Women as a Force in Electoral Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Burns ◽  
Ashley Jardina ◽  
Nicole Yadon
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Access To Data

This chapter examines the study of gender and electoral behavior. Early gender scholars took on the challenge of countering the literature’s portrait of women’s passivity and minority status. They provided analyses and data that could speak to the possibility that women were in fact participating, clear-eyed, and political. We begin with an overview of this early work, and outline the trajectory of research on gender and electoral politics through the present day, where women are now seen as a political force in American politics. Scholars have built on these groundbreaking efforts, re-centering attention more squarely on both women and men, gaining access to data they themselves shaped, and drawing on theoretical tools with a wider array of observable implications to shift understandings of sameness, difference, and the processes that give rise to these outcomes.

The History of Islam in East Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicitas Becker
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
East African ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Government

The history of Islam in East Africa stretches back to around 1000 CE. Until the mid-20th century, it remained largely confined to the coast and closely bound up with the history of the Swahili towns situated on it. The Swahili language remains central to many East African Muslims, hence the occasionally heard phrase, “Swahili Islam.” East African Muslims are mostly Shafiites and some belong to Sufi orders, especially Qadiriyya and Shadhiliyya. Since c. 1850, Islam, with many variations in ritual, has become the religion of speakers of a multitude of languages across the region, second only to Christianity. The region’s independent nation-states initially promised equality for all religions within a secular order. Since c. 1990, though, the minority status of East African Muslims has fed into a multitude of grievances related to the region’s economic and political impasses. This situation has led to growing movements of Islamic preaching and activism, supported by increased contacts with congregations elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. At times, they have influenced electoral politics, especially in Zanzibar, where Islamic activism resonates with fear of marginalization by the mainland. In Kenya, Somali-influenced Islamist terrorists committed a series of atrocities in the 2010s. East African governments, in turn, have been proactive in tracking and disrupting such networks, and in Kenya, the government engaged in targeted assassination. Nevertheless, peaceful coexistence between Muslims and adherents of other religions remains the norm in East Africa, and its dynamics are often poorly understood.

The Partisanship of Protestant Clergy in the 2016 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
James L. Guth ◽  
Corwin E. Smidt
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
General Election ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Protestant Clergy ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Strategic Position ◽  
American Society ◽  
High Level

Abstract Given their strategic position within American society, clergy continue to remain important actors in American politics. This article examines the partisan identifications and electoral behavior of American Protestant clergy in the 2016 presidential election. Although clergy partisanship may be of interest in any election, the 2016 contest, given the milieu of political polarization and the presence of the Trump candidacy, provides an intriguing context for assessing the profession's electoral behavior, particularly among Republican clergy. Based on survey results from over 2,500 clergy drawn from ten Protestant (five mainline and five evangelical) denominations, the study finds that, during the early stages of the 2016 nomination process, only a small percentage of Republican clergy supported Trump and that, despite the high level of political polarization, a sizable segment of Republican clergy resisted partisan pressures and refused to vote for Trump in the general election. The propensity of both independent and Republican clergy to vote for the GOP nominee varied largely with the level of perceived “threats”: to the Christian heritage of the nation, from Islam, and from the process of “globalization.”

Voter Sex, Party, and Gender-Salient Issues: Attitudes about Sexual Harassment and Brett Kavanaugh in the 2018 Elections

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 532-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Hansen ◽  
Kathleen Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Supreme Court Justice ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Confirmation Hearings ◽  
Dominant Influence

Since the election of President Trump and the dawning of the #MeToo movement, gender-salient issues have had a primary place in recent American politics. This was particularly evident in 2018 in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings amid accusations that he has sexually assaulted a classmate. Previous research suggests that women should be more concerned about issues like sexual harassment and mobilized to participate in elections in which these issues are prominent. Yet, American politics has become more polarized in the last 25 years, requiring us to re-examine the impact of gender-salient issues on women’s electoral behavior. Employing data from a 2018 ANES pilot study, we examine the relative impact of gender and party on attitudes toward sexual harassment, Brett Kavanaugh, and participation in the 2018 elections. We find that, while gender plays some role in 2018, partisanship is still the dominant influence in these elections.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Adam Michael Auerbach ◽  
Jennifer Bussell ◽  
Simon Chauchard ◽  
Francesca R. Jensenius ◽  
Gareth Nellis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Vast Variation

In the study of electoral politics and political behavior in the developing world, India is often considered to be an exemplar of the centrality of contingency in distributive politics, the role of ethnicity in shaping political behavior, and the organizational weakness of political parties. Whereas these axioms have some empirical basis, the massive changes in political practices, the vast variation in political patterns, and the burgeoning literature on subnational dynamics in India mean that such generalizations are not tenable. In this article, we consider research on India that compels us to rethink the contention that India neatly fits the prevailing wisdom in the comparative politics literature. Our objective is to elucidate how the many nuanced insights about Indian politics can improve our understanding of electoral behavior both across and within other countries, allowing us to question core assumptions in theories of comparative politics.

