The Political Case for Gender Egalitarianism

Author(s):  
Gina Schouten

This chapter argues that a liberal society cannot remain stable over time if its institutions are structured on the basis of an assumption that one’s sex will dictate the kind of work that one does. Stability in the relevant sense includes a moral dimension, and this chapter shows that moralized stability is threatened by arguing that the institutionalized assumption that sex will dictate the kind of work that one does is an affront to the political value of autonomy. When gender norms and social institutions built upon the assumption of breadwinner/homemaker specialization constitute formidable obstacles to the enactment of gender-egalitarian lifestyles, the citizenship interest in stability will license—and in fact demand—interventions to remove those obstacles. The criterion of reciprocity thus positively calls for gender-egalitarian political interventions under these circumstances. I go on to argue that the circumstances demanding those interventions obtain in the United States today.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-1) ◽  
pp. 62-91
Author(s):  
Irina Zhezhko-Braun ◽  

This article is the third and final in a series dealing with the birth of a new political elite in the United States, the minority elite. In previous articles, the mechanism of its appearance was analyzed, as well as its ideology, goals, program and values. The black movement, as the most co-organized of all protest movements, is entering the final phase of its development, being engaged in the placement of its representatives in state and federal governments, political parties and other social institutions. The women’s movement has recently been taken over by ethnic movements, primarily blacks, and has become their vanguard. This article describes new social elevators for the promotion of minority representatives into the corridors of power. The logic of promoting people of their own race, gender and nationality to the highest branches of power began to prevail over other criteria for recruiting personnel. During the 2020 election campaign, a new mechanism for promoting minorities in all branches of government was formed. It is based on numerous violations of local and federal electoral legislation. The mechanism of pressure on the US electoral system is analyzed using the example of the state of Georgia and the activities of politician Stacey Abrams. The article describes Abrams’ strategy to create a network of NGOs that are focused on one mission - to arrange for the political shift of the state in the elections. These organizations circumvented existing laws, making the state of Georgia the record holder for electoral irregularities and lawsuits. The article shows that Abrams’ struggle with the electoral laws of her state is based on the political myth of the voter suppression of minorities. The author identifies a number of common characteristics of the new elite. The minority elite does not show any interest in social reconciliation and overcoming racial conflict, but rather makes efforts to incite the latter, to attract the government to its side and increase its role in establishing “social justice” through racial quotas and infringement of the rights of those social strata that it has appointed bearers of systematic racism in society. As the colored elite increases and the government’s role in resolving racial conflicts grows, the minority movement is gradually condemned, it ceases to be a true grassroots movement and turns into astroturfing.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 390-391
Author(s):  
Greg Dimitriadis

In this brief essay, I take up Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964) to discuss key social and psychic energies at work across the United States today. Although they have longstanding roots in the United States, these paranoid tendencies have only intensified in recent years. I see this in two, intertwined ways–new social and psychic vulnerabilities as well as the rise of so-called “eliminationist” rhetoric.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bartle ◽  
Sebastian Dellepiane-Avellaneda ◽  
James Stimson

The political ‘centre’ is often discussed in debates about public policy and analyses of party strategies and election outcomes. Yet, to date, there has been little effort to estimate the political centre outside the United States. This article outlines a method of estimating the political centre using public opinion data collected for the period between 1950 and 2005. It is demonstrated that it is possible to measure the centre in Britain, that it moves over time, that it shifts in response to government activity and, furthermore, that it has an observable association with general election outcomes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 326-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Orentlicher

Although international covenants have long recognized a fundamental right to healthcare, and other countries provide healthcare coverage for all of their citizens, rights to healthcare in the United States have been adopted only grudgingly, and in a manner that is inherently unstable. While a solid right to healthcare would provide much benefit to individuals and society, the political and judicial branches of the U.S. government have granted rights that are incomplete and vulnerable to erosion over time.Unfortunately, enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) does not change these fundamental weaknesses in the regime of U.S. healthcare rights. Millions of Americans will remain uninsured after ACA takes full effect, and rather than creating a more stable right to healthcare, ACA gives unstable rights to more people. As a result, even if ACA survives its constitutional challenges, access to healthcare still will be threatened by the potential for attrition of the rights that ACA provides.


