Shortlist: The Best Paper Award 2023

We are delighted to announce that five excellent PSR articles have been shortlisted for The Best Paper Award 2023 (in alphabetical order):

Congratulations!

We will announce the final results in March.

Issue 1/2024: Press freedoms in Sub-Saharan Africa, negative social media communication and Donald Trump, political conflicts in Southern Europe, outgroup bias, migration in Germany, attitudes towards the EU agricultural policy and more

The whole issue of 1/2024 can be found here.

CONTENTS

Articles

State of the Art – Review Articles

THE NULL HYPOTHESIS

Early Results

RELATED CONTENT

PSR Interviews #21: Perceiving Freedom: Civil Liberties and COVID-19 Vaccinations – Dr Hayley Munir and Dr Syed Rashid Munir

In their research, Hayley Munir and Syed Rashid Munir address the question of why certain countries have experienced greater success in their COVID-19 vaccine rollouts compared to others. As they assert, “civil liberties—especially long histories of protections for civil liberties—complicate the government’s job in two ways regarding vaccine rollouts.” Some factors influencing the vaccine rollout can be related to very deep elements of the social tissue. For instance, as the authors claim, “Groups with conservative religious values in developed democracies had a slower rate of vaccination in comparison with residents of the same area who did not share the conservative ideas.”

The interview is based on the PSR article Perceiving Freedom: Civil Liberties and COVID-19 Vaccinations – Hayley Munir, Syed Rashid Munir, 2023 (sagepub.com)

PSR: Your theory posits that nations with greater civil liberties will experience lower COVID-19 vaccination rates. Could you elaborate on your findings?

Hayley Munir, Syed Rashid Munir: Our hypothesis builds on the observation that economically developed and consolidated democracies had a harder time achieving high vaccination in comparison with less economically developed, authoritarian states. All of the literature on development, regime type, and institutional characteristics leads to the expectation that the former category of states should have been more successful, and yet we did not observe this. To explain this, we suggest that civil liberties – especially long histories of protections for civil liberties – complicate the government’s job in two ways regarding vaccine rollouts. First, they imbibe within the citizenry a sense of freedom from government overreach, which allows them to resist directives they perceive to be insufficiently inclusive or transparent. Second, institutional regard for civil liberties also ties the governments’ hands: they cannot simply force their citizens to follow their orders. These two mechanisms combine together to produce the result.

Have datasets you analysed confirmed this hypothesis? If so, to what extent?

Yes, we have seen promising empirical evidence so far, even though the data is fairly limited with regard to its time coverage. We set a cut-off date of November 2021 and measured vaccination rates from the first availability of COVID-19 vaccines until the cutoff. Improvements in technology and data collection allow for such analysis, and we are currently working on extending our idea and findings since more data has become available now.

We suggest that civil liberties – especially long histories of protections for civil liberties – complicate the government’s job in two ways regarding vaccine rollouts.

What are the additional variables that can influence the proportion of a population that is vaccinated?

One factor that we could not satisfactorily include in our analysis is the role of misinformation around government policy in general and COVID-19 vaccines in particular. Access to the internet could be one reasonable proxy, but it would require abstractions in the theory that we did not think were suitable. Prevalence of alternative sources of media – somewhat tied to internet access – could be a more definitive way to capture this effect, but empirical data in this regard is still quite new. Beyond that, there might be other group-level dynamics and socio-cultural factors at play; for instance, we observed that groups with conservative religious values in developed democracies had a slower rate of vaccination in comparison with residents of the same area who did not share the conservative ideas. We expect this pattern to be present in less-developed countries, too.

Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/flag-coronavirus-covid-19-uk-5201916/

What about the countries with only a slight difference in levels of civil liberties? For instance: the UK vs Poland. The average number of vaccinated people is significantly much higher in the UK (93%)[1], compared to Poland (62% – the first dose)[2]. The same applies to civil liberties (UK 93/100, Poland 81/100, according to Freedom House)[3]. What other variables could have influenced such a result?

We know that the UK government was pretty forceful in its demand for citizens to be vaccinated, so directed government campaigns could be one explanation. It is entirely possible that the Polish government was also vocal in its efforts, but such efforts are not easily observable due to a language barrier. Furthermore, it could be that social elites other than politicians (religious leaders, for instance) could play a role in vaccine uptake. This effect could be expected to be more pronounced in more conservative countries, such as Poland.

Would there be any policy implications that follow from your analyses?

