Selected Papers By Peter Muhlberger
Director, Center for Communication Research, Texas Tech Univ.
Visiting Assistant Professor, College of Mass Communication
PI, Deliberative E-Rulemaking Project, National Science Foundation
Co-PI Virtual Agora Project, National Science Foundation
Email: peter dot muhlberger at gmail dot` com
Paper Abstracts List
Automated Extraction of Mental Models from Obama's and McCain's Campaign Speeches: A Natural Language Processing and Statistical Approach
This paper applies natural language processing (NLP) and statistical analysis to speeches of John McCain and Barack Obama in a part of the 2008 presidential race in an effort to extract the candidates' ideological mental models. A focus of the paper is to test moderately simple methods that help identify, from the over 6000 unique words utilized by the candidates, a statistically manageable subset that clarifies conceptual differences. NLP was applied to identify the parts of speech for each word in the candidates' speeches. This information helps disambiguate word meaning and narrow the choice of words. Statistical bootstrapping and a simple Bayesian calculation provided two key indicators to further narrow the selection of words to those that involved statistically significant differences between the candidates and that also were likely to play a substantial role in the candidates' conceptual systems. Findings reveal highly significant differences between the candidates in their choice of words. Identified terms and their use in context suggest that McCain embraces a touch of free market ideology, but, far more prominently, a conservative form of the political philosophy of republicanism--one that values the state and political institutions above the individual. McCain's language differentially stresses lofty goals, abstract policies, institutional authorities, and national unity. He presents himself more formally and does not appear to offer explanations in his speeches at the same rate as Obama. Obama, in contrast, presents himself as a grounded populist focused on everyday concerns and people. His language differentially stresses everyday issues, concrete policies, and ordinary people as well as far more freely examining social divisions. He presents himself more informally and offers appreciably more explanations. Contrary to some pundit wisdom, Obama's language, at least, appears to be populist rather than elitist. Multivariate statistical results indicate that the terms identified by the techniques deployed are moderately powerful predictors of which candidate is speaking, even on separate data than that used to construct the model. This suggests the analysis may have captured an important part of what makes these candidates different.
KEYWORDS: Review, deliberation, citizenship, authoritarianism, communicative rationality, identity, group polarization, attitude change, political knowledge, political sophistication
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Online Communication and Democratic Citizenship
Scholars of IT and society have been especially interested in the transformative potential of the Internet. One attractive possibility is that the Internet could become a much expanded public sphere stimulating a socially and politically engaged public. Thus, the Internet might effect a transformation of citizenshipin the conceptions people have of their role as citizens and in their conduct of that role. This chapter examines whether and how online political deliberation affects citizenship and the communicative conditions for these effects. It reviews research findings regarding the influence of online engagement on attitude change and polarization in group discussions and on the political knowledge and sophistication of participants. Perhaps the most important transformative impact of the Internet may be on deep conceptions pertinent to citizenship"psychological-structural" effects. This chapter examines research findings regarding conceptions of authority, identification with the citizen role, and use of communicative rationality.
KEYWORDS: Review, deliberation, citizenship, authoritarianism, communicative rationality, identity, group polarization, attitude change, political knowledge, political sophistication
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Strategic and Communicative Rationality in a Deliberative Field Experiment
Deliberative theorists maintain that deliberation can resolve political issues through reason rather than manipulation or forcesubstituting "communicative" for "strategic" rationality. Skeptics raise concerns that deliberations will become victim to manipulation by participants. Research and theory suggest six types of factors that may affect inclination to strategic behavior: interaction medium, the internalization of political motivation, authority attitudes, Machiavellianism, empathy, and conception of citizenship. Research on the social identity and deindividuation (SIDE) model of media effects indicates that online deliberation in the absence of reminders of collective citizen identity may increase strategic behavior. Self-determination theory research shows that greater internalization of political motivation may reduce strategic behavior. Belief in the desirability of hierarchical authority should undermine the rationale for communicative action. This paper examines data from a study of 386 Pittsburgh residents who participated in a one-day deliberation experiment involving online or face-to-face deliberation. The convergent validity of a measure of strategic behavior is confirmed by the variable's strong relationship with a tested dispositional measure of Machiavellianism. Maximum likelihood analysis of a zero-inflated OLS is used to determine what factors influence the prevalence of strategic behavior. Findings reveal that only small numbers of deliberators report engaging in strategic behaviors, and statistical findings show no evidence of understating strategic behavior. As expected, Machiavellianism, authority attitudes, and online deliberation in the absence of collective identity reminders significantly increase reported strategic behavior. Empathy and deliberative conceptions of citizenship reduces it. Political internalization variables have the greatest overall impact on strategic behavior. Results clarify the type of public that would be needed to hold deliberations without the strategic exercise of power.
