Suchergebnisse

Much of public opinion research over the past several decades suggests that the American voters are woefully uninformed about politics and thus unable to fulfill their democratic obligations. Arguing that this perception is faulty, Vincent Hutchings shows that, under the right political conditions, voters are surprisingly well informed on the issues that they care about and use their knowledge to hold politicians accountable. Though Hutchings is not the first political scientist to contend that the American public is more politically engaged than it is often given credit for, previous scholarship--which has typically examined individual and environmental factors in isolation--has produced only limited evidence of an attentive electorate. Analyzing broad survey data as well as the content of numerous Senate and gubernatorial campaigns involving such issues as race, labor, abortion, and defense, Hutchings demonstrates that voters are politically engaged when politicians and the media discuss the issues that the voters perceive as important. Hutchings finds that the media--while far from ideal--do provide the populace with information regarding the responsiveness of elected representatives and that groups of voters do monitor this information when "their" issues receive attention. Thus, while the electorate may be generally uninformed about and uninterested in public policy, a complex interaction of individual motivation, group identification, and political circumstance leads citizens concerned about particular issues to obtain knowledge about their political leaders and use that information at the ballot box

Carol M. Swain,The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 526 pages, ISBN 0-521-80886-3, $30.00.Paul M. Kellstedt,The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 174 pages, ISBN 0-521-82171-1, $60.00.Carol M. Swain's book,The New White Nationalism in American: Its Challenge to Integration, is an ambitious and, in many ways, novel blend of traditional social science and social advocacy. At the outset, Swain informs the reader that this book breaks with "… the tradition of impersonal, value-free social science insofar as I do not pretend to be neutral and do not hesitate to interject many personal observations and comments into the body of the text." She does not disappoint on this score. This nearly 500-page book combines original interviews and survey and focus group data, with Swain's reflections on a range of topics including reparations, affirmative action, racial hate crimes, and the redemptive power of religion. To Swain's credit, she also steps outside her role as a (nominally) dispassionate social scientist to offer a range of policy prescriptions near the end of her book to combat what she views as the potentially alarming growth of the White power movement. In many ways, Swain's passion for her subject is refreshing, and even commendable. Unfortunately, her passion is also the source of the principal weakness of this book: its inability to match its uncompromising rhetoric with persuasive, or even plausible, supportive evidence for readers who do not already agree with her arguments.

Tali Mendelberg's The Race Card offers a methodologically rich and convincing account of the impact of subtle race cues in contemporary American politics. Although her thesis is a controversial one, Mendelberg develops a careful and cogent argument that racial attitudes can have a substantial effect on candidate evaluations—provided that candidates craft a racial appeal that appears to be about something other than race. She argues that the success of implicit antiblack appeals, ones juxtaposing visual references to race with ostensibly nonracial verbal messages on issues such as crime or welfare, are due to four "A" factors: ambivalence about racial stereotypes, accessibility and priming, awareness of one's reliance on racial attitudes, and the ambiguity of the racial cue.

According to the issue salience hypothesis, citizens tend to acquire information on subjects they perceive as important. However, past efforts to demonstrate this have been mixed. I argue that this is because scholars often fail to recognize the importance of overlapping group memberships. I maintain that different group memberships -- a traditional proxy for issue salience -- can cancel out effects if they are in conflict. Some research has also shown that cues in the political environment increase levels of political information. Extending this line of research, I hypothesize that the interaction of salience with environmental cues influences both information & participation levels. I find that an examination of the confirmation vote for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas largely confirms these hypotheses. 7 Tables, 37 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractPrevious research has shown that racial or ethnic prejudice is one of the most influential antecedents of opposition to more expansive immigration policies. In this paper, we explore whether a theoretical perspective derived from the group position model might represent an additional and complementary explanation for immigration attitudes. We also compare how well the prejudice and group position models explain immigration attitudes among both White and Black Americans. Most of the previous work in this literature focuses solely on Whites' attitudes, and it remains unclear how well models designed with this group in mind might also apply to African Americans. We rely upon the 2004–2005 National Politics Study to explore the power of these models. In general, we find that measures derived from the group position model account for immigration attitudes even after controlling for various forms of out-group prejudice. The pattern of results also differs considerably across the two racial groups in our study.

▪ Abstract  The study of race and U.S. politics has always been controversial in the discipline. Theory and evidence are often ignored or misconstrued. Furthermore, literatures that examine the impact of race have developed in relative isolation from one another. We try to address this shortcoming here. We examine research on the influence of race on the political attitudes, behavior, and institutions of both blacks and whites. Our focus is on partisanship, voting, policy opinions, and representation. We identify linkages across these domains and then discuss the implications of this work for assessing the nation's progress toward achieving racial justice.

The study of race & US politics has always been controversial in the discipline. Theory & evidence are often ignored or misconstrued. Furthermore, literatures that examine the impact of race have developed in relative isolation from one another. We try to address this shortcoming here. We examine research on the influence of race on the political attitudes, behavior, & institutions of both blacks & whites. Our focus is on partisanship, voting, policy opinions, & representation. We identify linkages across these domains & then discuss the implications of this work for assessing the nation's progress toward achieving racial justice. 181 References. Adapted from the source document.