Popular Sentiment Research Articles

Khust yak stolytsia Karpatskoi Ukrainy u vidobrazhenni zakhidnoukrainskoi presy 1938—1939 rr.

The West Ukrainian press publications spanning 1938―1939s about the Khust town (the capital of the Carpatho-Ukraine) reflecting its symbol as a struggle for unity have been analyzed. The questions of the Khust nominative origin have been studied, as well as the popular sentiments of the people and a socio-political atmosphere of that time, have been characterized. The publications in the mentioned topics of the leading Ukrainian scientists, public figures, specifically, V. Birchak, M. Braschaik, B. Buri-Voskresenskyi, M. Vozniak, V. Zheltvai, A. Zhyvotko, V. Komarysnkyi, V. Koroliv-Staryi, I. Nevytska, A. Patrus-Karpatskyi, V. Pachovskyi, O. Pritsak and others, have been introduced in the scientific circulation. It has been argued that the Khust town will remain a symbol of the struggle of the most western branch of the Ukrainian people for its independence and freedom in 1919 and 1939s forever, in the annals of the Ukrainian history. The first vivid manifestation of this struggle was a general rally of the Transcarpathian Ukrainians (with participating 420 delegates) on Jan. 21 1919 in Khust. They elected the Central People’s Council and adopted a unanimous decision about joining Transcarpathia to Ukraine. Next time Khust became a symbol of the Ukrainian unity when the Carpatho-Ukrainian government officially recognized the town as a new capital of the young state on 10 November 1938, and the first Soim (the parliament) declared the independence of the Carpatho-Ukraine on 16 March 1939. Aspirations to unity and independence of the Transcarpathian Ukrainians, in M. Braschaik’s statement, were natural. The latter’s relevant reasoning is that the people’s integrity comprises its language and common origins, i.e., its blood, mentality, temperament, culture, folk traditions and customs. In the analyzed publications, the image of Khust town has been vividly reflected. It was a symbol of the struggle of the Transcarpathian Ukrainians for their unity, their blood affinity with the Ukrainian people. At the same time, this article presents a comprehensive history of foundation and derivation of the Khust town’s name, its external and internal changes, sentiments of the residents, as well as the then sociopolitical atmosphere of the time of the proclamation of the Carpatho-Ukraine’s independence (1939). Keywords: Khust, capital, Carpatho-Ukraine, publications, unity, state independence.

How to Make It as a Mainstream Magazine Illustrator; or, J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell Go to War

How do mainstream magazine illustrators organize popular sentiment in moments of crisis? This article meditates on this question by looking at how J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell addressed th...

Challenge for the Ball: Elites, Fans and the Control of Football in Zambia’s One-Party State, 1973–1991

Given the widespread popularity of football in Zambia, the poor performance of the national soccer (football) team in the mid 1970s triggered protests from fans and a decisive move by President Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party (UNIP) government to control the game. Kaunda was interested in football and his government played a role in the development of the game, but they also feared that their political opponents might use football as a vehicle for expressing dissent. This article examines how Kaunda and his UNIP government contributed to the development of football in post-colonial Zambia, how they attempted to control the game and how Kaunda tried to use football to shore up his popularity. It argues that despite Kaunda’s one-party state having authoritarian tendencies and control over most aspects of Zambian society, it never gained total control of football. This was because many ordinary citizens paid close attention to the involvement of authorities in the running of soccer and reacted forcefully whenever they felt that their game was being mismanaged. This further hints at the state’s awareness of its vulnerability if popular sentiment were to turn against the incumbent government.

