PSJ Editorial Team

Mixed Messages and Bounded Rationality: The Perverse Consequences of REAL ID for Immigration Policy

by Maureen Stobb, Banks Miller, & Joshua Kennedy

The President and Congress have renewed efforts in the past year to reshape immigration policy. Yet, if history can teach us anything, it is that outcomes in this area tend not to match intent. Our research looks at a clear example of this mismatch, the REAL ID Act, a law aimed at tightening refugee admissions by taking control away from liberal judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Despite its intent, it resulted in more people getting asylum. In our research we ask, what explains this policy gap?

We contend that part of the answer lies in the REAL ID Act’s ambivalent language, a common characteristic of policy concerning undocumented immigrants. The law gave the street-level bureaucrats who decide asylum cases —immigration judges (IJs)— more discretion to deny bogus asylum claims. They no longer had to point to an inconsistency undermining a key aspect of the persecution claim to find the applicant not credible. They could deny based on inconsistencies such as birthdays and wedding dates that have no connection to the asylum claim. At the same time, the law required IJs to consider all the circumstances, potentially reincorporating some of the former rule.

What did IJs do in this situation? They are supposed to follow the precedent in the circuit with jurisdiction over where they sit, but the President controls their hiring and firing, and Congress writes the law and determines their budget. We argue that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, relied on their professional training as lawyers as a shortcut and were considerably more deferential to the circuit courts who read every opinion they write.

We find just that. As the figure below shows, the adoption of the REAL ID Act’s credibility standard enabled significantly closer ideological control by the courts. Before REAL ID, there was very little relationship between the presumed aggregate preferences of the appellate courts on asylum cases and IJ decision making in that circuit. But after the REAL ID Act is implemented by the circuit through the adoption of its standard in precedent, as the percentage of the circuit that is Democratic increases so too does the likelihood of an IJ granting asylum. The impact went from 3 to 52 percentage points.

Figure 1: REAL ID & the Circuit Courts

We saw an increase in influence for Congress and the President, but it was not nearly as large. We also show this is not just a result of the uniqueness of the first Trump administration.

The findings suggest that any attempts to restrict asylum access through immigration courts during Trump’s second term would require precisely written policies. If the administration and a Republican-controlled Congress pursue such restrictions, vague or ambiguous language could backfire. In cases of unclear policy, IJs will turn to federal courts for guidance—potentially leading to interpretations that run counter to the administration’s goals.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Stobb, Maureen, Banks Miller, and Joshua Kennedy. 2023. Mixed messages & bounded rationality: The perverse consequences of real ID for immigration policy. Policy Studies Journal 51: 667–684. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12486

About the Authors

Maureen Stobb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. Her research focuses on the expansion of judicial power relative to the legislature and the executive, particularly in the policy areas of immigration and citizenship. Her research has been published in various outlets including The Journal of Law & Courts, and Justice System Journal.

Banks Miller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on judicial decision making, intellectual property policy, and immigration policy. Recent work has been published in the Journal of Law & Courts and American Politics Research.

Joshua B. Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. His research of late focuses on political control of the administrative state, and he has also published in the area of unilateral presidential power. His research has appeared in American Politics Research, Research & Politics, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other outlets.

asylum, frontline implementation, immigrants, implementation, policy ambiguity, policy implementors, REAL ID Act

Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials

by Yixin Liu

Collaboration among local governments is crucial for tackling shared challenges like environmental management and economic development. Partisanship significantly shapes these collaborative efforts. In my recent paper, I investigate how partisanship affects local policymakers’ decisions to collaborate and whether political identity moderates the importance of key collaborative attributes like resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes. This work bridges gaps in the existing collaborative strategies literature by focusing on individual-level preferences rather than aggregated patterns.

This study sought to address two primary research questions:

(1) Does partisanship influence local policymakers’ willingness to adopt collaborative sustainable development programs?

(2) Does partisanship alter how policymakers weigh other collaborative attributes, such as trust or resource sharing, in their decision-making?

