Institutionalizing dissent: The United States structure of political opportunity and the end of the nuclear freeze movement

This article uses the recent nuclear freeze movement as a vehicle for analyzing the ways in which United States political institutions cope with dissident movements. Building on the literature on political opportunity structure, I argue that United States political institutions reflect James Madison's strategy for coping with dissent by fragmenting political power. The Madisonian structure of United States government, by providing relatively easy institutional access to some challengers and numerous venues for often ritualized participation, serves to fragment, coopt, and dissipate dissident movements. I identify three complementary components of the process of fragmentation and dissipation: marginalization, depoliticization, and institutionalization. I then examine the political implications of institutionalization in the case of the nuclear freeze movement with a discussion of the movement's influence on policy. I conclude with a call for more comparative research on the process and political impact of institutionalizing social protest movements.     

NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS,POPULISM AND THE POLITICS OF THE LIFEWORLD

Since the 1960s, New Social Movements (NSMs) have been prominent as new actors on the political scene. But, by comparison with other radical political agents, they have made a relatively poor showing in mainstream political theory. Habermas, for example, criticizes NSMs, including second-wave feminism, for merely masquerading as new forms of radical political agency. By introducing some ideas from Laclau, I show how to counter Habermas's criticism. I then rethink NSMs as a new post-liberal form of democratic-emancipatory political agency, which by contrast with the politics of the public sphere that Habermas champions, is anchored in the less organized reaches of the lifeworld.     

The composition of public sector compensation: The effects of unionization and bureaucratic size

This paper examines the effect of the political power of public sector unions on the composition of public sector compensation. Public employee unions provide a relatively low-cost vehicle for organizing workers’ political activity in support of the rent-seeking behavior of local politicians. The unions also provide a conduit for employees to capture part of these rents as payment for political services. Since the public has little interest in paying for the political activities of public workers, these payments are most likely to be made through fringe benefits so as to minimize public scrutiny. The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions. Any errors remain those of the authors.     

Civic Epistemologies: Constituting Knowledge and Order in Political Communities

How do we know things? The question of epistemology – which drives both the sociology and philosophy of science – is also a crucial question for political sociology. Knowledge is essential to even the most basic and foundational of political processes and institutions. In 2000, for example, the transition of power in the US presidential election hung for 36 days on uncertainty over a seemingly simple question of fact: who won the most votes in Florida? A few years later, disputed factual claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction unraveled, calling into question key justifications of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and significantly weakening perceived US legitimacy. Yet, surprisingly, sociologists and political scientists know relatively little about how knowledge gets made in political communities, nor how the making of knowledge is tied to other key aspects of political life, such as identity, authority, legitimacy, and accountability.     

The Political Implications Of Digital Innovations: Trade-offs of democracy and liberty in the developed world

This paper addresses three issues: the potential trade-offs of democracy and liberty that the Internet may produce, the connection between real life and cyberspace, and the consequences for the conceptual apparatus of political science. It is argued that the Internet and real worlds are entwined, and thus classic political trade-offs remain pertinent. Important normative issues are addressed. It is established that the Internet is a nearly-neutral medium, so it is important how its development and effects are controlled. It is argued that a privately-controlled Internet would have negative implications for citizenship, political democracy and liberty.However, it is shown that existing Internet politics is significantly democratic, and if the 'net was used within a system similar to existing arrangements, i.e. with checks and balances, then one could optimistically foresee enhanced democracy. In this relatively unexplored but rapidly changing area of political life, this paper serves as a simple warning - public good, private bad - and justifies this in terms of the potential trade-offs of political citizenship versus market consumerism.     

The Disconnection In Online Politics: the youth political web sphere and US election sites, 2002-2004

In recent years, candidates and other political actors have dramatically increased their presence and activities online. Although the notion of these activities reaching beyond a limited set of early-adopters is relatively new, younger citizens have long been at the forefront of new developments on the web and continue to make up a substantial proportion of those seeking political information online. Given longstanding concern over levels of civic and political engagement among young people, questions concerning what young people seeking information and opportunities for political involvement online might find there are particularly relevant. In particular, we explore political websites that are directly targeted at younger voters (e.g. Rock the Vote and similar sites), websites produced by candidates and political parties, and possible linkages between these two web spheres. Based on content and hyperlink analyses spanning the 2002 and 2004 US election cycles, we find a complex evolution of the online political information environment offered to youth. Although the youth engagement web sphere experienced dramatic growth during this time period, our data also identify a reluctance of many mainstream political actors to speak directly to young people through the web, and a surprising underdevelopment of linkages between youth politics websites and the wider web of political information online. We conclude by considering the implications of these patterns for future research on the role of new media in processes of political communication and engagement.     

