Ethnic Genocide

There are few parallels to the human holocaust that took place in Burundi in 1972 in the wake of a tortuous competitive struggle between the country’s two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Scarcely noticed (let alone understood) by public opinion anywhere, the killings are conservatively estimated to have caused between 80,000 and 100,000 deaths. Approximately 3.5 percent of the country’s total population (3.5 million) were physically wiped out in a period of a few weeks. In comparative terms this is as if England had suffered a loss of 2 million or the United States about 8 million people. To speak of “selective genocide” in describing the outcome of such large-scale political violence seems scarcely an exaggeration.

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Correcting Inaccurate Metaperceptions Reduces Americans’ Support for Partisan Violence

10.31219/osf.io/8ftsx ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Joseph S. Mernyk ◽

Sophia Lerner Pink ◽

James Druckman ◽

Robb Willer

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Political Violence ◽

Large Scale ◽

Experimental Studies ◽

The United States ◽

Total N ◽

Before And After ◽

Nationally Representative ◽

Democrats And Republicans ◽

Willingness To Engage

Scholars, policy makers, and the general public have expressed growing concern about the possibility of large-scale political violence in the United States. These worries find support in studies revealing that many American partisans support the use of violence against rival partisans. Here we propose that support for partisan violence is based in part on greatly exaggerated perceptions of rival partisans’ support for violence. We also predict that correcting these inaccurate “metaperceptions” can reduce partisans’ own support for partisan violence. We test these hypotheses in a series of pre-registered, nationally representative, correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies (total n = 4,741), collected both before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack. In Studies 1 and 2 we found that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ perceptions of their rival partisans’ support for violence and willingness to engage in violence were very inaccurate, with estimates ranging from 239% to 489% higher than actual levels. Further, we find that a brief, informational correction of these misperceptions reduced support for violence by 37% (Study 3) and willingness to engage in violence by 44% (Study 4). In the latter study, a follow-up survey revealed the correction continued to significantly reduce support for violence approximately one month following the study. Together, these results suggest that support for partisan violence in the United States stems in part from systematic overestimations of rival partisans’ support for violence, and that correcting these misperceptions can durably reduce support for partisan violence in the mass public.

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Public Opinion in Affluent Democracies

Political Science ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0046 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Russell J. Dalton

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Public Opinion ◽

Family Life ◽

Large Scale ◽

Political Attitudes ◽

The United States ◽

Consumer Confidence ◽

Research Topics ◽

Public Opinion Research ◽

Additional Information

Public-opinion research ranges from political attitudes to understanding family life in sociology to consumer confidence surveys in economics. This article covers some of the major resources for studying and understanding opinions on political topics in the United States and other affluent democracies. It describes the major books on the content and methodology of public-opinion research as a guide to current scholarship. In addition, the article includes information on primary resources and journals emphasizing research on political attitudes. Many of the large-scale US and international public-opinion projects also provide the survey data and additional information on their research topics, and these projects are listed in the various sections of the article.

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Quality Control of Data in a Large-Scale Cancer Register Program

Methods of Information in Medicine ◽

10.1055/s-0038-1636339 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 05 (02) ◽

pp. 67-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

W. I. Lourie ◽

W. Haenszeland

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Quality Control ◽

Cancer Patients ◽

Large Scale ◽

The United States ◽

Newly Diagnosed ◽

Related Data ◽

Cancer Register ◽

Independent Review ◽

End Results

Quality control of data collected in the United States by the Cancer End Results Program utilizing punchcards prepared by participating registries in accordance with a Uniform Punchcard Code is discussed. Existing arrangements decentralize responsibility for editing and related data processing to the local registries with centralization of tabulating and statistical services in the End Results Section, National Cancer Institute. The most recent deck of punchcards represented over 600,000 cancer patients; approximately 50,000 newly diagnosed cases are added annually.Mechanical editing and inspection of punchcards and field audits are the principal tools for quality control. Mechanical editing of the punchcards includes testing for blank entries and detection of in-admissable or inconsistent codes. Highly improbable codes are subjected to special scrutiny. Field audits include the drawing of a 1-10 percent random sample of punchcards submitted by a registry; the charts are .then reabstracted and recoded by a NCI staff member and differences between the punchcard and the results of independent review are noted.

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Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza

10.23943/princeton/9780691159676.001.0001 ◽

2013 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Sara Roy

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Political Violence ◽

West Bank ◽

Gaza Strip ◽

Social Institutions ◽

The United States ◽

Great Promise ◽

Religious Congregations ◽

Regional Dynamics ◽

Second Intifada

Many in the United States and Israel believe that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and that its social sector serves merely to recruit new supporters for its violent agenda. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the critical period of the Oslo peace process, this book shows how the social service activities sponsored by the Islamist group emphasized not political violence but rather community development and civic restoration. The book demonstrates how Islamic social institutions in Gaza and the West Bank advocated a moderate approach to change that valued order and stability, not disorder and instability; were less dogmatically Islamic than is often assumed; and served people who had a range of political outlooks and no history of acting collectively in support of radical Islam. These institutions attempted to create civic communities, not religious congregations. They reflected a deep commitment to stimulate a social, cultural, and moral renewal of the Muslim community, one couched not only—or even primarily—in religious terms. Vividly illustrating Hamas's unrecognized potential for moderation, accommodation, and change, the book also traces critical developments in Hamas' social and political sectors through the Second Intifada to today, and offers an assessment of the current, more adverse situation in the occupied territories. The Oslo period held great promise that has since been squandered. This book argues for more enlightened policies by the United States and Israel, ones that reflect Hamas' proven record of nonviolent community building. A new afterword discusses how Hamas has been affected by changing regional dynamics and by recent economic and political events in Gaza, including failed attempts at reconciliation with Fatah.

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Utopias of One

10.23943/princeton/9780691196541.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Joshua Kotin

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Soviet Union ◽

World War I ◽

Large Scale ◽

Jim Crow ◽

Personal Autonomy ◽

The United States ◽

Soviet Period ◽

Original Research ◽

The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

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Situational Breakdowns

10.1093/oso/9780190922061.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Anne Nassauer

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Large Scale ◽

Contextual Factors ◽

The United States ◽

Social Outcomes ◽

Dynamic Processes ◽

Collective Decisions ◽

Different Types ◽

The Impact

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.

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Ban Ki-moon, 2007–2016

10.1093/oso/9780198748915.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Richard Gowan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Decision Making ◽

Security Council ◽

Large Scale ◽

Central African Republic ◽

The United States ◽

Cautious Approach ◽

Peacekeeping Operations ◽

Council Decision ◽

The Face

During Ban Ki-moon’s tenure, the Security Council was shaken by P5 divisions over Kosovo, Georgia, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. Yet it also continued to mandate and sustain large-scale peacekeeping operations in Africa, placing major burdens on the UN Secretariat. The chapter will argue that Ban initially took a cautious approach to controversies with the Council, and earned a reputation for excessive passivity in the face of crisis and deference to the United States. The second half of the chapter suggests that Ban shifted to a more activist pressure as his tenure went on, pressing the Council to act in cases including Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. The chapter will argue that Ban had only a marginal impact on Council decision-making, even though he made a creditable effort to speak truth to power over cases such as the Central African Republic (CAR), challenging Council members to live up to their responsibilities.

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