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The Influence of Local Patriotism on Participation in Local Politics, Civic participation, Trust in Local Government and Collective Action

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Patriotism is conceived of as a national-level concept. I posit that people hold similarly strong feelings toward their municipal area. Based on long-standing theories of patriotism in national politics, I show how local patriotism influences local politics. Using novel preregistered survey data from an online sample matched to nationally representative data in terms of gender, age, and race, I show that people have feelings of love, indifference, or hate toward their municipality. I also find a strong positive correlation between loving one's municipality and participation in local politics, civic participation, and trust in local government. I also conducted two preregistered survey experiments that show that priming feelings of love and/or hate towards one's town strongly motivates the willingness to sacrifice to solve local collective action problems. Specifically, stimuli that evoked these feelings made participants much more likely to donate the payment they earned from completing the survey to solve a town problem. These results show the crucial importance of local patriotism for understanding local politics.
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Original Research Article
American Politics Research
2022, Vol. 0(0) 116
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221125449
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The Inuence of Local Patriotism on
Participation in Local Politics, Civic
participation, Trust in Local Government
and Collective Action
Sean Richey
1
Abstract
Patriotism is conceived of as a national-level concept. I posit that people hold similarly strong feelings toward their municipal
area. Based on long-standing the- ories of patriotism in national politics, I show how local patriotism inuences local politics.
Using novel preregistered survey data from an online sample matched to nationally representative data in terms of gender, age,
and race, I show that people have feelings of love, indifference, or hate toward their municipality. I also nd a strong positive
correlation between loving ones municipality and partici-pation in local politics, civic participation, and trust in local gov-
ernment. I also conducted two preregistered survey experiments that show that priming feelings of love and/or hate towards
ones town strongly motivates the willingness to sac-rice to solve local collective action problems. Specically, stimuli that
evoked these feelings made participants much more likely to donate the payment they earned from completing the survey to
solve a town problem. These results show the crucial importance of local patriotism for understanding local politics.
Keywords
Patriotism, local poltitcs, participation, civic participation, trust
Do citizens love their towns
1
the way they love their nations? If
so, what impact does this local patriotism have on citizens
attitudes and behaviors in local politics? Patriotism has almost
exclusively been viewed as a national-level concept.
2
I posit that
people hold similarly strong feelings toward their municipal
area. Such feelings explain much about their participation in
local politics, civic participation, trust in the local government,
and willingness to sacrice for the town. Based on long-standing
theories of what motivates someone to being willing to incur the
costs of collective action, I developed a theory of how local
patriotism can inuence behavior and attitudes, such as moti-
vating participation in local politics. Empirically, I also show
that local patriotism is a distinct form of attachment from
previously measured concepts, such as national patriotism, and
therefore needs to be studied.
I expect citizens with a greater love of their town to be willing
to carry the cost of engaging in politics and civic activities.
Conversely, if someone dislikes or even hates their town, they
will have diminished feelings of civic duty. Such sentiments are
necessary to explain any rational actors decision to participate
in political activity that requires sacrice (Riker & Peter, 1968).
Hundreds of studies have examined attitudes and behaviors in
local activities and civic participation (e.g., Titus, 1981), but
none have conceptualized local patriotism as an explanatory
factor. The persuasive empirical results below show that local
patriotism is an important omitted variable in our understanding
of local politics.
Since Aristotle, we have known that daily interactions in
the agora (a local place of assembly, such as a marketplace)
are crucial for understanding how people relate to their po-
litical world (see, e.g., Aristotle, 1988, vii, II, 2). Local in-
teractions are the best chance for citizens to express
themselves politically (DeSantis & Hill., 2004) because the
nature of mass politics dilutes one persons impact on national
politics to the point of being ineffectual (Berry et al., 1993).
However, depending on the towns size (Oliver, 2000), an
individual may affect political outcomes at the local level
(Lassen & Serritzlew, 2011).
Nevertheless, participation in town politics and civic par-
ticipation requires a willingness to get involved. The local level
is where an impact may be more likely, but it is also the level
1
Political Science, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Sean Richey, Political Science, Georgia State University, 38 Peachtree
Central Ave, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
Email: srichey@gsu.edu
where political participation is the least prevalent (Oliver et al.,
2012). Low participation in town politics often leads to dom-
ination by a concerted minority mobilized by direct self-interest
(see an example from housing policy in Einstein et al., 2018). As
such, low participation levels may make outcomes unrepre-
sentative of the general populaces will in the town (Fung,
2006). Thus, understanding why people get involved in town
politics is a crucial question for political science.
This topic is crucial to study because local government is a
critical factor in determining the quality of life (Yo ung &
Kaczmarek, 2000). Still, many citizens ignore it by focusing
on national politics or ignoring politics altogether. Local politics
are well known to have a tremendous impact on citizenswell-
being (C´arcaba, Gonzalez, Ventura, and Arrondo 2017).
Criminal justice, education, housing, and public health policies
are mainly administered by the local government. A voluminous
literature that an involved, committed citizenry will improve the
local area and simultaneously improve many of the outcomes for
the citizens themselves (see, e.g., Aldrich, 2012). A possible
explanation for the lack of local political involvement may be a
lack of willingness to sacrice to achieve the townsgoals
because residents do feel attached to the city (see Ya ng &
Callahan, 2007). Generally, I posit that local patriotism should
correlate with greater willingness to incur costs to help the town.
To investigate the impact of local patriotism, I preregistered
two survey questionnaires, experimental protocols, and theo-
retical predictions.
3
Using novel survey
4
data matched to na-
tionally representative data for gender, age, and race, I show that
people have feelings of love, indifference, or hate toward their
municipality. I also nd a strong positive correlation between
loving ones municipality and participation in local politics,
civic participation, and trust in local government. The survey
results are augmented by the clear causality provided by two
survey experiments with real cash consequences. The survey
experiments show that priming feelings toward onestown
strongly motivates the willingness to make a nancial sacrice
to solve local collective action problems.
In both experiments, participants were asked to identify the
biggest problem facing their town. They were then asked to
donate their $1 payment for taking the survey to help address
that specic problem. The treatment groups were asked to think
about their feelings of love and/or hate toward the town, while
the control group was only asked to donate to help the towns
problem. The treatment group was much more likely to donate
than the control groups in both experiments. This outcome
shows the power of local patriotism in motivating behavior.
These participants signed up to take the survey for money, yet
thinking about their feelings toward their town led many more
respondents to donate that money willingly. The survey ex-
periments show that these results are not merely some form of
social desirability bias or survey wording response bias.
This paper continues as follows: I examine how local
patriotism has been concep-tualized in the literature, examine
how national patriotism has affected political attitudes and
behaviors, and state several theories about how local
patriotism can be inuential. I then describe my preregistered
predictions; detail the experimental procedures, data, and
methodology; describe the results, and conclude with a
discussion of the ndings.
Conceptualizing Local Patriotism
While no prior research in political science considers the impact
of local patriotism on politi-cal participation, civic participation,
trust in local government, and collective action, similar concepts
have been investigated. There is literature on local patriotism in
the eld of history examines local uprisings in the past
particularly the 1700s and 1800swhereby townsfolk op-
posed the nation-state, showing that they care more about their
locality than their na-tion (e.g., Ashton, 2010). More directly, a
few articles have examined how Europeans view their region
compared to their nationality in human geography. For example,
researchers have investigated how Spains Basque region citi-
zens are more likely to be proud of being Basque than being
Spanish (Melich, 1986). Also, Gnatiuk (2017) examined local
patriotism in Ukraine and compared it with national patriotism
among Ukrainians. However, none of these studies examined
the impact of local patriotism on political attitudes or behaviors.
In sum, while some research has examined elements of local
patriotism, the predic-tions that arise from this research has not
been tested directly. As such, I now examine the research on
national patriotism and how it affects attitudes and behaviors,
and I use this information to delineate the possible effects of
local patriotism on attitudes and behaviors at the local level.
Patriotism at the National Level
The extensive literature on how national-level patriotism
affects national-level politics serves as a helpful starting point
to understand how local patriotism may affect local politics.
