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Figure 4.1: Approval Ratings for Senator Bob Corker Over Time
May 2018. Figure 4.1a shows that for nearly 6 years, Senator Corker’s approval among Republicans remained quite high – between 75 and 85%. A month after his fight with the President, Senator Corker’s approval among Republicans plummeted to below 50%.
Breaking down approval by strength of partisanship reveals a particularly striking de- cline among strong Republicans. In contrast, Nancy Pelosi, currently the highest-ranking member of the Democratic party and arguably the “strongest and most effective speaker of modern times,”5 faced numerous attacks in the aftermath of the 2018 election. Sev- eral progressive house members were particularly critical; for example, Representative Ocasio-Cortez criticized Pelosi for singling out “newly elected women of color” for their progressive policy ideas. Though some Democratic members of Congress publicly ex- pressed their disapproval of the attacks on Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez and others who crit- icized Pelosi seemed not to suffer any serious consequences. A month after the spat, YouGov polled Ocasio-Cortez net favorability6at +37 among Democrats nationally.7
The social sanctions (or lack thereof) experienced by these political elites are unlikely
5Thomas Mann, as quoted in The Atlantic
6Net favorability is the percentage who approve minus the percentage who disapprove.
7https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-squad-probably-doesnt-have-to-worry-about-primary- challengers/
to be isolated incidents; after all, breaking social norms has led to social sanctions among virtually all human civilizations throughout history. In fact, Jane Goodall even observed social exclusion among chimpanzees (Goodall, 1986). Some of the first recorded exam- ples of social sanctions come from the Greeks. In Athenian democracy, ostrakismoswas the practice of forcing a citizen to leave Athens for 10 years using a popular vote. Those who returned early were killed, but after 10 years the individual was allowed to return and resume their normal life. We still use the word “ostracism” to refer to social shun- ning. Many other groups use various forms of social shunning: Iranian Qahr, Balinese Kasepekang, Amish Meinung, Jewish Cherem, and Catholic excommunication are all variants of the same practice — excluding group members based on failure to uphold group norms.
Although we no longer banish norm-breakers from society in quite the same way, social sanctions are alive and well today. For example, according to one survey, 67% of Americans admitted to giving “the silent treatment” to someone they knew, and 75% said they had received the silent treatment from a loved one (Williams, 2002, pg. 9). Recently, social media has provided even more opportunities to punish group members in front of large audiences. Twitter, in particular, is know for “mobs” of people who will attack those they disagree with (Rost et al., 2016). In his book,So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson (2016) interviews several people who had lost jobs, had their spouses leave them, or been forced to live in hiding as a result of minor normative missteps on Twitter.
One of the places we might observe social sanctions as the result of partisan norm violation is during primary elections. During primary elections, the party tends to be less unified. Some partisans feel very strongly about specific candidates, and develop strong negative feelings towards other candidates. In a very real way, primary candidates at the presidential level are fighting over the future of the party. During times of conflict and when the future of a group is in unclear, group members tend to enforce norms more strictly (Benard, 2012). Group leaders are also particularly susceptible to severe social
sanctions. On one hand, high-status group members are less likely to be punished for mild norm-breaking. (Wahrman, 2010). For those with high levels of group cachet, a bit of deviance is perceived as “innovation, tolerable idiosyncrasy” or even cause for changing the norms themselves (Wahrman, 2010, also see Hollander (1958)). On the other hand, when high-status group membersaresanctioned, they are usually sanctioned much more severely than rank-and-file group members (Wahrman, 1970).
H1: Candidates who break inparty norms will be punished electorally.
In chapter two, I argued that certain types of group members would be more likely to hold group norms. First, those with larger and more homogeneous political networks should be more sensitive to party norms. Norms are communicated socially, and homo- geneous networks tend to facilitate norm communication (Anoll, 2018; Larson and Lewis, 2017). Those who have robust political networks are more likely to have norms commu- nicated to them by their peers, particularly when those peers share their party affiliation.
As a result, we would expect that partisans with more homogeneous political networks should be more attuned to partisan norms. Second, those who pay more attention to political news should be more sensitive to party norms. Elites play an important part in communicating social norms (McLaughlin et al., 2017), and political media is an im- portant way that elites communicate with rank-and-file partisans. Existing work shows that the media can change the salience of an issue (Lenz, 2009), make people more cer- tain of their beliefs (Levendusky, 2013), and polarize the public (Druckman et al., 2013).
Those who pay attention to political news should have much clearer ideas about what
“good” group members should believe and how they should behave. Group members are more likely to enforce norms when they are aware of them, so the negative effects of norm-breaking should be particularly pronounced among voters who have homoge- neous political networks and voters who pay attention to political news. The mechanism is the same in both of these instances, but network homogeneity measures one’s personal connections, while attention to news measures exposure to elite messaging.
H2: Voters with homogeneous political networks will be more likely to punish norm- breaking candidates.
H3: Voters who pay attention to political news will be more likely to punish norm- breaking candidates.