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I am also an investigator on the Economic Security Index, a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Further details are available on the website, including our written reports. |
Working Papers & Papers Under Review:
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Seth Hill. 2011. "The Voting Experience and Beliefs about Ballot Secrecy"
Abstract: The legitimacy of democratic election results rests on the perceived fairness of the rules and procedures for voting. New democracies, for example, go to great length to install democratic institutions, while one of the hallmarks of long-standing democracies is strong institutions protecting the electoral process. In this paper, we argue that beliefs about these democratic institutions, and not just their existence, are of central importance to legitimate elections. We show that even in the United States doubts about democratic institutions are surprisingly prevalent: We find that 36 percent of respondents to a nationally representative survey hold doubts that the choices they make on their ballots remain anonymous. We also present evidence that polling place voters experience a variety of situations that might violate the privacy of their voting process. Concerns about the anonymity of the ballot are greater among those who have not previously voted and for those voting with electronic machines and by mail. These findings suggest an important divergence between public perceptions about the secret ballot and the institutional status of the secret ballot in the United States, a divergence that may have important consequences. More broadly, this evidence suggests that individual beliefs should not be ignored when considering the effects and operation of political institutions.
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Gregory A. Huber, Seth J. Hill, and Gabriel S. Lenz. 2011. "Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision-Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters' Limitations in Controlling Incumbents"
Abstract: Are citizens competent assessors of incumbent performance? Although observational studies cast doubt on their retrospective abilities, inferences from these studies are limited by the complexity of the real world, making it difficult to know why these shortcoming arise. In this paper, we show that biases in retrospective evaluation occur even in the simplified setting of experimental games. In three experiments, our participants (1) overweighted recent relative to overall incumbent performance when made aware of an election closer rather than more distant from that event, (2) allowed an unrelated lottery that affected their welfare to influence their choices, and (3) were influenced by rhetoric to give more weight to recent rather than overall incumbent performance. These biases were apparent even though we provided information, reinforced with a monetary incentive, that weighting all performance equally was preferable. These findings suggest key limitations in voters’ abilities to effectively implement a retrospective decision rule.
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Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Assessing the Stability of Psychological and Political Survey Measures"
Abstract: Recent research demonstrates growing scholarly interest in the relationship between personality characteristics and political attitudes and behaviors. In this paper we present analysis using data from a national panel survey conducted in two waves--the first prior to the 2010 US midterm election, the second after it. We assess the stability of a variety of personality measures and find high correlations between the pre- and post-election measures. We also leverage the fact that Republicans made substantial gains in the 2010 election to determine whether various personality measures are affected by the intersection of partisan attachments and political events and find little evidence that they are. The findings provide encouraging evidence for those interested in examining the relationship between personality and political attitudes using survey data.
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Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Seth Hill. 2011. "Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment"
Abstract: Although the secret ballot has long been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we provided registered voters with information about ballot secrecy protections prior to the 2010 general election. We find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. These results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long-standing institution in the United States, providing basic information about ballot secrecy can affect the decision to participate to an important degree.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, Connor Raso, and Costas Panagopoulos. 2011. "Big Five Personality Traits and Responses to Persuasive Appeals: Results from Voter Turnout Experiments"
Abstract: Researchers have recently begun to investigate whether variation in basic (non-political) psychological dispositions can explain differences in political behavior. We extend this research by examining the relationship between psychological dispositions and subject response to experimentally manipulated political stimuli. Specifically, we examine whether differences in Big Five personality traits are associated with heterogeneous treatment responses to Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) appeals in both a survey and field experiment. The results suggest that some personality traits are associated with broad persuadability while others affect responses to certain types of GOTV appeals. In some cases the conditioning effects of Big Five traits are substantial. The strongest evidence for a moderating effect of personality is found for a social pressure treatment, where a test of the joint significance of personality-treatment interactions is statistically significant at the p<.01 level. The findings contribute to our understanding of the political consequences of personality traits and the psychology of persuasion.
