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In National Identity and Partisan Polarization, Eric M. Uslaner examines how national identity has become a central issue in political and social life across the world. Questions of identity--who should be counted as a "true member" of a society and who deserves assistance from the government--have displaced other social and economic issues across nations in many countries. This study considers the role of identity theoretically and in the United State, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Israel, and Taiwan.

"This Handbook covers social and political trust. Essays cover the foundations of both types of trust, whether they have common or different roots. The Handbook includes essays on rational choice approaches to trust, including trust games and experiments-as well as an essay on how we measure trust. There are essays on the cultural and social psychological roots of trust, including how we are more likely to trust people like ourselves than strangers, as well as the place of trust in democracy- how national identity shapes trust, how trust forms in developing countries and in new democracies. Do minority groups are less trusting than the dominant group in a society? Do immigrants adapt to the trust levels of their host countries and do patterns of residence shape faith in others? Does interaction with people in groups build trust? Does the welfare state promote trust and in turn does trust lead to greater well-being and to better health outcomes? There are also essays on the foundations of political trust, political trust and the economy and elections. There are essays linking trust to the law, corruption, tax compliance, and economic growth. Authors also discuss how trust shapes cooperation in the international system and how it shapes attitudes toward international institutions and foreign countries"--

Why does corruption persist over long periods of time? Why is it so difficult to eliminate? Suggesting that corruption is deeply rooted in the underlying social and historical political structures of a country, Uslaner observes that there is a powerful statistical relationship between levels of mass education in 1870 and corruption levels in 2010 across 78 countries. He argues that an early introduction of universal education is shown to be linked to levels of economic equality and to efforts to increase state capacity. Societies with more equal education gave citizens more opportunities and power for opposing corruption, whilst the need for increased state capacity was a strong motivation for the introduction of universal education in many countries. Evidence for this argument is presented from statistical models, case studies from Northern and Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as a discussions of how some countries escaped the 'trap' of corruption

"Eric M. Uslaner examines the theoretical and measurement differences between segregation and diversity and summarizes results on how integrated neighborhoods with diverse social networks increase trust in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia"--

AbstractAmerican Jews voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2012 despite strong Republican efforts to win their votes. Republicans charged that Obama was not sufficiently supportive of Israel and that Mitt Romney was closer to Jewish opinions on this salient issue. Republicans miscalculated. For most American Jews, Israel was not a key voting issue. American Jews were also closer to Obama on Middle East issues than they were to Republicans. There was also a cultural chasm between American Jews and the Tea Party, reflective of long-standing tensions between Jews and evangelicals. Using surveys of the Jewish vote and the full electorate, I show that this cultural divide was more salient for Jews than for other white voters — and that there is at least preliminary evidence that this cultural divide may be important for other minority groups.

AbstractAmericans have become less trusting of their federal government since the late 1950s. Most accounts of trust in government are based upon the performance of the economy. I argue that two additional factors are essential for understanding the sharp fall in trust in government in recent years: the level of partisan polarization in the Congress (as reflected in the ideological distance between the parties on roll calls) and the inability of Congress to enact legislation (gridlock).