Ideological Diversity Research Articles

Is it time to understand Russia rationally? Test of suitability in constitutional adjudication

The author discusses the application of the suitability test in constitutional adjudication. Then he puts forward a thesis that in comparison with the essentially philosophical categories of reasonableness and rationality, this prong of proportionality principle has practical value in judicial review of legislation. The political system has to meet the minimum standards of a deliberative democracy in order courts could use the doctrine of rationality. Among such standards are: recognition of the diversity of ideologies, real competition between political parties and other groups, a serious attitude towards discussion in society, etc. High courts, even in countries with long democratic traditions, usually use the self-restraint technique in reviewing the reasonableness of statutes. In illiberal and populist regimes, due to the unification of public discourse and the imitation of democratic institutions, the challenging of reasonableness of majority decisions can be dangerous. The argument on absurdity of legislation is relatively rare in the case-law of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. It can be found in the dissenting opinions of constitutional judges. In regard with the recent legislative ban on the publication of these opinions, the reasoning ad absurdum has rather theoretical significance for constitutional adjudication in Russia. Moreover, criticism of the reasonableness of legislation can now create additional obstacles for the difficult dialogue of the Russian Constitutional Court with the parliament and other “political” branches. An alternative to critically reviewing the unreasonableness of parliamentary decisions in constitutional adjudication are both the borrowing of economic methodology and certain principles of Legisprudence. The author puts forward the argument on utility of these principles on the judicial review of the ability of legislative means to achieve public goals. Suitability has an empirical nature and requires scientific validity of statutes. Selection of regulatory measures should be evidence-based and grounded on outcomes of research. Usually, constitutional judges do not have special knowledge of complex issues of socio-economic policy. More often than not, the absence of such an expertise means deference to the parliamentary and administrative fact-finding, which predetermined the normative decision. The intensity of the review of the suitability of legislation can be increased in those areas where constitutional judges have the necessary expertise or practical background. Constitutional tribunals recognize the broad discretion of representative bodies in forecasting the social, economic and other consequences. Otherwise, the intervention of judges in the goal-setting of regulatory policy is inevitable. Forecasting can be inaccurate and even erroneous due to the targeting of the regulatory decision for the future. A second-guess of the legislative forecast in constitutional adjudication is an exception to the general rule. It is possible due to newly discovered circumstances, changes taking place in society or progress in science. The implementation of regulatory impact assessment in law-making does not replace, but supplements the judicial review of the principle of proportionality. Consistency test in constitutional adjudication is closely related to the principle of legal certainty, which in turn excludes inconsistency and contradictions of legislative measures with public aims. The consistency approach obliges the members of parliament to be logical in the implementation of the legislative intent. Otherwise, citizens’ legitimate expectations in the governmental policy are undermined. The suitability test has an applied meaning in discrimination cases. If unequal treatment affects the fundamental rights of truly vulnerable social groups, constitutional judges could increase the intensity of judicial review of unreasonable laws.

Measuring Subjective Ideological Disagreement with the US Supreme Court

AbstractConventional wisdom suggests that judicial legitimacy should be relatively unaffected by satisfaction with the ideological direction of judicial policy making. Recent studies challenge this assertion. The key to resolving this conundrum is estimating individual-level satisfaction with the ideological direction of judicial policy making reliably and validly. We examine the accuracy of several common measures of the concept. We find that 40% of the respondents repudiate their own scores on these measures. With this much systematic measurement error in such an important independent variable, the question of whether the Supreme Court’s institutional legitimacy is conditional on ideological agreement with its decisions must be reexamined.

СПРИЙНЯТТЯ МЕТРОПОЛІЇ КАНАДСЬКОЮ ПОЛІТИЧНОЮ ЕЛІТОЮ У 1914–1915 РР. (ЗА МАТЕРІАЛАМИ ПРОТОКОЛІВ ДЕБАТІВ КАНАДСЬКОГО ПАРЛАМЕНТУ)

