Liberal Orientation Research Articles

When Framing Matters

This monograph examines how the consistency and content of issue frames used by politicians and journalists from 1975–2008 affect preferences and partisanship. Combining our content analysis of Newsweek’s coverage of abortion and taxes with public opinion data, we show that consistent, partisan-sourced frames affect preferences and partisanship. In general, specific frames affect attitudes but not partisanship when sourced by partisan politicians, and both attitudes and partisanship when sourced by journalists. Policy-oriented liberal frames were associated with more liberal preferences and Democratic partisanship while symbolic conservative frames were associated with more conservative preferences and Republican partisanship.

Integrating Feminist Therapy and Expressive Arts With Adolescent Clients

ABSTRACTUtilizing expressive arts interventions within a feminist theoretical orientation may prove impactful for adolescent clients. Tenets of feminist therapy and support for integrating expressive arts interventions into counseling practice are presented. Assumptions and objectives for utilizing expressive arts interventions with adolescents in feminist therapy are offered. Two feminist theory ecological models of identity development are described, with corresponding expressive arts interventions to address adolescent identity development.

Boosting Belligerence

Major terrorist events, such as the recent attacks in Ankara, Sinai, and Paris, can have profound effects on a nation’s values, attitudes, and prejudices. Yet psychological evidence testing the impact of such events via data collected immediately before and after an attack is understandably rare. In the present research, we tested the independent and joint effects of threat (the July 7, 2005, London bombings) and political ideology on endorsement of moral foundations and prejudices among two nationally representative samples (combined N = 2,031) about 6 weeks before and 1 month after the London bombings. After the bombings, there was greater endorsement of the in-group foundation, lower endorsement of the fairness-reciprocity foundation, and stronger prejudices toward Muslims and immigrants. The differences in both the endorsement of the foundations and the prejudices were larger among people with a liberal orientation than among those with a conservative orientation. Furthermore, the changes in endorsement of moral foundations among liberals explained their increases in prejudice. The results highlight the value of psychological theory and research for understanding societal changes in attitudes and prejudices after major terrorist events.

Terrorism in Nigeria: The Case of the Boko Haram

This work examines the complex phenomenon of global terrorism in a fast evolving International Order (the New World Order) that is driven by the wheel of globalization as a historical process. The discourse is domesticated within the Nigeria geographical space with the onslaught of the Boko Haram attack on the Nigerian state; its premier institutional bulwark represented by the military and its vulnerable populations as case study. The article presents Nigeria as a deeply divided society that is exploited by the terrorist to their advantage. The work contained herein is anchored on the failed state and the relative deprivation theoretical model to sustain its thrust and give meaning to the arguments articulated. The methodology depended-on for data leans heavily on the analysis of secondary sources within the traditional liberal and social science orientations. Finally, the article presents a set of recommendations that could contribute in the reversal of the grounds covered by the Boko Haram since the highly ghoulish movement launched its macabre push against the symbol of Nigeria’s legitimacy as a sovereign state amongst other international system of states. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s2p247

The effect of supranational identity on cultural values in Europe

Does supranational identity have an independent effect on individuals’ beliefs about culturally contested issues in their national systems? This article demonstrates that self-categorization in the supranational realm – a seemingly unrelated category to domestic value cleavages – has implications for individuals’ views on cultural issues. Traditional theories of international norm diffusion focus almost exclusively on state-level interactions, but our findings provide further evidence to the existence of a more direct mechanism through which norms reach some citizens. A sense of identification with a supranational entity such as Europe makes citizens more likely to espouse the views and opinions promoted by supranational organizations. We use the European Values Study to examine whether supranational identity is associated with socially liberal preferences. Results from the multi-level models indicate that supranational identity exerts a systematic effect on attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and gender equality. Additionally, while these effects are more consistent in EU member states, supranational identity exhibits a similar impact on social attitudes in non-EU countries such as those in the former Soviet Union.

“A Truly Liberal Orientation”

After World War II, the American Academy in Rome faced a choice: remain a bastion of declining Beaux-Arts classicism or pursue a more modernist agenda. In “A Truly Liberal Orientation”: Laurance Roberts, Modern Architecture, and the Postwar American Academy in Rome,Denise R. Costanzo demonstrates how Laurance Roberts, director of the Academy from 1946 to 1959, orchestrated its reorientation and welcomed architectural modernism. Under Roberts, a reconfigured Rome Prize in architecture—with no prescribed activities or stylistic limits—attracted graduates of top modern programs. During the 1950s conservative alumni attempted a counterreformation, and Roberts’s efforts to engage prominent modernists as resident architects faltered, highlighting the Academy’s limited relevance to the postwar discipline. Despite these challenges, Roberts established a more progressive administration that allowed Louis Kahn’s and Robert Venturi’s epochal stays, kept Rome on the American architect’s map, and offered one possible model of a “modernist academy.”

