JEREMY F. DUFF

Email: duffjere@uiuc.edu
Webpage: www.msu.edu/~duffjere
Fields: American Politics, Public Opinion/Political Behavior, Institutions
Dissertation: The Reciprocal Effects of Ideology and Issue Positions: Considering a Directional Link from Issue Positions to Ideology
Expected Dissertation Defense: October 2007
Committee: William G. Jacoby (Chair), Saundra K. Schneider, Darren W. Davis, Charles L. Ballard (Department of Economics, Michigan State University)

 

Jeremy F. Duff’s research and teaching interests focus on American politics, including public opinion, political behavior, and American political institutions.  He is currently a visiting instructor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Prior to beginning his graduate studies at MSU, Jeremy received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Texas A&M University.  He also received a Master of Arts Degree in Political Science from MSU in 2004.  Additionally, he received training in quantitative methods of social research during the summers of 2003 and 2006 at the ICPSR summer program.

Jeremy’s research focuses on mass belief systems, ideology, the sources and development of issue attitudes, political institutions and their relationship with public opinion, and partisan theories of the United State Congress.  He has presented his work in these areas at several conferences, including the annual meetings of the APSA, the MPSA, the SPSA, and the State Politics and Policy Conference.

His dissertation project, The Reciprocal Effects of Ideology and Issue Positions: Considering a Directional Link from Issues to Ideology, assesses the role ideology plays in developing individual issue attitudes.  The literature on this relationship has long held that ideology provides a structure that helps individuals organize their political attitudes.  Jeremy argues that political scientists should consider the possibility that for many individuals the reverse actually occurs.  Their positions on political issues help in labeling their ideology.  He finds that when a reciprocal relationship between ideology and issue attitudes is considered, ideology is no longer useful in predicting issue positions.  Even when controlling for factors such as education and how individuals conceptualize the political world (whether through issues or ideological terms), issue attitudes play a significant role in predicting how individuals label themselves ideologically.  However, any effects that ideology has on forming issue positions are lost.

In the future, Jeremy plans on expanding his examination of issue attitudes and ideology.  His research has raised a number of questions that will help guide future research projects.  First, what has driven this change in the relationship between ideology and issue attitudes?  Second, if the role of ideology is truly limited in this way, is it still important, and how?  Third, if there is a reciprocal relationship between ideology and issue attitudes, do changes in each drive changes in the other?  Finally, if ideological identification is merely a label for an assortment of issue attitudes, what particular arrangements of attitudes lead to certain ideological identifications?

Jeremy served as a fellow in the Political Institutions and Public Choice Program, under the direction of Dr. David W. Rohde, from 2002 until Dr. Rohde’s departure from MSU in 2005.  He has also received external funding as a fellow of the H.B. Earhart Foundation, and received a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the MSU Graduate School.

Jeremy’s teaching experience includes four senior-level courses on public opinion, public bureaucracy, the United States Congress, and political parties in the U.S.  He has also taught two introductory courses on political methodology and general political science.  Jeremy is also interested in teaching courses on mass political behavior, campaigns and elections, the presidency, and American government.