It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of tim... more It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of times series data. Yet, the definition of balance provided so far has been incomplete and there has not been a consistent understanding of exactly why balance is important or how it can be applied. The discussion to date has focused on the estimates produced by the general error correction model (GECM). In this paper, we go beyond the GECM and beyond model estimates. We treat equation balance as a theoretical matter, not merely an empirical one, and describe how to use the concept of balance to test theoretical propositions before longitudinal data have been gathered. We explain how equation balance can be used to check if your theoretical or empirical model is either wrong or incomplete in a way that will prevent a meaningful interpretation of the model. We also raise the issue of “ $I(0)$ balance” and its importance.
It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of tim... more It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of times series data. Yet, the definition of balance provided so far has been incomplete and there has not been a consistent understanding of exactly why balance is important or how it can be applied. The discussion to date has focused on the estimates produced by the GECM. In this paper, we go beyond the GECM and be- yond model estimates. We treat equation balance as a theoretical matter, not merely an empirical one, and describe how to use the concept of balance to test theoretical propositions before longitudinal data have been gathered. We explain how equation balance can be used to check if your theoretical or empirical model is either wrong or incomplete in a way that will prevent a meaningful interpretation of the model. We also raise the issue of "I(0) balance" and its importance. The replication dataset includes the Stata .do file and .dta file to replicate the analysis in s...
The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are amo... more The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if th...
Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a ... more Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a dense network of multiple ties between countries. The spread of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), however, is not uniform: some countries have signed a multitude of deals, while others remain much less involved. This article presents a longitudinal network analysis method to analyze the patterns of the formation of trade agreements, based on the mutual codetermination of network structure and agreement formation. The findings suggest that PTAs spread endogenously because of structural arbitrage effects in the network, and that they establish a hierarchy among countries. Rich countries form ties with each other and middle-income countries, who themselves create a horizontal layer of PTAs, but least-developed countries are left behind and do not form many ties. Supplanting the multilateral trade regime with preferential agreements therefore creates a system of highly asymmetrical relat...
The papers in this symposium use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate the consequences of estim... more The papers in this symposium use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate the consequences of estimating time series models with variables that are of different orders of integration. In this summary, I do the following: very briefly outline what we learn from the papers; identify an apparent contradiction that might increase, rather than decrease, confusion around the concept of a balanced time series model; suggest a resolution; and identify a few areas of research that could further increase our understanding of how variables with different dynamics might be combined. In doing these things, I suggest there is still a lack of clarity around how a research practitioner demonstrates balance, and demonstrates what Pickup and Kellstedt (2021) call I(0) balance.
Supplemental material, HKP_Supplemental_Appendix_ for The Influence of Cause and Sectional Group ... more Supplemental material, HKP_Supplemental_Appendix_ for The Influence of Cause and Sectional Group Lobbying on Government Responsiveness by Vincent Hopkins, Heike Kluver and Mark Pickup in Political Research Quarterly
The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a ne... more The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a "softer" or "harder" direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical "package deals". This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a "softer" form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU's single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much "harder" trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. We also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers.
ObjectiveThe changing media landscape highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of Ame... more ObjectiveThe changing media landscape highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Research to date has focused on understanding how media diets vary across partisanship, while other, cross‐cutting cleavages remain underexplored. We focus on the relationship between populism and where Americans get their news and how they assess news media credibility.MethodsUsing an original, national survey of Americans (N = 1009) fielded in March 2020, we explore the news media diets of populists, controlling for partisanship, ideology, and relevant covariates.ResultsAnalyses demonstrate that two primary dimensions of populism—anti‐elitism and distrust of experts—relate to media diets in complex ways.ConclusionThose who distrust experts have a more ideologically extreme media diet and put trust in fringe outlets and social media, whereas those with anti‐elite attitudes do not shy away from mainstream outlets and hold positive views of journalists and mainstream media.
