Normative Threat Research Articles

The authoritarian dynamic and Brexit: Understanding the relationship between authoritarianism and wanting to leave the EU

AbstractIndividual‐level authoritarianism is prominent in explanations of preferences for Brexit. We contend that extant accounts have provided an incomplete theoretical and empirical understanding of this relationship. Drawing on the idea of the ‘authoritarian dynamic’, we show that perceptions of the economic/cultural threat of immigration have stronger effects on the pro‐Brexit views of individuals with weak authoritarian predispositions (libertarians). At the same time, perceptions of normative threat, which pertain to concerns like loss of faith in or lack of consensus among established authorities, have a greater impact on the pro‐Brexit views of individuals with high authoritarian predispositions (authoritarians). These conditional relationships, which have previously gone unacknowledged, are crucial to understanding which individuals are likely to respond to ‘increased threat’ with pro‐Brexit attitudes. We demonstrate these relationships with pro‐Brexit views using British Election Study longitudinal panel data. The results clarify the conditional impact of threats and authoritarian predispositions on attitudes.

What Are You Afraid of? Authoritarianism, Terrorism, and Threat

Research on authoritarianism has provided conflicting findings on its relationship with threat. Some studies indicate that in the face of heightened threat individuals with stronger authoritarian predispositions express more right‐wing and illiberal preferences; others suggest that it is individuals at the other end of the continuum, with weak authoritarian dispositions—libertarians—who are most likely to change and express such attitudes. Extant efforts to reconcile the differences have been unsatisfactory. We offer a new perspective in which both processes may occur simultaneously. Higher authoritarians are responsive to elevated “normative threat,” characterized by dissatisfaction with established parties and their leaders and perceptions of “belief diversity,” while libertarians respond with more right‐wing and illiberal preferences to heightened physical and personal threat, such as from terrorism, which does not affect high authoritarians. We suggest different contexts in which normative threat and personal threat vary, and we are thus likely to see change either in individuals toward one or other end of the authoritarian continuum or among both. Drawing on data in the quasi‐experimental context of the 2017 general election in Britain, during which there were two terror attacks, we confirm this pattern in a setting in which both personal and normative threat were elevated.

Explaining Autocratic Support: The Varying Effects of Threat on Personality

Why do people support autocratic forms of governance? Political psychology suggests that certain psychological traits predispose people to express authoritarian attitudes, especially under conditions of normative threat. However, such research has not explored whether perceptions of existential threats drive support for autocracy. Nor has this research explored whether the types of threats that activate autocratic support might vary across socioeconomic contexts. I extend existing work and show that closed personalities are more likely to support autocracy under conditions of threat. I also show that, in developing countries, “crisis threats”—poor economic performance, rampant crime, or corruption—activate closed personalities' needs for order and security heightening their autocratic support. Using public opinion data, I show how crisis threats activate closed personalities' support for autocracy in Latin America. The findings demonstrate the utility of personality psychology for understanding contemporary patterns of support for autocracy. The results also shed light on the possible roots of public support for autocratic leaders and forms of governance worldwide.

Why Do Immigrants Make Us More Authoritarian? The Impact of Direct and Normative Threat to Social Order from Outgroupers on Ingroup Authoritarianism

Inspired by the well-documented relationship between authoritarianism and prejudices, we tested whether a massive influx of immigrants can constitute social threats - direct (crimes, riots, violence) and normative (different norms, customs, values) - that increase ingroup authoritarian attitudes. Across two experimental studies (n 1=251 and n 2=230), we were able to show that both direct and normative threat to social order, originating from immigrants, lead to an increase in ingroup authoritarianism attitudes (Cohen’s d = 0.45–0.57), but do not impact the right-wing authoritarianism and cultural conservatism. The effect of threat on the rise of authoritarian attitudes was only partially and in a small degree mediated by collective security motivation. Implications for the authoritarianism-prejudices relationship and the functions of authoritarianism are discussed.

The normative threat of subtle subversion: the return of ‘Eastern Europe’ as an ontological insecurity trope

A combination of undemocratic developments in Hungary and Poland as well as Eastern Europe’s reluctance to engage in solidary burden-sharing at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe has brought back familiar allusions of Eastern Europeans as troublemakers for European unity and peace. This article offers a discursive dissection of ‘Eastern Europe’ as a subtly subversive challenge to Europe’s security of ‘self’, entailing a fear of being overrun by an ‘other’ perceived as endangering one’s normative and cultural order. Proceeding from Ingrid Creppell’s (2011) notion of normative threat, this article argues that the reappearance of ‘Eastern Europe’ as an ontological insecurity trope is indicative of deeper anxieties within Europe, some of which are systemic (such as doubts about the efficacy of integration and the legitimacy of the European Union) and some of which are contingent (such as concerns about defending the European political order from populist upsurges amidst ‘resurgent nationalism’).

