unc-ch

POLI 421
Framing Public Policies
T, Th 3:30-4:45, Murphey 112, Fall 2016

Prof. Frank R. Baumgartner
313 Hamilton Hall, phone 962-0414
Frankb@unc.edu
Web site: http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/
Office hours: T, Th, 2:30-3:30 pm and by appointment

Graduate Research Consultant: Kevin Roach, kevroach@live.unc.edu

Click here for the syllabus

Watch this space for announcements and resources.

Readings are below

Part One: Theories of how people think and how policies are framed

Week 1. Aug 23, 25, Introduction and a first theory: Causal Stories
Tuesday: Introductions and overview of the course
Thursday: Stone, Deborah A. 1989. Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas. Political Science Quarterly 104, 2: 281-300.

Week 2. Aug 30, target populations
Tuesday: Schneider, Anne, and Helen Ingram. 1993. Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy. American Political Science Review 87, 2: 334-47.

No class on Thursday this week; Baumgartner at the APSA meetings.

Week 3. Sep 6, 8, Gaining, Losing, and Risk (Tuesday), Good and Bad News (Thursday)
Tuesday: Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1973. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science 185 (4157): 1124-31.
Slovic, Paul. 1987. Perception of Risk. Science 236 (4799): 280-85.

Thursday: Baumeister, Roy F., Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen D. Vohs. 2001. Bad Is Stronger Than Good. Review of General Psychology 5: 323-370.

Graphing and keyword searching assignment, due Sept 15: Use the library web site to go to E-Resources, then Lexis-Nexis Academic, then pick The New York Times, then develop your own set of keywords that you believe tap into the concept of the US inflation rate. Enter your data in the spreadsheet, and save the spreadsheet while renaming it with your last name (Jones.xlsx). Email that sheet to Kevin Roach kevroach@live.unc.edu on the due date (or before). Copy the figure and paste it into the word document (replacing the one in the template), make sure it looks right (e.g., not distorted, 6.5 inches wide), and revise the template to describe accurately what you did and what you think of the results. This assignment is designed to get you familiar with keyword searching, so take your time with it and play around with different versions of the searches, getting yourself comfortable with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, W/5, W/P), parentheses, quotation marks, and wildcards (?, *) and what they do in the Lexis-Nexis environment. Also, I want you familiar with how to put a graph in a document and discuss what the trends indicate. Click here for the spreadsheet and here for the document templates. Your collective results are here.

Week 4. Sep 13, 15, Episodes v. Themes (Tuesday); Venues and Images (Thursday)
Tuesday: Aaroe, Lene. 2011. Investigating Frame Strength: The Case of Episodic and Thematic Frames. Political Communication 28: 207-26.
Thursday: Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. 1991. Agenda Dynamics and Policy Subsystems. Journal of Politics 53 (November): 1044-74.

*** First assignment due in class and by email, Sept 15, as per class web site.***

Week 5. Sep 20, 22, Motivated reasoning, or why it is hard to make people change their mind
Tuesday: Lord, Charles G., Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper. 1979. Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (11): 2098-2109.
Thursday: Ditto, Peter H. and David F. Lopez. 1992. Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63 (4): 568-84.
Kunda, Ziva. 1990. The Case for Motivated Reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 108, 3: 480-98.

Part Two: Race
Week 6. Sep 27, 29. A general overview, and two very troubling applications.
Tuesday: Goff, Phillip A., Claude M. Steele, and Paul G. Davies. 2008. The Space between Us: Stereotype Threat and Distance in Interracial Contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, 1: 91-107.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Amanda Lewis, and David G. Embrick. 2004.I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...: The Story Lines and Testimonies of Color-Blind Racism. Sociological Forum 19, 4 (December): 555-81.
Thursday: Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Paul G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, and Sheri Lynn Johnson. 2005/06. Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes. Psychological Science 17, 5: 383-6.
Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Nilanjana Dasgupta, and Tracy L. Banaszynski. 2003. Believing is Seeing: The Effects of Racial Labels and Implicit Beliefs on Face Perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29, 3 (March): 360-70.

Week 7. Oct 4, 6 Criminal Justice Applications
Tuesday: Boushey, Graeme. 2016. Targeted for Diffusion? How the Use and Acceptance of Stereotypes Shape the Diffusion of Criminal Justice Policy Innovations in the American States. American Political Science Review 110, 1: 198-214.
Thursday: Geller, Amanda, and Jeffrey Fagan. 2010. Pot as Pretext: Marijuana, Race and the New Disorder in New York City Street Policing. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 7, 4: 591-633.

***Due on October 6: 2 pages (single spaced) including your term paper topic, your choice of design, 5 good citations, and the beginnings of your definition of the relevant frames surrounding the issue. Click here is you'd like to participate in a joint paper project.***

Week 8. Oct 11, 13. Super-predators
Tuesday: DiIulio, John J., Jr. 1995. The Coming of the Super-Predators. The Weekly Standard. 27 Nov.
DiIulio, John J., Jr. 1996. My Black Crime Problem, and Ours. City Journal n.p.

