Perception and Misperception: Constituent Knowledge of Their Representative's Persian Gulf War Vote
- Creators
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Alvarez, R. Michael
- Gronke, Paul W.
Abstract
Many assert that constituents know little of their elected official's behavior, especially how their representative s have voted on specific legislative bills. When legislation concerns foreign affairs, the prospects for constituent knowledge are usually asserted to be even bleaker. We challenge these assertions. Our challenge is based on an intensive analysis of one highly salient roll call vote: The House and Senate vote s on the January 14, 1991 "Use of Force Resolution." Using data from the 1990-1991 Panel Study of the Political Consequence s of War we examine constituent perceptions of House and Senate member "Use of Force Resolution" votes. We find that aggregate perceptions of senator votes vary according to the senator's party, his or her tenure and past electoral competitiveness. At the individual level, we find that, while more informed constituents had more accurate perceptions, many less- informed citizens were able to use readily-understandable cues in developing their perceptions.
Additional Information
This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the Conference on the Political Consequences of War, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., February 28, 1992. We thank Thomas Mann for sponsoring that conference; John Aldrich, John Brehm, Charles Franklin, Ole R. Holsti, David Leege, Douglas Rivers, and John Zaller for their contributions to our work; and John Bainey and Abby Delman for their assistance. Some of the data used in this paper were originally collected by the Center for Political Studies and Distributed by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.Attached Files
Submitted - sswp841.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 80797
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170825-135911186
- Created
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2017-08-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2020-03-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 841