One major implication is that civil liberties – a most cherished feature of democracies – can become a hurdle in the way of policy efficacy in crisis situations. This does not mean that we ought to do away with civil liberties in such extenuating circumstances, but only that they can be an additional constraint on state policy. Beyond just COVID, other crises like natural disasters also require governments to respond quickly and effectively, but we typically do not see opposition regarding government efforts to provide welfare. With pandemics in the current day and age, however, we have seen that politics can become a causal factor towards predicting citizen response. For the future, governments ought to keep this hurdle in mind.

We observed that groups with conservative religious values in developed democracies had a slower rate of vaccination in comparison with residents of the same area who did not share the conservative ideas.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

We started out trying to address two specific grievances. First, Political Scientists were not addressing the effect of the pandemic towards their theories. Some of this was related to timing and data availability, but reasonable theoretical conjectures could still have been made. This had the expected result of explanations regarding political behavior being sidelined in discussions regarding the pandemic. Second, we wanted to show how state leaders, health officials, and media were missing the `political’ side of things. In other words, while there was wide-ranging consensus about the need for safety and vaccinations, efforts to promote the same were being met with resistance. Typical explanations centred around health infrastructure, economic development, literacy rate, etc. failed to account for this behavioral anomaly, and we think that political explanations have a central role here.

ABOUT

Hayley Munir is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Science at the Illinois State University. She specializes in law and courts.

Syed Rashid Munir is a Political Scientist doing research on domestic sources of foreign policy. I am presently serving as an Assistant Professor of Politics at LUMS, and have previously served as an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Forman Christian College University (FCCU) and as a Lecturer at the University of Management and Technology in Lahore, Pakistan.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, PSR/Brunel University London

SUGGESTED CONTENT

Issue 4/2023: Social democracy in Europe, economic understanding of populism, election winner–loser gap, the kafala system, political normativity and more

The whole issue of 4/2023 can be found here.

CONTENTS

Articles

State of the Art – Review Articles

Early Results

RELATED CONTENT

PSR Interviews #20: Professor Matthew Flinders, Democratic Decline and the Politics of the Upswing

Political science is more important than ever before, but it may need to be slightly more nimble and agile — passionate, dare I say. Where’s the passion in political science?” asks Professor Matthew Flinders. “I think to some extent, what political science has allowed to happen is almost to take the passion and emotion out of the subject, which leaves you with an empty vessel” – he adds. In this interview discussing his reflections on Robert Putnam’s book, “The Upswing: How We Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again(co-authored with Shaylyn Romney Garrett), Professor Flinders delves into the evolving landscape of political science and its implications. Putnam’s book serves as a gateway to a broader discussion on US politics, societal progress, engaged scholarship, the significance of the ‘so what’ question, and the future of political science.

The interview is based on the PSR article Democratic Decline and the Politics of the Upswing: How the United States May Have Come Together a Century Ago but Can It Do It Again? – Matthew Flinders, 2022 (sagepub.com)

PSR: In ‘The Upswing,’ Robert Putnam, with Shayla Romney Garrett, describes the American shift from the individualist, self-centred ‘I’ society to a more communitarian, socially conscious ‘We’ society. What are the major characteristics of this phase of U.S. history?

Prof Matthew Flinders: Every fantastic book is actually very simple. The best scholarship has a very simple argument. It’s clean, it’s a sharp focus. And the focus of this book is simple, it’s that we have moved from a ‘We’ society to a ‘Me’ society. We’ve moved from a very collective-eye society to a highly individualised and fragmented society.

The argument is that America went through a transition before where it recognized that the balance between the Me and the We had gone too far and it proactively and collectively introduced policies through the political system to shift the balance back towards a fairer, more egalitarian, more equal society. The high point in this argument is the 1960s. But then it has lost it, and the balance has gone once again too far.

There are a couple of things that are interesting about this book. First, on the one hand, this is a book about American politics and history.  On the other hand, it’s not a book about American politics at all. Actually, the broader, macro-political themes and issues that the book identifies are visible around the world in different forms, different contexts, and different textures. But essentially: concern about democratic disaffection, falling levels of trust, high levels of social inequality, increasing fragmentation, democratic dissatisfaction, backswing, backsliding, pitchfork politics, whatever you want to call it. You can see this in many parts of the world. So, there are strong comparative insights from this detailed analysis of American politics. And I think those comparative insights are still there to be fully drawn out.