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Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, and Seth J. Hill. 2011. "Identifying the Effects of All-Mail Elections on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen State"
Abstract: Election officials across the United States continue to implement convenience voting reforms that increase the times when, and modes by which, citizens may cast ballots. These reforms are thought to increase participation. Some argue that convenience voting increases inequality in political participation because the reforms alleviate barriers to participation for busy higher status citizens while lowering mobilization activity. In this article, we offer an improved design and new estimates of the effects of convenience voting on turnout. Exploiting cross-sectional and temporal variation in county-level implementation of all-mail elections in Washington State, we find a modest two to four point effect of the reform on turnout and some evidence that the effect begins to decay as time passes. Using individual observations from the state voter file, we also find that the reform increases voting by lower-participating registrants and young registrants, suggesting that this convenience reform does improve participation for the less-engaged.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Published/Forthcoming Papers In Peer-Reviewed Journals:
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Personality Traits, Disagreement, and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Putting Political Discussion Networks in Context" American Journal of Political Science, Forthcoming.
Abstract: Social networks play a prominent role in the explanation of many political phenomena. Using data from a nationally representative survey of registered voters conducted around the 2008 U.S. presidential election, we document three findings. First, we show that during this period people discussed politics as frequently as (or more frequently than) other topics such as family, work, sports, and entertainment with frequent discussion partners. Second, the frequency with which a topic is discussed is strongly and positively associated with reported agreement on that topic among these same discussion partners. Supplementary experimental evidence suggests this correlation arises because people avoid discussing politics when they anticipate disagreement. Third, we show that Big Five personality traits affect how frequently people discuss a variety of topics, including politics. Some of these traits also alter the relationship between agreement and frequency of discussion in theoretically expected ways. This suggests that certain personality types are more likely to be exposed to divergent political information.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Citizens' Policy Confidence and Electoral Punishment: A Neglected Dimension of Electoral Accountability." The Journal of Politics, Forthcoming.
Abstract: If voters punish elected officials who adopt incongruent policy positions, then representatives should take popular positions to avoid electoral sanction. Yet, scholars have noted gaps between citizen preferences and the behavior of elected officials. We argue that one important source of this gap is that individual citizens believe they are sometimes not well qualified to evaluate policy. Our analysis of a series of experiments shows that citizens’ stated confidence in their own ability to evaluate a policy proposal substantially affects their willingness to reward or punish a representative for their votes on that policy. Our results hold both across individuals (within policy areas) and within individuals (across policy areas) and suggest that, rather than a failure of representation, gaps between citizen preferences and policy may reflect citizen deference to “expert” legislators. We also show that understanding differences in policy confidence has important implications for understanding the contours of public opinion.
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Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Personality and the Strength and Direction of Partisan Identification." Political Behavior, Forthcoming.
Abstract: We examine the associations between personality traits and the strength and direction of partisan identification using a large national sample. We theorize that the relationships between Big Five personality traits and which party a person affiliates with should mirror those between the Big Five and ideology, which we find to be the case. This suggests that the associations between the Big Five and the direction of partisan identification are largely mediated by ideology. Our more novel finding is that personality traits substantially affect whether individuals affiliate with any party as well as the strength of those affiliations, effects that we theorize stem from affective and cognitive benefits of affiliation. In particular, we find that three personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness) predict strength of partisan identification (p<.05). This result holds even after controlling for ideology and a variety of issue positions. These findings contribute to our understanding of the psychological antecedents of partisan identification.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Is There a Secret Ballot? Ballot Secrecy Perceptions and Their Implications for Voting Behaviour" British Journal of Political Science, Forthcoming.