The literature on patriotism almost universally assumes that
this concept concerns the love of the nation-state. Crucial to
this research, the literature has consistently found that na-
tional patriotism correlates with participation in national-
level politics, such as voter turnout (Straughn & Andriot,
2011). This nding leads to the expectation that local pa-
triotism will also correlate with participation in local politics.
While early research on patriotism often conated it with
nationalism, modern research uses a more nuanced approach. It
denes patriotism as a positive feeling of appreciation for the
nation and a willingness to sacrice for its greater good (Davidov,
2009). In contrast, nationalism is described as a feeling that ones
nation is superior to others.
5
Further, the literature presents na-
tionalism as a harmful component of democratic citizenship
(Schatz et al., 1999). Crucially, while nationalism is correlated
with bigotry and xeno-phobia, patriotism is not (De Figueiredo &
Elkins, 2003). Patriotism instead correlates with greater partici-
pation in politics and a willingness to make sacrices for the
nations good, for example, by joining the military or even not
cheating on taxes (Konrad & Qari., 2012). Nationalism, however,
2American Politics Research 0(0)
does not correlate with these benecial forms of volunteerism
(Richey, 2011).
Patriotism encompasses multiple categories, which are most
prominently represented by constructive patriotism and con-
stitutional patriotism. For example, multiple factors of patriotism
were uncovered in Kosterman and Feshbach (1989) by con-
ducting factor analyses of survey answers to questions about
feelings toward the nation. Researchers posit that there is a
constructive patriotism that involves individuals who see
problems in their society and work toward solutions, which
often require sacrice in some way for the greater good (Schatz
et al., 1999). Constitutional patriotism features a deep feeling of
at-tachment and allegiance to the nationsraisond^etre and
essential documents, but it does not devolve into blood and soil
nationalism (Muller, 2007). The critical point for constitu-tional
patriotism is that anyone can be a full member of society if they
have an allegiance to its foundational national aspirations, es-
sential documents, and civic culture. By doing so, constitutional
patriotism welcomes immigrants and historically marginalized
subgroups as patriotic members of society.
Local patriotism is related to constructive patriotism in that its
focus is on helping the town. It is not related to nationalistic or
blind patriotism because it is measured below with a question
that asks if the respondent loves, likes, neither/nor dislikes, or
hates their town. The question used below does not ask about
opinions of the towns superiority or general relationship with
other towns because the underlying concept of local patriotism is
notconceptualizedinthisresearchashavinganythingtodowith
superiority. The underlying concept of local patriotism is also
related to constitutional patriotism because anyone who moves
to the town could develop a love for it. The uniqueness of this
measure of local patriotism is that it is used in this research for
the rst time to measure the impact of these concepts at the local
level on critical political phenomena.
These streams of research conclude that patriotism is not to
be confused with na-tionalistic or xenophobic belligerence to-
ward outgroups and minorities, and it features a willingness to
sacrice to solve the nations problems. These forms of patri-
otism motivate political participation, civic participation, and
trust without necessarily devolving into na-tionalism (Gangl
et al., 2016). Extending these ideas to the local level, local
patriotism should not cause hostility toward surrounding towns
or subgroups in the town but should engender a willingness to
bear the costs required to participate in and engage with ones
town for its betterment. Using this understanding of how pa-
triotism interacts with politics at the national level, I now present
several ideas about how local patriotism can shape citizens
participation with local politics.
Local Patriotism and CitizensAttitudes and
Behaviors
The rst research question is: What inuence does local
patriotism have on local political participation? The early
research into political participation demonstrated that civic
duty is crucial to understanding the costbenet analysis for
civic participation and political partici-pation. The funda-
mental logic explicated in Downs (1957) should hold for
local participation and participation in national politics.
Simply put, one person typically does not make much of a
difference, and the cost of involvement almost always out-
weighs the plausible possibility of achieving a political goal.
Whether attending a meeting, donating to a candidate, or
emailing a City Council member, one additional action from
an individual is not likely to determine a change in public
policy or electoral results.
However, the costbenet analysis for citizens who love
their town and want to improve it is different than those how
do not love the town. For those who love their town, sacrice
includes the instrumental benet and the psychological
benet of helping improve the town they love (Riker & Peter,
1968). These benets likely outweigh the cost of participa-
tion for many individuals who express local patriotism. Thus,
knowing the foundation for the psychological desire to help
the town is crucial for understanding political participation. I
posit that local patriotism is a profound motivator that alters
the costbenet analysis of participation, with greater pa-
triotism equating to greater participation. Thus, I present
prediction 1:
Prediction 1. Local Patriotism Correlates with Greater
Participation in Local Pol-Itics
The second research question is: What inuence does local
patriotism have on civic participation? Patriotism may cor-
relate with civic participation for an intuitive and straight-
forward reason: The more people care about their town, the
more they will volunteer in ac-tivities that promote its im-
provement. At their core, almost all civic participation ac-
tivities hinge on improving the local situation. Citizens who
care more about the local community should engage with it
more often. Furthermore, those who dislike or hate their town
would be less likely to sacrice their time and effort to engage
in voluntary and other civic activities to benet that town.
Thus, prediction 2 is the following:
Prediction 2. Local Patriotism Correlates with Greater
Civic Participation
The third research question asks what inuence local patri-
otism has on trust in local government. Decades of studies
have shown that the relationship between political trust and
attitudes toward government is complex. It is difcult to
discern whether people like the government and therefore
trust it or trust the government and subsequently like it.
Corre-lational survey analysis does not go far in untangling
the intertwined causal relationships of trust and affection.
While noting the lack of causation, I expect that local
Richey 3
patriotism should signicantly correlate with political trust
because it is doubtful that people would like the citys
government that they could not trust.
Furthermore, while the survey evidence provided below
cannot identify causation di-rectly, it is essential to know that
this relationship exists. Many public health campaigns, for
example, demonstrate the unique role that trust plays in
getting members of the community to cooperate with public
health ofcials. If we can nd a way to boost local patriotism,
we may nd an avenue to increase trust in local political
institutions and compliance in these campaigns that require
cooperation with the town. Based on these ideas, prediction 3
is as follows:
Prediction 3. Local Patriotism Correlates with Greater
Trust in Local Government
The fourth research question centers on the inuence that
local patriotism has on solv-ing collective action problems.
These problems are well-known social traps that feature a
large amount of free-riding from individuals unwilling to
sacrice for the greater good (Olson, 1965). Local patriotism
potentially offers a solution to social traps that are created by
collective action problems. The simple idea is that if people
love their town, they will be more willing to trust that others
will not cheat in the iterated prisoners dilemmas that give rise
to social traps (Rothstein, 2005). Further, a greater love of
town may inspire people to be more likely to sacrice short-
term self-interest for the towns benet. With greater local
patriotism, we should see a process similar to what is often
referred to as a patriotic act by those who sacriced for their
nation. Thus, prediction 4 is the following:
Prediction 4. People Primed with Local Patriotism are
More Likely to Contribute to Solving Local Problems
Experimental Procedures. To examine whether local patriotism
affects the willingness to sacrice for the town, I con-ducted
two survey experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted on the
same sample from which the survey data were derived in
October 2020. Experiment 2 was from a different online
sample, with slightly different stimuli explained below in
April 2021. In both exper-iments, participants were rst asked
to write what they considered is the biggest problem facing
their town. For example, in Experiment 1, approximately
15% indicated that traf-c was the biggest problem in their
town, while another 12% identied crime as the biggest
problem. The central idea of both experiments was to test
whether inducing local patriotism inuences the desire to
sacrice for the town by donating money to help solve its
biggest problem.
Both experimental designs are based on the emotion in-
duction methodology in psy-chology (see Lench et al., 2011).
This methodology is used to create stronger emotions in a
treatment group than in a control group (Siedlecka & Denson,
2019). Experimental research in psychology shows that after
having participants think about emo-tional attachments, their
subsequent actions will be more likely to be inuenced by
them (see Baumeister et al., 2007 for a critical review). The
difference be-tween the treatment and control group in the
current study derives only from the randomly assigned in-
ducement of the emotional attachment to their town. Having
the treatment group think about their feelings towards the
town prioritized that emotional attachment in deciding
whether to donate while the control group was not necessarily
thinking about these feelings. Importantly, if participants do
not have feelings of emotional attachment, then stimuli to
prompt such feelings will not inuence their behavior. Based
on its long history in psychology, vetted by dozens of psy-
chometric experiments (see a meta-analysis in Westermann
et al., 1996), this design and method are appropriate for this
research question and theory.