A second, really interesting issue is that the book was written and submitted to the publisher before Donald Trump became president. In fact, that’s fascinating in many ways (I don’t know if Robert is thinking about doing this), but there needs to be an updated Upswing with the new chapter, which is the Trump years. It just seems that in many ways all of the issues about the ‘We’ collective to the individualisticMe‘ and many of the broader socio-political things that he’s warning against came to a head with the populism of Donald Trump. And yet, the book was finished just before, probably the strongest evidence in favour of his whole thesis happened. So, in that way, The Upswing was pointing towards an emerging pathology that came to its head after the book was published.

You also mentioned that the vision of a ‘We’ society described in the book sometimes downplays the extent of discrimination on various levels. Could you elaborate on that?

I think that’s one of the interesting elements that Robert Putnam and Shayla Romney are working on within certain datasets and they highlight social progress in key areas: education, equality, housing, and culture. And this allows them to design and offer an incredibly simplistic pattern. It’s as if the data, no matter what the topic, show this arc of social progress: growing, growing, growing from the first half of the 20th century, peaking in the 60s and then rapidly falling away. Essentially Putnam is arguing that we need to go back up against progressive politics, interventions, and the role of the state in creating a more equal society.

Now, the slight problem, or the slight issue which other people have now recognized, as in some ways the arc of social progress that Putnam offers is too neat. It’s too simple. Not only the themes that he looks at, there were peaks and troughs throughout the 20th century, but also throughout the whole 20th century. There were areas where certain social groups did feel marginalized and didn’t feel taken into account by the progressive politics that Putnam is essentially praising.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t huge social progress, but it means the arc of social progress wasn’t as inclusive as Putnam suggests. And in some ways, the 1960s is almost seen as this golden Age of American Society. And of course, the end of the 1960s is known as being around social protests about race, gender and war. It was a time of complete upheaval in American politics by social groups who felt completely overlooked. Now, thinking aloud, Robert Putnam may well suggest yes, but those protests, those interventions, were themselves based on other cultural and educational games that put the foundations in place for that protest.

But overall, the arc is slightly too neat.  And doesn’t quite capture some of the variations in texture and tone and some of the big elements of American Society that didn’t feel part of the gain of the 20th century. And in fact, if you look at some determinants of social and political inequality, they have increased and are increasing, and have increased since that book was published. So, I think what’s interesting, and I don’t want to get too academic on this, but you might say that a macro-political level Robert Putnam’s thesis might be broadly correct.

However, if you were to apply a slightly more fine-grained, mid-level meso-level analysis, I think you would find higher levels of variation which doesn’t really get picked up in the discussion. But again, (and this is a broader issue for political science) I would say Robert Putnam is not a political scientist as such. Robert Putnam has moved into a position where he is a rare breed of political science/ public intellectual.

This is a man who speaks to presidents regularly. This is a man who’s heavily involved in Community Action and trying to change politics. So, this is a book that I think isn’t written purely for an academic audience. It’s written to be read by a wider audience within and beyond academia. And that might explain why some of the more detailed micro-political, methodological issues are not explored in the detail that maybe members of the academic community would like.

Throughout the whole 20th century, there were areas where certain social groups did feel marginalized and didn’t feel taken into account by the progressive politics that, that Putnam is essentially praising. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t huge social progress, but it means the arc of social progress wasn’t as inclusive as Putnam suggests.

Can we say that Putnam’s book is a critique of neoliberal policies?

For me the most interesting element of the book and where if I were to say there was the book provides a foundation for more work to be done. Or if I was talking to Robert Putnam, having a cup of tea and saying, you know, great book, what about X? It would be: the book has a long title. It’s The Upswing. How America Became Great or Solved Social Issues, And How It Can Do It Again. So, what’s interesting about the book is it isn’t designed to be just a historical analysis. It’s designed and explicitly about how we’ve done it before in history. History offers lessons on how we can make the art go back up again. What’s really interesting about the book is: that it is about 250 to 300 pages long, of the main chapters, 95% are historical analyses of the past. And to be honest yes, you could see it as a criticism of neoliberalism, but we don’t really need more criticisms of neoliberalism. It’s sort of some extent what political science has been doing for a long time.

