Electoral Activism Research Articles

The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War by Van Gosse

Reviewed by: The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War by Van Gosse Millington Bergeson-Lockwood (bio) The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. By Van Gosse. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 760. $39.95 cloth; $29.99 ebook) For Van Gosse, politics are "deeply conflictual." It is "a practice in which one engages so as to succeed, conquer, or triumph, but even more so as not to lose, be vanquished, and obliterated" (p. 549). This struggle is at the center of The First Reconstruction. While many historians have explored the fight for freedom in the first half of the nineteenth century, Gosse highlights the electoral sphere as a major site of political combat. He argues that struggles over voting, partisanship, and citizenship in the decades between the nation's founding and the Civil War presaged the better-known reconstruction of the post-war years. Rather than marginal, Black men were constant participants in elections and the avenues of party politics. This recentering of electoral and partisan politics in the history of Black activism and the struggle for American democracy is the most significant contribution of Gosse's study. He seeks to draw historians' gaze to an "old-style" political history of elections and political parties and show how these areas were just as significant in political development as those of the social or cultural spheres. [End Page 326] Gosse offers four state or regional histories, each with its own contours and trajectory. He includes well-trodden historical trails like those of Philadelphia and New York City, while also drawing attention to areas that have traditionally garnered less attention like upper New England and Ohio. Gosse makes a significant contribution in this expansion of antebellum Black political geography. In part one, Gosse examines the Black politics of Pennsylvania. He describes the "shadow politics" of Philadelphia, but also the lesser-known story of Black politics in the rest of the state. Gosse argues for historians to look beyond anti-slavery as the core mobilizer of Black politics. Instead, he draws attention to a political world organized around electoral participation in "the ordinary politics of partisan organizing" (p. 58). From the Keystone State, Gosse then travels to New England, a hotbed of Black electoral politics. While other states disenfranchised Black voters during the antebellum era, the New England states maintained non-racial suffrage and African Americans actively engaged in party politics. He highlights how not only were the number of Black voters higher than assumed in earlier studies, but that the urban Black electorate in the New England states was influential despite its small statewide population percentage. Leaving New England, Gosse takes the reader south to New York where he charts the persistence of a tradition of Black electoral activism even after "freehold laws" disenfranchised most Black voters in 1821. He argues that fights for suffrage strengthened the resolve and organizational strength of Black New Yorkers on the eve of the Civil War. In part four, Gosse explores Black politics in Ohio, a location not typically examined in a historiography dominated by the Northeast. Ohio became a powerhouse of Black electoral activism with Black voting strength having greater weight than anywhere in the nation. Gosse provides an in-depth and comprehensive study of Black electoral politics in the first half of the nineteenth century and his work raises questions for additional study. Future scholars must now [End Page 327] ask how this "First Reconstruction" directly connected to the reconstruction following the Civil War. How did the politics of the communities Gosse highlights change with the coming of emancipation and greater suffrage for all African Americans? How did these post-war activists draw upon the legacy of antebellum voting and how did this shape their vision of citizenship and place in the American body politic moving forward? Additionally, how did the "formal" politics of the electoral sphere intertwine with the "informal" politics of the social and cultural sphere? That Gosse's book raises difficult questions is a testament to its significance in the study of nineteenth-century Black politics and it would be a welcome contribution...

Electoral Activism in Iran: A Mechanism for Political Change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism contend that elections make autocratic regimes more durable, while scholarship on democratization states that authoritarian elections can lead to electoral revolutions and regime change. In this article, we argue that these two lenses occlude smaller instances of activism during election periods and the influence that this activism has on bringing about gradual political change. To build our argument, we draw on two presidential elections held in Iran in 2009 and 2013. We show how grassroots activists use elections to abort gains made by hardliners, push centrist and moderate candidates toward more reformist and democratic stances, promote issues that would otherwise be considered beyond the pale of formal regime politics, and encourage solidarity and opposition coalition building.

Movilización y contramovilización frente a los derechos LGBTI. Respuestas conservadoras al reconocimiento de los derechos humanos

Este artículo analiza la contramovilización frente a la institucionalización de los derechos de los grupos lgbti en Colombia y México. Con base en un marco analítico que integra la dimensión de la movilización y la contramovilización en los conflictos por derechos, se evidencia que la reacción conservadora, liderada por las iglesias en Colombia y México, es una respuesta coordinada y activa a las conquistas de las minorías sexuales, que ha logrado hacer más lento el avance del reconocimiento de los derechos humanos. En los dos casos se han presentado estrategias similares de contramovilización y repertorios de acción colectiva que han elevado los costos políticos de los cambios institucionales a partir de dos mecanismos de conflicto: el activismo callejero-electoral y el activismo institucional-legislativo.