In Experiment 1, the treatment group was primed to
consider their feelings of love and hate toward the town. If,
after considering their feelings about the town, this group is
more likely to donate to help solve town problems, a causal
relationship would be revealed between local patriotism and
the willingness to sacrice to solve collective action prob-
lems. In this case, the sacrice is the participants money
earned from lling out the survey. Note that while $1 may not
seem like a substantial sacrice, it was sufcient to motivate
the respondent in the Prolic sample to ll out the survey and
indicative of an extensive enough reward to motivate effort.
You are making $1 for taking this survey. Thinking about your
feelings of love and hate toward your town, would you like to
donate this $1 to help your town solve the problem that you just
listed above? If so, please click Yes, Donate $1 below. If not,
please click No, Do Not Donate $1.
You are making $1 for taking this survey. Would you like to
donate this $1 to help your town solve the problem that you just
listed above? If so, please click Yes, Donate $1 below. If not,
please click No, Do Not Donate $1.
In Experiment 2, a third of the sample was randomly
assigned to be asked to think about their feelings of love
toward the town. Another third of the sample was randomly
as-signed to be asked to think about their feelings of hate
toward the town. The control group was asked for the same
donation, but without the stimulus to prime their feelings of
love or hate toward the town. All three groups were then
asked to donate the money ($1) that they had earned by taking
the survey. The two treatments and control stimuli are re-
spectively listed below:
You are making $1 for taking this survey. Thinking about your
feelings of love toward your town, would you like to donate this
$1 to help your town solve the problem that you just listed above?
4American Politics Research 0(0)
If so, please click Yes, Donate $1 below. If not, please click No,
Do Not Donate $1.
You are making $1 for taking this survey. Thinking about your
feelings of hate toward your town, would you like to donate
this $1 to help your town solve the problem that you just listed
above? If so, please click Yes, Donate $1 below. If not, please
click No, Do Not Donate $1.
You are making $1 for taking this survey. Would you like to
donate this $1 to help your town solve the problem that you just
listed above? If so, please click Yes, Donate $1 below. If not,
please click No, Do Not Donate $1.
Randomization produced balance across a broad set of
pretest variables (see Appendix Tables A1 and A8.
6
) The
experiments used deception, which was revealed after the
survey was completed. The respondents were told that the
money was not donated to the town and that they could
donate it themselves.
7
Data and Methods
The data analysis was conducted using preregistered survey
questionnaires with survey ex-periments. The rst sample
included 500 US citizens who Prolic recruited. The survey
was conducted online, and respondents were matched to
nationally representative age, gen-der, and race Census data.
The respondents were paid $1 for completion.
8
A total of 524
respondents started the survey, but only 468 nished it. In-
complete surveys were excluded from the analysis. See
Appendix Table A2 for a table of summary statistics for all
variables. I included one manipulation check to ensure that
the participant read the survey (Kane & Barabas., 2019). All
respondents responded correctly to the instruction, Please
select 3 from the responses below.
The second survey used in Experiment 2 was sampled
about 6 months later than the rst using the same online
methodology and survey company, Prolic. However, this
was an online convenience sample that was not matched to
nationally representative benchmark data. The point of the
second survey was to replicate Experiment 1 at a different
time with a different sample.
Dependent Variables
I followed past researchers in measuring political participa-
tion on a scale of possible activities. The logic of using such a
scale is that there are many ways to participate in politics.
Simply measuring voter turnout, for example, is not sufcient
to measure the diversity of ways in which the public can be
involved in politics. Further, because people can participate
with larger or smaller amounts of time, it is best to weight
participation by active involvement. Local Political Partic-
ipation was measured with an additive scale of expressed
activity in the following political activities: never (0), once or
twice (1), or more than twice (2). Survey participants were
asked to mark how often they have engaged in the following
local political activities: sent an email or letter to a local
politician, commented on social media about local politics,
discussed local politics with friends or family, volunteered for
a local election campaign, donated money to a local cam-
paign, and attended a meeting/event on a local political issue.
Each question specied that it was about local politics, not to
confuse the respondent that this might be a about a national-
level political issue or person. For example, the question on
sending an email or letter to a local politician, was worded as
Sent an email or letter to a local politician.
As with political participation, there are also many ways to be
involved civically. As such, I also use a scale to measure civic
participation weighted by the level of participation. Civic
participation was adapted from an additive scale of expressed
civic activity suggested by the National Research Council
(2014). It is measured with agreement with the statements
that the respondents have not done this (0), have done it a little
(1), or have done it a lot (2). The participants were asked, Have
you ever spent time participating in any activity below in the last
12 months?The list of activities included involvement with a
church or religious group; parent-teacher association; neigh-
borhood organization/homeowners associ-ation; youth sports;
Boy Scouts/Girls Scouts or similar youth groups; Rotary,
Masons, Elks or Moose Lodge, Lions, Kiwanis, or similar
group; Chamber of Commerce or local business group;
cleaning-up litter project or similar beautication group; and
other community group not listed.
I adapted a question for local political trust from the
American National Election Studies (ANES) study that has
been frequently used to measure national-level political trust
(ANES, 2016). Local Political Trust was measured with the
question, Now speaking of the municipality that you listed
above, how often do you trust the local government to do the
right thing?Answers were coded as always (4), most of the
time (3), about half the time (2), sometimes (1), and never (0).
Collective Action Problem Solving was measured with a
question about participantswillingness to donate the fee they
earned for completing the survey to help the town solve an
important problem. Responses were coded as 1 if a partici-
pant chose to donate and 0 if they did not.
Local Patriotism Variable
The 2012 ANES included a question on patriotism at the
national level, which I adapted for the local level by asking,
Now speaking of the municipality that you listed before,
how do you feel about the town you live in?Responses were
coded as follows: hate it (2), dislike it (1), neither like nor
dislike it (0), like it (1), or love it (2). Interestingly, not many
demographic factors correlated with local patriotism, al-
though it seemed to increase with greater age and income.
(See Appendix Table A3 for regression models of correlates
of local patriotism.)
Richey 5
I have no way to verify the content validity of the
wording of this local patriotism question, which centers on
a novel concept. While it is not easy to assess content
validity, the question does have face validity, in that it is
plausible that respondents can reasonably assess their
feelings toward their town. And although it is measured
with a single question and not a scale of questions, it is
intended to measure local patriotism generally. Single-item
measures also have some psychometric advantages. For
example, having a single item reduces the common method
variance problem, a type of systematic error shared among
similarlymeasuredvariables.
9
Due to the shared common
understanding of the terms like, dislike, love, and hate, the
question should be able to determine the level of local
patriotism for this sample and be able to test my
hypotheses.
Figure 1 shows a skew in the distribution toward more
positive feelings about the town. Indeed, the modal category
indicates that around half of the sample liked their town.
How-ever, it is essential to note that a full 25% did not express
any positive feelings toward their town, and 3% hated their
town. This outcome conrms that local patriotism exists; real
feelings of love and hate are distributed across a nationally
representative sample toward the town they live in. As such, it
brings into focus the need to study such feelings and their
implications for participation in town politics, civic partici-
pation, trust in local government, and a willingness to sac-
rice for collective action problems.
This is important to show because, while we may not
expect every person to have similar ideas of love or hate
toward their town, the distribution of this unmeasured var-
iable is currently unmeasured and, thus, unknown. Intuitively,
because each town is unique and can have broad variations in
the quality of life and provisions of resources, there will be
wide variations in attitudes toward it. Importantly, negative
experiences with a town can also range widely, encompassing
challenges such as corruption and conicts with police.