The public sphere and debates about europe in Britain

This article undertakes an analysis of British public debates on European integration by recourse to an original data set on political claims-making. The public sphere is conceptualized as a space where citizens interact through their acts of public communication. Such public communications are an important source of the Europe-building process, because they potentially provide public inputs to the elite-led processes of European political institutional integration. Our empirical findings show that British public debates are internalized within the nation-state rather than creating links to supra- or transnational European polities. In addition, we find relatively low levels of civil society engagement compared to that of political elites, and a high level of political competition between the two major political parties, Labour and Conservative. Overall, we argue that elite ambivalence to Britain's position within the European Union has created this climate of uncertainty and political competition over Europe.     

The political consequences of contemporary immigration

This article synthesizes research on political outcomes associated with increasing immigration, with an emphasis on cross‐national studies of European countries, where immigration is a relatively newer phenomenon compared to the United States and other traditional immigrant destinations. We begin with explanations of and research on anti‐immigrant sentiment, not a political phenomenon in itself but considered an important precursor to other relevant political attitudes. Next, we review scholarship on the relationship between immigration and support for the welfare state, as well as exclusionary attitudes regarding immigrants' rights to welfare benefits. Then, we review research on immigration and political party preferences, in particular radical right parties, whose platforms often combine anti‐immigration and welfare chauvinistic positions. We conclude by discussing how these processes may ultimately shape social policies, which may in turn influence immigration itself.     

The political process of the revolutionary samurai: a comparative reconsideration of Japan’s Meiji Restoration

In the 1860s and 1870s, the feudal monarchy of the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled Japan for over two centuries, was overthrown, and the entire political order it had commanded was dismantled. This immense political transformation, comparable in its results to the great social revolutions of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries in the West, was distinctive for lacking a major role for mass political mobilization. Since popular political action was decisive elsewhere for both providing the force for social revolutions to defeat old regimes and for pushing revolutionary leaders to more radical policies, the Meiji Restoration’s combination of revolutionary outcomes with conservative personnel and means is puzzling. This article argues that previous accounts fail to explain why a group of relatively low-status samurai—administrative functionaries with some hereditary political privileges but in fact little secure power within the old regime—was able to overcome far more deeply entrenched political actors. To explain this, it is necessary to distinguish clearly between two political processes: the long-standing political relations of feudal monarchy and magnate lords and the unprecedented emergence of independent samurai political action and organizations cutting across domain boundaries. It was the interaction of these two processes that produced the overthrow of the Tokugawa and enabled the revolutionary outcomes that followed it. This article’s revised explanation of the Meiji Restoration clearly places it within the same theoretical parameters as the major revolutions of the seventeenth century and later.     

State‐led transnationalism and migration: reaching out to the Argentine community in Spain

Abstract This article focuses on when and how states develop transnational policies. It presents a case study of a relatively small emigrant community, whose departure was not simply caused by poverty or crisis, but most recently by an economic and political debacle that questioned people's values and expectations. I focus on the state side of the equation and identify a shift in Argentina's policy after 2003, though also show how such policies came out of a long history of state intervention in population and migration and are now related to human rights concerns and the unfinished process of democratic consolidation. I argue that the state initiates political transnationalism, not migrants, and highlight the importance of some relatively unexplored factors in the understanding of the motivation, intensity and impact of the state's involvement, such as the characteristics of the emigrant community, the existence of specific political projects, the role of some domestic actors and processes, and the nature of international agreements.     

Underemployment and the American Dream—"Underemployment-Consciousness" and Radicalism Among Young Workers

This paper explores propositions concerning the work attitudes and political views of educated young workers who are not able to find jobs commensurate with their education and skills. Underemployment theorists have proposed that growing numbers of college graduates are over-educated for the jobs available to them and may develop (1) "underemployment-consciousness" and (2) a new political radicalism growing out of their work-deprivation. In a sample of predominantly college-educated young unemployed workers, I report evidence of pervasive feelings of "over-education" but relatively low "underemployment-consciousness." A significant relationship is reported between underemployment-consciousness and radical political views among college graduates but not among non-graduates, providing preliminary support for the proposition that political dissent is most likely to emerge among the highly educated underemployed. The persistent strength of the American Dream, including assumptions of individual mobility, success and luck, is discussed to interpret the relative optimism of approximately two thirds of these workers about finding interesting work and a challenging career.     