Power, perception and foreign policymaking: US and EU responses to the rise of China

Handling the rise of China has not always been at the top of American or European policy agendas, but it probably marks the most strategic interstate issue the US and the EU have faced since the end of the Cold War. To date, most of the attempts to explain or assess the extent of China's rise had the intention of informing or influencing policy-making rather than examining the conclusions policy-makers themselves have drawn. Scott Brown's Power, perception and foreign policymaking therefore offers an important addition to the literature by engaging in an in-depth study of the ways in which policy-makers have evaluated and responded to China's rise. Brown's focus on perceptions is refreshing and responds to the strands of thinking in International Relations which highlight the importance of perceptions and ideas, as opposed to material factors, in the making of foreign policy. Following an introductory chapter which sets out the approach of the book clearly and concisely, chapter two categorizes different interpretations of China's rise by policy-makers in the US and EU. It does so across three factors: military threat or military non-threat; economic threat or economic opportunity; and normative threat or political opportunity. This enables Brown to bring out the differences between the US and EU: military threat interpretations have been a regular feature of policy-thinking in the US, for example, but not in the EU, where interpretations based on economic opportunity or political opportunity have been more common than across the Atlantic.

Tying legitimacy to political power: Graded legitimacy standards for international institutions

International institutions have become increasingly important not only in the relations between states, but also for individuals. When are these institutions legitimate? The legitimacy standards for international institutions are predominantly either minimal or democratic and cannot capture the large variety of international institutions. This article develops an autonomy-based conception of legitimacy based on the justification of political power that is applicable to both international and domestic institutions. Political power as rule-setting is a particular normative threat to the personal and political autonomy of its subjects. The more political power an institution exercises, the more demanding the legitimacy standards it needs to fulfil in order to be legitimate. The article argues that an increase in the four dimensions of political power (scope, domain sensitivity, applicability and impact) raises the legitimacy burden for the institution. Finally, graded legitimacy standards are proposed. These are sensitive to the differences between international institutions in respect of their levels of political power, i.e. level of competences. In contrast to minimal or democratic legitimacy standards, the article suggests that different standards of accountability, participation and human rights have to be fulfilled according to the institution’s level of political power.

The Queer Afterlife of Gossip

This article reveals the formative interplay between the queer art of gossip and poetic practice in James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover, a sprawling verse trilogy composed with the unlikely assistance of a Ouija board. The poem’s extensive gossip with the dead is often dismissed as mere surface. Yet Merrill, the article contends, indulges in what he calls the Ouija’s “backstage gossip” both to establish a queer relationship to poetic tradition and to confront the pervasive menace of the Cold War discourse of the Lavender Scare, which haunts the trilogy’s 1950s origins. Arguing that midcentury American attitudes about sexuality inflect—productively as much as disastrously—the relationship of lyric privacy to gossipy publicity in Merrill’s poem, the article shows how gossip, in its rich afterlife in Sandover, emerges not so much as a normative threat to be overcome but as a mode of fostering and preserving nonnormative voices, converting the privacy imposed on the homosexual into the conditions for creating queer worlds. Gossip concomitantly provides Merrill with a model of poetic self-performance that at once pushes against and embraces New Critical ideals of lyric subjectivity—a way of telling one’s own scandalous story through someone else’s words, even words intended as hostile, discovering poetic and sexual pleasures where others see only anxiety and dread.

СВІТОГЛЯДНІ ВИКЛИКИ ГЕНДЕРНІЙ ПОЛІТИЦІ СУЧАСНОСТІ

Abstract. Introduction. Despite the fact that various international organizations for more than half a century have been focusing on the fact that the ensuring of gender equality is a guarantee of peace, prosperity and social justice throughout the world, in recent years, public awareness has been increasingly marked by resistance to gender initiatives. Of course, such a situation may seem quite legitimate for transitive societies, which, obviously, perceive the destruction of ancient traditions with concern and anxiety, and with them – the whole social order. In view of this, the purpose of our work is to identify the reasons that have led to the return of public attention to basically discriminatory patriarchal gender stereotypes and the respective revival of their social strategies. Methods. During the study of the sources the author used the analytical method, and a systematic method for systematization of the received information. General scientific principles of the unity of historical and logical, of historicism and objectivity were useful for the research. Results. The study has disclosed the postmodern worldview transformations and showed that the main cause of the ambivalent attitude towards gender initiatives launched by liberally oriented representatives of the Western European world has been the flexibility of all ideological principles and value orientations, which forces a person to constantly search for his/her own place in the world in the absence of a clear determined world-view strongholds. Originality. The article stressed that the disorientation of a person in a modern, changing world leads to the fact that the only and the most reliable source of self-determination of man are local values that produce the most significant cultural meanings, thus providing a reliable world-view basis at the level of everyday life, which, in the context of postmodern depreciation of universal ideals, becomes the most reliable and ideological and value-determined life world that destroys universal cosmopolitan ideals, among which the principle of gender equality is not in the last place. Conclusion. Consequently, modern resistance to gender initiatives is a response to the normative threat posed by socio-cultural transformations due to globalization and the liberalization of public life.

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.