To test these questions, I designed a conjoint experiment targeting municipal officials across the United States. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical sustainable development programs proposed by cities with varying partisanship and collaborative attributes—such as the balance of resource contributions (resource allocation), the expected number of jobs created by the program (policy outcome), and past collaborations with the partner city (reciprocal trust). By randomizing these attributes, I was able to isolate the effect of partisanship while controlling for other factors.

The sample included 772 local government officials, representing a broad cross-section of U.S. municipalities. These officials represented 535 municipalities and covered offices from 49 states and the District of Columbia. I used my data to test two hypotheses:

Co-partisanship Hypothesis (H1): The collaborative program proposed by co-partisans will increase the interest of municipal officials in adopting it, compared to the same program proposed by out-partisans.

Conditional hypothesis (H2): The importance of resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes will weaken if the collaborative program is not proposed by co-partisans.

The co-partisanship effect was clear: Programs proposed by co-partisans were 12.75 percentage points more likely to be adopted than those proposed by out-partisans, supporting H1 (see Figure 2). Moreover, my analysis yielded support for H2. My results showed that the influence of collaborative attributes was indeed conditional on whether it was proposed by a co-partisan. For example, respondents favored programs that required lower resource contributions or had higher job creation potential, but these attributes were weighed less heavily when the proposal was made by a partner city in the out-party (see Figure 3). It is also important to note that the influence of partisanship was consistent across subgroups, suggesting its deep roots in political identity rather than professional roles or ideologies.

This study highlights the importance of understanding the role of partisanship in collaborative governance. Future research could explore the long-term impacts of partisanship on collaborative governance or expand the scope to other policy areas. Additionally, combining experimental methods with observational data could enhance our understanding of how partisan dynamics evolve over time in real-world settings.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Liu, Yixin. 2024. “ Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 955–967. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12551.

About the Author

Yixin Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics & International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. His research investigates cross-sectoral collaborative governance in environmental management. Prior to joining NAU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He completed his PhD at Florida State University.

co-partisanship, conjoint experiment, local government, policy collaboration

Are bureaucrats’ interactions with politicians linked to the bureaucrats’ policy entrepreneurship tendencies?

by Mariana Costa Silveira, Nissim Cohen, & Gabriela Lotta

Policy entrepreneurs – individuals who seek to shape policy outcomes that they could not otherwise achieve on their own – play a crucial role in the policymaking process. Typical examples of policy entrepreneurs include lobbyists, consultants, and even politicians. Bureaucrats, too, can also be policy entrepreneurs.

Our paper looks at the relationship between bureaucrats’ interactions with other policy actors – specifically politicians, peers, and non-state actors – and how confident the bureaucrats feel about engaging in policy entrepreneurship activities. At a broad level, we know that these interactions impact whether bureaucrats act as policy entrepreneurs, but we don’t have studies that have looked at how these interactions might be related to bureaucrats’ perceptions of their own policy entrepreneurship skills. We also assess how the reputation of a bureaucrat’s organization impacts their self-efficacy. The below research model outlines our hypotheses.

Figure 1. Research model.

To test our hypotheses, we used a survey of 2,000 bureaucrats in Brazil taken between October and December 2017 by the country’s National School of Public Administration, of whom approximately 30% completed the survey. The survey asked respondents about their levels of confidence performing different sorts of tasks, their frequency of interactions with actors from different groups (e.g., politicians, private companies, unions, etc.), and their motivations for doing their jobs.

In the course of analyzing the data, we found that the bureaucrats surveyed sorted into three profiles, based on their levels of interactions as well as with whom they interacted: brokers, who have high levels of interactions inside and outside of their organization with both state and non-state actors; insiders, who have high levels of interactions mainly inside their organization, with other state actors; and loners, who have low levels of interactions across all actor types.

We found that bureaucrats who interacted more regularly with peers and politicians displayed more confidence about their ability to engage in policy entrepreneurship. As far as non-state actors were concerned, we found positive – and statistically significant – relationships as regards interactions with the press and unions, but not statistically significant relationships with other non-state actors, such as private companies. Lastly, bureaucrats’ self-efficacy was also positively correlated with the reputation of their organization. We observed some variation across the three bureaucrat profiles: interactions with politicians were most strongly associated with feelings of self-efficacy among brokers than either insiders or loners. Regarding bureaucrats’ motivations to engage in policy entrepreneurship, we found that both the desire to advance the public good and their own careers were associated with greater policy entrepreneurship self-efficacy. This suggests that public- and self-interest motivations aren’t mutually exclusive, and that both can drive policy entrepreneurship.

