Political Groups Research Articles

Election proximity and the effectiveness of economic sanctions

Do elections matter for sanction effectiveness? Scholars have long highlighted the importance of domestic political factors in target (i.e. sanctioned) states in explaining when economic sanctions work. This line of research, however, has primarily focused on political regime characteristics and interest groups that are relatively low time-variant during sanction episodes. Building on this literature, we explore the effect of temporal proximity to elections. While the impact of elections have been examined in the context of military conflicts, their possible effects on sanction effectiveness have not been subject to systematic scrutiny. We argue that target governments are more likely to comply with sender demands as elections loom near in order to avoid the likely political costs of sanctions. The effect of elections, however, is likely to vary across different election characteristics and political regime types. We assess the empirical merits of our claims using data on over 1,000 sanction cases between 1950 and 2020. The results from a battery of empirical tests, including those that account for potential selection bias, support our hypotheses. We find that elections have a positive effect on sanction success, and this effect is more prominent in less democratic states that hold competitive elections. This suggests that even if sanctions have a relatively low success rate against non-democratic polities, elections may provide a window of opportunity for senders to extract concessions from target states.

Peers Influence on Youth Political Behavior: A Systematic Review

Youth political behaviour plays a crucial role in shaping the democratic system of a country. Several factors, such as socio-economic status, employment opportunities, and educational background, have been extensively studied in relation to their impact on youth political behaviour. However, there is a deficiency in systematic reviews specifically focusing on the influence of peers on youth political behavior. This article aims to address this gap by conducting a systematic review of relevant studies from the Web of Science, Scopus, SpringerLink, and ProQuest databases. In total, 30 studies were identified through comprehensive search terms such as “peer influence”, “youth”, “political knowledge”, and “political behavior”. Through this review, four key themes emerged: (1) political knowledge, (2) group discussion, (3) peer pressure, and (4) identity development. The findings highlight the significance of identity development and peer pressure as the most influential factors shaping youth political behaviour. By adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, this review encompasses studies conducted in various countries without any geographical restrictions. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of how peers influence the political behaviour of youth can provide leaders and policymakers with crucial insights for encouraging knowledgeable peer networks.

US-skepticism and transnational conspiracy in the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election

Taiwan has one of the highest freedom of speech indexes while it also encounters the largest amount of foreign interference due to its contentious history with China. Because of the large influx of misinformation, Taiwan has taken a public crowdsourcing approach to combatting misinformation, using both fact-checking ChatBots and public dataset called CoFacts. Combining CoFacts with large-language models (LLM), we investigated misinformation across three platforms (Line, PTT, and Facebook) during the 2024 Taiwanese presidential elections. We found that most misinformation appears within China-friendly political groups and attacks US-Taiwan relations through visual media like images and videos. A considerable proportion of misinformation does not question U.S. foreign policy directly. Rather, it exaggerates domestic issues in the United States to create a sense of declining U.S. state capacity. Curiously, we found misinformation rhetoric that references conspiracy groups in the West.

Polarization and health-related behaviours and outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review protocol.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected people's health behaviours and health outcomes. Political or affective polarization could be associated with health behaviours such as mask-wearing or vaccine uptake and with health outcomes, e.g., infection or mortality rate. Political polarization relates to divergence or spread of ideological beliefs and affective polarization is about dislike between people of different political groups, such as ideologies or parties. The objectives of this study are to investigate and synthesize evidence about associations between both forms of polarization and COVID-19 health behaviours and outcomes. In this systematic review, we will include quantitative studies that assess the relationship between political or affective polarization and COVID-19-related behaviours and outcomes, including adherence to mask mandates, vaccine uptake, infection and mortality rate. We will use a predetermined strategy to search EMBASE, Medline (Ovid), Cochrane Library, Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register, Global Health (Ovid), PsycInfo (Ovid), Web of Science, CINAHL, EconLit (EBSCOhost), WHO COVID-19 Database, iSearch COVID-19 Portfolio (NIH) and Google Scholar from 2019 to September 8 2023. One reviewer will screen unique records according to eligibility criteria. A second reviewer will verify the selection. Data extraction, using pre-piloted electronic forms, will follow a similar process. The risk of bias of the included studies will be assessed using the JBI checklist for analytical cross sectional studies. We will summarise the included studies descriptively and examine the heterogeneity between studies. Quantitative data pooling might not be feasible due to variations in measurement methods used to evaluate exposure, affective and political polarization. If there are enough relevant studies for statistical data synthesis, we will conduct a meta-analysis. This review will help to better understand the concept of polarization in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and might inform decision making for future pandemics. PROSPERO ID: CRD42023475828.

