Recent research finds that, for social desirability reasons, uninformed individuals disproportionately give “neither agree nor disagree” type responses to survey attitude questions, even when a “do not know” option is available. Such “face-saving” responses inflate the indifference (i.e., middle) categories of ordered attitude variables with nonordered responses. When such inflation occurs within the middle category of one's ordered dependent variable, estimates from ordered probit (and ordered logit) models are likely to be unreliable and inefficient. This article develops a set of mixture models that estimate and account for the presence of “face-saving” responses in middle categories of ordered survey response variables, and applies these models to (1) simulated data and (2) a commonly studied survey question measuring attitudes toward European Union (EU) membership among individuals in EU-candidate countries. Results from the survey data set and the Monte Carlo experiments suggest that, when middle category inflation is present in one's ordered dependent variable, the estimates obtained from middle category mixture models are less biased than—and in some cases substantively distinct from—the estimates obtained from “naive” ordered probit models.
While scholars have emphasized the importance of information for accountability, little research has addressed the demand for government information by real citizens. We study the totality of information requests filed with Mexican federal government agencies from 2003 to 2015, over 1 million requests in all. We use unsupervised methods to categorize requests, revealing the diversity of topics including environment, security, budgets, and government procurement and employees. While many topics have clear public accountability-seeking purposes, others are focused on more private, micro-political goals. Analysis over time and across states reveals linkage between information demand and issues of public interest such as environmental impacts and criminal violence. Our results demonstrate that, given functioning access-to-information institutions, citizens in a transitional democracy really do demand information relevant to public accountability.
Food security has attracted widespread attention in recent years. Yet, despite preliminary evidence connecting food insecurity to political violence, we lack a systematic understanding of the relationship(s) between local food resources and violence against civilians. This study develops a food-security based theory to explain the significant variation that we observe in violence against civilians across both time and subnational geographic space. We argue that combatants, be they government or rebel actors, often must turn to local agricultural resources for sustenance. During times of relative peace, armed actors and civilians have long time horizons, and the prospects of repeated interactions thereby promote a strategy of co-optation to obtain food resources. However, the existence of immediate conflict in a region leads armed actors to discount the benefits of future interactions in favor of obtaining food immediately, using violence if necessary. In estimating a series of statistical models on a sample of all African countries (1997–2009), we find robust support for our expectations: cropland increases the frequency of violence against civilians during periods of conflict, but has an added pacifying effect during times of peace.
This project explores how appreciation for, and comprehension of, ironic and exaggerated satire is related to political ideology. Drawing upon literature from communication, political psychology, and humor research, we explain how the psychological profiles of conservatives may render them less motivated to process and appreciate certain forms of humor compared to liberals. We test these propositions with an experiment that employs a two condition within-subjects experiment on a national sample (N ϭ 305) to assess appreciation and comprehension of ironic and exaggerated humor among liberals and conservatives. Mediating effects of psychological traits are tested. Findings suggest that conservatives are less appreciative of both irony and exaggeration than liberals. In both cases, the effect is explained in part by lower sense of humor and need for cognition found among conservative participants. Results are explored in terms of the implications for political discourse, political polarization, and democratic practices. Public Policy Relevance StatementThis manuscript explores the lack of conservative political satire by testing differences how liberals and conservatives appreciate and comprehend various forms of humor. The findings indicate low appreciation of humor among conservatives explained in party by need for cognition. In our polarized political climate, it is increasingly important for scholars and lawmakers to understand the nature of ideological differences to help identify functional approaches to bridge gaps in communicative strategy.
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