We want to caution that, when it comes to bureaucratic self-efficacy about policy entrepreneurship, we have identified correlations rather than causations. The dataset used for this study does not allow us to conclude whether, for example, frequent interactions with politicians makes bureaucrats more confident about engaging in policy entrepreneurship, or whether those bureaucrats already confident in their abilities as policy entrepreneurs are more likely to seek out interactions with politicians.

Nevertheless, in identifying these correlations, we draw attention to those factors that likely impact whether – and to what extent – bureaucrats engage in policy entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that expanding opportunities for bureaucrats to grow their networks and interact with different types of actors – such as politicians and those outside of the government – is important for cultivating policy entrepreneurship among bureaucrats. Ultimately, more research will need to be done to identify the precise causal mechanisms at play. Moreover, our study looked only at bureaucrats in Brazil, so additional case studies will confirm the extent to which our findings are generalizable.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Silveira, Mariana Costa, Nissim Cohen and Gabriela Lotta. 2024. “ Are Bureaucrats’ Interactions With Politicians Linked to the Bureaucrats’ Policy Entrepreneurship Tendencies?.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 533–559. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12536.

About the Authors

Mariana Costa Silveira is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) at Lausanne University. Her research interests include behavioral public administration, organizational behavior, policy entrepreneurship, and collaborative governance.

Nissim (Nessi) Cohen is a professor of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Haifa. His research interests include interactions between politicians and bureaucrats, public administration reform, street level bureaucracy and policy entrepreneurship.

Gabriela Lotta is an Associate Professor of Public Administration at Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration. Her current research interests include policy implementation, street-level bureaucracy and bureaucratic politics.

bureaucracy motivation, entrepreneurship self-efficacy, middle-level bureaucrats, policy entrepreneurship, politician-bureaucrat interactions

Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts

by Tomás Olivier & Sechindra Vallury

Water governance is a critical challenge that demands locally tailored solutions to address diverse social and ecological conditions. Our new paper explores this through Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs)—a basin-level governance arrangement created to manage groundwater resources. We investigated how well NRDs design policies to fit their local social-ecological contexts and the influence of broader institutional mandates on those policies.

The overarching goal of our research was to bridge the gap between institutional fit and policy design literature. To do this, we aim to better understand the drivers behind institutional fit—how well governing arrangements address local resource challenges—and the mechanisms shaping policy design in decentralized governance systems like Nebraska’s NRDs. Our research question was: how do actors in governing arrangements design policy outputs to fit to their social, ecological, and institutional environment?

Figure 1. Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts and the status of their Integrated Management Plans. The map was generated using data provided by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.

Nebraska’s NRDs are an ideal case for examining institutional fit. Established in 1972, these districts are defined by river basins and tasked with managing shared resources like water, soil, and land. Each NRD develops its own management plans and groundwater rules, which vary widely due to differing local conditions such as precipitation, population, and agricultural needs. This setting allows for a comparative study of how context influences policy design across NRDs.

Using topic modeling, k-means clustering, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyzed Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) and Groundwater Management Rules and Regulations (GMRRs) produced by 23 NRDs. We found evidence that the design of NRD outputs (plans and rules) aligned with local biophysical conditions. NRDs in areas with higher precipitation or greater groundwater demand tended to emphasize water management priorities tailored to those conditions. For instance, NRDs in drier western Nebraska prioritized policies addressing groundwater scarcity, as illustrated by their IMPs’ focus on water quantity controls (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Topic model of stemmed text from Integrated Management Plans of 23 Natural Resource Districts.

Our results also suggested that NRDs with a state mandate to develop Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) produced more distinct, context-sensitive policy outputs than those without mandates. NRDs with state-mandated IMPs showed lower textual similarity across their policy outputs, indicating more tailored responses to local conditions. Voluntary IMPs, on the other hand, often relied on boilerplate language, reflecting less contextual customization.

