Political Disagreement Research Articles

Distinction within the ‘global north’? A Bourdieusian approach for analysing development discourse: The case of U.S. and E.U. relations with the Colombian state (2016–2022): A comparative analysis

The paper conducts a comparative analysis of EU (91 texts) and US (93 texts) discourses concerning post-peace accord Colombia (late 2016 to mid-2022). Employing a Bourdieu-influenced methodology, our proposal aims to reconcile Post-Development theories with International Relations research. This innovative and multidimensional approach illuminates both discursive continuities within Global North while concurrently providing a framework that allows to identify and interpret internal political divergences. Our findings highlight a shared commitment to a liberal conception of peacebuilding, alongside internal distinction strategies employed to legitimize respective policies towards Colombia.

A Re-assessment of Thomas Hobbes Social Contract Theory and His Concept of Motion

Hobbes held the belief that his political philosophy would resolve political disagreements, rather his work has aroused series of criticisms and oppositions, and has given rise to unending controversies. Thus, this paper is a re-examination of Thomas Hobbes social contract theory and an analysis of his concept of motion. The driving philosophy behind every civil government is the concept of the social contract that spells out the responsibilities of government and duties of the governed. Hobbes was the first who wrote on the social contract where he clearly spelt out how man in the state of nature were life is short, nasty and brutish with no scientific development. Through the dictates of reason man in such a chaotic society was able to form a civil government relinquishing all his rights to this said man or assembly of men in place for law, order and protection. This study employed historic-analytical method. The historical dimension is to provide the knowledge of the political circumstances that prevailed during the time of Hobbes and the analytic aspect is to examine critically the concept of motion in relation to understanding the nature of man. The work concludes that, Hobbes understanding of human nature from the point of view of mechanical and mathematical precision without understanding man from the social human actions and as a conscious being is a major factor that has given rise to series of controversies surrounding his political philosophy. Keywords: Motion, Social Contract, Natural Right, Natural Law and Authority.

Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive

Differences of opinion between people are common in everyday life, but discussing those differences openly in conversation may be unnecessarily rare. We report three experiments (N = 1,264 U.S.-based adults) demonstrating that people’s interest in discussing important but potentially divisive topics is guided by their expectations about how positively the conversation will unfold, leaving them more interested in having a conversation with someone who agrees versus disagrees with them. People’s expectations about their conversations, however, were systematically miscalibrated such that people underestimated how positive these conversations would be—especially in cases of disagreement. Miscalibrated expectations stemmed from underestimating the degree of common ground that would emerge in conversation and from failing to appreciate the power of social forces in conversation that create social connection. Misunderstanding the outcomes of conversation could lead people to avoid discussing disagreements more often, creating a misplaced barrier to learning, social connection, free inquiry, and free expression.

Financial contagion of German industrial enterprises during the 2021–2023 global energy crisis

The relevance of the study is justified by the importance of capturing and assessing the financial contagion transmission in crisis for the purposes of identifying risks in the financial market, as well as for the industrial sector management at the micro and macro levels. The article applies such an assessment to the largest industrial enterprises in Germany. The object of study choice is due to the fact that Germany, on the one hand, has a highly developed industrial sector and, on the other hand, was the most severely affected by the global energy crisis caused by political disagreements at the international level. The natural gas market has been chosen as a transmitter of contagion and German industrial companies as a receiver. A brief theoretical review considers the peculiarities of the functioning of the industrial sector of the German economy during the global energy crisis. The dependence of industrial production on natural gas imports has been revealed. The practical section captures financial contagion using the following tests: Forbes-Rigobon, distributional coasymmetry, distributional cocurtosis, and covolatility. A ranking of the industries contagion in Germany has been constructed. It has been found that most of the investigated companies are exposed to contagion from the gas market to a greater or lesser extent. Only three companies showed absolute resistance to contagion: Enbw Energie Baden Wuerttemberg AG, Stemmer Imaging AG, and OHB SE. The light industry, metals and mining were the most affected to the financial contagion, while the construction industry was the least affected.

Using "balanced pragmatism" in political discussions increases cross-partisan respect.

