bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Climate Change Communication in Israel
Authors: Nossek Hillel
Published: May 2016

Given its location between the Mediterranean Sea and the desert, it seems Israel would be aware of the potential risks of climate change, especially given its lack of natural fossil resources, among other factors. Its location might have led to a greater emphasis on adaptation than mitigation and for climate change communication to flow from all relevant agents, utilized by the ingenuity of this hi-tech nation toward adaptation solutions. However, tracking the development of climate change policy and action leads to the conclusion that climate change is not at the top of Israel’s agenda, due to factors ranging from defense to the neoliberal economy.

This article presents some background history of climate change activism and policy development in Israel. It considers the relevant Israeli context that was the bedrock of climate change policy and activity. It also reviews the communicative activity of the relevant agents, including the government, parliament, scientists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the media, and the public at large, and examines climate change on the public’s agenda as it was presented by the media and reflected in public opinion polls, especially around global climate change events initiated by the United Nations (UN) from Bali (2007) to Paris (2015).

Climate change communication in Israel is primarily practiced within the environmental communication field and less so in the science communication field. Communication about climate change is fairly benign compared to the war and terror that are part of everyday life in Israel. Only in the 1970s did environmental communication emerge in various media channels and was placed on the public’s agenda, while climate change communication specifically began to gain salience slowly only in the first decade of the 21st century. Mass media coverage of climate change in Israel is generally quite low compared to other developed countries in the West, with new media channels partially used by interested nongovernmental organizations and individual activists. From time to time, media events organized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and world summits on climate change that involve mainly local political interests serve to increase coverage and raise public interest. As in other countries, coverage is usually local rather than global, even though climate change is a global problem. How effective is climate change communication in Israel? Research has only partially answered this question. It seems that the legacy of low media coverage contributes to the low salience of climate change on the governmental and public agendas. Moreover, the atmosphere of uncertain risks and outcomes for Israel has not created a climate of urgency for policymakers.
Climate Change Policy in the European Union
Authors: Rayner Tim , Jordan Andrew
Published: May 2016

The European Union (EU) has long claimed, with some justification, to be a leader in international climate policy. Its policy activities in this area, dating from the early 1990s, have had enormous influence within and beyond Europe. The period since ca. 2000 in particular has witnessed the repeated emergence of policies and targets that are increasingly distinct from national ones and sometimes globally innovative. They encompass a wide array of instruments (e.g., market-based, informational, voluntary, as well as regulatory). Policy development has been motivated by a mixture of concerns: to avoid national differences in policy causing distortions of the EU’s internal market; to enhance the domestic legitimacy of the wider project of European integration; to improve energy security; and to increase economic competitiveness through “ecological modernization.” Climate policy has also offered a means to enhance the standing of the EU as a global actor. The EU has, in general, been influential in international negotiations, for example, in its promotion of the 2°C warming limit and advocacy of emission reduction “targets and timetables.” In turn, its own policy has been shaped by developments at global level, as with the surprisingly enthusiastic adoption of the “flexible mechanism” of emissions trading. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that acute challenges to policy coherence and effectiveness—applying to emerging policy on adaptation, as well as mitigation—lie ahead in a Europe that is more polarized between its more environmentally conscious Member States and those in central and eastern Europe who have extracted significant concessions to protect their fossil fuel–intensive sectors. Although the Paris Agreement of 2015 offers an important opportunity to “ratchet up” the ambition of EU policy, it is proving to be a difficult one to seize.
Climate Change Communication in Middle East and Arab Countries
Authors: Eskjær Mikkel Fugl
Published: May 2016

In terms of climate change, Middle East and Arab countries cover a vast and diverse region with stark variations in natural resources, ecological footprints, and political priorities. It includes large oil and gas producing nations (the Gulf States) as well as resource-depleted countries (Jordan, Syria). Most countries rely on carbon energy, while a few have developed an alternative vision based on renewables (Morocco). It is home to both highly affluent countries (e.g., UAE) as well as poor and conflict-ridden societies (Iraq, the Levant, Yemen).

Although the region as a whole is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to low levels of socio-ecological resilience, potential conflicts over natural resources (e.g., water), and almost chronic refugee and immigration crises, there are considerable differences in the region’s adaptive resources and mitigation strategies. This regional heterogeneity, however, is rarely reflected in the region’s climate change communication, which (with a few exceptions) tends to follow similar communicative patterns.