Global alcohol policy implementation in Thailand: A narrative review

Alcohol consumption is growing in emerging economies. Thailand is an upper-middle-income emerging economy in Southeast Asia where the alcohol market has been under an oligopoly, which political groups are attempting to amend. The Thai Ministry of Public Health works in close partnership with the non-profit sector in alcohol control, and has recently adapted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) SAFER initiatives as part of the national alcohol agenda. In light of these ongoing changes, we conducted a narrative review with the following objectives: (1) to describe the development of alcohol control policy strategies in Thailand; and (2) to describe the current situation on alcohol policy implementation. We performed a search of the published and grey literature in both Thai and English languages using keywords related to topics of interest, and reviewed data on SAFER's effectiveness using a group of indicators (policy-attributable health outcomes). We found that Thailand has laws and regulations covering various domains of SAFER. However, gaps do exist with regard to regulation of alcohol outlet density, relatively low alcohol sales permit fees, control of online and surrogate marketing of alcoholic products, and enforcement of drinking-and-driving deterrence measures, among others. A review of the indicators showed that annual per capita alcohol consumption (APC) and prevalence of drinkers have remained constant since 2008, whereas the prevalence of binge-drinking has been on a decline since 2014. However, deaths attributable to alcohol have increased in both men and women. The findings of this narrative review may have implications for policymakers and stakeholders in behavioral health.

Will the US Survive the Frog? Time and History in the Pandemic and Decline

Abstract This essay examines two books, Jed Esty’s The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at its Limits (2022) and an edited collection, The Long 2020 (2022), in terms of their respective geometries of history, or the ways in which they extrapolate possible futures for the US from contemporary material conditions. It considers the decline of US global hegemony and the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic insofar as they puncture the nationalist fantasies of US exceptionalism. It also makes a case for steering between the alternatives of apocalypse and redemption in favor of a historical materialist reckoning with US socioeconomic decline. Learning from crisis and decline, the essay argues, doesn’t have to mean surrendering radical political or utopian impulses. It can also mean recasting social hope as the collective reclaiming of freedom from exceptionalism. Finally, the essay makes a methodological proposal for bringing together existential and structural approaches to history (or new materialist and Marxist modes of analysis) in literary and cultural studies, as well as critical theory.

Analisis Pendidikan Agama Kristen Terhadap Paham Radikalisme Dalam Konteks Indonesia

This article offers an analysis of the role of Christian religious education in overcoming radicalism in the Indonesian context. Radicalism in Indonesia is multifaceted, and religious, political, social, and ethnic factors contribute to its prevalence. Religious differences often give rise to misunderstandings and violence which then occurs. Political radicalism stems from power dynamics, including state-sponsored oppression or interstate conflict. Social radicalism manifests through extreme tactics aimed at societal transformation, sometimes ignoring legal norms. Ethnic radicalism promotes a supremacist ideology, justifying violence or discrimination against other ethnic groups. Using qualitative research and literature analysis, this research explores the intersection between Christian education, radicalism, and diversity. The results of research on Christian religious education in Indonesia emphasize values such as diversity, tolerance and peace, which provide a counterweight to radical ideology. By prioritizing these values, Christian education fosters stability across religious, political, social and ethnic dimensions, thereby reducing the risks posed by radicalism. This research underlines the importance of Christian religious education in cultivating a society that is cohesive and tolerant of radical influences.

Preregistered Replication and Extension of "Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue".

The tendency for people to consider themselves morally good while behaving selfishly is known as moral hypocrisy. Influential work by Valdesolo and DeSteno (2007) found evidence for intergroup moral hypocrisy such that people were more forgiving of transgressions when they were committed by an in-group member than an out-group member. We conducted two experiments to examine moral hypocrisy and group membership in an online paradigm with Prolific workers from the United States: a direct replication of the original work with minimal groups (N = 610; nationally representative) and a conceptual replication with political groups (N = 606; 50% Democrats and 50% Republicans). Although the results did not replicate the original findings, we observed evidence of in-group favoritism in minimal groups and out-group derogation in political groups. The current research finds mixed evidence of intergroup moral hypocrisy and has implications for understanding the contextual dependencies of intergroup bias and partisanship.

