Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2775
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Item American Populism, Political Information, and Trade Opinion(2022) Campana, Robert David Louis; Gimpel, James G.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Trade policy is a complex issue that involves economics and international politics. Traditionally, Americans have not often expressed opinions on trade policy due to its high issue complexity and because Democrats and Republican politicians since the later part of the 20th century have been inconsistent in their support for neoliberalism or protectionism. Despite this, populist candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have repeatedly used their support for protectionist policies to differentiate themselves from more mainstream candidates. Using multiple public opinion surveys and survey experiments, this project explores how populism, anti-expert sentiment, anti-capitalism, diversity anxiety, and ethnonationalism influence American’s views on free trade policy and shows that all these factors are associated with greater support for protectionist policies. Additionally, this project examines and adjusts for the unusually high level of non-response regarding questions about trade policy.This project also analyzes what causes Americans to think trade policy (specifically, the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership) is more important. This project finds that Americans who believe themselves to be strangers in their own country are more likely to believe the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific partnership is important. Meanwhile, Americans who believe the United States is less respected than in the past are less likely to believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership is important. Two survey experiments are conducted to see how the presence of “don’t know” responses in trade opinion questions and patriotic framing shift attitudes on trade policy. In both cases, issue framing does not significantly shift opinion on trade policy. This project carries out a longitudinal study to see how the same group of Americans shift their attitudes on trade policy over a multi-year time frame. Generally, these shifts are very small; however, Americans with differing views on regulation displayed the greatest attitudinal shift. Initially, Americans who wanted more government regulation were the most protectionist while Americans who wanted less government regulation were the least protectionist. Over the multi-year period, this association became significantly less visible. Finally, this project analyzes how economic attitudes, immigration attitudes, economic identity, immigrant identity, local immigrant populations, and local economic data influence views on trade policy. The study finds that immigration attitudes are closely aligned with views of trade policy.Item Information Control: Leadership Power in the U.S. House of Representatives(2011) Curry, James Michael; Lee, Frances E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most congressional scholarship argues that legislative leaders--majority party leaders and committee chairs--are strongly constrained, weak agents of their rank-and-file. This study argues that information, and leaders' ability to control it, is a significant and independent source of power for leaders in the House of Representatives. Most rank-and-file members of Congress lack the time and resources necessary to track, study, or become deeply involved in legislating on most bills considered by the House. As a result, they rely on sources that can synthesize the information they need to decide whether or not to support the bill, offer an amendment, or take other actions. The party leadership and committee chairs, because of their staff and resource advantages, are important sources of information for the rank-and-file. However, legislative leaders often exploit their informational advantages to help their preferred legislation gain easy passage through the chamber. Along with the ability to perpetually collect information on rank-and-file preferences, and provide leadership-approved information about legislation, legislative leaders also have an arsenal of tools to limit the availability of information including withholding legislative language, scheduling votes on short notice, and using large and complex legislation as a vehicle. This information control puts leaders in the driver's seat, allowing them to lead the chamber by shaping the information driving the debate on a bill. Thirty interviews with members of Congress and congressional staff, along with a unique dataset of important legislation considered by the House of Representatives are used to support this theory. Leaders are found to employ information control tactics strategically, to aid the passage of their priority legislation and in response to the potential for significant influence from outside groups. The study, overall, suggests that legislative leaders in the House are more influential than they are typically perceived to be and that participation in congressional policymaking is often restricted.Item Champions of the Public or Purveyors of Elite Perspectives? Interest Group Activity in Information and Communications Policy(2004-07-06) Sherman, Tina Won; McIntosh, Wayne; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Communication is a valuable tool of democratic politics as it is used by citizens to persuade decision-makers, and it also allows groups to come together and provide citizens with information about the polity. Today, communication that relies on the Internet plays an increasing role in how information is exchanged between citizens. Theorists assert that the democratic potential of the Internet and related communication technologies is great, given that citizens are able to serve as both producers and receivers of information. Yet, the policies that underlie the communications industry and the technologies it produces can limit that potential. This industry and its technologies are influenced by business interests that can limit democratic potential in favor of marketplace demands, leaving the policymaking process described in arenas, including as information and communications (info-comm) policy, as more elitist in nature than political scientists would otherwise like to believe. This study seeks to examine how elitism impacts the public interest position furthered by info-comm groups by exploring the following paradox: the leadership of the info-comm policy community help citizens participate in politics while at the same time deem the public generally unaware and uninformed on info-comm policy issues. This study's primary research question asks whether leadership of the info-comm policy community inform themselves about the public interest through dialogue with citizens. The secondary question for this research observes whether the leadership of the info-comm policy community approach their decision-making in a democratic fashion. These research questions and related propositions were tested through semi-structured interviews with the leadership of the info-comm policy community, including info-comm group leaders and the foundation grant officers that financially support them. The responses of the interviewees illustrate the impact of elitism on the formulation of policy positions by leaders and pose further considerations for the activities of this policy community. The findings of this study support the aforementioned paradox, suggesting that the public's voice in this policy arena may be more limited than we would otherwise expect. This could have implications for the future direction of info-comm policy and its related technologies, ultimately limiting the citizen participation in democratic deliberation.