Special Graduate Topic in Political Science: Political Behavior

Readings

This section features the required texts and the assigned readings by session.

Discussion questions accompany each set of readings. A complete list of all discussion questions is also available (PDF).

Required Texts

Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780674942929.

Campbell, Andrea Louise. How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780691091891.

Jacobson, Gary C. The Politics of Congressional Elections. 6th ed. New York, NY: Pearson Longman, 2004. ISBN: 9780321100405.

Popkin, Samuel L. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780226675459.

Rosenstone, Steven J., Roy L. Behr, and Edward H. Lazarus. Third Parties in America. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780691026138.

Johnston, Richard, Michael G. Hagen, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780521813891.

Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780300092158.

Readings by Session

LEC #	TOPICS	READINGS	DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1	Organizational Meeting
2	Participation	Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Chapters 2, 3, 7-14, and 16.	(PDF)
3	Voter Turnout	Powell, G. Bingham. 1986. “American Voting Turnout in Comparative Perspective.” American Political Science Review 80, no. 1 (March 1986): 17-43. Highton, Benjamin, and Raymond E. Wolfinger. “Estimating the Effects of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.” Political Behavior 20, no. 2 (June 1998): 79-104. Plutzer, Eric. “Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood.” American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002): 41-56. Rosenstone, Steven, and John Mark Hansen. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. Chapters 6 and 7. Aldrich, John H. “Rational Choice and Turnout.” American Journal of Political Science 37, no. 1 (February 1993): 246-78.	(PDF)
4	Participation-Policy Linkages	Campbell, Andrea L. How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Citizen Activism and the American Welfare State. Entire, especially chapters 6 and 7. Soss, Joe. “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action.” American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (June 1999): 363-80. Mettler, Suzanne. “Bring the State Back in to Civic Engagement: Policy Feedback Effects of the G.I. Bill for World War II Veterans.” American Political Science Review 96, no. 2 (June 2002): 351-65.	(PDF)
5	Party Identification	Fiorina, Morris. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981, chapter 5. ISBN: 9780300025576. MacKuen, Michael B., Robert S. Erikson, and James A. Stimson. “Macropartisanship.” American Political Science Review 83, no. 4 (December 1989): 1125-42. Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. Chapters 1-4 and 6.	(PDF)
6	Vote Choice	Dalton, Russell J., and Martin P. Wattenberg. “The Not So Simple Act of Voting.” In Political Science: The State of the Discipline. Edited by Ada W. Finifter. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1993. ISBN: 9781878147080. Fiorina, Morris. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981, chapters 5 and 10. ISBN: 9780300025576. (See also chapter 1 if you want more.) Petrocik, John R. “Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study.” American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 3 (August 1996): 825-50. Kinder, Donald R., Gordon S. Adams, and Paul W. Gronke. “Economics and Politics in the 1984 American Presidential Election.” American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 2 (May 1989): 491-515. Rahn, Wendy M., John Aldrich, Eugene Bordiga, and John L. Sullivan. “A Social-Cognitive Model of Candidate Appraisal.” In Information and Democratic Processes. Edited by John Ferejohn and James Kuklinski. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780252061134.	(PDF)
7	Political Information	Popkin, Samuel L. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Chapters 1-6. Converse, Philip E. “Information Flow and the Stability of Partisan Attitudes.” Public Opinion Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Winter 1962): 578-99. Luskin, Robert C. “Explaining Political Sophistication.” Political Behavior 12, no. 4 (December 1990): 331-61. Lau, Richard P., and David P. Redlawsk. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making.” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 4 (October 2001): 951-71. Kuklinski, James H., and Norman L. Hurley. “On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages: A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking.” Journal of Politics 56, no. 3 (August 1994): 729-51. Zaller, John. “Know Nothing Voters in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948-1996.” Unpublished manuscript, 1999.	(PDF)