Long-running social and religious conflicts in the Middle East have pushed climate change down the agenda of public opinion and news reporting in most Arab countries. Moreover, many Arab countries share a semi-authoritarian media system, which seems to exacerbate this tendency. In order to avoid crossing editorial redlines, climate change reporting is mostly copyedited from international news agencies. Local reporting is sparse as it may easily touch on sensitive issues concerning inadequate governance. Consequently, climate change has traditionally been covered as foreign news with a focus on international climate change negotiations—and hence limited relevance for a regional readership.

However, new information technology and an increasing focus on raising awareness on climate change points toward alternative channels of climate change communication in Middle Eastern and Arab countries.
The Free Market
Authors: Brennan Jason
Published: May 2016

Market-based economies outperform the alternative forms of economic organization on almost every measure. Nevertheless, this leaves open what the optimal degree of government regulation, government-provided social insurance, and macroeconomic adjustment is. Most economists seem to favor mostly, but not completely, free markets. Although regulation can in principle correct certain market failures, whether it will do so in practice depends in part on how pervasive and damaging corresponding government failures will be.

Philosophers, unlike economists, tend to think that questions about the value of the free market are not settled entirely by examining how well free markets function. Some philosophers even claim that markets are intrinsically unjust. In their view, markets encourage wrongful exploitation, lead to excessive economic inequality, and tend to induce people to treat each other in inhumane ways.

Among those philosophers who are more sanguine about markets, one major question concerns the moral status of economic liberty. Some philosophers, such as John Rawls, hold that economic liberty is purely of instrumental value. Citizens should be granted a significant degree of economic freedom only because this turns out, empirically, to produce good consequences. However, other philosophers, such as Robert Nozick and John Tomasi, argue that economic freedom is valuable in part for the same reasons that civil and political liberties are valuable—as a necessary means to respect citizens’ autonomy.
The Balance of Power in World Politics
Authors: Schweller Randall L.
Published: May 2016

The balance of power—a notoriously slippery, murky, and protean term, endlessly debated and variously defined—is the core theory of international politics within the realist perspective. A “balance of power” system is one in which the power held and exercised by states within the system is checked and balanced by the power of others. Thus, as a nation’s power grows to the point that it menaces other powerful states, a counter-balancing coalition emerges to restrain the rising power, such that any bid for world hegemony will be self-defeating. The minimum requirements for a balance of power system include the existence of at least two or more actors of roughly equal strength, states seeking to survive and preserve their autonomy, alliance flexibility, and the ability to resort to war if need be.

At its essence, balance of power is a type of international order. Theorists disagree, however, about the normal operation of the balance of power. Structural realists describe an “automatic version” of the theory, whereby system balance is a spontaneously generated, self-regulating, and entirely unintended outcome of states pursuing their narrow self-interests. Earlier versions of balance of power were more consistent with a “semi-automatic” version of the theory, which requires a “balancer” state throwing its weight on one side of the scale or the other, depending on which is lighter, to regulate the system. The British School’s discussion of balance of power depicts a “manually operated” system, wherein the process of equilibrium is a function of human contrivance, with emphasis on the skill of diplomats and statesmen, a sense of community of nations, of shared responsibility, and a desire and need to preserve the balance of power system.

As one would expect of a theory that made its appearance in the mid-16th century, balance of power is not without its critics. Liberals claim that globalization, democratic peace, and international institutions have fundamentally transformed international relations, moving it out of the realm of power politics. Constructivists claim that balance of power theory’s focus on material forces misses the central role played by ideational factors such as norms and identities in the construction of threats and alliances. Realists, themselves, wonder why no global balance of power has materialized since the end of the Cold War.
Women and Terrorism
Authors: Bloom Mia
Published: May 2016

Women are playing an increasingly significant role in terrorism. As men are progressively targeted by security personnel, using female operatives provides terrorist organizations with a “win–win” scenario; if security forces avoid invasively searching women for fear of outraging the local conservative population (based on social norms of women’s modesty and the honor code), women are the ideal stealth operatives. If security personnel are too aggressive in searching women, they aid terrorist recruitment by outraging the men in that society and providing the terrorists with propaganda that “our women” are being violated. In most conflicts, women remain an untapped resource. Recruiting women allows terrorist organizations to access an additional 50% of the population. Attacks by females generate greater media attention than those conducted by men. This is especially relevant when media attention is one of the terrorists’ main objectives. Although women’s involvement in terrorist and extremist activities is not a recent development, their presence as frontline activists, propagandists, and recruiters is increasing around the globe.
The Concept and Study of Implementation
Authors: Hupe Peter
Published: May 2016

