Political Disagreement Research Articles

Effects of news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity on incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal political information on Facebook

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the mechanism underlying the process where individuals come across political disagreement in online communication networks. For that, this study focuses on two potential factors affecting incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal information (IXC) on Facebook: (1) news sharing behavior and (2) discussion network heterogeneity. A two-wave national survey was conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaigns (Wave 1: Sept. 27– 13 October 2016, N = 1,623; Wave 2: Oct. 27– 8 November 2016, N = 637). The results indicate that news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity are both positively associated with IXC on Facebook, showing the critical roles played by these two variables in incidental exposure to political disagreement on social media. More importantly, news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity were found to sequentially mediate the positive relationship between overall use of Facebook and IXC, providing a more detailed mapping of the underlying mechanism in the basic relationship between general Facebook use and IXC. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Sacred distinctions: Law and the political regulation of Sikh Gurdwaras in British Columbia

AbstractSince the 1990s, a sizeable body of case law has formed in the Canadian province of British Columbia in response to disputes over the political leadership of local gurdwaras, the name for Sikh places of worship and assembly. Although the disputes stemmed from religious and political disagreements, the legal issues addressed by the courts concern the proper bureaucratic administration of Sikh institutions that have been legally incorporated as nonprofit “societies.” Through a textual analysis of 55 legal decisions related to gurdwara leadership disputes, this article explains how the courts have decided these cases without ceding the pretense of secular neutrality by mobilizing a series of shifting discursive distinctions between religion, politics, materiality, civil society, and bureaucratic procedure. Building on critical secular and sociolegal theory, this article tracks how law is able to establish and extend the state's jurisdiction over Sikh practices and populations through its capacity to inscribe and delimit the social and political parameters of religion. It illustrates how this case law serves as a mechanism of racial governance by extending forms of surveillance and legal intervention that work to embed the diasporic practices of Sikh communities within the spheres of Canadian state power.

Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe

Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe

Partisan Conflict, News, and Investors' Expectations

AbstractI consider the role of news provided by the media as signals used by investors to learn about partisan conflict. Higher partisan conflict induces uncertainty (by increasing the probability of crises) and gridlock (making tax reforms less likely), both affecting investment returns. The true degree of political disagreement is unobservable to investors, who create expectations based on the observation of informative signals. Using a Bayesian learning model, I illustrate how these signals affect investment decisions. To the extent crises are severe enough, an increase in the partisan conflict reduces expected returns and induces lower investment.

Characterizing Disagreement in Online Political Talk: Examining Incivility and Opinion Expression on News Websites and Facebook in Brazil

This paper examines the ways people engage in political conversation triggered by exposure to political news in two different informal platforms in Brazil: Facebook and news websites. We analyze the extent to which disagreement is associated to discursive traits that are commonly associated with deliberative behavior, such as directly engaging with others, and trying to justify one’s views, and negative traits, such as incivility. The contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, this paper emphasizes the importance of looking beyond a single platform and a single topic to understand political discussion online. Second, we demonstrate that online disagreement is positively associated with both deliberative traits, such as justified opinion expression, and non-deliberative traits, such as incivility, and argue that the latter is not enough to dismiss the value of political talk. We also demonstrate that the topic of a news story is relevant both to drive political conversation and to spark political disagreement: controversies involving celebrities and stories covering international affairs are more likely to drive heterogeneous conversations than more conventional political topics (e.g. government, policy), even though these are the topics that tend to attract more political talk. Finally, this study contributes to fill an important gap in the literature, looking beyond the US and Western European contexts by examining political talk in Brazil, the fourth largest digital market in the world.

