Elites, Participation, and the Democratic Creed

1979 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Femia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Democratic Norms

The primary purpose of this paper is to cast doubt on the theoretical and empirical soundness of two well-known survey studies of public opinion, ‘Consensus and Ideology in American Politics' by McClosky, and ‘Fundamental Principles of Democracy, Bases of Agreement and Disagreement’ by Prothro and Grigg. That these articles contributed to the pluralist orthodoxy of the fifties and early sixties is evident from their data and conclusions, which can be summarized as follows: (1) it cannot be claimed that the United States enjoys a wide democratic consensus; the majority of citizens exhibit only a superficial commitment to democratic norms and ideas; (2) rather, it is the social and political elites who are the main repositories of democratic virtue; therefore (3) any attempt greatly to increase popular participation would needlessly expose present institutions to authoritarian pressures. Although the past decade or so has witnessed a rehabilitation of radical democratic theory, these articles have enjoyed remarkable freedom from serious criticism. Indeed, their findings have become conventional academic wisdom. Through a detailed analysis, I attempt to demonstrate that the questionnaires used in the two investigations are both carelessly constructed and arbitrarily tied to a narrow, a historical conception of democracy. It is also argued that both studies are marred by a fundamental contradiction common (though hitherto undetected) in pluralist writing.

“Farewell, Saigon, I Promise I Will Return”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phuong Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vietnamese Americans ◽  
Boat People ◽  
Open Sea ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Right

This chapter’s subtitle focuses on the social work performed by artists, journalists, and activists, who, during the late 1970s, comforted grieving souls through the construction of a refugee cultural identity and community, specifically as the true patriots whose flight from communism and testimony later on revealed what really happened after 1975. Beginning with the boat people exodus in the late 1970s, worldwide public opinion, which had vilified the South Vietnamese as losers of the war and obstacles to revolution, began to view the winners of the postwar. Their willingness to risk their lives on the open sea cast doubt on Hanoi’s revolutionary promises, and, through bipartisan support for the plight of the boat people, enabled the United States and Vietnamese Americans to cast themselves on the right side of history in ways never possible during the war itself.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Peter Hart-Brinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Generational Theory ◽  
Cultural Schemas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This chapter introduces the concepts of generational change, generational theory, and the social imagination, and it describes how they can help us understand the evolution of public opinion about gay marriage in the United States and the role that public opinion played in the legalization of gay marriage. It introduces the thesis that the changing social imagination was the key cultural and cognitive development that led young cohorts to develop more supportive attitudes about gay marriage while also causing older cohorts to rethink their prior opinions. It explains how the imagination both produces and draws from the cultural schemas that we use to make sense of the world and why different groups can develop different cultural schemas. It concludes by describing the overall plan of the book and the author’s standpoint.

America in 1959 — as Seen from Moscow

1960 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick C. Barghoorn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Gradual Increase ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Forces

InSpite of a continued gradual increase of American-Soviet contacts, the official Soviet image of the United States in 1959 was shaped, as before, largely by a combination of preconcert tion and contrivance. The massive Soviet machinery of communication continued to present to the peoples of the Soviet Union a picture of America based less on empirical judgment than on the application to changing circumstances of unchanging attitudes. As in the past, the Kremlin's image of America and of the West in general appeared to be as much an instrument for the manipulation of foreign and Soviet public opinion as it was a reflection of Moscow's appraisal of international political forces. The official doctrine of irreconcilable struggle between Soviet “socialism” and Western “capitalism” held undiminished significance for the rationalization and legitimization of Kremlin power and policy.

scholarly journals From Apprenticeship to Internship: The Social and Legal Antecedents of the Intern Economy

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Frenette
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
School To Work ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This article looks towards the future of the intern economy by focusing on its past. What led to recent debates about the intern economy? How did it become legally possible for interns to work for free? Using the United States as my case study, I draw parallels between the current intern economy and its closest historical antecedent, the apprenticeship system. By providing a brief overview of the history of work-based learning and the unpaid internship’s legal underpinnings, this article ultimately frames current lawsuits and debates as a correction to today’s insufficiently scrutinized youth labour regime not unlike the apprenticeship systems of the past. In the attempt to facilitate youth transitions from school to work, yet maintain minimum wage standards, government intervention and—more imminently likely—legal decisions will, I anticipate, eventually transform the intern economy much like the Fitzgerald Act of 1937 drastically formalized apprenticeships in the United States.