Used in daily speech, in its most general meaning the word “implementation” refers to what is expected to follow in order to realize a particular goal, once that goal has been formulated and decided upon. As such, a threefold set of assumptions is implied, concerning a monocausal logic, a specific temporal order, and a relationship of subordination. Once seen as part of the policy process, the concept of policy implementation invokes associations with a normative view on the designability of society, a rationalist look on the relationship between reason and power, and a technocratic perspective on the politics/administration dichotomy. When one wants to understand and explain what happens since policy intentions have been expressed, this standard view inherent to the term (policy) implementation is to be acknowledged, for it may put users of the term on the wrong track. Rather than a one-to-one hierarchical relationship between a singular policy former as the central rule-maker and a singular implementor as the exclusive rule-applier, to a certain extent the coexistence of two different, multifaceted “worlds” is at stake. Studying what happens beyond the world of policy intentions implies taking multiple factors into account. This ambition has led to a range of comprehensive theoretical approaches, developed and applied side-by-side to an ongoing stream of single-case implementation studies. While the term implementation and the standard view connected to it, particularly in research, may be misleading, the study of implementation can be conceived as governance analysis. Specifying “implementation” as operational governance then enables researchers to get a greater analytical grip on the nested configurations in which collective endeavors turn public intentions into public achievements.
Open-Minded Cognition and Political Thought
Authors: Ottati Victor , Wilson Chase
Published: May 2016

Dogmatic or closed-minded cognition is directionally biased; a tendency to select, interpret, and elaborate upon information in a manner that reinforces the individual’s prior opinion or expectation. Open-minded cognition is directionally unbiased; a tendency to process information in a manner that is not biased in the direction of the individual’s prior opinion or expectation. It is marked by a tendency to consider a variety of intellectual perspectives, values, attitudes, opinions, or beliefs—even those that contradict the individual’s prior opinion. Open-Minded Cognition is assessed using measures that specifically focus on the degree to which individuals process information in a directionally biased manner. Open-Minded Cognition can function as an individual difference characteristic that predicts a variety of social attitudes and political opinions. These include attitudes toward marginalized social groups (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities), support for democratic values, political ideology, and partisan identification. Open-Minded Cognition also possesses a malleable component that varies across domains and specific situations. For example, Open-Minded Cognition is higher in the political domain than religious domain. In addition, Open-Minded Cognition is prevalent in situations where individuals encounter plausible arguments that are compatible with conventional values, but is less evident when individuals encounter arguments that are extremely implausible or that contradict conventional values. Within a situation, Open-Minded Cognition also varies across social roles involving expertise. Because political novices possess limited political knowledge, social norms dictate that they should listen and learn in an open-minded fashion. In contrast, because political experts possess extensive knowledge, social norms dictate that they are entitled to adopt a more dogmatic cognitive orientation when listening to a political communication.
The European Union’s Community Method: Foundations and Evolution
Authors: Devuyst Youri
Published: May 2016

The objective of the Community method is to ensure that, in the making, implementing, and enforcing of European Union law and policy, (a) the general European interest is safeguarded by the independent European Commission, which is responsible for proposing new EU legislation; (b) democratic representation of the people and the Member States takes place at the level of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, which together form the EU’s legislature; and (c) judicial control is secured by the European Court of Justice. The article traces the historical origins and evolution of the Community method and assesses its continuing relevance against the background of alternative ways of decision making and coordination such as “intense transgovernmentalism” or “deliberative intergovernmentalism,” in which the European Council plays the leading role.
Paternalism
Authors: Midtgaard Søren Flinch
Published: May 2016

