scholarly journals Civil liberties at the crossroads: Libertarian and illiberal attitudes among politically charged online groups

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Fasce ◽  
Diego Avendaño
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Online Groups ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Social Conservatism

Civil liberties and rights such as freedom of expression, press, thought, religion, association, lifestyle, and equality against the law are being subjected to fierce controversies within the socio-political landscape of Western developed countries. Based on a literature review, we develop two working hypotheses aimed at explaining divergent attitudes toward civil liberties among politically charged online communities on each side of the political spectrum. First, a “libertarian attitude” among rightist groups, in which economic conservatism suppresses the illiberal tendencies of social conservatism and right-wing authoritarianism. Second, a “illiberal attitude” among leftist groups, elicited by the rise of authoritarian forms of social justice-seeking within some influential left-wing ideologies. We report a correlational study using a cross-sectional sample (n = 902), whose results support both hypotheses. Lastly, we discuss these results in relation to polarization over civil liberties and perceived power imbalances between conservatives and liberals.

scholarly journals Experiments in political psychology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Fischer ◽  
Quentin Atkinson ◽  
Ananish Chaudhuri
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Orientation Scale ◽  
The Right ◽  
Social Conservatism

This chapter provides an overview of studies that use incentivised experiments to study political ideology. We look first at studies that conceptualise political ideology along a unidimensional liberal-conservative spectrum and explore whether there are behavioural differences between liberals and conservatives. While recent studies find that liberals display more pro-sociality, many other studies find that liberals and conservatives display similar levels of pro-social, ingroup-biased, normative, and punitive behaviour. We then turn to experiments that study two-dimensional political ideology as embodied in the concepts of economic conservatism/progressivism (often measured with the Social Dominance Orientation scale) and social conservatism/progressivism (usually measured with the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale). In such experiments, economic conservatives display lower levels of pro-sociality and universalism and greater tolerance of inequality and tendencies to harm outgroups. Social conservatives tend to display “groupishness”, including distrusting anonymous strangers, cooperating with ingroup members, following rules, punishing in the ultimatum game, and sometimes harming outgroups.

scholarly journals Clarifying the Structure and Nature of Left-Wing Authoritarianism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H Costello ◽  
Shauna Bowes ◽  
Sean T. Stevens ◽  
Irwin Waldman ◽  
Scott O. Lilienfeld
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Nomological Network ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Left And Right

Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously known as “the Loch Ness Monster” of political psychology. We iteratively construct a measure and data-driven conceptualization of LWA across six samples (N = 7,258) and conduct quantitative tests of LWA’s relations with over 50 authoritarianism-related variables. We find that left- and right-wing authoritarianism reflect a shared constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and values that might be considered the “heart” of authoritarianism. Our results also indicate that LWA powerfully predicts several critical, real-world outcomes, including participation in political violence. We conclude that a movement away from exclusively right-wing conceptualizations of authoritarianism may be required to illuminate authoritarianism’s central features, conceptual breadth, and psychological appeal.

Hypertrophy and proliferation of skeletal muscle fibers from aged quail

1995 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Carson ◽  
M. Yamaguchi ◽  
S. E. Alway
Keyword(s):  
Muscle Mass ◽  
Fiber Type ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Anterior Latissimus Dorsi ◽  
Fiber Number ◽  
Fiber Type Distribution ◽  
Distribution Shifts ◽  
The Right

The purpose of this study was to determined whether fibers in the anterior latissimus dorsi (ALD) muscle from aged Japanese quail have decreased hypertrophic or proliferative responses to 30 days of stretch overload compared with fibers from adult birds. Two groups of quail were studied, 12-wk-old quail (adult; n = 16) and 90-wk-old quail (aged; n = 16). The left wing of each bird was overloaded with a weight corresponding to 10% of the bird's body weight, and the right wing served as the intra-animal control. Quails were killed after 30 days of stretch overload. Total fiber number was quantified by counting all the fibers in a transverse section from the midbelly of the ALD muscle. ALD muscles in aged quails retained the capacity to increase their muscle mass (145%), total fiber number (49%), and fiber cross-sectional area (54%) in response to stretch overload. The ALD muscle in aged quail had a significantly lower increase in muscle mass (33%) and mass corrected for nonmuscle tissue (36%) compared with the ALD from young adult birds. Age had no effect on fiber type distribution shifts with stretch. These results suggest that although muscles in old birds have a substantial ability to adapt to enlarge, stretch-induced hypertrophy is attenuated in muscles from old quail.