Abstract: Ballot secrecy is a core feature of American elections, but whether voters believe their choices are protected has not been investigated. Using novel items from a nationally representative survey we find, first, that approximately 25% of all respondents do not believe their ballot choices are kept secret. Second, over 70% of respondents report sharing their vote choices with a close friend or family member. In sum, few people view their vote choices as truly private decisions. We describe how a standard theoretical account of candidate choice must be revised when voters believe their choices are not strictly private and examine how voter perceptions of ballot secrecy affect candidate choice. Our findings suggest that the translation from formal rules to perceptions about these rules is not straightforward and that subjective perceptions of how institutions work can affect voter behaviour.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, Connor Raso, and Shang E. Ha. 2011. "Personality Traits and Participation in Political Processes." The Journal of Politics 74 (3 July): 692-706.
Abstract: Using data from two recent surveys, we analyze the relationship between Big Five personality traits and political participation. We examine forms of participation that differ in domain (local politics vs. national campaigns) as well as in the amount of conflict involved, whether they are likely to yield instrumental benefits, and whether they are likely to be viewed as a duty--characteristics that may affect the relationships between dispositional personality traits and political activity. We find relationships between personality traits and: (1) both self-reported and actual turnout (measured using administrative records), (2) overreporting of turnout, and (3) a variety of other modes of participation. The effect of personality on political participation is often comparable to the effects of factors that are central in earlier models of turnout, such as education and income. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, these relationships vary depending on personality-relevant characteristics of each participatory act.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF) (On-Line Appendix) (Replication Archive)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Personality Traits and the Consumption of Political Information." American Politics Research 39 (1 January): 32-84.
Abstract: In this paper we examine the relationship between dispositional personality traits (the Big Five) and the consumption of political information. We present detailed hypotheses about the characteristics of the political environment that are likely to affect the appeal of politics and political information in general for individuals with different personalities, as well as hypotheses about how personality will affect the attractiveness of particular sources of political information. We find that the Big Five traits are significant predictors of political interest and knowledge as well as consumption of different types of political media. Openness (the degree to which a person needs intellectual stimulation and variety) and Emotional Stability (characterized by low levels of anxiety) are associated with a broad range of engagement with political information and political knowledge. The other three Big Five traits, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Extraversion, are associated only with consumption of specific types of political information.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF) (Replication Archive)
Berinsky, Adam J., Gregory A. Huber, and Gabriel S. Lenz. 2011. "Using Mechanical Turk as a Subject Recruitment Tool for Experimental Research" Political Analysis, Forthcoming.
Abstract: We examine the tradeoffs associated with using Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples -- the modal sample in published experimental political science -- but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples.
Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Ebonya Washington. 2010. "Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 104 (4 November): 720-744.
Abstract: Partisanship is strongly correlated with attitudes and behavior, but it is unclear from this pattern whether partisan identity has a causal effect on political behavior and attitudes. We report the results of a field experiment that investigates the causal effect of party identification. Prior to the February 2008 Connecticut presidential primary, researchers sent a mailing to a random sample of unaffiliated registered voters who, in a pre-treatment survey, leaned toward a political party. The mailing informed the subjects that only voters registered with a party were able to participate in the upcoming presidential primary. Subjects were surveyed again in June 2008. Comparing post-treatment survey responses to subjects’ baseline survey responses, we find that those informed of the need to register with a party were more likely to identify with a party and showed stronger partisanship. Further, we find that the treatment group also demonstrated greater concordance than the control group between their pre-treatment latent partisanship and their post-treatment reported voting behavior and intentions and evaluations of partisan figures. Thus, our treatment, which caused a strengthening of partisan identity, also caused a shift in subjects’ candidate preferences and evaluations of salient political figures. This finding is consistent with the claim that partisanship is an active force changing how citizens behave in and perceive the political world.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal, Local PDF) (On-Line Appendix) (Replication Archive)
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Shang E. Ha. 2010. "Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts." American Political Science Review 104 (1 February): 111-133.
