American Political Culture Research Articles

Motivating Future Voters: Comparing the Effects of ‘I Voted’ and ‘I Will Vote’ Stickers on Intention to Vote

ABSTRACT “I Voted” stickers have long symbolized civic pride and voter participation in American political culture. This study examines the impact of these stickers’ language on voting intentions, comparing the effects of future tense (“I Will Vote”) with past-tense stickers (“I Voted”) and control stickers. Through two pre-registered experiments involving low-propensity voters (Total N = 1500), we find that “I Will Vote” stickers significantly enhance voting intentions compared to “I Voted” and control stickers. We also find that “I Will Vote” stickers induce more positive attitudes toward voting and greater voting self-efficacy. These findings contribute to the understudied intersection of language and political behavior, illuminating how linguistic choices in voter outreach can shape civic engagement. We conclude with a call for scholars to explore how incorporating the future tense in get-out-the-vote campaigns can effectively boost turnout.

“Some Necessary Iconoclasm”: Contesting Liberty in the Progressive Era

During the Progressive Era, academics and theorists in positions of substantial institutional power engaged in an intellectual shift against the prevailing American political culture by challenging the ontological nature of liberty and the state. Owing to the belief that individuals were social creatures who could not exist outside of an organized society, these theorists rejected the theoretical underpinnings of natural rights and personal liberty and reconceived of freedom as something that was socially constituted rather than individually focused. Liberty was repositioned as a way for individuals to be the best members of society, not to pursue their own ends absent a restraining force. These intellectuals imagined a dynamic, progressive democracy that would respond to changing social and economic circumstances rather than a fixed constitution that protected individual and minority rights. In practice, reformers used this intellectual and linguistic shift to legitimize the era’s many moral crusades. They framed vices such as alcohol, cigarettes, and prostitution as deleterious to the socially constituted freedoms of the community and warranting the intervention of police power. Though progressive reformers were met with mixed success, the theoretical shift away from natural rights left a lasting legacy in the American political landscape.

The Sociology of Property Value in a Climate-Changed United States

ABSTRACT In the United States, individual and collective economic well-being is closely tied to homeownership. But there is an emerging set of complex issues where climate impacts intersect with housing markets. As climate disasters hit with greater intensity and frequency, the economic effects will be felt not only as the underlying assets are damaged or destroyed, but also as those experiences, and expectations of similar ones to come, are “priced in” to the judgments of what homes are worth. Drawing on scholarship on economic valuation, racism and housing markets, and homeownership in American political economy and culture, I outline a sociology of property value that can help us approach this matter analytically as it unfolds empirically. This approach allows us to see how social actors shape the climate-changed world by determining whether, how, and with what effects property values change. I illustrate these potential contributions through application to a court case in which the question of what was happening to property value—and whether, by extension, proximity to the water is an amenity or a risk—was the primary point of contention. The implications open onto fundamental questions about the future of safe and secure housing in a climate-changed United States.

Exceptional secularism: The religion-politics nexus in American domestic and foreign policy orientations

The growing political polarization in the United States of America in the 21st Century was accompanied by shifting ideological landscapes that reflect how cultural and religious divides continuously shape public discourse and policy orientations. Accordingly, this article highlights the role of religious paradigms in influencing political practice in the American context. It aims to inform current scholarship by assessing the relationship between religion and politics from both historical and contemporary perspectives. The article examines the fundamental relationship between Amer- ican Exceptionalism, political practice, and religiosity. It argues that the American model of secularism is exceptional in nature and post-secular in practice. This study demonstrated that religion plays a significant role in shaping American political culture and policymaking processes despite the U.S. Constitution’s emphasis on the separation of Church and state. This confirmed that key historical and contemporary instances where religious rhetoric intertwined with political discourse reflect a considerable reliance on religious paradigms to formulate and legitimise domestic and foreign policy orientations. Furthermore, the paper assessed the implications of the religion-politics entanglement on U.S. democracy by evaluating whether American political practice truly aligns with the secular ideals that are enshrined in its founding documents from the Federalist Papers to the U.S. Constitution. This paper argues that the American model of secularism is an exceptional and post-secularist one seeing that it encompasses religious diversity and theoretically promotes state neutrality while simultaneously depending on religious motifs in setting the norms for public debate, domestic policy, and foreign entanglement. The results of the study can be used to take into account religious aspects in the development of political campaign strategies, analysis of public opinion and forecasting of political changes

