scholarly journals Causal Effects, Migration and Legacy Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Marbach
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Exposure Time ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Movement Behavior ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Principal Stratification ◽  
Legacy Effects ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Attitudinal Differences ◽  
Formal Framework

Social scientists have long been interested in the persistent effects of history on contemporary behavior and attitudes. To estimate legacy effects, studies typically compare people living in places that were historically exposed to some event and those that were not. Using principal stratification, we provide a formal framework to analyze how migration limits our ability to learn about the persistent effects of history from observed differences between historically exposed and unexposed places. We state the necessary assumptions about movement behavior to causally identify legacy effects. We highlight that these assumptions are strong; therefore, we recommend that legacy studies circumvent bias by collecting data on people's place of residence at the exposure time. Reexamining a study on the persistent effects of US civil-rights protests, we show that observed attitudinal differences between residents and non-residents of historic protest sites are more likely due to migration rather than attitudinal change.

Introduction: The Desegregation Dilemma

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Court ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The City

Despite nearly four decades of controversy and debate over school segregation, the desegregation dilemma is still largely unresolved. The “busing” problem has received less national attention in recent years, and there are no riots, bus burnings, and school boycotts, as witnessed in earlier decades. Yet current events reveal the depth of a dilemma that has divided educators, parents, jurists, social scientists, and many other groups since the beginning of the civil rights movement. Indicators of the current desegregation dilemma are numerous. Hundreds of school districts throughout the country still impose busing for desegregation purposes, many under court orders that are now more than twenty years old. Although the types of desegregation plans have evolved to some extent, with increased emphasis on school choice, many plans still compel children to attend schools that their parents would not choose, solely for the purpose of racial “balance.” Further, after a period of quiescence, school desegregation was again the subject of several major Supreme Court decisions in 1991 and 1992. The decisions affected the length of time and the conditions under which a school district has to maintain a court-ordered busing plan. Although these decisions dispelled a common misconception that school systems have to maintain desegregation plans “in perpetuity,” it is still unclear how many school districts can or will end their busing plans. Finally, new desegregation litigation and controversies continue to surface. In 1989 a lawsuit was initiated in a Connecticut state court by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to compel desegregation between the city of Hartford and its suburban districts. A similar city suburbs desegregation strategy failed in the federal courts, but the Hartford lawsuit seeks to build on the success of school equal-finance cases under state constitutions. In 1991 the school board of La Crosse, Wisconsin, adopted a busing plan to equalize economic (rather than race) differences among schools. Reminiscent of the busing controversies of the 1970s, all board members who supported the busing plan were voted out of office in a regular and a recall election, reflecting the widespread community opposition to busing for the purpose of achieving socioeconomic balance in schools.

Estimation of Causal Effects via Principal Stratification When Some Outcomes are Truncated by “Death”

2003 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junni L. Zhang ◽  
Donald B. Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Sample Space ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Outcome Variable ◽  
Principal Stratification ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
Large Sample ◽  
Traditional Approaches

The topic of “truncation by death” in randomized experiments arises in many fields, such as medicine, economics and education. Traditional approaches addressing this issue ignore the fact that the outcome after the truncation is neither “censored” nor “missing,” but should be treated as being defined on an extended sample space. Using an educational example to illustrate, we will outline here a formulation for tackling this issue, where we call the outcome “truncated by death” because there is no hidden value of the outcome variable masked by the truncating event. We first formulate the principal stratification ( Frangakis & Rubin, 2002 ) approach, and we then derive large sample bounds for causal effects within the principal strata, with or without various identification assumptions. Extensions are then briefly discussed.

Seizing the Stage: Social Performances from Mao Zedong to Martin Luther King Jr., and Black Lives Matter Today

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Performative Power

It is possible to look at radical social movements from the perspective of social performance theory; though, being wedded to nonsymbolic and realist methods, few contemporary social scientists would agree. Despite their immensely practical goals, the success of both Chinese Communists and American civil rights protesters depended on achieving performative power, all in the service of dramatically connecting with their audiences. The same can be said for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Persecution of Political and Social Scientists in Brazil

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (02) ◽  
pp. 123-128
Author(s):  
Philippe C. Schmitter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
National Council ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Equal Concern ◽  
Established Order

In recent issues ofPS, American political and social scientists have been accused – by their colleagues – ofsubservienceto the established order. Of equal concern to the profession should be the paradoxical plight of their Brazilian colleagues who, while pursuing much the same goals and utilizing many of the same techniques of inquiry, find themselves accused – by their government – ofsubversion, and very actively persecuted for this charge.The following is a description of the situation of Brazilian social scientists since December 1968. Official censorship, self-imposed prudence and the understandable propensity for foreign journalists to concentrate on the more spectacular and horrifying aspects of Brazil's current regime, e.g. torture, assassination by “political police” or vigilante group, arbitrary arrest and loss of political rights by prominent politicians, make it difficult to obtain reliable documentation. Much of the information I gathered personally during a three week stay in Rio de Janeiro, Sāo Paulo and Pôrto Alegre in May of 1969. This has been updated with the help of Brazilian scholars resident in the United States. For obvious reasons I cannot recognize their efforts personally. I would, however, like to thank Mr. William Wipfler of National Council of the Churches of Christ and Professor Ralph Della Cava of Queens University who are preparing a comprehensive dossier on civil rights violations for proximate publication. Peter Bell, formerly with the Ford Foundation in Rio, has been particularly helpful with information and criticism.