In the standard view, A acts paternalistically toward B if and only if (a) A restricts B’s liberty, (b) A acts against B’s will, and (c) A acts for B’s own good. For example, the state may tax or prohibit smoking in the interest of citizens’ health in circumstances in which such measures are resisted by them or some of them. Telling counterexamples have been produced to each of these conditions. In the revised view, A acts paternalistically toward B if and only if (a) A acts so as to influence B by the use of means other than rational persuasion; (b) A does not regard B’s will as structurally decisive (i.e., A takes the prevention of voluntary self-regarding harm to constitute a reason for influencing B); (c) A does so for B’s good or to affect matters within B’s legitimate sphere of control; and (d) A’s act cannot be justified without counting its beneficial effects on B in its favor. The wrongness of paternalism lies in the way in which a paternalistic act by A toward B infringes B’s autonomy: A does not consider B’s will authoritative in determining how A should treat B in B’s self-regarding matters―A subjects B’s will to hers in this sense. Hard paternalism as thus understood should be distinguished from soft paternalism or antipaternalism. According to the latter, the prevention of voluntary self-regarding harm is never a good reason for interference. The latter is justifiable only to prevent involuntary self-regarding harm―harm pertaining to acts that are not his or do not represent his values or preferences. Hard paternalism may, pace what soft paternalism or antipaternalism claims, sometimes be justifiable. This is particularly so when the voluntary self-regarding harm involved is significant and the infringement of liberty required to prevent it is limited or acceptable given the harm at stake. The question of when a good or an advantage is profound and when an infringement of liberty is limited is, however, difficult and worthy of further investigation. Paternalistic justifications should be distinguished from other liberty-limiting principles. That is, they should, first, be distinguished from moral paternalism focusing on improving the person’s moral character and hence her moral well-being or on making the person better (as opposed to the improvement of the person’s physical and psychological condition focused on by ordinary or welfare paternalism). Second, it should be distinguished from legal moralism concerned with barring conduct that is intrinsically morally bad (that is, bad for reasons independent of how it affects people’s character or their physical or psychological condition).
Social Structure and Voting Choice
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn
Published: May 2016

The linkage between voters and political parties is to some degree based on stable social cleavages. Such cleavages express important and lasting societal divisions, allow parties and voters to establish long-term ties, and provide incumbents with clear representative and policy-making tasks against which they can be evaluated. Most research on cleavages has been based on the classic cleavages that were outlined in the Lipset-Rokkan model for social cleavages in industrial societies. These are:

(1) the center–periphery cleavage, which is anchored in geographical regions and related to different ethnic and linguistic groups as well as religious minorities; (2) the religious conflict between the Church and the State, which pitted the secular state against the historical privileges of the churches; this cleavage has more recently polarized the religious section against the secular section of the population; (3) the class conflict in the labor market, which involved owners and employers versus tenants, laborers, and workers; and (4) the conflict in the commodity market between buyers and sellers of agricultural products, or more generally, between the urban and the rural population.

Other social cleavages, such as gender, educational differences, and new divisions within the large new middle class, have been focused upon during the last decades. The new divisions within the new middle class are “horizontal” conflicts and can be conceptualized as a basic conflict between public and private employees, and as an alternative way of conceptualization, between those who work within technical, organizational, or interpersonal service environments.

Some of the cleavages have declined in importance over time, while others have increased. Some cleavages have changed character such as the class cleavage where part of the new middle class has voted for the New Left and part of the working class has voted for the New Right in the last decades. Changes in the impact and character of different cleavages have resulted in strategic reconsideration of important policies and changing location of the parties in the political space.
Intrastate Conflict and Civilian Victimization
Authors: Wood Reed M.
Published: May 2016