The fsQCA analysis identified multiple pathways for achieving institutional fit, involving combinations of factors like population size, precipitation, and state mandates. For example, NRDs with large populations and high precipitation but no state mandate tended to produce outputs with less focus on enforcement mechanisms, highlighting how context shapes policy emphasis (see Table 2).

This study underscores the importance of institutional fit in natural resource governance. It shows that decentralized systems like Nebraska’s NRDs can successfully tailor policies to local contexts, particularly when supported by state-level guidance. However, the reliance on voluntary planning can lead to inconsistent levels of customization, raising questions about equity and effectiveness across districts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Olivier, Tomás and Sechindra Vallury. 2024. “ Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (4): 809–832. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12550.

About the Authors

Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and the Assistant Director of the Center for Policy Design and Governance at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Follow him on Bluesky: @tomasolivier.bsky.social

Sechindra Vallury is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at the Odum School of Ecology and the Director for Policy at the River Basin Center, University of Georgia.

Follow him on Bluesky: @sechindra.bsky.social

institutional fit, Policy Design, text analysis, water governance

Narrative Strategies in a Nondemocratic Setting: Reflections on Conducting Policy Process Research in Autocracies

by Caroline Schlaufer & Dilyara Gafurova

Our article Narrative strategies in a nondemocratic setting: Moscow’s urban policy debates explored how narratives are strategically used in authoritarian contexts to promote or contest policy reforms. Focusing on three contentious urban policy debates in Moscow—housing renovation, public transport reforms, and waste management policies—we found stark differences in narrative strategies between government actors and their opponents. The Moscow government employed narratives that framed itself as a hero delivering widespread public benefits while avoiding acknowledgment of policy problems or villainizing opponents. In contrast, oppositional narratives depicted the government as a villain and emphasized the costs and exclusivity of governmental policies. The difference between the governmental and opposing narrative strategies, for example, between the angel and devil-shift scores of the two sides of the debates (see Table 2 of our article), is very large and much higher than in democratic contexts, indicating a strong polarization of the debate. A “debate” in an authoritarian context is less a dialogue but rather parallel monologues with governmental narratives dominating.

The research is based on a quantitative content analysis of online sources that were written between 2012 and 2020. Since conducting our research, Russia’s policy context has transformed dramatically. The ongoing war against Ukraine has accelerated autocratization and exacerbated repression in Russia. These developments have fundamentally altered the space for public policy discourse and almost obliterated oppositional voices. The majority of the actors whose online narratives we analyzed (see Appendix A of our article) are now silenced—whether by exile, imprisonment, death, organizational closure, or the inaccessibility of platforms like Facebook within Russia. This means that replicating our study is not possible anymore, as conducting the same research today would yield far fewer critical perspectives on Moscow’s urban policies.

The shrinking space for public debate has also been accompanied by increasing restrictions on academic freedom. Many scholars who worked on our research project on narratives in Moscow have since left Russia due to safety concerns and the hostile environment for empirical social research. The closure of HSE University’s Public Policy Department, where this research was conducted, epitomizes the growing difficulties faced by academics in the country.

Our findings demonstrated that the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), initially designed for democratic settings, is a robust tool for understanding discursive strategies in authoritarian contexts, even as genuine public debate disappears. While our research cannot be replicated in today’s Russia, the lessons it offers remain relevant—not only for autocracies but also for liberal democracies that increasingly experience polarization of public debates and attacks on academic freedom. However, our study and experience also raise critical questions about the boundaries of conducting policy process research in autocracies. Scholars must navigate significant ethical and safety concerns to protect team members and data sources, but at the same time meet high scientific standards and publish research even though access to data and possibilities to conduct research are extremely restricted.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schlaufer, C., Gafurova, D., Zhiryakova, E., Shikhova, M. andBelyaeva, N. 2023. “Narrative strategies in a nondemocratic setting: Moscow’s urban policy debates.” Policy Studies Journal 51: 79–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12445

About the Authors

Caroline Schlaufer is a senior researcher at the KPM Center for Public Management and head of the Ethics and Policy Lab of the Multidisciplinary Center of Infectious Diseases at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the role of narratives and of science in policy processes and on public policy in authoritarian contexts. She worked as a Professor at the Public Policy Department at HSE University in Moscow between 2017 and 2021.

