From Personal Responsibility to Political Mobilization: Using Attribution Frames to Overcome Policy Feedback Effects

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110632
Author(s):  
Mallory E. SoRelle
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Financial Protection ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Government Responsibility ◽  
Feedback Effects ◽  
Banking Reform ◽  
American Political Economy

Public policies that promote personal responsibility while minimizing government responsibility are a key feature of modern American political economy. They can decrease Americans’ political participation on a given issue, with detrimental consequences for the wellbeing of economically insecure families. Can this pattern be overcome? I argue that attribution frames highlighting government’s role in and responsibility for policies may increase people’s propensity for political action on an issue, but only if the frame can increase the salience of their preexisting beliefs about government intervention. Drawing on the case of consumer financial protection, I administer an experiment to determine the effect of attribution framing on people’s willingness to act in support of a popular banking reform. I find that helping people draw parallels between an issue they feel responsibility for and one they accept government responsibility for can boost political engagement on behalf of the original policy.

Repressive Religious Regulation and Political Mobilization in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin Gamza ◽  
Pauline Jones
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Perceived Harm

What is the relationship between state repression of religion and political mobilization in Muslim-majority states? Does religious repression increase the likelihood that Muslims will support acts of rebellion against the state? This chapter contends that the effect of repression on attitudes toward political mobilization is conditional on both the degree of enforcement and the type of religious practice that is being targeted. When enforcement is high and the repressive regulation being enforced targets communal (rather than individualistic) religious practices, Muslims expect state persecution of their religious community to increase, and that this persecution will extract a much greater toll. They are thus more willing to support taking political action against the state in order to protect their community from this perceived harm. The chapter tests this argument with two novel survey experiments conducted in Kyrgyzstan in 2019. It finds that the degree of enforcement has a significant effect on attitudes toward political mobilization, but this effect is negative (reducing support) rather than positive (increasing support). The chapter also finds that repression targeting communal practices has a stronger effect on attitudes toward political mobilization than repression targeting individualistic practices, but again, these effects are negative. The chapter’s findings suggest that the fear of collective punishment increases as the degree of enforcement increases, particularly when it comes to repression targeting communal practices. Thus, while Muslims are motivated to protect their community from harm, it may be that the certainty of financial and physical harm outweighs the expectation of increasing religious persecution.

scholarly journals Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases non-normative political engagement.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate ◽  
Willingness To Engage

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present paper, we tested the notion, whether a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and b) there may be opposing relations to normative vs. non-normative forms of political engagement. Two pre-registered experiments (N = 194; N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ non-normative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

How the Workplace Affects Employee Political Contributions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
JAN STUCKATZ
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
Political Contributions ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Public Companies ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Money In Politics

How important is the workplace for employees’ political donations? Contrary to research on workplace political mobilization, existing work assumes that most individual donors contribute ideologically. I link donations of employees and Political Action Committees (PACs) from 12,737 U.S. public companies between 2003 and 2018 to show that 16.7% of employee donations go to employer-PAC-supported candidates. I investigate the dynamics between employee and PAC donations within firm–legislator pairs over time and find that both rank-and-file employees and executives contribute more dollars to company-supported politicians. Firm–employee donation alignment is stronger on powerful and ideologically moderate politicians with high value for the employer. Results from a difference-in-differences design further show modest changes in the partisan composition of employee donations after swift changes in the partisan donations of corporate PACs. The results suggest investment-related rather than ideological motives for alignment and highlight the importance of corporations for money in politics.

scholarly journals Can Sustainable Consumption Trigger Political Activism? An Empirical Investigation of the Crowding-in Hypothesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9082
Author(s):  
Frédéric Vandermoere ◽  
Robbe Geerts ◽  
Raf Vanderstraeten
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
Online Forms ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Political Actions

In this article, we address the question whether political activism can be triggered by sustainable consumption. Specific attention is given to the crowding-out and crowding-in hypotheses. The first hypothesis is driven by a conflict view as it assumes that sustainable consumerism displaces the willingness to act collectively. In contrast, the latter hypothesis—crowding-in—frames conscious consumption as a potential political act whereby individual sustainable consumption may trigger political acts such as signing a petition, demonstrating, and voting. To address this issue, German survey data were analyzed (n = 936). Our analysis appears to confirm the crowding-in hypothesis. However, the results of multiple logistic regression analyses also show that the relation between sustainable consumption and political activism depends on the type of political action. Particularly, sustainable consumption does not relate to traditional political actions such as voting, but it does relate positively to less conventional (e.g., attending a demonstration) and online forms of political engagement (e.g., social media activism). Our findings also indicate that the positive association between sustainable consumption and less conventional politics may be moderated by educational attainment, suggesting that it is weakest among less educated groups. The paper ends with the empirical and theoretical conclusions that can be drawn from this study, and indicates some directions for future research.

scholarly journals Gender Policy Feedback: Perceptions of Sex Equity, Title IX, and Political Mobilization among College Athletes

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 642-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
James N. Druckman ◽  
Jacob E. Rothschild ◽  
Elizabeth A. Sharrow
Keyword(s):  
Title Ix ◽  
Student Athletes ◽  
Political Action ◽  
College Athletics ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Sex Discrimination ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Gender Policy ◽  
Democratic Responsiveness ◽  
Sex Equity

Public policies invariably confer or deny benefits to particular citizens. How citizens respond to relevant policies has fundamental implications for democratic responsiveness. We study the beliefs of a core constituency of one of the most celebrated sex non-discrimination policies in U.S. history: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Using a novel survey of college student-athletes, we find strong support for the spirit of the policy, with the vast majority of respondents reporting the opinion that there “should” be equity. Concurrently, student-athletes also perceive mal-distribution among status quo resources and opportunities and believe that redistribution is needed. Furthermore, they are willing to take political action to improve equality. Consistent with our expectations, these beliefs are particularly salient for women and those who perceive persistent sex discrimination in society. Our results reveal “positive policy feedback” among policy beneficiaries of Title IX who mobilize to seek equity in athletics. The dissatisfaction among policy beneficiaries raises questions about democratic responsiveness (e.g., to whom are policymakers and leaders in college athletics responding?) and highlights the political nature of college athletics.

scholarly journals Resolving the Puzzle of Conspiracy Worldview and Political Activism: Belief in Secret Plots Decreases Normative but Increases Nonnormative Political Engagement

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Forms ◽  
Intentions To Participate

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present article, we tested the notion, whether (a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and (b) there may be opposing relations to normative versus nonnormative forms of political engagement. Two preregistered experiments ( N = 194, N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ nonnormative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.

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