Working Papers

Airport Privatization Movement in the 21st Century

Luis M. Camargo — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:55:25 PDT

This paper examines airport privatization as a whole. Since airport privatization is so complex, this paper begins by laying out the fundamentals of airport privatization and the airport structure in the United States (U.S.). Understanding these crucial fundamentals will help readers comprehend how the supporters of this concept are attempting to revolutionize airports in the U.S. This paper entails an analysis of its corresponding literature, heavily relying on the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) since they are two active organizations concerning this topic. This paper also used information from interviews with long-time airport manager, Gary Shafer, who previously wrote his MPA research paper on this same topic. The literature review consists of: the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Airport Privatization Pilot Program (APPP), the various airport examples of this concept being implemented in the U.S. and it finally distinguishes where airport privatization is more likely to occur and become a success. This paper will also analyze what the public sector has to gain and lose with airport privatization through a review of case studies and it will also reveal and relate the misconceptions regarding this concept. Proponents of airport privatization argue that this policy aids the public sector by allowing them to relinquish having to operate an airport and opponents of airport privatization believe that the public sector would be relinquishing a public asset by privatizing its airport.

The Implications of Fictional Media for Political Beliefs

Ken Mulligan et al. — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:26:06 PDT

Most research on media effects in political science deals with the news media or political campaigns. While some recent work looks at the effects of soft news on beliefs and opinions, little attention has been paid to the potential consequences of media that are fictional. Although viewers typically watch fiction for entertainment, the themes, plots, and dialogue may nevertheless influence their thoughts about politics. This paper examines the effects of fiction on political beliefs. We do this in the context of an experimental design, where subjects in the treatment group watched the outlandish movie, Wag the Dog. The results show that those who watched the film were more likely to believe in a far-fetched conspiracy, namely that the U.S. government has and will fabricate a war for political gain. The findings stretch the boundaries of fictional influence by focusing on extreme, conspiratorial beliefs. We suggest that political science and communications scholars should focus greater attention on the implications of fiction for beliefs and attitudes, as the consequences can be perverse.

Following the Opinion Leaders?: The Dynamics of Influence among Media Opinion, the Public, and Politicians

Philip Habel — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:26:04 PDT

Media elites strive to shape the policy preferences of their audience through the publication of their opinions. Scholars, however, have not fully distilled whether the opinions communicated by media elites are successful in moving the public or politicians toward their preferred policy position, or whether media is responsive to these actors. This paper offers a means of assessing media influence. We provide measures of the policy preferences of two leading newspaper editorial pages, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and we employ these scales in a dynamic time series analysis. We find that the announced positions of the media have minimal influence. Rather, we find evidence of a movable media, where media opinion shifts in response to changes in the policy positions of politicians.

Divine Intervention? The Influence of Religious Values on Support for U.S. Intervention

Paul Djupe et al. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:38:44 PDT

Race, Religion, and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

Darren E. Sherkat et al. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:10:57 PDT

Objective: We examine racial differences in support for same sex marriage, and test whether the emerging black-white gap is a function of religiosity. We explore how religious factors play a crucial role in racial differences, and how secular factors have varying effects on attitudes for whites and African Americans. Methods: Using data from the General Social Surveys, we estimate ordinal logistic regression models and stacked structural equation models. Results: We show that the racial divide is a function of African Americans’ ties to sectarian Protestant religious denominations and high rates of church attendance. We also show racial differences in the influence of education and political values on opposition to same sex marriage. Conclusions: Religious factors are a source of racial differences in support for same sex marriage, and secular influences play less of a role in structuring African Americans’ beliefs about same-sex marriage.

The Effects of Christian Religiosity on Support for the Death Penalty versus Life without Parole

Kevin Wozniak — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:10:56 PDT

While numerous scholars have examined the relationship between individuals’ Christian religiosity and their support for the death penalty, empirical tests of this relationship show mixed results. In this paper, I argue that past empirical inconsistencies may be due to measurement error in the religious variables and dependent variable. Using the Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, I test the effects of individuals’ religious belonging, beliefs, and behaviors on their preference for replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. I find that Roman Catholic affiliation, Biblical literalism, and more frequent practice of religious behaviors affect support for LWOP vs. the death penalty, although the effect of Catholic affiliation differs across levels of religious behavior and political ideology.

Social Expertise and the Foundations of Political Involvement

Scott D. McClurg — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:55:23 PST

The correlation between social ties and political participation has been evident for some time, though very little attention is devoted to examining the causal mechanisms producing this relationship. This paper moves the literature in this direction by examining how an important feature of social networks -- levels of political expertise -- affect the attitudes underlying involvement. After outlining a model for explaining the relationship between social expertise and involvement, analysis of the 2000 American National Election Study shows that people who are in sophisticated social networks are less likely to be ambivalent about candidates and more likely to feel efficacious. This shows that social expertise supports participatory democracy by helping demystify politics, thus building up the reservoir of attitudinal resources necessary for involvement in politics.

A Test of the Effects of Fictional Framing on Attitudes

Ken Mulligan et al. — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:55:22 PST

The Effect of Presidential Campaigning: The 2002 and 2004 Midterm Senate Elections

Scott D. McClurg et al. — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:36:19 PST

Many scholars address the indirect effects presidents have on midterm election results by examining the “midterm loss” phenomenon, presidential coattails, negative voting, and the “referendum” thesis. However, very little research investigates the direct effect that presidential campaigning has on congressional candidates prospects for victory. This study adds to this growing literature by exploring presidential campaigning in the 2002 and 2006 U.S. Senate midterm elections. Our investigation makes two important contributions to previous research. First, we explicitly model the strategic decisions presidents make in visiting states in order to get a better estimate of presidential impact that accounts for selection bias. Second, we take advantage of a natural experiment between 2002 and 2006 to test the importance of presidential popularity in driving campaign effects. Although we expect presidents to primarily campaign in states where he believes he will be effective–an efficiency argument–we argue that the size of that effect depends very clearly on his own popularity. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the role of the president in modern American electoral politics.