An Age–Period–Cohort Analysis of Political Tolerance in the United States

We employ hierarchical age–period–cohort models and the 1974–2010 General Social Survey data to examine changes in the political tolerance of gays and lesbians, communists, racists, and anti‐religionists. Results show period‐based growth in political tolerance, cohort‐based growth in tolerance of anti‐religionists, baby boomers are particularly tolerant, and political tolerance is associated with changes in college education. The findings suggest that liberalizing trends in political tolerance are largely motivated by changes among Americans as a whole, not cohort replacement, that baby boomers are unique in their social and political perspectives, and that aggregate changes in higher education are correlated with changes in political tolerance.     

Contingent Pathways from Joiner to Activist: The Indirect Effect of Participation in Voluntary Associations on Civic Engagement1

Many analysts of civil society argue that the path from activity in voluntary associations to political participation is largely mediated—membership leads to unintentional political socialization through discussion and/or cognitive engagement, which then leads to participation. Others, however, have noted that groups are often effective in the direct mobilization of their members. This article tests these competing claims, while also considering the extent to which the mediation process relies on negative social capital (targeted requests for activity). Employing a series of structural equation models, I find strong support for the mediation argument, as well as for the perspective that negative social capital is a significant mediator in the pathway from social joiner to political activist.     

Associations of Childhood Religious Attendance,Family Structure,and Nonmarital Fertility Across Cohorts

This article considers associations among childhood family structure, childhood religious service attendance, and the probability of having a nonmarital first birth before age 30 for non‐Hispanic White women born 1944 to 1964 using data from the 1988 and 1995 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth (N = 5,995). We found that attending religious services weekly during childhood and growing up in a 2‐biological‐parent family were associated with lower odds of having had a nonmarital first birth. These associations were quite stable across cohorts, although religious attendance was less associated with nonmarital fertility for the youngest cohort. We estimate that changes in these childhood experiences account for 22% of the increase in nonmarital first births across these cohorts.     

Tolerance of Homosexuality in 88 Countries: Education,Political Freedom,and Liberalism

Researchers have repeatedly found a positive correlation between education and tolerance. However, they may be victims of an unrepresentative sample containing only rich Western liberal democracies, where political agendas have a liberalizing effect on curricula. In this paper, we specify the relationship between education and liberal attitudes by analyzing data on educational attainment and tolerance of homosexuality (one dimension of liberalism) drawn from a heterogeneous sample of 88 countries over the period 1981–2014. We argue that nonliberal political agendas in some countries undermine the supposed universality of the positive relationship between educational attainment and tolerance of homosexuality. In relatively free countries, education is indeed associated with greater tolerance. However, in relatively unfree countries, education has no effect on tolerance and in some cases encourages intolerance. Specifically, our analysis demonstrates that education is associated with tolerance of homosexuality only when regimes energetically promote liberal‐democratic values. The larger theoretical point is that the agendas of political regimes shape civic values partly via education systems. Especially in an era when democracy is at risk in many countries, it is important to recognize that education is not always a benign force.     

The mobility problem in Britain: new findings from the analysis of birth cohort data

Social mobility is now a matter of greater political concern in Britain than at any time previously. However, the data available for the determination of mobility trends are less adequate today than two or three decades ago. It is widely believed in political and in media circles that social mobility is in decline. But the evidence so far available from sociological research, focused on intergenerational class mobility, is not supportive of this view. We present results based on a newly‐constructed dataset covering four birth cohorts that provides improved data for the study of trends in class mobility and that also allows analyses to move from the twentieth into the twenty‐first century. These results confirm that there has been no decline in mobility, whether considered in absolute or relative terms. In the case of women, there is in fact evidence of mobility increasing. However, the better quality and extended range of our data enable us to identify other ‘mobility problems’ than the supposed decline. Among the members of successive cohorts, the experience of absolute upward mobility is becoming less common and that of absolute downward mobility more common; and class‐linked inequalities in relative chances of mobility and immobility appear wider than previously thought.     