KEYWORDS: Deliberation, communicative rationality, media effects, empathy, authoritarianism, political internalization, self-determination theory
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Stealth Democracy: Authoritarianism, Parochial Citizens and Deliberation
In their widely-read book, Stealth Democracy, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse seek to show that much of the American public desires "stealth democracy"a democracy run like a business by experts with little deliberation or public input. The authors maintain that stealth democracy beliefs are largely reasonable preferences and that a more engaged democracy is simply of no interest to the public. This paper introduces an opposing "parochial citizens thesis" that suggests that stealth democracy beliefs may be driven by socially problematic beliefs and orientations, including everence for authority, an incapacity to take other political perspectives, and low cognitive engagement. These beliefs and orientations may be rooted in simplistic conceptions of human agency and leadership that might be ameliorated through democratic deliberation. The paper introduces a novel cognitive developmental explanation of authoritarianism and its covariates that has advantages over existing explanations. Hypotheses are tested with survey and experimental data from a RDD sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents, who participated in a one-day deliberation. Using confirmatory factor analysis and OLS regression with cluster-robust standard errors, the paper finds that stealth democracy beliefs are explained by beliefs and orientations consistent with a parochial citizens worldview. It also finds that online democratic deliberation significantly ameliorates key stealth democracy beliefs and some of the factors that lead to these beliefs.
KEYWORDS: Political Apathy, Stealth Democracy, Political Participation, Political Discussion, Democratic Deliberation, Human Agency, Need for Cognition, Need for Structure, Right-Wing Authoritarianism
This paper is available by request from the author. It is under review at the journal Political Psychology; Retrn to Paper Titles List
Prosocial Reasoning in Deliberative Policy Choices
Deliberative theorists suggest that in thoughtful discussion citizens take into account a variety of social perspectives they would not otherwise consider. Thus, deliberation may help introduce more community-oriented or "prosocial" considerations into decision making. Meadian psychology, the Social Identity and Deindividuation (SIDE) model, and agency theory suggest the importance of group identities in focusing people on prosocial considerations. Research on online discussion indicates that certain online environmentsthose that restrict individual identity cues but remind people of their group identitiesmay especially open discussants to prosocial considerations. In particular, the SIDE model suggests that reminders of citizen identity in online or non-social contexts may help enhance the effect of prosocial considerations. This paper examines a variety of reasons offered to explain policy choices by a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents who participated in face-to-face, online discussion, or an individual contemplation or "control" condition. Using cluster-robust Ordinary Least Squares, it finds an increased prosocial impact of reasons on policy attitudes for people who are reminded of an important group identitytheir citizenshipand for the interaction of online deliberation and citizenship.
KEYWORDS: Democratic deliberation, deliberation effects, SIDE, Mead, prosocial, altruism.
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Virtual Agora Project Report: Deliberated Views Regarding School Consolidation and Educational Improvements in Pittsburgh
This report to the community stakeholders of the Virtual Agora Project presents evidence that the project appreciably changed participants' policy opinions on school closings in Pittsburgh and did so based on several coherent reasons. The report also discusses demographic differences in final policy opinions, finding that people with low income did not fully embrace school closings, unlike other participants.
KEYWORDS: Democratic deliberation, deliberation effects, deliberation quality, community report.
