This paper evaluates the dynamics of small group persuasion within a large scale randomized deliberative experiment, in particular whether persuasion in this context is driven by the ideological composition of small groups, to which participants were randomly assigned. In these discussions...

This paper extends the well-studied phenomenon of interviewer effects (race-, gender-, and ethnicity-of-interviewer) to the yet unexamined domain of language-of-interview. Using data from the 1989-1990 Latino National Politics Survey, the paper finds that the answers that survey respondents give...

Recently, health policy experts have sounded the warning about the severe health and economic consequences of America's growing obesity epidemic. Despite this fact, obesity has not yet entered America's political consciousness and we have little information about what average Americans think of...

A growing body of research shows the influence of political elites on the public's policy preferences. Yet we know little about the dynamics of elite influence or the cognitive mechanisms through which elite signals are interpreted in "real time"-that is, as public deliberation over a policy...

This paper explores the dynamics of transparency. It asks why some government-created systems of disclosure improve over time while others stagnate or degenerate into costly paperwork exercises. Transparency policies inevitably begin as unlikely compromises. Though transparency is universally...