Abstract: Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)
Note: This paper includes results that were originally presented in two separate papers: Personality Traits and the Dimensions of Political Ideology and Reassessing the Effects of Personality on Political Attitudes and Behaviors: Aggregate Relationships and Subgroup Differences.
Gerber, Alan S. and Gregory A. Huber. 2010. "Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments." American Journal of Political Science 54 (1 January): 153-73.
Abstract: Previous research shows that partisans rate the economy more favorably when their party holds power. There are several explanations for this association, including use of different evaluative criteria, selective perception, selective exposure to information, correlations between economic experiences and partisanship, and partisan bias in survey responses. We use a panel survey around the November 2006 election to measure changes in economic expectations and behavioral intentions after an unanticipated shift in political power. Using this design, we can observe whether the association between partisanship and economic assessments holds when some leading mechanisms thought to bring it about are excluded. We find that there are large and statistically significant partisan differences in how economic assessments and behavioral intentions are revised immediately following the Democratic takeover of Congress. We conclude that this pattern of partisan response suggests partisan differences in perceptions of the economic competence of the parties, rather than alternative mechanisms.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)
Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the subtitle "Results from a natural experiment."
Dickson, Eric S., Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation." The Journal of Politics 71 (4 October): 1357-1378.
Abstract: Governments are charged with monitoring citizens' compliance with prescribed behavioral standards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incentives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A "monitor" player makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about other players' choices to contribute to a public good. We find that the possibility of wrongly accusatory signals has a more deleterious effect on contribution levels than the possibility of wrongly exculpatory signals. We trace this across-treatment difference to a "false positives trap": when members of a largely compliant population are sometimes incorrectly accused, some will be unjustly punished if enforcement power is employed, but non-compliant individuals will escape punishment if that power is abdicated. Either kind of error discourages compliance. An additional treatment demonstrates that the functioning of a given enforcement institution may vary, depending on its origins. We consider implications of our findings for theories of deterrence, fairness, and institutional legitimacy.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (On-Line Appendix) (Replication Archive)
Gerber, Alan S. and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?" American Political Science Review 103 (3 August): 407-26.
Abstract: Survey data regularly show that assessments of current and expected future economic performance are more positive when a respondent's partisanship matches that of the President. To determine if this is a survey artifact or something deeper, we investigate whether partisanship is associated with behavioral differences in economic decisions. We construct a new dataset of county level quarterly taxable sales to examine the effect of partisanship on consumption. Consumption change following a Presidential election is strongly correlated with a county's partisan complexion, a result consistent with partisans acting in accordance with the opinions they express in surveys and outside the domain of politics. These results support the expansive role of partisanship in understanding mass politics and help validate surveys as a method for studying political behavior.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)
Gordon, Sanford Clark, Gregory Alain Huber, and Dimitri Landa. 2009. "Voter responses to Challenger Opportunity Costs." Electoral Studies 28 (1 March): 79-93.
Abstract: How do voters evaluate candidates in competitive elections? Gordon et al. (2007) present a model in which the fact of a serious electoral challenge conveys information about the relative competence of the candidates, over and above that conveyed by observable measures of candidate quality. The model predicts differences in voters' responses to candidates depending on challenger opportunity costs. Taken together, these predictions diverge from those associated with an alternative theoretical account. We take advantage of the variation in challenger opportunity costs afforded by state legislative term limits to evaluate the model's predictions. State legislators frequently challenge sitting members of the U.S. House. Those who are term-limited have less to lose from running, whereas those who are not must often risk their current position in pursuit of higher office. Using data on voter attitudes and knowledge about House elections involving state legislators, we find compelling evidence that voters respond to variation in challenger opportunity costs in a manner consistent with the model's predictions.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)
Note: This paper previously circulated as "Do Costly Challenges Make Voters Believe?"
Huber, Gregory A. and John S. Lapinski. 2008. "Testing the Implicit-Explicit Model of Racialized Political Communication." Perspectives on Politics 6 (1 March): 125-134.