The Tiebout model suggests that people can move if they
do not like their town, and having such a choice works as a
form of pressure on towns to provide a better quality of life
(Tiebout, 1956). However, newer research suggests that
people are closely tied to their communities and do not move
as freely as the Tiebout model suggests, even if they do not
like it. Consequently, some residents may love their town
while others hate it, and a large group exists between these
extremes.
I also expect that there are underlying psychological
propensities to express patriotism and that these tendencies
will be positively correlated between the expression of pa-
triotism at the national level and the local level. Beyond
psychological propensities, various factors have likely so-
cialized the respondent to have stronger or weaker patriotic
feelings, and the distinction between national and local
governments will not necessarily erase the effects of
socialization.
However, while several reasons support the expectation
that national and local pa-triotism will be positively corre-
lated, citizens can distinguish between local and national
governments. Their patriotism may therefore differ across
these distinct levels. Since there is only one federal gov-
ernment but 37,000 municipalities in the United States, I
expect a much broader variation in attitudes toward towns
than the national government.
Figure 2 shows a scatterplot of national patriotism mea-
sured on the same 5-point scale from hate to love of America
as the local patriotism variable. Figure 2 is jittered so that the
dots are viewable, and it shows that a correlation exists
between local and national patriotism. Pairwise correlations
show that these two variables correlate at .340 with a p-value
of less than 0.001. While a signicant positive correlation
does exist, plenty of people in the sample felt differently
about the nation and their town. This difference is apparent
from the number of people who, for example, love America
but hate their town.
In the regression models below, I controlled for national
patriotism to address the un-derlying psychological pro-
pensities and political socialization processes that inuence
general opinion toward the government. This allows me to
isolate the unique effect of local patrio-tism on the dependent
variables.
Control Variables
I control for national patriotism to separate the general
psychological propensity and the political socialization of a
generalized tendency to like government. The models below
show local patriotisms separate and unique impact by in-
cluding national patriotism in their re-gression models. The
question for national patriotism was taken from the 2012
ANES and was worded as Now speaking of the United
States of America, how do you feel about it?Responses were
coded as follows: hate it (2), dislike it (1), neither like nor
dislike it (0), like it (1), or love it (2).
Figure 1 . This bar graph shows the distribution of local patriotism.
6American Politics Research 0(0)
Similarly, I wanted to control for general tendencies to
trust government and other people to accurately measure the
impact of local patriotism on trust in the local government.
For interpersonal trust, I used the ANES question, Generally
speaking, how often can you trust other people?Responses
were coded as follows: always (4), most of the time (3), about
half the time (2), once in a while (1), and never (0). The
question about trusting the national government was also
from the ANES: Now speaking of the United States of
America, how often do you trust the federal government in
Washington DC to do the right thing?Responses were coded
using the same scale as for interpersonal trust.
For the political participation and civic participation
models, I wanted to control for a general desire to participate
in politics and care about political actions. First, I measured
voting in the 2020 presidential elections by asking, Whom
do you plan to vote for in the 2020 Presidential elections?I
coded responses as 1 for those who answered they did not
plan to vote and 0 for those who said they planned to vote.
Additionally, I control for interest in politics with the
question, How closely are you following politics?Re-
sponses were coded as follows: very closely (3), somewhat
closely (2), not too closely (1), or not at all (0).
I also controlled for Education,Age,Income, and whether
the respondent was Black,Hispanic,orFemale because
socioeconomic status variables have been shown to have a
massive impact on individualspolitical participation, civic
participation, and trust in gov-ernment (Verba et al., 1995).
Additionally, I controlled for how long the respondent resided
in the town because longer experiences with a town could
plausibly lead to greater trust and attachment (Kang & Kwak,
2003). The variable Residency Tenure was measured in years.
Methods
Local Political Participation and Civic participation were count
variables that indicated the number of activities a respondent
was involved in. To conduct the statistical analysis with these
dependent variables, I used a Poisson regression model. Trus t in
Local Government was measured with an ordinal variable, and I
used an ordered logistic regression model for its analysis. The
decision to donate or not to the town in the experiments was a
dichoto-mous variable, and I used a logistic regression model to
measure the effect of assignment to treatment. For all these
models, the modeling choice was robust to alternative speci-
cations, such as pairwise correlations and ordinary least
squares regression models (e.g., see Appendix Tabl es A4 and
A5 for pairwise correlations and ordinary least squares re-
gression models of these dependent variables and local patri-
otism showing similar results).
I use data from the rst survey for the correlational analysis
testing predictions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 below because of the validity
derived from it being matched to national repre-sentative data.
For this reason, I omit correlational analysis from the second
convenience sample below. However, Appendix Tab le A7
shows that the same correlations predicted by predictions 3,
4, and 5 obtain in this convenience sample; although the p-
value for Local Participation is above .05, it is signed in the
expected positive direction. Additionally, in survey 2, Local
Patriotism showed a similar distribution as Figure 1 (see
Figure 2. This scatterplot shows the relationship of local patriotism and national pa-triotism.
Richey 7
Appendix Figure A1) and has a pairwise correlation with
National Patriotism at 0.3243 with a p-value <0.001.
Results
Prediction 1
Prediction 1 is that local patriotism correlates with greater
participation in local politics. Table 1 shows a strong positive
correlation across multiple specications between local pa-
triotism and local political participation. In model 1, which
controls for national patriotism, a strong effect is apparent. It
diminishes in model 2 and model 3, although it remains sta-
tistically signicant and positive. Model 3 shows that the
predicted number of participatory acts for those that hate their
town is around 4, while those who love their town are
predicted to do 5.13 acts.
10
This equates to about one-third of
a standard deviation increase in the dependent variable when
going from the lowest level of local patriotism to the highest
while controlling for the other variables in the model. These
results conrm that local patriotism correlates with partici-
pation in local politics. The hundreds of studies of political
partici-pation that have been conducted without considering
local patriotism as correlating factor. This nding shows that
local patriotism is a large omitted variable bias in prior
research.
The control variables match expectations from prior re-
search over what is inuencing political participation. Having
more interest in politics, the length of residency in the town,
greater education and income, and being female raised the
propensity to participate in poli-tics, while not voting in
national elections correlates with less participation in local
politics. The other control variables were not statistically
signicant.
Prediction 4
Prediction 2 is that local patriotism correlates with greater civic
participation. Tab le 2 shows across three model specications
that local patriotism strongly and positively correlates with civic
participation. By controlling for national patriotism, I show the
unique impact of local patriotism on civic participation. Models
1 and 2 show a strong signicant positive correlation at a p-value
of less than 0.05, and in model 3, the p-value rises to 0.063. For
model 3 in Tab le 2, the predicted number of weighted acts of
civic participation for those that hate their town is 1.79, while
thosewholovetheirtownarepredictedtodo2.42weightedacts.
This equates to about one-fth of a standard deviation increase
in the dependent variable when going from the lowest level of
local patriotism to the highest while controlling for the other
variables in the model.
The control variables match expectations from prior re-
search over what is inuencing civic participation. Having
more interest in politics, the length of residency in the town,
greater education, and being Black correlates with civic
participation, while age correlates with lower likelihood of
participating in local politics. The other control variables
were not statistically signicant.
Prediction 3
Prediction 3 is that local patriotism correlates with greater
trust in local government. As predicted, local patriotism has a
strong correlation with trust in local government. Across all
three model specications, there is a large, statistically sig-
nicant positive correlation with trust in local government.
The p-value in all three model specications is less than
0.001. The control variables in the model were changed to
include interpersonal and national trust in government. As
Table 1. Determinants of Participation in Local Politics.
Variable 1 S.E. 2 S.E. 3 S.E.
