Speak No Evil

Author(s):  
Heidi Hardt

As a fourth empirical chapter, Chapter 6 identifies the sources that motivate elites to share their knowledge of strategic errors. Employing a survey experiment on elites, the chapter presents hypotheses about the impact of three different sources: the United States, NATO's secretariat and international media. Surprisingly, experimental results indicate that NATO elites are less likely to record or share knowledge of a strategic error if an action is framed as such by the United States. Results also demonstrate that NATO elites are slightly more likely to record if the action is framed as such an error by the secretariat. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why a powerful state would counter-intuitively have a dampening effect on an international organization’s capacity for retaining knowledge across time and space. Findings support the book’s argument that the secretariat plays a critical role in facilitating the development of institutional memory about past strategic errors.

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ardanaz ◽  
M. Victoria Murillo ◽  
Pablo M. Pinto

AbstractWe explore the impact of issue framing on individual attitudes toward international trade. Based on a survey experiment fielded in Argentina during 2007, which reproduces the setup of earlier studies in the United States, we show that individuals' position in the economy and their material concerns define the strength of their prior beliefs about international trade, and thereby mitigate their sensitivity to the new dimensions introduced in informational cues. Extending the analysis beyond the United States to a country with different skill endowments allows us to better explore the role of material and nonmaterial attributes on individual attitudes toward trade. We find that skill is a central predictor of support for openness. The effect is strongest for individuals in the service sector and in cities that cater to the producers of agricultural commodities. Our findings suggest that the pattern of support for economic integration reflects the predictions from recent literature in international economics that emphasizes trade's impact on the relative demand for skilled labor regardless of factor endowments. Our findings also amend recent empirical contributions that suggest socialization is the main factor explaining individual sensitivity to issue framing on trade preferences. We suggest that material conditions associated with income and price effects are crucial, both in shaping trade preferences and in affecting the malleability of attitudes to issue framing. Hence, our results provide a crucial contribution to our general understanding of the attributes shaping susceptibility to political framing in policy debates.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110084
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Madrigal ◽  
Stuart Soroka

The migrant caravan is comprised of thousands of people traveling from Central America to the Mexico–U.S. border seeking refuge from their home countries. In news coverage, images of the caravan regularly portray large groups of immigrants walking toward the border. What are the consequences of this depiction on attitudes toward immigration? We suggest that images of groups of immigrants, in contrast with images of individual immigrants, will tend to decrease support for immigration. In 2019, we preregistered and ran a web-based survey experiment in the United States in which respondents read a news story with either an image of immigrants in a crowd setting, an image of an individual immigrant, or a control condition. The group treatment produces no systematic increase in anti-immigrant sentiment relative to the control. However, we do find differences in the group and individual treatments for respondents who are high in threat sensitivity. Findings are discussed as they relate to recent work on the roles of both fear and person positivity in attitudes about immigration, as well as the potential importance of editorial choices in the portrayal of immigration to the United States.


Author(s):  
Matthew Rimmer

Copyright exceptions and limitations in the United States have experienced dynamic evolution in light of new technological developments. There has been significant legal debate in the courts and in the United States Congress about the scope of the defense of fair use. The copyright litigation over Google Books has been a landmark development in the modern history of copyright law. The victory by Google, Inc., over the Authors Guild in the decade-long copyright dispute is an important milestone for copyright law. The ruling of Leval J emphasizes that the defense of fair use in the United States plays a critical role in promoting transformative creativity, freedom of speech, and innovation. The Supreme Court of the United States was decisive in its rejection of the Authors Guild’s efforts to challenge the decision of Leval J. There has been significant debate in the United States Copyright Office and United States Congress over the development of “the Next Great Copyright Act.” Hearings have taken place within the United States Congressional system about the history, nature, and future of the defense of fair use under United States copyright law. There remains much debate about the internationalization of the defense of fair use, and the need for the trading partners of the United States to enjoy similar flexibilities with respect to copyright exceptions. There has been concern about the impact of mega-regional trade agreements—such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership—upon copyright exceptions, such as the defense of fair use.


2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-228
Author(s):  
Ellora Derenoncourt ◽  
Claire Montialoux

Abstract The earnings difference between white and black workers fell dramatically in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This article shows that the expansion of the minimum wage played a critical role in this decline. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act extended federal minimum wage coverage to agriculture, restaurants, nursing homes, and other services that were previously uncovered and where nearly a third of black workers were employed. We digitize over 1,000 hourly wage distributions from Bureau of Labor Statistics industry wage reports and use CPS microdata to investigate the effects of this reform on wages, employment, and racial inequality. Using a cross-industry difference-in-differences design, we show that earnings rose sharply for workers in the newly covered industries. The impact was nearly twice as large for black workers as for white workers. Within treated industries, the racial gap adjusted for observables fell from 25 log points prereform to 0 afterward. We can rule out significant disemployment effects for black workers. Using a bunching design, we find no aggregate effect of the reform on employment. The 1967 extension of the minimum wage can explain more than 20% of the reduction in the racial earnings and income gap during the civil rights era. Our findings shed new light on the dynamics of labor market inequality in the United States and suggest that minimum wage policy can play a critical role in reducing racial economic disparities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-119
Author(s):  
Niloufer Siddiqui

In authoritarian states, emerging democracies, and well-established democracies alike, alternative accounts that contest official state narratives are common. Why do people believe such accounts even in the absence of supporting evidence? While this question has been explored in the United States, relatively little research has assessed it in other contexts. Through a survey experiment carried out in Pakistan, this article tests the impact of cues by political parties on belief in such conspiracy theories. The results provide evidence in favor of partisan cueing: When alternative narratives are endorsed by political parties viewed favorably by the respondent, they are more likely to be believed. I suggest that political parties are able to capitalize on misinformation and a lack of trust in official institutions for tactical advantage. Results differ by subgroup: Higher income and urban respondents are swayed more by their own party source than are lower income and rural individuals.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
David T. Buckley

Abstract What impact do cues from religious elites have on followers, particularly when religious communities are internally divided? Could religious elites promote internal consensus, or would their cues stoke further internal polarization? This article utilizes the release of Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', to explore these questions. A unique survey experiment, conducted on a nationally representative sample of Catholic voters in the United States in late 2015, tests the impact of Francis' message relative to a similar message from unidentified environmental elites. In keeping with other studies of Laudato's impact in the United States, findings reveal real, but nuanced, effects from Francis' environmental cue. The Francis cue did impact conservatives and high religiosity Catholics, but these effects were not distinct from those on other Catholics in the sample, suggesting limitations in promoting consensus. Instead, responses to a Francis cue varied sharply depending on pre-existing views of Francis' leadership.


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