The Bechdel Test and the Social Form of Character Networks

This essay describes the popular Bechdel Test—a measure of women’s dialogue in films—in terms of social network analysis within fictional narrative. It argues that this form of vernacular criticism arrives at a productive convergence with contemporary academic critical methodologies in surface and postcritical reading practices, on the one hand, and digital humanities, on the other. The data-oriented character of the Bechdel Test, which a text rigidly passes or fails, stands in sharp contrast to identification- or recognition-based evaluations of a text’s feminist orientation, particularly because the former does not prescribe the content, but merely the social form, of women’s agency. This essay connects the Bechdel Test and a lineage of feminist and early queer theory to current work on social network analysis within literary texts, and it argues that the Bechdel Test offers the beginnings of a measured approach to understanding agency within actor networks.

Espousing Apostasy and Feminism? Older and Younger British Female Apostates Compared

It has been acknowledged that white western men are more likely to leave their former religion behind (Altemeyer and Hunsberger, 1997, Zuckerman, 2012), or declare themselves of no religion (Brown and Lynch, 2012, Baker and Smith, 2009), than women (Beit-Hallahmi, 2007). But it has not been unknown for women, even in the past, both of the older and younger generations to do the same (Budd 1977; Schwarz 2010). This article, based on two small scale studies in the United Kingdom, considers a group of older and a group of younger women ‘apostates’, to determine what leads them to do this and examines whether developing a feminist orientation plays a role. Religious women in second wave feminism were often ignored, having been considered to have chosen patriarchy over feminism while there is some evidence that women with feminist attitudes are less likely to be religious (Redfern and Aune, 2013, 154, Furseth, 2010, 210).Data were subjected to inductive thematic analysis to determine overarching themes, while the three-fold typology of apostasy developed by Zuckerman (2012) allowed the authors to examine similarities and differences between older and younger women who choose to leave religion behind. They conclude reasons for apostasy are various, certainly not solely attributable to developing a feminist orientation.

Beyond burned bras and purple dungarees: Feminist orientations within working women’s networks

Is there a feminist ideological undertone when women choose to organise separately, or are their motivations purely instrumental? While this question has been addressed by numerous researchers, most studies are mono-national; most extrapolate meaning from different types of networks/groups, and most do not carry out close examination of network members’ orientations. This article explores varieties of orientations to feminism among members of four networks for business and professional women in the UK and Germany. The findings suggest that even within a single network, members’ feminist orientations can vary, and can be different from the publicly/officially declared organisational position.

THE ARCHIVAL FOUNDATION OF LITHUANIANEMIGRATION CATHOLIC AND LIBERAL IDEOLOGICALMOVEMENTS: RELEVANCE AND ACCESS

Lithuanian culture facing the challenge of globalization carries an actual ambition of integration the Lithuanian emigrants’ heritage. The archival foundation is a part of it. The great interest in the culture, history and experiences of Lithuanian emigration emerged when Lithuania gained it’s independence in 1990. Now these days are gone. Only narrow circles of academic and public society still concern about the fate of Lithuanian emigration’s heritage.This paper deals with the archival foundation of two main Lithuanian ideological movements, which flourished among Lithuanian émigré after World War II. The problems of storage, relevance and access are discussed.Since the end of the 19th century the Lithuanian ideological landscape has been shaped by the movements of Catholic or liberal orientation. The clash between Catholic and liberal ideological trends increased during the period of the first Lithuanian Republic (1918–1940) and especially during the years of anti-Nazi resistAbstractance. The conflict of the ideologically orientated Catholics and liberals reached its peak during the years of emigration.The research points that despite the ideological disagreement the fate of the archival foundation of two Lithuanian emigration ideological movements is similar. During the years of action most of the ideological institutions’ didn’t pay special attention to the systematic storage of the archival foundation. It should be stated that the archival foundation of two Lithuanian emigration ideological movements is dispersed in the archival institutions in Lithuania and abroad and in the variety of personal archives. The materials kept in the archival institutions are available for the academics and public. The access to the archival documents kept in personal archives could be complicated. However, the fate of the private archives is the question of the ultimate concern. The death of the archive keeper often means the loss of an important and valuable historical and cultural material.

