scholarly journals Apolitical Values & Compliance with Government-Recommended Prosocial Health Behavior

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Motta ◽  
Paul Goren
Keyword(s):  
Health Behaviors ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Reported Data ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal government and local governments across the U.S. recommended that individuals engage in social distancing and other prosocial health behaviors (e.g., wear a mask when out in public). While social scientists know a fair amount about the extent to which people complied with these recommendations, far less is known about why some people may have been more likely to do so. Building on insights from Human Values Theory, we argue that people who are more self-transcendent (i.e., more likely to put others’ needs before their own) should be more likely to engage in a variety of prosocial health behaviors (PSHB); including social distancing. In a nationally representative survey (N = 1,015) conducted at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, we find that people who are highly self-transcendent were significantly more likely to engage in PSHB. Recognizing the limitations of self-reported data, we validate these findings by merging both international and inter-state phone-tracking data into state and country opinion surveys. We find that, on average, people in both countries and states that place a higher emphasis on self-transcendence values were more likely to engage in social distancing at the start of the pandemic.

Electronic Government at the American Grassroots

2011 ◽  
pp. 643-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. F. Norris
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Electronic Government ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Current State ◽  
Electronic Delivery ◽  
The U.S

During the past 10 years or so, governments in the United States have rushed to adopt and implement electronic government or e-government (defined as the electronic delivery of governmental information and services 24 hours per day, seven days per week, see Norris, Fletcher, & Holden, 2001). Today, the federal government, all 50 state governments (and probably all departments within them), and the great majority of general purpose local governments of any size have official presences on the World Wide Web through which they deliver information and services and, increasingly, offer transactions. In this article, I examine the current state of the practice of e-government at the grassroots in the U.S.—that is, e-government among American local governments. In particular, I address the extent of local adoption of e-government, including the reasons for adoption, the relative sophistication of local e-government, and barriers to and initial impacts of e-government.

Can Information Decrease Political Polarization? Evidence From the U.S. Taxpayer Receipt

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 736-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik P. Duhaime ◽  
Evan P. Apfelbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
White House ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Baseline Levels ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
High Level ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

Scholars, politicians, and laypeople alike bemoan the high level of political polarization in the United States, but little is known about how to bring the views of liberals and conservatives closer together. Previous research finds that providing people with information regarding a contentious issue is ineffective for reducing polarization because people process such information in a biased manner. Here, we show that information can reduce political polarization below baseline levels and also that its capacity to do so is sensitive to contextual factors that make one’s relevant preferences salient. Specifically, in a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and a preregistered replication (Study 2), we find that providing a taxpayer receipt—an impartial, objective breakdown of how one’s taxes are spent that is published annually by the White House—reduces polarization regarding taxes, but not when participants are also asked to indicate how they would prefer their taxes be spent.

scholarly journals Compliance in the 1.5 Meter Society: Longitudinal Analysis of Citizens’ Adherence to COVID-19 Mitigation Measures in a Representative Sample in the Netherlands

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Reinders Folmer ◽  
Malouke Kuiper ◽  
Elke Olthuis ◽  
Emmeke Barbara Kooistra ◽  
Anne Leonre de Bruijn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Distance Measures ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
General Duty ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The One ◽  
Representative Samples ◽  
Do So

In the month of May, the Netherlands moved out of the “intelligent lockdown”, and into the “1.5 meter society”, which aims to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic by means of safe-distance measures. This paper assesses how Dutch citizens have complied with these social distancing measures. It analyses data from two surveys conducted in May (between 8-14 and between 22-26) among nationally representative samples (N = 984 and N = 1021). We find that a combination of factors explain social distancing compliance. On the one hand we see that people are more likely to comply if they have an intrinsic motivation to do so, when they have the capacity to comply, when they have good impulse control, when they think compliance is normal, and when they see a general duty to obey rules generally. The paper also assesses how compliance has changed over time, assessing changes in May as well as how these are different from compliance with lockdown measures in April. During this period, there has been a gradual decline in compliance that coincides with a decline in intrinsic motivations and capacity for compliance, and there has been an increase in opportunities to violate the measures. The paper assesses what these changes may mean for current and future success of Covid-19 mitigation measures.

Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW H. GRAHAM ◽  
MILAN W. SVOLIK
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Democratic Stability ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

Is support for democracy in the United States robust enough to deter undemocratic behavior by elected politicians? We develop a model of the public as a democratic check and evaluate it using two empirical strategies: an original, nationally representative candidate-choice experiment in which some politicians take positions that violate key democratic principles, and a natural experiment that occurred during Montana’s 2017 special election for the U.S. House. Our research design allows us to infer Americans’ willingness to trade-off democratic principles for other valid but potentially conflicting considerations such as political ideology, partisan loyalty, and policy preferences. We find the U.S. public’s viability as a democratic check to be strikingly limited: only a small fraction of Americans prioritize democratic principles in their electoral choices, and their tendency to do so is decreasing in several measures of polarization, including the strength of partisanship, policy extremism, and candidate platform divergence. Our findings echo classic arguments about the importance of political moderation and cross-cutting cleavages for democratic stability and highlight the dangers that polarization represents for democracy.

6. Law: 1866–1876

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-100
Author(s):  
Allen C. Guelzo
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Race Politics ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Do So

So much of Reconstruction is understood as a struggle over race, politics, and the nature of state sovereignty within a federal system that not enough attention is paid to how it was also a constitutional struggle between the branches of the federal government. ‘Law, 1866–876’ describes the key legal debates that were raised during the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant. The U.S. Constitution apportioned various federal responsibilities among the three federal branches—executive (the presidency), legislative (Congress), and judicial (the federal courts)—but it did not do so evenly or in the same detail.

Openness and Self-enhancement are predictors of cultural and economic beliefs: an analysis of European countries across 15 years

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Czarnek ◽  
Małgorzata Kossowska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

In this study, we investigate the relationship between values and political beliefs and how it varies as a function of cultural context and time. In particular, we analyzed the effects of Conservation vs. Openness to change and Self-transcendence vs. Self-enhancement for cultural and economic political beliefs using data from nationally representative samples of citizens from 34 European countries from eight rounds of the European Social Survey (data spans the 2002–2016 period). We found that the effects of values on political beliefs are moderated by the Western vs. Eastern cultural context and that there is a modest round-to-round variation in the effects of values on beliefs. The relationship between Openness and cultural beliefs was negative and largely consistent across the Western and Eastern countries. Similarly, the effects of Self-enhancement were positive across these Western and Eastern countries. In contrast, the effects of Openness on economic beliefs were positive for the Eastern countries but largely weak and inconsistent for the Western countries. Finally, the effects of Self-enhancement on cultural beliefs are weak for both cultural contexts.

The Racial and Economic Context of Trump Support: Evidence for Threat, Identity, and Contact Effects in the 2016 Presidential Election

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Knowles ◽  
Linda Tropp
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Racial Identification ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Neighborhood Diversity ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
To Come ◽  
Neighborhood Level ◽  
Support Evidence

Donald Trump's ascent to the Presidency of the United States defied the expectations of many social scientists, pundits, and laypeople. To date, most efforts to understand Trump's rise have focused on personality and demographic characteristics of White Americans. In contrast, the present work leverages a nationally representative sample of Whites to examine how contextual factors may have shaped support for Trump during the 2016 presidential primaries. Results reveal that neighborhood-level exposure to racial and ethnic minorities is associated with greater group threat and racial identification among Whites, as well as greater intentions to vote for Trump in the general election. At the same time, however, neighborhood diversity afforded Whites with opportunities for intergroup contact, which is associated with lower levels of threat, White identification, and Trump support. Further analyses suggest that a healthy local economy mutes threat effects in diverse contexts, allowing contact processes to come to the fore.

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