Contemporary civil conflicts frequently impose disproportionate costs of civilian populations. By some estimates, roughly 90% of conflict causalities were combatants in the wars of the early 20th century, but by the end of the century nearly 90% of causalities were civilians. While scholars have spent decades examining phenomena such as genocide and terrorism, they have only recently begun to systematically examine the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to the more general occurrence of civilian victimization during intra-state armed conflict. What is civilian victimization, and how does it differ from other forms of political violence? Is it possible to differentiate between “collateral damage” and intentional civilian targeting during civil conflicts? While virtually all conflicts impose significant costs on civilians, those costs vary tremendously across armed conflicts. Moreover, while collateral damage is an unfortunately common feature of warfare, violence perpetrated against civilians often includes massacres, bombings of civilian targets with negligible military value, summary executions, ethnic cleansing, and other forms of intentional attacks on noncombatants. Yet, these practices are comparatively more common during some wars, in some areas, or by some groups. This variation suggests that while all internal conflicts are violent, certain characteristics of actors, the conflict spaces, and/or the patterns of interactions between rebels, the government they challenge, and civilians within the conflict zone explain why some conflicts produce greater levels of abuse against civilians than do others. Do similar factors explain both government-sponsored civilian victimization and violence committed by non-state actors during civil conflict? A cursory review of available data clearly demonstrates that both state and non-state forces often engage in high levels of civilian victimization. In general, the existing evidences suggest that the motives for state and non-state actor violence are similar. However, key differences in the nature of institutional and organizational arrangements suggest that rebels and governments experience different types of constraints on their ability to act on their motives. How can the international community effectively respond in order to reduce the severity of civilian victimization in ongoing conflicts? This important policy question has produced a range of conflicting answers; however, the most recent scholarship on the topic suggests that both United Nations peacekeeping operations—particularly when they include a strong mandate for civilian protection and a robust military force—and international condemnation (“naming and shaming”) can effectively reduce the magnitude of intentional violence against civilians.
The Strategic Use of State Repression and Political Violence
Authors: deMeritt Jacqueline H. R.
Published: May 2016

Repression is the act of subduing someone by institutional or physical force. Political violence is a particular form of repression involving the use of physical force to achieve political goals. Acts of repression and/or political violence often violate fundamental human rights, and are sometimes referred to as human rights abuse. Most systematic research into these forms of human rights abuse, particularly as perpetrated by governments, is built on assumptions of rationality: repression and political violence are strategic policies that governments employ in pursuit important political and/or military objectives. Since the defining concept of the state is its monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion, those objectives are generally related to quiescence and the quelling of popular dissent.

Empirical research has investigated the causes of repression and political violence, focusing generally on the conditions and incentives that make these strategies most likely. To a lesser extent, scholars have also investigated the consequences of human rights abuse. This work is intimately tied to extant work on causes, and highlights an important feedback loop between repressive governments and those who oppose them. Finally, researchers have investigated methods of limiting and/or preventing state repression and political violence. Some of these methods are primarily domestic in nature (e.g., regime type and institutional design) while others have a decidedly international bent (e.g., advocacy campaigns).
Information and Communication Technology, Transparency, and Accountability
Authors: Bailard Catie Snow
Published: May 2016

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are rapidly, profoundly, and simultaneously changing three structural properties that define contemporary communication systems. How we encode information, the means for transmitting this encoded information, and the networks that determine who can send and receive that information have changed dramatically with the advent of the Internet and mobile technology. Although the political events, outcomes, and behaviors precipitated by the political opportunities created by these ICTs are neither uniform nor automatic, this dramatic reshaping of contemporary information landscapes does have clear consequences for the quantity and range of information available to citizens across the globe. There are also evident effects on the communication costs that are integral to political organization. Additionally, there are indisputable implications for the informational relationship shared by governments and their citizens. Each of these sets of effects creates new opportunities for accountability and transparency in the electoral process and for the processes of governance more generally, in the context of developed democracies but also in developing and non-democratic countries.
Racial Priming with Implicit and Explicit Messages
Authors: Tesler Michael
Published: May 2016

An expansive body of research known as racial priming consistently shows that media and campaign content can make racial attitudes more important factors in Americans’ political evaluations. Despite the well-established racial priming findings, though, there are some lingering questions about this line of research that have not been adequately settled by the extant literature. Perhaps the most frequently debated issue involves the effectiveness of implicit and explicit racial appeals. Can explicit appeals that directly invoke race and/or racial stereotypes, for example, effectively activate racial attitudes in white Americans’ political opinions? Or do racial appeals have to be implicit in nature, making only coded references to race in order to prime racially conservative support for political candidates and public policies? Along with this important topic, there are additional questions raised by the existing racial priming research, which include: Who is most susceptible to racial priming? Are political attacks on other minority groups, such as Muslims and Latinos, as potent as the appeals to anti-black stereotypes and resentments upon which the racial priming research is based? How did Obama’s presidency, which both heightened the salience of race in political discourse and increased the importance of racial attitudes in Americans’ partisan preferences, affect the media’s ability to prime race-based considerations in mass political evaluations?
From Crisis to Stasis: Media Dynamics and Issue Attention in the News
Authors: Boydstun Amber E. , Russell Annelise
Published: May 2016

