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Nontraditional candidates for elective office—including non-Whites, women, and homosexuals—have been rare in American politics, with the exception of a virtual explosion of nontraditional candidates in recent years. In reflection of these trends, research on political evaluation concerning nontraditional candidates has blossomed. Although significant advances have been made in our understanding of the role that gender and race play in political evaluation, we know much less about how members of other political minority groups, particularly gays and lesbians, are evaluated in electoral politics. Drawing on two experimental investigations, using highly realistic audio-visual vignettes of ostensible candidates for office, I explore how voters' responses to politically identical gay and lesbian candidates differ depending on whether their attributes are consistent or inconsistent with their respective group's stereotypes. I also investigate differences in political responses to gay and lesbian candidates as a function of respondents' gender, ending with a discussion of the findings' political implications.

Many studies have focused on the relationship between political information and the use of ideology. Here, we argue that two "evaluative motivations"-general investment of the self in politics and extremity of partisanship-serve as moderators of this relationship. Specifically, we use data from two recent national surveys to test whether the possession of information is more strongly associated with a tendency to approach politics in an ideological fashion among individuals high in both types of evaluative motivation. Results supported this hypothesis, revealing that information was more strongly associated with ideological constraint and with a tendency to give polarized evaluations of conservatives and liberals among those who highly invest the self in politics and those with more extreme partisanship. As such, this study suggests that information and involvement interact to shape the use of ideology. Adapted from the source document.

Ip Po Na. ; Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. ; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-72). ; Abstracts in English and Chinese.

THIS ARTICLE DISPUTES A WIDELY ACCEPTED ASSUMPTION THAT POLITICAL CRITICISM, AS MEASURED WITH LOW SCORES OF TRUST IN GOVERNMENT, CAN BE EQUATED AS POLITICAL CYNICISM. PATH ANALYSES OF DATA FROM A NATIONAL SURVEY SHOW DISTINCTIONS, WHERE CRITICISM IS TRIGGERED BY POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS AND CYNICISM IS A RIGIDIFIED FORM OF CRITICISM.

Political trust and political efficacy are concepts currently undergoing considerable discussion and revision. The discussion of voting behavior in Campbell et al. (1954), Almond's and Verba's (1965) version of the participation hypothesis, Gamson's (1968) trust-efficacy hypothesis, and Verba's and Nie's (1972) standard socioeconomic model represent quite distinct and contrasting stages in the treatment of these concepts, but share some assumptions requiring additional discussion and clarification. One of these pertains to treatment of political criticism, measured with low scores of trust in government, as political cynicism. This is not so much an operational or methodological question as a theoretical framework that has never had much to say about the role of criticism in contemporary democratic societies. This essay proffers a case in which, high levels of interpersonal distrust and high levels of government criticism notwithstanding, it is possible to make this basic distinction. Path analyses of data from a national-sample survey show that criticism is triggered by predominantly political orientations, while cynicism is a rigidified form of criticism inseparable from the social circumstances of individuals. In addition, the evidence suggests that the sense of political efficacy does not play the pivotal role assigned to it in the literature.

The debate draws upon both conservative and liberal philosophy, yet fails to polarise opinion into clearly opposing political goals. Argues that the way biotechnology is used reflects what is valued in society. (AFH)