Thursday:
Gluck, Stephen. 1997. Wayward Youth, Super Predator: An Evolutionary Tale of Juvenile Delinquency from the 1950s to the Present. Corrections Today 59, 3: 62-64,66.
Rattan A, Levine CS, Dweck CS, Eberhardt JL. 2012. Race and the Fragility of the Legal Distinction between Juveniles and Adults. PLoS ONE 7, 5: e36680.

Week 9. Oct 18, The Superpredators idea goes out of style
Tuesday: Bazelon, Lara A. 2000. Exploding the Superpredator Myth: Why Infancy is the Preadolescent's Best Defense in Juvenile Court. New York University Law Review 75: 159-198.
Becker, Elizabeth. 2001. As Ex-Theorist on Young 'Superpredators,' Bush Aide Has Regrets. The New York Times: A19.
*** Overview of your data collection and draft section explaining your keywords, frames, and data collection process due October 18. 5 pages single-spaced.***

No class on Th Oct 20, Happy Fall Break

Week 10. Oct 25, 27, Punitivenss and the beginnings of a reversal. Slides for class today.
Tuesday: Enns, Peter K. 2014. The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States. American Journal of Political Science 58, 4: 857-872.
Thursday: Dagan, David, and Steven M. Teles. 2015. The Social Construction of Policy Feedback: Incarceration, Conservatism, and Ideological Change. Studies in American Political Development 29 (October): 127-153.

Week 11. Nov 1, 3 Race and Punitiveness (Tuesday); Rehab in Prison Doesn't Work, Oops (Thursday)
Tuesday: Peffley, Mark, and Jon Hurwitz. 2007. Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America. American Journal of Political Science 51, 4: 996-1012.
Hetey, Rebecca C., and Jennifer L. Eberhardt. 2014. Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies. Psychological Science 25, 10 (October): 1949-54.

Thursday: Martinson, Robert. 1974. What Works? Questions and Answers about Prison Reform. The Public Interest 35: 22-54.
Martinson, Robert. 1979. New Findings, New Views: A Note of Caution Regarding Sentencing Reform. Hofstra Law Review 7, 2: 243-58.

***Note: revised schedule takes Thursday Nov 3 for a workshop / lab session in class focused on your spreadsheets, data collection, and Lexis-Nexis skills. Click here for my general comments on how to write good papers.***

Part Three: Miscellaneous Examples of Framing Effects
Week 12. Nov 8, 10 "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome" (Tuesday) and Prohibition (Thursday)
Tuesday: Armstrong, Elizabeth M. 1998. Diagnosing Moral Disorder: The Discovery and Evolution of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Social Science and Medicine 47, 12: 2025-2042.
Jones, Kenneth L., David W. Smith, Christy N. Ulleland, and Ann Pytkowicz Streissguth. 1973. Pattern of Malformation in Offspring of Chronic Alcoholic Mothers.  The Lancet 1, 7815 (9 June): 1267-71.
Thursday: Schrad, Mark Lawrence. 2007. Constitutional Blemishes: American Alcohol Prohibition and Repeal as Policy Punctuation. Policy Studies Journal 35, 3: 437-463.

Week 13. Nov 15, 17, Affirmative Action, Taxes
Tuesday: Hirschman, Daniel, Ellen Berrey, and Fiona Rose-Greenland. 2016. Dequantifying Diversity: Affirmative Action and Admissions at the University of Michigan. Theory and Society 45: 265-301.
Thursday: Scheve, Kenneth, and David Stasavage. 2012. Democracy, War, and Wealth: Lessons from Two Centuries of Inheritance Taxation. American Political Science Review 106, 1 (February): 81-102.
*** Full outline of your paper due November 17. The more you have, the more I can give feedback on. At a minimum, theory, lit review, beginnings of your data, good bibliography. Complete drafts are certainly welcome. Double-spaced.***

***Note: revised schedule has Kevin Roach in class for office hours / consulting / help with your data presentations. Your choice of when to hand in your draft paper. I strongly encourage you to give it to me in class on Nov 15 if possible, or email it to me when you can, otherwise I won't have much time to give you feedback.***

Week 14. Nov 22, Framing the poor: a UNC senior thesis, revised
Tuesday: Rose, Max, and Frank R. Baumgartner. 2013. Framing the Poor: Media Coverage and US Poverty Policy, 1960-2008. Policy Studies Journal 41, 1: 22-53.

No class on Thursday Nov 24, Happy Thanksgiving

Week 15. Nov 29, Dec 1, Review, presentations, your own research
Tuesday: no readings, class presentations
Thursday: no readings, class presentations

Week 16. Dec 6, last day of class
Tuesday: Review and summary


*** Term papers due in class Dec 6.***

***Final Exam: Thursday 15 December 2016, 4-6pm, in the regular classroom ***

Last updated August 23, 2016