My research interests lie broadly in the study of interest groups, and I am particularly interested in how interest groups mobilize their members and obtain the resources they need to accomplish their goals.

Modern Interest Group Membership

Each of these three long-term projects works to pursue a different leg of the stool of how dramatically lower communications costs are changing the way interest groups produce policy from citizen preferences. I am seeking to understand how cheap targeted communication to nested constituencies and the explosion in grassroots lobbying can cheaply influence key legislators, how and when communications through these new media can lead members to update their expected utility beliefs and induce more contributions of both money and time, and finally, how the incentive to amass non-contributing members who are merely exposed to cheap communications alters internal interest-group decision-making.

"Presidential Grassroots Lobbying and Targeted Partisan Appeals" (under revision).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2011
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, Washington, 2011
To be Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Orlando, Florida, 2013
To be Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2013

I extend the Canes-Wrone model of public appeals and allow the president to make appeals to an activist of his own party as well as to the median voter. I argue that the ability to send these targeted messages provides a rationale for presidents in some circumstances, notably the unified government that frequently exists in the early years of a presidential tenure, to maintain campaign-style grassroots lobbying organizations. I use an original dataset along with the data from Canes-Wrone's 2001 AJPS article to indirectly examine the effects of difficult to observe targeted appeals. I find that presidents are less likely to make public appeals under unified government and as they become more extreme in relation to the pivotal legislator, which is when my model predicts that targeted appeals will occur.

“Let Me Be Clear: Experiential Search, Informative Messages, and Membership Activity in Volunteer Organizations" (under revision).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2012
To be Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Orlando, Florida, 2013

I use a survey of members of the Fuller Center for Housing to examine the effect of social media messaging on individual learning about organizational goals and the efficacy of activity with the group. I breakdown the expected utility of membership in an interest group, apply the model to interest group communications, and use this as a framework for understanding the impact of the messages which groups send. I hypothesize that messages that contain richer information (such as highly commented-upon social media posts and face-to-face conversations) increase participation with an organization. I find little support for this informational richness hypothesis, but I find that individual beliefs about the value of organizational goals are particularly responsive to the information gathered from one-way messages such as emails and newsletters, and social media produced by organizational leadership. Beliefs about personal efficacy within the organization, however, are most connected to the information gathered about efficacy through the direct acts of contributing or volunteering for the organization. I plan to extend this survey project to further investigate the peculiar connections between updating expected utility beliefs and certain media forms. I am currently in talks with FreedomWorks to conduct a large survey of their membership, and working with Lawrence Rothenberg to create a large long-term panel study of individuals which will be able to assess the beliefs individuals have about the expected utility of interest group membership before, during, and potentially after they become members of the largest interest groups in the country.

 

"A Viable Exit Option : Examining the Decision to Leave Volunteer Organizations " (under revision).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2012
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2012
To be Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Orlando, Florida, 2013

I examine the reasons why individuals would be willing to be a rank-and-file member of an organization (remaining a member while not contributing), particularly when their interests are not dominant in the interest group. This paper extends a turnout model to add a third option to contribution and abstention, which I call an exit option. As I argue in my second paper, removing oneself from a group should result in reduced exposure to messages promoting the importance of a group's goals. Accordingly, while the public goods produced by a group can be consumed whether individuals are members of a group or not, leaving a group bars access to communications and identification which provide a club good (or bad) to members but not to non-members. In this model, individuals who choose the exit option do not receive a selective incentive for membership, and also experience a reduced impact from the policy competitively selected by the group as a result of the removal of the club good. The variables I am primarily interested in include group heterogeneity, group size, the effect of exit on the salience of group policies, and the size of selective benefits. In the future, I intend to use experimental methods to investigate hypothesized differences in participation patterns within this structure among individuals by varying the gender, age and education of subjects. I also intend to include an entrepreneur into the model who selects policies to maximize the number of activists and rank-and-file members rather than an election mechanism, as I believe this better reflects the dynamics present in contemporary interest groups.

Public Opinion

I am particularly interested in studying the socialization effects of particular experiences on the attitudes and opinion
of citizens. I am currently doing research on the changes in political attitudes induced by attending college, serving in
the military, and experiencing deeper relationships with others.