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"Report to the Deliberative Democracy Consortium: Building a Deliberation Measurement Toolbox"
This report provides a range of tested measures of the effects of deliberation and of deliberative quality of use to researchers and practitioners. These include such survey scales as: social trust, political interest, political identity, deliberative citizenship, political reflectiveness, stealth democracy beliefs, confidence in government, perceived conflict, motivation, policy attitudes, and reciprocity. The report also introduces a tested qualitative coding scheme for the quality of deliberation. The report describes the results of tests of these measures in four deliberations held by prominent public deliberation organizations: AmericaSpeaks, the Canadian Policy Research Network, Public Agenda, and the Virtual Agora Project. The report also introduces a theoretical framework, agency theory and the related parochial citizens' thesis, for approaching deliberation research and understanding its practice. It introduces suggestions for how practitioners could improve their efforts to demonstrate the value and efficacy of deliberation, both in terms of how they design such efforts and in how they should write questions to measure of effects of deliberation. If researchers and practitioners could consistently use a fairly common set of indicators for deliberative consequences and quality and report their experiences, this would contribute greatly to the accumulation of knowledge about deliberation. A repository of results from different deliberations using the same measures would help researchers and practitioners identify what features of deliberation contribute to given outcomes.
KEYWORDS: Democratic deliberation, deliberation effects, deliberation quality, human agency, identity, measurement, scales.
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"Lessons From the Virtual Agora Project: The Effects of Agency, Identity, Information, and Deliberation on Political Knowledge"
A key impetus toward increasingly widespread use of deliberation has been the claim that deliberation helps educate citizens about political issues, counteracting low levels of political knowledge and sophistication. Past research has confirmed that people learn in deliberative contexts. This research, however, has not been careful to separate the effects of informative readings or other information sources from the effects of discussion. Knowledge of the exact mechanism of learning in deliberative contexts is crucial to determine how best to design these contexts to foster learning. In addition, past research has not carefully examined what individual-level factors affect deliberative learning. Knowledge of these factors is important for addressing concerns about possible inequality in deliberative contexts and may help suggest interventions to increase the equality of learning. This paper introduces a theory of political agency that suggests possible factors for explaining learning in deliberative contexts, including political reflectiveness and conceptions of citizen identity. The paper tests a model, involving these agency variables, socioeconomic factors, and experimental conditionsÑ including discussion and information-only conditions. The model is tested with data from pre- and post- surveys of a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents who came to a one-day deliberation experiment. Analysis proceeded with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, HLM, and OLS with group-robust p-values. We find, overall, that post-discussion knowledge is not responsive to discussion, suggesting that learning occurred primarily through reading materials, a finding with important deliberation design implications. Deliberation remains important because it encourages people to participate in the first place. We also find, however, that people with certain conceptions of citizenship may be more likely to learn in a discussion. Fially, results show that socioeconomic characteristics play an important role in learning, but one that is counteracted to a substantial extent by the agency variables, which are distributed almost equally across socioeconomic categories. The agency variables suggest points of intervention to mitigate inequality in learning. Agency theory may be a valuable theoretical framework for deliberation research more generally.
KEYWORDS: Political knowledge, learning, human agency, identity, democratic deliberation.
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"Should E-Government Design for Citizen Participation? Stealth Democracy and Deliberation"
Cyberoptimists have heralded an age of citizen engagement enabled by electronic technologies that allow widespread citizen input in government decision making. In contrast, influential political scientists maintain that the preponderance of citizens quite reasonably wish to avoid political participation and that involving citizens could have very negative consequences for governance. In their widely-read book, Stealth Democracy, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse seek to show that much of the American public desres "stealth democracy"Ña democracy run like a business by experts with little deliberation or public input. The authors maintain that stealth democracy beliefs are due to reasonable apathy rationales and that a more engaged democracy is simply of no interest to the public. This paper introduces an opposing "parochial citizens thesis" that suggests that stealth democracy beliefs may be driven by socially problematic beliefs and orientations, including reverence for authority and an incapacity to take other political perspectives. These views are rooted in simplistic conceptions of human agency and political leadership that might be ameliorated through deliberation. This paper examines survey and experimental data from the National Science Foundation / Information Technology Research funded Virtual Agora Project. The data comprise a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents, who participated in face-to-face and online deliberations. Using OLS regression with cluster-robust standard errors, the paper finds that stealth democracy beliefs are explained by beliefs and orientations consistent with the parochial citizens thesis. It also finds that online democratic deliberation significantly ameliorates key stealth democracy beliefs and some of the factors that lead to these beliefs. Contrary to the stealth democracy thesis, e-government efforts to stimulate citizen deliberation may have positive consequences.
