scholarly journals The Effect of Whiteness and Attempts to Preserve It on Political Division in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-117
Author(s):  
Therin Alrik Showalter
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Dramatic Shift

Beginning in the early 1990s, the American public has become increasingly politically polarized. As party affiliations have become more rigid, a racial trend has emerged in which white voters are much less likely than black voters to identify as liberal or align with the Democratic Party. Using voting data from the 2016 presidential election, this study correlates the prevalence of whiteness in certain counties with those counties’ support for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. This paper first details the increasing polarization over the past decades and the dramatic shift of white voters away from liberalism. It then analyzes the political affiliations of other identity groups (such as women, millennials, and college graduates) that are majority liberal and demonstrates that, when restricted to their white members, those groups all lean conservative. The research results find a significant correlation between concentrated whiteness and a rejection of Hillary Clinton. The correlation on a national level is weaker, however, than the correlation of counties when separated regionally, suggesting that the relationship between whiteness and anti-liberalism depends heavily on a county’s degree of whiteness (or anti-liberalism) in its geographical context. While it is impossible to determine whether the race of white voters consciously motivates their voting behavior, the results suggest that American democracy is informed, in some way, by the racial identities of its participants. These results should encourage the public to discuss the current political climate and its intensely divided electorate from a racial perspective. If the nation perceives political division as a problem to be solved, it is essential to understand what factors might be causing the division. To that end, the results of this study would be fundamental to the nation’s dialogue and should be considered when voters make their decision on Election Day. 

scholarly journals Who Can Be President of the United States?: Candidate Hillary Clinton and the Problem of Statutory Qualifications

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-121
Author(s):  
Seth Barrett Tillman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Federal Statute ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Qualifications for public office restrict democratic choice, but such restrictions have a long pedigree in many jurisdictions. For example, the U.S. Constitution sets out qualifications for elected federal officials: i.e., Representative, Senator, President, and Vice President. Qualifications for those positions include provisions relating to age, citizenship, and residence. It has been long debated whether these textual qualifications are exclusive (i.e., floors and ceilings) or whether they are merely floors, which can be supplemented by additional qualifications imposed by Congress or by the States. Once again, this issue has become topical. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a prominent candidate in now-ongoing Democratic Party primary elections. These primaries select delegates to a national convention which will choose the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2016 popular presidential election. It has been alleged that, during her term as Secretary of State, Clinton violated a provision of the federal statute mandating government record keeping. 18 U.S.C. § 2071 provides: “Whoever, having the custody of any … record … willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same … shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” This Article addresses two interesting interpretive challenges posed by Section 2071. First, does Section 2071’s “office under the United States” language reach the presidency? Second, if Section 2071’s “office under the United States” language encompasses the presidency, is the statute constitutional? In other words, does Congress have the power to create additional qualifications for the presidency?

scholarly journals The Impact of Fake News and the Emerging Post-Truth Political Era on Nigerian Polity: A Review of Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umaru A. Pate ◽  
Danjuma Gambo ◽  
Adamkolo Mohammed Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online News ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ruling Party

Since the rising to notoriety of the present ‘genre’ of malicious content peddled as ‘fake news’ (mostly over social media) in 2016 during the United States’ presidential election, barely three years until Nigeria’s 2019 general elections, fake news has made dangerously damaging impacts on the Nigerian society socially, politically and economically. Notably, the escalating herder-farmer communal clashes in the northern parts of the country, ethno-religious crises in Taraba, Plateau and Benue states and the furiously burning fire of the thug-of-war between the ruling party (All Progressives Congress, APC) and the opposition, particularly the main opposition party (People’s Democratic Party, PDP) have all been attributed to fake news, untruth and political propaganda. This paper aims to provide further understanding about the evolving issues regarding fake news and its demonic impact on the Nigerian polity. To make that contribution toward building the literature, extant literature and verifiable online news content on fake news and its attributes were critically reviewed. This paper concludes that fake news and its associated notion of post-truth may continue to pose threat to the Nigerian polity unless strong measures are taken. For the effects of fake news and post-truth phenomena to be suppressed substantially, a tripartite participation involving these key stakeholders – the government, legislators and the public should be modelled and implemented to the letter.