The interesting part for me was what can be done, which is squeezed into about 20 pages of the book.  And is also fairly broad apple pie, sort of we’ve got to get together. We’ve got to find new solutions. It isn’t actually detailed technical policy prescriptions and for me, that was the interesting element that a book that is set up that we’ve done it before. We can learn from history. We can procreate an upswing. It almost takes you to the brink of an intellectual cliff. And you want to jump off and you get there. And you’re left hanging. Because actually that last bit of what should be done it’s nowhere near substantive or detailed. And for me, that’s a really interesting question, not just about why those more solution-orientated content isn’t there because none of these issues are easy. But, there is a broader issue here that Putnam is suggesting that we can learn from history. We can learn about what happened between 1900 and 1910, and we can take those insights and lessons. He talks about investigative journalists and the muckrakers and the role they played in politics.

You could see it as a criticism of neoliberalism, but we don’t really need more criticisms of neoliberalism. It’s sort of some extent what political science has been doing for a long time. The interesting part for me was the and what can be done.

But we’re talking about the 21st century. We’re talking about an age now of Internet social media, algorithmic governance, and globalisation. I’m not wholly convinced that actually, the lessons from the 20th century are going to provide us with insights for the 21st century. Just because the pace of socio-political change and technology has moved, I made some rather terribly cliched statements that the book is on a carthorse and now we’re on the information superhighway. But the scope of change is so massive. I’m just not convinced that we can automatically say because we’ve done it again, we’ve done it in the past. We can do it again.

And coming back to reinforcing inequalities: you mentioned Donald Trump and his presidency. How has it influenced the quality in the US society, also in the context of The Upswing?

There is an obvious link between the, in many ways, declining arc of social progress that Putnam followed up until around, I think his data goes up to the mid-1999 or something like that. In many ways, what Trump has done now, if you were to carry on the data was that the dip today has gone far lower than Putnam even thought it would have done.

In many ways, again, I think what’s interesting is that populism is itself a reaction against sections of the community that feel lost, vulnerable, dejected, peripheral, and overwhelmed. They don’t support the populist strongman. They often feel they don’t have any choice. It’s almost a protest vote to make those more mainstream parties take notice of a broader constituency. So, in many ways, Trump funnelled and inflamed frustrations for his own benefit. Those in many ways came ahead in the assault on Capitol Hill itself.  But I do think what’s interesting now, and I know Donald Trump thinks that he may have a second crack at the Presidency, is that if you look at current data in America about what are their key political issues and concerns, what’s fascinating is the economy is still #1. But #2 is the health of democracy. So, I think a really interesting legacy effect, which might be slightly more positive, is that a lot of Americans now realise that democracy, faith in democracy, participation and listening not just talking, are aspects of democracy that are far more fragile than they ever really understood.

Now, whether that legacy effect of alerting people to the fragility of democracy will last or have some practical value in the next elections, I’m not sure. But it is fascinating. In opinion polls at the moment, constitutional democratic issues would never really be up there as a list of key concerns. It’s right up at the moment in a post-Trump context.

What I think is interesting is that in many ways, political science doesn’t have a choice. Research funding for the discipline will increasingly require political scientists to demonstrate or provide an answer to the so what question.

So, can this book be considered a part of solution-orientated political science? What would be – in your opinion – the implications of this book for the condition of political science in general?

What I think is really interesting at the moment is that Universities and higher education academics are increasingly expected to work in a different context. That is a context where their work is expected to have some – not direct, not simplistic – but it’s able to have some relevance, potentially some impact beyond academia. I know, and I completely understand that many academics don’t agree with this agenda. And actually, I’ve just written a big piece which is actually about the importance of political science and whether political science should reject the impact agenda. Putting that to one side, what I think is interesting is that in many ways, political science doesn’t have a choice. Research funding for the discipline will increasingly require political scientists to demonstrate or provide an answer to the so what question. And for too long, political science didn’t have an answer to the so what question. That’s it,  simple.

If you’re going to have public money, you need to have an explanation that you can give to anybody beyond the academic arena as to why your research should have public funding. And I think that what’s interesting about Putnam’s book is it demonstrates that there is a big public demand in public appetite out there for what I call engaged scholarship.

Putnam’s work is based on absolutely top-class political science. But it is translated and written for a more engaged mass public audience. Of course, there are many other political scientists, and social scientists who are very good at doing this sort of work. Hochschild’s book Strangers In Their Own Land around why American voters in the Deep South find Trump attractive. I’m not on commission, but Hochschild’s book is the most beautiful book that has been read by a massive audience within and beyond academia.

