Political Competition, Partisanship and Interpersonal Trust in Electoral Democracies

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Carlin ◽  
Gregory J. Love

How does democratic politics inform the interdisciplinary debate on the evolution of human co-operation and the social preferences (for example, trust, altruism and reciprocity) that support it? This article advances a theory of partisan trust discrimination in electoral democracies based on social identity, cognitive heuristics and interparty competition. Evidence from behavioral experiments in eight democracies show ‘trust gaps’ between co- and rival partisans are ubiquitous, and larger than trust gaps based on the social identities that undergird the party system. A natural experiment found that partisan trust gaps in the United States disappeared immediately following the killing of Osama bin Laden. But observational data indicate that partisan trust gaps track with perceptions of party polarization in all eight cases. Finally, the effects of partisanship on trust outstrip minimal group treatments, yet minimal-group effects are on par with the effects of most treatments for ascriptive characteristics in the literature. In sum, these findings suggest political competition dramatically shapes the salience of partisanship in interpersonal trust, the foundation of co-operation.

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 256-265
Author(s):  
Konstantin V. Simonov ◽  
Stanislav P. Mitrakhovich

The article examines the possibility of transfer to bipartisan system in Russia. The authors assess the benefits of the two-party system that include first of all the ensuring of actual political competition and authority alternativeness with simultaneous separation of minute non-system forces that may contribute to the country destabilization. The authors analyze the accompanying risks and show that the concept of the two-party system as the catalyst of elite schism is mostly exaggerated. The authors pay separate attention to the experience of bipartisan system implementation in other countries, including the United States. They offer detailed analysis of the generated concept of the bipartisanship crisis and show that this point of view doesn’t quite agree with the current political practice. The authors also examine the foreign experience of the single-party system. They show that the success of the said system is mostly insubstantial, besides many of such systems have altered into more complex structures, while commentators very often use not the actual information but the established myths about this or that country. The authors also offer practical advice regarding the potential technologies of transition to the bipartisan system in Russia.


2019 ◽  
pp. 77-126
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman

This chapter details changes in American law from the eighteenth century onward, covering federal and state constitutions, judges, organization of courts, and civil procedure, and the law of evidence. The colonies declared themselves independent in 1776. However, American law continued to borrow from English law. English doctrines that were needed and appropriate were welcome. Between 1776, and the middle of the nineteenth century, there developed a true republic of bees; their flowers were the social and economic institutions that grew up in the United States. American conditions and ideas were the lawmakers that made American law a distinctive system: a separate language within the common-law family.


1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 995-1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Vincent Padgett

Because Mexican politics since the Revolution of 1910–17 have operated mainly within the framework of a one-party system and because in the past strong men have sometimes occupied the presidency, writers in the United States have tended to treat the system as authoritarian. Emphasis upon presidential rule and the corollary explanation of the role of the Revolutionary Party as nothing more nor less than an instrument of presidential domination have served to create an oversimplified picture of presidential power. It is the purpose of this paper to outline at least four checkpoints on which the authoritarian interpretation seems to have involved miscalculation of the realities of the Mexican political system. The nature of membership in the “official” party, the degree of centralization within and without the party structure, the threefold role of the party within the political system, and the ideological bias of the political elite all seem to indicate the necessity of a re-evaluation of the politics of the republic on our southern border.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 223
Author(s):  
Steven R. Edscorn

The American Political Party System: A Reference Handbook brings together readable, informative essays about the formation and influence of and controversies surrounding political parties in the United States; profiles of significant people and organizations; responsibly argued opinion essays from a variety of perspectives; and important primary-source documents and data. Major sections include “Background and History,” “Problems, Controversies, and Solutions,” “Perspectives,” “Profiles,” and “Data and Documents.” Examples of subsections and entries include “The Transformative Election of McKinley and the Progressive Era, 1896–1932,” “Structural Barriers or Impediments to Third-Party Candidates,” “Make America Great Again PAC,” “MoveOn.org,” “David Koch (1935–),” “Harry Reid (1939),” “Jill Stein (1950–),” “Donald Trump’s Proposed Immigration Policies,” “Election Results, 2016 Presidential Vote, by Select Group Categories,” and “Millard Fillmore’s Speech, June 26, 1856, on American Party Principles.”


Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton

This chapter introduces the theoretical arguments for equality in democratic participation. Long-term evidence for the United States shows that participation levels are increasing overall. At the same time, the participation gap in who is active is also widening. It also reviews the civic voluntarism model that describes the factors that affect the inequality of participation within and between nations. Differences in social status are a key determinant of participation, social groups can mobilize individuals to participate, and citizen values affect participation levels. Aspects of the social structure, party system, and institutional structures may also influence the size of the participation gap.


Author(s):  
Charles Ellis ◽  
Molly Jacobs

Health disparities have once again moved to the forefront of America's consciousness with the recent significant observation of dramatically higher death rates among African Americans with COVID-19 when compared to White Americans. Health disparities have a long history in the United States, yet little consideration has been given to their impact on the clinical outcomes in the rehabilitative health professions such as speech-language pathology/audiology (SLP/A). Consequently, it is unclear how the absence of a careful examination of health disparities in fields like SLP/A impacts the clinical outcomes desired or achieved. The purpose of this tutorial is to examine the issue of health disparities in relationship to SLP/A. This tutorial includes operational definitions related to health disparities and a review of the social determinants of health that are the underlying cause of such disparities. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of potential directions for the study of health disparities in SLP/A to identify strategies to close the disparity gap in health-related outcomes that currently exists.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Celal Hayir ◽  
Ayman Kole

When the Turkish army seized power on May 27th, 1960, a new democratic constitution was carried into effect. The positive atmosphere created by the 1961 constitution quickly showed its effects on political balances in the parliament and it became difficult for one single party to come into power, which strengthened the multi-party-system. The freedom initiative created by 1961’s constitution had a direct effect on the rise of public opposition. Filmmakers, who generally steered clear from the discussion of social problems and conflicts until 1960, started to produce movies questioning conflicts in political, social and cultural life for the first time and discussions about the “Social Realism” movement in the ensuing films arose in cinematic circles in Turkey. At the same time, the “regional managers” emerged, and movies in line with demands of this system started to be produced. The Hope (Umut), produced by Yılmaz Güney in 1970, rang in a new era in Turkish cinema, because it differed from other movies previously made in its cinematic language, expression, and use of actors and settings. The aim of this study is to mention the reality discussions in Turkish cinema and outline the political facts which initiated this expression leading up to the film Umut (The Hope, directed by Yılmaz Güney), which has been accepted as the most distinctive social realist movie in Turkey. 


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.


Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo

This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.


2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
L. Lee

Dr. C.K. Clarke (1857-1924) was one of Canada’s most prominent psychiatrists. He sought to improve the conditions of asylums, helped to legitimize psychiatry and established formal training for nurses. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Canada experienced a surge of immigration. Yet – as many historians have shown – a widespread anti-foreigner sentiment within the public remained. Along with many other members of the fledgling eugenics movement, Clarke believed that the proportion of “mental defectives” was higher in the immigrant population than in the Canadian population and campaigned to restrict immigration. He appealed to the government to track immigrants and deport them once they showed signs of mental illness. Clarke’s efforts lead to amendments to the Immigration Act in 1919, which authorized deportation of people who were not Canadian-born, regardless of how many years that had been in Canada. This change applied not only to the mentally ill but also to those who could no longer work due to injury and to those who did not follow social norms. Clarke is a fascinating example of how we judge historical figures. He lived in a time where what we now think of as xenophobia was a socially acceptable, even worthy attitude. As a leader in eugenics, therefore, he was a progressive. Other biographers have recognized Clarke’s racist opinions, some of whom justify them as keeping with the social values of his era. In further exploring Clarke’s interest in these issues, this paper relies on his personal scrapbooks held in the CAMH archives. These documents contain personal papers, poems and stories that proclaim his anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner views. Whether we allow his involvement in the eugenics movement to overshadow his accomplishments or ignore his racist leanings to celebrate his memory is the subject of ongoing debate. Dowbiggin IR. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. McLaren A. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990. Roberts B. Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada 1900-1935. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.


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