AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
This convening of the American Politics and Public Policy Workshop will feature two presentations by Yale graduate students in political science, Natalie Hernadez and Nicholas Ottone. This workshop is open to the Yale community only.
Natalie Hernandez: “Prospectus: Three Papers on Abortion and Political Behavior”
Abstract: Abortion has typically been seen as a hyperpolarized issue where individuals on each side hold deeply entrenched and non-movable preferences. As a result, abortion has typically been seen as a ‘hard issue’ and many studies of persuasion have found null results. In this dissertation project, I challenge this view and argue instead that while there are certainly two very polarized sides, there is also a large middle. I define the middle as people who believe abortion should be legal in certain situations and not others. Because of the polarized state of the abortion issue, groups oftentimes talk past this middle group. This in effect makes group lose out on potential supporters. In this dissertation project, I seek to understand several questions at the intersection of political behavior and abortion politics, focusing on this middle group. During this presentation, I will go through one of the proposed projects in detail.
Natalie Hernandez is a third year PhD student at Yale University studying political behavior and gender.
Nicholas Ottone: “Do Americans Prefer Public or Private Delivery of Social Services? A Survey Experiment”
Abstract: From the War on Poverty to the present day, the United States national, state, and local governments have funded social services provided by private organizations, including non-profits, to the tune of billions of public expenditures every year. Research on taxation preferences shows that Americans prefer higher efficiency and lower costs, which suggests they may prefer private organizations to the government, but it is also possible that Americans have no clear preference over the method of service delivery. To investigate whether Americans have preferences over the method of service delivery, I conduct a survey experiment which varies the organization delivering the service in two hypothetical ballot measures and elicit overall support as well as measurements of potential mechanisms such as perceived efficiency and fairness. Additionally, to determine whether preferences vary across type of service and perceived deservingness of beneficiaries, I measure respondents’ willingness to pay for four services in a within-subjects design. This project will contribute to the literature on the “submerged state” and expand our understanding of Americans’ taxation and spending preferences.
Nicholas Ottone is a third-year PhD student in political science at Yale University. His research interests include political behavior and public policy, and his prospectus focuses on the causes and consequences of state and local governments outsourcing social services to non-profit organizations. He is currently serving as an editorial assistant for the American Political Science Review and as a research assistant for Yale’s ISPS Data Archive.