Princeton University

Specialization: Public opinion; civic engagement, political socialization; political psychology; democratic theory

Danielle Shani is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics. Besides her dissertation work, she has an ongoing project about partisan biases in political perceptions of "objective" national conditions. She is a Fulbright scholar, a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Scholars, a winner of a proposal for the ANES 2006 pilot study, and the recipient of the Israeli Parliament?s (Knesset) award for exceptional academic achievements. Danielle is also the co-author of Auditing Israeli Democracy 2003, the first in a series of annual evaluations of the quality and functioning of Israeli Democracy.

M.A., Politics, Princeton University; M.A. (hon.), Tel-Aviv University; B.A. (hon.), Tel-Aviv University

Thesis Title: On the Origins of Political Interest

Committee: Larry Bartels (chair), Martin Gilens, Tali Mendelberg

Abstract: How do people develop an interest in politics? Curiously, despite the centrality of citizens' political interest for democratic politics, we know very little on the bases of this motivation. In the dissertation, I put to test various theories about the origins of political interest, such as family socialization, high-school socialization, and the dominance of events experienced during one?s formative years. I also attempt to assess, quantify, and explain the changes in Americans' interest in politics in the past half a century. I utilize both the pooled cross-sectional data on political interest gathered by the American National Election Studies, which I have adjusted for question-order and survey administration effects, and the only long-term panel study of political attitudes, which traced a cohort of high school seniors from the 1960s until they reached the age of 50.

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Link to: Personal Web site