All Politics is Not Local: National Forces in State Abortion Initiatives

Objective. Although research suggests that national forces can play a role in local and state elections, most of this work has only recently begun to examine the potential role of national forces in state or local ballot initiative or referenda elections. Methods. Our research addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the influence of national forces, such as the timing of elections, Supreme Court rulings, the activities of interest groups, and public opinion, on state direct legislation elections. We incorporate national forces into the morality politics framework and derive specific hypotheses. We then test these hypotheses by conducting a multivariate analysis of county–level voting patterns across 16 abortion–related direct legislation elections. Results. Our results confirm most of the hypotheses derived from the morality politics framework, including those concerning the role of national forces. Conclusions. Voting patterns on abortion tend to be influenced by the presence of presidential elections, Supreme Court rulings, interest–group activity, public opinion, partisanship, college education, and conservative religious forces. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on elections, abortion policy, and morality politics.     

Rationality from a computational standpoint

A computationally viable choice function possesses, in addition to other important properties, adaptability - as new alternatives become feasible the set of best alternatives corresponding to the new feasible set can be located without having to reconsider previously rejected alternatives. Adaptability is shown to be closely related to, in fact characteristic of, the standard notions of rationality (expressed in terms of transitivity properties). Adaptability provides a generalization of conventional rationality and in addition leads to the choice function proposed by Schwartz, albeit from an entirely different route, that of computational viability.     

Measuring the Dynamics of Interactional Synchrony

Past research has revealed that natural social interactions contain interactional synchrony. The present study describes new methods for measuring interactional synchrony in natural interactions and evaluates whether the behavioral synchronization involved in social interactions is similar to dynamical synchronization found generically in nature. Two methodologies, a rater-coding method and a computational video image method, were used to provide time series representations of the movements of the co-actors as they enacted a series of jokes (i.e., knock?Cknock jokes). Cross-spectral and relative phase analyses of these time series revealed that speakers?? and listeners?? movements contained rhythms that were not only correlated in time but also exhibited phase synchronization. These results suggest that computational advances in video and time series analysis have greatly enhanced our ability to measure interactional synchrony in natural interactions. Moreover, the dynamical synchronization in these natural interactions is commensurate with that found in more stereotyped tasks, suggesting that similar organizational processes constrain bodily activity in natural social interactions and, hence, have implications for the understanding of joint action generally.     

Exporting Brotherhood: Orangeism in South Australia

The idea of fraternity, and how to organise it, was one of nineteenth-century Europe's invisible exports to the New World. This paper explores the international diffusion of the Loyal Orange Institution, with comparative reference to Freemasonry, its main model. Three alternative explanations are discussed for its appeal outside Ireland (that it facilitated the assimilation of emigrants, transmitted ‘tribal’ Irish animosities to fresh contexts, or adapted itself to pre-existing sectarian rivalries abroad). These hypotheses are tested used evidence from South Australia, where Orangeism flourished in the absence of heavy Ulster immigration. A collective profile of Orange South Australia is derived from Lodge records showing age, religious denomination and occupation, and the appeal of Orangeism is related to local political and religious contexts. In this case at least, Orangeism was primarily an export of organisational techniques rather than of Irish personnel or Irish bigotry.     

Cognitive and Affective Factors Which Influence Downtown Behaviors

Abstract

Data collected on perceptions of downtown Atlanta are used to explore the impact of cognitive and affective assessments of place on the frequency with which individuals go downtown for shopping, business or professional services, and for entertainment activities. Findings include: (1) social background variables generally exert only weak effects on cognitive and affective responses to downtown Atlanta; (2) affective identification with downtown exerts a positive, significant, and powerful effect on the frequency of using downtown for shopping and business activities; (3) non-Whites, city residents, and singles are more likely to go downtown for entertainment activities than Whites, suburbanites, and married respondents; and (4) images of downtown, affective identification, and positive assessments of downtown municipal services encourage participation in downtown entertainment activities. The analysis strongly suggests that behaviors are influenced by the meanings and evaluations people create for an area.