Please cite this paper as: Muhlberger, Peter. 2006. "Should E-government Design for Citizen Participation?:ÊStealth Democracy and Deliberation." ACM International Conference Proceeding Series: Proceedings of the 2006 National Conference on Digital government Research (available at: http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm) 151: 53 - 61.
KEYWORDS: Political Apathy, Stealth Democracy, Political Participation, Political Discussion, Democratic Deliberation, Online Deliberation, Human Agency.
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"The Virtual Agora Project: A Research Design for Studying Democratic Deliberation"
In 2001, the National Science Foundation provided $2.1 million in funding for the Virtual Agora Project, a three-year exploration of the effects of online and face-to-face democratic deliberation. The project seeks to shed light on deliberationÕs effects on individuals, the community, and decision quality as well as how best to use technology to achieve positive outcomes. Of special concern to the project is determining whether deliberation builds better citizens. This paper describes the research design of this project to stimulate future research on deliberation.
KEYWORDS: Research design, research methodology, democratic deliberation, NSF.
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"Attitude Change in Face-To-Face and Online Political Deliberation: Conformity, Information, or Perspective Taking?"
Theorists of deliberative democracy maintain that deliberation can alter political views by providing new information and by exposing participants to alternative perspectives. Prior research has shown that deliberation often results in substantial attitude change. Published studies, however, do not effectively separate the effects of reading policy briefs from the effects of discussion, nor do they explore conformity or perspective taking effects. This paper examines data from a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents, who came to a one day deliberation experiment. All participants received and had time to study detailed information about the project topic. They were divided into online discussion, face-to-face discussion, and no-discussion control groups. OLS with group-robust p-values indicate that reading materials and not discussion resulted in much of the change in policy attitudes, though face-to-face discussion had some effects. Discussion did have powerful effects in shifting individual attitudes toward their post-discussion group mean. This diverges from conformity research, which predicts polarization to pre-discussion group means. Analyses also find evidence for effects of perspective taking and knowledge, but not conformity.
KEYWORDS: Attitude change, democratic deliberation, perspective taking, conformity, political knowledge, attitude polarization.
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"Democratic Deliberation and Political Identity: Enhancing Citizenship"
Theorists hypothesize that democratic deliberation can shape better citizens, ones that are more community-minded, empathic, and motivated. This paper examines a mechanism by which political deliberation could create such improved citizens. According to self-regulation theory, action and cognition are regulated by high-level self-concepts or "identities." It is proposed that democratic deliberation calls participants' attention to their "citizen identity," thereby strengthening that identity and its behavioral effects. This paper examines data from a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents. These residents came to a deliberation experiment at Carnegie Mellon University. Participants were divided into small-group deliberation and control conditions. Multivariate OLS analysis with robust standard errors shows that deliberation significantly increased "citizen identity." This identity is related to voting, contacting officials, community collaboration, and political internalizationÑa deep concern for politics that refines the concept of political interest. Prior research shows that internalization leads to active political information seeking, less dependence on others for political choices, less susceptibility to persuasion, and more differentiated attitudes.
KEYWORDS: Political identity, democratic deliberation, political participation, political discussion, citizenship, political development
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"Stealth Democracy, Apathy Rationales, and Deliberation"
In their widely-read book, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse seek to show that much of the American public desires "stealth democracy"--a democracy run like a business by experts with little deliberation and little public input. The authors maintain that stealth democracy belifs are due to rather understandable apathy rationales and that a more deliberative democracy is simply of no interest and no benefit to the public. This paper examines survey and related data from a representative sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents, who participated in a deliberation. It finds that stealth democracy beliefs are explained by a number of apathy rationales that are not innocuous but are related to a syndrome of factors including authoritarian beliefs and an incapacity to take the perspective of others. These factors may, in turn, be related to inadequate cognitive development. It also finds that democratic deliberation significantly ameliorates the apathy rationales, potentially remedying stealth democracy beliefs.