A Flawed Saint: The Popular Image of William Gladstone in the Australian Colonies

ABSTRACTThis article looks at the popular image of William Gladstone which gradually emerged and evolved in the Australian Colonies throughout the nineteenth century. By using a wide variety of newspaper sources and political speeches, the piece shows how Gladstone was extensively discussed and interpreted on the far side of the ‘British World’. It tracks the ups and downs of the turbulent relationship Gladstone had with the Australian Colonies over his long career, as he influenced Australian history both directly through the policies he implemented and indirectly as an inspiration for local politicians. It concludes that although Gladstone repeatedly aggravated Australian opinion both through his time at the Colonial Office and the ‘soft’ foreign policy he pursued as Prime Minister, his domestic popularity as a successful liberal and democratic figure was enough to make him a hero in colonial eyes. This conclusion shows how ‘British World’ popular sentiment was able to trump nominal local interests. This demonstrates not only the predominance of Britishness in Australian identity during this time period, but also how as a simultaneously separate yet intimately linked part of the Empire, Australians abstracted their own significance and meaning from domestic British politics.

Two flags in the sand: anti-Communism in early Cold War Northern Ireland

ABSTRACTThis article reveals how the Cold War impinged upon not just national, but local political considerations and became woven into communal narratives. It contributes to the examination of religion in the conflict, adds to the historiography of Britain and the Cold War, and provides a context by which British Cold War experience and responses can be assessed. With Northern Ireland’s political similarities to Great Britain, its consistency with European norms and its overlaps with popular sentiment in the United States, Northern Ireland offers a gauge to better understand the nature of anti-Communism in the Cold War’s first decade and offers an unexplored perspective on the conflict.

Politics and the Supreme Court: The Need for Ideological Balance

Politically controversial decisions and divisive nomination battles at the U.S. Supreme Court reflect a disturbing reality — the Justices’ personal ideologies exert undue influence on the Court’s work. The ability of a mere majority of conservative or liberal Justices to impose their perspective creates three serious and related problems: Members of the public who share the perspective of the Court minority lack meaningful representation on many important issues, the judicial appointment process has become highly politicized as each side fights for a Court majority, and we increase the risk of ill-advised decisions. Better decisions are made when they are based on a diversity of perspectives. Accordingly, I argue for a Supreme Court that operates on an ideologically balanced basis. With ideological balance, the Court would provide meaningful representation to all, it would defuse the politicization of judicial appointments, and it would make wiser decisions. On the relevant metrics, a Court with ideological balance is superior to a Court that brings an ideological bias to its work. Indeed, it is difficult to identify a good reason for permitting the Court to function with a majority on one side or the other of the ideological spectrum. While we can point to the principle of majority rule to justify partisan control in the executive or legislative branches, majorities do not deserve special recognition in a judicial branch that should be guided by legal principle rather than popular sentiment. Drawing on approaches at European constitutional courts and several state supreme courts, I identify three models for achieving ideological balance on the Supreme Court and lower courts. I also discuss how a combination of those models would provide the best results.

Re-negotiating the Boundaries of the Permissible: The National(ist) Revival in Soviet Armenia and Moscow’s Response

In Soviet Armenia, nationalist discourse, in particular, demands for recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, became prominent in public debate during the Khrushchev era. The essay uses the case study of Soviet Armenia to explore how nationalist ideas became an accepted part of the official Soviet discourse, in doing so examining the relationship between popular sentiment, the local authorities and the central authorities in Moscow. The case study suggests that the Soviet authorities implemented a much more fluid and flexible nationality policy in the periphery than is usually assumed. It also suggests that the local authorities tried to find a balance between local sentiments and the demands of the central authorities in Moscow. The research demonstrates that they positioned themselves simultaneously as guardians of the national interest and social order to their respective audiences.

Migration and refugees in German cinema: transnational entanglements

ABSTRACTContrary to popular sentiment which sees the current, so-called ‘refugee crisis’ as unprecedented, (forced) migration and the displacement of larger groups of population have a long history in most countries of the world. Consequently, the cinema, ever since it existed, has addressed many aspects surrounding the realities and imaginations of the issue. Indeed, the cinema could be seen as a laboratory in which different scenarios are played through, different situations are experienced and different (subject) positions are occupied. Taking the German cinema as a case study, I intend to take a long view at these phenomena by concentrating on three different historical periods: the displacement of German Jews, political opponents of Nazism and others from Germany after 1933; the forced migration of German-speaking populations around and after the end of the Second World War from eastern Europe (Silesia, Eastern Prussia, Bohemia, etc.), and the influx of migrants and refugees into Germany from the 1960s onwards and well into the twenty-first century.