The European Union-United States cybersecurity relationship: a transatlantic functional cooperation

ABSTRACT This article explores the European Union (EU)-United States (US) cybersecurity relationship through an international relations perspective focusing on threat perceptions and interests, principles and norms and institutions. It uses data from publicly available EU and US documents and speeches and from three interviews conducted by the author with EU officials. The main argument of this research is that the transatlantic security relationship is not in a process of rift with regard to cybersecurity; cooperation and coordination continues despite the broader political disagreements that arise from time to time. The EU and the US share common threat perceptions and interests, they converge around a number of cybersecurity principles and norms, and they coordinate their actions in practice. In other words, the EU-US cybersecurity relationship has taken the form of a functional cooperation which aims at safeguarding common interests and avoiding the costs and the vulnerabilities that arise from the EU-US interdependencies in the cyber realm. At the same time, not all policy areas related to cybersecurity have been equally prioritised by the two actors.

Metacognitive Labeling of Contentious Claims: Facts, Opinions, and Conspiracy Theories.

Congenial information is often judged to be more valid than uncongenial (but otherwise equivalent) information. The present research explores a related possibility concerning the process by which people label a claim as fundamentally factual (open to proof or disproof) or opinion (a matter of personal preference not amenable to falsification). Rather than merely being more skeptical of uncongenial claims, uncongenial claims may be metacognitively categorized as more opinion than factual, while congenial claims may be more likely to be categorized as factual. The two studies reported here attempt to trace a preliminary outline of how claims are categorized as fact, opinion, or some mix of the two in the context of mundane claims, contentious political issues, and conspiracy theories. The findings suggest that claims are more likely to be labeled factual (and, to a lesser extent, are less likely to be labeled opinion) to the extent that one subjectively agrees with the content of the claim. Conspiracy theories appear to occupy a middle-ground between fact and opinion. This metacognitive approach may help shed light on popular debate about conspiracy theories, as well as seemingly intractable political disagreements more generally, which may reflect fundamental differences in the perceived epistemic foundations of claims rather than simple disagreement over the facts of the matter. Given limitations of the stimuli and participant samples, however, it remains to be seen how generalizable these findings are.

From Context Collapse to “Safe Spaces”: Selective Avoidance through Tie Dissolution on Social Media

ABSTRACT This study examines whether disconnective practices on social media such as unfriending could constitute a form of selective avoidance and investigates its boundary conditions. To do so, we study whether, to what extent, and under which conditions exposure to disagreement on social media predicts politically motivated unfriending. Specifically, we examine how the relationship varies in different relational contexts and whether it is conditioned by opinion minority status. Using survey data collected shortly before the 2017 Chief Executive Election in Hong Kong, we find cross-cutting exposure to be a significant predictor of politically motivated unfriending. This suggests that the disconnective practices represent a form of selective avoidance, but only among a relatively small number of social media users. We also show that only disagreements arising from political discussion with distant others predict unfriending. Furthermore, opinion minorities are more inclined to cut ties in the face of political disagreement than the majorities. Based on these findings, we discuss the weakness of weak ties on social media and characterize selective avoidance as a means to build digital “safe spaces”.

ЎЗБЕКИСТОН ВА ТУРКИЯ РЕСПУБЛИКАЛАРИ ЎРТАСИДАГИ ДИПЛОМАТИК АЛОҚАЛАРНИНГ РИВОЖЛАНИШ ДИНАМИКАСИ

This article analyzes the formation of Uzbek-Turkish relations, the causes of political conflicts and disagreements between the two countries, as well as the efforts to restore these relations on the basis of new evidence. It was also noted that the normative and legal documents signed in recent years during high-level state visits and official meetings of the two leaders in trade, economic, scientific, technical, cultural and humanitarian spheres play an important role in expanding mutually beneficial relations.Index Terms: foreign policy, cooperation, response, integration, democracy, science, culture, independence, religion, security

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Pre-pandemic, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) economy was growing, but at a pace below the more successful countries in Eastern Europe. The pandemic generated a substantial output contraction in 2020. Early in the pandemic, the authorities successfully implemented restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus and took measures to support firms and households. However, the ongoing second wave poses additional challenges. A gradual recovery is expected for the second half of 2021. Political disagreements about policy coordination at the BiH State level have hampered program implementation under the 2016 EFF arrangement and the deepening of the single economic space. The challenge is to deal with the pandemic and put the economy on a higher medium-term growth trajectory.