KEYWORDS: Cognitive Development, Political Apathy, Stealth Democracy, Political Participation, Political Discussion, Democratic Deliberation
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"Human Agency and the Revitalization of the Public Sphere"
This paper examines three types of explanations for why the advent of the Internet has not revitalized the public sphere. One set of explanations focuses on the economy of attention"--limits to human information processing and resulting tradeoffs. The economy of attention, in combination with features of the Internet, such as information quantity, untrustworthy information, and unfit discussion partners, serves as a deterrent to the revitalization of the public sphere. A second set of explanations, psycho-social structure, includes the development of routines and habits of Internet use that confine that use to conventional activity. It also includes the decline of traditional bases of political organization that remove participation incentives for parts of the population. Ultimately, however, attention and structure serve only as deterrents, not as bars to revitalization. Sufficiently self-motivated people could overcome these bars. Thus, it may be political disinterest that serves as the final bar. This disinterest can best be understood as based in naive realism and other cognitive developmental explanations. The paper concludes by sketching a theory of human agency that encompasses all three types of explanations and suggests new avenues for e-democracy research.
KEYWORDS: Agency, Public Sphere, Cognitive Development, Attention, Social Structure
Political Communication Issue #2, 2005; Return to Paper Titles List
"Polarization of Political Attitudes and Values on the Internet"
Laboratory experiments show that people online can be more powerfully affected by group norms. This has led some to suggest that the Internet could serve as a divisive social force, polarizing the public sphere. Many potentially relevant differences exist between the real Internet and online laboratory experiments, which raises the question of whether polarization does occur on the real Internet. This paper employes data from a representative sample survey of Pittsburgh, PA, to determine whether political attitudes and values of those who use the Internet for political purposes are more polarized. Polarization is measured both as extremity and mean absolute distance between all pairs of responses, a measure of clustering. The significance of polarization differences between Internet users and non-users is determined by statistical bootstrapping, with weights to control for intensity of Internet use. No evidence is found that online political discussion polarizes attitudes and values more than offline political discussion. Trends imply modestly lower polarization online than offline.
KEYWORDS: Polarization, Political Ideology, Political Values, Internet
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"Beyond Political Interest:
Political Internalization in Political Participation"
Previous psychological research with undergraduate students suggests people possess qualitative differences in their political interest. Some internalize their interest to a greater degree than others, leading to more and higher quality participation. This poster's research replicates these findings with a representative population sample, and extends the findings into participation-relevant attitudes and the quality and quantity of everyday political speech.
Hypotheses are tested using a representative mail survey of 1200 Pittsburgh residents. Higher levels of internalization are found to improve participation-relevant attitudes and the quality and quantity of political speech, even controlling for conventionally-measured political interest, ideological and partisan strength, internal and external efficacy, opportunity costs, and other variables. In most cases, political interest proves insignificant. The results provide strong evidence for a theoretical approach that importantly qualifies existing understandings of political participation. It is not political interest itself but the motivational form of that interest that influences many aspects of participation.
KEYWORDS: Political Discussion, Political Interest, Political Participation,
Democratic Deliberation
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"Political Trust Vs. Generalized Trust in Political Participation"
A key operationalization of the concept of social capital is the degree to which people believe they can, in general, trust people. Social capital theory maintains that generalized interpersonal trust should promote civic engagement, but research results to date indicate that trust influences engagement either weakly or not at all. Generalized trust may not show an influence on civic engagement because it may contain features that both promote and inhibit collective action. If people trust political and community leaders they may believe there is no need to participate. This paper seeks to find a strong, positive relationship between trust and collective action by developing a measure of specifically political social trust. This measure specifies that other community members are being trusted to abide by norms of political cooperation. The measure is tested using a representative mail survey of 1200 Pittsburgh residents. Ordered probit and regression analyses find political trust superior to generalized trust in predicting reported motivation to act on community problems, participation in organizations in which community problems are discussed, and participation in organizations that take action on community problems. Generalized trust proves superior to political social trust in predicting self-reported attendance at community planning meetings, but such meetings are primarily about communicating concerns to community leaders, not collective political action.
