Explaining Processes of Institutional Opinion Leadership

Abstract

When and how can institutions lead public opinion? Scholarly controversy exists over whether even a highly esteemed institution such as the Supreme Court can move mass opinion. In this study we use an experimental design embedded within a representative national survey to examine these questions in a context involving multiple institutions and multiple issues. Our findings suggest that the Court's ability to move opinion is potent and based on multiple processes of persuasive influence. Congress's ability to move opinion, while conditional, is surprisingly more potent than previously understood. Moreover, opinion change in response to institutional endorsements is mediated by substantive political thought to a greater extent than heuristic explanations have suggested.

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

“…One attribution approach is to characterize the decision as merely coming “from the Supreme Court” without providing additional context about which particular justice authored the opinion. By crediting the institution with the decision this approach would seem to garner greater acceptance of the decision by members of the public by connoting neutrality, credibility, clarity, legality, and even institutional legitimacy (Baird ; Bartels and Mutz ; Brigham ; Gibson et al ; Hoekstra ; Mondak ). This general deference to and reverence of the U.S. High Court (and its actions) has been described as “positivity theory” (e.g., Gibson ).…”

“…Specifically, we are interested in whether citizens' agreement with a decision by the Court is affected by source cues tied to the identity of the majority opinion author. We argue that majority opinions attributed to the U.S. Supreme Court as a whole should enjoy higher levels of agreement than those attributed to particular justices because the Court‐attributed opinions will connote neutrality, credibility, and institutional legitimacy (Bartels and Mutz ; Gibson et al ; Hoekstra ).…”

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

“…One attribution approach is to characterize the decision as merely coming "from the Supreme Court" without providing additional context about which particular justice authored the opinion. By crediting the institution with the decision this approach would seem to garner greater acceptance of the decision by members of the public by connoting neutrality, credibility, clarity, legality, and even institutional legitimacy (Baird 2001;Bartels and Mutz 2009;Brigham 1987;Gibson et al 2014;Hoekstra 1995;Mondak 1992). This general deference to and reverence of the U.S. High Court (and its actions) has been described as "positivity theory" (e.g., Gibson 2007).…”

“…Specifically, we are interested in whether citizens' agreement with a decision by the Court is affected by source cues tied to the identity of the majority opinion author. We argue that majority opinions attributed to the U.S. Supreme Court as a whole should enjoy higher levels of agreement than those attributed to particular justices because the Court-attributed opinions will connote neutrality, credibility, and institutional legitimacy (Bartels and Mutz 2009;Gibson et al 2014;Hoekstra 1995).…”

Political Capital in the 21st Century: An Electoral Theory of Going Public and Private

“…If these shifts occur, we have reason to believe legislators will respond to them (Kousser and Masket, 2007). We generally have little support for the claim that presidents may directly and broadly lead public opinion (Page, Shapiro and Dempsey, 1987;Edwards III, 2006;Edwards, 2007Edwards, , 2009Edwards III, 2012), though temporary, issue specific, non-presidential, and limited opinion leadership effects have been found (Wood, 2007;Bartels and Mutz, 2009;Rottinghaus, 2009;Cohen, 2010;Tedin and Rodgers, 2011). The limited scope of presidential opinion leadership effects found thus far suggest this technique of grassroots mass persuasion (called Neighbor-to-Neighbor by OFA) is potentially very important if effective (Melber, 2010) 4 .…”