STRUCTURING POLITICAL OPINIONS:

Political democracy assumes that citizens can form consistent political attitudes that guide their political actions, thereby communicating political preferences to elites. Responding to the longstanding debate about the democratic competence of the U.S. mass public, we use a multitiered framework of opinion formation to describe the structure of mass opinion, showing that the mass public displays relatively consistent responses across multiple issues and uses these to evaluate presidential candidates. Confirmatory factor analysis allows us to examine multiple models of political attitudes, showing the best fit to be three positively correlated general orientations for economic, social, and racial issues. We find no significant racial or educational differences in the structuring of these attitudes but some evidence of "race-coding" of economic issues and class differences in levels of support for economic and social liberalism. Liberal/conservative self-identification operates as a basic structuring principle for organizing these general orientations with liberals and conservatives assigning different salience to specific issues. These general political orientations, in turn, influence presidential evaluations net of party loyalties. Although the mass public may not be ideologically sophisticated, it is "deliberative and reasonable" in its political thinking and, in this sense, democratically competent.     

Political Beliefs in an Era of Economic Decline: Farmers' Attitudes Toward State Economic Intervention,Trade, and Food Security1

Abstract The effects of the economy on political attitudes is a longstanding sociological issue that is receiving renewed attention in the face of recent U.S. economic downturns. While the impacts of the farm crisis on financial and household well-being of farm operators have been addressed by a number of studies, few have explored its political outcomes. Four perspectives that consider how economic forces translate into political beliefs are outlined, two reflecting objective economic position (class location and financial pressure) and two indicating subjective appraisals (feelings of economic uncertainty and subjective deprivation). Data from a sample of Ohio farm operators for 1987 are used to analyze how the perspectives are related to progressive beliefs about farming, the domestic nonfarm economy, and third-world food production. Indicators of objective economic position and subjective appraisals have relatively limited impact on farmers' political attitudes. Of these indicators, subjective appraisals were more closely related to attitudes. In addition, operators' stances on farm political issues also affect their views on domestic nonfarm and third-world policy agendas. Implications were found for studies of farmers' political attitudes as well as for broader sociological theory regarding the development of progressive attitudes during periods of economic decline.     

Open media or echo chamber: the use of links in audience discussions on the Facebook Pages of partisan news organizations

This study evaluates the use of hyperlinks in audience discussions on the Facebook Pages of two partisan cable news organizations: the liberal-leaning Rachel Maddow Show and the conservative O'Reilly Factor, to investigate to what extent linking might intensify partisan political discussion or infuse a variety of perspectives into online communication. The results suggest that these Facebook audiences show a preference for a small group of information resources; furthermore, the two audiences shared an even smaller number of information resources in common. The findings support previous research that suggests a relatively small number of information resources receive most of the news audience traffic, and provide some support for other studies that indicate that partisan political discussions on social media are segregated by political orientation.     

The Syrian Refugee Crisis in the Kurdish Region of Iraq: Explaining the Role of Borders in Situations of Forced Displacement

More than 250,000 Syrian refugees have relocated in the Kurdish Region of Iraq since 2011. The local response has been relatively receptive towards them. This study proposes an analysis of the concept of border and applies the idea of “border thinness” as an interpretative framework to examine the nature of transborder relations between the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish areas. Relying on secondary sources, technical and elite level interviews with social and political actors in KRI, the analysis highlights how Kurdish areas of Syria and Iraq have maintained transborder relations which shaped the dynamics of displacement from Syria and constituted the context for a relatively receptive stance towards Syrian Kurdish refugees. Borders do not always mark a sharp territorial separation between social, political, and economic realities; instead a more complex conceptualization exposes transborder relational spaces, explaining the modes of displacement and its responses from host communities.     