Local patriotism 0.127*** 0.026 0.104*** 0.027 0.057* 0.027
National patriotism 0.061** 0.021 0.063** 0.022 0.057** 0.022
Nonvoter 0.502*** 0.123
Interest 0.300*** 0.033
Residency tenure 0.009*** 0.001
Hispanic 0.085 0.100 0.108 0.101
Black 0.178** 0.069 0.065 0.070
Education 0.121*** 0.023 0.101*** 0.023
Income 0.008 0.008 0.014 0.008
Age 0.002 0.015 0.044** 0.015
Female 0.069 0.044 0.112* 0.045
Intercept 1.456*** 0.032 1.055*** 0.170 0.226 0.202
N 457 457 457
chi2 26.563*** 68.476*** 242.699***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for Poisson regression models for determinants of participation in local politics.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
8American Politics Research 0(0)
expected, both interpersonal trust and national political trust
lead to large positive correlations with trust in local gov-
ernment. The other variables matched their predicted out-
comes based on the relationships that were found in prior
research. For model 3 in Table 3, the predicted level of trust
for those that hate their town is 2.45, while those who love
their town are predicted to have an average level of trust at
3.67. This equates to about one standard deviation increase in
the dependent variable when going from the lowest level of
local patriotism to the highest while controlling for the other
variables in the model.
The control variables do not have much impact on trust in
local government. Hav-ing more interpersonal and national
level political trust correlates with more trust in local gov-
ernment, while age correlates with lower trust. The other
control variables were not sta-tistically signicant.
Prediction 4
Prediction 4 was that local patriotism would correlate with a
greater willingness to solve local collective action problems.
Specically, this prediction was measured by the respondent
Table 2. Determinants of Civic Participation.
Variable 1 S.E. 2 S.E. 3 S.E.
Local patriotism 0.155*** 0.040 0.115** 0.041 0.075+ 0.041
National patriotism 0.286*** 0.035 0.326*** 0.037 0.310*** 0.037
Nonvoter 0.213 0.171
Interest 0.129** 0.048
Residency tenure 0.010*** 0.002
Hispanic 0.110 0.150 0.123 0.151
Black 0.215* 0.092 0.281** 0.094
Education 0.227*** 0.034 0.224*** 0.035
Income 0.028* 0.012 0.023 0.012
Age 0.098*** 0.023 0.122*** 0.023
Female 0.054 0.066 0.004 0.067
Intercept 0.311*** 0.059 0.099 0.257 0.587 0.306
N 458 458 458
chi2 115.362*** 218.604*** 263.001***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for Poisson regression models for determinants of civic participation.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table 3. Determinants of Trust in Local Government.
Variable 1 S.E. 2 S.E. 3 S.E.
Local patriotism 0.841*** 0.107 0.814*** 0.108 0.721*** 0.113
National patriotism 0.297*** 0.084 0.271** 0.089 0.091 0.100
National trust 0.503*** 0.119
Interpersonal trust 0.967*** 0.127
Residency tenure 0.002 0.006
Hispanic 0.548 0.359 0.542 0.380
Black 0.357 0.250 0.077 0.254
Education 0.205* 0.091 0.167 0.094
Income 0.040 0.033 0.012 0.034
Age 0.023 0.059 0.037 0.062
Female 0.451* 0.176 0.370* 0.181
Cut point 1 1.998*** 0.190 2.619*** 0.656 0.860 0.770
Cut point 2 0.179 0.134 0.371 0.633 3.388*** 0.776
Cut point 3 1.454*** 0.147 0.950 0.632 4.879*** 0.788
Cut point 4 4.559*** 0.293 4.122*** 0.682 8.483*** 0.873
N 467 467 466
chi2 100.751*** 124.193*** 215.325***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for ordered logistic regression models for determinants of trust in local government.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Richey 9
being willing to donate their payment for completing the
survey ($1) to solve a problem that they identied about their
town. This was tested with two survey experiments.
In Experiment 1, shown in Figure 3, the treatment group,
which was prompted to consider their feelings of love and
hate toward the town, 18% said they would donate the money
to help their town. In the control group, which received no
prompts about feelings, only 3% said they would donate the
$1 to the town. The six-fold difference between the treatment
and control groups is signicant at a 0.001 level.
11
This result shows that stimulating feelings of local pa-
triotism by having the respon-dents think of their feeling
towards the town generated a willingness to incur costs to
solve collective problems. When thinking about their feelings
towards their town, one in six of the treatment group re-
spondents were willing to incur an actual monetary cost to
help the town. Without being spurred to think about their
feelings towards their town, only one in 30 participants in the
control group were willing to sacrice for the town. This
outcome demonstrates that local patriotism is a powerful
motivator for solving collective action prob-
Experiment 2, Figure 4 shows that no one in the control
group was willing to pay the $1 they received for the survey to
help their towns problem. In the treatment group that stimulated
love of the town, we see that 8% were willing to donate to the
town. The difference between these two conditions is statisti-
cally signicant with a p-value <0.001. This conrms pre-
diction 6 and replicates the ndinginExperiment1.
Interestingly, the stimuli which provoked hate of town also
saw 5% of its participants willing to donate the $1 to help the
town. This is also statistically signicantly different from the
control group with a p-value <0.001. Of note is that the dif-
ference between the treatment conditions stimulating feelings of
hate of town and love in town is not statistically signicant. This
suggests that stimulating any feelings towards the town will
generate more willingness to sacrice to resolve collective action
problems. Perhaps engendering emotions
12
To consider how the
treatment effects vary by how people felt about their town, I
divided the sample into groups that either liked (4) or loved their
town (4), or those who had no opinion (3), disliked (2) or hated
their town (1). There were 128 participants in the Less Local
Patriotism Group and 340 participants in the More Local Pa-
triotism Group. The results of box plots shown in Appendix
Figures A2 and A3 show that the treatment effect is similar for
both groups. Interestingly, no one in the Less Local Patriotism
Group donated to help the towns problem in the control con-
dition, but around 14% donated when stimulated with local
patriotism. This suggests that even people who have a basic
dislike of the town can be motivated through patriotic appeals.
Toward the town in and of itself is motivating sacrice
when compared to a control group in which no emotions were
stimulated.
These results clearly show that if you can prime local pa-
triotism, it may lead to more willingness to sacrice for the town.
There are several ways to prime patriotism, but perhaps the chief
way is incentivizing a willingness to work with the town. Richey
(2007) nds that experiments done in Japanese towns show that
incentivizing working with the town could increase trust in the
town. This nding suggests that a similar incentive process can
engen-der local patriotism by facilitating working with the town.
Conclusion
Ind that local patriotism exists; people do have feelings of
love or hate for their town. The distributions of national
patriotism and local patriotism are correlated, but not
strongly. Thus, an underlying psychological predisposition or
political socialization process that pre-dicts someone ex-
pressing a positive attitude toward government does not
entirely explain the phenomenon of local patriotism. One or
more additional factors distinguish peoples feelings toward
local government from their feelings toward the national
Figure 3. This box plot shows the mean and 95% condence
intervals of the willing-ness to donate to help solve the towns
biggest problem for the treatment and control groups.
Figure 4. This box plot shows the mean and 95% condence
intervals of the willing-ness to donate to help solve the towns
biggest problem for the treatment and control groups.
10 American Politics Research 0(0)
government. Even after controlling for national patriotism, I
found that local patriotism matters greatly in local politics. A
robust and clear correlation was apparent between local
patriotism and political participation in local politics, civic
participation, and local government trust. The correlations
were robust to multiple model specications and data anal-
ysis. Although causal-ity cannot be obtained for predictions
3, 4, and 5 from cross-sectional survey data, these pre-
registered strong results show that these relationships need
much more study. Crucially, I show that local patriotism is a
distinct concept from previously measures of attachment,
such as national patriotism, and therefore needs to be studied.
I also conducted two survey experiments that showed that
priming feelings toward
Ones town are a powerful motivator of sacrice to solve
local collective action problems. In the rst experiment, stimuli
that elicited feelings of love or hate toward the town encouraged
a six-fold increase in the number of participants willing to
donate their payment to solve a town problem. Exposure to
treatment increased donation rates from 3% to 18%. The second
experiment found that the stimulating feelings of love of town
led 8% of participants to donate their fee while stimulating
feelings of hate led to 5%. These conditions were statistically
signicantly different from a control group that did not stimulate
feelings toward the town. These results show that more work in
political science is needed to understand how feelings toward the
local area affect local politics.