Appointee–Careerist Relations in the Presidential Transition of 2008‐2009

This research takes a different approach from most studies of presidential transitions by examining transition preparations from the unique perspective of the career bureaucrats that provide a critical connection between transitions and governance. I examine how career senior executives perceive management techniques that are commonly prescribed to political appointees, how prominent their application was during the second term of the George W. Bush administration, and what happened at the end of the Bush administration when the White House called for appointees to pursue a transition strategy that required the involvement of career Senior Executive Service members. I find evidence that cooperation between careerists and appointees is conditional, even in a policy area where the president demands it. Career executives' explicit knowledge of transition preparations is more likely in agencies subject to persistent vacancies among Senate‐confirmed appointee positions, and the importance of trust to explicit knowledge exchange is pronounced in agencies with more liberal orientations.

Neither ideologues nor agnostics: alternative voters' belief system in an age of partisan politics.

How do Americans organize their political beliefs? This article argues that party polarization and the growing prominence of moral issues in recent decades have catalyzed different responses by different groups of Americans. The article investigates systematic heterogeneity in the organization of political attitudes using relational class analysis, a graph-based method for detecting multiple patterns of opinion in survey data. Three subpopulations, each characterized by a distinctive way of organizing its political beliefs, are identified: ideologues, whose political attitudes strongly align with either liberal or conservative categories; alternatives, who are instead morally conservative but economically liberal, or vice versa; and agnostics, who exhibit weak associations between political beliefs. Individuals' sociodemographic profiles, particularly their income, education, and religiosity, lie at the core of the different ways in which they understand politics. Results show that while ideologues have gone through a process of issue alignment, alternatives have grown increasingly apart from the political agendas of both parties. The conflictual presence of conservative and liberal preferences has often been resolved by alternative voters in favor of the Republican Party.

The Feminist Orientation in Edith Nesbit's Gothic Short Fiction

For a long time critically neglected or disparaged, Edith Nesbit's Gothic fiction is beginning to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. This essay extends analysis beyond the much anthologized “Man-Size in Marble” (1893) to argue that a feminist orientation is in evidence more widely in her works of supernatural short fiction. A preoccupation with gender is discernible in several stories that offer distinct gender critiques, and in further tales through imagery of the dead female body and the female revenant, as well as through the recurrent character motifs of the female Cassandra and the male Frankenstein. The essay also argues that the anti-vivisectionism of several stories is an aspect of this feminist orientation. The article recognizes Nesbit as being a problematic figure for scholarly attempts to reclaim feminist authors, since she herself evinced ambivalence about the women's movement and the New Woman, but argues that the unleashing of Nesbit's most counter-hegemonic impulses in her Gothic writings points to the political significance of this generic form, making Nesbit a figure of substantial interest for scholars working on women's supernatural fiction.

Emotional attachment security as the origin of liberal-conservative differences in vigilance to negative features of the environment.

This commentary advances the hypothesis that differences between liberal and conservative orientations noted in the target article are emotional in nature and caused by differences in attachment security: Conservatives are more vigilant to negative features of the environment because of a general sense of insecurity, whereas liberals are relatively more secure.

An Introduction to Feminist Security Studies

International Security and Gender. By Nicole Detraz. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. 255 pp., $22.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-745-65117-0). Nicole Detraz provides an impressive and accessible introduction to the vibrant and wide-ranging body of International Relations (IR) research now commonly referred to as “feminist security studies” (Sjoberg 2010; Wibben 2011). Addressing itself primarily to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, International Security and Gender adroitly guides the reader through feminist analyses of militarization and militarism, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, terrorism, human security, and environmental security. Surveying foundational texts, recent contributions, and emerging research areas, Detraz presents a strong case for the adoption of “gender lenses” to facilitate much-needed reevaluations of the assumptions that undergird security scholarship. Although issues related to the subordination of women are central to this work, Detraz specifies that her subject is not “women and security,” much less “women in need of security,” but rather “gendered understandings of security” (p. 12). This distinction—pithily captured in the title of Terrell Carver's 1996 book Gender Is Not a Synonym for Women— reflects the work's explicitly feminist theoretical orientation. That is, by defining gender as “a set of socially constructed expectations about what men and women ought to be” (p. 5), Detraz distinguishes her project from nonfeminist security-studies research that treats gender as an unproblematic and dichotomous variable—the “add gender and stir” approach previously criticized by feminist IR scholars (Peterson 1992; Carver 2003; Sjoberg 2006). She rejects, in other words, efforts that merely “bring women into an analysis, which can isolate …