scholarly journals The Persistent Effect of U.S. Civil Rights Protests on Political Attitudes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soumyajit Mazumder
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Party Vote Shares

Protests can engender significant institutional change. Can protests also continue to shape a nation’s contemporary politics outside of more formalized channels? I argue that social movements can not only beget institutional change, but also long-run, attitudinal change. Using the case of the U.S. civil rights movement, I develop a theory in which protests can shift attitudes and these attitudes can persist. Data from over 150,000 survey respondents provide evidence consistent with the theory. Whites from counties that experienced historical civil rights protests are more likely to identify as Democrats and support affirmative action, and less likely to harbor racial resentment against blacks. These individual-level results are politically meaningful—counties that experienced civil rights protests are associated with greater Democratic Party vote shares even today. This study highlights how social movements can have persistent impacts on a nation’s politics.

scholarly journals The Necessity of Construct and External Validity for Generalized Causal Claims

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Esterling ◽  
David Brady ◽  
Eric Schwitzgebel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Construct Validity ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Internal Validity ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Tremendous Progress ◽  
The Social

The credibility revolution has facilitated tremendous progress in the social sciences by advancing design-based strategies that rely on internal validity to deductively identify causal effects. We demonstrate that prioritizing internal validity while neglecting construct and external validity prevents causal generalization and misleadingly converts a deductive claim of causality into a claim based on speculation and exploration -- undermining the very goals of the credibility revolution. We develop a formal framework of causal specification to demonstrate that internal, external and construct validity are jointly necessary for generalized claims regarding a causal effect. If one lacks construct validity, one cannot assign meaningful labels to the cause or to the outcome. If one lacks external validity, one cannot make statements about the conditions required for the cause to occur. Re-balancing considerations of internal, construct and external via causal specification preserves and advances the intent of the credibility revolution to understand causal effects.

Forced Justice

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Educational Choices ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Minority Children ◽  
Public School Systems ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

School desegregation and "forced" busing first brought people to the barricades during the 1960s and 1970s, and the idea continues to spark controversy today whenever it is proposed. A quiet rage smolders in hundreds of public school systems, where court- ordered busing plans have been in place for over twenty years. Intended to remedy the social and educational disadvantages of minorities, desegregation policy has not produced any appreciable educational gains, while its political and social costs have been considerable. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's epic decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the legal and social justifications for school desegregation are ripe for reexamination. In Forced Justice, David J. Armor explores the benefits and drawbacks of voluntary and involuntary desegregation plans, especially those in communities with "magnet" schools. He finds that voluntary plans, which let parents decide which school program is best for their children, are just as effective in attaining long-term desegregation as mandatory busing, and that these plans generate far greater community support. Armor concludes by proposing a new policy of "equity" choice, which draws upon the best features of both the desegregation and choice movements. This policy promises both improved desegregation and greater educational choices for all, especially for the disadvantaged minority children in urban systems who now have the fewest educational choices. The debate over desegregation policy and its many consequences needs to move beyond academic journals and courtrooms to a larger audience. In addition to educators and policymakers, Forced Justice will be an important book for social scientists, attorneys and specialists in civil rights issues, and all persons concerned about the state of public education.

King and the Other America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvie Laurent ◽  
William Julius Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
Poor People's Campaign ◽  
American Society

Did the Civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties fail to address economic issues and to grasp that class, beyond just race, was the main cleavage and the greater hindrance in American Society? Many historians and social scientists contend that the movement too narrowly circumscribed its mission, deceptively assuming that specific race-based demands were the only way to achieve social equality and racial fairness. This book argues that, despite an inability to hamper a growing class divide, significant members of the Black Liberation movement actually intertwined civil rights to economic issues, some of them defending that class was trumping race when it comes to racial equality. Time has come, they argued, to build an interracial coalition which would bring substantive freedom to the lesser-off of America, Blacks being at rock bottom. This book will demonstrate that Martin Luther King Jr. was profoundly shaped by their conviction that racial equality was embedded in the broader class struggle, as illustrated by the forgotten Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. Although carried out postumously, the Poor People’s campaign, presented as much an interracial mass mobilization demanding redistribution as the culmination of King’s comprehension of the entanglement of class and race. It also dovetailed with compelling academic works which, either preceding or following the campaign, have vindicated its framework.

Temporal Resilience and Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grigore Pop-Eleches ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Evolution ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Attitudinal Differences ◽  
The Third ◽  
Do So

This chapter addresses the question of the temporal resilience of communist socialization effects. To do so, it develops three stylized models of attitudinal change, which carry very different implications for the temporal evolution of both aggregate-level post-communist exceptionalism and within-country attitudinal differences between different age cohorts. The first model, fleeting legacies, predicted a fairly rapid attitudinal convergence of post-communist citizens toward the views of their non-communist counterparts. The second model, generational replacement, entails a much slower process of attitudinal convergence based on the gradual dying-off of the older and more heavily exposed age cohorts and the coming of age of new cohorts with shorter or no direct communist exposure. The third model, temporary divergence, allows for the possibility that the attitudinal legacies of communism could actually increase, at least temporarily, over the course of the post-communist transition.

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