American Democracy Research Articles

The ‘Woke’ way or the highway: American democracy in the age of ‘Wokism’ and ‘Cancel Culture’

The ‘Woke’ way or the highway: American democracy in the age of ‘Wokism’ and ‘Cancel Culture’

Stability and policy threats: US public opinion after a decade of the Affordable Care Act

AbstractThe Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to shape US politics at the elite level. We know less about whether this conflict still carries over to the broader public. Moreover, we know little about the degree to which the conflict reaches into its various policies and whether the policy threats to the ACA can affect public opinion. We fielded a large, and demographically diverse survey of US adults using Lucid (N = 6066) from July 8–21, 2020. The survey contained an experiment that introduced the topic to respondents as the 2010 health reform law, the ACA, or Obamacare and at times highlighted the potential undoing of the ACA by the US Supreme Court. Analyses were conducted using Ordinary Least Squares regression. Our findings indicate that perceptions of the ACA differ substantial based on partisanship and racial prejudice. Framing still matters in the minds of Americans and their perception of health reforms in general and its individual components by extending these differences. However, we find only very limited evidence for changes to public attitudes related to the policy threat of the Supreme Court ruling the ACA constitutional in California v. Texas. The ACA remains a political battleground in the minds of Americans. The politics of the ACA continue to be shaped by perceptions of race and partisanship.

Quantifying Political Polarization through the Lens of Machine Translation and Vicarious Offense

This talk surveys three related research contributions that shed light on the current US political divide: 1. a novel machine-translation-based framework to quantify political polarization; 2. an analysis of disparate media portrayal of US policing in major cable news outlets; and 3. a novel perspective of vicarious offense that examines a timely and important question -- how well do Democratic-leaning users perceive what content would be deemed as offensive by their Republican-leaning counterparts or vice-versa?

Проблемы регионального развития Кыргызстана в условиях новых вызовов

The current situation in the world reflects the peculiarities of the interaction between American democracy and surrounding countries. All global economy participants need to determine their own position regarding the events taking place in the world and the growing confrontation. Under these conditions, there is a serious drop in the socio-economic sphere of the Kyrgyz Republic, which determines the relevance of studying the topic. The article shows the conditions and trends of socio-economic development of the Kyrgyz Republic’s regions and the features of its socio-economic development for 2010–2023. The issues of uneven regional development are discussed, in particular, the problems of regional economic policy in the context of modern challenges such as the geopolitical situation and digitalization processes, as well as the peculiarities of the trade relations formation are identified. The aim is to identify the key problems of regional development in the Kyrgyz Republic. The author conducts research of statistical material and publications of domestic and foreign scientists using the methods of analysis, synthesis, and induction. The study proposes measures to stabilize the situation in the region and the direction of economic policy in the new conditions of world economy. The most important measure is effort to increase the investments attraction in key sectors of the economy. The prospects and opportunities of the Kyrgyz Republic Government in overcoming key regional problems are considered.

Uncommon and nonpartisan: Antidemocratic attitudes in the American public

Democratic regimes flourish only when there is broad acceptance of an extensive set of norms and values. In the United States, fundamental democratic norms have recently come under threat from prominent Republican officials. We investigate whether this antidemocratic posture has spread from the elite level to rank-and-file partisans. Exploiting data from a massive repeated cross-sectional and panel survey ([Formula: see text] = 45,095 and 5,231 respectively), we find that overwhelming majorities of the public oppose violations of democratic norms, and virtually nobody supports partisan violence. This bipartisan consensus remains unchanged over time despite high levels of affective polarization and exposure to divisive elite rhetoric during the 2022 political campaign. Additionally, we find no evidence that elected officials' practice of election denialism encourages their constituents to express antidemocratic attitudes. Overall, these results suggest that the clear and present threat to American democracy comes from unilateral actions by political elites that stand in contrast to the views of their constituents. In closing, we consider the implications of the stark disconnect between the behavior of Republican elites and the attitudes of Republican voters.

Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social media

Language change is influenced by many factors, but often starts from synchronic variation, where multiple linguistic patterns or forms coexist, or where different speech communities use language in increasingly different ways. Besides regional or economic reasons, communities may form and segregate based on political alignment. The latter, referred to as political polarization, is of growing societal concern across the world. Here we map and quantify linguistic divergence across the partisan left-right divide in the United States, using social media data. We develop a general methodology to delineate (social) media users by their political preference, based on which (potentially biased) news media accounts they do and do not follow on a given platform. Our data consists of 1.5M short posts by 10k users (about 20M words) from the social media platform Twitter (now “X”). Delineating this sample involved mining the platform for the lists of followers (n = 422M) of 72 large news media accounts. We quantify divergence in topics of conversation and word frequencies, messaging sentiment, and lexical semantics of words and emoji. We find signs of linguistic divergence across all these aspects, especially in topics and themes of conversation, in line with previous research. While US American English remains largely intelligible within its large speech community, our findings point at areas where miscommunication may eventually arise given ongoing polarization and therefore potential linguistic divergence. Our flexible methodology — combining data mining, lexicostatistics, machine learning, large language models and a systematic human annotation approach — is largely language and platform agnostic. In other words, while we focus here on US political divides and US English, the same approach is applicable to other countries, languages, and social media platforms.

Anti-Asian Racism and the Rise of Hawkish Mass Opinion in China

Abstract The dramatic increase in anti-Asian racial violence in the United States during the pandemic has sparked debates on issues of domestic racial justice and deep-seated racism against Asian Americans. Political scientists, however, have paid relatively little attention to how growing anti-Asian racism might affect contemporary U.S.-China relations, especially by shaping foreign policy discourses and public opinion in China. In this article, I investigate the way the Chinese state media discuss the issue and how such top-down discourses shape mass political attitudes and foreign policy preferences in China. Analyzing the Chinese state media coverage of anti-Asian racial violence, I first find that Chinese official narratives frame the issue as a manifestation of both racially motivated American foreign policy and problems with American democracy. By conducting a nationwide survey experiment in China, I then examine the impact of such top-down political rhetoric on public support for hawkish foreign policies. I find that these political narratives significantly boost racialized and nationalist sentiments among the Chinese masses, which, in turn, garner greater public support for hawkish foreign policy. This article contributes to understanding the foreign policy implications of anti-Asian racism after the global pandemic and the potential racialization of Sino-American great-power competition.

The New Racial Spillover: Donald Trump, Racial Attitudes, and Public Opinion Toward Accountability for Perpetrators and Planners of the January 6 Capitol Attack

Abstract Since the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, federal authorities have sought to hold participants and organizers accountable for their assault on American democracy. Troublingly, however, a substantial fraction of the public opposes the prosecution of participants in the assault on the Capitol and rejects charging former president Trump with crimes relating to the planning and execution of the attack. Why does a substantial fraction of the American public oppose accountability for perpetrators of the January 6 attack? In this article, we argue that racial attitudes play a central role in determining individuals' attitudes toward accountability for the Capitol attack. Elaborating on the theory of “racial spillover,” we argue that former president Trump's frequent use of racial rhetoric—which established a racialized identity and cemented a close relationship between negative racial attitudes and support for his presidency among members of the mass public—created conditions in which these attitudes were likely to “spill over” into the ostensibly non-racialized domain of attitudes toward holding perpetrators, planners, and inciters accountable for the attack. Because attitudes toward accountability for the Capitol attack are inextricable from Trump's racialized persona, we hypothesize that negative racial attitudes should be associated with increased opposition to accountability for those responsible for the attack. Using data from four original, nationally representative surveys fielded between 2021 and 2023, we find strong evidence for our racial spillover hypothesis and show that individuals with more negative racial attitudes are more opposed to accountability for those responsible for the Capitol attack.

The Crucial Role of Race in Twenty-First Century US Political Realignment

Abstract Traditional realignment theory has fallen out of fashion among political scientists, yet the popular press talk about political realignments with great regularity. However, in this research note we show that political science should reconsider realignment theory because over the last decade American politics has dramatically realigned—but only for white Americans. Specifically, we demonstrate that income has gone from a highly polarizing factor to one in which there is little to no polarization at all, while at the same time education polarization has increased dramatically to become the prominent demographic cleavage in the white segment of the electorate. However, no such realignment has occurred among Black or Latino voters. These differences across racial groups show how it is essential to consider race in theories of realignment, particularly because of the different experiences across racial groups. Realignment theory is quite viable in the twenty-first century, but the lens of race is the key to seeing the white realignment.