Hong Kong journalists’ attitude towards social protests: A belief system perspective

Social protests have become an increasingly prominent aspect of the political process in Hong Kong in the past decade. Yet how the news media handle social protests and movements have important consequences on the development and influence of protest politics in a society. Based on this premise, this study examines Hong Kong journalists’ attitude towards social protests by adopting a belief system perspective. The perspective posits that journalists’ attitudes towards prominent social and political phenomena are embedded in their existing belief systems, which encompass both professional norms and beliefs and social and political attitudes and perceptions. Drawing upon a representative survey of journalists, the empirical analysis shows that Hong Kong journalists’ attitude towards social protests is significantly related to beliefs in the importance of several social functions of the news media, a liberal political orientation, political identities, and perceived seriousness of media self-censorship. Political orientation also moderates the relationship between attitude towards social protests and some of the factors. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Building the world's supply of quinine: Dutch colonialism and the origins of a global pharmaceutical industry

Quinine, a naturally occurring alkaloid from the Cinchona tree, was one of the first drugs produced and sold by a global pharmaceutical industry during the nineteenth century. Factories in Europe and North America dominated the manufacturing industry, and between 1890 and 1940, Cinchona plantations on Java supplied most of the bark for the quinine pharmaceutical business. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Dutch colonial state kept a hands-off approach to the Cinchona enterprises, in keeping with its liberal orientation. But the persistent low-price for bark, which led to the near ruin of the Cinchona planters, eventually pushed the colonial state to actively protect the Cinchona plantations. Colonial officials sought to stabilize the colonial Cinchona export-business by encouraging the integration of the quinine industry on a global scale. Most important was the colonial state's sponsorship in 1913 of the Quinine Agreement, establishing a set price for Cinchona bark, which created the world's first pharmaceutical cartel. In the interwar period, an alliance of Dutch government officials, planters, scientists, doctors and drug-makers, working in both the motherland and the colony, actively promoted the expansion of quinine consumption, as well as the merit of the Quinine Agreement, which they argued supplied guaranteed a steady supply of quinine, all for the wellbeing of global humanity.

A New American Family? Public Opinion toward Family Status and Perceptions of the Challenges Faced by Children of Same-Sex Parents

The present study brings together current thinking on public opinion toward varied family arrangements and perceptions of the challenges faced by children of same-sex parents with recent scholarship from the fields of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT)/family studies in an effort to better contextualize the general population's orientation toward varied household types. Specifically, the research focuses on understanding what factors influence public perceptions of varied family compositions and the implications of these dynamics for those engaged in the practice of family therapy and policy making. Analyzing data from the Pew Research Center's October 2010 Changing American Family Survey, the results suggest that demographics, predispositions, and importantly, views on the state and purpose of marriage, explain the greatest amount of variation in opinions. Furthermore, despite more liberal orientations toward marriage and family, Americans still feel that the children of gay and lesbian couples face more challenges on average than children from other types of family arrangements. The study concludes with a discussion of key findings and implications for policy and practice.

Citizenship orientations in a divided society: A comparison of three groups of Israeli junior-high students—secular Jews, religious Jews, and Israeli Arabs

This study identifies major preferences for combinations of rights and duties (henceforth, citizenship orientations), as reflected in the political worldview of Israeli junior-high school students. Two distinct orientations were found, termed here as ‘liberal’ and ‘ethno-republican’. In order to contextualize the examination of citizenship orientations in the deeply divided Israeli society, the study compares three educational sectors that represent these rifts. Findings suggest that citizenship orientations are context-bound, in the sense that they depend upon the educational sector. As expected, ethno-republican orientations were more salient among religious Jewish students than among either secular Jewish or Israeli Arab students. Secular Jewish and Israeli Arab students tend more strongly to endorse the liberal orientation, a propensity that is especially manifest among Arab adolescents. This trend supports the perception that Israeli-Jewish population is bifurcated.

Framing the Right Suspects: Measuring Media Bias

This article examines ideological bias in six large daily newspapers and The Associated Press. The media examined are three to six times more likely to associate ideological labels (or frames) with organizations (think tanks) with a conservative orientation than think tanks having a liberal orientation. This tends to frame the analyses done by conservative think tanks as less objective than the analysis done by liberal think tanks. Regression results suggest that approximately three-fourths of the explained differential in framing rates is due to media bias. The rest is primarily explained by the differential in the “quality” of think tanks.