Dilyara Gafurova heads the team of the Sphere foundation that focuses on fostering LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. She is a political scientist and worked on this research project on policy narratives in Moscow during her Master’s at HSE University in 2018-2020.

Submitter Guidelines for Recommending Reviewers

After surpassing 500 submitted manuscripts in 2024, PSJ’s need for reviewers is at an all-time high. With this, our editorial team is immensely grateful to those who continue to contribute to our field by serving as manuscript reviewers. This commitment is central to our work as policy scholars and is essential to ensure publication of high-quality scholarship. We have relied heavily on many of you to provide valuable feedback on promising manuscripts, and we do not take the time you have dedicated lightly.

To lessen our reliance on our current pool of reviewers while still ensuring a timely review process, the PSJ editorial team has instituted a new policy for those submitting manuscripts to our system: moving forward, every submitter will be required to recommend five (5) reviewers.

With this change, our team wanted to share guidelines that can assist submitters in selecting applicable reviewers. When considering reviewers, we ask submitters to keep in mind the following:

First, please make sure that the reviewers collectively cover the three critical aspects of your manuscript: theory, methodology, and the substantive topic.
Second, please try to mix senior and emerging scholars. This diversity enriches the review process with varied perspectives and experiences.
Third, the reviewers should be those who can uphold the highest standards of editorial integrity, as this is of utmost importance to us.
Finally, please make sure that the selected reviewers do not have any obvious connections to you or other authors. This will help maintain anonymity and impartiality in the review process.

Thank you in advance to all submitters for supporting your individual manuscript’s review process, and we look forward to your submissions!

Link to Geoboo’s LinkedIn post about surpassing 500 manuscripts: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/geoboo-song-%EC%86%A1%EA%B1%B0%EB%B6%80-08215359_weve-just-received-our-500th-new-submission-activity-7253819572598841344-tKQi?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

How do public policies diffuse, and how can diffusion processes be actively governed without direct coercion?

by Kai Schulze

Diffusion has emerged as an important concept for studying how public policies spread across jurisdictions. Scholars have identified several mechanisms that drive policy diffusion, including learning, competition, emulation, and coercion. At the same time, policy diffusion is also a popular governance approach, particularly for higher levels of government that want to promote certain policies at lower levels, but do not want to or cannot mandate policy action. However, the governance potential of policy diffusion is poorly captured by the prevailing mechanism-centered concept, which is difficult to measure and typically emphasizes direct coercion or “hard” interventions, such as preemptive legislation or conditional funding. It therefore risks overlooking important less coercive or “soft” interventions that higher levels of government can use to promote policy development at lower levels.

This neglect of soft interventions limits the analytical value of the diffusion concept, especially in multilevel environments with varying levels of authority and in policy areas where direct coercion is unavailable or undesirable, including in climate policy. For example, in many countries, higher levels of government lack the constitutional authority to mandate local climate action, or local authorities lack the capacity to comply with such mandates, so they resort to various interventions that are scattered throughout the literature but have not yet been compared more systematically.

To address these issues, I present a new channel-centered framework that distinguishes between six soft policy diffusion channels that can be broadly placed on a continuum of coerciveness or state intervention: autonomous, collaborative, exemplary, persuasive, organized, and funded diffusion (see Table 1). Autonomous diffusion refers to voluntary and noninstitutionalized exchanges between jurisdictions at the same level of government, collaborative diffusion to the bottom-up creation of formal networks, exemplary diffusion to policy development by higher-level governments to set an example, persuasive diffusion to the provision of informational resources, organized diffusion to networks created by higher-level governments, and funded diffusion to financial incentives and the provision of additional resources.