Austerity and Aging in the United States: 1980 and beyond

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carroll L. Estes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Old Age ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Policy Solutions

This paper presents a critical examination of the past and future direction of social policies for the aged in the United States. The definitions of the social problem of old age and of the appropriate policy solutions for this problem have reflected the ups and downs of the U.S. economy and the shifting bases of political power during the past thirty years. In the 1980s, three dominant definitions of reality are shaping public policy for the elderly: (a) the perception of fiscal crisis and the necessity for reduced federal expenditures; (b) the perception that national policies should give way to decentralization and block grants; and (c) the perception of old age as an individual problem. It is argued that old age policy in the United States reflects a two-class system of welfare in which benefits are distributed on the basis of legitimacy rather than on the basis of need.

scholarly journals A Crude Threat: The Limits of an Iranian Missile Campaign against Saudi Arabian Oil

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson ◽  
Miranda Priebe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Saudi Arabian ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ballistic Missile ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Persian Gulf

The United States and its Persian Gulf allies have been increasingly concerned with the growing size and complexity of Iran's ballistic missile programs. At a time when the United States and its allies remain locked in a standoff with Iran over the latter's nuclear program, states around the Persian Gulf fear that Iran would retaliate for an attack on its nuclear program by launching missiles at regional oil installations and other strategic targets. An examination of the threat posed by Iran's missiles to Saudi Arabian oil installations, based on an assessment of Iran's missile capabilities, a detailed analysis of Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure, and a simulated missile campaign against the network using known Iranian weapons, finds no evidence of a significant Iranian missile threat to Saudi infrastructure. These findings cast doubt on one aspect of the Iranian threat to Persian Gulf oil while offering an analytic framework for understanding developments in the Iranian missile arsenal and the vulnerability of oil infrastructure to conventional attack.

The “Historical Turn” in the Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert S. Klein
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Professional Societies ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
The Social

The first professional societies in the United States, from the 1880s to the 1910s, understood history to be closely associated with the other social sciences. Even in the mid-twentieth century, history was still grouped with the other social sciences, along with economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology. But in the past few decades, history and anthropology in the United States (though not necessarily in other countries) have moved away from the social sciences to ally themselves with the humanities—paradoxically, just when the other social sciences are becoming more committed to historical research.

scholarly journals A Rare Moment of Cross-Partisan Consensus: Elite and Public Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley ◽  
Aengus Bridgman ◽  
Peter John Loewen ◽  
Taylor Owen ◽  
Derek Ruths ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multimethod Approach

The COVID-19 pandemic requires an effort to coordinate the actions of government and society in a way unmatched in recent history. Individual citizens need to voluntarily sacrifice economic and social activity for an indefinite period of time to protect others. At the same time, we know that public opinion tends to become polarized on highly salient issues, except when political elites are in consensus (Berinsky, 2009; Zaller, 1992). Avoiding elite and public polarization is thus essential for an effective societal response to the pandemic. In the United States, there appears to be elite and public polarization on the severity of the pandemic (Gadarian et al., 2020). Other evidence suggests that polarization is undermining compliance with social distancing (Cornelson and Miloucheva, 2020). Using a multimethod approach, we show that Canadian political elites and the public are in a unique period of cross-partisan consensus on important questions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as its seriousness and the necessity of social distancing.

Here in the Middle

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Middle America

This chapter reflects on the idea of an American heartland now beset with problems and how it intertwines with nostalgic visions of a better past. Both perceptions play well to the insiders who live in declining rural communities and to audiences who have long since pursued more glamorous lifestyles elsewhere. The chapter considers the case of Smith County, situated at the exact geographic middle of the United States: the heart of America's heartland. That America's heartland is a thing of the past is a long-standing refrain in treatments of the region. The reigning motif is nostalgia for a pastoral village-based America. The other common perspective on middle America sees the region as a social problem. The chapter argues that neither nostalgia nor an emphasis on social problems adequately captures the complexity of the social transformations that took place in America's heartland.

Clausewitz: A Bibliographical Survey

1965 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Paret
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Partial Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Bibliographical Survey

The vitality of the social sciences in the United States has not prevented some of its most influential pioneers from becoming unread classics. A widespread preference for textbook treatment and up-to-theminute analysis plays its part; but if the reader does want to turn to the originals, he often finds that they are not readily available. Complete and scholarly editions of writers who pursued new directions of inquiry are rarer than might be supposed—even in their native language. The situation is particularly bad when it comes to foreign authors. A writer's theories and insights may be transmitted through one or two major works, while the rest of his output is ignored, so that his thoughts are analyzed in isolation, without benefit of the preliminary sketches, correspondence, and marginal studies that would give depth and suppleness to the interpretation. Until recently Rousseau and Tocqueville have been in this position; another case in point is Max Weber, ignorance of whose fertile theorizing has misled more than one commentator. Still another, and extreme, example of intellectual discontinuity is provided by Clausewitz. Much of his work has never been published; even in German most of it is out of print; little of it has ever been translated. The result has been the partial loss of a remarkable historical and theoretical achievement. To the American reader, in particular, Clausewitz rarely means more than the “philosopher of war,” a famous name associated with one or two clichés backed up by little of substance. Repeated attempts to outline Clausewitz's thought, or to present the “essential Clausewitz” in the form of excerpts, have never been of more than doubtful value, if only because his methodology and dialectic are scarcely less interesting than the conclusions they reach. It would be pointless to attempt the impossible once again. On the other hand, a brief survey of Clausewitz's writings and of the literature concerning him may provide a useful introduction to his theories and to the manner in which for the past 150 years they have influenced the study and the waging of war.

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