Motive and Opportunity: British Christian Parties 1997–2011

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bruce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

AbstractThe absence from Britain of anything like the United States New Christian Right of the 1980s could be explained by differences in the popularity of religion or in features of the respective party and political structures. Devolution and electoral reform have encouraged British Christians to form political parties and contest elections. Examination of their performance, agendas, and candidate profiles, coupled with survey data on British attitudes to mixing religion and politics, suggests that the major difference between the United States and Britain lies in the degree of secularization rather than in political opportunity structures.

scholarly journals Killing Two Birds with One Stone?

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Soledad Escobar Villegas ◽  
Santiago Pérez-Nievas ◽  
Guillermo Cordero
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Gender Disparity ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures ◽  
The Eu

This article analyses the descriptive representation of immigrant-origin women in two local Spanish elections. On the basis of the influence of political opportunity structures and the role played by political parties, we quantify their presence on party lists and their degree of success in becoming councilwomen. Using the APREPINM database we compare their levels of representation across different immigrant-origin minorities and the degree of gender disparity within each group. Our results show that women originating from the EU and Latin America benefit from greater access to party lists than their male counterparts and their female peers from other groups. But when it comes to being elected as councilwomen, only Latin-American women maintain this comparative advantage.

Political Parties and Confidence in Government: A Comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur H. Miller ◽  
Ola Listhaug
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Cognitive Judgements ◽  
Structural Aspects

Comparable survey data from Norway, Sweden and the United States are used to examine trends in political trust for the period 1964–86. During the early part of that period trust declined in all three countries; later it recovered for Norway but continued to plummet in Sweden and the United States. Three major features of the party system are hypothesized to explain the difference in these trends for the three countries. These features are: the structural aspects of the party system; the public's cognitive judgements of the parties as representatives of the policy interests; and the possibility that a negative rejection of political parties as undesirable institutions may spill over to citizen evaluations of government more generally.

Occupy Movement, Religion and Social Formations

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Matt Sheedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

The Occupy movement was an unprecedented social formation that spread to approximate 82 countries around the globe in the fall of 2011 via social media through the use of myths, symbols and rituals that were performed in public space and quickly drew widespread mainstream attention. In this paper I argue that the movement offers a unique instance of how discourse functions in the construction of society and I show how the shared discourses of Occupy were taken-up and shaped in relation to the political opportunity structures and interests of those involved based on my own fieldwork at Occupy Winnipeg. I also argue that the Occupy movement provides an example of how we might substantively attempt to classify “religion” by looking at how it embodied certain metaphysical claims while contrasting it with the beliefs and practices of more conventionally defined “religious” communities.

‘It Is a Tradition in the Nuclear Industry . . . Secrecy’: Political Opportunity Structures and Nuclear Knowledge Production in France

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042110250
Author(s):  
Julie Schweitzer ◽  
Tamara L Mix
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Shaping Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

Employing the example of France’s civil nuclear program, we connect political opportunity structures (POSs) to mechanisms of knowledge production, identifying how opposing stakeholders generate knowledge about a controversial technology. A history of nuclear dependence in France creates a context that praises, normalizes, and rationalizes nuclear energy while stigmatizing attempts to question or contest the nuclear industry’s dominant position. Integrating Bond’s knowledge-shaping process with Coy and colleagues’ concept of oppositional knowledge, we consider how the broader social, political, and economic context influences opposing stakeholder assessments of nuclear energy. Employing qualitative semi-structured interviews, we offer unique insight into the French nuclear debate, discussing the role of POS in shaping knowledge production.

Exploiting a Crisis: Abortion Activism and the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Movement Organizations ◽  
Medical Procedure ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Movement Organizations

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”

The “Separation” of Religion and Polities: The Paradoxes of Spinoza

1988 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 603-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillel G. Fradkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Founding Fathers

Benedict Spinoza is the first philosophical proponent of liberal democracy. In his Theologico-Political Tractate he calls for the liberation of philosophy from theology and for the subordination of religion to politics. Though Spinoza may have not influenced the American Founding Fathers directly, both the clarity and the paradoxes of his arguments are perhaps the best guide to understanding better the present-day conflicts over religion and politics in the United States. Spinoza's insistence on the prerogative of the political sovereign to exercise absolute authority in the sphere of moral action necessarily complicates religious values. But the “inconveniences” resulting from liberal democracy are justified in terms of justice.

The Role of Congress in the Development of a Responsible American Policy Toward Angola

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Bender
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
American Policy

In addition to our discussions today of the current situation in Angola, I would like to direct my remarks to the question of what role, if any, the United States should play with regard to Angola, and concretely, how the Congress can assist in the formulation and execution of a responsible American policy toward Angola. We have all learned a number of important lessons from recent revelations about the conduct of American policy in Southeast Asia, about Government coverups such as Watergate, corporate bribery of foreign officials and political parties, and about the illegal and unacceptable activities of the CIA as described in the Rockefeller Commission report and elsewhere. Certainly we can apply some of these lessons to our present consideration of U.S. policy toward Angola; hopefully we will learn the vital facts and ask the necessary questions now, rather than, as has too often been the case, after the fact.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document