"City upon a Hill" in the Face of Significant Challenges

The editor-in-chief proposes a context for examining the crisis processes in American society explored in the articles. The author suggests that this crisis should be viewed in the context of the American history cycles. Many of the current conflicts in the USA have a similar internal source, which is a sharp intra-elite conflict involving a significant part of society. This conflict is unusual in its depth, given that for many decades the «trademark» of the American political class has been its consensus character. One important element of this consensus can be seen as an unquestioned focus on global American leadership and a shared commitment among members of the community to the force imperatives in foreign policy – either the classic “hard” or “flexible” power. Among the sources of American foreign policy continuity are a number of factors. First, it is the stability of institutional mechanisms of decision-making, which, in turn, is based on a stable system of representation of dominant interests. Second, the stability of formal and informal institutions that ensure a high degree of elite cohesion; and the specificity of American political culture, which is based on a set of political and philosophical views of messianic nature. The consensual nature of the political elite was the system-forming basis of liberal democracy, so the breakdown of this consensus may entail – and partially has already entailed – a crisis of the US political system.

American Literary History in Pieces

Abstract Daniel Diez Couch’s American Fragments offers a scholarly analysis of the fragment, a mainstay of American print culture in the early national period. In American Fragments, Couch argues that fragments were central to both American aesthetics and American political culture. Insisting that the fragment was an inclusive and progressive form that invited readers to consider the relationship between a part and the whole, Couch shows how fragments helped Americans understand themselves and their place in a democratic republic. Couch’s book is deeply researched, and it provides insightful readings of well-known texts like Hannah Fosters’s The Coquette, Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, and Washington Irving’s Sketch Book while also introducing readers to a host of poems and other shorter writings that appeared in newspapers, periodicals, and gift books throughout the early nineteenth century. The original research in American Fragments is engaging, and it is also emblematic of a new wave of scholarship enabled by the widespread digitization of books and newspapers in that it introduces so many new texts that are difficult to connect to existing timelines and canons. In this respect, Couch’s book also reveals the limitations of the monograph as a tool for revisioning our collective scholarly project.[R]ight now, the scholarship pushing us to reimagine our literary past is running ahead of the forms in which it might be published.

Atlantic Patriotism: The Seven Years' War and the Transformation of American, British, and French Political Culture

Abstract: The Seven Years' War worked as a catalyst of mutations already present before the hostilities. The case is particularly palpable when we consider the transformation of American, British, and French political culture between 1756 and 1763. In America, William Pitt's colonial policy based on partnership led after the peace to a huge disappointment in America and a growing tension with London. Eventually, it paved the way for the revolt of the Sons of Liberty. In Great Britain, the ideological and political consequences of the war were no less dramatic. Pitt's patriot policy, which was in many respects a mirror of the colonists' political culture based on the same republican principles, brought a decisive contribution to the birth of radicalism after the peace. Last but not least, French political culture was deeply affected by the conflict. A new conception of the political role of the French people emerged during the war, leading to the transformation of the subjects of Louis XV into self-proclaimed citizens willing to offer spontaneously their services for the common weal.