Canadian Journal of Political Science, Oct 11, 2018
Decades of research have established the direct influence of partisanship on voter perception of ... more Decades of research have established the direct influence of partisanship on voter perception of a host of real-world conditions. Even so, numerous factors have been found to moderate this “partisan bias.” We examine one plausible moderator: the volume of perceptually relevant information that is available in the mass media. Both dissonance-theoretic and motivated-reasoning formulations of partisan bias in political perception suggest that the availability of perceptually relevant information may constrain perceptual bias. Yet this proposition has rarely been investigated systematically. This article investigates the moderation of partisan bias by informational conditions, focusing on the impact of economic news on economic perceptions during five Canadian general elections (1993–2006). Although the overall pattern is mixed, evidence suggests that bias reduction in response to information depends on the broader economic and political context.
Political Science Research and Methods, Aug 14, 2017
In this research note we replicate, update and expand innovative research by Sniderman et al. con... more In this research note we replicate, update and expand innovative research by Sniderman et al. conducted in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, and ask whether the relative primacy of cultural compared with economic and safety threats in explaining ethnic prejudice remains true under markedly different national, economic and political contexts. Using two national British surveys conducted in 2011 and 2016, we examine the impact of threat on hostility toward three minority groups. Our results confirm the primacy of cultural threat as the strongest and most consistent predictor of hostility, while demonstrating the more context-specific effects of safety and economic concerns, with safety threats playing an overall more prominent role and increased economic concerns being related to less hostility post-Brexit.
Previous work shows that populism correlates with conspiratorial thinking generally (Oliver and R... more Previous work shows that populism correlates with conspiratorial thinking generally (Oliver and Rahn, 2016) and conspiratorial thinking predicts belief in COVID-19 conspiracies (Uscinski et al., 2020) but the direct effect of populism on belief in COVID-19 conspiracies has not been tested. This is important because populism is a more explicitly political manifestation of conspiratorial thinking and distrust in experts. Moreover, as Fenster (2008) notes, conspiratorial thinking is a non-necessary subset of populism. Which is to say that while conspiratorial thinking is common to populism, not all populist attitudes require an individual to embrace conspiracies. Demonstrating that populism specifically is a predictor of belief in COVID-19 conspiracies is our first contribution. Further, previous work shows conservative news media is
Journal of behavioral public administration, Jan 30, 2023
nsafe socializing-such as attending house parties, visiting nightclubs, and sharing drinks or foo... more nsafe socializing-such as attending house parties, visiting nightclubs, and sharing drinks or food-has been a major contributor to the spread of coronavirus, particularly among young people. A key challenge is that public health recommendations are necessarily complex and nuanced. This often renders them ambiguous. By ambiguous, we mean that messaging is open to more than one interpretation (cf., Moynihan 2006, Kopko, et al., 2011). 1 Appropriate behaviours depend on specific circumstances, and governments cannot detail every situation. This leaves it up to the individual to infer the correct behaviour in many day-today circumstances. Messaging may also vary across different levels of government (state/provincial, national/federal) and international organizations (e.g., World Health Organization). This can lead to contradictions in messaging, apparent or real, which further increase ambiguity. From a behavioural science perspective, ambiguity is especially problematic because of the potential for directional motivated reasoning. Directional motivated reasoning occurs when people's underlying attitudes influence how they process information and make decisions (Chaiken et al. 1989; Kunda 1990; Lodge & Taber, 2013; Taber & Lodge, 2006). In the present context, we theorize people who were highly social before the pandemic may manifest directional motivated reasoning via disconfirmation bias-that is, they may counter-argue against public health restrictions to justify socializing during the pandemic. Ambiguity creates 'wiggle room', allowing people to interpret government recommendations in ways consistent with relevant underlying preferences. For example, a 20-year-old eager to resume normal life may interpret nuanced messaging about unsafe socializing-U
Opinion polls are central to the study of electoral politics. With modern election polling dating... more Opinion polls are central to the study of electoral politics. With modern election polling dating back to the 1936 US presidential election, and proto-straw polls going back as far as the 1824 presidential election, polls have long been employed to gauge the popularity of different political competitors and, for as long as they have been available, researchers have used them to make predictions about future election results (Smith, 1990; Bean, 1948). Research on the links between opinion polls and election outcomes took off in the 1970s and early 1980s, as a cluster of (mostly) American researchers analysed these relationships, primarily in the context of US presidential elections (Campbell, 2008). The field has evolved rapidly since then, as polls have proliferated and analysis tools have grown ever more sophisticated. Opinion poll-based election analysis and forecasting is now a global enterprise, and often one with an unusually high public profile – poll analysis and election forecasts by academics and data journalists are now widely reported and discussed in election campaigns. This chapter reviews research on the relationships between opinion polls and election outcomes, and some of the election forecasting techniques built on this relationship.
ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-ethnic minority sentiment ... more ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-ethnic minority sentiment in Britain and elsewhere. Yet while the scale of anti-immigrant hostility is well documented, its underlying drivers are less well understood. In this paper, we examine the role that different types of perceived threat - cultural, safety and economic - play in explaining prejudice towards three major minority groups: Muslims, Black British and East Europeans. Next, we explore how citizens’ immediate real world environment impacts on the salience of these perceived threats, and ultimately on ethnic prejudice, with a natural experiment in which the riots that occurred in major cities in England in August 2011 are used as a ‘situational trigger’. For this study we conducted two large nationally representative surveys before and after the riots. The results show that, in the aftermath of the riots, people were more likely to feel that their society’s security and culture were under threat, but did not feel more economically threatened. Moreover, because the rioting increased feelings of threat among a substantial portion of the British public, there was an increase in prejudice towards Black British and East Europeans communities.
Canadian Journal of Political Science, Mar 1, 2017
In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about res... more In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about research openness and its implications for our discipline. This discussion is important because the Tri-Agency has recently released guidelines on data management and because a number of political science journals, from several subfields, have signed the Journal Editors' Transparency Statement requiring data access and research transparency (DA-RT). As norms regarding research openness develop, an increasing number and range of journals and funding agencies may begin to implement DART type requirements. If Canadian political scientists wish to continue to participate in the global political science community, we must take careful note of and be proactive participants in the ongoing developments concerning research openness.
It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of tim... more It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of times series data. Yet, the definition of balance provided so far has been incomplete and there has not been a consistent understanding of exactly why balance is important or how it can be applied. The discussion to date has focused on the estimates produced by the general error correction model (GECM). In this paper, we go beyond the GECM and beyond model estimates. We treat equation balance as a theoretical matter, not merely an empirical one, and describe how to use the concept of balance to test theoretical propositions before longitudinal data have been gathered. We explain how equation balance can be used to check if your theoretical or empirical model is either wrong or incomplete in a way that will prevent a meaningful interpretation of the model. We also raise the issue of “ $I(0)$ balance” and its importance.
It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of tim... more It is understood that ensuring equation balance is a necessary condition for a valid model of times series data. Yet, the definition of balance provided so far has been incomplete and there has not been a consistent understanding of exactly why balance is important or how it can be applied. The discussion to date has focused on the estimates produced by the GECM. In this paper, we go beyond the GECM and be- yond model estimates. We treat equation balance as a theoretical matter, not merely an empirical one, and describe how to use the concept of balance to test theoretical propositions before longitudinal data have been gathered. We explain how equation balance can be used to check if your theoretical or empirical model is either wrong or incomplete in a way that will prevent a meaningful interpretation of the model. We also raise the issue of "I(0) balance" and its importance. The replication dataset includes the Stata .do file and .dta file to replicate the analysis in s...
The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are amo... more The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if th...
Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a ... more Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a dense network of multiple ties between countries. The spread of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), however, is not uniform: some countries have signed a multitude of deals, while others remain much less involved. This article presents a longitudinal network analysis method to analyze the patterns of the formation of trade agreements, based on the mutual codetermination of network structure and agreement formation. The findings suggest that PTAs spread endogenously because of structural arbitrage effects in the network, and that they establish a hierarchy among countries. Rich countries form ties with each other and middle-income countries, who themselves create a horizontal layer of PTAs, but least-developed countries are left behind and do not form many ties. Supplanting the multilateral trade regime with preferential agreements therefore creates a system of highly asymmetrical relat...