Has social mobility in Britain decreased? Reconciling divergent findings on income and class mobility

Social mobility has become a topic of central political concern. In political and also media circles it is widely believed that in Britain today mobility is in decline. However, this belief appears to be based on a single piece of research by economists that is in fact concerned with intergenerational income mobility: specifically, with the relation between family income and children's later earnings. Research by sociologists using the same data sources – the British birth cohort studies of 1958 and 1970 – but focusing on intergenerational class mobility does not reveal a decline either in total mobility rates or in underlying relative rates. The paper investigates these divergent findings. We show that they do not result from the use of different subsets of the data or of different analytical techniques. Instead, given the more stable and generally less fluid class mobility regime, it is the high level of income mobility of the 1958 cohort, rather than the lower level of the 1970 cohort, that is chiefly in need of explanation. Further analyses – including ones of the relative influence of parental class and of family income on children's educational attainment – suggest that the economists' finding of declining mobility between the two cohorts may stem, in part at least, from the fact that the family income variable for the 1958 cohort provides a less adequate measure of ‘permanent income’ than does that for the 1970 cohort. But, in any event, it would appear that the class mobility regime more fully captures the continuity in economic advantage and disadvantage that persists across generations.     

The generalized action potential of protest movements: The new class,social trends,and political exclusion explanations

Three explanations have been advanced to account for the generalized action potential of contemporary protest movements: the rise of the new class, a set of general social trends that cumulatively lead to liberalized social values and loosened social restraints against protest, and the mobilization of excluded groups. Analyzing three dimensions of generalized action potential—protest potential, political action repertoires, and protest movement support—we find support for all three explanations. Educated salaried professionals, especially sociocultural and public sector professionals, display greater protest potential, especially for civil disobedience, and are supportive of emerging “middle class” movements. A set of general social trends centering on increased education, life-cycle and generational change, secularism, and increased women's autonomy also create greater action potential. Reflecting mobilization against political exclusion, African Americans display a consistently strong generalized action potential. These protests reflect the rise of new political repertoires, particularly “protest activism,” which combines protest with high levels of conventional participation and is centered among the more educated.     

Buying a Voice: Gendered Contribution Careers among Affluent Political Donors to Federal Elections, 1980–2008

Early work in feminist theory hypothesized that differences in women and men's social and institutional roles might be reflected in the ways they participate in the political sphere. However, past empirical research has found scant evidence of a gender gap in the participatory strategies or motivations of women and men who become active in politics. But significantly less is known about the gender gap among a more select and increasingly significant player in American politics—political donors. In this article, we utilize a novel big data set—called the Longitudinal Elite Contributor Database (LECD)—that contains the population of all itemized donations made in federal elections between 1980 and 2008. Using this novel big data set supplemented with Social Security Administration (SSA) data on the gender of first names, we provide original estimates of the long‐term evolution of gender representation in the donor pool, vis‐à‐vis when, how often, and to whom affluent men and women have made political contributions over nearly 30 years. We find that large and persistent gendered inequalities of political voice continue to characterize this significant form of political influence. We theorize the potential implications of these findings for the representation of women's interests in the political sphere.     

COHORT CHANGES IN POLITICAL ATTITUDES: TOLERANCE OF IDEOLOGICAL NON CONFORMITY

This analysis of cohort changes in political attitudes revealsthat tolerance of ideological nonconformity has been increasingamong all cohorts. Aging is not invariably accompanied by greaterconservatism, as earlier studies have suggested. Rather, oldercohorts are more likely than younger ones to adhere to theirearlier, more conservative, attitudes. It is this differentialpropensity for change that leads to a widening gap between cohortattitudes.     

Why have relative rates of class mobility become more equal among women in Britain?