In modern historical science, an integral component of scientific research is the component of the source base, which also applies to studies in world history. This article is devoted to the analysis of the protocols of the Canadian Parliament’s debates at the initial stage of World War I (1914–1915). The pages of the protocols of the Canadian Parliament’s describe the personal attitude of politicians to Metropolia, the public speeches of Canadian politicians in 1914–1915, the vision of representatives of political elites regarding the entry of the Canadian Confederation into the First World War. Notwithstanding the ideological diversity of Canadian politicians in the early twentieth century, who included both proponents of unity with Metropolia and opponents of the process, it is interesting that the entire political elite at the beginning of the Great War was consolidated in the matter of supporting the British Crown. Even former political opponents – R. Borden and W. Laurier – became ideological partners, who emphasized that Canada should support the British Empire at a difficult time. Importantly, French Canadian politicians, who were in part critical of British imperialism, also took a positive view of Britain. The main ideologue of the French Canadians at this time was considered A. Burassa, who supported Canada’s entry into the First World War. The main issues discussed at this time by parliamentarians were Canada’s military and material support for the armed conflict. Senators J. Bolduk, E. Smith, A. Lougheed, and P. Murphy actively called for the side of the Metropolia. In the article the author draws attention to the fact that politicians were negative about the military conflict itself. Canadian politicians consider German Empire to be the main culprit in the war, which violated Belgium’s sovereignty and started the war. As a result, the UK was forced to go to war, defending the neutrality of the Belgian state. According to most Canadian politicians, Canada’s main task was to support the British Empire.

Western Ideological Homogeneity in Entrepreneurial Finance Research: Evidence From Highly Cited Publications

Entrepreneurs play crucial roles in global sustainable development, but limited financial resources constrain their performance and survival rate. Entrepreneurial finance discipline is, therefore, born to explore the connection between finance and entrepreneurship. Despite the global presence of entrepreneurship, the literature of entrepreneurial finance is suspected to be Western ideologically homogeneous. Thus, the objective of this study is to examine the existence of Western ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance literature. Employing the mind-sponge mechanism and biblio-metric analyses (Y-index and social structure), we analyze 412 highly cited publications extracted from Web of Science database and find Western ideological dominance as well as weak tolerance towards heterogeneity in the set of core ideologies of entrepreneurial finance. These results are consistent across author-, institution-, and country-levels, which reveals strong evidence for the existence of Western ideological homogeneity in the field. We recommend editors, reviewers, and authors to have proactive actions to diversify research topics and enhancing knowledge exchange to avoid the shortfalls of ideological homogeneity. Moreover, the synthesis of mind-sponge mechanism and biblio-metric analyses are suggested as a possible way to evaluate the state of ideological diversity in other scientific disciplines.

The National Idea in the Conservative Revolution During the Years of Weimar Republic

The article discusses the idea of the national idea in the ideology of the German conservative revolution during the Weimar Republic in Germany. The authors also analyze this issue in historiography. The search for a new substantiation of the national idea of the German nation after the First World War became a key moment in the phenomenon of the conservative revolution. Using the examples of the intellectual activity of its three leading ideologists O. Spengler, A. Möller van den Brook and E. Junger, it is shown that in the conservative revolution there was no unity in the formulation and understanding of the national idea. This was due to the difference in their political views. However, the idea that the future German state should be based on the principles of national unity was common to all. It is also noted that these representations of the conservative revolution about the national idea and their qualitative characteristics have been repeatedly considered in historiography. It is concluded that the intellectual and ideological diversity of the conservative revolution, which was acutely felt by its representatives and did not allow to create a certain unified ideological platform, is its fundamental characteristic, including on the issue of the national idea, which was confirmed by subsequent historiographical studies of this phenomenon German history.

Reflection of the Ideolo­gical Diversity of I.S. Lukash’s Works in his Di­logy “The House of the Dead” and “The Devil”

The article is devoted to the works of I.S. Lukash, a significant writer of the first wave of emigration, that were published abroad in Russian. Previous literary criticism comprehended I.S. Lukash’s works fragmentary, sometimes one-sided, sometimes biased. The aim of the article is to complete two tasks: to trace the creative evolution of I.S. Lukash; to formulate and substantiate the hypothesis of appropriateness to unite in a dilogy his mystery “The Devil” and his poem “The House of the Dead”, never considered separately before. These tasks caused the structuring of the article into sections, of which the first is devoted to the ideological and thematic evolution of I.S. Lukash as a writer, the second — to the hypothetical unity of the mystery “Devil” and the poem “The House of the Dead”. With the help of catalogs and collections of the largest libraries in Russia and abroad, the article identifies and engages foreign publications of I.S. Lukash’s work in Russian. On the basis of this material, there is performed an analysis of the ideological diversity of I.S. Lukash’s works. The article reveals the main range of narrative themes, the genre diversity, the author’s individuality, the uniqueness of philosophical vision. There is traced the evolution of I.S. Lukash’s works, in which three main chronological stages are distinguished: ego-futuristic, military-patriotic, “St. Petersburg”.From I.S. Lukash’s creative heritage, the article, for the first time, pays special attention to the mystery “The Devil” and the poem “The House of the Dead”, and emphasizes the genre originality of both the works. In the context of the identified ideological evolution of I.S. Lukash’s works at various levels — chronological, genre, textual, narrative, philosophical — there is examined the hypothesis of appropriateness to unite the two works into a conventional dilogy. The conclusion notes the up-to-date relevance of both the works by I.S. Lukash.

