International Social Science Program Research Articles

Shifting Sands? Citizens' National Identities and Pride in Social Security in Canada

While the use of public policy to construct a Canadian identity has been established in the literature, what is less well understood is whether national identity, once established, might shape Canadians' feelings about these same public policies. This article examines the extent to which citizens' national identities influence their pride in Canada's social security system, and how this relationship may be changing over time. Using data from the International Social Science Programme's 1995 and 2003 National Identity Modules, the article argues that citizens' national identities help explain the contours of social security attitudes in Canada, and that this relationship persists despite significant policy change in the field. Additionally, the paper suggests that political actors may successfully increase public support for their social security policies by “framing” them in ways that appeal to citizens' definitions of Canada.

Labor union membership and voting across nations

Despite a large literature on voter turnout around the world, our understanding of the role of labor union membership remains muddled. In this paper, we examine the relationship between union membership and voting. Using individual level International Social Science Program (ISSP) data from thirty-two countries, we find that union members are more likely to vote and that the substantive effect rivals that of other common predictors of voting. This relationship is also largely invariant across an array of demographic factors, indicating that unions tend to be “equal opportunity mobilizers.” We also find that unions have “spillover” effects: controlling for a variety of other factors, even non-union members are more likely to turn out to vote in countries with higher union densities. In sum, we find that labor unions have a consistent political influence across a wide set of countries.

Quintessentially Un-American? Comparing Public Opinion on National Identity in English Speaking Canada and the United States

This paper examines national identities in Canada and the United States in 1995 and 2004, a period of considerable change in both countries. Drawing on data from the International Social Science Programme National Identity modules and on research from social psychology, the central argument forwarded is that in several respects the national identities of Canadians are becoming more similar to those of Americans over time. These similarities have often been overlooked in previous Canadian research, which tends to emphasize the differences between the two countries while downplaying their shared characteristics.

As Canadian as Possible … Under What Circumstances? Public Opinion on National Identity in Canada Outside Quebec

Public opinion on national identity in Canada is changing. Using data from the International Social Science Programme, this essay presents evidence that most Canadians have a strong national identity rooted in universal conceptions that everyone can share, such as citizenship. Data also show, however, that a growing number of Canadians define their national identity narrowly, such as through birthplace and religion. Drawing on research from social psychology, the essay suggests that theories of Canadian identity need to take into account the fact that many Canadians have strong national identities that do not fit cleanly into the civic/ethnic theoretical dichotomy.

Crime Volume and Law and Order Culture

The literature on public opinion about crime and justice has neglected the exploration of macro‐ or community‐level influences on individual‐level attitudes. A key macrofactor that may be related to individual level attitudes is the volume of violent crime. High crime rates can facilitate the development of a culture of “law and order,” a response that may be a practical or instrumental attempt to control crime. The present paper tests the hypothesis that persons residing in nations marked by a high volume of crime will be more likely to adhere to elements of a law and order culture. It employs data from the International Social Science Program (N = 15,024). Controls are taken from major theoretical perspectives on public opinion about crime as well as demographic factors. The results from a hierarchical linear model support the hypothesis that individuals residing in nations with high crime rates are more likely than others to support law and order ideologies. The findings extend the support for this relationship from research based on the US alone to other industrialized societies.

Public Opinion On The Death Penalty

Research on public support for the death penalty has neglected comparative analysis. It is not clear whether the results of past research based disproportionately on the United States will replicate in other nations with varied institutional and cultural frameworks. The present article has two central aims: (a) to replicate U.S.-based findings, based on the theoretical perspectives of instrumentalism (crime-centeredness) and broader, non-crime-centered symbolic orientations, for a set of 17 nations, and (b) to partially test the elite leadership hypothesis. The latter refers to the notion that legal abolition of the death penalty will substantially delegitimate capital punishment in a nation's cultural system and will lead to a steady decline in death penalty support. Individual-level data are from the International Social Science Program and refer to 17,725 respondents in 17 nations. A multiple logistic regression analysis largely confirmed U.S.-based research. In particular, indicators from an instrumental approach that were found to be significant included individuals' degree of punitiveness and nations' homicide rates. Measures of symbolic orientations that were found to be significant predictors of death penalty support included authoritarianism and fundamentalism. Some support was found for the elite leadership hypothesis. Residents of abolitionist nations, especially if they resided in nations with a long history of abolition, were significantly less supportive of the death penalty than residents of retentionist nations. The full model explained 25 percent of the variance in support for capital punishment, providing systematic cross-national evidence for U.S.-based theories of death penalty support.

