Current thinking about the effect of religion on political participation centers on its organizational structure, emphasizing the role of “institutional treatment” – the development of resources, social pathways to recruitment, and shaping of motivation that occurs in small groups and...

type="main" <title type="main">Objective</title> <p>A classic statement about rights talks in American politics argues they are a divisive force, limiting discussion and creating zero-sum questions. While we agree that rights talk has become ubiquitous, we disagree about its effects on the mass public. Rights frames are a...</p>

Arizona's recent passage of Senate Bill 1070 has reignited a national debate over illegal immigration (and immigration more generally), bringing language politics back to the fore. Over the last one-hundred years, states have intermittently introduced and passed legislation declaring English as...

A growing literature attempts to link Wal-Mart's presence in a community to rates of political participation and membership in civic associations. The debate is currently fought out by competing econometric models – some find a negative association between Wal-Mart and social capital, while...

Does historical political legacy influence current rates of political discussion, and if so, for how long does a historical legacy have an impact? That is, does a country's former regime type continue to influence this type of interpersonal interaction even after its demise? We examine the role...

Using an original, six-wave panel survey conducted in two cities, we find that 1) mass partisanship in Brazil shares important similarities with mass partisan identification in developed countries, and 2) that for many citizens, such identification is a social identity. Our findings are...

Displaying a political yard sign is a conspicuous element of the election experience but an understudied act of political participation. We argue that the study of spatial patterns in the dissemination of yard signs speaks to the debate over “context” as a cause of political participation....

Scholars have long been interested in understanding how members of Congress make voting decisions, for this process is at the core of representative democracy. Existing literature investigating the nature of Congressional cue-taking identifies several sources that members of Congress may look to...

What are the ripple effects from structured deliberation sessions? To better understand the potential aggregate consequences of these (somewhat limited) opportunities, we focus on the social networks of participants, looking for the informational consequences of second-hand exposure. We report...