Rejecting Compromise

Anderson, Sarah; Butler, Daniel M.; Harbridge‐Yong, Laurel

doi:10.1017/9781108768375

Cited by 47 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 168 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We recruited a total of 213 U.S. state legislators and legislative staff from 47 states attending the 2019 National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) Annual Meeting for the pilot study. Recruitment was based on the procedure described in Anderson et al (2020) 15 . To recruit participants, our research team secured an exhibitor booth at the 2019 NCSL Legislator Summit in Nashville, Tennessee.…”

Section: Participants and Recruitmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

Hirsch

Wong‐Parodi²

2023

Environ. Res.: Climate

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Evidence-based policymaking has the potential to improve the efficiency and impact of climate mitigation and adaptation policies, but that promise cannot be fulfilled if policymakers fail to change their minds (update their beliefs) when presented with new evidence. Research suggests that individuals often resist changing their mind, especially on polarized topics like climate action. Here we explore whether an “evidence-based policymaker” intervention can reduce resistance when policymakers interpret new information. We hypothesize that, if policymakers wish to see themselves as "evidence-based", reminding them of that identity can make changing their beliefs more comfortable. This is because belief-updating provides an opportunity to affirm their identity as an evidence-based policymaker. In two survey studies of state and local U.S. policymakers – a neutral policy pilot (n = 152) and a polarizing climate policy experiment (n = 356) – we show that the intervention was effective, even when evidence was incompatible with prior policy beliefs or party ideology. This finding suggests that making evidence-based identities salient when presenting new evidence could increase that information’s impact on climate policymaking.

show abstract

Section: Participants and Recruitmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

Hirsch

Wong‐Parodi²

2023

Environ. Res.: Climate

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…widely known (and if they in fact are more likely to support compromise), then legislators may feel freer to support, rather than reject compromise (Anderson et al, 2020).…”

Section: Politicians and Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research in political science has identified both the impact of perceived norms on politicians as well as politicians’ biases in understanding what those norms are. Anderson and colleagues (2020), in their book, Rejecting Compromise: Legislators Fear of Primary Voters , reported an interesting series of studies. First, they conducted a survey of voters, asking them about their preference for their legislators finding compromise—in particular, “half‐loaf” compromises that move a policy somewhat closer to what is the legislator's preferred outcome, but not all the way.…”

Section: Politicians and Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, when the researchers presented the bill compromise in hypothetical form to a large sample of state legislators and asked them to anticipate their voters’ responses, the majority of state legislators said that their primary voters would want them to kill that bill. In a survey, 72% of state legislators thought they would receive some or a lot of retribution if they supported the compromise bill (Anderson et al., 2020). Politicians act in anticipation of that potential retribution in ways that at times lead them to shift away from supporting climate policy.…”

Section: Politicians and Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The connections—and misconnections—between the public and politicians over climate policy: A social psychological perspective

Sherman,

Van Boven

2023

Social Issues Policy Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We review findings from social psychology and related fields to examine the bidirectional relationship between the public—what are their views about climate change and the need for policies to address the climate crisis—and the politicians who are making (or not making) climate policy and beholden to electoral constraints. We illustrate social psychological pressures that influence policy support and their relevance to how policies emerge from coordinated action and how barriers impede policy progress. We review two factors that have been the focus of research within communication, political science, and psychology and that are relevant to how climate policies are promoted (or undermined): activists and the media. We examine the process by which activists amplify and transmit the preferences of the public to politicians, and how research on persuasion and social norms helps understand how this effect can be amplified or diminished. We also describe how the media environment can amplify or diminish the roles of the public and the politicians in influencing each other. As the world confronts the climate crisis, research from social psychologists, environmental psychologists, political scientists, and communication scholars has examined the interrelations between the public, politicians, media, and activists, but largely in a disconnected way. The current paper provides a social psychological framework to integrate these approaches and, in so doing, suggest new directions for research and theory‐guided ways to influence policy around climate change.

show abstract

“…Consequently, as the threat of a challenge from the ideological extreme increases, legislators become more cautious and limit their electoral vulnerability by avoiding bills that demonstrate their lack of ideological purity. The result is less bargaining and collaboration across the aisle, and fewer moderate, compromise bills capable of being enacted into law (Anderson et al, 2020).…”

Section: Primaries and Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The primary threat: How the surge of ideological challengers is exacerbating partisan polarization

Barton

2022

Party Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite widespread speculation among pundits and politicians, statistical research finds little evidence that primaries are an important source of polarization in roll call voting. This manuscript moves beyond roll call votes by testing the effects of ideological primary challenges on partisanship in bill co-sponsorship in Congress. Moreover, while extant research generally focuses on the one-to-one effects of primary challenges on the incumbents who experience a challenge, I measure and test the effects of the mere threat of a primary challenge from the ideological extreme. I find that the increased threat of an ideological primary challenge accounts for about one-fourth of the rise in partisanship that occurred from the 1980s to the 2010s. These findings suggest the recent wave of ideological primary challenges is an important source of the escalation and intensification of polarization in recent Congresses.

show abstract

Rejecting Compromise

Cited by 47 publications

References 168 publications

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

The connections—and misconnections—between the public and politicians over climate policy: A social psychological perspective

The primary threat: How the surge of ideological challengers is exacerbating partisan polarization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About