The Structure of Budget Demands in Denmark, Norway And Sweden

Data on people's attitudes to items on the public budgets are found in the International Social Science Programme (ISSP) Role of Government surveys and Danish national election surveys 1990–1998. These data are factor analysed to validate a three‐way agenda that postulates three main goals or functions of the state: the authoritarian state, the welfare state, and the humanitarian state. The factor solution is very similar in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the four largest European Union (EU) countries, and on many points consistent with theories of value change and new politics.Based on the factor analysis, the support for each of the three agendas is analysed for voters of different parties in the three Scandinavian party systems. We find that all three systems are structured in at least two dimensions, the welfare dimension and the humanitarian vs. authoritarian dimension. These data therefore point to the existence of a ‘new politics’ dimension that is similar in the three party systems insofar as it contains the same five budget items. However, the opinion climate differs somewhat between the three countries. The support for the humanitarian agenda is lowest in Norway, whereas the support for the authoritarian agenda is highest in Denmark.

Analysing Partial Ranks by Using Smoothed Paired Comparison Methods: An Investigation of Value Orientation in Europe

Summary This paper introduces the paired comparison model as a suitable approach for the analysis of partially ranked data. For example, the Inglehart index, collected in international social surveys to examine shifts in post-materialistic values, generates such data on a set of attitude items. However, current analysis methods have failed to account for the complex shifts in individual item values, or to incorporate subject covariates. The paired comparison model is thus developed to allow for covariate subject effects at the individual level, and a reparameterization allows the inclusion of smooth non-linear effects of continuous covariates. The Inglehart index collected in the 1993 International Social Science Programme survey is analysed, and complex non-linear changes of item values with age, level of education and religion are identified. The model proposed provides a powerful tool for social scientists.

Diversity and Commonality in National Identities: An Exploratory Analysis of Cross-National Patterns

Issues of boundary maintenance are implicit in all studies of national identity. By definition, national communities consist of those who are included but surrounded (literally or metaphorically) by those who are excluded. Most extant research on national identity explores criteria for national membership largely in terms of official or public definitions described, for example, in citizenship and immigration laws or in texts of popular culture. We know much less about how ordinary people in various nations reason about these issues. An analysis of cross-national (N= 23) survey data from the 1995 International Social Science Program reveals a core pattern in most of the countries studied. Respondents were asked how important various criteria were in being ‘truly’ a member of a particular nation. Exploratory factor analysis shows that these items cluster in terms of two underlying dimensions. Ascriptive/objectivist criteria relating to birth, religion and residence can be distinguished from civic/voluntarist criteria relating to subjective feelings of membership and belief in core institutions. In most nations the ascriptive/objectivist dimension of national identity was more prominent than the subjective civic/voluntarist dimension. Taken overall, these findings suggest an unanticipated homogeneity in the ways that citizens around the world think about national identity. To the extent that these dimensions also mirror the well-known distinction between ethnic and civic national identification, they suggest that the former remains robust despite globalization, mass migration and cultural pluralism. Throughout the world official definitions of national identification have tended to shift towards a civic model. Yet citizens remain remarkably traditional in outlook. A task for future research is to investigate the macrosociological forces that produce both commonality and difference in the core patterns we have identified.

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CITIZENS' VALUES AND PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR

In this paper, I focus on values and behavior towards the environment in seven countries. Using data from the International Social Science Program and comparable survey results from Japan, I address the questions of whether values or perceptions of the environment induce pro-environmental behavior. Informer West Germany, Britain, Ireland, United States, Italy, and the Netherlands, there are clear relationships between beliefs/values and behavior, but not always in Japan, apparently because of a different sense of the social efficacy of individual behavior.

NATIONAL CONTEXT AND GENDER IDEOLOGY

This study uses a comparative framework to examine the relationship between individual-level attributes and gender-role attitudes in a state-market society (Hungary) and in a capitalist society (the United States). Data from the 1988 International Social Science Program (ISSP) indicate significant differences in attitudes between the two populations. Both women and men in the United States were more supportive of women's employment than their counterparts in Hungary, despite the Hungarian government's policy of full employment during communist rule. Nevertheless, the level of agreement between women and men (the gender gap) was uniform across national contexts: Women were more supportive of women's employment than men. We also found that individual-level attributes, such as employment status and marital status, differentially affected gender-role attitudes in the two countries. This study contributes to a broader dialogue about the dynamic relationship between social structure and gender ideology.

Labour Market Incentive Structures and Employee Performance

Abstract: This paper uses data from the International Social Science Programme Work Orientations Module to investigate whether there is empirical support for Soskice's (1990, 1991) hypothesis that there is a difference in labour market incentive structures between northern European ‘flexibly co‐ordinated’ systems and the ‘uncoordinated’ or ‘deregulated’ systems of the UK and the USA, which generates improved employee co‐operation and performance in the former. Labour markets in ‘uncoordinated’ systems are found to generate the better employee work performance. Little support is found for the existence of a ‘flexibly co‐ordinated’ type of labour market incentive structure. Instead, labour market incentive structures are found to be heterogeneous.