Julian F. Müller: Political pluralism, disagreement and justice: the case for polycentric democracy, New York, NY: Routledge, 2019, 234 pp, USD 48.95 (paperback)

Julian F. Müller: Political pluralism, disagreement and justice: the case for polycentric democracy, New York, NY: Routledge, 2019, 234 pp, USD 48.95 (paperback)

Political Disagreement and Minimal Epistocracy

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. In a recent paper, Julian Reiss challenges a crucial assumption underlying the case for epistocracy. Central to any defence of epistocracy is the conviction that we can identify a body of political knowledge which, when possessed in greater amounts by voters, leads to substantively better outcomes than when voters lack such knowledge. But it is not possible to identify such a body of knowledge. There is simply far too much controversy in the social sciences, and this controversy prevents us from definitively saying of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Call this the Argument from Political Disagreement. In this paper I respond to the Argument from Political Disagreement. First, I argue that Reiss conflates social-scientific knowledge with politically relevant knowledge. Even if there were no uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge, there is much uncontroversial politically relevant knowledge. Second, I argue that there is some uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge. While Reiss correctly notes that there is much controversy in the social sciences, not every issue is controversial. The non-social-scientific politically relevant knowledge and the uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge together constitute the minimal body of knowledge which epistocrats need to make their case.

Examining Sanctions on Syria: Possibilities for Effectiveness Based on a Spatial Model

Sanctions are one of the most important tools used in foreign policy after World War II. Moreover, sanctions” subject is keeping to be a controversial one, even though the international institutions and powerful states are using sanctions since the beginning of the 20th century. However, the scientific and political community could not reach a clear-cut stand on sanctions” effectiveness. This ambiguity happens for many reasons: the humanitarian consequence of sanctions, the possibilities of achieving their goals, and the political disagreement between great powers like the use of the VETO right in the Security Council. Regarding Syria as the government and entities connected to it, are facing intensive sanctions starting from 2011 especially from the European Union, and the United States of America. Nevertheless, those sanctions were not the first case that Syria is facing sanctions in its history. Therefor his paper would investigate the cases of sanctions that been imposed on Syria, from 1979, until 2011 and after, according to (the spatial model conclusions, which suggests three directions for the result of sanctions; first sanctions success possibility unilaterally or multilaterally is high, if the sanctioned system is democratic and has a strong relationship with the sender. The second is; sanctions may have a positive result in changing an authoritarian regime if the nature of the sanctions were not fatal to the existence of the regime. The third is that sanctions on authoritarian regimes would fail if they target its existence and would result in overthrowing it.

Political Pluralism, Disagreement and Justice: The Case for Polycentric Democracy, Julian F.Müller, 2020. London, Routledge. 235pp, £120.00 (hb) £36.99 (pb)

Political Pluralism, Disagreement and Justice: The Case for Polycentric Democracy, Julian F.Müller, 2020. London, Routledge. 235pp, £120.00 (hb) £36.99 (pb)

Dialoguing with Data and Data Reduction: An Observational, Narrowing-Down Approach to Social Media Network Analysis

In this article, we propose an observational, narrowing-down approach to analysing social media networks and developing research design by the joint use of computational algorithms and researchers’ inductive exploration and interpretive explanations. The Brexit referendum on Twitter study is used to illustrate how we applied this approach in practice. In this study, observation helped us combine the strengths of computational statistical analysis and modelling and of inductive inquiries. Computational algorithms and tools including Elasticsearch, Kibana and Gephi provided us with an “ethnographic field” where we were able to inductively observe the relationships among users and to reduce the amount of data down to a level in which we could intuitively understand these relationships. In traditional observational studies, talking to human subjects and observing their interactions in a research site are important to ethnographers. Likewise, it is useful for social science researchers to dialogue with data, observe human relationships embodied in the data and reconstructed by computational tools, and understand these relationships through closely examining a small batch of meaningful data that is extracted from large-scale data. In this case study, adopting the proposed approach, we found the importance of political disagreement leading to a tale of two politicians, in which pro-Brexit users denounced @David_Cameron but legitimised @Nigel_Farage.

