Party Line Research Articles

The effect of incentives on motivated numeracy amidst COVID-19

AbstractHow does political ideology affect the processing of information incongruent with one’s worldview? The disagreement in prior research about this question lies in how one’s ideology interacts with cognitive ability to shape motivated numeracy or the tendency to misinterpret data to confirm one’s prior beliefs. Our study conceptually replicates and extends previous research on motivated numeracy by testing whether monetary incentives for accuracy lessen motivated reasoning when high- and low-numeracy partisans interpret data about mask mandates and COVID-19 cases. This research leverages the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, as Americans are polarized along party lines regarding an appropriate government response to the pandemic.

Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World by Benjamin R. Young

<i>Guns, Guerrillas, and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World</i> by Benjamin R. Young

Legislator Dissent Does Not Affect Electoral Outcomes

AbstractAre there electoral consequences or benefits for legislators who deviate from the party line? We answer this question with data from individual-level vote choice and constituency-level electoral results in the UK for the last two decades. Exploring the variations in voting patterns over time with a panel-regression approach, we find results that are most compatible with the null hypothesis, that is, that dissent by legislators is neither rewarded nor punished in elections. These results call into question the degree to which voters know and/or care about legislative dissent in parliament.

Open Form in American Poetry: Essays by Burton Hatlen. Ed. Bruce Holsapple. U of Maine P, 2021. 309 pp. plus seven color plates. ISBN 978-0-89101-131-6. $28.00.

<i>Open Form in American Poetry: Essays</i> by Burton Hatlen. Ed. Bruce Holsapple. U of Maine P, 2021. 309 pp. plus seven color plates. ISBN 978-0-89101-131-6. $28.00.

There's No Place Like Home(land) in American and Soviet Fantasy Cinema of 1939: The Wizard of Oz and Vasilisa the Beautiful

There's No Place Like Home(land) in American and Soviet Fantasy Cinema of 1939: <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> and <i>Vasilisa the Beautiful</i>

South Korean Perceptions of Misinformation on Social Media: The Limits of a Consensus?

How do South Koreans view efforts at combating misinformation on social media? The growing influence of social media companies and their willingness to engage in content moderation on their platforms expands the domain of free speech and information beyond government actions. Through original survey work, I find that South Koreans, across party lines, largely acknowledge concerns about misinformation on social media, with views on media freedom and support for defamation laws corresponding with responding to misinformation. However, little consensus emerges on what social media companies should do in response to misinformation.

Love and evaluative conflict

AbstractLovers often disagree. We may reject the specific goals our loved ones pursue or the broad values they hold. Some philosophers suggest that such evaluative conflict makes romantic love in its ideal form deficient. I argue that this is mistaken. On the contrary, our ideal of love holds that we can love people for “who they are” (as we say), even as we profoundly disagree with them. My argument draws on intuitive cases from screwball comedy about love amid conflict, love across political party lines, as well as “forbidden” love across religions and cultures. At a deeper level, I sketch an ideal of love I call intimate independence and argue that this ideal is (a) fully compatible with any evaluative conflict, (b) embedded in our ordinary attitudes toward mature love between equals, and (c) an ideal worth achieving. As long as intimate independence is a compelling ideal, deep conflict will not seem like an obstacle to true love. The ideal reminds us that love can bring together people with radically different points of view, and that to insist on shared ends or values is thus to miss a part of the meaning and power of love.

La Revolución Rusa y América Latina: 1917 y más allá

La Revolución Rusa y América Latina: 1917 y más allá

Venture creation in the aftermath of COVID-19: The impact of US governor party affiliation and discretion.

In the USA, governors became central figures in the fight against the novel coronavirus. In many cases, state leaders were forced to choose between preserving life and protecting economic livelihood. While prior research has underscored the important role that US governors played in implementing healthcare policies at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know little about how characteristics of state leaders impacted self-employment. In this paper, we draw from upper echelons theory to examine how governor party and discretion impacted venture creation in the food and restaurant industry. Interestingly, we find no significant relationship between governor party and venture creation. However, we find that when the governor and legislature were unified in their political party — irrespective of party line — there were a higher number of new food and restaurant ventures created. We also found this effect to be strengthened when small business unemployment levels were higher. We explore the implications of these results for how unity of command may be beneficial during times of crisis.

Is it all talk: Do politicians that promote environmental messages on social media actually vote-in environmental policy?

Government policies are key to combating climate change and biodiversity loss. Here, we examine whether environmental messages on Twitter by UK politicians can be used to predict the probability of politicians voting-in pro-environmental policy. Using historical Twitter data and voting records, we determine that the number of tweets by UK politicians regarding environmental subjects has increased over the last decade, although this is not consistent across all parties. The probability of voting environmentally has not increased, instead, voting trends are highly heterogeneous over time, varying by political party. This suggests that there is little association between politicians that promote environmental messages on social media and the odds of them voting-in environmental policy. However, in some cases, politicians do deviate from political party lines, and so we assessed whether politicians that posted more environmental messages were more likely to break party lines and vote-in environmental measures. We found evidence that, after accounting for party, politicians who tweet more frequently about environmental subjects are more likely to vote against party lines in favour of environmental measures. This work suggests that politicians’ that post more environmental messages are more likely to support pro-environmental policy, but this signal is low relative to the predominant driver—political party association.Article highlightsEnvironmental tweeting by UK MPs has increased over the past decade but environmental voting has not.Party lines account for much of the variation in environmental vote patterns.Political association is a stronger predictor of vote intentions than whether an MP tweets about environmental issues.