Abstract: The Implicit-Explicit (IE) model of racial priming posits that implicitly racial messages will be more effective than explicitly racial ones in priming racial predispositions in opinion formation. Is the Implicit-Explicit model supported by existing data? In “Racial Priming Revived,” Mendelberg responds to our analysis of a pair of experiments in which we found that “that implicit appeals are no more effective than explicit ones in priming racial resentment in opinion formation.” In this note we demonstrate that the concerns raised about our experiments are unfounded. Further, we show that the existing work supporting the IE model suffers from serious limitations of experimental design and implementation. Cumulatively, we find that the evidence questioning the IE model is far stronger than the evidence that supports it.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)
Huber, Gregory A. and Kevin Arceneaux. 2007. "Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising." American Journal of Political Science 51 (4): 957-977.
Abstract: Do presidential campaign advertisements mobilize, inform, or persuade citizens? To answer this question we exploit a natural experiment, the accidental treatment of some individuals living in nonbattleground states during the 2000 presidential election to either high levels or one-sided barrages of campaign advertisements simply because they resided in a media market adjoining a competitive state. We isolate the effects of advertising by matching records of locally broadcast presidential advertising with the opinions of National Annenberg Election Survey respondents living in these uncontested states. This approach remedies the observed correlation between advertising and both other campaign activities and previous election outcomes. In contrast to previous research, we find little evidence that citizens are mobilized by or learn from presidential advertisements, but strong evidence that they are persuaded by them. We also consider the causal mechanisms that facilitate persuasion and investigate whether some individuals are more susceptible to persuasion than others.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (On-Line Appendix) (Replication Archive)
Note: This paper previously circulated as "Uncovering the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising."
Huber, Gregory A. and Sanford C. Gordon. 2007. "Directing Retribution: On the Political Control of Lower Court Judges." Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (2 June): 386-420.
Abstract: The sentencing decisions of trial judges are constrained by statutory limits imposed by legislatures. At the same time, judges in many states face periodic review, often by the electorate. We develop a model in which the effects of these features of a judge's political landscape on judicial behavior interact. The model yields several intriguing results: First, if legislators care about the proportionality of punishment, judicial discretion increases with their punitiveness. Second, voters are limited by two factors in their ability to make inferences about judicial preferences based on observed sentences: the extent to which judges are willing to pander to retain office and the range of judicial discretion mandated by the legislature. Finally, legislators can sometimes manipulate judicial discretion to aid sufficiently like-minded voters in their efforts to replace ideologically dissimilar judges.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)
Gordon, Sanford C., Gregory A. Huber, and Dimitri Landa. 2007. "Challenger Entry and Voter Learning." American Political Science Review 101 (2 May): 303-320.
Abstract: We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter‘s positive assessment of incumbent qualifications. How a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running, depending on the electoral environment. The model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting, the incumbency advantage, and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare, while pointing to new interpretations of, and future avenues for, empirical research on elections.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal, Local PDF)
Note: This paper previously circulated as "The Informational Value of Challengers."
Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2007. "The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 2 (2 May): 107-138.
Abstract: What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: 14 districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while 17 employ noncompetitive retention elections. In the latter, therefore, challengers are ruled out. We find judges in partisan systems sentence more severely than those in retention systems. Additional tests attribute this to the incentive effects of potential competition, rather than the selection of more punitive judges in partisan districts.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal, Local PDF) (Replication Archive)
Arceneaux, Kevin and Gregory A. Huber. 2007. "What to Do (and Not Do) with Multicollinearity in State Politics Research." State Politics and Policy Quarterly 7 (1 Spring): 81-101.
