Cross-Validating Measures of Global Religious Intolerance: Comparing Coded State Department Reports with Survey Data and Expert Opinion

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Grim ◽  
Richard Wike
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Expert Opinion ◽  
State Department ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
The State ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
Individual Expert ◽  
Cross National

AbstractWe address a pressing substantive issue as well as evaluate several methodologies in this article. Substantively, we ask whether the U.S. State Department has a clear understanding of the level of cross-national religious intolerance that triggers daily headlines around the globe. Methodologically, we ask whether data on social attitudes coded from systematic qualitative reports can reliably represent cross-national public opinion. We empirically address these questions by comparing cross-national levels of religious intolerance coded from the State Department's annual international religious freedom reports with relevant population survey data from the World Values Survey and the Pew Research Center, as well as with data from written interviews of country experts conducted by the Hudson Institute. The results indicate that the understanding of social religious intolerance embodied in the State Department reports is comparable with the results of population surveys and individual expert opinion. Methodologically, this suggests that cross-national public opinion survey data can be cross-validated with coded data from systematic qualitative analysis as well as with expert opinion.

America's Campaign of Truth Throughout the World

1951 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dick Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
State Department ◽  
The State ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Officer

Operation of the government's program to combat Russian misrepresentation and vilification is described by the audience research officer in the International Press Division of the State Department. Mr. Fitzpatrick is widely known for his writings in the field of public opinion and communications.

On the relationship between party polarization and citizen polarization

2022 ◽  
pp. 135406882110695
Author(s):  
Mert Moral ◽  
Robin E Best
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Error Correction ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Party Polarization ◽  
Party Position ◽  
Established Democracies ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Public Demand ◽  
Cross National

Do party policy offerings simply reflect public opinion or do parties shape public demand for policies? Theories of party position-taking and the operation of democracy expect parties to track their supporters’ positions, while scholarship of public opinion has shown voters often adopt the position of their preferred parties. We apply both of these theoretical expectations to the relationship between citizen polarization and party polarization and additionally argue that the relationship between them should be stronger among more politically more engaged and sophisticated citizens. We draw on aggregated survey data from 174 cross-national and national election studies from 19 established democracies, to assess the extent to which citizen polarization responds to party polarization, the extent to which parties respond to changes in citizen polarization, and whether these relationships differ across different groups of citizens. We estimate seemingly unrelated error-correction models employing data on party and citizen positions from 1971 to 2019. Our findings suggest that citizen polarization follows party polarization and also that politically engaged and sophisticated citizens are more responsive to changes in party polarization than the politically less engaged and unsophisticated. In contrast, we find little evidence that party polarization responds to changes in citizen polarization.

A Subtle but Intractable Problem? Public Attitudes to Sectarianism in 2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Ormston ◽  
John Curtice ◽  
Stephen Hinchliffe ◽  
Anna Marcinkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Beliefs ◽  
Intractable Problem ◽  
Robust Evidence

Discussion of sectarianism often focuses on evidence purporting to show discriminatory behaviour directed at Catholics or Protestants in Scotland. But attitudes also matter – in sustaining (or preventing) such discriminatory behaviours, and in understanding the nature of the ‘problem of sectarianism’ from the perspective of the Scottish public. This paper uses data from the Scottish Social Attitudes survey 2014. The survey fills a gap in the evidence base by providing robust evidence on what the public actually thinks about sectarianism in modern Scotland. It assesses public beliefs about the extent and nature of sectarianism and its perceived causes. Tensions in public opinion and differences in the attitudes of different sections of Scottish society are explored.

Party Standstill in an Era of Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
External Environment ◽  
The State ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Significant Modification ◽  
Interest Management ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Run

Chapter 5 discusses the premises of the emergence of the cartel party with the parties’ resilience to any significant modification in the face of the cultural, societal, and political changes of the 1970s–1980s. Parties kept and even increased their hold on institutions and society. They adopted an entropic strategy to counteract challenges coming from a changing external environment. A new gulf with public opinion opened up, since parties demonstrated greater ease with state-centred activities for interest-management through collusive practices in the para-governmental sector, rather than with new social and political options. The emergence of two sets of alternatives, the greens and the populist extreme right, did not produce, in the short run, any impact on intra-party life. The chapter argues that the roots of cartelization reside mainly in the necessitated interpenetration with the state, rather than on inter-party collusion. This move has caught parties in a legitimacy trap.

The New Progressive Dilemma through the Lens of Comparative Welfare State and Party Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis C. Spies
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Expenditures ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

The chapter summarizes the New Progressive Dilemma (NPD) debate, identifying three arguments from comparative welfare state and party research likely to be relevant to the relationship between immigration and welfare state retrenchment: public opinion, welfare institutions, and political parties. Alignment of anti-immigrant sentiments and welfare support varies considerably between countries, especially between the US and Europe, leading to different party incentives vis-à-vis welfare state retrenchment. The chapter introduces insights from comparative welfare state and party research to the debate, discussing inter alia, political parties in terms of welfare retrenchment, immigrants as a voter group, and cross-national variation of existing welfare institutions. It addresses the complex debates around attitudinal change caused by immigration, levels of welfare support, voting behavior, and social expenditures. Combining these strands of literature, a common theoretical framework is developed that is subsequently applied to both the US and Western European context.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Horder
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Adequate Coverage

The criminal law has the resources to address corruption in politics, if prosecutors are willing to use it, and if courts are willing to interpret it so that it provides adequate coverage of wrongdoing, particularly wrongdoing in the form of personal corruption engaged in by Members of Parliament. There needs to be a greater willingness to expose the worst corrupt wrongdoers in high office to the risk of judgment at the bar of public opinion, in the form of jury trial. The offence of misconduct in office provides the most appropriate means of doing this. This is not just because it is likely to provide the most appropriate label, but because the offence highlights the constitutionally fundamental bond of trust between the citizen and the state that is broken when officials indulge in corruption.

Public Opinion in Israel: The Sociodemographic Nexus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Hermann
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
Deep Disagreements ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The Impact

In Israel, as in many other countries, the impact of public opinion on national policymaking has increased dramatically over the last few decades. In fact, public opinion has practically developed into one of the prime political inputs in Israel. This chapter argues that this increased impact, which could have contributed to improving the Israeli democracy, is in fact often undermined by the increasing overlapping of the main cleavages within Israel: between the political Right and Left, between Jews and Arabs, and between religious and secular Israelis. This extreme overlapping has severely eroded the national consensus and accelerated the emergence of deep disagreements in public opinion over strategic issues, such as the nature of the state (Jewish? Democratic?), the main challenges facing the nation (including the best way of dealing with the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict), and the desired collective future.

The State Department Speaks

1944 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-136
Author(s):  
Dexter Perkins
Keyword(s):  
State Department ◽  
The State
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