Synthesizing research on wisdom and a real-world practitioner intervention, we develop and test a strategy for presenting political views that fosters cross-partisan respect. This strategy of balanced pragmatism combines two aspects of "wise reasoning": balancing multiple interests and seeking pragmatic solutions. Studies 1-5 (N = 2,846) demonstrate that participants respected outgroup political elites more when they used balanced pragmatism versus other forms of messaging. Studies 6-8 (N = 671) extend the usefulness of balanced pragmatism to everyday political disagreements: cross-partisan comments about divisive issues (i.e., guns and immigration) generated more respect when they used balanced pragmatism versus logical analysis. Strikingly, people were as willing to discuss politics with opponents who used balanced pragmatism as they were with ingroup members. Balanced pragmatism appears to improve cross-partisan respect by making opponents seem more moral and rational. Results highlight connections between political psychology and wisdom research and illustrate the fruitfulness of scientist-practitioner collaborations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Political polarization and intimate distance: Negotiating family conflicts during a high-risk protest movement

Political polarization not only threatens democracy, but also disrupts family lives, causing clashes between family members with discordant political orientations. This article examines how individuals negotiate family conflicts during political divides, by focusing on the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Based on data drawn from interviews conducted with 37 self-identified protest participants, I develop the concept of intimate distance in order to capture the way in which the participants negotiated political disagreements with their immediate family. Individuals make peace with their families during a high-risk movement, not merely by restoring closeness, but also by adjusting the intimate distance with their family members in three interconnected aspects: everyday family life, cognitive and emotional aspects. Individuals employ a repertoire of practices, together with emotion work and boundary work, to alleviate confrontations, rebuild consensus, and contain political risks. This study contributes to a more nuanced conceptualization of intimacy and family conflict resolution, and unravels the impact of family interactions on the intensification or alleviation of ideological and affective polarization in relation to the interpersonal and societal level.

Constructing liberty and equality – political, not juridical

ABSTRACT When offering constructions of political values, it is common to generally strive for unity, i.e., to aim at principled definitions and the reduction of normative conflict. In this article, by contrast, I argue that we should aim to construct broad and conflicting concepts of the central liberal democratic values of liberty and equality. Taking my cue from an under-appreciated debate between Ronald Dworkin and Bernard Williams, I suggest that the demand for unity derives its appeal from a juridical model of political value construction, which assumes the unified perspective of public decision-making. But while this model may be apt for constructing institutional rights, the construction of the political values liberty and equality had better operate according to a political model, which focuses on the perspective of citizens that live in a relationship of political opposition. Not only is there no demand for unity from that perspective, but there is a positive demand for political plurality: we need to draw on broad and conflicting concepts of liberty and equality if we are to respect the claims of fellow citizens with whom we have value-based political disagreements.

Ideological Disagreement and the Rejection of Laws by Italian Heads of State

AbstractHeads of state in parliamentary democracies are usually perceived as neutral and non‐partisan political actors. However, they can make autonomous political choices, sometimes oriented by their own partisan preferences. Focusing on the Italian case, we analyze the propensity of the president of the Republic to publicly express political disagreement by rejecting the promulgation of laws. We contribute to the literature by creating and exploiting a new dataset, based on a content analysis of presidents' investiture speeches and New Year's Eve messages which maps the ideological position of Italian heads of state and their distance from the cabinet over more than 75 years (1946–2022). We show that such ideological distance increases the number of laws rejected by the president. This effect holds when controlling for the size and heterogeneity of the government coalition, as well as the state of the economy and the occurrence of crises.

The Influence of Online Political Expression on Disagreement and Incivility: The Moderating Role of Social Identity

ABSTRACT This study theorized that active political expression on social networking sites (SNS) facilitates political disagreement since it diversifies one’s communication network, which likely leads to political incivility. Additionally, individuals’ social identity might condition this indirect relationship. Relying on a two-wave panel survey in Hong Kong, this study found that political expression on SNS is significantly associated with political disagreement. However, political disagreement does not lead to political incivility, indicating that it does not mediate the relationship between political expression and incivility. Further analysis showed that the mediating relationship between political expression, disagreement, and incivility is only significant for dual identifiers.

SPORT, MEDIA AND BUSINESS IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PROFESSIONALS AND SCHOLARS

Despite the shift from socialist to market economy and the proliferation of media outlets and opportunities, sport and media organizations in Southeast Europe have not kept up with global trends. Most teams and fixtures have become feeders for top leagues rather than remaining aspirational destinations in their own right. This phenomenon has manifested across all former Yugoslav republics. Yet, political divergences have hindered learning from neighboring countries’ mistakes and experiences.
 This paper outlines the broadcasting presence of selected leagues from Southeast Europe, describes the most common motivations for mediated sport consumption, and introduces the concept of mediatization of sport. Media professionals should develop contents designed to satisfy all motivations for sport spectatorship. Scholars should study such content, the professional situation of journalists and broadcasters, and the representation of foreign athletes and women in sport. Collaboration among scholars and professionals is vital for the continued development of sport, media and business in the region.

EU Renewable Energy Governance and the Ukraine War: Moving Ahead Through Strategic Flexibility?