How Parties and Ambitious Politicians Undermined American Democracy—and the Reforms that Might Save It

Abstract Asserting that American checks and balances have broken down, Lawrence Jacobs asserts that parties must filter out dangerous candidates such as Donald Trump. To do so requires a number of reforms to undo several wrong turns in the evolution of the party system. Ambitious political elites including Jefferson, Jackson, LaFollette, and McGovern introduced changes in the name of greater equality that served their own interests but also had a number of harmful consequences. Reforms are needed to expand and reinvigorate citizen political participation along many dimensions and curb elite influence. In his book Democracy Under Fire: Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History, Lawrence Jacobs offers a robust vision of democracy and argues democracy is incompatible with entrenching minority control of electoral outcomes or political decision-making. Yet some of the failures and changes that gave rise to current threats to democracy, including authoritarian candidates, have affected other nations and have causes that go beyond remedies considered here. Some of the modest reforms proposed by Jacobs seem unlikely to achieve the purposes he envisions. However, reforms that do not require constitutional amendments and broader citizen political engagement that extends beyond election season are welcome proposals.

Teaching Democratic Citizenship in Moments of Conflict: Putting Civic Engagement Theory Into Practice When Teaching About the War in Ukraine

Events of recent years both in the United States and around the globe have highlighted the fragility of democracy. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has prompted educators to seek evidence-based civic engagement methods for helping students understand the invasion and its implications. This paper offers a set of recommendations on how to teach the war in Ukraine through the lens of civic engagement education. Over the years, a sizeable body of scholarship has developed addressing the critical role civic education plays in safeguarding democracy and producing effective pedagogical approaches for instilling democratic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Using this scholarship as a starting point, this paper offers recommendations on how educators in a variety of settings and across disciplines might modify these civic learning models to address the war in Ukraine. Based on my experience as a scholar-practitioner-educator at an institute of politics focused primarily on American democracy, I also offer suggestions on how to integrate teaching the war in Ukraine using these practices to enhance appreciation of civic engagement and the role of the citizen.

Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr., In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy

Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr., <i>In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy</i>

THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS IN THE TIME OF CRISES: REVISITING TONY KUSHNER’S ANGELS IN AMERICA

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has revealed once again that the effects of health crises have been more severe for some groups compared to the others. The most prominent of these groups is non-binary or LGBTQ+ individuals who have long faced social discrimination. The disadvantaged position of LGBTQ+ people during worldwide epidemics attracted the attention of playwrights especially in 1980s and 90s. Although this could be attributed to the AIDS epidemic during the time, playwrights problematized the “otherness” issue influencing LGBTQ+ people through AIDS and the political response to it. One of the most significant of these was American playwright Tony Kushner. In “Angels in America”, Kushner put forth not only the problems of LGBTQ+ people during AIDS epidemic but also the problem of otherness in different levels as a social and political phenomenon. This article aims to explore the concepts of “responsibility” and “otherness”, which Kushner problematized in his play based on the philosophical approaches of Levinas and Benjamin, in light of the current developments regarding health crises and the political response. The article claims the disadvantaged position of minority groups during crises including AIDS and COVID-19 is more of a political issue regarding the attitudes of right-wing/conservative politics (which has not changed even today) rather than the difficulties posed by the pandemics themselves. In that respect, Kushner’s activist theatre proves to be guiding in evaluating the conditions of “the others” during the pandemic.

Students’ Perception of the Enforcement Model Approach towards Radicalism Movement in Malaysia Higher Learning Institutions (HLI’s)

Radicalism among undergraduates in a higher learning institution (is an HLI’s) thing that is already synonymous in most countries, especially in developing nations. The radicalism brought about by the student movement is not triggered, but it is often influenced by the issue of statehood, which is a factor in social change and the formation of community values. However, the involvement of students in higher learning institutions (HLI’s) in Malaysia is now not as intense and aggressive as in the foreign context. Based on scientific studies, student participation in Malaysia lack awareness and concern about the current political issues and problems around them. The enforcement of the University College University Act (AUKU) 1971 in Malaysia, which prohibits students from engaging in politics for five decades, has caused some passivity and paralysis in the students’ interest in political activities. Therefore, this study’s main objective is to develop a resilience model in preventing radicalism in a more student-friendly scenario that does not constrain students’ rights in Malaysia, like the Universities and University Colleges Act (AUKU), by benchmarking the good practices in Indonesia’s Higher Learning Institution (HLI’s) using the Altbach’s theoretical framework. Thus, questionnaires were conducted among students in three HLI’s – UTM, UKM and UM to understand students’ perception of AUKU from the technical and social sciences backgrounds. The study found that students’ perception of the AUKU enforcement model was poorly satisfactory and required a review, as universities function not as controlled factories but as generators of knowledge for producing great and intellectual national leaders regardless of their calibre and performance.