The papers in this symposium use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate the consequences of estim... more The papers in this symposium use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate the consequences of estimating time series models with variables that are of different orders of integration. In this summary, I do the following: very briefly outline what we learn from the papers; identify an apparent contradiction that might increase, rather than decrease, confusion around the concept of a balanced time series model; suggest a resolution; and identify a few areas of research that could further increase our understanding of how variables with different dynamics might be combined. In doing these things, I suggest there is still a lack of clarity around how a research practitioner demonstrates balance, and demonstrates what Pickup and Kellstedt (2021) call I(0) balance.
Supplemental material, HKP_Supplemental_Appendix_ for The Influence of Cause and Sectional Group ... more Supplemental material, HKP_Supplemental_Appendix_ for The Influence of Cause and Sectional Group Lobbying on Government Responsiveness by Vincent Hopkins, Heike Kluver and Mark Pickup in Political Research Quarterly
The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a ne... more The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a "softer" or "harder" direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical "package deals". This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a "softer" form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU's single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much "harder" trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. We also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers.
ObjectiveThe changing media landscape highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of Ame... more ObjectiveThe changing media landscape highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Research to date has focused on understanding how media diets vary across partisanship, while other, cross‐cutting cleavages remain underexplored. We focus on the relationship between populism and where Americans get their news and how they assess news media credibility.MethodsUsing an original, national survey of Americans (N = 1009) fielded in March 2020, we explore the news media diets of populists, controlling for partisanship, ideology, and relevant covariates.ResultsAnalyses demonstrate that two primary dimensions of populism—anti‐elitism and distrust of experts—relate to media diets in complex ways.ConclusionThose who distrust experts have a more ideologically extreme media diet and put trust in fringe outlets and social media, whereas those with anti‐elite attitudes do not shy away from mainstream outlets and hold positive views of journalists and mainstream media.
Canadian Journal of Political Science, Oct 11, 2018
Decades of research have established the direct influence of partisanship on voter perception of ... more Decades of research have established the direct influence of partisanship on voter perception of a host of real-world conditions. Even so, numerous factors have been found to moderate this “partisan bias.” We examine one plausible moderator: the volume of perceptually relevant information that is available in the mass media. Both dissonance-theoretic and motivated-reasoning formulations of partisan bias in political perception suggest that the availability of perceptually relevant information may constrain perceptual bias. Yet this proposition has rarely been investigated systematically. This article investigates the moderation of partisan bias by informational conditions, focusing on the impact of economic news on economic perceptions during five Canadian general elections (1993–2006). Although the overall pattern is mixed, evidence suggests that bias reduction in response to information depends on the broader economic and political context.
Political Science Research and Methods, Aug 14, 2017
In this research note we replicate, update and expand innovative research by Sniderman et al. con... more In this research note we replicate, update and expand innovative research by Sniderman et al. conducted in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, and ask whether the relative primacy of cultural compared with economic and safety threats in explaining ethnic prejudice remains true under markedly different national, economic and political contexts. Using two national British surveys conducted in 2011 and 2016, we examine the impact of threat on hostility toward three minority groups. Our results confirm the primacy of cultural threat as the strongest and most consistent predictor of hostility, while demonstrating the more context-specific effects of safety and economic concerns, with safety threats playing an overall more prominent role and increased economic concerns being related to less hostility post-Brexit.
