Upending American Politics

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
American Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Grassroots Groups ◽  
Organizational Configurations ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Key Questions

Analysts and citizens alike struggle to comprehend recent gyrations in US politics. The country did an apparent U-turn in just eight short years, from the election of Barack Obama and an all-Democratic Congress in 2008 to the election of Donald Trump and confirmation of GOP control of Congress in 2016. Twice in under a decade, ordinary citizens reacted by organizing local grassroots groups all over the country—with Tea Parties starting in 2009 and anti-Trump resistance groups starting in late 2016. Upending American Politics offers a fresh perspective on these developments by focusing on recent and newly changing organizational configurations, such as voluntary local citizens’ groups, elite advocacy organizations, consortia of wealthy donors, and candidate-led political campaigns. Contributors have collected many new kinds of data to document and probe changing organizational configurations at the national level and in the pivotal states of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The volume offers insightful answers to key questions: Why has partisan polarization unfolded in a heavily rightward-tilted manner that sees Republicans embracing ever-more extreme positions? Why have widespread grassroots citizens movements erupted twice just eight years, and what impact have these movements had on the major political parties?

Bases Loaded

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Costas Panagopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
Voter Mobilization ◽  
Campaign Strategy ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Swing Voters ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Over the past few decades, a fundamental shift in political campaign strategy has been afoot in U.S. elections: Political campaigns have been gradually shifting their attention away from swing voters toward their respective, partisan bases. Independents and weak partisans have been targeted with less frequency, and the emphasis in contemporary elections has been on strong partisans. This book documents this shift—away from persuasion toward base mobilization—in the context of U.S. presidential elections and explains that this phenomenon is likely linked to several developments, including advances in campaign technology and voter-targeting capabilities as well as insights from behavioral social science focusing on voter mobilization. The analyses show the 2000 presidential election represents a watershed cycle that punctuated this shift. The book also explores the implications of the shift toward base mobilization and links these developments to growing turnout rates for strong partisans and attenuating participation among independents or swing voters over time. The book concludes these patterns have contributed to heightened partisan polarization in the United States.

scholarly journals Partisan Ambivalence and Electoral Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Craig ◽  
Paulina Cossette ◽  
Michael Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Campaign Ads ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Negative Feelings ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
High Degree

American politics today is driven largely by deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans. That said, there are many people who view the opposition in an overwhelmingly negative light – but who simultaneously possess a mix of positive and negative feelings toward their own party. This paper is a response to prior research (e.g., Lavine, Johnson, and Steenbergen 2012) indicating that such ambivalence increases the probability that voters will engage in "deliberative" (or "effortful") rather than "heuristic" thinking when responding to the choices presented to them in political campaigns. We extend the logic of this argument to a hypothetical race for Congress, using data from a survey experiment to determine whether a high degree of ambivalence toward one's party makes voters more responsive to a negative attack against the candidate of that party. In fact, we find little evidence that partisan ambivalence promotes a deliberative response to negative campaign ads.

scholarly journals Impact of US smoke-free air laws on restaurants and bars by employer size: a panel study

BMJ Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. e018137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Shafer
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Food Services ◽  
North Carolina Department ◽  
Free Air ◽  
Redistributive Effect

ObjectivesThirty states have smoke-free air laws that ban smoking in restaurants and bars, covering nearly two-thirds of the US population. It is well established that these laws generally have a null or positive economic impact on restaurants and bars. However, all establishments in a geographic area are usually treated as a homogeneous group without considering the potential for differential effects by establishment characteristics. This study uses variation in smoke-free air laws over time to estimate their impact on employment in restaurants and bars with a focus on potential differences by employer size (number of employees). A two-pronged approach with a national-level and state-level analysis is used to take advantage of more granular data availability for a single state (North Carolina).DesignObservational study using panel data.Setting1) US, 2) North CarolinaInterventionsSmoke-free air laws.Outcome measuresState-level accommodation and food services employment for all 50 states and District of Columbia from 1990 through 2014 (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages); county-level restaurant and bar employment in North Carolina from 2001 through 2014 (North Carolina Department of Commerce).ResultsThere is no evidence of a redistributive effect of smoke-free air laws on restaurant and bar employment by employer size.ConclusionThe lack of a redistributive effect is an important finding for policy-makers considering implementation or expansion of a smoke-free air law to protect employees and patrons from the dangers of exposure to secondhand smoke.