Media coverage does not ebb and flow. Rather, media coverage rapidly moves from crisis to stasis and back again. The result of these attention dynamics is news reporting that is disproportional to the breadth and pace of policy problems in the world, where some balloon in the news beyond expectations and others fade quickly (or never make the news at all). These patterns of news coverage result from the powerful role that momentum plays in the news-generation process. Forces of positive feedback drive news outlets to chase each new hot story quickly, while negative feedback forces drive news outlets to stay locked onto a hot story at hand. Together, these forces drive news coverage to lurch and fixate, lurch and fixate, again and again. Thus, although previous research has conceived of the news-generation process functioning either as a “patrol” system (where news outlets act as sentinels, tracking each policy problem as it unfolds in the world) or as an “alarm” system (where news outlets move in quick bursts from one policy problem to the next, with little to no in-depth coverage), both these previous models tell only half the story. Rather, the news-generation process is best understood through the alarm/patrol hybrid model, where news outlets often lurch from one hot item to the next but sometimes become entrenched in an unfolding storyline. The alarm/patrol hybrid model helps explain the particular phenomenon of “media storms” that can occur, where a sudden surge in media attention can vault a previously ignored issue into the center of public and political attention; think of the Catholic priest abuse scandal, or the scene in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s death. The lurching/fixating dynamics of media attention have far-ranging implications for citizen information and political response, contributing to a wider system of disproportionate information processing where some topics are attended to and others are largely ignored. In particular, because policymakers take so many of their cues from the news, it is likely the case that the lurching/fixating patterns of our media system exacerbate the punctuated patterns of government in turn.
Going Public and Presidential Leadership
Authors: Eshbaugh-Soha Matthew
Published: May 2016

Going public is the preeminent governing strategy of modern presidents. When presidents go public, they attempt to influence the decisions, actions, and opinions of others through speechmaking and other public engagement. Although some scholars of the rhetorical presidency show how presidents have used speeches to govern since the dawn of American democracy, the bulk of scholarship centers on the modern presidency, as both advances in communications technologies and changes in federal policymaking institutions spurred presidents to go public.

Going public as a leadership strategy involves a variety of presidential speeches designed to reach a range of institutions and actors. Strategies include going local, speaking on national television, or saturating news coverage by sustaining attention to a top priority. The president’s target audience can be Congress, the public, news media, or bureaucracy. Presidents have had some success going public, although the ways in which presidents have been successful vary by strategy and target audience.

Going public is more than just presidential leadership of others. It is also about what incentivizes the president’s efforts to use speeches to govern in the first place. Thus, a second focus of research on going public is what explains speechmaking and the tendency of presidents to respond to those institutions and actors that they also attempt to lead. The majority of existing research centers on presidential leadership of, and responsiveness to, mass public opinion, but the emergence of a more polarized public may influence why presidents go public and may change what political scientists conclude concerning going public and presidential leadership in a more polarized political age.
Gender and Political Behavior
Authors: Kittilson Miki Caul
Published: May 2016

The burgeoning field of gender and political behavior shows that the way in which ordinary citizens connect to the democratic process is gendered. Gender differences in voting behavior and participation rates persist across democracies. At the same time, countries vary substantially in the size of these gender gaps. In contemporary elections, women tend to support leftist parties more than men in many countries. Although men and women vote at similar rates today, women still trail men in important participatory attitudes and activities such as political interest and discussion. Inequalities in political involvement undermine the quality of deliberation, representation, and legitimacy in the democratic process. A confluence of several interrelated factors (resources, economy, socialization, political context) work together to account for these differences. Today, scholars more carefully consider the socially constructed nature of gender and the ways in which it interacts with other identities. Recent research on gender and political behavior suggests that political context affects different kinds of women in different ways, and future research should continue to investigate these important interactions.
Party Identification and Its Implications
Authors: Dalton Russell J.
Published: May 2016

Early electoral research in the United States discovered the most important concept in the study of political behavior: party identification. Party identification is a long-term, affective attachment to one’s preferred political party. Cross-national research has found that these party identities are a potent cue in guiding the attitudes and behavior of the average person. Partisans tend to repeatedly support their preferred party, even when the candidates and the issues change. Party ties mobilize people to vote to support their party, and to work for the party during the campaign. And, given the limited information most people have about complex political issues, party ties provide a cue to what positions one should support. This review describes how the level of partisanship among contemporary publics varies across nations and across time, and how these patterns have significant implications for democracies today.
Public Opinion and Public Policy
Authors: Wlezien Christopher , Soroka Stuart N.
Published: May 2016