Political Difference in Marriage: Wife’s Gender Linked Fate and Relational Conflict

ABSTRACT Increasing political polarization and growing animus toward political outgroup members may strain marriages in which spouses express political differences. For heterosexual married couples, interrelationships among gender, power, and political conflict may be of particular importance. The purpose of this study was to examine heterosexual spouses’ conflicts over political differences as a function of wives’ endorsement of gender-linked fate. Married, heterosexual women completed an online survey. Results demonstrate that in large part, the effect of wives’ gender-linked fate on reported conflict behaviors during political disagreements varies on the basis of husbands’ political party affiliation. Among women married to men who more strongly identify as Republican, greater endorsement of gender-linked fate associates with more pursuit of conflict, more competitive conflict tactics, and greater volatility and asymmetry in couple conflict patterns. When married to Democratic-leaning husbands, wives’ greater endorsement of gender-linked fate associates with more submissiveness during political conflicts.

“You’re still worth it”: The moral and relational context of politically motivated unfriending decisions in online networks

Political disagreements in social media can result in removing (i.e., "unfriending") a person from one's online network. Given that such actions could lead to the (ideological) homogenization of networks, it is pivotal to understand the psychological processes intertwined in unfriending decisions. This requires not only addressing different types of disagreements but also analyzing them in the relational context they occur. This article proposes that political disagreements leading to drastic measures such as unfriending are attributable to more deeply rooted moral dissents. Based on moral foundations theory and relationship regulation research, this work presents empirical evidence from two experiments. In both studies, subjects rated political statements (that violated different moral foundations) with regard to perceived reprehensibility and the likelihood of unfriending the source. Study 1 (N = 721) revealed that moral judgments of a political statement are moderately related to the unfriending decision. Study 2 (N = 822) replicated this finding but indicated that unfriending is less likely when the source of the morally reprehensible statement is relationally close to the unfriender and provides emotional support. This research extends unfriending literature by pointing to morality as a new dimension of analysis and offers initial evidence uncovering the psychological trade-off behind the decision of terminating digital ties. Drawing on this, our findings inform research on the homogenization of online networks by indicating that selective avoidance (in the form of politically motivated unfriending) is conditional upon the relational context and the interpersonal benefits individuals receive therein.

Is the «Nord Stream-2» profitable economic project or new point of political disagreements

Is the «Nord Stream-2» profitable economic project or new point of political disagreements

Seneca Conceptions of Land Use and Value: Debates over Land Sovereignty, 1797–1848

Settler groups characterized Seneca political disputes that developed throughout the nineteenth century as “factions,” which are typically viewed as signs of societal disintegration for Native communities. This essay instead views Seneca political disagreements as a single narrative of alternate solutions to the advancement of American expansion. The Senecas experienced three distinct disputes over the course of the nineteenth century, and each side used their awareness of American expectations for Seneca society to protect Seneca interests. The Senecas forced the United States to reflect on the extent of American expansion and interrupted settler constructs such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, and property law by defining those ideas for themselves.

The Source Value of Sunnah in The Kalām -In The Context of Juwaynī and Ghazzālī’s Understandings of Report-