Previous work shows that populism correlates with conspiratorial thinking generally (Oliver and R... more Previous work shows that populism correlates with conspiratorial thinking generally (Oliver and Rahn, 2016) and conspiratorial thinking predicts belief in COVID-19 conspiracies (Uscinski et al., 2020) but the direct effect of populism on belief in COVID-19 conspiracies has not been tested. This is important because populism is a more explicitly political manifestation of conspiratorial thinking and distrust in experts. Moreover, as Fenster (2008) notes, conspiratorial thinking is a non-necessary subset of populism. Which is to say that while conspiratorial thinking is common to populism, not all populist attitudes require an individual to embrace conspiracies. Demonstrating that populism specifically is a predictor of belief in COVID-19 conspiracies is our first contribution. Further, previous work shows conservative news media is
Journal of behavioral public administration, Jan 30, 2023
nsafe socializing-such as attending house parties, visiting nightclubs, and sharing drinks or foo... more nsafe socializing-such as attending house parties, visiting nightclubs, and sharing drinks or food-has been a major contributor to the spread of coronavirus, particularly among young people. A key challenge is that public health recommendations are necessarily complex and nuanced. This often renders them ambiguous. By ambiguous, we mean that messaging is open to more than one interpretation (cf., Moynihan 2006, Kopko, et al., 2011). 1 Appropriate behaviours depend on specific circumstances, and governments cannot detail every situation. This leaves it up to the individual to infer the correct behaviour in many day-today circumstances. Messaging may also vary across different levels of government (state/provincial, national/federal) and international organizations (e.g., World Health Organization). This can lead to contradictions in messaging, apparent or real, which further increase ambiguity. From a behavioural science perspective, ambiguity is especially problematic because of the potential for directional motivated reasoning. Directional motivated reasoning occurs when people's underlying attitudes influence how they process information and make decisions (Chaiken et al. 1989; Kunda 1990; Lodge & Taber, 2013; Taber & Lodge, 2006). In the present context, we theorize people who were highly social before the pandemic may manifest directional motivated reasoning via disconfirmation bias-that is, they may counter-argue against public health restrictions to justify socializing during the pandemic. Ambiguity creates 'wiggle room', allowing people to interpret government recommendations in ways consistent with relevant underlying preferences. For example, a 20-year-old eager to resume normal life may interpret nuanced messaging about unsafe socializing-U
Opinion polls are central to the study of electoral politics. With modern election polling dating... more Opinion polls are central to the study of electoral politics. With modern election polling dating back to the 1936 US presidential election, and proto-straw polls going back as far as the 1824 presidential election, polls have long been employed to gauge the popularity of different political competitors and, for as long as they have been available, researchers have used them to make predictions about future election results (Smith, 1990; Bean, 1948). Research on the links between opinion polls and election outcomes took off in the 1970s and early 1980s, as a cluster of (mostly) American researchers analysed these relationships, primarily in the context of US presidential elections (Campbell, 2008). The field has evolved rapidly since then, as polls have proliferated and analysis tools have grown ever more sophisticated. Opinion poll-based election analysis and forecasting is now a global enterprise, and often one with an unusually high public profile – poll analysis and election forecasts by academics and data journalists are now widely reported and discussed in election campaigns. This chapter reviews research on the relationships between opinion polls and election outcomes, and some of the election forecasting techniques built on this relationship.
ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-ethnic minority sentiment ... more ABSTRACT Recent years have seen an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-ethnic minority sentiment in Britain and elsewhere. Yet while the scale of anti-immigrant hostility is well documented, its underlying drivers are less well understood. In this paper, we examine the role that different types of perceived threat - cultural, safety and economic - play in explaining prejudice towards three major minority groups: Muslims, Black British and East Europeans. Next, we explore how citizens’ immediate real world environment impacts on the salience of these perceived threats, and ultimately on ethnic prejudice, with a natural experiment in which the riots that occurred in major cities in England in August 2011 are used as a ‘situational trigger’. For this study we conducted two large nationally representative surveys before and after the riots. The results show that, in the aftermath of the riots, people were more likely to feel that their society’s security and culture were under threat, but did not feel more economically threatened. Moreover, because the rioting increased feelings of threat among a substantial portion of the British public, there was an increase in prejudice towards Black British and East Europeans communities.
Canadian Journal of Political Science, Mar 1, 2017
In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about res... more In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about research openness and its implications for our discipline. This discussion is important because the Tri-Agency has recently released guidelines on data management and because a number of political science journals, from several subfields, have signed the Journal Editors' Transparency Statement requiring data access and research transparency (DA-RT). As norms regarding research openness develop, an increasing number and range of journals and funding agencies may begin to implement DART type requirements. If Canadian political scientists wish to continue to participate in the global political science community, we must take careful note of and be proactive participants in the ongoing developments concerning research openness.
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Papers by Mark Pickup