KEYWORDS: Social Capital, Social Trust, Political Capital, Political Participation
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"Political Apathy Rationales: Stealth Democracy or Failure of Societal Perspective?"
Political scientists are increasingly interested in the reasons why people are politically apathetic. In such works as Stealth Democracy, political apathy is explained as innocuous and reasonable. This paper explores the political ramifications of four apathy rationales that are likely not innocous: belief that only efficacious political action makes sense (instrumentalism), belief in the privacy of political views, taking personal offence a political disagreement, and belief in the impossibility of rational discussion of political disagreements. These apathy rationales can be understood as resulting from a lack of a broader societal perspective that leaves people unconcerned with the larger community and puts their political thoughts and actions, no matter how socially harmful, beyond the possibility of being discussed or questioned. The causes and consequences of the apathy rationales are explored with mail survey data from a sample of 1200 Pittsburgh, PA residents. Those who agree with the apathy rationales discuss politics less, are less willing to be phoned regarding democratic deliberation opportunities, have lower political interest and ideological strength, and have lower quality political discussion. Humanitarianism helps reduce subscription to the apathy rationales.
KEYWORDS: Political Apathy, Political Discussion, Political Participation, Humanitarianism, Democratic Deliberation
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"Political Values and Attitudes in Internet Political
Discussion: Political Transformation
or Politics As Usual?"
Theory:&bsp; The scholarly literature on the social effects of technology
suggests a number of hypotheses regarding the political implications of the
Internet, including that it will: make no difference (normalization);
mobilize those already interested in politics (reinforcement); mobilize new
types of participants and attitudes (mobilization); instill new types of
attitudes (cultural change); polarize attitudes (polarization); and reducing
political inequality. A particularly important type of political attitude
that might be affected is political values, which influence a wide variety
of political judgments.
Hypotheses: This paper will test the null hypothesis that people
who discuss politics on the Internet or who do so more frequently do not
have either different or more extreme political values, party identifications,
ideology, and political attitudes than the general population or people who
discuss politics offline.
Methods: A 2001 representative sample mail survey of 1200 Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania residents elicited political values (standard survey measures
of egalitarianism, humanitarianism, economic individualism, traditionalism,
and racism), key political attitudes (ideology, racial attitudes, party identification,
etc.), and frequency of political discussion online and offline. Mean
differences and extremity are compared using bootstrapped p-values.
Results: The data in this paper replicates results from prior
studies showing significant attitude and value differences between online
and offline activists and discussants. But, when proper account is
taken of discussion frequencies, these differences prove insignificant.
The normalization hypothesis is supported. Polarization is rejected.
KEYWORDS: Internet, Political Discussion, Political Participation,
Normalization, Mobilization, Polarization, Political Inequality
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"Access, Skill, and Motivation In Online Political
Discussion: The Democratic Digital"
Three key issues confront the investigation of electronic political engagement:
whether such engagement will ameliorate low levels of political knowledge
and participation in the mass public, whether it will aggravate social inequalities,
and, relatedly, what factors promote or inhibit online discussion.
This paper employs a representative sample survey of Pittsburgh to examine
these issues with respect to online political discussion. It finds
that political discussion constitutes 9.8% of all political discussion, a
small but perhaps not negligible amount. Demographic factors prove
much less important for online as opposed to offline discussion, suggesting
that online discussion does not aggravate social inequalities. Nevertheless,
examining the respective roles of Internet access, political motivation,
and Internet skill reveals that this demographic equality is brought about
by suppressed levels of online participation by the educated and homeowners.
Thus, the demographic equality of online political discussion depends on
factors that minimize the amount of such discussion. Efforts to mobilize
online discussion run the risk of creating social inequalities.