The Concept of a Critical Realignment, Electoral Behavior, and Political Change

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter F. Nardulli
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
National Movements

The realignment perspective has exerted an enormous amount of influence on thinking about American politics, but recently it has fallen into disfavor. As a theory of political change, this dissatisfaction is warranted. However, in rejecting the realignment perspective, scholars risk losing a valuable concept, the notion of a critical realignment. My thesis is that, properly defined, the concept of a critical realignment can be a powerful tool in the study of electoral behavior and an important component of a broader theory of political change. This thesis derives from an analysis of presidential elections between 1828 and 1984. This analysis provides dramatic evidence for the proposition that critical realignments are important electoral phenomena. The evidence is equally clear, however, that critical realignments are subnational phenomena that vary considerably in form, not the majestic national movements some believed them to be. The analyses reported here reveal broadly based electoral eruptions of 40 to 50 points that endure for decades.

Governing America: An Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian E. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
National Security ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political History ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fiscal Constraint ◽  
The Impact

This book offers fresh narratives about U.S. political history by focusing on policy, political institutions, and electoral politics. It argues that the field of American political history, once marginalized, has been remade in vibrant fashion and now provides rich and original approaches and interpretations about America's political past. The book is divided into four thematic sections. Part I deals with the historiography of political history, and especially the intellectual underpinnings of the field and the multiple analytic foundations upon which it is built. Part II examines the challenges imposed by fiscal constraint in American politics, showing how policymakers were able to use innovative fiscal strategies such as Social Security and Medicare to build programs within such constraints. Part III considers the impact of the political process as it occurred in Congress, whereas Part IV explores how policy and politics intersected in the case of national security.

scholarly journals VOTING, NATIONHOOD, AND CITIZENSHIP IN LATE-COLONIAL AFRICA

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 1113-1135
Author(s):  
JUSTIN WILLIS ◽  
GABRIELLE LYNCH ◽  
NIC CHEESEMAN
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Secret Ballot ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Face

AbstractIn the face of considerable scepticism from some British commentators, elections by secret ballot and adult suffrage emerged as central features of the end of British rule in Africa. This article considers the trajectories of electoral politics in three territories – Ghana (Gold Coast), Kenya, and Uganda. It shows that in each of these, the ballot box came to provide a point of convergence for the disparate ambitions of nationalist politicians, colonial policy-makers, and a hopeful, restive public: performing order, asserting maturity and equality, and staking a claim to prosperity. Late-colonial elections, we argue, constrained political possibility even as they offered citizenship, presenting the developmentalist state as the only possible future and ensuring substantial continuities from late colonialism to independence. They also established a linkage between nationhood, adulthood, and the ballot that was to have enduring political force. Yet at the same time, they established elections as a space for a local politics of clientelism, and for kinds of claims-making and accountability that were to complicate post-independence projects of nation-building.

Religion and the 2020 Presidential Election: The Enduring Divide

The Forum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Campbell ◽  
James R. G. Kirk ◽  
Geoffrey C. Layman
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Evangelical Protestants ◽  
Voting Decisions

Abstract Religion played a prominent role in the 2020 presidential campaign. Donald Trump overtly courted white evangelical Protestants and Catholics, while Joe Biden emphasized his Catholicism far more than any Catholic candidate in American history. Did religion play as important a role in electoral behavior in 2020? If so, how and why did religion affect Americans’ voting decisions? We take up those questions by analyzing the religious vote in 2020 and the reasons why particular religious and non-religious groups voted as they did. We find that the religious divisions in the 2020 electorate were quite deep, but they were mostly unchanged from those present in 2016. Moreover, some electoral differences between religious groups are based in factors such as racial resentment, support for limited government, and anti-immigration attitudes that are not typically associated with religion. However, a key explanation for religious voting in 2020 was an old standby: the abortion issue. The religion gap in American electoral politics represents an enduring divide. The only changes were at the margins—but where elections are close, margins matter.

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