Are Campaigns Defined by Structure or Agency?
Political scientists will be the first to tell you that campaigns are driven by the fundamentals. The most important variables in an incumbent president’s reelection are if the country is at war and the state of the economy. At the same time, more recent work has found innovative ways that campaigns can induce turnout, cross-pressure voters, and ultimately influence the behavior of voters in a number of ways. But are these two interpretations at odds? A seemingly innocuous Twitter conversation between journalists and political scientists yesterday casted that doubt, calling it “ironic” in a perjorative sense. The prevailing consensus in that thread: it’s not ironic if different political scientists hold different opinions. But the field at large is still plagued by this impression of cognitive dissonance between campaigns determining elections and fundamentals driving the result. So what is it? Structure or Agency? @ symbol overload The easy answer: both. The better que...