In the political science literature on participation in local
politics and civic participa-tion, local patriotism has been
mostly ignored, but these results clearly show that it should
not be. These ndings help elucidate the role of civic edu-
cation in promoting positive images of the town. The com-
mon concerns about patriotic education becoming
nationalistic, xeno-phobic and jingoistic are not applicable
for local patriotism (see MacMullen, 2012) because there is
no local military or typically harsh xenophobic relationships
with nearby towns. The clear ndings of this research, in-
cluding the survey experiments, show that one of the best
ways to mobilize political action at the local level is to en-
gender feelings of local patriotism.
Future research can examine how these results are moderated
and mediated by local context, such as town size, It is true that
this is not expected nding. One interesting nding was that
prompting hate of the town elicited more donations. I expected
that priming hate of the town would have the opposite reaction,
or potentially have no reaction in terms of promoting donating to
help the most prominent problem in the town. Perhaps getting the
participant to think about their dislike of the town, makes them
also think about prominent problems in the town, and thereby
elicits more willingness to donate money to help these problems,
which are now top of mind. This is a possibility that future
researchers should investigate. Future research would also
benet by analyzing these potential subdivisions of local pa-
triotism that are similar to those found in national patriotism. The
literature has made several distinctions between the multiple
forms of patriotism. This includes de-tailed literature on con-
structive patriotism, blind patriotism, nationalistic patriotism, and
constitutional patriotism. These might also exist at the local level.
Appendix
13
Table A1. Test of Balance between Treatment and Control
Groups.
(Treatment) (Control) (Difference)
Local patriotism 0.711 0.888 0.178**
National trust 2.286 2.262 0.025
Civic participation 2.122 2.031 0.092
Local trust 3.000 3.004 0.004
Nonvoter 0.094 0.052 0.042*
Interpersonal trust 3.183 3.283 0.100
Local participation 4.364 4.748 0.384
National participation 5.461 6.031 0.570
National patriotism 0.813 0.798 0.014
Residency tenure 18.443 19.373 0.931
Hispanic 1.047 1.073 0.026
Black 0.132 0.142 0.010
Education 3.766 3.657 0.109
Income 4.643 4.601 0.042
Age 4.464 4.635 0.171
Female 1.545 1.506 0.038
Observations 235 233 470
Note: Cells represent means, and difference between the means with a
signicance test for difference in means between the treatment and control
group.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table A2. Summary Statistics.
Variable Mean Std. Dev Min Max N
Donate 0.109 0.312 0 1 468
Treatment 0.498 0.501 0 1 468
Local patriotism 0.799 0.915 2 2 468
Local participation 4.554 3.292 0 14 457
Civic participation 2.076 2.921 0 18 458
Local trust 3.002 1.026 1 5 467
National patriotism 0.806 1.112 2 2 468
Interest 3.167 0.762 1 4 468
Nonvoter 0.073 0.26 0 1 468
National trust 2.274 0.932 1 5 467
Interpersonal trust 3.233 0.817 1 5 468
Residency tenure 18.906 16.101 0 98 468
Hispanic 1.06 0.237 1 2 468
Black 0.137 0.344 0 1 468
Education 3.712 1.085 1 6 468
Income 4.622 3.031 1 9 468
Age 4.549 1.618 1 7 468
Female 1.526 0.5 1 2 468
Richey 11
Table A3. Determinants of Local Patriotism.
Variable 1 S.E. 2
Ideology 0.011 0.068
Nonvoter 0.660 0.367
Trump approval 0.047 0.147
Republican party ID 0.017 0.305
Residency tenure 0.008 0.006 0.007 0.006
Hispanic 0.517 0.358 0.552 0.360
Black 0.359 0.258 0.274 0.263
Female 0.049 0.177 0.046 0.179
Age 0.150** 0.058 0.140* 0.060
Income 0.081* 0.033 0.074* 0.033
Education 0.104 0.092 0.087 0.093
Cutpoint 1 3.092*** 0.731 3.217*** 0.874
Cutpoint 2 1.140 0.658 1.256 0.814
Cutpoint 3 0.047 0.653 0.058 0.810
Cutpoint 4 2.556*** 0.666 2.462** 0.819
N 468 468
chi2 31.183*** 34.761***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for ordered logistic regression models for determinants of local patriotism.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table A4. Correlation Matrix.
Local Patriotism 1.00
National patriotism 0.30 (0.00) 1.00
Local participation 0.12 (0.01) 0.06 (0.20) 1.00
Civic participation 0.13 (0.01) 0.21 (0.00) 0.39 (0.00) 1.00
Local trust 0.41 (0.00) 0.26 (0.00) 0.08 (0.09) 0.18 (0.00) 1.00
Donate 0.16 (0.00) 0.05 (0.30) 0.10 (0.04) 0.14 (0.00) 0.09 1.00 (0.05)
Note: Coefcients and p-values in parentheses for pairwise correlations.
Table A5. Determinants of Local Participation, Civic participation and Trust in Local Government.
Variable Pol. Part S.E. C.E. S.E. Trust S.E.
Local patriotism 0.556** 0.175 0.285+ 0.152 0.416*** 0.049
National patriotism 0.276 0.144 0.513*** 0.126 0.144*** 0.040
Intercept 5.980*** 0.957 1.643 0.837 1.688*** 0.268
N chi2 457 458 467
Note: Cells represent unstandardized standard errors for ordinary least squares regression models for determinants of local participation, civic participation and
trust in local govern-ment.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table A6. Willingness to Donate Survey Participation Fee to Fix Town Problem.
Variable 1 S.E. 2 S.E.
Treatment 1.860*** 0.397 1.807*** 0.401
Local patriotism 0.676** 0.219
Nonvoter 0.316 0.777
Intercept 3.346*** 0.360 3.976*** 0.447
N chi2 468 29.668*** 468 41.252***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for ordered logistic regression models for determinants of willingness to donate survey
participation fee to x town problem.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
12 American Politics Research 0(0)
Table A7. Correlations in Survey 2 with Local Patriotism.
Variable Participation S.E. Civic participation S.E. Trust S.E.
Localpatriotism 0.009 0.022 0.176** 0.057 0.622*** 0.141
Intercept 2.348*** 0.147 0.629 0.394
Cut point 1 1.482 0.945
Cut point 2 3.749*** 0.958
Cut point 3 5.116*** 0.983
Cut point 4 8.266*** 1.094
N 259 259 260
chi2 0.173 9.852** 20.123***
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for Poisson and ordered logistic regression models.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.
Table A8. Test of Balance between Treatment and Control
Groups in Experiment 2.
Variable 1 S.E.
Hate treatment heightLocal patriotism 0.066 0.157
Civic participation 0.098 0.053
Local trust 0.121 0.140
Nonvoter 0.273 0.385
Interpersonal trust 0.214 0.176
Local particpation 0.104* 0.049
National patriotism 0.023 0.144
Residency tenure 0.005 0.010
Hispanic 0.216 0.401
Black 0.827 0.508
Education 0.274 0.158
Income 0.074 0.052
Age 0.007 0.107
Female 0.082 0.261
Ideology 0.050 0.078
Intercept 2.956 1.641
Love treatment heightLocal patriotism 0.065 0.162
Civic participation 0.058 0.053
Local trust 0.061 0.143
Nonvoter 0.289 0.393
Interpersonal trust 0.087 0.176
Local participation 0.058 0.046
National patriotism 0.106 0.143
Residency tenure 0.018 0.010
Hispanic 0.187 0.417
Black 0.295 0.479
Education 0.172 0.158
Income 0.024 0.051
Age 0.066 0.105
Female 0.346 0.261
Ideology 0.014 0.079
Intercept 2.763 1.632
N 256
chi2 25.220
Note: Cells represent unstandardized coefcients and standard errors for a
multinomial lo-gistic regression model for determinants of assignment to
either the love treatment, hate treatment or the control group.
+p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001
Figure A1. This bar graph shows the distribution of Local
patriotism from the Survey 2 convenience sample.
Figure A2. This box plot shows the mean and 95% condence
intervals of the willingness to donate to help solve the towns
biggest problem for the treatment and control groups for those
who neither like or dislike, dislike or hate their town.