So, I think the importance of Putting’s book is it demonstrates that writing for a public audience doesn’t have to involve dumbing down your scholarship. In fact, I think that in many areas political science suffers. And particularly the social sciences suffer from a cultural barrier which says: if this work is readable and accessible to a broad audience, it can’t be real scholarship. And the truth is, as I said before, if you look at all the strongest, most seminal books in political science, they share a common issue: a simple, concise argument, accessible, flowing, coherent, and readable. And too much political science still is teched up, verbose, and beyond the understanding of all but the four or five people in that tiny subfield that read that work.

Now, I think things are changing. I think younger early career researchers, want to engage, they’ve got a passion for engaging. But the problem is the incentive structure within political science still has a very narrow academic currency. Whether you get a job or whether you get promoted is based on how much external research you can bring in and your peer-reviewed academic publications. Now again, people will say “Oh, that’s changing”, and it is changing, but it is changing very slowly. Because universities and higher education tend to be very risk-averse.

And I think until there is an opportunity for political science to almost cease the impact agenda and redefine what relevance is, and why the discipline therefore matters. In a sense, this is what Putnam’s book does show – that you might argue, looking around the world today, that there’s been no time when an engaged, vibrant political science was more needed in society. To help people understand some of the clashes, challenges, arguments and truths, alternative truths and fake news that’s out there. It doesn’t mean telling people what’s right or wrong. But it’s about engaging with different publics, and different communities in different ways to help them have the tools and frameworks to think for themselves more deeply about that increasingly fluid, loud and polarised context in which they’re living. So, in a sense, political science is more important than ever before, but it may need to be slightly more nimble and agile. Passionate, dare I say. I mean, where’s the passion in political science? When’s the last time anybody read a journal article and came away thinking: Blimey, that really fired me up with an interest in an area?

So in a sense, political science is more important than ever before, but it may need to be slightly more nimble and agile. Passionate dare I say. I mean where’s the passion in political science?

I read something that I had completely not thought of before. I mean, maybe people can write to me and say that they’ve read those pieces, but a lot of academics would say to me: Oh, politics study is not supposed to be passionate. It’s supposed to be technical, sophisticated, scientific. I don’t believe that politics is about emotions. It’s about relationships. And I think to some extent, what political science has allowed to happen is almost to take the passion and emotion out of the subject, which leaves you with an empty vessel.



When it comes to engagement and the ever-pressing “so what” question, some researchers emphasise that engagement can lead to a pitfall, as sometimes it means focusing on negative processes and phenomena, and it often does not bring expected effects. What’s the solution in such a case?

And then what’s really good is that there is a new strand of what’s called positive political science. This is exactly on studying success in politics, what can we learn from success instead of always studying failure where we can find success, how can we scale up, scale out, and scale down?

First of all, I think that political science has got very much hung up on problem-focused analysis. We know what most of the problems are, what we actually need is more solution-orientated political science. Now, a lot of people again will say “No, that’s not the job of political science”, but I think there is space to do both problem and solution-orientated. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. And then what’s really good is that there is a new strand of what’s called positive political science, particularly within the governance and public administration sphere led by scholars, at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and this is exactly on studying success in politics, what can we learn from success instead of always studying failure where we can find success. How can we scale up, scale-out, and scale down?

But again, there is a danger that a political science that only ever studies and promotes examples of failure, blunders, disasters, etcetera. It just becomes part of a broader negativity which fires up a politics of pessimism amongst the public. So, in a sense, I’m not calling for the political scientist to be naively positive, but it is to at least acknowledge, that many governments around the world got many things wrong. But there were also examples of where things went well and where we might learn positive lessons for building up resilience for the future.

MORE

Democratic Decline and the Politics of the Upswing: How the United States May Have Come Together a Century Ago but Can It Do It Again? – Matthew Flinders, 2022 (sagepub.com)

Listen to the full interview: PSR Interviews #20: Professor Matthew Flinders, Democratic Decline and the Politics of the Upswing – YouTube

ABOUT

Matthew Flinders is Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre and Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He is also Vice President of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom and is currently Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, PSR/Brunel University London

SUGGESTED CONTENT

Issue 3/2023: Normative Behaviourism, The Substantive Representation of Disadvantaged Groups, Political Theory, Immigration and Voting and more

The whole issue 3/2023 can be found here.