Meme-ing Electoral Participation

In February 2016, the Washington Post characterized the presidential primaries as “the most-memed election in U.S. history.” During the election year, meme-ing related to the major candidates became hugely popular and engaged various groups of people who were not ordinarily involved in bipartisan political processes. As brief, to the point, and quickly modifiable visual-textual messages, Internet memes were a particularly apt way to illustrate the most contested hot-button issues that emerged during the 2016 presidential race. This article considers the phenomenon of meme-ing in relation to both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. In particular, it focuses on memes that called attention to the candidates’ contradictory or incongruous statements critiquing their policy positions. The article demonstrates the ways in which memes spoke to the intersection of electoral activism and cultural representations in several ways: they enabled users to rapidly take a stand on and react to developing political events in real time; they provided alternative parallel discourses to mainstream media viewpoints; and they enabled mobilizing voters outside of official political discourses. During the 2016 campaign, meme-ing served as an example of a politico-cultural discourse that exemplified the unusual election year in ways that conventional political analysis alone was not able to capture.

Corruption and Political Participation in the Americas and the Caribbean

This article deals with an issue as yet little explored in the vast literature about political participation: the role of corruption in political engagement. It investigates whether the coexistence, the values and the perception of citizens in relation to corrupt practices and actors have effects on political activism, and it verifies the direction in which this is evolving, whether it is in the direction of engagement in or withdrawal from politics. The unit of analysis is the individual, the geographic sector includes the Americas and the Caribbean, and the time frame includes biennial intervals between 2004 and 2012. A theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of the data from the Americas Barometer is used. Five distinct types of political participation were identified: contact with political and governmental actors, community activism, partisan and electoral activism, voter turnout and protest activism. The article concludes that the experience with corruption and the tolerance for bribe increase the chances of engagement in participative activities, going against the principal contributions of the specialized literature.

Education and Political Engagement: The Importance of the Educational Institutional Structure

It is hardly disputed that educational institutions carry responsibility for the education of democratic citizens though the enhancement of civic and political engagement. Despite the wealth of studies on civic and citizenship education, scholars have, however, not yet examined the relevance of national educational institutional factors. This study examines to what extent elements of national educational systems, in particular early tracking and a vocational orientation, are related to political engagement of young adult citizens. Using pooled European Social Survey data collected between 2002 and 2012, from 24 European countries, and examining electoral participation, political interest, and political activism, it was shown that people educated in vocational programmes had lower levels of political engagement than people educated in general/academic education. Moreover, these differences were stronger in strongly tracked educational systems relative to comprehensive systems. These results suggest that educational institutions that differentiate students early and rigidly may form a threat to democratic equality.

Predictors of Feminist Activism among Social Work Students in the United States

While social workers advocate against domestic violence, sexual harassment, and restrictive reproductive practices, there have been virtually no studies on the reasons behind their feminist activism. To address this oversight, this study documented the extent of feminist activism among American undergraduate social work students (n = 159). When moving to explanatory analysis, our data suggest that feminist activism was related to greater educational attainment, knowing activist peers, recognizing heterosexism, and internalizing a commitment to social justice. Moreover, electoral activism was tied to the rejection of traditional gender norms in the family and perceptions of social movement tactics were crucial to protesting for women's rights.

Predicting electoral activism among gays and lesbians in the United States

Although battles over gay and lesbian rights have appeared prominently in political arenas, scholars have created few empirical studies on gay and lesbian activism. To address this absence, this quantitative study identified factors that inspired greater electoral engagement among gays and lesbians in the United States (n = 285). After integrating “resource,” “mobilizing,” and “framing” variables into regressions, this study found that electoral activism was inspired by many sorts of motivators. In sum, activist tendencies were swayed by educational levels, perceptions of political potency, a desire to conceal sexual orientations, surviving hate crimes, and joining certain political groups. Interestingly, this study supported “new social movement” theories that downplay economic factors as predictors of involvement in gay and lesbian rights campaigns.

New Political Spaces and Public Sphere ‘Deliberativeness’ in Ecuador, 1822–2011

Widely adopted decentralisation policies have increased the significance of local citizen participation in Latin America, especially with regard to ‘new political spaces’, or spaces for citizen–government engagement distinct from both electoral democracy and non-electoral political activism. Since new political spaces tend to employ ‘deliberative democratic’ methods of decision making, their prospects depend to a considerable extent on the extent to which surrounding ‘public spheres’ enable or constrain deliberation. This paper focuses on the specific case of Ecuador, drawing upon theories of deliberative democracy and the public sphere to assess the likely prospects for new political spaces in Ecuador through an examination of the key aspects of Ecuadorian politics and society since independence from Spain in 1822.

