Party Norms and Partisan "Apostates"

• In Event: The Role of Norms in Public Opinion and Political Behavior

Abstract

Norms are an important factor in predicting attitudes and behavior within social groups, but norms are understudied in the context of partisan behavior in American politics. I enhance our understanding of partisan norms in two steps. First, I used various text analysis methods and open-ended data from the American National Election Studies to discover norms of behavior in the Democratic and Republican parties. I find that Democrats hold an injunctive norm to care for members of marginalized or oppressed groups, while Republicans hold norms of loyalty to the group, especially group leaders, and to uphold Conservative ideology. Second, I examine the ways that partisans sanction group members who break these norms using approval ratings data and an original survey experiment.

Author

• James Lucien Martherus, Vanderbilt University