CONTENTS

Symposium: “Do Actions Speak Louder Than Thoughts? Normative Behaviourism Reconsidered”

Symposium: “The Substantive Representation of Disadvantaged Groups – Taking Stock and Moving Forward”

Articles

State of the Art – Review Articles

The Null Hypothesis

Early Results

RELATED CONTENT

The Null Hypothesis: now up to 8000 words

Many research projects produce results where the hypotheses are rejected, but where the results are nonetheless interesting. PSR publishes papers where there was a sound theoretical reason for stipulating hypotheses but where these hypotheses had to be rejected.

The PSR Null Hypothesis papers can now have up to 𝟖𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬, just like regular Research Articles.

THE NULL HYPOTHESIS PSR PAPERS

2023

2022

2021

2020

More about article types

PSR Interviews #19: Nightly News or Nightly Jokes? News Parody as a Form of Political Communication: A Review of the Literature – Caroline V. Leicht

“Research has found that citizens in the United States are more likely to turn to late-night comedy programs than to national newspapers for their election news. As we continue to observe these phenomena, it is increasingly more important to expand the research agenda as well” – claims Caroline V. Leicht. In this interview, based on the research article Nightly News or Nightly Jokes? News Parody as a Form of Political Communication: A Review of the Literature, Leicht elaborates on the consequences of the increasing popularity of political satire, gender stereotypes and US Politics.

PSR: In your PSR article, you argued that for some people, political satire is not only entertainment but also a source of political information. How widespread is this phenomenon?

Caroline V. Leicht: In the United States, it is certainly a widespread phenomenon. Political satire is a key element of the US-American entertainment industry. Programs like Saturday Night Live (SNL) have been on the air for almost 50 years and more recently, news parody shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or Last Week Tonight have had wide success as they rose to prominence in the age of social media where content is spread more rapidly and more widely. The jokes and humour on these programs are highly political; however, it is not just a means to make fun of politics but also a means to provide political commentary and contextualization. In a way, it can help in making political processes and issues more accessible to viewers. A prominent example that comes to mind is John Oliver’s segment on Last Week Tonight about Net Neutrality in which he explains the issue in more depth and provides the background that citizens would need to engage in informed discourse about the topic. And there are many other examples like this. As I detail in my PSR article, studies have shown that there are real learning effects associated with watching these types of programs. In addition to this, research has found that citizens in the United States are more likely to turn to late-night comedy programs than to national newspapers for their election news. As we continue to observe these phenomena, it is increasingly more important to expand the research agenda as well. In my PhD project, I examine the role of gender in political satire representations of candidates, a subject that I believe is immensely important for this research area but has unfortunately remained substantially unexplored to date.

You argue that “Research has shown that these programs have real effects on political attitudes and candidate evaluations”. How does political satire affect its audiences? How can political satire programmes influence political behaviours or electoral behaviours?

In my PSR article, I identified three key strands of the literature that reflect the different types of audience effects: political knowledge acquisition, political attitudes, and political participation. First, research has found that political satire programs like The Daily Show feature substantive information about politics that is comparable to traditional news media, and experimental studies have confirmed that exposure to political satire can lead to higher levels of political knowledge. Second, the literature on political satire suggests that this media format can affect issue salience and candidate evaluations. We know that news media have the power to set the agenda for their respective audience, making some political issues or characteristics of political actors more salient than others through editorial decisions and filtering. The same is true for political satire, so the issues or versions of politicians presented in these programs could become more salient for audience members. And third, prior research has found that political satire can mobilize its viewers politically, for instance through calls to action. Political participation is often measured through voting, but a slightly different “real world example” that comes to mind is the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” organized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in 2010, just a few weeks before the midterm elections in the US that year. Over 200,000 people turned out for this rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC – that certainly shows that political satire can mobilize audience members politically and in the real world. Taking these three types of audience effects into account and considering the similarities with more traditional news media, it just becomes even clearer that political satire is a media format that should receive more research attention in political science.

We know that news media have the power to set the agenda for their respective audience, making some political issues or characteristics of political actors more salient than others through editorial decisions and filtering. The same is true for political satire, so the issues or versions of politicians presented in these programs could become more salient for audience members.

In your recent research, you’ve undertaken an impressive analysis of SNL sketches from the 2016 election cycle, referring to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Could you elaborate on the conceptual framework of this research, as well as on your latest research on the 2020 Democratic Primaries?