The Electoral College as a Vulnerability of American Democracy

The Electoral College as a Vulnerability of American Democracy

A call for reform: Education’s role in strengthening democracy

This essay maintains that the ideal American democracy necessitates a fair, equitable, and just education system. This fair system would subsequently create an educated electorate to then select their representatives, vote on policy amendments or changes, and remain informed on issues that affect all aspects of life in this representative democracy. It pays special attention to the racial inequities that continue to exist due to an unjust taxation and funding system, corrupt political bodies, and the urban-suburban divide. Relying on the Founding Fathers, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and contemporary sociologists and economists, this essay identifies key factors which continue to divide the American educational system. The essay contends that such inequities, political actions aimed at the elimination of content or curriculum, and the continued underfunding of American school systems puts the long-term viability of our democracy in peril.

Receptive-Productive Dynamics of US Evangelicals in Response to G. W. Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives’ Funding Programs

Faith-based organizations in the United States remain the primary shelter either for the indigent individuals seeking social help or for the government striving to reinforce its domestic policies. The aim of the present article is to investigate and assess the interrelation between religion and US politics via Evangelical faith-based organizations and government funding under G. W. Bush’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative policy. The question remains whether being an Evangelical organization prohibits from receiving government funds. The study examines three Evangelical organizations: Union Rescue Mission, East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership, and the Salvation Army in their response for Faith-Based Organization’s programs naming: Compassion Capital Funds, Ready4Work, and Continuum of Care. The article argues that the three organizations received government funds during Bush’s two presidential terms. Union Rescue Mission and East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership acted positively for Ready4Work program while the Salvation Army used Compassion Capital Funds and Continuum of Care funds in serving the needs of US citizens.

Democracy and Institutional Change in Times of Crises in Latin America

Latin American democracies have gone through a series of perfect storms over the recent years. In what ways have these challenges transformed the institutional infrastructure of democracy? How have institutional reforms impacted the democratic prospects? This review article analyzes four recent edited volumes that approach the problems of institutional change against the backdrop of the multiple crises unfolding throughout the region. It describes two modes through which the reforms of political institutions have had an ambivalent or outright negative effect on the quality of democracy, and assesses the resilience of political institutions. Arguing for a more prominent role of informal institutions and political parties in institutional analyses, the article suggests that changes in formal political institutions have had a limited impact vis-à-vis the profound changes in political cleavages, culture wars, swift changes in religious identities and the decline of political parties.

Expert Bias and Democratic Erosion: Assessing Expert Perceptions of Contemporary American Democracy

ABSTRACT In an important contribution to scholarship on measuring democratic performance, Little and Meng suggest that bias among expert coders accounts for erosion in ratings of democratic quality and performance observed in recent years. Drawing on 19 waves of survey data on US democracy from academic experts and from the public collected by Bright Line Watch (BLW), this study looks for but does not find manifestations of the type of expert bias that Little and Meng posit. Although we are unable to provide a direct test of Little and Meng’s hypothesis, several analyses provide reassurance that expert samples are an informative source to measure democratic performance. We find that respondents who have participated more frequently in BLW surveys, who have coded for V-Dem, and who are vocal about the state of American democracy on Twitter are no more pessimistic than other participants.

Conservative Talk Radio and political persuasion in the US,1950–1970

Conservative Talk Radio continues to shape US politics in the 21st century, but it has a deeper history. Using newly digitized archival records, we provide new evidence on the electoral effects of Conservative Talk Radio in the historically consequential period from 1950 to 1970. Conservative radio hosts like Clarence Manion, Billy James Hargis, and Carl McIntire rapidly expanded their network during the early 1960s before the Kennedy administration took regulatory steps to dismantle their business model. We find that in counties where these shows aired on local stations, the Republican vote share increased following their introduction. Anticipatory effects are small and insignificant, which supports a causal interpretation of this effect.