift from case to case. When the court is heavily polarized along ideological lines, the same justice will tend to be the median justice across cases. This graph shows the probability that we can identify a unique median justice for each year since before World War II. Notice that this certainty varies over time, and in most years our certainty is modest at best. Since 2000, however, this certainty has been very high, implying that justices have been fairly predictable in recent years. Why do you think this is the case? The data come from Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn, and Lee Epstein. 2005. “The Median Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.” North Carolina Law Review 83: 1275–1322 (http://mqscores.wustl.edu/measures.php).

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The Federal Courts. Some people are concerned that the Supreme Court has grown more divided or “politicized” over time. This figure shows the relative amount of consensus and dissent on Supreme Court votes, broken down by chief justice. Only cases with nine votes are included. Notice that over time, the number of cases decided by consensus has slightly increased but the number of fully divided cases has increased even more. Does this indicate that the Supreme Court has become more politicized? Do you think this trend will continue?

 

Source: The Supreme Court Data Base, http://scdb.wustl.edu/ (accessed 07/29/13).

 

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The Federal Courts. Many observers assert that liberal judges tend to be more activist than conservative judges. This graph shows a measure of judicial activism for justices on the Supreme Court, for the years 1994 to 2005, which is simply the percent of cases where the justice voted to overturn a provision enacted by Congress. By the authors’ count, the Court had 64 such provisions before it between 1994 and 2005. The graph also indicates which justices were nominated by a Republican president and which by a Democratic president. By this measure, are the Republican appointees less activist?

 

Source: Chuck Shipan Original source: “So Who Are the Activists? Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder, New York Times, July 6, 2005.

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Public Opinion. What determines why citizens’ attitudes toward gay marriage change? This figure suggests that one factor appears to be whether one has a close friend or family member who is gay. How can this hypothesis be tested? For further consideration of this topic, see the Analyzing the Evidence feature in chapter 10 of American Government: Power and Purpose. The data come from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (www.people-press.org/2013/03/21/gay-marriage-changing-opinions/ ). Accessed May 27, 2013.

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Public Opinion. Public opinion surveys suggest that men and women tend to have different views on certain issues. This figure looks at the differences between men and women on social issues among respondents to the 2012 CCES. Notice that women tend to be more permissive regarding abortion than men but more centrist regarding the trade-off between environmental protection and economic development.

 

Source: 2012 CCES Common Content.

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Public Opinion. Until recently, survey research firms could rely on randomly dialing home telephones to achieve a representative sample, but with the growth of cell phone usage, many homes no longer have a landline. Cell phones, however, are more expensive to call and harder to sample. This graph helps to show the difficulties survey firms face in constructing their samples.

 

Source: “Assessing the cell phone challenge to survey research in 2010,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, May 2010,

www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/1601-cell-phone.pdf (accessed 07/29/13).

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Public Opinion. The authority of scientific evidence of climate change is controversial in American politics. What drives this controversy? Do views of the scientific consensus regarding climate change depend on education level or ideology?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

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Public Opinion. Elections are the core institution of any democracy. What are U.S. citizens’ attitudes toward proposals regarding election reform? This graph shows that citizens are mostly evenly divided regarding the merits of proposed reforms, with the exceptions of requiring vote by mail and requiring government-issued photo identification. The data are from a 1,000-person random subsample of the 2008 CCES common content, Variables: CC419_1 to CC419_6 (http://web.mit.edu/polisci/portl/detailpages/portlcces2008.html).

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Media. Who leads in setting the agenda for discussing health policy? Does media interest in a topic tend to drive Congress’s interest, or vice versa? This graph shows that, typically, the media’s interest in health policy tends to lag behind that of Congress’s. One can see this by looking at the two vertical gray dotted lines, indicating the years 1986 and 2000. Notice that at each of these years, Congress’s attention to health policy spikes, while the media’s interest is declining, and in each of the following years, the reverse happens. Another way to see this is that the correlation between the two series is higher when the hearings series is lagged relative to the news series (0.63), compared to when both series are contemporaneous (0.58) or when the news series is lagged (0.47). These data are taken from the New York Times and the Committee Hearings datasets of Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones’s “Policy Agenda’s Project” (www.policy agendas.org, accessed 07/29/2013).

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The Media. This bar chart illustrates differences in media use across different age groups. Do you think that these differences will lead to different age groups having different views of the world?

 

Source: 2010 CCES Common Content (weighted sample).

