Norm-breaking and political accountability 

[pre-print] [pre-registration: study 1, study 2] [replication materials]

Drew Cagle and Nicholas T. Davis

This short paper investigates how violations of civility norms by politicians affect attitudes about the importance of norms and demand for political accountability after wrongdoing. Our main findings are twofold: (1) support for norms and (2) demand for punishing norm-breaking increases when parties hold political officials accountable for their actions – especially in the case of in-group norm-breaking. These findings contribute to a growing literature on Americans’ support for norms by implying that elites play an important role in sustaining the standards of democratic exchange. When elites impose punishment on copartisan elites, they signal to the public that accountability is acceptable. 

Forthcoming, Social Sciences Quarterly

Supreme Court legitimacy exhibits new partisan sorting

[pre-print] [replication]

Nicholas T. Davis and Matthew P. Hitt

A rich literature argues that the perceived legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court is stable and resists the polarizing forces of partisan politics. However, political developments over the last several years raise the possibility that Democrats and Republicans now view the Court’s place in democracy differently. We analyze an original dataset of surveys from the contemporary period in which widespread partisan sorting dovetails with a sharp decline in public approval of the Court. Study 1 shows that, against the expectations of legitimacy theory, diffuse support for the Court has dramatically sorted since 2016. In Study 2, we find that partisan sorting on several correlates of diffuse support fuels these partisan differences in Supreme Court legitimacy: Democrats are more cynical about the Court, disapprove of its outputs, and approach obedience to the law in ways different than Republicans. Our analysis conveys that partisanship directly and indirectly shapes this crisis of legitimacy.

Under review

Religious nationalism and civil liberties

Michael Regnier and Nicholas T. Davis

This study examines the impact that different types of theocratic threat have on American partisans’ support for civil liberties, tolerance, and separation of church and state. Specifically, we prime partisans with news stories about theocratic threat from either Islamic Nationalists or Christian Nationalists to test whether partisans are consistent in how they respond to religious nationalism. We hypothesize that some partisans may not view Christian Nationalism as a threatening religious out-group movement. As a result, subjects randomly assigned to read about Christian nationalism may appear more supportive of civil liberties and less enthusiastic about a strict of separation of church and state than other subjects randomly assigned to read about Islamic nationalism. This research sheds light on how partisanship affects beliefs about elements of secular democracy during a period of renewed attention to religious social movements.

Spring 2023 data collection

Race, place, and the Court: Public reactions to Vaello Madero

Julia Dominguez and Nicholas T. Davis

Individuals who are residents of United States territories, apart from the Northern Mariana Islands, are ineligible for supplemental security income (SSI) benefits thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Vaello Madero, which reinforced the constitutionality of denying these U.S. Citizens benefits. That decision received little media or national scrutiny when released in April, 2022, which reveals that denying American citizens their SSI benefits causes little outrage among the wider mass public. This apathy seems unintuitive, suggesting there is something special about the people affected by Vaello Madero case. While social security is implicitly viewed though a racialized lens by Americans (Mendelberg 2008), it remains a popular welfare program in the United States. But what happens to these attitudes when the recipients are not only racialized, but their membership in the community of beneficiaries is questioned? The rationale behind the denial of benefits to Vaello Madero involved his place of relocation—Puerto Rico—which was viewed as insufficiently “American”. This feature of his case suggests nationalism may affect attitudes toward the outcome because Puerto Rico is positioned as the outgroup to the American ingroup. This research project aims to clarify the relationship between race, location, and attitudes about governmental obligations to American citizens. I hypothesize conditions that describing Puerto Rico {Hawai’i} as the place of relocation for a hypothetical welfare beneficiary will have higher {lower} support that the Vaello Madero decision was correct; that beliefs about SS benefits should be less {more} generous; and that SSI should be harder {easier} to get.

Spring 2023 data collection