Abstract: State politics scholars often confront data situations where explanatory variables in a model are highly related to each other. Such multicollinearity (MC) makes it difficult to identify the independent effect that each of these variables has on the outcome of interest. In an effort to circumvent MC, researchers sometimes drop collinear variables from the regression model. Using simulated data, we demonstrate the implications MC has for statistical estimation and the potential for introducing bias that the omitting-variables approach generates. We also discuss MC in the context of multiplicative interaction models, drawing on research on the influence of the initiative process on policy responsiveness as an applied example. We conclude with advice for researchers faced with MC in their datasets.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal, Local PDF) (Replication Archive)
Huber, Gregory A. and John S. Lapinski. 2006. "The "Race Card" Revisited: Assessing Racial Priming in Policy Contests." American Journal of Political Science 50 (2 April): 421-440.
Abstract: In The Race Card (2001), Mendelberg finds support for her theory that implicit racial appeals, but not explicit ones, prime racial resentment in opinion formation. She argues that citizens reject explicit appeals, rendering them ineffective, because they violate widespread egalitarian norms. Mendelberg's innovative research, however, suffers from several limitations. We remedy these deficiencies using two randomized experiments with over 6,300 respondents. We confirm that individuals do tend to reject explicit appeals outright, but find that implicit appeals are no more effective than explicit ones in priming racial resentment in opinion formation. In accounting for the differences between previous research and our own, we show that education moderates both the accessibility of racial predispositions and message acceptance. This suggests that the necessary assumptions of Mendelberg's theory hold only for different and exclusive subsets of the general population.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (On-Line Appendix) (Replication Archive)
Huber, Gregory A. and Sanford C. Gordon. 2004. "Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?" American Journal of Political Science 48 (2 April): 247-263.
Abstract: Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the outcome of a single publicized case can be decisive in their evaluations. Further, voters are more likely to perceive instances of underpunishment than overpunishment. Our theory predicts that elected judges will consequently become more punitive as standing for reelection approaches. Using sentencing data from 22,095 Pennsylvania criminal cases in the 1990s, we find strong evidence for this effect. Additional tests confirm the validity of our theory over alternatives. For the cases we examine, we attribute at least 1,818 to 2,705 years of incarceration to the electoral dynamic.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)
Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2002. "Citizen Oversight and the Electoral Incentives of Criminal Prosecutors." American Journal of Political Science 46 (2 April): 334-351.
Abstract: Popular wisdom suggests that only by securing convictions can elected prosecutors cultivate the perception that they are tough on crime. This article considers why voters might use conviction rates to evaluate prosecutors and whether justice is subverted as a consequence. Citizens lack information about individual cases and prosecutor behavior. We model voter oversight of prosecutors in light of these difficulties. Voters use the promise of reelection given observed outputs to induce prosecutors to reduce uncertainty through investigation and subsequently to punish the guilty and free the innocent. The model demonstrates that an optimal voter strategy is always to reelect prosecutors who obtain convictions. Most importantly, even voters who most fear wrongful convictions should reward success at trial. Voter attitudes and beliefs instead influence rewards for cases concluded out of court, including plea bargains. Finally, we derive sanctions necessary to prevent prosecutors from suppressing evidence when doing so is politically tempting.
Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)
Huber, Gregory A. and Thomas J. Espenshade. 1997. "Neo-Isolationism, Balanced-Budget Conservatism, and the Fiscal Impacts of Immigrants." International Migration Review 31 (4 Winter): 1031-1054.
Abstract: A rise in neo-isolationism in the United States has given encouragement to a new fiscal politics of immigration. Growing anti-immigrant sentiment has coalesced with forces of fiscal conservatism to make immigrants an easy target of budget cuts. Limits on legal alien access to social welfare programs that are contained in the 1996 welfare and immigration reform acts seem motivated not so much by a guiding philosophy of what it means to be a member of American society as by a desire to shrink the size of the federal government and to produce a balanced budget. Even more than in the past, the consequence of a shrinking welfare state is to metamorphose legal immigrants from public charges to windfall gains for the federal treasury.
Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)
Espenshade, Thomas J., Jessica L. Baraka, and Gregory A. Huber. 1997. "Implications of the 1996 Welfare and Immigration Reform Acts for US Immigration" Population and Development Review 23 (4 December): 769-801.
