Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Citizens employ a range of heuristic devices in reaching judgments and making evaluations regarding political candidates and issues. This paper examines the circumstances that lead to the use of multiple and potentially competing heuristics in making complex decisions. In our analysis, subjects demonstrate confusion regarding ideological and partisan heuristics - an inability to disentangle partisan and ideological criteria in the evaluation of candidates. We argue that the political environment alters both the accessibility of particular heuristic devices, as well as the strength of association in memory among alternative heuristic devices. Hence the ability of citizens to select among heuristics is conditioned on the larger environment of incoming information. As a practical matter, this means that the ability of citizens to employ various judgmental criteria depends on the larger political debate, and accessibility provides the connecting link between environmentally supplied political messages and the terms and criteria of individual political choice.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Do shortcuts lead to the same decisions as "encyclopedic" information gathering? Some scholars argue that heuristics are adequate substitutes for thorough search, analysis and weighing of competing arguments when making judgments about public policy issues. Other scholars argue that "full" information enables citizens to make more informed, rational choices, to cut through campaign rhetoric, to know when they are being misled. It is argued that such encyclopedic information gathering, in turn, leads to a more effective, ideal democracy. This research investigated the opinions and knowledge of Australian citizens on "Reconciliation". Voters' use of heuristics versus encyclopedic information processing was examined when a random sample of the Australian electorate participated in Australia's second Deliberative Poll: Australia Deliberates, Reconciliation - Where from Here? Prior to deliberations, the opinions of Coalition and Australian Labor Party supporters were starkly different and deeply divided about various aspects of Reconciliation. This changed following participation in the deliberative process. Deliberation virtually negated the political divide, with post-deliberation opinions and knowledge converging on key aspects of Reconciliation. Analyses of survey responses suggest that uninformed voters using shortcuts for their judgments, draw different conclusions from voters exposed to encyclopedic information gathering.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Heuristic devices have often been posited as a potential aid to low information voters seeking to make a ?correct? vote choice, i.e. one that serves their perceived policy interests. Heuristics are seen, then, as a substitute for ?hard? political information about the policy preferences of the candidates. More recently, however, some have become to question whether reliance on cognitive short-cuts and symbols might actually undermine the collection of politically useful accurate information.
In this effort, we evaluate the role that heuristics and symbols played in the political choices made by Latino citizens in the 2000 presidential election. Using a Fall 2000, pre-election poll, conducted by the Tom?s Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI), we measure political sophistication by using a direct measure of knowledge-in-use, that is, the amount of hard political information on candidate issue positions held by each respondent. When we model this level of information, we find, first, that candidate likeability is strongly and negatively associated with the amount of accurate issue information held by respondents. We also find that levels of information interact with determinants of vote choice. Specifically, while the likeability heuristic appears to be at work in the voting calculus of many Latino citizens, its impact?along with that of the symbolic appeal of Bush?s Spanish speaking ability?crowds out the impact of more issue-based information, such as candidate issue position, among low information respondents. By contrast, issues matter to high information respondents. Our findings are consistent with earlier work in an experimental setting and are of particular importance in a community historically disadvantaged in terms of the usual determinants of political sophistication.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper assesses the impact of the European Union’s Open Method of Coordination (OMC) on Italy’s institutional capability in the employment and social inclusion policy fields. Institutional capability is defined as the extent to which a system of collective action is able – by means of interactive dynamics – to elaborate ‘satisficing’ responses to environmental challenges; transform such responses into decisions of a political nature; implement such decisions; and learn from experience.
Both in employment and social inclusion, Italy has suffered from a twofold handicap: initial congruence of its policymaking process with that presupposed by the OMC was low in both fields, and there have been internal dynamics of change which have significantly interacted with the push related to the OMC. However, the evidence provided in the paper points towards a clear strengthening of institutional capability as an OMC-induced effect in the employment field, while the OMC seems to have had little – if any – impact on institutional capability in the social assistance field. This variance is put to work in order to identify clusters of factors that have plausibly affected the impact of the OMC on Italy’s institutional capability, and could be exploited to generate general hypotheses about the impact of the OMC on national institutional capabilities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Despite the richness of extant studies on the use of party cues as information short-cuts, there is a significant limitation: since most studies focus predominantly on the two main parties in the United States, we do not know whether and to what extent other party labels are used as heuristic devices. This paper seeks to address this limitation by expanding the geographical span of our understanding of the effect of party cues. Our principal focus is the degree to which different party labels, across different institutional contexts, influence how individuals form and express opinions on a range of political issues. We also investigate the moderating influence of partisanship and issue complexity. We present a set of results from an experimental study conducted in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Our findings show that the influence of party cues on the expression of opinions varies greatly when one moves beyond the two major parties in the United States. The results vary by party and country, there is some evidence that partisanship influences whether or not cues are used, and there is mixed evidence about the role of issue complexity in the usefulness of party cues.