"The Crusade Against the Whisker" and the Birth of the Modern Radical Beard

This paper seeks to investigate the shift in style in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when it again became customary for men to shave their beards. In order to address this topic, the historiographies of facial hair, masculinity, and radical politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States demand attention. The convergence of these three areas of study will provide the basis for this examination into this shift in style, and the social meanings that may have been placed on beards and beardlessness during this period in American history.

Mindfulness meditation use in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The objectives of this study were to examine the prevalence and associations of mindfulness meditation use and also its perceived mental health effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using repeated cross-sectional data from broad online samples weighted to be representative of the adult population in Britain, we estimated the prevalence of mindfulness meditation use and employed logistic regression models to investigate sociodemographic and political associations of mindfulness meditation use and also its perceived mental health effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that 16 percent of adults in Britain had learnt to practice mindfulness in 2021. In covariate-adjusted regression models, having learnt to practice mindfulness was more common among young and middle-aged adults, residents in London, and respondents who voted for the Liberal Democrats. Among mindfulness meditation users who reported having practiced mindfulness during the COVID-19 pandemic, 60 percent reported that it positively affected their mental health and 24 percent reported that it negatively affected their mental health. Notably, 41 percent of respondents with children under 18 (versus 13 percent of those without minors) reported negative mental health effects. In covariate-adjusted regression models, negative mental health effects from mindfulness practice during the COVID-19 pandemic were not concentrated in any particular groups, except for respondents with children under 18. Mindfulness meditation has become widespread in Britain, but the results in this study suggest that mindfulness meditation use may be concentrated in certain sociodemographic and political groups. The results also suggest that practicing mindfulness during the COVID-19 pandemic had positive mental health effects for a majority of users, but approximately one-quarter of users reported negative mental health effects. It is therefore important for future research to continue monitoring the prevalence of mindfulness meditation use in society and to investigate under what circumstances, for whom, and in what ways mindfulness-based practices may have negative effects on mental health.

Effects of intellectual humility in the context of affective polarization: Approaching and avoiding others in controversial political discussions.

Affective polarization, the extent to which political actors treat each other as disliked outgroups, is challenging political exchange and deliberation, for example, via mistrust of the "political enemy" and unwillingness to discuss political topics with them. The present experiments address this problem and study what makes people approach, and not avoid, potential discussion partners in the context of polarized political topics in Germany. We hypothesized that intellectual humility, the recognition of one's intellectual limitations, would predict both less affective polarization and higher approach and lower avoidance tendencies toward contrary-minded others. Across four preregistered online-survey experiments (N = 1,668), we manipulated how intellectually humble a target person was perceived and measured participants' self-reported (topic-specific) intellectual humility. Results revealed that participants' intellectual humility was consistently negatively correlated with affective polarization. Additionally, intellectual humility of both the target person and the participants was beneficial, and sometimes even necessary, to make participants approach, and not avoid, the target person. Intellectual humility was more important than moral conviction, opinion, and opinion strength. Furthermore, the effects on approach and avoidance were mediated by more positive expectations regarding the debate, and the effects on future willingness for contact by higher target liking. Our findings suggest that intellectual humility is an important characteristic to enable political exchange as it leads to seeing political outgroups more positively and to a higher willingness to engage in intergroup contact. Implications for intergroup contact of political groups as well as ideas for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Refleksi Eksistensi Petani dalam Panggung Sejarah Indonesia

This article raises issues related to the overall exploitation of farmers in various regions in Indonesia. This paper uses historical methods. The existence of farmers was underestimated because they were merely extras, or more precisely, material for Dutch and Japanese colonial exploitation, both for economic and political interests. This fate then suddenly changed because farmers had joined political party groups and become organizations, such as Pertanu, STTI, BTI, and so on. Unfortunately, the euphoria to support the peasants did not run smoothly because there were clashes with civil society and with those who did not share the same ideology. The result is bloodshed between members of the nation; this is truly ironic. Until then, the New Order was born, and all forms of organizations related to farmers were communized.

Measuring political radicalism and extremism in surveys: Three new scales.