scholarly journals A Paradox in Polarization? Cross-pressured Representatives and the Missing Incentive to Moderate

World Affairs ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 182 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-96
Author(s):  
Benjamin T. Toll
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

Members of the public are often left choosing between two extreme candidates who will not represent the moderate, aggregate, public effectively. Cross-pressured members of the U.S. Congress serve a constituency that votes for the opposite party at the national level. If there is any group of representatives that have an incentive to moderate their voting behavior, it is cross-pressured members. In this article, I show that cross-pressured members are more moderate than the average member of their party. This could provide constraints on rampant partisanship in the form of districts that are comfortable electing a representative of one party and voting for the president of the other. However, I show that these members are significantly less likely to be reelected. Thus a paradox exists in which cross-pressured members who moderate their voting behavior are no more likely to be rewarded for behaving the way citizens claim they want to represent.

A Triad of Crisis Communication in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Eid ◽  
Jenna Bresolin Slade
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Change ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
System Collapse ◽  
Right To Communicate ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

The United States experienced a core-shaking tumble from their pedestal of superpower at the beginning of the 21st century, facing three intertwined crises which revealed a need for change: the financial system collapse, lack of proper healthcare and government turmoil, and growing impatience with the War on Terror. This paper explores the American governments’ and citizens’ use of social network sites (SNS), namely Facebook and YouTube, to conceptualize and debate about national crises, in order to bring about social change, a notion that is synonymous with societal improvement on a national level. Drawing on democratic theories of communication, the public sphere, and emerging scholarship on the Right to Communicate, this study reveals the advantageous nature of SNS for political means: from citizen to citizen, government to citizen, and citizen to government. Furthermore, SNS promote government transparency, and provide citizens with a forum to pose questions to the White House, exchange ideas, and generate goals and strategies necessary for social change. While it remains the government’s responsibility to promote such exchanges, the onus remains with citizens to extend their participation to active engagement outside of SNS if social change is to occur. The Obama Administration’s unique affinity to SNS usage is explored to extrapolate knowledge of SNS in a political context during times of crises.

Religion and Progressive Activism

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
New Left ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Plowshares Movement

This volume focuses on an important, if often overlooked, way that religion and politics intersect in the United States. Within almost every community, and involved with almost every possible issue or area of public concern, progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life. Their presence complicates the prevailing wisdom that religion is necessarily conservative and political progressivism is necessarily secular. Yet little is known about these activists, either among the public or within academia. This book brings together a group of leading experts who describe and analyze the inner worlds and public activities of the progressive religious activist field, including chapters on faith-based community organizing, immigrant rights activism, the Plowshares movement, the New Left, and the Nuns on the Bus, among others. Other chapters consider the political engagement of various religious communities, including Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Catholics. Finally, authors consider connections between these activists and the Democratic Party, examine what factors lead congregations to mobilize for progressive causes, and trace the revival of civil religious rhetoric. Taken together, this book challenges common perceptions of religiously motivated social action, and offers new ways of thinking about the American religio-political landscape as a whole.

The Early American Origins of Entitlements

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 360-404
Author(s):  
Laura S. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Health Security ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early American ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

There is perhaps no topic that has generated more sustained interest and controversy in the United States during the past three decades than the public policies called “entitlements.” From the Great Society innovations of the 1960s to the guaranteed income plan of the 1970s to the “health security” proposal of the early 1990s, debate over the issue of which U.S. citizens should be entitled to what kind of national-level benefits has been a constant in American political life. Though consensus has occasionally been reached, moments of accord have been fragile and fleeting. Late 1995 and early 1996 found both President William Clinton and a large, bipartisan majority of Congress targeting poor Americans and their benefits, advocating an “end to welfare as we know it.” Yet interbranch disagreement over the way that “welfare” reform should be implemented reached such heights that the annual U.S. budget development process broke down, resulting in repeated shutdowns of government agencies and the threat that, for the first time in the history of the American nation, the United States would default on its obligations to its creditors.