Richey 13
Declaration of Conicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no nancial support for the research, au-
thorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Sean Richey https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7971-4249
Notes
1. I use the terms town, city, and municipality interchangeably.
2. For example, Huddy and Khatib (2007, 63) state that (t)here is
broad agreement on the meaning of patriotism as a deeply felt
an affective attachment to the nation(emphasis added).
3. These preregistration materials are available at https://bit.ly/
3cfF2Jd
4. I obtained voluntary and informed consent from participants at
the beginning of each survey question-naire (IRB redacted).
Participants were told that they were taking part in a research
study. This research did not intervene in political processes.
Respondents were paid $1 to complete the survey, which took
on average 5 minutes to complete. This payment equates to
about $12 per hour.
5. Blind patriotism is essentially another phrase for nationalism
that is used in psychology.
6. Because Experiment two has three conditions, Appendix Table
A8 uses a multinomial probit regression model to determine if
there is balance between conditions.
7. Specically, they were told, Unfortunately, we are not able to
nd a place to donate the $1 to solve the problem in your town,
but you can donate it yourself if you like.
8. AAPOR (2021) describes this type of sample as respondents
were not randomly selected from among the total population,
but rather from among those who took the initiative or agreed to
volunteer to be a respondent.
9. I hope to in the future work to further validate this measure and
potentially develop a multiple-item scale of local patriotism.
10. This was measured using the margins command in Stata 16.
11. Please see Appendix Table A6 for logistic regression results
which features a bi-variate model and a model with a control
valuable that was not balanced across both conditions, Non-
voter. lems
12
.
12. To consider how the treatment effects vary by how people felt
about their town, I divided the sample into groups that either
liked (4) or loved their town (4), or those who had no opinion
(3), disliked (2) or hated their town (1). There were 128 par-
ticipants in the Less Local Patriotism Group and 340 partici-
pants in the More Local Patriotism Group. The results of box
plots shown in Appendix Figures A2 and A3 show that the
treatment effect is similar for both groups. Interestingly, no one
in the Less Local Patriotism Group donated to help the towns
problem in the control condition, but around 14% donated when
stimulated with local patriotism. This suggests that even people
who have a basic dislike of the town can be motivated through
patriotic appeals.
13. Due to space limitations, the following tables and graphs are
available as a Web Appendix. If published, this Web Appendix
would be available on my Web site.
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Aristotle. (1988). The politics. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. In Stephen
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Author Biography
Sean Richey is Associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at Georgia State University.
16 American Politics Research 0(0)
... To Almond and Verba (1965), pride in one's country is part of civic culture. When people feel pride in their community, they are more likely to participate in politics (Richey 2023). Feelings of national pride can bring people together to pursue common interests (Putnam 2000). ...
... Nearly all studies of pride and patriotism have focused on people's feelings about the country where they live. But we have reasons to believe that people may feel proud of not just their country, but also their region or community (Flavin and Shufeldt 2024;Jiménez et al. 2021;Richey 2023;. Work in political science has increasingly recognized how important place can be to how people see themselves (Cramer 2016;Munis 2019, 2020;Wong 2010). ...
... Pride is tied to civic cooperation and investment in collective goals (Almond and Verba 1965;Gangl, Torgler, and Kirchler 2016;Putnam 2000). When people feel pride in their states and communities, they are more likely to participate in politics (Richey 2023;. We have reasons to believe that feelings of state pride might also serve as a countervailing force against the partisan battles that increasingly define American politics. ...
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Separate from their feelings of national pride, Americans may also feel proud of the state where they live. I explore the political consequences of these feelings of state pride. I propose that when people feel proud of the state they reside in, they are more willing to empower their state governments to take action to address state challenges. Using survey responses from a module of the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, I find that people who express greater pride in their state are more likely to advocate for state spending on social programs. Feelings of state pride are also associated with support for policy devolution and the belief that state governments should have more influence over policymaking within the federal system. State governments have incentives to try to cultivate feelings of state pride, as those who feel proud of their state are more willing to empower their state government to effect change.
... The former gap in literature expands when urban social movements as referendum initiators are in the crosshairs, as Hamel (2014) observed. Albeit the centrality of citizens' engagement in political science, studies that are curious about the role local patriotism as a collective identity plays in promoting citizen participation in, for example, local referendums are almost non-existing (Richey, 2022). The former gap is salient due to local patriotism positively correlating with, among others, trust in local government (ibid), a distinct critical issue for representative democracies. ...
... This paper's scientific foundation is the scarcity of knowledge about urban social movements as referendum initiators on a local level combined with an enthusiasm to understand how local patriotism is expressed in a Swedish local political context. Further, it sets sail from Richey's (2022) conclusion, namely, that "one of the best ways to mobilize political action at the local level is to engender feelings of local patriotism." (:11). ...
... To that end, I performed a qualitative content analysis of a caricature, a video clip, and data gathered through semi-structured interviews with prominent PIAF members. Moreover, I seek to answer the following research questions that are inspired by the correlation between local patriotism and political-civic engagement, and trust in local government, as observed by Richey (2022): ...
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Referendums are enigmatic in their sense as consolidating-or erosive tools of representative democracy; nonetheless, an upswing in the referenda from below was recently highlighted in the literature. Thus, how local referendums from below are mobilized and whether they affect trust in local government is a significant question to be answered, which mandates bridging social movements to tools of deliberative democracy. Similarly, little is known about urban social movements and local patriotism as tenon and its mortise in a sub-national referendum. Therefore, this paper set sail from the role of local patriotism within collective action and aimed at exploring how locals are mobilized to petition a local referendum regarding the liquidation of a cityscape. Within an exploratory holistic single-case study design, I used QCA to analyse the data gathered through semi-structured interviews with members of The People's Initiative for the Airport Future and various peculiar secondary data. The evidence was compelling in depicting the respondents' solid spatial belonging and an unmistakable altruistic stance towards Västerås manifested through political participation. Along with other conclusions, the evidence advocated a persuasive presence of local patriotism, a tendency to resort to unconventional political participation, and a fragmented trust in local government among the respondents.
... In addition, the factors that are recognized to impact attitudes towards local food (healthiness, freshness, concerns for the environment, and concerns for the local economy) (Kumar and Smith, 2017). The conceptual model within this study draws on contributions from the literature on pro-social behaviors, such as local patriotism (Richey, 2022) and perceived value similarity between consumers and local farmers (Skallerud and Wien, 2019). Additionally, this research examines the role of demographics, such as gender and age, in understanding food citizens' consumption behavior. ...
... While traditionally considered at the national level, patriotism is increasingly acknowledged as a local phenomenon in scholarly discourse. Richey (2022) supports this shift in perspective and suggests that individuals hold strong sentiments toward their localities, influencing their civic engagement and collective actions. ...
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This paper uses Will County in Illinois as a case study to examine the relationship between food citizenship and local food consumption in what we term to be the rural-urban blend of America. Food citizenship is participating in food-related actions promoting democratic, socially and economically equitable, and environmentally sustainable food systems. On the other hand, local food consumption is choosing and preferring to buy and eat local food over other conventional forms of food. The study used data analysis from a survey of 342 residents in Will County, Illinois, to test a conceptual model that considers various socio-psychological traits that food citizens might have, which could explain their preferences for local food, including local patriotism, perceived similarity with local farmers, social concern for the community's well-being, and environmental concerns. The findings reveal the intertwined nature of local patriotism and place identity, shedding light on their direct influence on food citizens' preferences. The perceived similarity with farmers and active engagement with local food producers deepen food citizens' understanding and connection, ultimately influencing their preferences for locally sourced food. The study also highlights the distinct roles of men and women in local food preferences, with local patriotism being more significant for men aged 40 and above. Finally, the results underscore the Midwest's unique socio-political landscape and the complex interplay of factors shaping local food preferences within rural-urban blends like Will County.
... Analysis of the Practical Aspects of Local Self-Government in the Context of the Functioning of Territorial Communities in Ukraine 3 self-government (Magnusson, 2023, 39, 40). Developing countries today attach great importance to the development of local self-government as a key factor for economic growth (Thanh & Nguyen, 2023, 631;Sun & Razzaq, 2022;Richey, 2023). Ukraine is no exception in this regard. ...
