Norm-breaking and political accountability 

Social Science Quarterly 

[article] [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. 

Supreme Court legitimacy exhibits new partisan sorting

American Journal of Political Science

[article] [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

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

Julia Dominguez and Nicholas T. Davis

[pre-print]

In United States v. Valleo Madero, the Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans are ineligible to receive Supplemental Security Income. Drawing from the Racial Position Model’s distinctions between inferiority (race) and foreignness (place), we report the results of a survey experiment that disentangles how a defendant’s race (white, Hispanic) and place of residence (Hawai’i, Puerto Rico) affect reactions to this welfare ruling. Although racial cues are unrelated to evaluations of the Court’s decision, geographic cues powerfully constrain reactions to the ruling. However, this is not to say that race is irrelevant. Additional exploratory analysis suggests that the association between pretreatment racial prejudice and attitudes about the Court’s decision is strongest among subjects assigned to conditions that implicate Puerto Rico as the defendant’s home. These findings suggest that, despite a common national bond, mainland Americans are largely ambivalent about their Puerto Rican neighbors’ treatment as second-class citizens.