From Madison to Wall Street: Assessing the Electoral Consequences of Protest on the Left

This paper compares three movements with respect to their impact on elections: the Tea Party, the pro-labor protests in Madison and other capitals, and Occupy Wall Street. Findings: 1) Both the Tea Party and the labor protests have moved directly to electoral action. 2) The Tea Party increased its influence by its willingness to sabotage Republican Party chances of victory; the labor-based insurgency, in contrast, has never opposed a Democratic incumbent. 3) Occupy Wall Street is unlikely to lead to electoral activism by its participants, but has had a major indirect influence by changing the national issue agenda.

Global Communities and Hybrid Cultures: Early Gay and Lesbian Electoral Activism in Brazil and Mexico

Scholars have recast debates on globalization by emphasizing both national actors' selective appropriation of transnational practices and their reinvention in national settings. Drawing on Nestor Garcia Canclini's concepts of communities and hybrid cultures, I explore these debates by comparing gay and lesbian activists' first experiments in electoral activism in Mexico and Brazil, both occurring in 1982. The different electoral strategies that prevailed in each country drew on the transnational arena in different ways. To explain these differences, I consider the relative strength of competing sectors within heterogeneous social movement fields and their variable participation in competing global communities. The relative influence of these sectors and thus the relative salience of specific transnational practices, in turn, reflected each movement's embeddedness in broader opposition movements to authoritarian regimes. Finally, I argue that these practices should be read contextually, with attention given to their transformation and limitations in national settings. Varios academicos han abordado los debates acerca de la globalizacion enfatizando tanto la apropriacion selectiva de practicas transnacionales por actores nacionales como la reinvencion de estas practicas en marcos nacionales. En base a los conceptos de y culturas hibridas acunados por Nestor Garcia Canclini, exploro estos debates comparando los primeros experimentos de activismo electoral realizados por homosexuales y lesbianas en Mexico y Brasil, ocurridos en el ano 1982. Las diferentes estrategias electorales que fueron utilizadas en cada pais devinieron de la arena transnacional de distintos modos. Para explicar estas diferencias, considero la fuerza relativa de diversos sectores compitiendo dentro de campos de activismo heterogeneos y su participacion en comunidades globales rivales. La relativa influencia de estos sectores y por tanto la relativa importancia de practicas transnacionales especificas, a su vez, reflejaron la participacion de cada movimiento en movimientos mas amplios movilizando contra regimenes autoritarios. Finalmente, argumento que estas practicas deben ser comprendidas en su contexto, prestando atencion a sus transformaciones y limitaciones en los respectivos marcos nacionales.

“From Protest to Politics”

This article traces the origins of black independent electoral activism in Philadelphia during the 1970s to the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Specifically, it argues that Black Power activists in Philadelphia turned to electoral strategies to consolidate their efforts to achieve community control over public institutions in the city's black working-class neighborhoods. Finally, the article concludes with a brief evaluation of the careers of African American activist state legislators David Richardson and Roxanne Jones and W. Wilson Goode, Philadelphia's first African American mayor.

Electoral Activities of Southern Local Unions in the 2000 Election

This paper examines the impact of environmental and organiza tional characteristics on the electoral mobilization activities of local unions in the 2000 presidential election. Based on a sample of 140 southern local unions, the study finds that, externally, the strength of the labor movement relative to competing political interests in the state, along with the organizing and political ac tivities of international unions, promotes the electoral activism of local unions. However, both economic inequalities and racial con flicts seem to discourage the electoral activities of local unions. Internally, the development of rank-and-file leadership and inter nal organizing also supports the electoral activism of local unions. The implications of the results and some directions for future re search are discussed.

The Lady and the Tiger: Women's Electoral Activism in New York City Before Suffrage

The Lady and the Tiger: Women's Electoral Activism in New York City Before Suffrage

American Politics - American Women and Political Participation: The Impacts of Work, Generation, and Feminism. By Karen Beckwith (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986. xiv, 185p. $29.95).

Karen Beckwith examines the patterns of mass-level political participation among American women from 1952 to 1976. Four distinct forms of political participation are focused upon: voting, electoral activism, conventional nonelectoral participation, and political protest. She then tests three explanations considered unique to the political participation of women in these areas: the nature of women's work; women's experience in political generations; and adherence to or support of feminism. Surprisingly, Beckwith's study indicates that such traditional explanations reveal more about men than about women, and that there is very little difference in participation between the sexes. However, Beckwith found that reported feelings of political efficacy among women were less than among men, even where actual participation differences were nonexistent.