Survey Research on Taiwan

In recent years, a number of the obstacles to survey researchon Taiwan have been overcome. The growing but still limitednumber of surveys conducted show a populace with relativelymoderate levels of satisfaction following a period of spectaculareconomic growth. Increased living standards are widely appreciated,but levels of aspiration also have risen, particularly amongthe educated. Deep ambivalence seems to be felt toward the socialand political changes accompanying industrial growth and towardWestern social, political, and moral ideas in general. At present,the island offers fruitful opportunities for the study of publicopinion in a relatively nondemocratic state.     

Double disenchantment of politics: A systems theory approach to post‐socialist transformation

Many social scientists argue that the precarious future of post‐socialist societies is determined by cultural constraints to which the actors of transformation are exposed. In contrast to this approach, the paper focuses on those developmental obstacles which are inherent to the structure of post‐socialist societies. The analysis draws primarily on social systems theory, especially on the theory of functional differentiation. In the first part, the changing role of political actors is dealt with. The competitive nature of the democratic political process have forced the new and old political actors to adopt a pragmatic and professional attitude towards their activity. Not all of them, however, have been able to adapt to the new rules of the political game. Adaptation problems are mostly faced by those political actors who played a decisive role in the initial stages of democratization on the basis of their informal political influence. The second part of the paper focuses on the changes related to the societal functions of the democratic political system. Irrespective of the ambitions of political actors, democratic politics is inherently ‘unsuitable’ for the extensive regulation of society. A democratic political system presupposes a relatively high ability of other societal subsystems to rely on self‐regulation. The absence of this ability is an important source of systemic tensions in post‐socialist societies. These two sets of changes can be characterized as the double disenchantment of politics. Both on the systemic level and on the level of actors politics has lost many attributes of a ‘privileged’ societal activity. But the process of disenchantment can give rise to demands for a revival of the politics of ‘great deeds’.     

UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTALISM IN A RED,AGRICULTURAL STATE: THE IMPACT OF POLITICAL PARTY IDENTIFICATION AND PLACE OF RESIDENCE

The red state-blue state characterization of American society geographically categorizes the U.S. into Republican and Democrat states, with the assumption that the gulf between the states is broad and deep in many issues and policies. Given this presumed division, this research examines three dimensions of environmentalism to determine if political party identification is indeed a useful predictor of environmentalism when taking into consideration a person's place of residence and several other social demographic influences. Data come from a 2003 phone survey of 606 residents in Nebraska. Nebraska provides a good test of how much political party identification matters in understanding environmentalism when the population is generally conservative, with traditional ties to extractive commodity production. The findings show that political party identification is significant in understanding environmentalism and that place of residence does not affect environmentalism. However, while the findings reveal that political party identification is an important predictor of environmentalism, both Republicans and Democrats show a relatively strong support for the environment.     

Power and Politics in Grievance Resolution: Managing Meaning of Due Process in an Organization

This paper studies the relatively less exploredissue of the actual process of grievance resolution froma political perspective. In a steel plant in India, sixgrievance cases were analyzed from the filing of a grievance to its final resolution. Caseswere reconstructed through semistructured interviews andanalyzed from a political perspective. The sources ofpower of the key actors and their influence tactics vis-a-vis one another were found to determinewhether the case would be decided in favor of or againstthe grievant. The understanding of the dynamics ingrievance resolution was enhanced when we analyzed cases as episodes nested in the ongoingpolitical process of the organization. A comprehensiveunderstanding of political behavior required analysis attwo levels: the explicit dealing with apparent behavior; and the implicit exploring the underlyingconcerns and intents of the actors often manifestedthrough symbols. Implications of multiple levels ofpolitical behavior for institutionalizing due processare discussed.     

Strain,ethnic competition,and power devaluation: white supremacist protest in the U.S., 1948–1997

Many Western democracies have seen an increase in extreme right mobilization over the past several decades but extreme right mobilization is not a new phenomenon when we look historically. In this paper, we examine fifty years of white supremacist protest in the United States to help shed light on the factors that explain variation in levels of right-wing mobilization. Using annual time-series analysis, we find that traditional strain explanations do not explain these protests but that threats to the traditional economic, political, and social power of whites were critical. Ethnic competition associated with black population growth and political threats stemming from the political power of northern Democrats, a divided federal government, and civil rights protest stimulated this mobilization. These findings support a broadened ethnic competition/power devaluation model of right-wing mobilization that emphasizes the mobilizing effects of economic and political threats to a relatively advantaged group.