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Media. One of the distinguishing features of media consumption in the last decade is the rise in online news consumption. Does this trend toward finding information online vary by age group? Using data from the 2008 CCES, this figure shows that during the 2008 election, all age groups were more likely to read a newspaper than to read an online blog. But it also shows that older citizens are less likely to go to online blogs for information. Is age an important factor in the “digital divide”?

 

Source: 2010 CCES Common Content.

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Elections. Because of the principle of “one person, one vote,” the Electoral College delegation from each state is a function of the state’s population. The map above left indicates which presidential candidate won a majority in each state in the 2012 general election between Obama (blue states) and Romney (red). This is similar to the map the TV networks show on election night, but it is possibly misleading. To the casual observer, it might appear that Romney had a majority of the votes, since a larger area of the country is shaded red. A map that adjusts the size of each state’s area based on its population is given above right. By rescaling area to reflect each state’s population, this map correctly shows that Obama won a larger number of votes. The maps come from Prof. Mark Newman, University of Michigan, www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/.

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Elections. Voting is an important civic right and duty, but not everyone votes in every election. This graph shows the top 10 reasons people give for not voting. Are some of these reasons more valid than others? Are the reasons personal or institutional? What changes to institutional rules might affect individuals’ likelihood to vote?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

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Elections. Some states allow citizens to vote by mail for any reason—that is, they do not need to provide an “excuse” to register to vote by mail. Do citizens of these “no excuses” states take advantage of the convenience of voting by mail?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

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Political Parties. How do political parties help to organize politics for citizens? Do parties serve as informational shortcuts to how voters assess the performance of politicians? This bar chart shows large differences between Democrats and Republicans in their approval ratings for President Barack Obama in October 2012. The data are taken from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study Common Content (http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces), questions CC308a and pid3.

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Political Parties. This chart shows the relationship between the partisan makeup of a state and the percentage of time a senator votes with his or her party on legislation, separately for Democrats and for Republicans. The Democratic Party appears to be overall more cohesive, in the sense that Democratic senators are less responsive to state partisanship, but there are a number of outliers as well.

 

Original Slide: Greg Koger

Sources: Party Unity Scores – Voteview, (http://pooleandrosenthal.com/party_unity.htm, accessed 07/29/13;

Election Data – Clerk of the House, (http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/election.aspx, accessed 07/29/13)

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT POWER & PURPOSE, 13th Edition

Copyright © 2014 W.W. Norton & Company

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Political Parties. Are political parties effective in getting out the vote? This graph shows that people who are contacted by a political party before an election are much more likely to vote than those who were not contacted. Does this demonstrate that party organizations cause people to vote?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

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Political Parties. The Tea Party Movement emerged in 2009 as a self-described nonpartisan or independent movement focused on the size of government and the deficit. How nonpartisan is the movement?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

 

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Political Parties. A number of commentators have suggested that the Republican Party is increasingly becoming concentrated in the South. Using data from the 2012 CCES, this figure shows that more southerners still actually identify as Democrats than as Republicans. Note that the rates of independent party identification are slightly different.

 

Source: 2012 CCES Common Content.

Southern states classified by Census Southern Region: AL, DC, DE, FL, GA, KY, MD, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, and WV.

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Groups and Interests. There is always much talk in the news about the role of campaign contributions in elections. Many people worry that contributions undermine democracy by helping to further entrench incumbents. The above graph shows how the margin of victory among Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 relates to the amount of contributions they attracted for the subsequent 2010 election cycle. Does it appear that contributions are further helping members who are most likely to be reelected, or are mostly directed toward those members least likely to be reelected? What explains this pattern? The data are from the Federal Election Commission (www.fec.gov/data/CandidateSummary.do?format=html&election_yr=2010).

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Groups and Interests. This chart shows the amount of contributions from PACs representing various industries that were donated to House members on two congressional committees, Financial Services and Agriculture. PACs often make contributions to incumbent members of Congress who have expertise on topics of interest to their group. In this graph we observe this tendency among PACs, but in different degrees for each committee.

 

Source: www.opensecrets.org/cmteprofiles/overview.php?cmteid=H02&cmte=HAGR&congno=111&chamber=H (accessed 07/29/13).

 

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Groups and Interests. The number of PACs has increased significantly over the past few decades. How do PACs allocate their contributions? Most PACs give to both Republicans and Democrats. In general, PACs tend to contribute most of their money to incumbents, to party leaders and committee chairs, and to the majority party in each chamber.

 

Source: Center for Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org/pacs/toppacs.php?cycle=2012&party=A (accessed June 7, 2013;

based on data released by the FEC on March 25, 2013).