I probe the framework by studying local climate change adaptation policy using original survey data collected from the administrations of 190 municipalities located in the central German state of Hessen. The regression results indicate that the local institutionalization of adaptation in Hessen such as the development of adaptation plans and new staff dealing with adaptation is associated with several interventions by higher levels of government, including the provision of a policy model, a municipal climate network, and grant programs. However, the density of concrete adaptation measures–such as the creation of open-air corridors, education programs, drainage and retention areas, and surface unsealing–is associated with noninstitutionalized exchanges between municipalities. These results demonstrate the usefulness of the framework for distinguishing and comparing different diffusion channels and thus for understanding policy diffusion as a governance approach. In particular, the results suggest that different types of interventions may be needed to support adaptation policy development at the local level. This is important information for the efficient allocation of scarce (local) resources and for policymakers seeking to capitalize on policy diffusion.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schulze, Kai. 2024. “ The Soft Channels of Policy Diffusion: Insights From Local Climate Change Adaptation Policy.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 881–906. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12555.

About the Author

Kai Schulze is an Adjunct Professor with the Institute of Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany leading the Junior Research Group on Integrated Systems Analysis. His research focuses on comparative public policy and politics, particularly in the fields of energy, climate, and environment. His work has appeared in journals such as Climate Policy, European Journal of Political Research, Global Environmental Politics, Regional Environmental Change, Regulation & Governance, Review of Policy Research, WIREs Climate Change.

climate change, environmental governance, local government, Policy Diffusion, scaling

Disasters Shape Beliefs in Technological Solutions to Environmental Problems: Lessons From a Quasi-Natural Experiment

by Aksel Sundström

While ecomodernist ideas—e.g., the notion that modern technology can solve environmental problems—are widespread among citizens, we know little about their stability. In my article, I explore how ecomodernist beliefs are affected by major catastrophes. Leveraging the happenstance that the Fukushima-Daiichi accident occurred during the fieldwork of a 2011 public opinion survey in Israel, this piece makes several interesting inferences.

Ecomodernism advocates that humanity can reduce its environmental footprint through technological innovation while maintaining economic growth. Ecomodernists often promote technologies like nuclear power and geoengineering as vital tools for rapidly cutting carbon emissions. However, not everyone shares this optimism. Critics argue that a technology-first approach may overlook ecological limits and social risks. This raises an important question: how does techno-optimistism shift when technology fails dramatically?

My study identifies a unique opportunity to investigate attitude shifts surrounding the Fukushima disaster. This event occurred during data collection for the European Social Survey (ESS) in Israel, a survey fieldwork that was unaffected by the events in Japan, creating quasi-natural conditions to experimentally analyze how sudden catastrophes influence ecomodernist beliefs. As seen in figures 1 and 2, both news media and people’s Google search trends in the country suggest that the events were very much present in the public debate.

Figure 1. Print media news attention.

Figure 2. Google search trends.

The ESS survey – rolled out to a nationally representative sample – measured survey participants’ agreement with the statement: “Modern science can be relied upon to solve environmental problems.” The disaster took place in the middle of the fieldwork period. Results reveal that those surveyed after Fukushima were, on average, less likely to agree with this statement than those interviewed before the disaster. The effect was particularly pronounced among respondents with higher education, a group typically more trusting of science and technology. Figure 3 illustrates this interaction, showing how the effect is stronger among those with longer education.

Figure 3. Main effects from Fukushima by respondents’ education years.

The study also corroborates these findings in a survey experiment with participants in two settings: Israel and the United States. In this extended analysis, an information vignette about the risk of nuclear power plant failures (compared to a control group that received no such information) provided similar effects on ecomodernist beliefs, suggesting that these effects are found when replicated with alternative approaches.

In the literature, environmental disasters can be seen as focusing events that draw attention to the risks of technological solutions. Interestingly, several authors have still described people’s beliefs about technological optimism as a “stable trait.” The events at Fukushima-Daiichi exposed vulnerabilities in complex technological systems, prompting heightened awareness of the risks with nuclear power and undermining broader trust in science’s ability to tackle environmental challenges. Hence, ecomodernist attitudes are more malleable than often assumed.

Given that public trust in technology wanes after disasters, it can become harder to rally support for large-scale technological initiatives, such as building new nuclear power plants or advancing geoengineering projects.