Ideological Diversity, Intelligibility and Electoral Design: A Deliberative Perspective

ABSTRACT The article explores some trade-offs between two democratic goods: intelligibility and ideological diversity that different types of electoral systems – proportional representation and single member plurality – often involve through the way in which they affect the number of significant political parties in a polity. The article reviews practices that can alleviate those trade-offs and provides a sketch of what we can and should want to achieve within the limits of each system from the normative vantage point of deliberative democratic theory.

Diversity climate promises in ideological psychological contracts: racial differences in responses to breach and fulfilment

ABSTRACTDiversity, a major societal force that exerts an important influence on contemporary workplaces, may play a role in shaping present-day workers’ psychological contracts. In two studies, we explored diversity as an ideological commitment in psychological contracts and its impacts on workers and organizations. In Study 1, a three-wave longitudinal study following workers from pre- to post-hire, organizations’ use of diversity recruitment was positively associated with job-seekers’ perceptions that ideological diversity climate promises were made pre-employment. In addition, we found that subsequent perceptions of breaching these promises have negative effects on worker attitudes and behaviours above and beyond the consequences of traditional (i.e., transactional and relational) psychological contract breach. Unexpectedly, fulfilment and breach of ideological diversity climate promises were more weakly related to racial minority than majority group workers’ attitudes and behaviours. In Study 2, using both between- and within-person experimental designs, we largely replicate this counter-intuitive moderating effect and uncover that racial minority versus majority workers’ differential reactions can be explained by their prior experiences with racial discrimination. Our work substantiates that diversity is an important ideological commitment and provides novel insights as to the mechanisms and consequences of ideology for workers’ psychological contracts.

The board of directors and CSR: How does ideological diversity on the board impact CSR?

Abstract Given that ideological differences are likely to become an increasing source of conflict within organizations, we introduce ideological diversity as a new board-level diversity construct and hypothesize its effects on CSR performance. We hypothesize that ideological diversity can have a negative effect on CSR performance through social categorization mechanisms. Alternatively, we introduce a competing hypothesis that suggests a positive effect of ideological diversity on CSR performance through information processing mechanisms. We test our hypotheses on a panel of 372 Dutch municipality boards from 2014 to 2017 using a fixed effects OLS regression. These methods allow us to control for unobserved heterogeneity and is supported by the Hausman test we perform. Results support a negative relationship between board ideological diversity and CSR performance, indicating that a high level of ideological diversity leads to a lower performance in CSR. We discuss the implications of these findings for the board diversity and CSR literatures.

Interculturalism and the Acceptance of Minority Groups

Abstract. Multiculturalism has been criticized and rejected by an increasing number of politicians, and social psychological research has shown that it can lead to outgroup stereotyping, essentialist thinking, and negative attitudes. Interculturalism has been proposed as an alternative diversity ideology, but there is almost no systematic empirical evidence about the impact of interculturalism on the acceptance of migrants and minority groups. Using data from a survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, we examined the situational effect of promoting interculturalism on acceptance. The results show that for liberals, but not for conservatives, interculturalism leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and increased willingness to engage in contact, relative to multiculturalism.

