COVID-19 and Asian Americans: How Elite Messaging and Social Exclusion Shape Partisan Attitudes

Extending theories of social exclusion and elite messaging, we argue that Trump’s targeted rhetoric toward Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic pushes the racial group, largely “Independent” or nonpartisan affiliated, to lean more towards the Democratic Party. We support this claim by combining social media (Study 1) and survey data (Study 2) analysis. Tracing 1.4 million tweets, we find that Trump’s rhetoric has popularized racially charged coronavirus-related terms and that exclusionary, anti-Asian attitudes have increased in the United States since the pandemic began. Next, by analyzing repeated cross-sectional weekly surveys of Asian Americans from July 2019 to May 2020 (n=12,907), we find that the group has leaned more towards the Democratic Party since Trump first made inflammatory remarks towards Asian Americans. Whites, Blacks, and Latina/os, on the other hand, exhibited fewer and less consistent changes in Democratic Party-related attitudes. Our findings suggest that experiences with social exclusion that are driven by elite sources further cement Asian Americans as Democrats.

Exhaustion, Adversity, and Repression: Emotional Attrition in High-Risk Activism

The article proposes the notion of emotional attrition to capture the process through which activists working in high-risk environments may develop a lasting state of emotional exhaustion caused by protracted exposure to adversarial conditions. Combining insights from clinical psychology and the sociology of emotions, it outlines a novel framework to understand the relationship between activism, emotions, and disengagement. We argue that activists can develop an emotional state characterized by dispiriting emotions and disengaging attitudes that affect their well-being and ability to sustain their activism. This argument is grounded on an in-depth analysis of more than 130 interviews with local human rights activists in Colombia, Kenya, and Indonesia. By examining their experiences and pressures in relation to the arena of repression, their immediate social circle, and the broader sociopolitical and cultural context, we shed light on the complex intersections between activists’ emotional challenges and the range of contextual and strategic factors shaping their work and lives.

Rewiring Linked Fate: Bringing Back History, Agency, and Power

Linked fate, the concept introduced by Dawson almost three decades ago, reoriented the study of racism and political behavior in the United States. The scholarship traditionally had focused on the racial psychology of whites and how racism seeps into their political views and actions. Dawson proposed the Black utility heuristic theory and linked fate, its associated measure, to investigate the political behavior of Blacks, the minority group most harmed by racism. Since then, linked fate has become a ubiquitous variable of interest in research on minority group politics. Yet the research program around linked fate is due for some extension. Most studies gloss over the fact that the Black utility heuristic theory is historically and socially conditional. We call for bringing elite-level agency and group-level social practices back into the literature to clarify the macro- and meso-level conditions under which a group’s racial status translates into linked fate at the individual level. Greater inquiry into these dynamics is not only warranted but also has broad implications for the research on racial and ethnic politics.

Small Money Donating as Democratic Politics

Since 2008, the number of people in the United States making small monetary donations to political causes, both within and beyond electoral politics, has skyrocketed. While critics of “big money” in politics laud these donations because they are small, proponents of small-scale democratic political action eye them suspiciously because they are monetary. Neither group interrogates whether the monetariness of these donations might be a source of their democratic potential. Building on Wendy Brown’s conceptual distinction between monetization and economization, I argue that small-money political donations are potentially democratic not only because they are small, but also because they are monetary. More specifically, the mobility, divisibility, commensurability, and fungibility of money help make small-money political donations potentially democratic, by making them potentially accessible, non-intrusive, and collective. Money is the coin of the economic realm, but it can also be a currency of democratic politics.

Fiddling while Democracy Burns: Partisan Reactions to Weak Democracy in Latin America

Democracy is weakened when citizens and elites do not criticize actions or actors that undermine its principles. Yet this study documents a widespread pattern of partisan rationalization in how elites and the public evaluate democratic performance in Latin America. Survey data show that those whose party controls the presidency consistently express positive evaluations of the current state of democratic competition and institutions even when democracy in their country is weak. This pattern emerges in both mass survey data and among elected elites. These data have a worrying implication: if only the political opposition is willing to publicly acknowledge and sound the alarm when democracy is under attack, public pressure to protect democracy is likely to be dramatically reduced.

The Participatory Implications of Racialized Policy Feedback

How do involuntary interactions with authoritarian institutions shape political engagement? The policy feedback literature suggests that interactions with authoritarian policies undercut political participation. However, research in racial and ethnic politics offers reason to believe that these experiences may increase citizens’ engagement. Drawing on group attachment and discrimination research, we argue that mobilization is contingent on individuals’ political psychological state. Relative to their counterparts, individuals with a politicized group identity will display higher odds of political engagement when exposed to authoritarian institutions. To evaluate our theory, we draw on the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Study to examine the experiences of Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans. For all subgroups and different types of institutions, we find that, for those with a politicized group identity, institutional contact is associated with higher odds of participation. Our research modifies the classic policy feedback framework, which neglects group-based narratives in the calculus of collective action.