Avoiding U.S.-China Competition Is Futile: Why the Best Option Is to Manage Strategic Rivalry

Avoiding U.S.-China Competition Is Futile:Why the Best Option Is to Manage Strategic Rivalry Timothy R. Heath (bio) and William R. Thompson (bio) keywords China, United States, rivalry, competition, Asia [End Page 91] executive summary This article argues that the structural drivers of U.S.-China competition are too deep to resolve through cooperative engagement and that policymakers must instead accept the reality of strategic rivalry and aim to manage it at a lower level of intensity. main argument Rising tensions between China and the U.S. have spurred fears that the two countries could end up in conflict or recreate the Cold War. To avoid these outcomes, analysts have proposed ways to defuse competition and promote cooperation. However, because these arguments do not address the structural drivers underpinning U.S.-China competition, such proposals are unlikely to end the rivalry. Conflict is not inevitable, however, and aggressive strategies that unnecessarily aggravate the sources of rivalry are likely to prove dangerously counterproductive. The best option at this point is, paradoxically, for the U.S. to accept the reality of the growing strategic rivalry and manage it at a lower level of intensity. policy implications • Maintaining a technological edge is critical for the U.S. to successfully manage the rivalry with China. Policies should be pursued to ensure that the U.S. continues to attract and nurture the best science and technology talent and retains its status as the global leader in technology. • To compete with China's narrative about leading regional integration, the U.S. should both put forth a compelling vision for the region that encompasses widely held economic, security, and political values and continue to bolster its diplomatic and military positions in Asia. • To maintain the U.S.-China rivalry at a stable level, policymakers in both countries should prioritize measures that discourage the mobilization of popular sentiment against the other country and encourage cultural exchanges. • U.S.-China competition will likely become increasingly entwined with rivalries between China and U.S. allies and partners such as Japan and India. U.S. policymakers will need to take into account the independent dynamics of those separate rivalries when managing relations with China. [End Page 92] The United States and China find themselves increasingly enmeshed in a strategic rivalry, the basic nature of which remains poorly understood in the United States. To be sure, disagreements between the two countries have gained widespread attention. Disputes involving Chinese confrontations with U.S. allies and partners such as Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan have frequently grabbed the headlines. At other times, disagreements over Chinese trade practices and U.S. military activities in the South China Sea have occasioned discord. All these sources of conflict are genuine, but they mask the main drivers of rivalry, which are twofold. First, the United States and China are locked in a contest for primacy—most clearly in Asia and probably globally as well. The United States has been the dominant power, and China seeks to eventually supplant it. By definition, two different states cannot simultaneously share primacy at either the regional or global level. Second, economic, demographic, and military trajectories suggest that China has the potential to contend in a significant way for leadership at the global systemic level. At this level, the most decisive competition will be for technological leadership. Should China supplant the United States as the world's premier country in terms of technology, its claim to regional and global supremacy will be difficult to deny. And once it has gained that supremacy, China will be well positioned to restructure institutional arrangements to privilege itself and disadvantage the United States. Although this competition is occurring simultaneously at both levels, observers have focused primarily on the struggle for primacy at the regional level and overlooked or downplayed the competition at the global systemic level.1 To counter China's pursuit of regional primacy, the United States has bolstered its alliances in Asia (albeit inconsistently), expanded diplomatic outreach to China and rising powers in Southeast Asia, and revised its military posture—efforts captured by President Barack Obama's "rebalance to Asia." President Donald Trump may have abandoned the rebalance, but many of the related...