KEYWORDS: Digital Divide, Second-Level Digital Divide, Political Discussion,
Democratic Deliberation, Political Participation
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""Social Capital and Deliberative Theory:
A Synthesis and Empirical Test"
This paper draws on deliberative democratic theory to clarify the mechanisms
by which social trust, a key component of social capital, exercises political
effects. This theoretical elaboration suggests a number of factors
that should mediate the political effects of social trust, and it thereby
points to improvements that can be made in measuring politically-relevant
social trust. Hypotheses regarding mediating factors are tested with
data from a small sample of Pittsburgh residents. Several key hypotheses
are confirmed. In particular, it is found that social trust is significantly
and negatively correlated with two rationalizations of political apathy—the
view that only manifestly efficacious individual political action is worthwhile
(instrumentalism) and the view that political discussion cannot be rational.
These apathy rationalizations and social trust itself have expected effects
on norms of political discussion, political behavior, and other outcomes.
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"Political Speech and Apathy in an American
City: A Pilot Study"
Political theorists have focused increasing attention on democratic deliberation
among ordinary people as morally and pragmatically crucial for addressing
difficult public policy choices. Some theorists also maintain such
deliberation is key to building community and citizenship. Despite
growing interest in democratic deliberation among political scientists, not
much is known about the quantity or quality of political speech in America.
This paper examines findings from a pilot study of new survey items meant
to clarify the degree to which Americans are prepared to deliberate politically.
Starting with a theory-based definition of political deliberation, this paper
examines the validity and reliability of the new survey items and what they
indicate regarding the quantity, quality, and inequality of political speech
in a pilot study of Pittsburgh, PA. It also examines the factor structure
of norms with respect to political speech, identifying several distinct deliberative
norms. The relationship between these norms and behavior, are explored.
Finally, the paper briefly examines measures of several explanations of political
apathy that should impact deliberative norms and behavior.
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"Defining and Measuring Deliberative Participation
and Potential: A Theoretical Analysis"
and Operationalization
Though deliberative democracy has received ever increasing theoretical and
research attention in recet years, theorists have not agreed on what deliberation
is. Also, standardized survey measures of deliberative participation
and attitudes conducive to deliberation have not been constructed.
Such measures would help social scientists determine the degree to which
citizens already engage in deliberative discussions and their potential for
such discourse. These measures would also help identify what political
events and interventions improve the prospects for deliberation. Drawing
on several theorists, this paper seeks to clarify what deliberation is, operationalizes
deliberation, and proposes a measure of deliberative participation and attitudes
conducive to deliberation.
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"Prospects for Electronic Democracy: A Survey
Analysis, Version 1"
This report provides an overview of key findings from a 1200-person mail
survey, funded by the Markle Foundation, and designed and conducted by Carnegie
Mellon University's Community Connections Project. Mail survey participants
were selected to be representative of the Pittsburgh city community.
The survey was designd to provide data useful to Community Connections'
objective of promoting constructive and informed political discussion in
the Pittsburgh community, particularly via electronic means. The survey
provides key baselines against which Community Connections can judge the
success of its efforts, such as the current quantity and quality of everyday
political discussion.
The survey also provides answers to many vital questions pertinent to how
Community Connections directs its efforts: How receptive is the public
to improving the quantity and quality of political discussion? What
factors influence the quantity and quality of political discussion either
generally or with regard to particular forms? The nature of these factors
will help Community Connections identify the types of persuasive appeals
and other interventions that will be needed to stimulate public engagement.
Finally, how are factors that impact political discussion distributed demographically?
If the factors are strongly determined by demographic characteristics, they
may be based on strong social divisions that could be difficult to eradicate.
Moreover, if demographics play a substantial role, then the views of those
who discuss politics may not be representative of the community as a whole.
Special efforts would then need to be undertaken to insure that public deliberations
organized by Community Connections adequately represent the public as a whole.
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"Analyzing Reasoning Chains in Political Decisions:
A Response Latency Methodology"
Much social research examines attitudes, values, and beliefs. Researchers would often like to make claims about the relationships between these cognitions as well as their effect on behavior. Providing evidence for such claims is quite difficult, yet without such evidence critics can challenge the direction of relationships between cognitions and even between cognitions and behavior. This paper describes and tests a methodology for using reaction time (response latency) to clarify the direction between cognitions and between cognitions and behavior. The elements of the method include: a model relating reasoning chains to reaction time, the gamma probability function for time data, Bayes factors for testing the relative strength of statistical models, and question order experiments. The method is applied to the author's ethical responsibility model of political participation decisions in a sample of 167 college students. Findings support the model in one key respect and are ambiguous in another. Findings contradict a reverse causal effect from behavioral intentions to the key ethical cognition.