Theological Views of Clive Staples Lewis in the Late Period of the Writer’s Work

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that it attempts to analyze the artistic features, genre identity and the issues addressed in one of the most significant and monumental works of Clive Staples Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia written in the late period of the writer’s work (1950–1956). In this regard, the purpose of this article is to consider the fantasy world of C. S. Lewis and the traditions of the English literary fairy tale, the genre of fantasy as a semantics-forming genre, as well as the moral issues through the prism of the Gospel values, which are fundamental in understanding the characters of the heroes. The leading approaches to the study of this problem are the comparative method, the method of philological and philosophical analysis, the dialectical and deduction method, which allow to analyze in detail The Chronicles of Narnia as a work of art in all its genre, ideological and philosophical diversity. The article presents a detailed analysis of Clive Staples Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. It is revealed that this work represents a special synthesis of a number of genre structures, such as a parable, a fairy tale, and the genre of fantasy. It is substantiated in the paper that fantasy acts as the main genre structure, since it ‘generalizes’ the parable and the fairy tale, the reality and the fantasy world. The article shows that it is fantasy, as a synthesis of various genre elements, that ensures the unity of the ‘world’s dual nature’: the writer’s world, the country where he and his characters live, and the fictional country. The spiritual evolution of Lewis’ characters is accomplished through overcoming temptations, fear, indifference, and betrayal. The humaneness of Lewis’ moral position is manifested in the fact that he believes that God and his life-giving power is present in the life of every person, and the Joy of man is to meet with God. The materials of the article are of practical value for philologists, philosophers and theologists, and can also be used in lecture courses of “History of Foreign Literature of the XX Century” as well as “History of English Literature of the XX Century”, in lecture courses in cultural studies, history of philosophy of science, history of philosophy of religion, and in the teaching of theology.

Does Our Vision of Diversity Include Social Conservatives?

Achieving our goals of advancing science and benefitting society depends on ideological diversity. Cultivating relationships and dialogue with ideological opponents creates compassion and progress.

Interculturalism: A new diversity ideology with interrelated components of dialogue, unity, and identity flexibility

AbstractIncreased cultural diversity has led to considerable debate on how to best promote intergroup harmony within pluralistic nations. In the current research, we consider the nature of interculturalism, a new diversity ideology extensively discussed by political philosophers and policy‐makers in Europe and beyond. Interculturalism consists of three interrelated components of dialogue, unity, and identity flexibility. Using data (N = 2,364) from three national surveys in two ethnically diverse nations (Netherlands and USA), we test a new measure of interculturalism and establish its independence from multiculturalism and assimilation. We then demonstrate that interculturalism predicts positive intergroup outcomes, over and above multiculturalism, and is in a theoretically meaningful way related to various criterion measures. Collectively, these studies establish the uniqueness of interculturalism from multiculturalism and demonstrate its promise for improving intergroup relations in culturally diverse nations.

Replicating and extending Martin-Quinn scores

We set to replicate and extend the commonly used Martin and Quinn (2002) scores of judicial ideology for the entire universe of U.S Supreme Court justices from 1793 onwards. Our replication strategy consists of three steps. First, we replicate the constant ideal point scores with a novel variable distinguishing between liberal and conservative case reversals. Using this variable, we show that the replicated scores exhibit a moderate-to-strong correlation with the original scores. Second, we extend the replication of constant ideal points to specific policy areas and show that the variation in latent judicial ideology in the areas of criminal procedure, economics, first amendment and due process strongly predict the overall scores. And third, we replicate and extend dynamic scores to capture the temporal changes in the judicial ideology using repeated sampling Monte Carlo Marko Chain simulation without imposing prior distribution on case-level parameters. To allow for judicial ideology to trend smoothly over time, we employ a large-scale MCMC simulation involving roughly 1.9 billion iterations of the baseline latent judicial trait model, and a filtering parameter to separate the long-run ideology trend from its cyclical component. The replicated dynamic ideal point estimates without prior restrictions generally confirm the trends of dynamic Martin-Quinn scores.

El discurso referido en los artículos de opinión. Análisis del diálogo en las columnas de Alfonso Sánchez

La polifonía es un rasgo característico del discurso periodístico. A través de la representación de distintas voces se da entrada a la diversidad interpretativa del contexto social. Este trabajo pretende reflexionar sobre el diálogo como recurso retórico en el artículo de opinión. Nuestra hipótesis es que el discurso referido es una técnica que produce efectos retóricos que, en el caso de las columnas, contribuyen a reforzar su poder persuasivo. El objetivo es definir y describir la utilización del discurso referido en las columnas y analizar sus efectos estéticos y cognitivos. Para ello se analizan los componentes dialógicos de diez columnas escritas en el diario Informaciones (1954 -1980), por el periodista Alfonso Sánchez, pues según nuestra hipótesis este autor recoge la tradición del artículo de costumbres en un momento de renovación del género de opinión en España. El análisis retórico y narratológico que llevamos a cabo muestra que la columna de Sánchez interpreta la realidad a través de una polifonía de voces, dirigidas por un yo narrador que actúa como testigo. Mediante la apertura a las voces de los personajes, el discurso referido aumenta el dinamismo de los hechos narrados, aporta verosimilitud y, limitando la presencia del narrador, abre el discurso a una pluralidad de enfoques.