Sentiment Polarity Detection in Bengali Tweets Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

AbstractSentiment polarity detection is one of the most popular sentiment analysis tasks. Sentiment polarity detection in tweets is a more difficult task than sentiment polarity detection in review documents, because tweets are relatively short and they contain limited contextual information. Although the amount of blog posts, tweets and comments in Indian languages is rapidly increasing on the web, research on sentiment analysis in Indian languages is at the early stage. In this paper, we present an approach that classifies the sentiment polarity of Bengali tweets using deep neural networks which consist of one convolutional layer, one hidden layer and one output layer, which is a soft-max layer. Our proposed approach has been tested on the Bengali tweet dataset released for Sentiment Analysis in Indian Languages contest 2015. We have compared the performance of our proposed convolutional neural networks (CNN)-based model with a sentiment polarity detection model that uses deep belief networks (DBN). Our experiments reveal that the performance of our proposed CNN-based system is better than our implemented DBN-based system and some existing Bengali sentiment polarity detection systems.

Identifying Genuine Popular Topic and Sentiment Analysis in Social Network using Big Data Analytics

Identifying Genuine Popular Topic and Sentiment Analysis in Social Network using Big Data Analytics

Strict Scrutiny, Public Opinion, and Affirmative Action on Campus: Should the Courts Find a Narrowly Tailored Solution to a Compelling Need in a Policy Most Americans Oppose?

The Courts should never bow to public opinion in finding a racially discriminatory law is a good thing. Strict scrutiny demands that the courts disregard any such popular opinion and determine for themselves whether such a law is the narrowly tailored response to a compelling need. Hence even supposing that Jim Crow laws were popular among Americans, the judiciary’s function was to be a counterweight to such popular sentiment. But what about the other way around? If popular opinion opposes racially discriminatory policies, should those policies ever survive strict scrutiny? This essay takes the position that in such a case, the concept of the judiciary as a counterweight to popular opinion evaporates. The point of strict scrutiny is to put a very firm thumb on the scale against laws and policies that discriminate on the basis of race. If most American believe that a racially discriminatory law or policy is bad public policy, it is not easy to see how the courts could find it a narrowly tailored response to a compelling need.

The High Church Revival in the Church of England: Arguments and Identities by Jeremy Morris

Reviewed by: The High Church Revival in the Church of England: Arguments and Identities by Jeremy Morris Robert Tobin The High Church Revival in the Church of England: Arguments and Identities BY JEREMY MORRIS Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2016. x + 288 pages. Paper: $66. ISBN 978-90-04-32679-8. The Church of England's High Church Revival is among the most scrutinized topics in the religious history of modern Britain. What more, then, is there to be said about it? Quite a lot, it turns out, as Jeremy Morris ably demonstrates in this collection of essays, which is a compilation of his writings on the subject from the past twenty years. Alongside scholars such as Peter Nockles and Rowan Strong, Morris has sought to broaden the historiographical terms in which the Revival is discussed, extending its chronology and geography and framing it against wider social and religious currents. In doing so, it was first necessary to deconstruct the received narrative, a version of events which routinely identifies the years 1833–45 in Oxford as of paramount importance. This narrative originated with the Tractarians themselves and has been assiduously maintained by their champions in subsequent generations. (Having welcomed hundreds of John Henry Newman devotees to Oriel College Oxford during my recent tenure there as chaplain, I can attest to the imaginative hold this "founding myth" continues to exercise over both Roman and Anglican Catholics even now.) What this dominant narrative has discouraged, however, is due consideration of alternative forms of High Church Anglicanism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the ways Tractarian ideas were taken in multiple directions thereafter. By the same token, it also emphasized, in Morris's words, that which "is unique and striking rather than what is mundane and pervasive," ironically ensuring that the Revival is presented in isolation from the very society it set out to transform (25). As a corrective to these limitations, Morris seeks not just to fill gaps in the historical record but to take a more varied approach to the study of the Revival in its fullness. In two essays paired under the heading "Growth, Renewal, and Society," he insists on the importance of scrutinizing popular sentiment and local factors when gauging the relative success Anglo-Catholics had in embedding their principles at the parochial level. He illustrates the point by looking closely at the conditions under which Tractarian clergy pursued their cause away from the common rooms of Oxford, in such burgeoning urban centers as Leeds and Croydon. In a second pair of essays under the title "Continental Perspectives," he then shifts his focus from the local to the international. Here [End Page 91] again he identifies a dimension of the Revival too often overlooked. Morris attributes such an omission to a wider tendency among British historians to regard religious developments in England as segregated from those in Europe. Yet in reviewing the travel writings produced by high churchmen during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, he identifies among them a considerable self-consciousness about the ways their own ideas and activities intersected with the realities of continental Catholicism. To some degree, the opposite was also the case, as Morris examines the rhetorical uses that rival parties within French Catholicism made of the Oxford Movement when promoting competing visions for their own Church. Having sought to escape the long shadow of Newman, Pusey, and Keble in his study of the High Church Revival, Morris returns to them in the book's final section. He does this, however, by first attending to one of their more neglected legacies, that of preaching. Commenting that "it is often forgotten that the Oxford Movement was not so much written as preached," Morris documents the importance its leading figures attached to parochial sermons as central to their cause (174). He also notes the impact of the Evangelical phase through which many of them had passed. This was evident in their use of expository techniques and the earnestness with which they promoted devotional practices from the pulpit. This willingness to explore influence and overlap in the thinking of Victorian High Churchmen enables Morris to trace intellectual legacies that...