KEYWORDS: Political Participation, Decision Making, Research Methods, Causal Modeling, Response Latency
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"Moral Reasoning Effects on Political Participation"
In this study, respondents who agreed to participate in a computer-administered interview
were presented with information and questions about public interest groups, followed by
the Defining Issues Test of moral reasoning (DIT). Respondents with high DIT scores
stressed morally central over morally peripheral considerations in deciding whether to
participate in public interest groups. Less sophisticated reasoners showed the opposite
pattern. Morally central considerations also had a much greater impact on the probability
that sophisticated respondents would attempt to participate in public interest groups after
completing the interview. The analysis included controls for potential confounding variables
such as cognitive ability, education, prior political participation, and gender. The findings
imply motivational differences between advantaged and disadvantaged population groups.
Such differences may help to account for the differing strategies and successes of political
organizations mobilizing these groups.
KEYWORDS: Moral Reasoning, Political Participation, Interest Groups, Responsibility, Attitudes.
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"The Role of Self-Focused Attention in Political Participation Decisions"
Political mobilization may increase participation in part by inducing self-focus in those mobilized. Psychological research shows that self-focus, an attention process, increases the influence of certain types of cognitions on behavior. This experimental study examines whether self-focus increases the effect of personal responsibility judgments on the likelihood of taking steps to join public interest groups. The study surveyed 246 community members in three treatment groups. Survey and behavioral responses were analyzed by probit, OLS, and confirmatory factor analysis. Self-focus significantly and substantially increased the impact of cognitions on behavior. The average probability of behavior was not, however, increased due to compensating downward shifts in the regression constants. Nonetheless, the results have political implications, and they suggest many avenues for future research.
KEYWORDS: Moral Reasoning, Political Participation, Interest Groups, Responsibility, Attitudes.
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"The Role of Political Agency in Political Participation Decisions"
This paper proposes and explores a theory of political agency, a type of intentional explanation that differs in critical respects from existing rational choice intentional explanations. It is hypothesized that people possess differing degrees of political agencyÑthe capacity or desire to choose actions consistent with a coherent sense of self. Data are presented bearing on the validity of a political agency scale. Experimental results are also reported indicating that political agency plays a mediating role on the effects of an attention manipulation on political behavior. People who have been made self-focused typically exhibit stronger relationships between feelings of responsibility and motivation to act on these feelings. Persons high in agency should not, however, be as susceptible to manipulations of self-focus because they are already utilizing the same processes of self-regultion that lend self-focus its effects.
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"An Ethical Responsibility Model of Electoral Participation and Candidate Choice"
Self-interest theories of political participation and choice have difficulty explaining existing levels of participation and the apparent ethical content of many political choices. Though researchers have turned toward explanations incorporating both ethical and identity considerations, these explanations have yet to be woven into an integrated theoretical approach. This paper takes a step toward such an approach by proposing an ethical responsibility model based on psychological theory and research. Using data from the 1996 Presidential race, this paper seeks to show the responsibility model clarifies how people decide whether to vote and for whom to vote. Moreover, model variables powerfully mediate a variety of variables typically used to explain electoral participation and choice, indicating these variables ultimately feed into ethical and identity considerations.
KEYWORDS: candidate choice, political participation, decision making, moral responsibility, identity, electoral decisions
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"The Status of Rational Choice Explanations of Political Participation"
This paper suggests that the shortcomings of rational choice explanations of costly participation stem from the information requirements of intentional explanations. Intentional explanations have certain minimal information needs that have not and probably cannot be met by the existing empirical strategies and theoretical formulations of the rational choice approach. A viable intentional explanation of participation will require measurement of intentions and a theoretical framework that suggests non-obvious hypotheses regarding intentions. Non-obvious hypotheses are necessary to validate the measures of intentions and, more generally, to establish a progressive theory. I will discuss a promising approach in the conclusion.
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