In a previous paper it has been shown that across three cohorts of men and women born in Britain in 1946, 1958 and 1970 a gender difference exists in regard to relative rates of class mobility. For men these rates display an essential stability but for women they become more equal. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the causes of this trend—or, that is, of increasing social fluidity—among women. We begin by considering a refined version of the perverse fluidity hypothesis: that is, one that proposes that part‐time work leads to increasing downward worklife mobility among women that also entails downward intergenerational mobility and thus promotes greater fluidity. We do in fact find that the increase in fluidity is very largely, if not entirely, confined to women who have had at least one period of part‐time work. However, a more direct test of the hypothesis is not supportive. We are then led to investigate whether it is not that part‐time working itself is the crucial factor but rather that women who subsequently work part‐time already differ from those who do not at entry into employment. We find that eventual full‐ and part‐timers do not differ in their class origins nor, in any systematic way, in their educational qualifications. But there is a marked and increasing difference in the levels of employment at which they make their labour market entry. Eventual part‐timers are more likely than eventual full‐timers to enter in working‐class positions, regardless of their class origins and qualifications. Insofar as these women are from more advantaged origins, they would appear not to seek to exploit their advantages to the same extent as do full‐timers in order to advance their own work careers. And it is, then, in the downward mobility accepted by these women—who increase in number across the cohorts—that we would locate the main source of the weakening association between class origins and destinations that is revealed among women at large.     

TRENDS IN TOLERANCE TOWARD RIGHTIST AND LEFTIST GROUPS, 1976-1988: EFFECTS OF ATTITUDE CHANGE AND COHORT SUCCESSION

Trends in tolerance are tested for groups on the Right and onthe Left of the political spectrum with 1976–88 GeneralSocial Survey data. Findings are that (1) tolerance increasedtoward leftist groups but not toward rightist groups; (2) succession,the replacement of older cohorts by more recent cohorts, increased tolerance toward leftists and rightists alike, partiallyon account of more recent cohorts' higher levels of education;and (3) attitude change within cohorts reduced tolerance butonly toward rightists. Overall, trends toward greater toleranceseem not to be mere reflections of reduced opposition to unpopulargroups but instead reflect changes in willingness to allow expressionof opposed ideas.     

Political Position and Social Knowledge1

The nature of social cognition—how we “know about” the social world—is one of the most deceptively obvious problems for sociology. Because we know what we know, we often think that we know how or why we know it. Here, we investigate one particular aspect of social cognition, namely, what we will call “political ideology”—that is, people’s self‐placement on a dimension on which persons can be arrayed from left to right. We focus on that understanding that is in some ways the “ur‐form” of social cognition—our sense of how we stand by others in an implicit social formation whose meaning is totally relational. At the same time, these self‐conceptions seem to be of the greatest importance for the development of the polity and of civil society itself. Our question is, when citizens develop such a “political ideology,” what does this mean, and what do they do with it? We examine what citizens gain from their subjective placement on the dimension from liberalism to conservatism by using the results of a survey experiment that alters aspects of a hypothetical policy.     

Social movement as civic education: communication activities and understanding of civil disobedience in the Umbrella Movement

Occupy Central, which would later evolve into the Umbrella Movement, was conceived as a civil disobedience campaign when it was first proposed in early 2013. Although the history of civil disobedience in Hong Kong arguably spans decades, the concept was seldom discussed in the public arena, and the practice was not well established in the society's repertoire of contentious actions. The years 2013 and 2014 thus constituted a “critical discourse moment” in which the concept of civil disobedience was intensively discussed and debated. This study seeks to determine whether the Occupy Central campaign and the Umbrella Movement had an educational function that led to increased levels of the public's understanding of civil disobedience. The analysis of the responses to two surveys conducted in September 2013 and October 2014 showed that the public's understanding of civil disobedience increased substantially over the year. After the Umbrella Movement started, attitudinal support for and actual participation in the movement, the political use of social media, and discussions with disagreeing others significantly predicted the understanding of civil disobedience. The theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed.     