The Israel Polarization Panel Dataset, 2019–2021

Research on affective polarization – that is, dislike and hostility across party lines – originated in the study of the American two-party system and only recently traveled into multiparty contexts. This emerging body of research is hindered by lack of comprehensive data that capture multiple dimensions of polarization and examine how they develop over the course of political events such as electoral campaigns or the formation and dissolution of coalition governments. This research note introduces the Israel Polarization Panel [IPP] Dataset, 2019–2021, designed specifically to address this shortcoming. The IPP consists of 10 panel waves, following the same individuals over four elections. We first survey the key features of the IPP and then discuss its applications. The dataset is publicly available and should be of interest to scholars of polarization, political behavior and electoral politics.

A survey on the attitudinal differences between acute and community settings.

IntroductionWhile challenges facing community and acute care practitioners have been studied elsewhere, this is not the case for respiratory therapists (RTs). This study aimed to examine attitudinal differences amongst RTs in British Columbia regarding challenges faced by acute and community settings.MethodsA 40-item anonymous online survey was sent to members of the British Columbia Society or Respiratory Therapists. Of the 40 questions, 11 were relevant to the study’s aim.ResultsOf 1024 invitations, 197 (19.2%) responded. One-hundred and seventeen (59.4%) self-identified as working in acute care settings, 53 (26.9%) in community settings, and 27 (13.7%) as “other”. Stress- and interpersonal-related challenges showed statistically significant differences (P ≤ 0.05) based on work setting. Acute care had the highest percentage of responses for challenges related to technology, stress, inter-professional collaboration, and training. Community settings had the highest percentage in challenges related to independence and education. Both being equal received the highest percentage in challenges related to problem-solving, interpersonal, communication, and resource management.DiscussionWhile attitudinal differences exist, they are not extreme. It did not appear that respondents’ primary motivation was to vote along “party lines”.ConclusionsThe setting an RT works in can influence attitudes related to stress and interpersonal challenges. Despite this, one setting is not universally more challenging. Acute care settings can have greater technological, inter-professional, and training-related challenges. Community settings can have greater independence and education-related challenges. Both settings can provide similar challenges with problem-solving, communication, and resource management.

Do political protests mobilize voters? Evidence from the Black Lives Matter protests

In this article, we study the local political mobilization effects of political protests in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. We analyze monthly voter registration data from 2136 US counties across 32 states, leveraging variation in the exposure to BLM protests across counties in a two-way fixed-effects framework with a matched control group. In contrast to previous studies, which reported substantial mobilization effects of local protests in other contexts, we show that voter registrations in the aggregate were insensitive to the presence of local BLM protests. We further disentangle the effects along party lines and the degree to which protests were associated with violent behaviors and find similarly insignificant effects. We present some preliminary evidence that the large scale of the protests and their extensive news coverage might have reduced the importance of experiencing a protest firsthand.

Factual Corrections Eliminate False Beliefs About COVID-19 Vaccines

Abstract The spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines threatens to prolong the pandemic, with prior evidence indicating that exposure to misinformation has negative effects on intent to be vaccinated. We describe results from randomized experiments in the United States (n = 5,075) that allow us to measure the effects of factual corrections on false beliefs about the vaccine and vaccination intent. Our evidence makes clear that corrections eliminate the effects of misinformation on beliefs about the vaccine, but that neither misinformation nor corrections affect vaccination intention. These effects are robust to formatting changes in the presentation of the corrections. Indeed, corrections without any formatting modifications whatsoever prove effective at reducing false beliefs, with formatting variations playing a very minor role. Despite the politicization of the pandemic, misperceptions about COVID-19 vaccines can be consistently rebutted across party lines.

At the crossroads between Communism and Jewish nationalism: Ber Mark as historian of premodern Jewish society

ABSTRACT Ber Mark, the longstanding director of ŻIH (1949–1966), is generally considered a regime historian who adhered to the Communist Party line in his histories of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, most of which were significantly distorted by Communist bias. In 1957, however, he published a book dealing with premodern Jewish history. Di geshikhte fun yidn in poyln (bizn sof fun XV y[or]h[undert]) (The History of Jews in Poland [until the End of the Fifteenth Century]) represents an attempt by Mark to reconcile an orthodox Marxist interpretation of Jewish history with a Zionist Marxist construction, with its nod to Jewish nationalism. In this book, then, Mark had ultimately reached a crossroads in his writing of Jewish history. With its incorporation of a nationalist understanding of Jewish history in coexistence with a Communist one, Di geshikhte fun yidn in poyln marks the end of pure Marxist historiography in Yiddish.