Policymakers need to recognize that trust in technological solutions is fragile and sensitive to external shocks. This study highlights that people’s beliefs about technology’s role in solving environmental problems are not static. By better understanding how such attitudes are shaped, we gain further insights in the public support for environmental policies in times of crises.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Sundström, Aksel. 2024. “ Environmental Disasters and Ecomodernist Beliefs: Insights From a Quasi-natural Experiment.” Policy Studies Journal 00(0): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12562.

About the Author

Aksel Sundström is the PI of the Quality of Government (QoG) Data and an associate professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research agenda is focused on comparative politics, with an interest in environmental politics, especially in the Global South, and the study of political representation.

disasters, environmental policy, Fukushima, natural experiment, public opinion

Rapid Response and Uncertain Agendas: Senators’ Response to Dobbs

by Corinne Connor & Annelise Russell

How do elected officials signal what matters to them when agenda-setting isn’t just about picking issues, but also deciding how to respond? In our recent paper, we dig into this question by looking at how U.S. senators reacted to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and the earlier draft opinion leak.

Twitter (or X, if you must) remains a go-to platform for today’s legislators—a direct line to advocates, the media, and political elites. Unlike traditional media, it lets lawmakers respond instantly and unfiltered, making it the perfect stage for showing where they stand. We explored how senators used Twitter during two moments: the shock of the draft opinion leak and the expected court ruling. By examining their “rhetorical agendas”— the issues they highlight and how they frame them online — we uncovered insights into how they communicate their priorities in real time

We tested the following hypotheses:

Time Hypothesis (a): More ideologically extreme senators will be more likely to react more quickly to theleaked court opinion on Twitter.

Time Hypothesis (b): Democratic senators will be more likely to react more quickly to the leaked court opinion on Twitter.

Frame Hypothesis (a): The most ideologically extreme senators will be more likely to frame the Dobbs leak and decision in terms of pro-life or pro-choice alternatives.

Frame Hypothesis (b): Senators with greater electoral security will be more likely to adopt pro-choice or pro-life responses to the leak and/or decision.

Using 5,163 tweets from senators’ official Twitter accounts from the week surrounding both events, our analysis revealed clear distinctions in senators’ reactions. We found strong support for the Time Hypotheses regarding the leak. Ideologically extreme members were quicker to respond to the Dobbs leak compared to their more moderate peers. Democrats, as anticipated, were generally more prompt in addressing the leak, reflecting their platform’s commitment to reproductive rights. Interestingly, response timing for the court’s final decision did not follow the same pattern, suggesting that anticipation allowed for more calculated, uniform engagement across ideological lines.

The results of our analysis, on the other hand, did not support our Frame Hypotheses. We found that partisanship and extremity of partisanship were significant predictors of whether a senator would adopt a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” position relative to the other issue frames. However, electoral vulnerability and ideological extremity did not seem to be significant predictors of issue framing—with the exception that ideological extremity predicted pro-life/pro-choice frames).

Our study aims to understand how lawmakers’ attention and agenda-setting behavior as a response to highly salient events. During the Dobbs leak, uncertainty prompted quicker, more polarized responses. Conversely, the anticipated ruling enabled senators to prepare and standardize their communications, highlighting the difference between reactive and proactive agenda setting. Rapid-response platforms—like Twitter—compel lawmakers to not only choose whether to engage but how quickly and with what narrative.

This study opens avenues for exploring digital responses to other unexpected events, such as acts of political violence or security crises, and how they compare to anticipated policy announcements. Additionally, further research could investigate whether similar patterns hold in the U.S. House or within other political systems that also use social media for agenda setting. Understanding these dynamics could deepen our grasp of modern policymaking and communication strategies in a digital landscape.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Connor, Corinne and Annelise Russell. 2024. “ Rapid Response and Uncertain Agendas: Senators’ Response to Dobbs.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 751–775. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12553.

About the Authors

Corinne Connor is a program analyst with The Heinz Endowments.

Annelise Russell is an associate professor at the University of Kentucky.

agenda setting, congress, policy process, twitter

Staying on the Democratic Script? A Deep Learning Analysis of the Speechmaking of U.S. Presidents

by Amnon Cavari, Akos Mate, & Miklós Sebők

In a representative democracy like the United States, we expect that the policy priorities expressed by politicians on the campaign trail or in stump speeches reflect the same priorities that they pursue while in office. We further expect that politicians would continue their policy commitment in their programmatic messages as well as in their daily activities and speeches. When they do that, we say that they stay on the democratic script.