This paper introduces three new scales to measure left- and right-wing radical as well as general extremist attitudes that can be applied across Western European countries. We therefore propose a thorough conceptualization of extremist attitudes that consists of two dimensions: general extremism, by which we understand attitudes that oppose the constitutional democratic state, and another dimension that differentiates between right- and left-wing radicalism by which we understand people who take far-reaching but often one-sided positions on political issues (e.g., on nationalism or anti-imperialism) by advocating fundamental socio-political change. Based on data from Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands (n = 6,201) we created short indices for general extremism and left- and right-wing radicalism. We check for convergence validity by assessing the psychometric properties of the extracted indices, i.e. their internal coherence and the degree to which a scale is able to distinguish strongly extremist and non-extremist individuals. Finally, we correlate the scales with various constructs that are likely related to extremist attitudes in order to assure external or construct validity. The results indicate that the three scales are highly valid and applicable across three Western European countries. Overall, we find that about two to four percent of citizens in each country hold left-wing or right-wing extremist attitudes.

The Impact of Political Orientation and Government Change on Public Satisfaction with Food Policy in South Korea.

This study investigates the relationship between political orientation, government change, and public satisfaction with food policies in the Republic of Korea. Utilizing data from the Consumer Behavior Survey for Foods (CBSF) conducted by the Korea Rural Economic Institute from 2020 to 2021, we employ fixed effects models to examine the impact of political orientation, the presence of a conservative government, and their interactions on satisfaction across various dimensions of food policy. We also analyze the change in satisfaction levels from 2020 to 2021 based on shifts in political orientation. The results reveal complex dynamics between political alignment, government performance, and public perceptions. While conservatives and liberals exhibit higher satisfaction with labeling policies, they show lower satisfaction with safety and redress policies. The presence of a conservative government is associated with higher satisfaction in specific policy areas but lower overall satisfaction. Changes in political orientation significantly influence policy satisfaction, with shifts away from conservatism and towards liberalism leading to decreased satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the nuanced preferences of different political groups and the need for responsive and transparent food policy frameworks. This study advances the theoretical understanding of the political economy of policy satisfaction and provides novel policy implications for effective governance.

Electoral institutions and repression in dictatorships

We argue that the relationship between authoritarian elections and repression depends on the electoral system in use. Proportional representation (PR) systems co-opt more heterogeneous political groups to contest and receive seats in the legislature and thus, dictators are less likely to use broad-based repression. Under plurality rules, by contrast, the regime has more incentives to mobilize turnout and deter collective action. Examining electoral systems from 1990 to 2010, we find that elections only reduce broad-based repression under PR systems, which are less commonly used in non-democracies. Our results highlight the importance of formal institutions in shaping political outcomes even in dictatorships.

The accumulation economy of private schools: extraction, mystification and depletion

ABSTRACT Too few studies of elite private schools consider how they derive power and prestige from their relationships and interactions with other social and political groups and institutions, including the State. This paper contributes to elite school studies by examining the relationality between the Australian State and private sector schools around how government funds public and private education. Of all Australian students, 35.5% attend private schools. All private schools, including elite schools, receive significant amounts of taxpayers’ money. After explaining the complex policy architecture of this funding regime, this paper offers a fresh set of conceptual resources to help deepen the analysis of this situation. We argue that the whole Australian private school sector operates as an accumulation economy, essentially utilising public sector resources to enlarge, enrich and sustain itself. This happens via three dynamics – accumulation by extraction, by mystification and by depletion. We show how elite schools are part of, and benefit from, each.