We know that citizens turn to political satire for election news, and we know that political satire can have real effects on its audiences; however, there are still significant gaps in the research on political satire. The literature has thus far been primarily concerned with audience effects studies, the format of news parody shows, and partisanship as a mediating factor. In my PhD research, I thus decided to address these limitations by exploring the role of gender as a mediating factor for candidate representations and focusing on an understudied genre of political satire, namely sketch comedy. My current paper combines frameworks from the research on gendered media representations and political satire to make a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the field. Role congruity theory and gendered framing built the basis for my research questions and hypotheses as I wanted to test whether the gender stereotypes and biases that have been observed in traditional news media are also present in political satire. Understanding these gendered representations of candidates is important because it provides insights into how voters perceive political processes and actors, particularly if we take into account that political satire has effects on candidate evaluations. To test my hypotheses, I examined all Saturday Night Live sketches about the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Primaries and general elections, using a mixed-methods approach consisting of content analysis – for which I developed a comprehensive coding scheme – and framing analysis.

Saturday Night Show highlights: Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, and Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton, Creative Commons License

What kind of gendered stereotypes were the most visible in your research?

It is still a working paper, so the results are preliminary, but the initial results reflect observations from studies of more traditional news media. Female candidates were often framed through more personal characteristics or relationships. For instance, sketches about Hillary Clinton often referenced her husband, former President Bill Clinton. In 2020, Kamala Harris was often portrayed as a maternal figure. An example of this is the SNL sketch about the first presidential debate: Harris (played by Maya Rudolph) enters the stage and tells Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) and Joe Biden (Jim Carrey) to calm down, apologize for their rowdy debate behaviour, and then says she has snacks for them backstage for after the debate. She even refers to herself as “Momala” which is what the real Harris’ stepchildren call her. My initial results indicate that the male candidates were more likely to be framed through issues and policy proposals than the female candidates. So far, the results reflect a number of “typical” gendered stereotypes and show that representations and framing of candidates in political satire are indeed gendered. This is an important observation to make as it helps in tracing the origins of gendered biases observed in political processes and voting behaviours: Voters who watched the SNL sketches will have been exposed to gendered representations of the candidates as well as framing mediated by gender stereotypes, and this could influence their candidate evaluations.

What were the major differences in portraying the three analysed candidates in terms of masculine and feminine traits?

For my study, I built on existing works on gendered traits to categorize the SNL characterizations of the candidates. As an example of initial results: In the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton was often characterized as “assertive” or as a “leader”, both of which are categorized as masculine traits in the coding instrument. A possible explanation for this portrayal could be that the real Clinton was “performing” a political leadership role as the presidential candidate and political leadership roles are still regarded in more masculine terms, as research has shown. We know that gendered characterizations of candidates have been observed in traditional news media coverage, so my results could be evidence that SNL is comparable to news media in this way. This would link back to what we talked about earlier: That political satire is comparable to traditional news media in several ways and therefore warrants more research attention as a political information source

My initial results indicate that the male candidates were more likely to be framed through issues and policy proposals than the female candidates. So far, the results reflect a number of “typical” gendered stereotypes and show that representations and framing of candidates in political satire are indeed gendered.

Can you think of any examples of political satire sketches/ shows reflecting on recent political turmoil, for instance in Ukraine or Iran?  

Political satire does not always have to be something to laugh about, and I think certainly with the examples you mention, there is nothing funny about them at all. But political satire, at its core, is about speaking truth to power and about reflecting opinions, discourse or the mood of a given audience. And we can definitely observe this in the examples you mentioned. For instance, the Saturday after Russia invaded Ukraine, SNL did a very somber yet also political cold open. They had the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York perform “Prayer for Ukraine”. No wigs, no costumes, no jokes – just a somber two-minute song. I think that really captured the mood at the time. A few weeks later, SNL opened with a sketch about a fictional “Fox News Ukrainian Invasion Celebration Spectacular” in which Tucker Carlson (played by Alex Moffat) and Laura Ingraham (Kate McKinnon) “apologize” for previous comments in support of Russia and then proceed to host guests like Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) to raise money for “the real victims of this invasion, the oligarchs.” The sketch does not make fun of the war, but rather offers a critique of media coverage, the focus on the war’s effect on oligarchs, and politicians’ statements. That is certainly something we can observe for these types of political topics, like the war in Ukraine or the current turmoil in Iran: Political satire offers critiques of news media coverage, critiques of international responses and politicians’ actions or lack thereof.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