From Statehouse to Courthouse: Legislative Professionalism and High Court Auditing Behavior

ObjectivesThe objective of this article is to determine whether the institutional resources available to state legislatures impact the cases that a state's court of last resort chooses to hear. Specifically, does legislative professionalism influence the number of cases the court audits that reference an act of the legislature?MethodI use time‐series cross‐sectional analysis to examine over 10,000 cases for 44 state courts from 1998 to 2009.ResultsI find that courts of last resort in states low in legislative professionalism tend to hear a greater number of cases that reference the legislature than states higher in professionalism, even after controlling for confounders such as ideological disagreement and judicial resources.ConclusionThis suggests that state supreme courts offer themselves a disproportionate influence in public policy in states with low professionalism legislatures relative to those with lawmakers more capable of authoring litigation‐proof legislation.

Not So Radical After All: Ideological Diversity Among Radical Right Supporters and Its Implications

Radical right voters and parties are often characterized as conservative and traditionalist on issues of gender, sexuality, and morality. Common wisdom is that they reject the progressive sociopolitical shifts that began in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, some radical right parties, such as the Dutch Party for Freedom, maintain moderate positions on morality issues. Are radical right supporters still traditionalist? Latent class analysis applied to European Social Survey data from 10 West European countries reveals that radical right supporters belong to three ideologically distinct classes. The fastest growing group is the sexually-modern nativists, who make up about 45% by 2016. Contrary to extant literature, traditionalism no longer appears to be a major motivation for today’s radical right. Instead, immigration and nationalism are now the core common concerns for radical right supporters in Western Europe. This development may be due to the Euro crisis and the migration crisis, which have increased the salience of national borders.

The Need for State Ideology in the State to Ensure Human Rights

Human society is not a history of ideas, as such, of the activities or the vicissitudes of destinies, the so-called historical personalities acting according to the arbitrariness of their mind and heart. The history of society has its “earthly basis”. This is, first of all, the history of the development of people, their existence, traditions of the people, spirituality, moral values, economic development, rules of conduct, laws of the country in which you live, in short, the ideology of the state and how it is presented by the authorities through the media. But in Russia, as stated in article 13 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, "No ideology can be established as a state or mandatory." The same Constitution recognizes “ideological diversity”. Subsequent postulates of the same Constitution of the Russian Federation refute the foregoing.

Beyond good and evil? Popular songs, mathemes and bus rides (art and transition in the region of the former Yugoslavia)

Art production and art reception play a vital role in transitional societies. However, their actual operation and patterns of impact often appear ‘messy’ to those who use and evaluate art in transitional contexts: an artwork can serve as a catalyst for peace building and transitional justice processes, but it can also obstruct such processes, or impart ambiguous meanings to them; and its modes of operation (including the art producers’ awareness of their role in transitional justice processes), its reception trends and its influence on transitional society all vary over time. Framed by transitional justice theory and an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates the insights of psychosocial cultural studies, comparative arts and the phenomenology of embodiment, this article scrutinizes this ambivalent operation in relation to the fluctuating sphere of reception in the region of the former Yugoslavia since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993. The author juxtaposes art practices widely different in terms of expression, format, scope, reach and ambition, but comparable insofar as they all operate in the ‘open’ and appeal to senses and repetition engagement to create patterns of affiliation. These include various types of popular music (turbo-folk, rock, hip-hop, soft pop) and the public intervention activities of the Serbian DAH Theatre and pan-regional art and theory collective Monument Group. The article argues for the development of hermeneutic and axiological thinking that befits the complex functioning of art in transition: nuanced and multilevelled, challenging inherited hierarchies and paradigms while appreciating the prolonged life/impact of art practices and the sensorial, cognitive and ideological variation in their reception. It proposes moving beyond the binary assessments and adopting a more dynamic approach to the evaluation of artworks in transition for the benefit of both scholars and practitioners in the field.

Distinguishing (the) right from wrong: knowledge, curriculum, and intellectual responsibility

ABSTRACTGiven the political Right's attacks on U.S. academics as too liberal, we broach questions about knowledge production and curriculum development. We first explore how the Right has used arguments for freedom of speech and ideological diversity to undermine higher education’s mission in the hope of polluting the public sphere with ideas that are deeply erroneous and destructive. We then describe the mission of higher education to serve as a quality control mechanism for ideas in the public sphere and reaffirm the importance of academic freedom in safeguarding that mission. We end by calling for communication and instruction scholars in particular, and academics in general, to safeguard their academic expertise against Post-Truth attacks.