When faced with highly heterogeneous national conditions and preferences, the EU has often resorted to differentiation to ensure political support for advancing common policies. Despite growing scholarly interest in differentiation in the EU, conceptual clarity and empirical evidence of different forms of differentiation are still in a nascent stage. Particularly the use of differentiation in times of crisis needs to be better understood. To address this research gap, we investigate differentiation in the EU renewable energy policy in response to the crisis stirred by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We find that the EU successfully used the Ukraine crisis to increase the ambition of renewable energy policy, but this was accompanied by various and often novel forms of differentiation. Rather than formally exempting countries from common EU provisions (differentiated integration), EU decision-makers strategically incorporated flexibility in implementation, often tailored to a few outlier countries. Strategic flexibility was instrumental in overcoming political disagreements among national governments and adopting a more ambitious and comprehensive renewable energy policy. Our findings contribute conceptually and empirically to understanding various forms of differentiation in EU policymaking and how they are employed to facilitate the building of political majorities during crises.

American Gun Violence & Mental Illness: Reducing Risk, Restoring Health, Respecting Rights & Reviving Communities

Abstract Intentional injuries claimed nearly two hundred lives every day in the United States in 2020, about two-thirds of them suicides, each a story of irretrievable human loss. This essay addresses the complex intersection of injurious behavior with mental illness and access to firearms. It explores what more can be done to stop gun violence while respecting the rights of lawful gun owners, preserving the dignity of persons with mental illnesses, and promoting racial equity. Strategies to prevent firearm injury in the United States are uniquely conditioned by a constitutional right to bear arms, the cultural entrenchment and prevalence of private gun ownership, and strident political disagreement on regulatory solutions to stem gun violence. Broad implementation of a range of complementary policies is needed, including community-based programs to address the social and developmental determinants of violence, improved access to a continuum of mental health services, firearm restrictions based on behavioral indicators of risk (not mental illness, per se), licensing for firearm purchase or ownership, comprehensive background checks for firearm purchase, and supply-side approaches to interrupt illegal firearm markets.

Intraparty and Interparty Political Disagreement as Predictors of Affective Polarization and Willingness to Engage in Interparty Contact: The Moderating Role of Political Difference Management Styles

Interpersonal political discussion is a normatively valued practice in a democracy, shaping polarizing attitudes and influencing future contact intentions in divided political landscapes. Applying social identity, intergroup contact, and conflict management styles theories, in this article, we investigate the associations between political disagreement with in-party and out-party members, affective polarization, and willingness to engage in interparty contact. Additionally, we examine how these associations are contingent upon individuals’ styles for managing political disagreement. Using cross-sectional survey data ( N = 732), we found that better quality of disagreement with out-party members and more frequent disagreement with in-party members are related to improved intergroup attitudes. Furthermore, these relationships vary depending on the competing disagreement management style.

Politics Matters for Life Satisfaction of Mainland Chinese Spouses in Taiwan

This study examined how politics, along with familial and socioeconomic factors, influence the life satisfaction of marriage migrants in Taiwan. We conducted a social survey in Taiwan and offered a multidimensional and dynamic view on adaptation and life satisfaction among them. The results showed that in Taiwan, family relationships and socioeconomic class were significant factors of life satisfaction among mainland Chinese marriage migrants. A high level of social integration was positively related to life satisfaction, while the prejudice faced from neighbors, rather than from the media, was negatively related. Regarding political factors, political disagreement with their Taiwanese partners undermined life satisfaction among spouses from mainland China. However, those who possessed a dual identity (i.e., both Chinese and Taiwanese) and those who viewed mainland China and Taiwan as two separate entities tended to have high levels of life satisfaction.

Globalization and Worlding: Interconnected Alternatives

At the outset, a distinction is drawn between globalization, that takes the shape of a consensus imposed from above, and worlding, that takes the shape of a dissensus developed from below. In Jacques Rancière’s terms, globalization “polices” a political space, suppresses conflicts among its constituents, appropriates and translates everything into its own identity parameters. By pointing out the “political” gap between what is claimed and what is within the given space, worlding, in contrast. insists on disagreement. However, these two reconfigurations and recalibrations of human being-in-common are never diametrically opposed, but are interrelated and intertwined. Worlding can start as a liberating “politics” but, as soon as it institutes its platform of commonality, may slip into an imposed “police”. Since political disagreement necessarily aims to legitimize its unrecognized identities, a surreptitious perversion of dissensual politics into a consensual police is its inescapable ultimate consequence. Disagreement invents names and utterances, setting up new collectivities that solidify their identities by “policing” their spaces. Accordingly, one can conclude that worlding starts as an emancipating project that gradually turns into discriminating globalization. The continuous slide of one into the other impeded and disconcerted the political space of European modernity from its very beginnings, accompanying it like an uncanny shadow. This space repeatedly proliferated both its internal (intra-European) and external (extra-European) “zones of indistinction”, whose residents forged transborder alliances with the aim of its recalibration and reconfiguration.

