Ryan L. Claassen
E-mail: rclaasse@kent.edu
Personal web page: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rclaasse/index.htm
Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of California, Davis, 2005
Fields: American politics, elections and political behavior, public opinion, public law, methodology
Recent Publications:
Claassen, Ryan. "Direction v. Proximity: Amassing Experimental Evidence." Forthcoming: American Politics Research.
Claassen, Ryan and Benjamin Highton. Forthcoming. "'The ‘Choice Context' and the Political Significance of Political Awareness." Political Research Quarterly.
Claassen, Ryan. 2008. "Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation." Political Behavior. 30: 277-296.
Claassen, Ryan, David B. Magleby, Quin Monson, and Kelly D. Patterson. 2008. "‘At Your Service': Voter Evaluations of Poll Worker Performance." American Politics Research in the 2008 special issue devoted to election administration. 36:4. 612-634.
Claassen, Ryan. 2007. "Campaign Activism and the Spatial Model: Getting Beyond Extremism to Explain Policy Motivated Participation." Political Behavior. 29:3. 369-390.
Claassen, Ryan. 2007. "Ideology and Evaluation in an Experimental Setting: Comparing the Proximity and the Directional Models." Political Research Quarterly. 60:2. 263-274.
Claassen, Ryan. 2007. "Floating Voters and Floating Activists: Political Change and Information." Political Research Quarterly. 60:1. 124-134.
Claassen, Ryan and Benjamin Highton. 2006. "Does Policy Debate Reduce Information Effects in Public Opinion? Analyzing the Evolution of Public Opinion on Health Care." Journal of Politics. 68:2. 410-420.
I teach a variety of courses in the areas of quantitative research methods, American politics, and political behavior—at both the doctoral and undergraduate levels. Although I pursue a wide range of interesting empirical questions in my research, the common thread is political engagement—especially knowledge and participation. In my published and ongoing work I investigate whether engagement shapes the capacity of individuals and groups of individuals in the American public to effectively contribute to public opinion and compete democratically. My work has appeared (or will be appearing soon) in American Politics Research (2x), The Journal of Politics, Political Behavior (2x), and Political Research Quarterly (4x).
At present, I am working on several projects exploring the ramifications of the distribution of political knowledge in the mass public. Few debate that many Americans remain uninformed about their political environment, but the debate over the consequences of political ignorance and apathy is a vigorous one. Some argue that a maldistribution of political knowledge is inconsequential because the unengaged use a variety of low-information shortcuts or heuristics to behave as if they were better informed about politics. Work in this vein has succeeded in demonstrating that unengaged citizens can use shortcuts (e.g. Lupia, Popkins, and others), but questions remain regarding the extent to which the unengaged actually do succeed in behaving as if they were engaged. Like others exploring the role of political knowledge structuring opinion and behavior (e.g. Althaus, Bartels, Delli Carpini, and others), I find dramatic disparities between the behavior of otherwise similar individuals who differ in their levels of political knowledge. But my work, and my work in collaboration with Benjamin Highton, contributes new insights into how the size of these information effects vary as the political environment changes. This line of research demonstrates that political knowledge mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment. We show this to be the case in terms of opinions about health care in the 1990s—when a major change in the government's role in providing health care was proposed (see my JOP article with Benjamin Highton); we show this to be the case in terms of polarization around racial issues, economic issues, and moral issues—in an era of increasing elite-level polarization (forthcoming PRQ article with Benjamin Highton); and I have found that political knowledge also mediates the process of partisan realignment and the way individuals experience presidential election campaigns (new papers currently under review). Each of these findings has important ramifications for understanding the way individuals contribute to public opinion and compete for democratic representation. For example, because they failed to respond to a changing political environment, the chronically uninformed wielded virtually no influence over fluctuation in public support for government provided health care in the 1990s.
In general, my work consistently demonstrates that the uninformed do not succeed in behaving as if they were better informed; ability to use shortcuts notwithstanding. Because citizens can use shortcuts, but habitually do not, the root of the problem is lack of engagement and motivation to follow politics. Hence my long range interest in this line of research lies in exploring whether 1) it is possible to induce political engagement 2) whether political engagement persists beyond inducement and 3) whether induced engagement succeeds in eliminating information effects. To investigate, I am revising an NSF grant proposal requesting funding for a large-scale experiment in which I will expose subjects to a variety of engagement inducing activities (e.g. payment for listening to NPR news for 6 weeks or for maintaining a political blog) and conduct a series of surveys designed to assess the existence and magnitude of information effects for comparison across the various treatments.
I also have a longstanding interest in the participation dimension of political engagement. In my dissertation and subsequent publications (see my first 2007 PRQ article), I explore the idea that well informed, responsive campaign activists provide a link between poorly informed floating voters and a collectively rational electorate that rewards and punishes incumbents based on factors such as economic performance and ideological moderation. In more recent work, my attention has turned to the determinants of participation. For example, in my 2007 Political Behavior article I question the role of extremism as a motivation for campaign activism and show that the spatial model can be extended to explain participation beyond turnout. In my 2008 Political Behavior article I demonstrate that attitudinal extremism is better conceived as a consequence of participation—not a determinant. In a similar vein, in my first collaboration with a graduate student, Andrew Povtak and I raise questions about the role of evangelical religious identity inspiring longitudinal increases in participation (this is a new paper). Finally, my work with David Magleby, Quin Monson, and Kelly Patterson is also concerned with participation—albeit indirectly through confidence that votes will be counted accurately in electoral jurisdictions using touchscreen voting machines compared to electoral jurisdictions using optical scan systems (see our APR article and we recently completed a second manuscript).
In addition, I have been active in the directional v. proximity model debate and the Hispanic politics literature. My work here is consistent with my interest in how individuals and groups contribute to public opinion and compete democratically and it showcases my ability to design and conduct experiments. For example, my contributions to the directional v. proximity model literature explore the calculus of candidate evaluation using the experimental method. Both my forthcoming APR article and my second 2007 PRQ article describe experiments I designed and conducted in order to gain purchase on a question that observational studies have been unsuccessful resolving. More generally, I devote considerable time and energy to issues of research design—both in the classroom and in my own research. On the experiment front, my efforts to date have involved designing, conducting, and analyzing experimental manipulations within surveys, but my long range plans—the NSF grant—include more involved experimental treatments that will take place inside laboratories and in the field. And I devote similar attention to issues of research design in my work using the survey research methodology. For example, in my 2007 Political Behavior article, I deploy both cross-sectional and panel data to bring a mixed-methods approach to bear. In my 2008 Political Behavior article, I explore questions of reciprocal causation and estimate causal models (using LISREL) of relationships among variables in a three-wave panel. My training in, and ongoing study of, advanced statistical methods enables me to approach empirical questions with creativity—matching method with question to obtain maximum explanatory leverage. And I am passionate about teaching these skills to students and inspiring them to conduct creative and rigorous research. In the classroom, I emphasize application and ability to use, understand—and especially ability to explain—research involving advanced methods. I include original research projects in each class, and graduate students regularly present these papers at conferences and submit them for peer review.