As I outlined before, my research addresses gaps in the current literature on political satire. There was a bit of a trend for more political satire research around the 2008 and 2012 US elections, but there is still a lot that has not been explored. The research has thus far been focused primarily on news parody shows, audience effects and partisanship. My PhD research, including my current paper which we talked about earlier, instead focuses on sketch comedy, an understudied genre of political satire, and examines the role of gender in candidate representations. My current paper combines and builds on frameworks from different sub-fields and introduces a comprehensive coding scheme for the content analysis of sketches, thus making a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the field as well. We know that citizens use political satire programs as news sources, so it is important that we, as researchers, consider these programs news sources as well and direct more research attention to this media format. Gendered representations and framing of candidates can lead to biases in voter perceptions and can affect voting behaviour. So, it is vital to understand these biases in the coverage, examine when and how they appear, and how they are perceived by audiences. And that is precisely what I am doing in my PhD research.

MORE

Leicht, C. V. (2022). Nightly News or Nightly Jokes? News Parody as a Form of Political Communication: A Review of the LiteraturePolitical Studies Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221100339

ABOUT

Caroline V Leicht received her MA from the University of Liverpool and is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Southampton. Her research focuses on political satire as a form of political communication in electoral contexts in the United States.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, PSR/Brunel University London

SUGGESTED CONTENT

PSR Podcast #21: Dr Tsung-han Tsai, When “Don’t Know” Indicates Nonignorable Missingness: Using the Estimation of Political Knowledge as an Example

“In some cases, don’t know can be considered as valid responses rather than missing values. For example, in the case of measuring political knowledge, the conventional approach is categorizing don’t know into incorrect responses. However, more and more research suspects whether it is appropriate to treat don’t know as an absence-of-knowledge category. This research pays attention to partial knowledge hidden within don’t know.” – says Dr Tsung-han Tsai.

Dr Tsung-han Tsai proposes a model to extract the information from don’t know responses and to formally test partial knowledge within don’t know. To learn more listen to the podcast and read the PSR article When “Don’t Know” Indicates Nonignorable Missingness: Using the Estimation of Political Knowledge as an Example – Tsung-Han Tsai, 2023 (sagepub.com)

PODCAST SCRIPT

In survey research, researchers usually design a battery of questions to measure some concepts such as democratic values and political knowledge. Owing to the limitations of the questionnaire length, three to five questions are used to measure a defined concept.  Since there are only limited questions for a concept, responses to these questions matter. However, respondents sometimes provide nonresponses to these questions such as don’t know. One widely used approach to deal with nonresponses is to treat them as missing values. Treating nonresponses as missing values indicates that there is no information extracted from these questions.

In some cases, don’t know can be considered valid responses rather than missing values. For example, in the case of measuring political knowledge, the conventional approach is categorizing don’t know into incorrect responses. However, more and more research suspects whether it is appropriate to treat don’t know as an absence-of-knowledge category. This research pays attention to partial knowledge hidden within don’t know.

In this paper, I propose a model to extract the information from don’t know responses, on the one hand, and to formally test partial knowledge within DK. In specific, I combine item response theory and the shared-parameter approach which is presented in the literature on missing data mechanisms. Unlike the conventional approach, I treat DK as missing values and assume that they are missing not at random. The logic is that whether a response to political knowledge questions is correct or not and whether a don’t know the response is provided is determined by knowledge levels.

I applied the proposed model to analyze survey data from Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study project. In specific, I study the gender gap in political knowledge. It has been argued that men appear to know more about politics than women. Even though some studies recognize the gender gap in knowledge, others argue that the higher percentage of DK responses from women exaggerates the gap in political knowledge.

That is if there is knowledge hidden within DK responses, treating DKs as incorrect responses would make women appear less knowledgeable than they actually are. According to the results of the analysis in this article, we do find hidden knowledge within nonresponses for women. This phenomenon, however, occurs only in one of the three political knowledge questions. These results suggest that the gender gap in political knowledge is not seriously exaggerated by women’s higher percentages of nonresponses because most of the time these nonresponses indicate the absence of knowledge.

MORE

Tsai, T.-H. (2023). When “Don’t Know” Indicates Nonignorable Missingness: Using the Estimation of Political Knowledge as an Example. Political Studies Review21(1), 99–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211058543

Tsung-Han Tsai is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and jointly appointed associate research fellow in the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University (NCCU), Taipei, Taiwan

Personal website: Tsung-han Tsai – Home (weebly.com)

production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London