Sopranotronics 101. An Analytical Approach With Repertorial Proposal

"The current work aims to present an investigation of the past seventy years of Sopranotronics repertoire, approached through the eye of the performer. The Soprano Fach and the electronic environment merged in the last decades into a new interdisciplinary performance field, which is both artistic and scientific in its making. The Sopranotronics now offers a fresh vocal repertoire with challenging drama stories and thought-provoking art. Whether expressing a political disagreement (Nono’s La Fabbrica Illuminata) or describing a mythical story (Babbitt’s Philomel) in chamber works; writing a four-hour opera without dramatic action and a storyline (Glass’s Einstein on the Beach) or inventing the disembodied performance while the most humane character of the opera suffers because of this (Machover’s DATP) or chanting for spirits in an electro - acoustic aria (Crețu’s I.X.@100) and challenging any musical and vocal establishment in a dadaistic formula (Beldean’s Tekmirio) brings forward the human component of this experimental art worth performing. Keywords: Sopranotronics, Soprano Fach, electronic music"

Entering an Information Era of Parallel Truths? A Qualitative Analysis of Legitimizing and De-legitimizing Truth Claims in Established Versus Alternative Media Outlets

In today’s digital media ecology, alternative narratives and conspiracies spread rapidly, and may undermine the legitimacy of journalism and reinforce polarized divides in society. In this setting, constructions of truth may greatly vary across established and alternative media. In this paper, we use a comparative qualitative content analysis in the US and the Netherlands to offer in-depth insights into how factual claims are legitimized and delegitimized by alternative versus mainstream media outlets. We put the assumption of post-factual relativism and alternative truths to an empirical test: To what extent and how do alternative versus established media construct irreconcilable versions of reality? When political disagreement is no longer founded on a shared reality, representative democracy may be severely damaged and vulnerable to undermining discourses of untruthfulness.

Verbal Agreements and the Pressure of Instability against the Convergence Conception of Political Liberalism

Political liberalism, or public reason liberalism, has taken a decisive turn towards the Convergence Conception of public justification and away from the orthodox Consensus Conception. Convergence theorists argue that public justification should be understood as all reasonable people having some conclusive reason to endorse coercively enforced moral rules that are issue and context specific. They argue for this on the basis that, given the nature of deep moral and political disagreement, only the Convergence Conception can show reasonable people how to achieve a stable political order. I argue however that the Convergence Conception faces the Verbal Agreement Objection which puts pressure on its claims to show people how to maintain a political order. This is because at its core it involves a tension between its account of the nature of the agreements that constitute public justification and the objects of those agreements that make it highly sensitive to context changes.

Dehumanization and Plausible Deniability Bias: Sexism Under the Guise of Political Disagreement

Dehumanization and Plausible Deniability Bias: Sexism Under the Guise of Political Disagreement

Metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on social media: relating processing fluency, subjective knowledge, and political participation.

Encountering political disagreements in our daily lives can discourage us from participating in democratic processes. To date, research has mainly focused on social motives or attitudinal mechanisms to explain this phenomenon. In the present study, we adopt a different approach and highlight metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on processing fluency (i.e., perceived ease of processing) and subjective knowledge as well as their relationship with behavioral outcomes such as the intention to politically participate. In a pre-registered online experiment (N = 1,258), participants saw a political social media post with six opinionated user-generated comments. These comments either all matched (congruent condition) or contradicted (incongruent condition) participants' personal opinions. Processing fluency, issue specific subjective knowledge, and intention to politically participate were then measured using established self-report scales. In line with our hypotheses, the congruent stimuli evoked a higher feeling of processing fluency than the incongruent ones (d = 0.21). Furthermore, participants in the congruent condition indicated a higher intention to politically participate (d = 0.23) and rated their own knowledge on the topic as higher (d = 0.22) than participants in the incongruent condition-even though the factual knowledge gain should be equal in both conditions. Finally, we observed positive relationships between processing fluency and subjective issue knowledge (β = 0.11) as well as between subjective issue knowledge and issue-specific political participation (β = 0.43). Our findings highlight the importance of considering metacognitive constructs such as subjective knowledge to explain political behaviors and suggest that attitudinal congruence influences the way we perceive our own knowledge and information processing.