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Economic Policy. Do citizens’ attitudes toward the environment depend on trade-offs they perceive with economic growth? This graph shows whether citizens prefer protecting the environment or maintaining jobs, as reflected in their responses to this question: “Some people think it is important to protect the environment even if it costs some jobs or otherwise reduces our standard of living. Other people think that protecting the environment is not as important as maintaining jobs and our standard of living. Which is closer to the way you feel, or haven’t you thought much about this?” It appears that when citizens believe the economy’s performance over the past year has improved, they are more inclined to protect the environment, when citizens believe the economy’s performance over the past year has worsened, they are more inclined to maintain jobs. Why? The data are from the 2012 CCES common content (http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces), questions CC302 and CC325.

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Economic Policy. There has been a lot of concern lately about the growth of the deficit. The figure on the left indicates that the deficit has indeed been growing in real terms. But the figure on the right shows that the size of the deficit relative to the economy has been relatively constant for several decades and to some extent has been decreasing relative to the size of the economy in recent years.

 

Source: White House Office of Management and Budget, Table 1.1 and 1.2, www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals (accessed 07/29/13) 2013–2018 values are estimates).

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Economic Policy. Politicians and pundits have been focused on the long-term deficit and methods in balancing the budget. To balance the budget, the United States government could reduce its spending by cutting defense programs or domestic programs, or it could increase its revenue by raising taxes. Do the political parties agree on how to balance the budget? What might explain the divergent views?

 

Source: CCES 2012 Common Content (weighted sample).

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Social Policy. What determines citizens’ attitudes toward immigration policy? Why do some citizens prefer stronger enforcement against illegal immigrants than do others? On the one hand, perhaps people prefer stronger enforcement when they perceive the economy is in trouble, and so prefer to have less competition for American jobs from illegal immigrants. On the other hand, perhaps citizens prefer stronger enforcement when they hold negative cultural attitudes about the ethnicity of the largest group of illegal immigrants, Hispanics. The first plot shows that there is essentially no correlation between enforcement and citizens’ beliefs about the economy, while the second shows that there is a strong correlation between enforcement and citizens’ attitudes toward Hispanics.

 

These data come from a national survey by Kevin Esterling, Michael Neblo, and David Lazer, “The Connecting to Congress Project,” conducted by Knowledge Networks in the summer of 2006. (Each of the three variables is the predicted values of the first dimension from a factor analysis. The immigration enforcement indicators are the respondent’s belief about how serious the problem is with illegal immigrants, their beliefs about the effectiveness of border control in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, and their attitudes toward a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The beliefs about the economy indicators are their perceptions of the direction of their own finances over the next two years, and the direction of the overall economy over the next two years. The indicators of attitudes toward Hispanics are feeling thermometer scores toward illegal immigrants and toward Hispanics.)

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Social Policy. Table 15.1 in your textbook shows that the federal government gives states large grants to fund the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The formula the federal government uses to allocate this money to states depends in part on the number of the state’s residents in poverty, and in part on other factors. This figure shows the relation of the count of each state’s residents who are in poverty (in 2011) to the amount given to the state in TANF aid (in 2011). The dashed gray line indicates the amount each state would get if the number of residents in poverty were the only factor that determined the allocation of aid. Notice, however, that some states are above the line (such as NY and CA), and some below (such as FL and TX). Can you think of any reasons that the relative amount of aid to some states would be higher than to others?

 

Source for TANF amounts: FY 2011 TANF Financial Data, Office of Family Assistance, Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/resource/tanf-financial-data-fy-2011 (accessed 07/29/13).

Source for number of residents in poverty: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Percentage of People in Poverty by State Using 2- and 3-Year Averages: 2008–2009 and 2010–2011, www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2011/tables.html (accessed 07/29/13).

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Foreign Policy. The effectiveness of a democracy’s foreign policy depends critically on public support. For what sorts of interventions do citizens support using troops? What do they not support? The data come from the CCES 2012 common content (http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces), questions CC414_1 to CC414_7.

AMERICAN GOVERNMENT POWER & PURPOSE, 13th Edition

Copyright © 2014 W.W. Norton & Company

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Foreign Policy. U.S. military expenditures increased significantly after 2001, when the United States entered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This figure shows the defense budget as a proportion of the total budget since 1980. The proportion varies quite a bit, and changes often coincide with changes in presidential administrations. Do these changes in proportion reflect the different priorities of each administration or changes in the country’s actual national security needs? Or both?

 

Sources: White House Office of Management and Budget, Table 3.1: Outlays by Superfunction and Function, 1940–2018, www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals (accessed 07/29/13).