The link between public opinion and public policy is of special importance in representative democracies, as we expect elected officials to care about what voters think. Not surprisingly, a large body of literature tests whether policy is a function of public preferences. Some literature also considers the mechanisms by which preferences are converted to policy. Yet other work explores whether and how the magnitude of opinion representation varies systematically across issues and political institutions. In all this research, public opinion is an independent variable—an important driver of public policy change—but it is also a dependent variable, one that is a consequence of policy itself. Indeed, the ongoing existence of both policy representation and public responsiveness is critical to the functioning of representative democracy.
Aging Workforce Issues from a Multilevel Approach
Authors: Yaldiz Lale M. , Fraccaroli Franco , Truxillo Donald M.
Published: May 2016

The proportion of older people in the industrialized workforce is increasing owing to the aging of the baby-boom generation, improved health in industrialized countries, changing retirement laws, need for additional income by older workers, and entry of fewer younger people into the workforce in some countries. This “graying” trend of the workforce raises a number of issues such as the needs, motivation, job attitudes, and behaviors of older workers; how to manage age diversity issues at work; late career issues; and preparing the worker and the organization for retirement. Specifically, older worker issues as a research topic includes work-relevant changes taking place within individuals as they age (e.g., physical, cognitive, and personality changes); how older workers are affected by their physical and social environments; the sources of age stereotyping and discrimination and how to combat them; and how these factors affect outcomes such as older workers’ well-being, health, attitudes, motivation, performance, and desire to continue working.
Gangsters and Genre
Authors: Lam Anita
Published: May 2016

While there are multiple possible definitions of what makes a gangster film, ranging from the simple inclusion of a villainous gangster in a film to those that follow outlaws on the run, the classic definition of a gangster film has revolved around the rise and inevitable fall of an immigrant gangster protagonist, a career criminal with whom audiences are expected to identify. Yet this classic definition has been expanded by evolving theoretical and methodological considerations of film genre. From the outset, gangster films were one of the first film genres to be considered by early genre criticism. Based on structural and formal analyses of the so-called Big Three Hollywood gangster films from the 1930s—namely, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface—early scholars argued that the gangster genre reflected the ideological tensions that underlay the American Dream of material success. Interpreted as modern tragic figures, gun-toting gangsters in these films were trapped in dangerous cities characterized by anonymity, violence, and death. More recently, genre criticism of gangster films has not only shifted emphasis away from the classic gangster narrative, but also paid far greater attention to institutional intertexts that have highly influenced the production and historical reception of these films. By highlighting variability, contingency, mutability, and flexibility, scholars now speak of genre in terms of specific cycles of production, where each cycle produces different gangster figures to mediate changing societal concerns and public discourses around issues of criminality, class, gender, and race.

More contemporary and culturally-specific extensions, adaptations, or articulations of the gangster genre can also be read as thematic explorations of blackness in the following two ways. First, the cycle of ghetto-centric American “hood” films in the 1990s, a cycle that helped to launch hip-hop cinema, points to a continuity between the mythic figure of the gangster and African-American self-representations as “gangsta.” Secondly, while the gangster genre has been defined as a distinctly and explicitly American genre, owing much to critics’ primary emphasis on examining Hollywood films, the genre has also played a significant role in revitalizing and popularizing Hong Kong cinema in the late 1980s and 1990s. Referred to as hak bong dianying (“black gang films”), Cantonese-language Hong Kong gangster films are part of the fabric of local Hong Kong culture, revealing the moral implications of joining “black society” (the Cantonese-language concept for triad) and the “black paths” that members take.
Elite and Private Education
Authors: Doherty Catherine , Pozzi Megan
Published: May 2016

