Polarization, diversity, and democratic robustness

In the Madisonian Constitution, fragmented and overlapping institutions of authority are supposed to manage democracy’s innate rivalry, channeling competition to serve the public interest. This system of safeguards makes democracy more robust: capable of withstanding and, if need be, adapting to challenges posed by a changing problem environment. In this essay, I suggest why affective polarization poses a special threat to democratic robustness. While most scholars hypothesize that polarization’s dangers are that it leads to bimodality and extremism, I highlight a third hypothesized effect: Polarization reduces interest and information diversity in the political system. To be effective, democracy’s safeguards rely upon interest diversity, but Madison took that diversity for granted. Unique among democracy’s safeguards, federalism builds in a repository for diversity; its structure enables differences between national- and state-expressed interests, even within the same party. This diversity can be democracy hindering, as the United States’ history with racially discriminatory politics painfully makes clear, but it can also serve as a reservoir of interest and information dispersion that could protect democracy by restoring the possibility that cross-cutting cleavages emerge.

Reprogramming the History of Video Games: A Historian’s Approach to Video Games and Their History

This paper explores the need and opportunities for historians to recognize the importance of video games to their research in modern American history. While this paper is rooted in examples specific to United States history, the call for historians to examine video games, engage with the rich field of games studies, and explore video games as sources in historical scholarship is a universal one, applicable to all fields of history. In this paper we argue that digital games are an essential part of media and cultural history and while media scholars and others interested in game studies have taken up the mantel of video games history, historians have been slow to respond to the medium and even slower to engage with video games as historical sources.

Polish Take on Realism: Poland’s Policy Towards the Former Soviet Countries, 1991–2021

This article analyzes Poland’s policy towards the former Soviet space (Poland’s Eastern policy) through the assumptions of the realist theory of international relations. The fi rst part of the article examines the realist theory in international relations (IR). The second – deals with the existing literature on Poland’s foreign policy. The third part analyses the determinants and the goals of Poland’s policy towards the post-Soviet states (history of its relations with the region, ideological determinants, security concerns, etc.). The last part inquires about the evolution of Poland’s policy till current times. The Russian Federation is perceived as a signifi cant threat by Poland. In that context, since the early 1990s, Poland has been seeking solutions to strengthen its security. It aimed to join the North Atlantic Alliance and establish a close partnership with the United States (bandwagoning). This strategy brought substantial eff ects – in 1999, Poland joined NATO, and since it has hosted allied troops. Poland also wanted to develop cooperation with Ukraine (to a lesser degree also with its other post-Soviet neighbors) and bring them closer to the Euro-Atlantic structures. This policy was, in particular, at weakening Russia’s infl uence in the region (balancing). The results of this strategy have been somewhat ambiguous, though. Ukraine has rejected Russia’s sponsored reintegration projects in the post-Soviet space. The process of reforms in that country, however, is slow and uncertain. As for other post-Soviet states, Poland has largely proven unable to infl uence the desired changes.

Assassination

This chapter examines the continuation of anti-Mormon sentiments in western Illinois and the rise of hostile dissenters in Nauvoo. Many are committed to killing Joseph Smith. Their opportunity arises when Smith, in his role as mayor, orders the destruction of a printing press used to print an anti-Mormon newspaper. After several days of tense negotiations that include Smith declaring martial law in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, submit to arrest. However, the court denies them bail because treason is added to the charge of inciting a riot, and they are forced to stay in the Carthage, Illinois, jail. On June 27, 1844, a mob storms the jail, killing Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The chapter considers the various motivations for the act. Although Joseph Smith is not assassinated because he is running for president, he has the unwanted designation of the first assassinated presidential candidate in United States history.

What the eyes can’t see

Over the last years, Monteiro Lobato has been rightfully accused by Brazilian and Latin American scholars of expressing racist and eugenic ideas in his body of work. In this article, we take a step further and add to this traditional portrait of his literary production an analysis of the impact of a new set of technological media during the first decades of the twentieth century on his writings. We discuss how these two main issues – i.e., technology and race – played out in Lobato’s historical representation of Brazil’s past and future and the influence that the United States could play in it. We show how a revisionary and racist version of the United States’ history and the ideal of an American technological prosperity in the 1920s inspired one of Lobato’s most contentious novels, the technological dystopia O Presidente Negro, ou O Choque das Raças, published in 1926.

Military and Absentee Voting in the United States: History and Modern Practice

The advent of absentee voting for American citizens began with the desire on the part of soldiers to participate in the electoral process. It was aided by politicians who wanted the support of those soldiers. The rise of absentee voting was later extended to nonmilitary Americans living overseas or otherwise away from their home precincts. Resistance to absentee voting was strong at first, largely on philosophical grounds (i.e., the question of why someone away from home would be interested in voting, or absentee voting inviting vote fraud). It was also resisted by political parties who were convinced that those voters may vote for the opposition candidate. Gradually, in the post-World War II years, nearly all resistance faded but never disappeared. Vestigial perceptions of the voting habits of military personnel remained as late as the first years of the 21st century. Congress was convinced to pass several voting rights laws that eventually extended the right to vote to all Americans serving in the military or living overseas, although some barriers remain to be overcome.

The Historic Rainfalls of Hurricanes Harvey and Florence: A Perspective from the Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor System

Hurricane Harvey in 2017 generated one of the most catastrophic rainfall events in United States history. Numerous gauge observations in Texas exceeded 1200 mm, and the record accumulations resulted in 65 direct fatalities from rainfall-induced flooding. This was followed by Hurricane Florence in 2018 where multiple regions in North Carolina received over 750 mm of rainfall. The Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) system provides the unique perspective of applying fully-automated seamless radar mosaics and locally gauge-corrected products for these two historical tropical cyclone rainfall events. This study investigates the performance of various MRMS quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) products as it pertains to rare extreme tropical cyclone rainfall events. Various biases were identified in the radar-only approaches, which were mitigated in a new dual-polarimetric synthetic radar QPE approach. A local gauge correction of radar-derived QPE provided statistical improvements over the radar-only products but introduced consistent underestimation biases attributed to undercatch from tropical cyclone winds. This study then introduces a conceptual methodology to bulk correct for gauge wind undercatch across the numerous gauge networks ingested by the MRMS system. Adjusting the hourly gauge observations for wind undercatch resulted in increased storm-total accumulations for both tropical cyclones that better matched independent gauge observations, yet its application across large network collections highlighted the challenges of applying a singular wind undercatch correction scheme for significant wind events (e.g., tropical cyclones) while recognizing the need for increased metadata on gauge characteristics.