Abstract: Major changes in noncitizen eligibility for welfare and in US immigration policy are contained in two pieces of federal legislation signed into law in 1996. The first, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, reforms the entitlement policy for poor families and imposes new limits on alien access to welfare benefits and other social services. The second, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, strengthens efforts to combat illegal immigration and creates higher standards of financial self-sufficiency for the admission of sponsored legal immigrants. The authors suggest that these reforms will produce unintended, and possibly undesirable, consequences. They argue in particular that the 1996 reform measures, instead of preserving legal immigration and discouraging illegal immigration, are more likely to reduce the former and expand incentives for the latter. In addition, the Personal Responsibility Act creates added pressures for eligible legal immigrants to apply for US citizenship. To the extent that higher rates of naturalization were unanticipated by reformers of welfare policy, the actual cost savings attributable to reduced benefits for noncitizens will be smaller than expected.
Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)
Other Published/Forthcoming Papers/Chapters:
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena" Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 14: 265-287.
Abstract: Recent political science research on the effects of core personality traits--the Big Five--contributes to our understanding of how people interact with their political environments. This research examines how individual-level variations in broad, stable psychological characteristics affect individual-level political outcomes. In this article, we review recent work that uses the Big Five to predict political attitudes and behavior. We also replicate some of these analyses using new data to examine the possibility that prior findings stem from sampling error or unique political contexts. Finally, we discuss several of the challenges faced by scholars who are currently pursuing or are interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. These challenges include refining theoretical explanations of how the Big Five shape political outcomes, addressing important measurement concerns, and resolving inconsistencies across studies.
Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)
Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "The Political Economy of Prosecution." Annual Review of Law and Social Science 5: 8.1-8.22.
Abstract: We argue that contemporary advances in the field of political economy, particularly those concerning the subject of delegated authority, can provide a unifying framework for analyzing the behavior and political context of criminal prosecutors in the United States. This perspective, which considers a number of tradeoffs associated with mechanisms for compensating, reviewing, and constraining the discretion of public officials generally, is well-suited for studying these prosecutors, the vast majority of whom are elected but whose accountability is frequently called into question. Prosecutors serve in a variety of roles that necessitate interaction with other parties: as subordinates of voters (or other elected officials), superiors of subordinate prosecutors, collaborators in cooperative relationships with other officials in law enforcement and courtroom communities, and adversaries of defendants. Much of the behavior of prosecutors examined by scholars employing disparate disciplinary approaches may be explained with reference to (1) the extent of conflict between the prosecutor’s motives and the motives of those other actors, and (2) the degree to which information is unevenly distributed among those actors. A political economy perspective is especially well-suited for integrating these features of the prosecutor’s environment into a coherent account. To illustrate the value of this unifying approach, we apply this perspective to three areas in the existing literature on prosecutors: plea bargaining, courtroom communities, and public corruption prosecution.
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Huber, Gregory A. 2007. "Contingency, Politics, and the Nature of Inquiry: Why Non-events Matter." In Political Contingency: Studying the Unexpected, the Accidental, and the Unforeseen, eds. Ian Shapiro and Sonu Bedi. New York: NYU Press
Abstract: Contingent events are probabilistic. Acknowledging that realized contingencies alter observed political outcomes, however, does little to advance the systematic study of politics. This paper suggests that political science should focus on understanding how foreseeable contingencies, rather than truly “exogenous” unforeseeable events, alter political behavior. The most useful tool for understanding the effects of these foreseeable contingencies on political interactions is the formal and informal analysis of strategic behavior in the face of uncertainty through the use of game theory. This paper identifies the limitations of using observed contingent events to understand the role of contingencies in politics. More broadly, it suggests that the proper analysis of anticipatory strategic behavior has implications for the allocation of research resources across many topics of interest to political science.
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