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Why are women less likely to engage with politics as compared to men? I explore whether women avoid politics because of their lower levels of tolerance for conflict and disagreement. Men are more likely to say they enjoy a lively political argument, while women are more conflict avoidant. These differences in people’s orientations toward conflict are thought to contribute to gender gaps in political interest and engagement. I explore this using survey responses to a module of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. I find that people’s positive reactions to conflict better explain the decision to engage in politics than negative reactions to disagreements. While women report higher levels of conflict avoidance than men, gender gaps in political engagement cannot be explained by women’s greater aversion to conflict. Instead, gender gaps are better understood as a product of men’s comparatively higher levels of enjoyment of arguments and disagreements.

What makes people feel influential in politics? While prior studies describe political efficacy as a stable and socialized trait, I argue that feelings of effectiveness in politics follow from the actions of politicians and the design of government. When state governments afford citizens opportunities for voice and deliver desired policy outcomes, I expect that citizens feel more politically effective. Using a set of unique items from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I investigate how factors like policy congruence, descriptive representation, election administration, and ballot initiatives shape people’s feelings that politicians are responsive to their concerns. I find that people feel more efficacious in state politics when they have greater opportunities for political voice and when their concerns are reflected in the policy process.

When women are represented on the campaign trail and in elected office, women in the electorate have been shown to report greater engagement in politics. However, most evidence of the effects of descriptive representation on women's empowerment is drawn from surveys from the 1980s and 1990s. I update these studies to consider how women candidates and officeholders affect the political knowledge, interest, and participation of other women in the electorate. Using responses from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study from 2006 to 2014, I find that both men and women are more politically knowledgeable when represented by women in Congress and in state government. Considering political engagement, I find little evidence that women are more politically interested or participatory when residing in places with more female officeholders or candidates. Women's political presence as candidates and officeholders does not uniquely encourage other women to engage in political life.

How do people decide whether a political process is fair or unfair? Concerned about principles of justice, people might carefully evaluate procedural fairness based on the facts of the case. Alternately, people could be guided by their prior preferences, endorsing the procedures that produce favored policy outcomes as fair and rating those that generate disliked outcomes as unfair. Using an experimental design, we consider the conditions under which people use accuracy goals versus directional goals in evaluating political processes. We find that when procedures are clearly fair or unfair, people make unbiased assessments of procedural justice. When the fairness of a process is ambiguous, people are more likely to use their prior attitudes as a guide.

Are the origins of trust in state government different from the reasons why people trust the national government? I argue that trust in state government has distinctive origins, tied to differences in how states operate within a federal system of government. Leveraging variations in the character of the states, I consider whether trust in state government is a function of its proximity to citizens, people’s relative preferences for smaller government, and the homogeneity of state electorates. Using responses to the 2017 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show feelings of trust in state government follow not only from state political conditions and economic performance but also from the distinctive character of the states. These findings challenge prior accounts that argue that diffuse trust in state government reflects only how people feel about the national government, and highlight how large states and small states face different challenges in cultivating trust in state government.

Politicians invest a lot of energy into managing their image, with the hope that the public views them favorably. In sharing details about themselves, elected officials want to be seen as people, not just as politicians. Are these efforts successful? I explore this question using an experiment inspired by a column in the celebrity entertainment magazine Us Weekly. I find that politicians who share nonpolitical autobiographical details about themselves secure warmer evaluations from the public. Reading this type of personalizing information also can contribute to ratings of elected officials that are less polarized by partisanship. While personalizing information boosts favorability toward politicians across party lines, members of the opposing party are particularly likely to report warmer affect toward the politician about whom they read. This suggests that this type of soft news coverage has the potential to depolarize partisan evaluations of politicians.

When people say that they trust local authorities, is it simply because they have generalized trust in national government? Or is trust in local government rooted in distinctive considerations, connected to the character of local communities and the balance of power across levels of government? We explore how trust in local and national government differs across individuals and across countries in western Europe. We find that people trust local government for different reasons than those that drive trust in national government. Cross-national differences in levels of trust in government reflect the character of national institutions. While both proportional representation systems and federal systems are power-sharing designs, each has distinctive consequences for trust. When opportunities for voice in local government are high, as in decentralized systems, people report greater trust in local government. When opportunities for voice in national government are limited, as in majoritarian systems, people report lower trust for national government and higher trust in local government.

Why do people call for states' rights and the devolution of national authority? Are they driven by partisan motives, where they like devolution the most when the President is of the opposing party? Or are calls to shift the balance of federal power rooted in sincere support for decentralized political authority? Using survey data from 1987 to 2012, I explore how support for devolution varies across time and individuals. I find that people are not strictly partisan in how they think about devolution. While people are more likely to favor decentralization when the President is of the opposing party, they are no more likely to want devolution when their own party controls state government. Substantive considerations are also important, where those who support limited government increasingly favor the devolution of central authority as the size of the national government increases relative to the size of state and local government.

When members of Congress neglect the needs of their districts or vote contrary to the wishes of their constituents, their public approval suffers. Does the same hold true for representatives at the state level? Using experiments, I explore whether people dole out similarrewardsand penalties to state legislators and members of Congress for their successes and shortfalls inrepresentingconstituents. I find that a similar model of political accountability travels from national politics to state politics. People value policy representation, casework, and attention to the district as much from state legislators as they do from members of Congress.