... He analyzes how local governance can negatively impact human rights, examining the case of "LGBT ideology-free zones" in Poland. S.Richey (2023) examines the impact of socalled "local patriotism" on participation in local politics, civic engagement, trust in local government, and collective action. The author argues that these factors are crucial in shaping the idea of government accountability, thus underscoring the pivotal role of local self-government in contemporary democracy. ...
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... There is also evidence that patriotism may influence individuals' decision-making processes when evaluating trust in state institutions (Gangl et al., 2016). Indeed, a recent experimental study demonstrated that constructive patriotism positively influences trust in local government (Richey, 2023). Based on this evidence, we hypothesize the following: ...
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... Patriotism is an integrating basis for the revival of the spiritual values of society, it is a stabilising factor of national and civil harmony in independent Ukraine (Polulyashchenko, 2020). Patriotic people tend to invest their own money in solving current social problems (Richey, 2022). An example of the current situation is the so-called donation for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. ...
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The study examines the possible influence of social intelligence on the development of such a civic sense as patriotism. The full-scale aggression against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, clearly demonstrated the relevance of patriotic education of young people, which is reflected not only in the performance of military duty, but also in active volunteering and support for the national idea in the media space, that is, the development of information security of the state. The purpose of the study is to identify the influence of social intelligence on feelings of patriotism. The study was conducted among students of colleges and universities in Poltava. To determine the level of social intelligence of young people, the TROMSØ rapid test developed by Norwegian researchers was used. Using this method, it was possible to obtain the necessary data for conducting a correlation analysis of social intelligence with a sense of patriotism. The experiment revealed a significant influence on patriotism of such components of social intelligence as social information processing, social skills, and social awareness. The development of a certain value system among young people under the influence of social intelligence, which increases the sense of patriotism, is one of the main possible explanations for such results. The development of social competence among students contributes to strengthening the economic, political and social security of the state. Further study of practical mechanisms for developing the social intelligence of young people would certainly strengthen the state in the face of potential future challenges and contribute to ensuring stable economic development
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Manipulation checks are often advisable in experimental studies, yet they rarely appear in practice. This lack of usage may stem from fears of distorting treatment effects and uncertainty regarding which type to use (e.g., instructional manipulation checks [IMCs] or assessments of whether stimuli alter a latent independent variable of interest). Here, we first categorize the main variants and argue that factual manipulation checks (FMCs)—that is, objective questions about key elements of the experiment—can identify individual‐level attentiveness to experimental information and, as a consequence, better enable researchers to diagnose experimental findings. We then find, through four replication studies, little evidence that FMC placement affects treatment effects, and that placing FMCs immediately post‐outcome does not attenuate FMC passage rates. Additionally, FMC and IMC passage rates are only weakly related, suggesting that each technique identifies different sets of attentive subjects. Thus, unlike other methods, FMCs can confirm attentiveness to experimental protocols.
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Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and physiological responses (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure). Based on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments.
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The relationship between national and local patriotism is an important scientific issue in view of modern socio-political crisis in Ukraine and arising processes of regionalism and separatism in many countries throughout the world. The paper represents an attempt to disclose and understand spatial patterns of local and national patriotism in Ukraine. This case-study was focused on Po-dolia in view of significant internal historical and cultural diversity. The data for analysis was collected by means of a questionnaire survey that make possible to assess separate aspects of local and national patriotism as well as calculate their integral indices. Indicators for local patriotism assessment are as follows: presence of small motherland, love and proud of the settlement (topophilia), preferable consumption of local products, and support for local sports teams. Indicators applied for national patriotism evaluation are: mental attachment to Ukraine, willingness to be born again in Ukraine, and proud of being Ukrainian. Overlaying these characteristics allowed splitting study region into the four areas in terms of national and local patriotism relationship. However, the results prove that strength of both local and national patriotism is closely linked to the historical and cultural specificity of the region and confirm cumulative (synergistic) interaction between national and local patriotism, suggesting developed local (regional) identity to be an essential prerequisite for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the state.
Book
Local government is the hidden leviathan of American politics: it accounts for nearly a tenth of gross domestic product, it collects nearly as much in taxes as the federal government, and its decisions have an enormous impact on Americans' daily lives. Yet political scientists have few explanations for how people vote in local elections, particularly in the smaller cities, towns, and suburbs where most Americans live. Drawing on a wide variety of data sources and case studies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of electoral politics in America's municipalities. Arguing that current explanations of voting behavior are ill suited for most local contests, the book puts forward a new theory that highlights the crucial differences between local, state, and national democracies. Being small in size, limited in power, and largely unbiased in distributing their resources, local governments are “managerial democracies” with a distinct style of electoral politics. Instead of hinging on the partisanship, ideology, and group appeals that define national and state elections, local elections are based on the custodial performance of civic-oriented leaders and on their personal connections to voters with similarly deep community ties. Explaining not only the dynamics of local elections, Oliver's findings also upend many long-held assumptions about community power and local governance, including the importance of voter turnout and the possibilities for grassroots political change.
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Scholars and policymakers have highlighted institutions that enable community participation as a potential buffer against existing political inequalities. Yet these venues may bias policy discussions in favor of an unrepresentative group of individuals. To explore who participates, we compile a novel data set by coding thousands of instances of citizens speaking at planning and zoning board meetings concerning housing development. We match individuals to a voter file to investigate local political participation in housing and development policy. We find that individuals who are older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners are significantly more likely to participate in these meetings. These individuals overwhelmingly (and to a much greater degree than the general public) oppose new housing construction. These participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs.
Book
People's bonds, associations and networks - as well as the civil, political, and institutional characteristics of the society in which they live - can be powerful drivers affecting the quality of life among a community's, a city's, or a nation's inhabitants and their ability to achieve both individual and societal goals. Civic engagement, social cohesion, and other dimensions of social capital affect social, economic and health outcomes for individuals and communities. Can these be measured, and can federal surveys contribute toward this end? Can this information be collected elsewhere, and if so, how should it be collected? Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion identifies measurement approaches that can lead to improved understanding of civic engagement, social cohesion, and social capital - and their potential role in explaining the functioning of society. With the needs of data users in mind, this report examines conceptual frameworks developed in the literature to determine promising measures and measurement methods for informing public policy discourse. The report identifies working definitions of key terms; advises on the feasibility and specifications of indicators relevant to analyses of social, economic, and health domains; and assesses the strength of the evidence regarding the relationship between these indicators and observed trends in crime, employment, and resilience to shocks such as natural disasters. Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion weighs the relative merits of surveys, administrative records, and non-government data sources, and considers the appropriate role of the federal statistical system. This report makes recommendations to improve the measurement of civic health through population surveys conducted by the government and identifies priority areas for research, development, and implementation. © 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Bo Rothstein explores how social capital and social trust are generated and what governments can do about it. A 'social trap' is a situation where individuals, groups or organizations are unable to cooperate owing to mutual distrust and lack of social capital, even where cooperation would benefit all. Examples include civil strife, pervasive corruption, ethnic discrimination, depletion of natural resources and misuse of social insurance systems. Much has been written attempting to explain the problem, but rather less material is available on how to escape it.
Article
Local government is the hidden leviathan of American politics: it accounts for nearly a tenth of gross domestic product, it collects nearly as much in taxes as the federal government, and its decisions have an enormous impact on Americans' daily lives. Yet political scientists have few explanations for how people vote in local elections, particularly in the smaller cities, towns, and suburbs where most Americans live. Drawing on a wide variety of data sources and case studies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of electoral politics in America's municipalities. Arguing that current explanations of voting behavior are ill suited for most local contests, Eric Oliver puts forward a new theory that highlights the crucial differences between local, state, and national democracies. Being small in size, limited in power, and largely unbiased in distributing their resources, local governments are "managerial democracies" with a distinct style of electoral politics. Instead of hinging on the partisanship, ideology, and group appeals that define national and state elections, local elections are based on the custodial performance of civic-oriented leaders and on their personal connections to voters with similarly deep community ties. Explaining not only the dynamics of local elections, Oliver's findings also upend many long-held assumptions about community power and local governance, including the importance of voter turnout and the possibilities for grassroots political change.