2021 ◽  
pp. 161-205
Author(s):  
Deva R. Woodly

Chapter 5 reports on the political impacts of the movement thus far, including the way it has reshaped public discourse and political meanings, transformed public opinion, and influenced public policy. This chapter contains extensive empirical data, including records of public opinion change over time, maps of where progressive prosecutors have been elected across the United States, lists of policies aimed at “defunding the police” or what abolitionist call nonreformist reforms, which emphasize divesting from police and prisons and investing in social support, policies that are under consideration or have been adopted by state and municipal legislatures.


Economies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin G. Mixon ◽  
Chandini Sankaran ◽  
Kamal P. Upadhyaya

This study extends the political science and political psychology literature on the political ideology of lawmakers by addressing the following question: How stable is a legislator’s political ideology over time? In doing so, we employ Nokken–Poole scores of legislators’ political ideology for members of the United States (U.S.) House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate who were elected prior to the 103rd Congress that began in early 1991 and who served consecutively through the 115th Congress, which ended in early 2019. Results from individual time-series estimations suggest that political ideology is unstable over time for a sizable portion of the members of both major political parties who serve in the U.S. Congress, while analysis of the pooled data suggests that, after accounting for inertia in political ideology and individual legislator effects, Republican legislators become more conservative over time. These results run somewhat counter to the finding in prior studies that the political ideologies of lawmakers and other political elites are stable over time.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (04) ◽  
pp. 737-755
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Coggins ◽  
James A. Stimson

Our focus is a puzzle: that ideological identification as “liberal” is in serious decline in the United States, but at the same time support for liberal policies and for the political party of liberalism is not. We aim to understand this divorce in “liberal” in name and “liberal” in policy by investigating how particular symbols rise and fall as associations with the ideological labels “liberal” and “conservative.” We produce three kinds of evidence to shed light on this macro-level puzzle. First, we explore the words associated with “liberal” and “conservative” over time. Then we take up a group conception by examining the changing correlations between affect toward “liberals” and affect toward other groups. Finally, we consider the changing policy correlates of identification.


Author(s):  
Rickie Solinger

In what settings are babies born in the United States today? In 1900 more than 95 percent of American women gave birth at home. Fourteen years later, anesthesia, or “twilight sleep,” was first used to dull labor pains, accelerating over time the transition of...


The Border ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 45-73
Author(s):  
Martin A. Schain

This chapter examines how border policies have evolved in Europe and the United States. It goes beyond law and deals more broadly with what has been termed “policy output. ” The chapter considers how policies have varied over time and space, and the author argues that in both Europe and the United States immigration policy has increasingly become focused on the border, the reinforcement of border controls, and the link between other aspects of immigration to these controls. The framing of the political problem of immigration—as one of legal entry in the United States, and integration in Europe—has been connected to questions of border control and enforcement. Even as levels of immigration have been stable, or even in decline, policy on the border has become more important. The chapter concludes by dealing with outcomes, which help us to understand the relevance of policy objectives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Barkow

This essay explores how the role of the United States Sentencing Commission has changed over time. It has gone through three different phases in terms of its role (either actual or perceived) in federal sentencing. The first phase covers the Commission at its inception, and the perceived role of the Commission that dominated then was that of a politically insulated, expert agency that would serve, essentially, as an independent policy maker. This vision of the Commission never materialized, but it is important to understand this model in order to appreciate why the Commission was set up the way it was. During the second and dominant phase, which lasted for roughly two decades, from 1986 until 2007, the Commission played a weak supporting role to the political actors who oversaw its work, with Congress largely controlling its output. This period was characterized by political battering by Congress. Given the political climate of the time, that meant increases in sentences, but little else, from the Commission. The third phase began in 2007 and continues today. The Commission is now seen as a respected supplier of data, and its judgments are given more deference. In a sense, this role combines the first two. The Commission is recognized for its expertise, but that expertise is valuable only insofar as the information it generates has political value. The essay concludes with ways the Commission’s design can be improved to give it greater political influence in setting sentencing policy.


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