John Witherspoon, the Scottish Common Sense School, and American Political Philosophy

This article thus argues that we should interpret Witherspoon's relationship to slavery through the lens of his philosophical commitments. Perhaps John Witherspoon's most lasting contribution to American political culture was his introduction of Scottish Common Sense philosophy into American life. This body of philosophical thought that Witherspoon brought over from Scotland soon became dominant in American seminaries and universities. It helped shape the language of the Patriot cause during the American Revolution and seems to have, in concrete ways, influenced the Constitution. Scottish Common Sense philosophy helped to undergird much of the early anti-slavery movement. In this sense Witherspoon contributed significantly to the foundations of early American abolitionism. As the anti-slavery movement radicalized, though, decades after Witherspoon's death, Common Sense philosophy proved less useful, and generally faded as a source of anti-slavery commitment.

Political System Justification in Argentina: Ideology, System Performance, and the Legitimization of Democracy

The main objective of this study was to analyze democracy legitimacy in a non-WEIRD country from a political psychology perspective. More specifically, two dimensions of democracy legitimacy were empirically isolated: diffuse and specific support. We tested a system justification model of democracy legitimacy, while also assessing the role of sociodemographic and context evaluation variables. We applied a questionnaire with closed-ended response choices to a non-probabilistic quota sample of adults from Cordoba, Argentina (n = 450). Besides descriptively analyzing democracy legitimacy, two hierarchical multiple regression analyzes were performed, one for each criterion variable. The results evidenced that diffuse support for democracy remains relatively high, while specific support for Argentine political system is markedly low. Different variables explained each dimension of political legitimacy: those regarding ideological system justification—right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and political conservatism—explained an important amount of the variance of diffuse support but had only a marginal role in explaining specific support. The latter was better predicted by context evaluation variables, suggesting that system performance is more relevant than ideology when it comes to specific support. Thus, although democracy legitimacy could be based on a relatively developed civic culture, a poor system performance is not innocuous. The authors discuss how the theoretical explanations developed and framed in Western democracies may be not adequate to comprehend Latin American political culture.

Отражение пост-экономических проблем в научно-фантастических сериалах «Звездный путь» и «Вавилон 5»

The article examines “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” as components of American political culture and collective memory, focusing on their portrayal of economic issues. It aims to analyze how economic ideas are depicted in science fiction films and how they are absorbed into mass culture to fit the needs of a consumer society. The study draws on interdisciplinary historiography and economic theory, integrating insights from economic and cultural anthropology as well as sociology. Its novelty lies in analyzing how economic and social issues are perceived and how alien economic development is portrayed in the visual narratives of science fiction series. The analysis focuses on how these series represent economic experiences and social contradictions, such as inequality and development disparities in American society. It also explores the political and ideological dimensions of the economy as a driver of social and cultural transformation, particularly amid economic globalization and growing criticism of capitalist rationality. Additionally, the study considers how economic development is understood through collective memory, with socio-economic traumas from modernization and globalization intensifying inequality and disparities. The study further explores how “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” shape perceptions of economic issues in U.S. society by promoting the idea of a socially responsible economy. The author argues that these series envision a post-capitalist economy grounded in humanism, progress, and development. In conclusion, the findings suggest that “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” serve as cultural mechanisms for the assimilation and reevaluation of economic concepts, addressing collective traumas and ideological contradictions as society balances social responsibility with market dynamics.

Science Fiction Series <i>Orville</i> as Space for the Memorial Cultures and Memory Wars