While meritocratic ideals assume a level playing field for educational competition, those who can may seek to tilt the field in their children’s favor to ensure better educational opportunities and the associated life rewards. A growing body of literature is researching “up” to better understand how advantage for some through the choice of elite or private schooling contributes to the relative disadvantage of others. Institutional claims to offering an “elite” education can rest on different logics such as social selectivity by dint of high fees or academic selectivity by dint of enrollments conditional on academic excellence. Private education provided by a non-government entity serves as an alternative to public sector provision for those who can afford it. The global spread of neoliberal metapolicy has fanned a general trend towards privatization. Such logics of social restriction can distinguish the whole school, niche programs of distinction within a school, or tracking practices that pool advantage in particular classes or subjects. While education policy debates wrestle with how to articulate competing ethics of excellence, inclusivity, and equity, elite branding unapologetically resolves these tensions by conflating excellence and exclusivity. To achieve and sustain elite status, however, relies on the extra work of carefully curating reputations and protecting the brand. Recent research has started to ask more difficult questions of educational privilege. Such research helps to understand: the curricular processes and nature of privilege achieved through elite and private educational choices; how such education harnesses the semblance of meritocratic competition to legitimate its forms of distinction; and the broader impact of these processes.
Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Movement
Authors: Garcia Matt
Published: May 2016

In September 1962, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) held its first convention in Fresno, California, initiating a multiracial movement that would result in the creation of United Farm Workers (UFW) and the first contracts for farm workers in the state of California. Led by Cesar Chavez, the union contributed a number of innovations to the art of social protest, including the most successful consumer boycott in the history of the United States. Chavez welcomed contributions from numerous ethnic and racial groups, men and women, young and old. For a time, the UFW was the realization of Martin Luther King Jr.’s beloved community—people from different backgrounds coming together to create a socially just world. During the 1970s, Chavez struggled to maintain the momentum created by the boycott as the state of California became more involved in adjudicating labor disputes under the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA). Although Chavez and the UFW ultimately failed to establish a permanent, national union, their successes and strategies continue to influence movements for farm worker justice today.
The United States, National Security, and World Oil since 1945
Authors: Dietrich Christopher R. W.
Published: May 2016

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article.

The United States considered foreign oil, in particular oil from the Middle East, crucial to national security after 1945. Although successive presidential administrations maintained a doctrine of commercial neutrality, which officially separated the business interests of oil from diplomacy and international politics, U.S. officials were reluctant to rely on oil companies or market forces to determine the availability of the resource. Policymakers thus maintained an ad hoc policy, but reserved the right to intervene when they believed the situation warranted government action. Policies that include the 1951 to 1953 Iran crisis, the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, the founding of OPEC in 1960, the energy crises of the 1970s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait all point towards the place of oil in U.S. national security.
Racial Diversity and Suburban Politics in 20th-Century Los Angeles
Authors: Jenks Hillary
Published: May 2016

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article.

Despite its cultivated reputation as the nation’s “white spot” in the early 20th century, Southern California was in fact home to diverse and numerous communities of color, some composed of relatively new immigrants and some long predating the era of Anglo settlement and conquest. In the years following World War II, the region engaged in suburban home construction on a mass scale and became a global symbol of what Dolores Hayden called the economically democratic but racially exclusive “sitcom suburb,” from the tax-lowering mechanism of its “Lakewood plan” to the car-friendly “Googie” architecture of the San Fernando Valley. Existing suburban communities of color, such as the colonias of agricultural laborers, were engulfed by new settlements, while upwardly mobile African Americans, Latinas/Latinos, and Asian Americans sought access to the expanding suburban dream of homeownership, with varying degrees of success. The political responses to suburban diversity in metropolitan Los Angeles ranged from Anglo resistance and flight to multiracial political coalitions and the incorporation of people of color at multiple levels of local government. The ascent by a number of suburbanites of color to positions of local and regional political power from the 1960s through the 1980s sometimes exposed intra-ethnic discord and sometimes the fragility of cross-race coalition as multiple actors sought to protect property values and to pursue economic security within the competitive constraints of shrinking municipal resources, aging infrastructure, and a receding suburban fringe. As a result, political conflicts over crime, immigration, education, and inequality emerged in many Los Angeles County suburbs by the 1970s and later in the more distant corporate suburbs of Orange, Ventura, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. The suburbanization of poverty, the role of suburbs as immigrant gateways, and the emergence of “majority-minority” suburbs—all national trends by the late 1990s and the first decade of the 20th century—were evident far earlier in the Los Angeles metropolitan region, where diverse suburbanites negotiated social and economic crises and innovated political responses.