Here you will find my publications that reflect my substantive, policy and methodological interests.
Jeronimo Cortina
University of Houston
Publications
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"The Quiet Revolution:" Convenience Voting, Vote Centers, and Turnout in Texas Elections
Peer Reviewed Journal ArticlesJeronimo Cortina & Brandon Rottinghaus (2021): “The quiet revolution”: convenience voting, vote centers, and turnout in Texas elections, Politics, Groups, and Identities, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2021.1946099
Publication year: 2021
From a Distance: Geographic Proximity, Partisanship, and Public Attitudes toward the U.S.–Mexico Border Wall
Peer Reviewed Journal ArticlesCortina, J. (2019). From a Distance: Geographic Proximity, Partisanship, and Public Attitudes toward the U.S.–Mexico Border Wall. Political Research Quarterly.
Publication year: 2019
There are increasing claims regarding the attachments that Latin American immigrants have to their home countries and their potential roles as lobbyists for their countries of origin. These claims are not based on systematic analyses of immigrant perspectives and behavior but reflect instead the rhetoric and aspirations of home country and immigrant leaders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which such claims reflect immigrant attitudes and behavior. Specifically, it will draw on surveys of Latin American immigrants that examine how they view home country issues, their levels of involvement in activities related to home countries and the strength of their attachments to U.S. institutions and society. This paper will pay particular attention to attitudes and behaviors directly linked to politics as distinct from those tied to cultural and social realms.
Every 4 years, during election season, we witness continuously growing appeals from Democrats and Republicans to the Latino electorate with the purpose of gaining enough of their vote to tilt the election to their respective advantage. Although Latinos regularly vote Democratic, Republicans assume that because of their continuing upward mobility and long-standing social conservatism, Latinos are in fact Republicans but just don’t know it yet. In this article, we test how likely Latinos were to abandon their historic attachment to the Democratic Party and identify with the Republican Party in 2000 and 2004. Our conclusion is that although Latinos may have increasingly voted for the Republican candidate in 2004 and over time may change their partisan preferences, the Hispanic electorate was far from abandoning its partisan attachment to the Democratic Party.
The outbreak of political scandal depresses the approval ratings of the individuals involved, especially the president. Yet, less is known about the partisan effects of approval ratings during scandal, especially the “stickiness” of partisan ties to leaders involved in scandal. Using a survey experiment, we expose respondents to manufactured news coverage of both illegal and not illegal (mismanaged policy) activities involving President Obama. The results demonstrate that the President’s co-partisans are more likely to approve of the President and less likely to desire to impeach the president, even after being informed about illegal activity. In contrast, out partisans are more likely to demand the President’s impeachment for both illegal and not illegal activity. This article provides evidence of how partisanship persists (and even expands) during presidential scandals and how partisan linkages are important to surviving scandal.
Migration theories often ignore the role that states play in stimulating migration through public assistance policies. Using the case of Mexico, this article explores the role of the state as a migrant-producing actor by examining the relationship between migration and social assistance policies in the form of monetary cash transfers. It argues that direct, unconditional cash transfers, like those provided by agricultural programs such as Procampo, rather than providing the incentives needed to retain individuals in their home country, may instead be providing the resources needed to migrate, particularly if the amount of the transfer is insufficient to spur investment. Instead of discouraging migration by enhancing economic opportunities and reducing poverty, such policies can actually make it easier and more appealing for its beneficiaries to migrate.
Using data from eight focus groups and two household surveys conducted in the cities of Tirana, Albania and Quito, Ecuador, this paper finds that migration from at least one parent has a negative impact on the life satisfaction of children and adolescents left behind relative to that of children and adolescents who live with both parents who have never migrated. The results of this paper suggest that the impact of migration goes beyond traditional ones (e.g. remittances), which is useful for understanding how different components of international migration in general, and parental migration in particular, relate to outcomes that not only affect the full development prospects of children and adolescents, but also have important implications for policy initiatives that seek to address both the positive and negative impacts of migration on sending countries.
On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions as polling results divided the nation’s map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become a symbol of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes–pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist, latte-sipping blue-state Democrats who are woefully out of touch with heartland values. This book debunks these and other political myths.
We get to the bottom of why Democrats win elections in wealthy states while Republicans get the votes of richer voters, how the two parties have become ideologically polarized, and other issues. We useseye-opening, easy-to-read graphs to unravel the mystifying patterns of recent voting, and in doing so paints a vivid portrait of the regional differences that drive American politics. We demonstrate in the plainest possible terms how the real culture war is being waged among affluent Democrats and Republicans, not between the haves and have-nots; how religion matters for higher-income voters; how the rich-poor divide is greater in red not blue states–and much more.
To foster a deeper understanding of the interconnection of the social sciences, economists should know where historical data come from, sociologists should know how to think like economists, political scientists would benefit from understanding how models are tested in psychology, historians should learn how political processes are studied, psychologists should understand sociological theories, and so forth.
This overview by prominent social scientists gives an accessible, non-technical sense of how quantitative research is done in the social sciences. Readers will find out about models and ways of thin inking in economics, history, sociology, political science and psychology, which in turn they bring back to their own research.
This book sheds some light on a recurring gap in the migration-development literature and examines the various channels by which migration permeates the economic, cultural, social, and political structures both in migrant-sending and-receiving countries. The unique contribution of this volume to the migration-development literature is precisely this multi-causal line of inquiry, something new in a field which has been dominated by an economistic approach.