The Differential Effects of Right‐Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation on Political Intolerance

Decades of scholarship have identified several determinants of political intolerance, including authoritarianism and normative threat. Previous attempts in the literature to associate other individual difference variables (i.e., social dominance orientation [SDO]) and situational variables (i.e., out‐groups' gains in power and status) have been unsuccessful. Using a dual‐process motivational (DPM) model framework, in Study 1 we found that SDO predicted political intolerance of groups with hierarchy‐attenuating political objectives. This relationship was consistent over and above other well‐known predictors of political intolerance, including right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). RWA predicted intolerance of groups with both hierarchy‐attenuating and cohesion‐reducing objectives. In Study 2, we manipulated whether an immigrant‐rights group was described as presenting a normative threat or as gaining power and status. Consistent with extant findings, RWA moderated the effect of normative threat on political intolerance. More interestingly, SDO moderated the effect of gains in power and status on political intolerance. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Converting RPL into academic capital: lessons from Australian universities

Recognition of prior learning (RPL) requires an assessment of the equivalence and transferability of learning acquired in one context to another. However, this study’s examination of the institutional policies and practices of three Australian universities reveals that RPL can also be understood as a Bourdieuian process of ‘capital conversion’, where an individual’s economic, social and cultural capital are assessed as being equivalent to ‘academic experience’. This approach reveals that, far from being an epistemological assessment of prior learning, universities also consider their organisational identity and status when considering what informal or non-formal learning will be accepted. Ultimately, what counts as prior learning depends as much upon which university is doing the assessment, its motive for doing so and the extent to which it views RPL as a normative threat.

The concept of normative threat

Why are some acts, events, or people elevated to a status of a threat, when no hostile action or direct physical damage appears imminent? Why are some relationships of threat infused with intense emotionality and ethical language? In this paper, I argue that puzzles such as these can be understood if we develop a concept of normative threat. The role of ethical values and beliefs has not been sufficiently integrated with the threat literature. Many writers assume that ethical language tied to constructions of threat serves merely to disguise and palliate the underlying hard reality of struggles for power. This is too simplistic. I offer an approach that takes seriously the normativity of the threat experience for people as members of political bodies. I argue that perceptions of threat emerge and carry a heightened emotional and moral energy when basic features of a political body's normative order appear to be at stake and people believe action affirming their strength as a collective body is required. Normative order comprises a set of principles citizens believe to be necessary for the functioning, justifiability, and indeed ‘reality’ of their political body. A normative threat is perceived as a promise of harm to the political body through defiance of basic principles of order and right that constitute one's group. The paper describes three main types of normative threat: transgression/grievance, subversion/insecurity, abomination/indignant aversion.

The authoritarian dynamic

1. Introduction: the authoritarian dynamic 2. Kindred spirits, common spark: the theory of the authoritarian dynamic 3. Manipulating threat and reassurance: data and methods 4. The authoritarian dynamic and the politics of fear: putting the pieces of the puzzle together 5. Authoritarianism and conservatism across cultures 6. Authoritarianism and conservatism: how they differ and when it matters 7. One true people: putting a dace on the theory 8. One right way: fleshing out the portrait 9. Manning the barricades: racism and Intolerance under conditions of normative threat 10. The authoritarian dynamic: implications.

Nonresponse? Well, Not Really

A large body of literature exists on nonresponse to questionnaires, particularly in relation to the most frequently used surveys conducted by mail (Dillman, 1991). Research assessing response rate is ‘dominated by hundreds of tests of specific procedures and techniques for improving response’ (Dillman, 1991: 229). Nonresponse to questionnaires is generally seen to occur in two ways. First, the error can be created by questionnaires which are not returned by the chosen sample, sometimes referred to as noninterviews. Second, it can occur when members of the sample population do not complete particular questions, also called response omissions (Warwick and Lininger, 1975). Many different methods, both subjective and quantitative, have been suggested to compensate for these forms of nonresponse (e.g. Brook, 1977; Dillman, 1991; Jolliffe, 1986; Viswesvaran et al., 1993). Some researchers (e.g. Brook, 1977) have tried to create profiles of nonrespondents suggesting that they may be elderly or disengaged; live in urban areas; may feel a judgement is being made about their responses; or may feel inadequate about contributing. Bradburn and Sudman (1979) suggest that nonresponse may be more of a problem when the questions being asked are of a sensitive or threatening nature or involve ‘social definitions of “desirable” behavior’ (Bradburn and Sudman, 1979: 65). Through a variety of experiments and tests they determine that the ‘perceived normative threat of a topic influences responses to questions’ (Bradburn and Sudman, 1979: 83) including both noninterview and response omissions. None of this research addresses the situation in which nonrespondents do not answer questionnaires, but do in fact send letters explaining why they are not responding. Some of the explanations received may easily fall into the nonresponse categories outlined above, but others may challenge both these categories and the research questions. We 1 are conducting research on feminism, sex and the media, which involves sending questionnaires by mail to women identified as spokespersons for women’s issues in selected mainstream media. 2 More than 180 questionnaires were sent out. About 45 percent of these were returned completed. Of the remaining 55 percent, about half (27 percent of the total) were not completed, but the women to whom we had sent them responded