On Their Own? Women Running as Independent Candidates in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
Bozena Welborne
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Global North ◽  
Primary Vector ◽  
North And South

Abstract This paper considers examples of women successfully running as independents at the national level in the Middle East, investigating how existing electoral systems impacted their ability to contest political office. Women in the region face a host of challenges when it comes to launching political campaigns outside of sociocultural norms. Most extant literature on political participation focuses on parties as the primary vector for female participation in the Global North and South. However, women in the Middle East often cannot rely on this mechanism due to the absence of political parties or existing parties’ unwillingness to back women for cultural reasons. Yet, the region hosts many female independents holding office at the national level. Through the cases of Jordan, Egypt, and Oman, I unpack this phenomenon using an institutional argument and assess what the emergence of such candidates bodes for the future of women in the Middle East.

Australia Burning

2003 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
National Level ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Fire Behaviour ◽  
Community Issues ◽  
Indigenous Land ◽  
Key Questions

The phenomenon of fire in the Australian landscape traverses many interests and disciplines. At a national level, there is an urgent need for the integration of both the natural and social sciences in the formulation of public policy. With contributions from 30 leading experts, Australia Burning draws together these issues, under the themes: Ecology and the environment Fire behaviour and fire regime science People and property Policy, institutional arrangements and the legal framework Indigenous land and fire management The book examines some of the key questions that relate to the ecology, prediction and management of fire, urban planning, law, insurance, and community issues, including indigenous and non-indigenous concerns. It looks at what we need to know to inform public policy, given the present risks and uncertainty, and explores the avenues for closer integration between science, policy and the community.

Jim Crow Capital

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Elizabeth B. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Black Freedom Struggle ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Post War

Jim Crow Capital tells the story of how black women in Washington, D.C. transformed civil rights politics between 1920 and 1945. Even though no resident of the nation’s capital could cast a ballot, women nonetheless proclaimed their first-class citizenship rights by working to influence congressional legislation, lobby politicians, shape policy, and secure freedom and justice for all African Americans, both in Washington, D.C. and across the country. During the course of their political campaigns, African American women’s relationship to federal and local politics underwent a fundamental transformation. During the 1920s, black women seized on their location in the nation’s capital to intervene in federal matters, thereby working to improve conditions for disenfranchised African Americans who lacked a political voice on a national level. But by the early 1930s, black women turned their attention to focus more fully on local politics in Washington, D.C. by waging campaigns for economic justice, voting rights, and an end to racial segregation and interracial police brutality, making their freedom struggle an example for the nation. Black women in Washington, D.C. crafted a broad vision of citizenship by waging comprehensive and interconnected campaigns for legal equality, economic citizenship, public commemoration, and safety from violence. Women’s political activism in Washington, D.C. influenced the post-war black freedom struggle and still resonates today.

Religion, Gendered Authority, and Identity in American Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin C. Cassese ◽  
Mirya R. Holman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractReligious identity serves as a central cleavage in American politics. However, little attention has been granted to how gendered views of authority conveyed in religious doctrine shape political identities and attitudes. Using a nation-wide sample of adult Americans, we demonstrate that gendered notions of divine and human authority exert considerable influence on political thinking. In particular, belief in a masculine God and preferences for traditional gender roles strongly relate to political conservatism. Adherence to gendered notions of authority influences political identity and policy preferences, even when controlling for more conventional indicators of religiosity. Accounting for gendered beliefs about authority also partially explains well-documented gender gaps in American politics, providing insight into women's apparently contradictory tendencies toward both political liberalism and religiosity. The relationships uncovered here, coupled with the continued salience of both gender and religion in contemporary political campaigns, underscore the importance of attending to the gendered dimensions of authority.

scholarly journals Leftists possess more national consensus in Europe in one of two datasets

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark John Brandt ◽  
Anthony Aron ◽  
Megan Parker ◽  
Cristina Rodas ◽  
Megan Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Ideological Differences ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
Using Data

A regularity in US American politics is that liberals have more policy consensus than do conservatives, and both ideological groups have more consensus than moderates (Ondish & Stern, 2018). The idea is that conservatives’ local conformity paradoxically results in less consensus than liberals at the national level. If this is the case, then the liberal consensus effect should also be observed in other countries. We test this using data from Europe. In the European Social Survey (Country N = 38, N = 376,129) we find that on average leftists have more consensus than do rightists; however, we do not find this using the Eurobarometer (Country N = 18, N = 375,830). In both data sources we also observe variation in ideological differences between countries. These results suggest that there is a liberal/leftist consensus effect that can be found in Europe and the United States, but there are also exceptions.

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