"The Development of Political Attitudes and Behavior Among Young Adults" with Richard G. Niemi
(published in March 2012 issue of the Australian Journal of Political Science).
Presented at Democratic Participation in a Globalized World Conference, Perth, Australia, 2010.

With young adults frequently characterized by distrust, inefficacy and disengagement from the political process,
understanding how and when youth develop attitudes and participatory habits is increasingly important.  With this in
mind,we analyze nationwide surveys of American youths aged 18-24 from 2006 and 2007 with the goal of uncovering
developmental patterns characteristic of this age.  We find that political participation, narrowly interpreted, changes
surprisingly little across this age range; community involvement, however, declines, more so among students than
nonstudents.  Political trust and efficacy also decline, again more among students than nonstudents.  Disconcertingly,
there was no greater acceptance of diversity among older individuals, even those attending university.  Overall, our
results indicate that late adolescence through early adulthood is a time of meaningful, patterned change in people’s
attitudes and behavior.  We conclude by discussing potential policy solutions to address declining trust and efficacy
during this period of life.

"Are You Doing Your Part? Veterans, Political Attiudes and Heinlein's Conception of Citizenship" with Tyson
Chatagnier (Forthcoming in Armed Forces and Society).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA, 2011.

Drawing from the concept of citizenship in the novel, Starship Troopers, we consider public opinion in a world in
which "service guarantees citizenship." We do thisby examining the political attitudes of U.S. veterans|a group
generally neglected in the public opinion literature|relative to the adult population at large. Using 2006 CCES data,
we demonstrate that, as a group, veterans tend to be more ideologically conservative and more likely to identify as
Republican than their non-veteran counterparts. Moreover, even when controlling for ideology and party identication,
veterans express signifcantly more hawkish views on foreign policy issues. Matching estimation suggests that the
military experience, to some extent, leads veterans to support intervention in support of allies and to take action
against perceived enemies, but support for more idealistic or economically motivated intervention among veterans
arises due to selection effects.

"I Get By with a Little Help From my Friends: Belonging, Needs Satisfaction, and Political Attitudes" (under revision).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2010.

Postmaterialist value change theories have predicted attitude changes at the societal level, but scholars have
struggled to and individual-level support for these theories. These theories utilize a two-stage material/postmaterial
hierarchy of needs to explain value change, but findings in the psychology literature suggest an intermediate
relatedness needs stage. I hypothesize satisfaction of relatedness needs is positively related with postmaterialist
attitudes and behaviors in individuals which satisfy personal growth needs. I approach the problem by using social
time spent with valued others (e.g. friends, family) as a measure of relatedness needs satisfaction from the
1999-2000 American wave of the World Values Survey. Regression results support the hypothesis that spending
more time socializing with others is positively associated with greater general measures of postmaterialism,
acceptance of traditionally unacceptable behaviors, support for foreign aid and environmental protection, and
participation in a number of elite-challenging behaviors.

Other Projects

“Voter ID Laws and Turnout", with David Primo and Jeff Milyo (under revision).
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2011.

Voter identification laws in the U.S. states and their effect on turnout are a hot topic, with strong rhetoric on both
sides of the debate.  In this paper, we advance the literature studying these laws in three ways.  First, we develop
better measures of voter identification laws.  Second, we account for state-specific factors that may influence turnout
as well as the decision to implement the laws to begin with.  Third, we estimate whether the effects of these laws
vary by race, income, and party.  Our preliminary findings suggest that strict voter identification laws tend to hurt
Democrats relative to Republicans, but they appear to benefit blacks and have minimal effect on the poor.  These
findings suggest that the effects of these laws may be more complicated than previously understood.

“A Sense of His Soul: Candidate Imagery, Signaling and Voting Intent", with Adam Ramey and Gary Hollibaugh (under revision).
To be Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2013.

In recent presidential elections, much media attention has focused on determining which candidate most Americans
would prefer to share a beer with.  The implicit assumption, of course, is that America's preferred drinking buddy is
destined to become its next president.  However, despite achieving a status of folk wisdom among members of the
media, little-to-no empirical analysis has focused on whether Americans, on an individual level, are more likely to vote
for the candidate with whom they'd prefer to share a drink.  Using an experimental design, we examine whether certain
activities---such as drinking beer, playing sports, manual labor, and the like---affect how respondents perceive
candidates and whether they improve the likelihood of voting.