The January 6 Insurrection and America's Standing Abroad: Natural Experimental Evidence from Five Unexpectedly Interrupted Public Opinion Surveys

American geopolitical power partly relies on foreign public support for its leadership. Pundits worry that this support is evaporating now that the United States—which claims to be the world’s beacon of democracy—has itself experienced democratic back- sliding. I provide the first natural experimental test of this hypothesis by exploiting that the January 6 insurrection of the US Capitol unexpectedly occurred while Gallup was conducting nationally-representative surveys in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Romania, and Vietnam. Because Gallup uses random digit dialing I can identify the effect by comparing US leadership approval among respondents that were interviewed just before, and just after, January 6, 2021. I find that the insurrection had no effect on US approval. If even a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election does not affect US approval abroad it is unlikely that any other domestic anti-democratic event will.

Unofficial Media, Government Trust, and System Confidence Evidence From China: An Empirical Exploration of the Attitudes of Netizens Based on the Dual Moderating Effect

Mass media has a significant impact on public support for the government. This manuscript constructs a mixed model with official media use as the moderating variable and government trust as the intermediary variable to explore the mechanism of how unofficial media use affects system confidence, using data from a survey of the political and social attitudes of netizens (2015). The study finds that official media use weakens the negative role of unofficial media use in building system confidence, with the intermediary variable of government trust creating the necessary conditions for weakening the effect of unofficial media use. Moreover, the effect of unofficial media use on system confidence is heterogeneous. These findings remind us that it is necessary to deepen research into the micromechanisms that explain how unofficial media use reduces system confidence, a task for which cognitive theory is well suited.

Public Support for the EU in Times of Crisis and the Drivers of Euroscepticism

In the context of the economic, political and social crises that unfolded during the recent years, the European Union had to withstand a growing pressure from the part of its dissatisfied citizens. The long-term effects of the economic crisis, the limited ability to manage refugee flows or the difficulty to come up with joint solutions to pressing issues have highlighted the shortcoming of the EU as a political system, while also giving rise to growing criticism from EU citizens and the loss of their trust. The 2016 referendum vote of British citizens that subsequently led to what came to be known as “Brexit” could be perceived both as a crisis and as an outcome of the growing popular dissatisfaction and protest from the part of British citizens. Consequently, the present article aims to explore the connections between recent crises and the evolution of European citizens’ attitudes in relation to the EU and the integration process as a whole. This perspective could ultimately shed some light on the roots and drivers of Euroscepticism in the context of an inability of the EU as a political system to channel the solidarity of Member States towards common solutions and to cope with the existing social, economic, and cultural divisions in Europe.

Public Perceptions of Legislative Action on Reducing Plastic Pollution: A Case Study of Atlantic Canada

Government-led legislation is a key strategy to reduce plastic pollution; however, societal perception can heavily influence government intervention for environmental issues. To understand the public acceptability of government action to reduce plastic pollution, we examine the perception of existing and upcoming legislative action on single-use plastics by means of a structured survey with additional semi-structured interviews. Our focus is on the four Atlantic provinces of Canada, which was the first region in Canada to implement provincial-wide legislation for plastic reduction at the consumer level in 2019. Results show strong public support (77 %, n = 838) for bans on single-use plastic bags at the consumer level, and for further plastic pollution reduction legislation. However, the level of support differed between regions and by demographics. Semi-structured interviews show that decision-makers should increase efforts in raising consumer awareness and standardizing regulations across jurisdictions for smoother transitions prior to legislative action.

Exploring cultural differences in wildlife value orientations using student samples in seven nations

Understanding differences in the way people think about wildlife across countries is important as many conservation challenges transcend jurisdictions. We explored differences in wildlife value orientations in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Serbia. Standard scales assessed domination (prioritizing human well-being) and mutualism (striving for egalitarian relationships with wildlife). We used student samples (total n = 2176) for cross-cultural comparisons. Reliabilities of the wildlife value orientations scales were adequate in all countries. Relationships between demographics and wildlife value orientations were different across countries. Men were generally more oriented towards domination and less towards mutualism than women, except in Serbia, where it was the other way around. Estimated at the level of the individual (using ANOVA), wildlife value orientations varied across countries, with nationality explaining a larger portion of the variation in mutualism (21%) than domination (6%). Estimated at the level of countries (using multilevel modelling), effect sizes were comparable. Thought about wildlife has previously only been examined within single countries. This paper makes a new contribution to the conservation literature suggesting that wildlife value orientations vary by country, and are associated with demographic factors. For conservation practices, understanding national differences in the way people think about wildlife is crucial to understanding sources of conflict among practitioners. Such knowledge is also important to gain public support for conservation.