Experience of Personal Loss Due to Drug Overdose Among US Adults

Since 1999, over 1 million people have died of a drug overdose in the US. However, little is known about the bereaved, meaning their family, friends, and acquaintances, and their views on the importance of addiction as a policy priority. To quantify the scope of the drug overdose crisis in terms of personal overdose loss (ie, knowing someone who died of a drug overdose) and to assess the policy implications of this loss. This cross-sectional study used data from a nationally representative survey of US adults (age ≥18 years), the fourth wave of the COVID-19 and Life Stressors Impact on Mental Health and Well-Being (CLIMB) study, which was conducted from March to April 2023. Respondents reported whether they knew someone who died of a drug overdose and the nature of their relationship with the decedent(s). They also reported their political party affiliation and rated the importance of addiction as a policy issue. Logistic regression models estimated the associations between sociodemographic characteristics and political party affiliation and the probability of experiencing a personal overdose loss and between the experience of overdose loss and the perceived salience of addiction as a policy issue. Survey weights adjusted for sampling design and nonresponse. Of the 7802 panelists invited to participate, 2479 completed the survey (31.8% response rate); 153 were excluded because they did not know whether they knew someone who died of a drug overdose, resulting in a final analytic sample of 2326 (51.4% female; mean [SD] age, 48.12 [0.48] years). Of these respondents, 32.0% (95% CI, 28.8%-34.3%) reported any personal overdose loss, translating to 82.7 million US adults. A total of 18.9% (95% CI, 17.1%-20.8%) of all respondents, translating to 48.9 million US adults, reported having a family member or close friend die of drug overdose. Personal overdose loss was more prevalent among groups with lower income (<$30 000: 39.9%; ≥$100 000: 26.0%). The experience of overdose loss did not differ across political party groups (Democrat: 29.0%; Republican: 33.0%; independent or none: 34.2%). Experiencing overdose loss was associated with a greater odds of viewing addiction as an extremely or very important policy issue (adjusted odds ratio, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.09-1.72) after adjustment for sociodemographic and geographic characteristics and political party affiliation. This cross-sectional study found that 32% of US adults reported knowing someone who died of a drug overdose and that personal overdose loss was associated with greater odds of endorsing addiction as an important policy issue. The findings suggest that mobilization of this group may be an avenue to facilitate greater policy change.

Gamified inoculation reduces susceptibility to misinformation from political ingroups

Psychological inoculation interventions, which seek to pre-emptively build resistance against unwanted persuasion attempts, have shown promise in reducing susceptibility to misinformation. However, as many people receive news from popular, mainstream ingroup sources (e.g., a left-wing person consuming left-wing media) which may host misleading or false content, and as ingroup sources may be more persuasive, the impact of source effects on inoculation interventions demands attention. In this experiment, we find that although news consumers are more susceptible to (non-political) misinformation from political ingroup publishers pre-intervention, gamified inoculation successfully improves veracity discernment and reduces susceptibility to misinformation from both political ingroup and outgroup publishers.

Contemporary Censorship Debates in Germany

During the past five years the cultural world in Germany has been shaken and divided by a series of controversies involving contemporary works of art charged with being anti-Semitic. Obviously, with the Holocaust continuing to occupy a major position in modern German consciousness and history, sensitivity to anti-Semitic expressions is particularly keen here. This sensitivity has been increased by a number of recent developments, including the growing visibility of far-right political groups, the rise of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) protesting Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and the official politicization of these tensions by a parliamentary ruling in 2015 restricting the activities of the BDS. The conflict between legitimate criticism of policies of the Israeli state and legitimate censorship of ethnically offensive material has recently become increasingly bitter in Germany. This article discusses the dynamics of three of the most significant recent examples: the conflict involving Germany’s most prestigious arts festival, the Kassell documenta in 2020; the withdrawal in 2022 of the European Drama Award, the continent’s largest award, from British dramatist Caryl Churchill; and the withdrawal from the Munich stage of the most recent play by Wajdi Mouawad, who has been widely heralded in Germany as the most significant contemporary dramatist.

There is no "I" in Postphenomenology

AbstractHuman beings are embedded in diverse social, cultural and political groups through which we make sense of our technologically mediated lived experience. This article seeks to reaffirm the postphenomenological subject as a primarily social subject. Critics maintain that the current postphenomenological framework does not adequately address the social, cultural and political context in which human-technology relations take place. In recent years, various additions to postphenomenology have been suggested in order to address this contextual deficit. In this article, I argue that a return to the phenomenological roots of postphenomenology reveals underexamined analytical tools that allow for greater socio-cultural and political sensitivity. I take Don Ihde’s supposed macroperceptual and microperceptual divide as a point of departure in claiming that postphenomenology has too hastily turned away from the subject as primarily socially situated. I draw upon the phenomenological tradition, particularly the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, to develop a social postphenomenological approach. This approach is informed by the Schutzian notions of action, the stock of knowledge at hand and consociates. In the resulting account, the postphenomenological schema of I—Technology—World is reconstrued as We—Technology—World.