Invaluable Involvement: Purposive Interest Group Networks in the 21st Century

We present the first social network analysis of purposive and coordinated interest group relationships. We utilize a network measure based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs. The illuminated structures lend insight into the central players and overall formation of the network over the first seven years of the 21st century. We find that the majority of interest groups primarily partake in coalition strategies with other groups of similar policy interest and ideological character. This is in contrast to previous literature that focused only on one or the other. The factions are tied together by various central players, who act as hubs, leaving a disparate collection of organizations that work alone. Network analysis provides evidence, for example, that the National Wildlife Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union are all particularly strong groups, but exploit different central roles. Ultimately, our work and data suggest several subsequent questions and opportunities pertaining to the coalition strategies of interest groups

The Factors of Interest Group Networks and Success: Organization, Issues and Resources

While interest groups use a variety of techniques to exert influence, coalition strategies are the dominant lobbying technique. However, many questions remain about such coalitions. This paper is the second in a series of social network analyses of purposive and coordinated interest group relationships. We utilize a network measure based on cosigner status to United States Supreme Court amicus curiae, or friend of the court briefs. The illuminated structures lend insight into the central players and overall formation of the network over the first several years of the 21st century. The factions are tied together by various central players, who act as hubs, leaving a disparate collection of organizations that work alone. Using an exponential-family random graph model (ERGM), we find that graph-theorectic and organizational characteristics, such as size and budget, as well as policy interests explain interest group network formation

A strong web presence can equalize the playing field for long shot candidates in Presidential party nominations

While few would doubt that the Internet is now an important component in any election, especially the presidential, what effects does a candidates’ web presence have on their electoral chances, and is this something that they are able to influence? Using data from the 2008 presidential nominations, Dino P. Christenson, Corwin D. Smidt and Costas Panagopoulos investigate how candidate’s web presence differs from traditional indicators of campaign performance and if it can help them to gain greater financial and electoral support. They find that campaign frontrunners have a limited ability to control their web presence, but that outsider candidates can have more success. They also show that candidates with a greater web presence see greater successes in fundraising

Recruiting large online samples in the United States and India: Facebook, Mechanical Turk and Qualtrics

This article examines online recruitment via Facebook, Mechanical Turk (MTurk), and Qualtrics panels in India and the United States. It compares over 7300 respondents—1000 or more from each source and country—to nationally representative benchmarks in terms of demographics, political attitudes and knowledge, cooperation, and experimental replication. In the United States, MTurk offers the cheapest and fastest recruitment, Qualtrics is most demographically and politically representative, and Facebook facilitates targeted sampling. The India samples look much less like the population, though Facebook offers broad geographical coverage. We find online convenience samples often provide valid inferences into how partisanship moderates treatment effects. Yet they are typically unrepresentative on such political variables, which has implications for the external validity of sample average treatment effects.Accepted manuscrip

Executive Accountability Beyond Outcomes: Experimental Evidence on Public Evaluations of Powerful Prime Ministers

Although executives in many democracies have constitutional powers to circumvent the majoritarian legislative process to make policy, political scientists know relatively little about whether and when ordinary people hold executives accountable for the process they use. To study this issue beyond the American presidency, we conduct a series of large survey experiments in France, where the institution of the confidence procedure puts the government in a strong position relative to parliament. Our experiments highlight that public evaluations of the executive reflect a fundamental trade‐off between policy and process. If they face significant opposition in the legislative process, executives either have to accept policy failure or risk punishment for the use of procedural force. People dislike both results, and the average popularity gain of using the confidence procedure over not delivering the policy is modest. Moreover, in some contexts, executives are strictly better off not legislating rather than applying force