The relevance of collective memory analysis comes from the increasing role of memorization in social processes, which are currently acquiring increasingly significant conflict potential. The author analyses visual material of the popular science fiction series The Orville, which represents a segment of American political culture, as one of the cultural mechanisms for the assimilation of ideology and politics in mass cultural discourse. It is presumed that The Orville parodies the classic epics Star Trek and Babylon 5 and thus is part of the processes of deconstructing the historical collective memory of modern American society. This study intends to establish how a formally parody series not only mocks and imitates, but also constructs its own versions of memorial culture. The article aims: 1) to describe the universal tactics of deconstruction as a form of revision of existing memorial cultures; 2) to clarify the possibilities and boundaries of describing memorial culture through the prism of visual mass culture, using the example of a science fiction series; 3) to analyze the modes of updating political and social contradictions in American society on the example of the TV series The Orville; 4) to consider the specificity of the transformation of mass consciousness by constructing a new version of identity in the light of a radical revision of the narratives of classic science fiction series; 5) to analyze the political and ideological dimensions of the memory wars presented in the clash of traditional and liberal values of the characters in the series. Methodology of the article bases on the principles of the memorial turn and the analysis of the politics of memory within the paradigm of cultural and intellectual history and includes the methods of discourse analysis and intent analysis. The novelty of the study lies in determining the directions and specificities of the assimilation of the political, limited by the problems of collective memory, cultural, religious and gender identity along with military and ideological confrontation in modern mass culture of historical memory within the visual space of the science fiction series The Orville. The series is analyzed as an attempt to deconstruct the cultural experience and legacy of Star Trek, which actualized science fiction series as one of the sources of cultural and social meanings for modern consumer society. The author also analyzes the contribution of the series to the development of the collective memory of US society; the transformation of the concepts of Self and Otherness through the prism of specifying cultural, religious and gender roles. Revision of the past in popular culture as an alternative space for the functioning of collective historical memory is investigated. As a result of the study, it is presumed that The Orville actualizes modern American laughter culture and inspires attempts to rethink collective memory, the collective historical experience of trauma and represents an attempt to abandon the strategies of historical amnesia and ignoring politically inconvenient experiences.

NATIONAL ACADEMIC ASSOCIATIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS AS PARTICIPANTS OF HISTORICAL POLITICS IN THE USA

The aim of the study is to examine the activities of professional academic associations in the U.S., which are close to the memory institutions in Europe. The author examines the role of professional associations as memory institutions in the development of memorial culture through the representation of the past in contemporary politics, its reflection in public and public spaces of American society. The novelty of the study lies in the comparison of institutions that determine the main vectors and trajectories of historical policy as memory policy in the United States. The article analyses the problems of the activities of institutionalized actors of collective memory policy in the U.S., including the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association. It hypothesizes that these groups can shape civil society versions of collective memory as alternatives to politically motivated use of the past by political elites. The article deals with the institutional and formal features of historical politics in the United States, the participation of historical associations in memorial conflicts and “memory wars”, issues of politicization of history and the academic community’s attempts at forming a canon of historical collective memory which is formally free from ideological influences. The activities of professional historical associations have supposedly been a factor in the development of revisionism in the interpretation of the history of the American South and the Confederate States of America. Therefore, the author considers the role and responsibility of American historians as public intellectuals who shaped compromise versions of memorial culture that contributed to the consolidation of society. The article highlights the contribution of professional historical associations as memory institutions to the development of mnemonic spaces of American society and its memorial culture. It analyses the attempts of American historians to preserve the “purity” of academic research in the context of the growing ideologization and instrumentalization of history by ruling elites. The research results suggest that memory institutions are an important factor in the development of contemporary identities in the United States in the context of revision of the past and the formation of new or alternative memorial canons in American political culture.

Weaving in the Threads

Weaving in the Threads

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. and Understanding the Independence Era

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. was an important historian of the independence era in Mexico. He argued in various well-researched works that Hispanic political culture contained the seeds of liberalism and that during the independence era many groups became politicized. His passionate and sometimes provocative arguments were driven by his rejection of the widely held notions that Spanish American political culture was oriented toward authoritarianism and that representative democracy was an alien import from Western Europe and the United States. Rodríguez made crucial contributions, but we should build on those contributions by exploring the social influence of Hispanic liberalism. How did the new egalitarianism play out on the streets and in the fields? How did legal equality and the abolition of racial classification in Mexico coexist with the continuation of racial prejudice?

Does the “Fascism Debate” Matter for Understanding 2024 American Politics?