Secular Partisan Realignment in the United States: The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of White Partisan Support since the New Deal Era

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert P. Kitschelt ◽  
Philipp Rehm
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
White American ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
Partisan Realignment ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
The New Deal

White American voters have realigned among the two dominant parties by income and education levels. This article argues that the interaction of education and income provides a more insightful—and stark—display of this change than treating them individually. Each group of voters is associated with distinctive “first dimension” views of economic redistribution and “second dimension” preferences concerning salient sociopolitical issues of civic and cultural liberties, race, and immigration. Macro-level hypotheses are developed about the changing voting behavior of education-income voting groups along with micro-level hypotheses about the propensity of vote switching. The hypotheses are tested with data from the American National Election Studies 1952–2016. A profound realignment is revealed between (groups of) white voters and the two main US parties that is consistent with the theoretical expectations developed in the article.

Electoral Vulnerability, Party Affiliation, and Dyadic Constituency Responsiveness in U.S. Legislatures

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 484-491
Author(s):  
Nathalie Giger ◽  
Heike Klüver ◽  
Christopher Witko
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Voting Decisions

It is often argued that electoral vulnerability is critical to constituency responsiveness. We investigate this possibility using different measures of vulnerability, but argue that in the United States the Republican Party may be less responsive than the Democratic Party due to its core constituency and view of representation. We test our hypotheses relying on an innovative research design that exploits referenda in U.S. states to compare legislator voting behavior with voter preferences on exactly the same policy proposal, allowing us to overcome the measurement problems of much previous research. Based on a newly compiled data set of more than 3,000 voting decisions for 818 legislators on 27 referenda, we find high levels of congruence, but that congruence with the median voter is higher for legislators who are running for reelection. We also find that Democrats are more responsive after a close election but that Republicans are not sensitive to electoral margins.

ADOPTIONS

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 366-386
Author(s):  
Samuel Karelitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Agencies ◽  
Widespread Interest

Any practice or social institution which is increasing at a rapid rate deserves review by the professions involved and by the public, to see where it is going and how it is getting there. This question of adoption is a vast national problem and one that concerns medical and legal practitioners, the courts, public health, public or private social agencies. Adoptions in the United States have increased 80% in the last 10 years, and the increase appears to be continuing. The reasons for this phenomenon are probably many and mixed. Underlying them is the widespread interest in family life, in wanting children and more children as evidenced by the increase in the birth rate and in the size of families. Even college graduates, traditionally the low birth-rate group, are having bigger families today. As a background for the more specific papers to follow, I should like to present an over-all view of the extent of the problem and some of the major issues involved. There is no over-all national pattern of adoption procedure in the United States as defined by law or as carried out in practice. Just as laws vary from state to state—on marriage, divorce, taxation, or civil rights— so laws relating to adoption vary. Much of our legal machinery, furthermore, is concerned with the process of legalizing the status of the child, of finishing the job and tying the knot, and not with the core of the problem—the placement of a child for adoption. There are great differences in social agencies. Their practices as well as their philosophy are undergoing study and reappraisal all the time—and especially now.

A Slippery Slope: Economists and Social Insurance in the United States

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Du Boff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Negative Images

Since the 1980s welfare state protections have been blamed for a host of economic problems. In the United States, conservatives have always disliked Social Security but could not effectively attack this popular program until the 1980s, when they devised a new tactic—warning young people that they would never get their “money's worth” from Social Security, which is on the brink of “bankruptcy.” The political climate, dominated by a drive to cut back “big government,” also became favorable for attempts to destabilize Social Security politically. Thus, negative images of Social Security have been forced onto the public agenda, and economists who consider themselves “liberal” have uncritically accepted this new set of political “givens.” It is an example of how they address “crises” as separable issues tied to no particular social context.

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