Suchergebnisse

The subject of this book is the discourse of persecution used by Christians in Late Antiquity (c. 300–700 CE). Through a series of detailed case studies covering the full chronological and geographical span of the period, this book investigates how the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity changed the way that Christians and para- Christians perceived the hostile treatments they received, either by fellow Christians or by people of other religions. A closely related second goal of this volume is to encourage scholars to think more precisely about the terminological difficulties related to the study of persecution. Indeed, despite sustained interest in the subject, few scholars have sought to distinguish between such closely related concepts as punishment, coercion, physical violence, and persecution. Often, these terms are used interchangeably. Although there are no easy answers, an emphatic conclusion of the studies assembled in this volume is that "persecution" was a malleable rhetorical label in late antique discourse, whose meaning shifted depending on the viewpoint of the authors who used it. This leads to our third objective: to analyze the role and function played by rhetoric and polemic in late antique claims to be persecuted. Late antique Christian writers who cast their present as a repetition of past persecutions often aimed to attack the legitimacy of the dominant Christian faction through a process of othering. This discourse also expressed a polarizing worldview in order to strengthen the group identity of the writers' community in the midst of ideological conflicts and to encourage steadfastness against the temptation to collaborate with the other side.

As of late, political theory, research, and practice have taken a deliberative turn, extolling the benefits of idealized public discourse. This paper explores how mass polarization impacts the preconditions for such discourse. Drawing from social identity theory, partisanship is conceptualized as having distinct, yet interrelated social and ideological dimensions. Through both online and telephone-based survey experiments, the paper then examines how these two dimensions affect attitudes toward discussion that theorists prioritize. Strong social attachments to one's party consistently drive antideliberative attitudes toward disagreement; ideological partisan attachment, however, does not have this effect. The results suggest that the rise of social identity polarization has driven the public away from discursive norms that would support a deliberative democratic system.

ObjectiveGeographic political polarization is an increasingly salient topic of academic and popular discourse. Using Bill Bishop's bestseller The Big Sort as a foil, this article tests the claim that America has split into "ideologically inbred" "red" and "blue" communities.MethodDrawing on Bishop's concept of "landslide" Democratic and Republican counties, the article uses survey data to measure the overlap in opinion between respondents from opposing "landslide" counties. This is done both graphically and with a quantitative measure developed by Levendusky and Pope (2011).ResultsAcross economic, social, and cultural value dimensions, there is vastly more common ground than difference between respondents from "landslide" Democratic and Republican counties.ConclusionHyperbolic claims of a "sorted" country aside, geographic polarization in the United States is limited at best. Partisan polarization could be a real and consequential phenomenon in the electorate, but it has little geographic, "red versus blue" manifestation.

Intro -- Preface -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction -- 1.1 Modern Partisan Polarization -- 1.2 Polarization and Geography -- 1.3 Outline of the Book -- References -- 2 Beyond ``Red State, Blue State'': The Political Geography of Presidential Competition, 1828-2016 -- 2.1 Partisanship, Voting, and Polarization -- 2.2 Polarization and Geography -- 2.3 The Political Geography of Presidential Voting -- 2.3.1 Global Measures of Spatial Autocorrelation -- 2.4 Analysis of County-Level Voting, 1828-2016 -- 2.4.1 Spatial Analysis -- 2.5 Political Geography and the American Party Systems -- 2.5.1 The Second American Party System -- 2.5.2 The Third American Party System -- 2.5.3 The Fourth American Party System -- 2.5.4 The Fifth American Party System -- 2.5.5 The Sixth American Party System -- 2.6 Conclusion -- References -- 3 Geographic Polarization in Historical Perspective -- 3.1 Bishop's Argument -- 3.2 Recent Assessment of The Big Sort -- 3.3 Historical Examination of Geographic Polarization -- 3.4 Education and the Geography of Presidential Voting -- 3.5 Conclusion -- Appendix -- References -- 4 Modeling the Political Geography of Presidential Voting -- 4.1 Diagnostics for Spatial Dependence -- 4.2 Analysis of Voting Behavior, 1828-2016 -- 4.3 The Second American Party System -- 4.4 The Third American Party System -- 4.5 The Fourth American Party System -- 4.6 The Fifth American Party System -- 4.7 The Sixth American Party System -- 4.8 The Interaction of Racial and Immigrant Demographics -- 4.9 Conclusion -- References -- 5 Clinton vs. Trump: Back to the Future? -- 5.1 The Relationship Between the 1828 and 2016 Elections -- 5.2 Looking Further on the 1828 and 2016 Relationship -- 5.3 Trump and Jackson: A Closer Look -- 5.4 Adams and Clinton: A Closer Look -- References -- 6 Conclusion.

A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens' views of legal institutions are influenced by their partisanship and signals from the president. Through multiple experiments, we demonstrate that support for two key institutions—the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice—is substantially derived from the intersection of one's partisan identity and their partisan proximity to the president. These effects are strongest among respondents exhibiting high levels of affective partisanship. Our results suggest that in forming perceptions of the rule of law, partisan politics is increasingly competing with perceptions of procedural fairness, thereby subverting support for legal institutions in the United States.

Although restricting formal voting rights—voter suppression—is not uncommon in democracies, its incidence and form vary widely. Intuitively, when competing elites believe that the benefits of reducing voting by opponents outweigh the costs of voter suppression, it is more likely to occur. Internal political and state capacity and external actors, however, influence the form that voter suppression takes. When elites competing for office lack the ability to enact laws restricting voting due to limited internal capacity, or external actors are able to limit the ability of governments to use laws to suppress voting, suppression is likely to be ad hoc, decentralized, and potentially violent. As political and state capacity increase and external constraints decrease, voter suppression will shift from decentralized and potentially violent to centralized and mostly non-violent. We illustrate our arguments by analyzing the transition from decentralized, violent voter suppression through the use of lynchings (and associated violence) to the centralized, less violent suppression of black voting in the post-Reconstruction South. We also place the most recent wave of U.S. state voter suppression laws into broader context using our theoretical framework.