Romania

2019 ◽  
pp. 388-434
Author(s):  
Laurențiu Ștefan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Party System ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right

In Romania, a highly segmented and extremely volatile party system has contributed to a predominance of coalition governments. Alternation in power by coalitions led by either left-wing or right-wing parties used to be a major feature of Romanian governments. Thus, until a short-lived grand coalition in 2009, ideologically homogeneous coalitions were the general practice. Since then, parties from the right and left of the political spectrum have learned to work together in government. Given the semi-presidential nature of the political regime and the exclusive power to nominate the prime minister, the Romanian president plays an important role in coalition formation. The president also plays a pivotal role by shadowing the prime minister and therefore influencing the governance of coalitions. She has the power to veto ministerial appointments and therefore she can also shape the cabinet line-up. Pre-election coalitions are a common feature, more than two-thirds of Romanian coalition governments have been predicated on such agreements. Coalition agreements dealt with both policy issues and coalition decision-making bodies and the governance mechanisms that have been in most cases enforced and complied with—until the break-up of the coalition and the downfall of the respective government. One very common decision-making body is the Coalition Committee, which has been backed on the operational level by an inner cabinet made up of the prime minister and the deputy prime ministers, which usually are the heads of the junior coalition parties.

scholarly journals Does Government Support Respond to Governments’ Social Welfare Rhetoric or their Spending? An Analysis of Government Support in Britain, Spain and the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1407-1429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Bernardi ◽  
James Adams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Left And Right

Issue ownership theory posits that when social welfare is electorally salient, left-wing parties gain public support by rhetorically emphasizing social welfare issues. There is less research, however, on whether left-wing governing parties benefit from increasing social welfare spending. That is, it is not known whether leftist governments gain from acting on the issues they rhetorically emphasize. This article presents arguments that voters will not react to governments’ social welfare rhetoric, and reviews the conflicting arguments about how government support responds to social welfare spending. It then reports time-series, cross-sectional analyses of data on government support, governments’ social welfare rhetoric and social welfare spending from Britain, Spain and the United States, that support the prediction that government rhetoric has no effects. The article estimates, however, that increased social welfare spending sharply depresses support for both left- and right-wing governments. These findings highlight a strategic dilemma for left-wing governments, which lose public support when they act on their social welfare rhetoric by increasing welfare spending.

Flank attacks

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs Rooduijn ◽  
Tjitske Akkerman
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Category ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Good People ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Radical Left

How is populism distributed over the political spectrum? Are right-wing parties more populist than left-wing parties? Based on the analysis of 32 parties in five Western European countries between 1989 and 2008, we show that radical parties on both the left and the right are inclined to employ a populist discourse. This is a striking finding, because populism in Western Europe has typically been associated with the radical right; only some particular radical left parties have been labeled populist as well. This article suggests that the contemporary radical left in Western Europe is generally populist. Our explanation is that many contemporary radical left parties are not traditionally communist or socialist (anymore). They do not focus on the ‘proletariat’, but glorify a more general category: the ‘good people’. Moreover, they do not reject the system of liberal democracy as such, but only criticize the political and/or economic elites within that system.

scholarly journals In search of the antecedents of adolescent authoritarianism: the relative contribution of parental goal promotion and parenting style dimensions

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Duriez ◽  
Bart Soenens ◽  
Maarten Vansteenkiste
Keyword(s):  
Parenting Style ◽  
Social Dominance ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Right Wing Authoritarianism ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Need Support ◽  
Parental Rearing ◽  
Parenting Goals

Although research drew attention to the importance of both parental goal promotion and parental rearing style in explaining adolescent authoritarian submission (Right‐Wing Authoritarianism or RWA) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation or SDO), research failed to examine their combined effects. This study examines the relative contribution of parenting goals (i.e. extrinsic vs. intrinsic and conservation goals) and styles (i.e. need support and regulation) and their interactions in the prediction of adolescent RWA and SDO. Cross‐sectional analyses show that, whereas parenting goals and styles and their interactions predict RWA, SDO is predicted by parental goals only. However, in a second, longitudinal study, changes in RWA and SDO were predicted by parenting goals only. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

scholarly journals Left-Wing Xenophobia in Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svenja Kopyciok ◽  
Hilary Silver
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Ethnic Inequality ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Redistributive Policies ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Political Spectrum

Given rising populist nationalism and multiplying meanings of “right” and “left,” this paper assesses whether Europeans who identify as extremely left-wing on the political spectrum hold anti-immigrant attitudes. In contrast to right-wing xenophobes, we further examine whether the political left, who conventionally emphasize class conflict, oppose immigrants less for cultural reasons and more for materialist reasons. We also consider whether socioeconomic status and values traditionally associated with the political left—favoring redistributive policies, egalitarianism, or social rights to benefits and services for immigrants—temper left- more than right-wing xenophobia. We find that a surprisingly large share of those who identify as far left do express extremely xenophobic attitudes, and we profile them in contrast to far right xenophobes. With logistic regression analysis of nine waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2018), we find that, all things equal, socioeconomic status influences far left xenophobia more than far right xenophobia, but inegalitarian values, less support for redistributive policies, and welfare chauvinism can only partially account for far left xenophobia and unexpectedly do not distinguish it from far right xenophobia. This implies that far left parties might adopt anti-immigrant policies to try to retain their loyal voters, even though such policies do not comport with broader left-wing values and may increase racial and ethnic inequality. Controlling for demographic and attitudinal differences reduces the probability of xenophobia among the far left by about sixty percent, but there remains some residual anti-immigrant attitudes among this group still to be explained.

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