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s life was framed by global conflict. Born on 27 February 1902, in Salinas, California, he was twelve years old when World War I began and sixteen when Germany and the Allies signed an armistice bringing to cessation the “War to End All Wars.” Unfortunately, World War II began in 1939. Echoes of the rise of Adolf Hitler and threats of war occur throughout his early works, as in the journals accompanying The Grapes of Wrath (1939), in which he writes of the angst of his times, fearing the inevitably approaching conflict. When World War II came, he became involved in the wartime efforts, working as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and experiencing the London Blitz, with sixty-six of his eighty-five dispatches gathered in Once There Was a War (1958). Recognizing Steinbeck’s expertise as a writer and desiring to enlist public support, the government commissioned him to write Bombs Away (1942), an account of a bomber team and its specially equipped plane. Hence, he observed American airmen as they trained and went into battle, flying on forays with them. Similarly, during the Vietnam War Newsday hired him as a war correspondent, and again he went to the front and into battle with the enlisted men, with his accounts collected in Letters to Alicia (1965). On the home front, the San Francisco News commissioned him to report on Dust Bowl migrants working as harvesters in California. Incensed by what he witnessed—the specter of starvation, babies and children dying, and malnutrition taking a toll on the very humanity of the migrants—he wrote The Harvest Gypsies (1936), background for The Grapes of Wrath. An early ecologist, Steinbeck loved the land, depicting the earth as a living, sensate character in The Grapes of Wrath—an elegiac mourning over its the desecration. Later, his nonfiction America and Americans (1966) decried pollution and the felling of redwood trees. Looking into the future with some hope but much trepidation, this work also addressed ethnic and racial prejudices, questionable politics, ageism and sexism, loss of ethical moorings. Believing his country to be infested with a deadly immorality, he warned Americans to root out this cancerous growth in order to survive. His last work of fiction, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), carried these same concerns, with protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley portrayed as an Every American, who must rise above his failings. John Steinbeck died 20 December 1968, of congestive heart failure.

Methodological Foundations of Renewal and Expansion of Car Fleet

Currently, Russian international road transport carriers do not have sufficient potential to successfully compete with their foreign partners. The main reasons for this are significant deterioration of the car fleet and its non-compliance to modern environmental requirements, lack of own funds for timely renovation and development of the motor transport fleet, as well as systemic lag in development of transportation technologies and their logistics support.The objective of the article is to substantiate the choice of rational measures to solve the problem of expanded reproduction of car fleet used in international road haulage. The methodology used in preparation of the article is based on the use of general scientific methods in combination with special methods, including the analysis of statistical data on international road haulage, a comparative analysis of the state of the car fleet of Russian carriers, considering the basic conditions and operational characteristics, classification of the fleet of trucks based on typification of their operational characteristics with subsequent subdivision of this fleet into three main groups, an overview analysis and benchmarking of foreign operating experience and future development of car fleet, an analysis of the economic and legal possibilities of raising funds for renewal of car fleet.The article examines and studies: a) urgency of solving the problem of renewal and expansion of the car fleet used by Russian carriers in international road transportation; b) foreign experience and trends in development of fleet used for international haulage; c) the main directions of providing economic opportunities for transition to expanded renewal of vehicles; d) analysis of the legal possibilities of providing public support for expanded reproduction of the motor transport fleet of Russian international road carriers including through the use of public-private partnerships.Based on the results of the study, proposals have been developed aimed at ensuring renewal and expansion of car fleet and increasing the efficiency of international road haulage operations.