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When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies?

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  • Arthur Lupia
  • Jesse O. Menning

Abstract

Many people claim that politicians use fear to manipulate citizens. Using a model, we examine how select attributes of fear affect a politician's ability to scare citizens into supporting policies that they would otherwise reject. In the model, the politician can alert citizens to the presence of a threat. But his claim need not be true. How citizens respond to this claim differs from most game‐theoretic models. Our representation of this response follows from research in psychology, has distinct conscious and subconscious components, and does not presume efficient processing (i.e., Bayesian updating). Our conclusions counter popular claims about when politicians will use fear to manipulate citizens. They also highlight issues (abstract, distant) and leaders (secretive) for which recent empirical findings about how fear affects politics will—and will not—generalize to other cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Arthur Lupia & Jesse O. Menning, 2009. "When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 90-106, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:53:y:2009:i:1:p:90-106
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00359.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Bechtel, Michael M. & Hainmueller, Jens & Hangartner, Dominik & Helbling, Marc, 2015. "Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(3), pages 683-695, September.
    2. Abraham Aldama & Mateo Vásquez-Cortés & Lauren Elyssa Young, 2019. "Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(1), pages 103-125, January.
    3. Jennings, Colin, 2011. "The good, the bad and the populist: A model of political agency with emotional voters," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 611-624.
    4. HORIUCHI Yusaku & ONO Yoshikuni, 2018. "Public Opposition to Refugee Resettlement: The case of Japan," Discussion papers 18050, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    5. Jennifer Jerit, 2009. "How Predictive Appeals Affect Policy Opinions," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 411-426, April.
    6. Lisa J. Carlson & Raymond Dacey, 2014. "The use of fear and anger to alter crisis initiation," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(2), pages 168-192, April.
    7. Thomas Jensen & Andreas Madum, 2014. "Partisan Optimism and Political Bargaining," Discussion Papers 14-05, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    8. Thomas Jensen & Andreas Madum, 2017. "Partisan optimism and political bargaining," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 191-213, April.

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