This study assesses two central concepts in the study of people of color (PoC): the relative stability of PoC identity versus PoC solidarity, and the temporal ordering between them. Prior work treats identity as more stable than solidarity and assumes identity shifts solidarity, but that conclusion rests on cross-sectional data that cannot formally test stability or causal ordering.
This research maps how public confidence in the Supreme Court has changed and why those changes now split sharply along partisan lines. The analysis proceeds in three steps to show both the scope and the mechanisms behind declining legitimacy.
This study tests whether the COVID-19 pandemic shifted citizens’ ideological beliefs about the role of government—motivated by prior work showing major crises (wars, depressions) can reshape mass attitudes. Original panel data from the United Kingdom were used to observe changes in the same respondents’ views before and after the pandemic.
Political responsiveness depends on officials' beliefs about public preferences. Existing work shows those perceptions are often distorted, but two questions remain: why reelection-seeking officials misperceive public preferences, and how to reduce those distortions.
This article examines how attitudes toward same-sex marriage evolve over time using data from a three-wave panel study. Using survey responses collected from participants across different waves, the authors analyze shifts in public opinion on this social issue.
Theoretical work predicts symbolic benefits when institutions are gender-inclusive, yet empirical findings are inconsistent. This article argues that a key reason for mixed results is that many Americans misperceive how well women are represented. By focusing on variation in citizens' beliefs about women's inclusion, the analysis links those perceptions to feelings about legislative institutions.
In many contemporary urban spaces, political information is unevenly distributed across neighborhoods. This might exacerbate political inequality because residents often talk with others similar to themselves. However, the study finds that specific media content diffused through everyday conversation helped low-education residents gain factual knowledge and close spatial gaps in knowledge. Using a six-wave panel survey between 2002 and 2006 across fifty Brazilian neighborhoods, multilevel models show that while conversations were more frequent among highly educated residents, they had the greatest impact on reducing specific political knowledge gaps among those with less education. The findings reveal this effect, but also indicate that these discussions slightly widened social perceptions of general knowledge differences between education levels.