8	Political Behavior Research Considerations	McDonald, Michael P., and Samuel Popkin. “The Myth of the Vanishing Voter.” American Political Science Review 95, no. 4 (December 2001): 963-974. Price, Vincent, and John Zaller. “Who Gets the News?” Political Opinion Quarterly 57, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 133-64. Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M., Gary C. Jacobson, and J. Tobin Grant. “Question Wording and the House Vote Choice: Some experimental evidence.” Political Opinion Quarterly 64, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 257-270. Burden, Barry C. “Voter Turnout and the National Election Studies.” Political Analysis 8 (2000): 389-98. Silver, Brian D., Barbara A. Anderson, and Paul R. Abramson. “Who Overreports Voting?” American Political Science Review 80, no. 2 (June 1986): 613-24. Iyengar, Shanto. “The Method is the Message: The Current State of Political Communication Research.” Political Communication 18 (2001): 225-9. Ridout, Travis N., Michael Franz, Kenneth Goldstein, and Paul Freedman. “Measuring the Nature and Effects of Campaign Advertising.” Unpublished manuscript, 2002.	(PDF)
9	Political Campaigns	Finkel, Steven E. “Reexamining the ‘Minimal Effects’ Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns.” Journal of Politics 55, no. 1 (1993): 1-21. Gelman, Andrew, and Gary King. “Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes are So Predictable?” British Journal of Political Science 23, no. 4 (October 1993): 409-51. Johnston, Richard, Michael G. Hagen, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics. (Skip chapter 3.)	(PDF)
10	Media Effects	Davis, Richard. The Press and American Politics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000, chapter 14. ISBN: 9780130264046. Patterson, Thomas E. Out of Order. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1994, chapters 1 and 2. ISBN: 9780679755104. Bartels, Larry M. “Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure.” American Political Science Review 87, no. 2 (June 1993): 267-85. Iyengar, Shanto, Helmut Norpoth, and Kyu Hahn. “Consumer Demand for Election News: The Horserace Sells.” Journal of Politics 66 (2004): 157-75. Zaller, John. “The Myth of Massive Media Impact Discredited Idea.” Chapter 2 in Political Persuasion and Attitude Change. Edited by Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman, and Richard A. Brody. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 17-78. ISBN: 9780472065554. Bimber, Bruce, and Richard Davis. “The Internet in Campaign 2000: How Political Web Sites Reinforce Partisan Engagment.” Paper written for the Institute of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Scholarship Repository, 2002.	(PDF)
11	Congressional Elections	Jacobson, Gary. The Politics of Congressional Elections. Chapters 1-3, 5, and 6. Erikson, Robert S. “The Puzzle of Midterm Loss.” Journal of Politics 50, no. 4 (November 1988): 1011-29. Cox, Gary W., and Jonathan N. Katz. “Why Did the Incumbency Advantage in U.S. House Elections Grow?” American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (May 1996): 478-97.	(PDF)
12	Sophisticated Voting / Minor Party Candidates	Rosenstone, Steven J., Roy L. Behr, and Edward H. Lazarus. Third Parties in America. Chapters 1-2, 4-6, and 8-9. Abramson, Paul, John Aldrich, Phil Paolino, and David Rohde. “Sophisticated Voting in the 1988 Presidential Primaries.” American Political Science Review 86, no. 1 (March 1992): 55-69. Burden, Barry C. “Minor Parties in the 2000 Presidential Election.” In Models of Voting in Presidential Elections: The 2000 U.S. Election. Edited by Herbert F. Weisberg and Clyde Wilcox. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780804748568.	(PDF)
13	Partisan Realignment	Meffert, Michael F., Helmut Norpoth, and Anirudh V. S. Ruhil. “Realignment and Macropartisanship.” American Political Science Review 95, no. 4 (December 2001): 953-62. Carmines, Edward, John McIver, and James Stimson. “Unrealized Partisanship: A Theory of Dealignment.” Journal of Politics 49, no. 2 (May 1987): 376-400. Abramowitz, Alan I., and Kyle L. Saunders. “Ideological Realignment in the U.S. Electorate.” Journal of Politics 60, no. 3 (August 1998): 634-52. Layman, Geoffrey C., and Thomas M. Carsey. “Party Polarization and ‘Conflict Extension’ in the American Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (October 2002): 786-802. Jacobson, Gary C. “Party Polarization in National Politics: The Electoral Connection.” In Polarized Politics: Congress and the President in a Partisan Era. Edited by Jon R. Bond and Richard Fleisher. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Books, 2000. ISBN: 9781568024936.	(PDF)