Polarized Pluralism: Organizational Preferences and Biases in the American Pressure System

Crosson, Jesse M.; Furnas, Alexander C.; Lorenz, Geoffrey M.

doi:10.1017/s0003055420000350

Cited by 33 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Interest groups also shape whose opinions become more readily available to legislators (Klüver 2020). There is ample evidence of representational biases in the pressure system (e.g., Binderkrantz et al 2015;Crosson et al 2020). Even in organizations that represent marginalized subconstituencies, the preferences of their most advantaged members tend to prevail.…”

Section: Exposure and Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

Pereira¹

2020

Preprint

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To be responsive, politicians have to rely on beliefs about public will. Previous research suggests that perceptions of public opinion are often distorted. However, it remains unclear (1) why reelection-seeking officials misperceive constituent preferences, and (2) how to mitigate these distorted beliefs. I argue that misperceptions result in part from unequal exposure to different subconstituencies, and a tendency of legislators to project their own preferences on voters. A six-wave panel of Swedish MPs combined with mass surveys provides support for these arguments. Elite beliefs disproportionately reflect the preferences of more privileged subconstituencies and the personal positions of legislators. Additionally, an experiment with Swiss representatives leveraging real political events reveals how misperceptions can be reduced by encouraging a more balanced exposure to voters. The study concludes that economic and political inequalities are rooted in elite beliefs about public preferences and reveals ways to bolster the links between voters and their representatives.

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Section: Exposure and Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

Pereira¹

2020

Preprint

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“…Beginning with the introduction of the wellknown NOMINATE procedure to measure legislator ideology with roll-call votes (Poole and Rosenthal, 1985;Poole, 2005), the literature has since greatly advanced these measurement techniques, expanding them into new areas of theoretical and empirical interest. Methods have been developed to measure the ideology of legislators (Poole and Rosenthal, 1985;Heckman and Snyder Jr., 1997;Clinton, Jackman and Rivers, 2004), political donors (Bonica, 2013(Bonica, , 2014(Bonica, , 2018, interest groups (Groseclose, Levitt and Snyder Jr., 1999;McKay, 2008;Crosson, Furnas and Lorenz, Forthcoming), Supreme and lower-court justices (Martin and Quinn, 2002;Jessee and Malhotra, 2013;Bonica and Woodruff, 2015;Bonica and Sen, 2017), newspapers (Groseclose and Milyo, 2005;Ho and Quinn, 2008;Shapiro, 2010, 2011), municipalities (Tausanovitch and Warshaw, 2014), and government agencies (Richardson, Clinton and Lewis, 2018). Substantial effort has also been put into measuring the ideology of ordinary citizens and political actors on a common ideological scale (Aldrich and McKelvey, 1977;Jessee, 2009;Bafumi and Herron, 2010;Bonica, 2013Bonica, , 2014Jessee and Malhotra, 2013;Hare et al, 2015;Jessee, 2016).…”

Section: Political Ideology Of Social Media Users and News Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

Eady¹,

Bonneau²,

Tucker³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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This article examines the news sharing behavior of politicians and ordinary users by mapping the ideological sharing space of political information on social media. As data, we use the near-universal currency of online political information exchange: URLs (i.e. web links). We introduce a methodological approach (and statistical software) that unifies the measurement of political ideology online, using social media sharing data to jointly estimate the ideology of: (1) politicians; (2) social media users, and (3) the news sources that they share online. Second, we validate the measure by comparing it to well-known measures of roll call voting behavior for members of congress. Third, we show empirically that legislators who represent less competitive districts are more likely to share politically polarizing news than legislators with similar voting records in more competitive districts. Finally, we demonstrate that it is nevertheless not politicians, but ordinary users who share the most ideologically extreme content and contribute most to the polarized online news-sharing ecosystem. Our approach opens up many avenues for research into the communication strategies of elites, citizens, and other actors who seek to influence political behavior and sway public opinion by sharing political information online.

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“…Interest groups also shape whose opinions become more readily available to legislators (Klüver 2020). There is ample evidence of representational biases in the pressure system (e.g., Binderkrantz, Christiansen, and Pedersen 2015;Crosson, Furnas, and Lorenz 2020). Even in organizations that represent marginalized subconstituencies, the preferences of their most advantaged members tend to prevail.…”

Section: Exposure and Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

Pereira

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To be responsive, politicians have to rely on beliefs about public will. Previous research suggests that perceptions of public opinion are often distorted. However, it remains unclear (1) why reelection-seeking officials misperceive public preferences and (2) how to mitigate these distorted beliefs. I argue that misperceptions result from unequal exposure to different subconstituencies and a tendency of legislators to project their own preferences on voters. I find support for these arguments in a six-wave panel of Swedish MPs combined with mass surveys. Elite beliefs disproportionately reflect the preferences of privileged voters and the personal positions of legislators. Additionally, an experiment with Swiss representatives leveraging real political events reveals how misperceptions can be reduced by encouraging a more balanced exposure to voters. The study concludes that economic and political inequalities are rooted in elite beliefs about the electorate and reveals ways to bolster the links between voters and their representatives.

show abstract

Polarized Pluralism: Organizational Preferences and Biases in the American Pressure System

Cited by 33 publications

References 64 publications

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

News Sharing on Social Media: Mapping the Ideology of News Media, Politicians, and the Mass Public

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

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