In 2020, historians and public intellectuals began to ask whether fascism had come to America, with many analysts arguing in the affirmative. I argue here that fascism as a category has an “epistemic plasticity” that attenuates its analytic utility when it is used outside of historical context. Fascism as an analytic device in the American context, therefore, obscures dangerous tendencies in American politics and culture. Where European political culture is characterized by secular and religious solidarity rooted in national state institutions, American political culture lacks collectivism and solidarity and is susceptible to nativism, a distinctly American impulse that is unmoored from institutional arrangements. In the 2024 American election cycle, analysts should focus on factors that threaten democratic institutions and strategies that strengthen democracy. Comparisons that apply imperfectly to the American situation will not save democracy.

Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution by Jared A. Goldstein

In Real Americans, Jared Goldstein offers a bracing examination of the role played by the U.S. Constitution in the country's political consciousness. Goldstein's aim is to pierce the narrative of constitutional nationalism to show how citizens have invoked America's founding text to express “deeply conflicting conceptions of national identity” (2) and “justify hatred, violence, and exclusion” (4). He does so by exploring the beliefs of various right-wing movements that have resisted mainstream developments in basic law, as well as more diffuse social changes. Among the subjects covered: the Know Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan, the Tea Party, the ascendance of Judeo-Christian nationalism, and the modern militia movement. Goldstein's reader-friendly approach is mostly descriptive rather than normative; he presents even the most illiberal visions of community in largely nonjudgmental terms. This allows readers to appreciate the capacious and disturbing nature of American political culture. At the same time, it leaves unstated what, if any, criteria ought to be used to evaluate the competing visions of power and community—particularly those that claim authority to dominate existing institutions rather than as an excuse to opt out of normal politics.

Richard J. Ellis. Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation.

The 1840 presidential election dazzles in textbooks and syntheses as a milestone in the history of American democracy. Less bitterly controversial than the 1824 contest, and vastly less portentous of bloodshed than the 1860 campaign, the 1840 election has captivated historians’ attention more for its pageantry than for its candidates, issues, or policy implications. Often, 1840 is framed as the moment when the Whigs descended from their aristocratic perch, copied the Democrats’ playbook, and finally got the ball rolling by appealing to the masses with songs, slogans, symbols, and a war hero atop the ticket. Whether this reflected the vitality of American political culture or the vacuity of American political ideas depends on one’s point of view. But the notion that the contest featured more style than substance remains pervasive, not least because the election’s two previous book-length treatments—published in 2016 and 1957, respectively—both accepted it. In this well-crafted new study, however, eminent presidential scholar Richard J. Ellis presents a compelling reinterpretation of the immediate and lasting importance of the storied Log Cabin campaign. Building on important work by historians such as Michael Holt on the primacy of economic issues and the dynamics of voter mobilization, and Mark Cheathem on antebellum electioneering, Ellis offers a detailed campaign study that will likely remain the standard on the subject for many years. In this persuasive retelling, the 1840 election appears just as colorful, much more innovative, dramatically more substantive, and more enduringly significant than ever before.

Double-Edged Care: Toward a Politics of Care Justice

In American political culture, care is double-edged. In everyday struggles over power, some political actors deploy care in ways that advance social justice, while others mobilize care in ways that hinder it. Feminist scholarship itself grapples with this double-edged-ness: Some scholars argue for care (Joan Tronto, Martha Fineman), while others push against it, asserting that care ideology is oppressive and should be “troubled” (Michelle Murphy, Lisa Lowe). I suggest that a discerning politics of care justice helps to resolve this tension. My study is comparative: I uphold Black Lives Matter, Black feminism, and the Domestic Workers Alliance as advancing varying forms of transformative politics that join care with justice. I also show that deployments of care by white political actors often counter or constrain social justice progress. To discern and analyze care’s double-edged-ness, I delineate three meanings of care—moral value, emotion, and labor—and I trace these meanings in political-cultural moments from the Trump era.

Buttered Bagels

Buttered Bagels

Editorial

Editorial