We test this proposition, focusing on the relationship between the programmatic addresses of US presidents and the daily speeches by comparing the annual State of the Union address (SOU) with subsequent day-to-day speeches, which we refer to as occasional remarks (ORs). Occasional remarks are crucial because they allow the president to show the electorate that they are following through on their promises. They can also serve as testing grounds for new ideas or messages.

Using the American Presidency Project, we gathered all State of the Union addresses and occasional remarks for every president from Harry Truman to Donald Trump. We then coded the documents using the codebook of the Comparative Agendas Project, which defines 20 policy categories. Because of the large volume of documents that made up our dataset (16,523 speeches divided into nearly 2 million sentences), we used a large language model to conduct the bulk of our coding, supplemented with some manual coding used to train and refine our language model.

We used the coded data to test three hypotheses:

H1: The policy agenda of the most important programmatic speech (SOU) and of routine remarks (ORs) each year will be positively correlated.
H2: The correlation between the policy agenda of the most important programmatic speech (SOU) and that of the routine remarks (ORs) will steadily decline over the course of the year.
H3a: Major domestic and foreign events decrease the diversity of the presidents’ routine attention (measured in ORs) relative to that presented in strategic communication (based on SOU).
H3b: The effect of domestic and foreign events on the diversity of routine agenda would be conditioned on the diversity of the annual agenda in the SOU.

Figure 1. Correlations between speech types by policy topic.

As the above figure illustrates, across the 20 coded policy topics, there’s a strong correlation between the topics that are emphasized in State of the Union addresses and those that subsequently appear in occasional remarks, giving credence to Hypothesis 1. Applying regression analysis, we also found that, as time goes on, the policy topics addressed in occasional remarks diverge from those emphasized in the State of the Union, supporting Hypothesis 2.

As for Hypothesis 3, we found a positive correlation between the diversity of policy topics referenced in the State of the Union and those referenced in occasional remarks; but, in contrast to our expectation, we do not find that major events (e.g., foreign conflicts, natural disasters, etc.) have a major impact on shifting the focus of presidential remarks.

Our results show that, generally speaking, U.S. presidents are staying on the democratic script: The policy priorities that they outline in their State of the Union addresses are the same priorities to which they return in subsequent remarks. By comparing State of the Union addresses to occasional remarks, we’ve shown a link between programmatic and occasional communications that may have broader applicability beyond the presidency. We have also demonstrated the value of using large language models for parsing large volumes of policy texts, as our model’s coding displayed a higher accuracy rating than our manual coders, and at a fraction of the time. There are numerous avenues for building upon the insights outlined here, including examining the relationship between speechmaking and public opinion, how different speech types intersect with the policymaking process, and exploring the populations exposed to these speeches and how they respond to the speeches.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Cavari, Amnon, Akos Mate and Miklós Sebők. 2024. “ Staying on the Democratic Script? A Deep Learning Analysis of the Speechmaking of U.S. Presidents.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 709–729. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12534.

About the Authors

Amnon Cavari is Associate Professor and head of the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University, Israel. Prof. Cavari’s main research interests are in the interrelationship between actions of elected officials and public opinion in the United States and in Israel. He is the author of The Party Politics of Presidential Rhetoric.
Twitter/X: @ACavari

Akos Mate is a computational social scientist whose research interests are political economics and quantitative methodology. He is a research fellow at the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest. He also teaches as visiting faculty at the Central European University, Vienna, and served as a consultant for the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office.

Twitter/X: @aakos_m

Miklós Sebők is a Senior Research Fellow at the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences (CSS), Budapest. He serves as the research co-director of the Artificial Intelligence National Lab at CSS, the principal investigator of the V-SHIFT Momentum research project, and the convenor of the COMPTEXT conference. His main research interest lies at the intersection of policy studies and natural language processing.
Twitter/X: @Miklos_Sebok

content analysis, deep learning, large language models, policy agendas, state of the union addresses