Moral Identity in Friendships between Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Students and Straight Students in College

People construct moral identities for being a supportive affiliate of stigmatized groups. To extend past research that focused on such identities within formal organizations, this study seeks to identify the process of moral identity construction in a personal setting—friendships between gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) people and straight people. Analyzing data from in‐depth interviews with college students, we show that straight students claim moral worth by emphasizing their deliberate decisions to develop and sustain friendships with GLB people and by highlighting how the friendships led them to personal enlightenment and political engagement. GLB students, as a stigmatized group, also claim moral worth by emphasizing their ability to transcend the community boundary and to be accepted in the larger society. Students make such claims as they strategically link these aspects of cross‐orientation friendships to existing moral discourses in the larger society and draw on resources available in the organizational and life course contexts.     

State Building as a Source of Islamic Political Organization1

Previous research on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has been limited in providing a generalizable theory of its origins and systematically account for the cross‐national variation in the prevalence of Islamic movements. Following a state‐centered approach, this study argues that state‐building activities are a primary origin of Islamic movements. Regimes adopt religious symbolism and functions that legitimate the role of Islam in the public sphere. State incorporation of religion thus creates Islam as a frame for political action, with increased access to mobilizing resources and better able to withstand repression and political exclusion. To provide an explicit and systematic test of cross‐national variation, data on 170 political and militant organizations across the region are analyzed. Results indicate that state incorporation of religion is a crucial factor in the religiosity of movement organizations. Mixed effects of political exclusion and repression are found. No support is found for theories of economic grievances or foreign influence as causes of Islamic mobilization. In sum, analysis suggests that a state‐centered perspective is the most fitting account of political Islam.     

Actual Versus Perceived Generational Differences in the Preferred Working Context: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

This study extends generational research by delineating actual versus perceived cohort differences through a theoretically grounded model using the Social Identity Approach (SIA). Subjects rated how much they valued 15 workplace characteristics and then provided value ratings for generational cohorts based on their perceptions of said cohorts. This allowed for the determination of actual and perceived cohort differences by characteristics. Results revealed actual cohort value differences across seven characteristics; however, perceived differences exceeded actual ones. Post-hoc, an examination of cohort values by characteristics revealed generational identities and the presence of prototypical distancing between cohort in groups and out groups.     

Temporal dimensions of the fertility transition: an age-period-cohort analysis of frontier fertility

"This paper evaluates age, period, and cohort effects on marital fertility during onset of the Utah fertility transition (1880-1900). Computerized genealogies are used to derive age-period-cohort fertility rates for 49,842 once-married couples. Age, period and cohort effects on marital fertility are then estimated using Johnson's (1985) relational model. Declining marital fertility in Utah is shown to be explained by both lower fertility levels across periods and increasing age-specific limitation across cohorts. Direct cohort effects on fertility are insignificant. These results are consistent with prior research, and the view that fertility levels were adaptive (in part through birth spacing across ages) to immediate contexts of childbearing while age-specific fertility truncation increased across cohorts (in part through the more general diffusion of contraceptive innovations)."     

Pathways from origins to destinations: Stability and change in the roles of cognition,private schools and educational attainment

While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio-economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools.     

Deliberation and Ethnicity

Scholars typically suggest that deliberation, defined as communication guided by reason‐giving and inclusion, works best behind a veil of ignorance or when personal differences are bracketed. In this article we explore deliberation within ethnically diverse groups. We operationalize ethnicity in three ways: as an aspect of individual identity, as an identity that is made salient through priming, and as an enactment relative to interactions in particular situations. In this way, we can explore the applicability of our previous experimental results to ethnically diverse groups. We find similar results: within ethnically diverse groups, deliberation matters; participants are more likely to reconsider their positions when deliberating than when simply talking about politics. Ethnicity has no adverse effects on the quality of deliberation, indicating that bracketing has no significant impact. On the contrary, when conceptualized as a relational enactment, ethnicity is correlated with increased levels of reason‐giving and inclusion, and hence higher quality deliberation. This suggests deliberation works in multiethnic groups in much the same way as—if not better than—it does in homogeneous groups. Deliberation is a robust form of political communication that not only helps manage, but also embraces diverse subjective experiences as a part of the political process.