Social media network homophily among political candidates in multilevel settings

ABSTRACT Our study investigates political candidates’ networks in the multilevel political setting of Belgium. Using Twitter data collected during the four months preceding the May 2019 regional, federal and European elections, we examine the extent to which network homophily – defined as the tendency to interact with similar others – occurs among political candidates along parliament, language and party lines. Relying on a unique dataset of 20 061 retweets between 935 candidates, we find that network interactions are most likely to occur among co-partisans and candidates speaking the same language. Candidates campaigning for the same parliament also tend to retweet among each other, although this tendency is not strong. Overall, the findings confirm the strong divide of Belgian politics along language lines and Belgium’s ‘partitocracy’ in which parties are the main actors in the representation and policy-making process.

The curve not taken: Effects of COVID-19 international comparison news.

International news can inform people not only about what is happening in other countries, but also about how their own country could benefit from policies that have proved successful elsewhere. Specifically, international policy comparison news, or news that compares the policies of two or more countries on the same issue, is a potentially important but underutilized and understudied form of news content. We use an experiment to test effects of exposure to news comparing the COVID-19 pandemic policies of the U.S. versus South Korea, and find that this increases knowledge of policy differences between the two countries, support for adopting similar policies in the U.S., presidential blame for the severity of the pandemic in the U.S., and trust in health experts. On most outcomes, these effects did not vary across political party lines, a particularly encouraging result given the polarized nature of policy debates on this issue.

COVID-19 health practices and attitudes in the United States: the role of trust in healthcare.

AimIndividual-level COVID-19 vaccination and related preventive health behaviors is politically polarized in the United States. We examined whether the current polarization in COVID-19 health behavior may be explained by differences in trust in healthcare, locus of control, or insurance status.Subject and methodsOur sample includes 553 US adults recruited on Amazon MTurk. We assessed odds ratios of currently vaccinated, or willing to be vaccinated if unvaccinated using logistic regression. We assessed count of routine changes and positive attitudes toward facemasks using negative binomial regression.ResultsTrust in healthcare was found to be an important determinant of all COVID-19 related health behavior measured in our study. Further, the effects on COVID-related attitudes/behavior from trust in healthcare are large in magnitude. For instance, our results suggest that individuals at or above the upper quartile of trust in healthcare are around 20 percentage points more likely to be vaccinated than those at or below the lower quartile. Further, we find that the effect of trust in healthcare on adherence or endorsement of COVID-19 mitigation strategies is distinct from political affiliation, i.e., the effect on COVID-19 related health behavior is independent of the polarization across political party lines. Locus of control was not associated with adherence/attitude toward COVID-19 mitigation strategies. Insurance status was only found to be positively associated with odds of being vaccinated.ConclusionOur study highlights the importance of increasing trust in healthcare as a means to protect public health in the wake of major public health crises.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-022-01737-9.

Policy preferences, unity, and floor dissent in the European Parliament

ABSTRACT To what extent do individual members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have policy and ideological incentives to vote against their European Political Groups (EPGs) and national party delegations (NPDs), and how often they act on these by voting against the party line? Documenting over-time variations in incentives to dissent in floor votes using five waves of surveys of MEPs, covering the years 1994–2019, this article shows that while these have generally decreased over time, they remain substantial. Further, by combining individual floor voting records on legislation and individual MEP survey responses for the 2004–2009 EP, the article shows that while individual MEP preferences significantly influence the decision to dissent from the EPG line in floor votes, this is not the case for voting against their NPD, lending support to the argument that the primary principal for MEPs is their national party, not their EPG.

ISTORIJSKO U ROMANU DOBRICE ĆOSIĆA „DALEKO JE SUNCE“

The plot of Dobrica Ćosić’s novel The Sun is Far Away is deeply rooted in the events of 1942-1943, with reference to other war and post-war years. The second layer consists of the writer’s subsequent political ideas and thoughts, which were then attributed to his literary heroes. Ćosić’s early work, with an emphasis on the novel The Sun is Far Away, cannot be viewed as dissident; according to his motives and conclusions, he is politically engaged and completely “on the Party line”. However, the then open dilemma (whether to fight for freedom at all costs) will follow the author in the following period, and his conclusions presented in 1951 will change in the future. The number of identified historical contents in the novel exceeds the initial expectations and it could be said that for all the basic ideas presented in the book, the author had as inspiration specific historical events and personalities. He shaped them through artistic freedoms, but also in accordance with the ideology of the movement to which he belonged. In our opinion, the motives for the creation of the novel in the early post-war years were also political: to present the Partisan Movement to the Serbian people as part of its historical epic vertical; to make a departure from the USSR and present the Partisan struggle as an independently executed, authentic revolution; to point out the betrayal and crimes of the counter-revolution and the Ravna gora Movement (presented in a politically constructed symmetry as “Serbian Ustashas”), and thus to contribute to the war propaganda that was waged against them even then. In that sense, the novel The Sun is Far Away should not be viewed only as a literary fiction, but as a part of engaged literature which had far-reaching consequences in the formation of the historical consciousness of post-war generations.