İtikadî meselelere ilişkin hükümlerin belirlenmesinde başvurulan kaynaklardan ikincisi olarak Sünnet, dinin aslını teşkil eden Kitab’ın da açıklayıcısı olması bakımından kelâmda önemli bir konuma sahip olmuştur. Ayrıca Kitab’ta Hz. Peygamber’e itaat edilmesine ve onun verdiği hükümlerin kabul edilmesine yönelik ifadeler ile birlikte Hz. Peygamber’in kelâmda tartışma konusu olan ve Kitab’ta açıkça belirtilmeyen itikadî meselelerle ilgili hadisleri, kelâmda kaynaklık vasfı taşımaktadır.
 Kelâmcılar, öncelikle Sünnet’in kaynaklık vasfına yaptığı atıflarla Sünnet’in konumunu ve otoritesini belirginleştirmişlerdir. Sonrasında ise itikadî meseleler Sünnet’in konumu göz önünde bulundurularak Hz. Peygamber’in hadisleriyle delillendirilmiş ve izah edilmiştir. Bu anlamda Hz. Peygamber’in sünneti, itikadî nitelikli tartışmalarda başvurulan bir delil olmak üzere kelâmın kaynakları arasında haber kavramıyla yer edinmiştir.
 Kelâmcılar, iddialarını delillendirmenin yanında karşı tarafın temel prensiplerini çürütmek için de Sünnet’ten faydalanmışlardır. Böylece itikadî meselelerle ilgili ileri sürülen görüşler üzerinde dinin temel ilkelerini ifade eden Sünnet, denetleyici bir rol üstlenmiş ve öne sürülen iddiaların Sünnet’e uygunluğu aranmıştır. Sünnet’e aykırı değerlendirilen düşünceler, itikadî açıdan problemli kabul edilmiştir. Bununla birlikte Hz. Peygamber kaynaklı haberler ifade ettiği bilgi değeri bakımından kelâmda ayrıca irdelenmiştir.
 Kelâmın bir yöntem olarak sorgulanan meşruiyeti de kelâmî perspektifi benimseyenler tarafından Sünnet’le desteklenmiştir. Zira akıl ve vahyi birlikte içeren en önemli kaynak Sünnet’tir. Hz. Peygamber, nübüvvet görevinin gereği, kendisine vahyedilen hakikatleri olduğu gibi insanlara tebliğ etmiştir. Diğer taraftan o yine peygamberlik görevinin bir gereği olarak bu hakikatlerin yorumlanıp izah edilmesinde zaman zaman aklî ve mantıkî prensiplere işaret eden bir yaklaşım sergileyerek Sünnet’i ortaya koymuştur. Bu şekliyle Sünnet aklın kullanımına ilişkin örnekler vermektedir.
 Kitab’la birlikte Hz. Peygamber ve sahabenin genel yaklaşımlarına bağlılık gösteren toplum için Sünnet, dini anlama şeklinin ve itikadî meselelere yaklaşım tarzının tanımlayıcı kimliğini oluşturmuştur. Bu anlayış şeklini paylaşan kelâmcılar, siyasî/itikadî tartışmalarda Sünnet’e başvurmuş ve meseleleri Sünnet çerçevesinde değerlendirmişlerdir. Böylece öne sürülen itikadî iddialar sebebiyle Müslümanlar arasında yaşanacak kırılmalar ve Müslüman toplumun dağılması engellenmiştir. Bu anlamda Sünnet, kelâmcıların iddialarını dayandırdıkları kaynak olmanın ötesinde Müslüman toplumu kapsayıcı ve bağlayıcı ilkeler etrafında birleştiren, herhangi bir ayrık ve aykırı itikadî tavrın tezahür etmesine de engel teşkil eden, dinin anlaşılır, yaşanılır ve sürdürülebilir yorum şeklini yansıtmaktadır.
 Zikri geçen açılardan kelâmda Sünnet, esasen bir prensipler bütününe karşılık gelmektedir ve kelâmcılar, itikadî tartışmalarda ya da itikadî değerler üzerinden değerlendirilen siyasî ayrışmalarda bu prensipler bütününü takip etmişlerdir.
 Ehl-i Sünnet kelâmının sistematik bir yapıya kavuşmasında önemli katkılar sağlayan kelâmcılar olarak Cüveynî ve Gazzâlî itikadî konuları, takip ettikleri kelâmî geleneğe uygun şekilde, Sünnet’in kaynaklık vasfını göz önünde bulundurarak yorumlamış ve savundukları görüşleri Sünnet’ten istinbat ettikleri delillerle temellendirmişlerdir. Dolayısıyla sünnî kelâm açısından Sünnet’in kaynaklık değeri, Ehl-i Sünnet kelâmına yön veren Cüveynî ve Gazzâlî ile ilgili yapılacak bir okumayla net olarak anlaşılmaktadır.