Home in Honduras

Home in Honduras

Social Desirability Bias in Pornography-Related Self-Reports: The Role of Religion

In a large online survey of undergraduates, we examined the degree to which social desirability concerns might bias pornography-related self-reports and whether these biases are stronger among highly religious participants than among less-religious ones. Recent state-level analyses have put forward a controversial suggestion that religious individuals tend to search for pornography more than their less-religious peers, despite self-reports to the contrary. Such results could be explained by a social-desirability bias against reporting the consumption of pornography, one that applies specifically to religious individuals. Though our findings are limited to undergraduates in the U.S. Midwest, we found some evidence that the desire to positively self-present (as measured by the Marlowe–Crowne social desirability scale) may bias reports of pornography consumption and perceptions of pornography’s effects (e.g., perceptions of addictiveness). However, contrary to popular sentiment—and our own hypotheses—we found no evidence for and much evidence against the suggestion that religious individuals have a more pronounced social desirability bias against the reporting of pornography consumption than the irreligious. Interaction terms assessing that possibility were either nonsignificant or significant in the reverse direction.

On the Date of Eupolis’ Demes and the Political Events of 412 bc

Abstract Eupolis’ fragmentary Demes has traditionally been placed in 412 bc, after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition but before the oligarchic coup of 411. Ian Storey has recently argued that the play belongs instead in 417 or perhaps 416 bc, while Mario Telò and Leone Porciani put it in 410 bc. This article demonstrates that both alternative dates face decisive objections, and suggests that Demes is better kept in 412 bc. I then briefly consider the role of late 5th-century Athenian “political” comedy generally, and in particular the sort of popular sentiment that Eupolis’ comedy must have been exploiting or echoing when it was conceived in the first half of 413.

The Dogs That Didn’t Bark

Much of the scholarship seeking to understand why Donetsk and Luhansk succumbed to separatist takeovers in 2014, while other parts of eastern Ukraine did not, has focused on popular sentiment and economic exposure to Russia as explanatory variables. However, closer examination suggests that these factors are insufficient to explain why the central state was able to maintain or reassert control everywhere except the Donbas region. This paper argues that the success or failure of separatist movements across eastern Ukraine is best understood with reference to the preferences and actions of local political and economic elites.

Translating Trump through A Brief History of Black America

ABSTRACTThe history of Black people in America perhaps provides one of the best lenses to understand our current era. Contrary to popular sentiment, that history has not been some teleological march of progress. It has instead been a history of paradoxes and contradiction, of triumphs and setbacks, and one of ongoing perseverance against shifting forms of adversity, including the present presidency and what it carries in its wake.

The Jury as a Translation of Democratic Participation and Political Conflict

A long tradition in scholarship champions the juror as an important manifestation of democratic participation. Some scholarship advances the jury as an expression of and method to instill democratic duty and produce lay participation at the individual level (Dalton 2008; Hans 2007; Fukurai, Knudtson, and Lopez 2009). Other scholarship views the jury as an institutional manifestation of deliberative democracy and as a method to facilitate consensual democracy (Gastil et al. 2002; Smith and Wales 2000; Hans, Gastil, and Feller 2014; Warren and Gastil 2015). Both approaches view the jury as a mechanism to establish further democracy through participation in democratizing societies. In her presidential address, Valerie Hans offers the useful concept of translating to understand further the adoption, expansion and decline of trial by jury in established and developing democracies. I use her deployment of this term to argue that the implementation of liberal democratic structures in new democracies opens new opportunities to translate the jury system into and onto new democratic societies.Hans's address is grounded in the idea of lay participation, but she also alludes to the concerns that policy makers have about the strength and vibrancy of this participation (31). This concern opens questions as to policy makers' decision-making processes to translate trial by juror into the fabric of polities. I would argue here that the aims of policy makers are not always democratic. Nonetheless, the consequence of the translation of trial by jury furthers democratic development. To express this idea I examine specifically the adoption (or attempt to adopt) trial by jury in three countries: Nicaragua, Mexico and Russia. These three countries implemented the process to adopt trial by jury between 1992 and 2008. In all three cases, governments adopted or attempted to adopt the jury trial in the aftermath of control of the state apparatus by a hegemonic political party. The strategic decision to adopt trial by jury was partly an attempt to remove legal decision making from the sole control of a state that was occupied by officials who the new government believed retained allegiance to the prior government.In Nicaragua, the Popular-Socialist Sandinista (FSLN) government partly abolished the jury trial in 1988 because of juries' tendencies to acquit, particularly to acquit poor defendants (Wilson 1990). Juries during the Revolutionary period use the intima conviccion (innermost belief) standard to guide deliberations (Wilson 1992: 359). The government prior to the Sandinista state (the Somoza dictatorship 1933-1979) had constitutionally established trial by jury, but rarely were people tried-by-jury in civilian criminal courts during the period of the Somoza regime.The Sandinista Government did embrace the concept of lay participation in legal decision-making process. As Hans's address highlights, the jury is only one of several forms of lay participation in legal decision-making. The Sandinista government attempted to institute the concept of lay participation by allowing non-attorneys to populate the lower levels of the judicial hierarchy (Walker 2003). Jackson and Kovalev (2016) point out that the lay-judge mechanism has been adopted in some European countries to replace juries as a mechanism of lay participation.The Sandinista Government built its justice system on the idea of popular justice. It, nonetheless, abolished trial by jury. Indeed, the Government's overall lay participation program failed. Beyond juries' tendencies to acquit, the Sandinista Government constructed criminal justice system on a socialist model of justice that requires a machine-like system of judgment and punishment (Ventura 1971: 101). Because the Sandinistas opted for the socialist model of justice, they viewed the jury system as flawed in its ability to efficiently allocate judgment and punishment. In addition, the system requires judges, even lay-judges, to interpret cases and to base their decisions on the norms of formal law, rather than popular sentiment (McDonald and Zatz 1992: 289). …

Bearing Truthiness: Russia’s Cyclical Legitimation of its Actions

This article investigates drivers and mechanisms of policy legitimation in authoritarian states. In highly interconnected and digitalised environments, non-democratic states need to legitimise their policies in order to maintain and cultivate the support of their populations. While democracies are more likely to pursue legitimation through enhanced policy performance, authoritarian states are likely to legitimise their actions through repression and control mechanisms: information control, enhancement of popular sentiments, and narrative shaping. The article elucidates these arguments by focusing on Russia’s actions in three specific contexts, namely Crimea’s annexation, the destruction of sanctioned food products, and military involvement in the Syrian crisis.