The Stained Glass Ceiling: Social Contact and Mitt Romney’s “Religion Problem”

Why did Mitt Romney face antagonism toward his Mormon religion in the 2008 election? Using experiments conducted in the real time of the campaign, we test voters?? reactions to information about Romney??s religious background. We find that voters were concerned specifically with Romney??s religious affiliation, not simply with the fact that he is religious. Furthermore, concern over Romney??s Mormonism dwarfed concerns about the religious backgrounds of Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee. We find evidence for a curvilinear hypothesis linking social contact with Mormons and reaction to information about Romney??s Mormonism. Voters who have no personal exposure to Mormons are most likely to be persuaded by both negative and positive information about the Mormon faith, while voters who have sustained personal contact with Mormons are the least likely to be persuaded either way. Voters with moderate contact, however, react strongly to negative information about the religion but are not persuaded by countervailing positive information.     

Religious fundamentalisms,territories and ‘globalization’

Abstract

This paper analyses what the two main monotheist religious fundamentalisms – Islam and Christianity – have had to say about the international system, and in particular their attitudes towards, and visions of, ‘globalization’. The paper concentrates upon the fundamentalist position in respect of the two religious doctrines discussed while fully recognizing that the non-fundamentalists and mainstream traditions in each case do not necessarily share the sentiments announced by – or pursued by – their fundamentalist co-religionists. But it is the fundamentalist variants of the two doctrines that are having the greatest impact on the international situation, so the emphasis is upon these (though there are also some shorter reflections on Jewish religious fundamentalism). In addition, the paper concentrates upon the attitudes of these positions towards the idea of ‘territory’ since this is one of those categories that are more widely at stake in the general discussion of globalization and its consequences. Finally, the paper assesses the impact of these doctrines on the conduct of international relations, the likely success or otherwise of their impact, and the nature of the international system that is being forged in the wake of the re-emergence of fundamentalist activity in the domestic and international spheres.     

Jumping on the Trump Train or Ditching the Donald: Campaign Rhetoric and the 2016 Congressional Election

The 2016 general election presented an unusual challenge to Republican congressional candidates: whether to market one’s campaign as aligned with or against Donald Trump’s controversial candidacy. In this paper, we determine what district and member-level factors influence candidate endorsements of Trump for president. Second, we study if the endorsements hurt candidates on Election Day. We find that underlying political partisanship, as measured by Mitt Romney’s 2012 vote share in congressional districts, predicts much of incumbents’ support for Trump, and that candidates’ support did not harm them in the general election.     

Religion and the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups

I test the hypothesis that religious affiliation is an empirical measure of tastes and beliefs that affect the demand for membership in environmental citizen groups. The number of adherents to Judeo-Christian denominations per household has a significant, negative effect on state membership rates for nine groups advocating a preservationist approach to environmental policy, particularly in states with many Catholics, Baptists and Mormons. Religious affiliation has a marginally significant, positive effect on membership rates for two sportsmen groups advocating private stewardship. These results suggest that religious affiliation should also be a significant determinant of constituent preferences for environmental policies.     

Whitehall and the Refugees: The 1930s and the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper, originally presented on the occasion of the launch of her book concerning British immigration policy towards Jewish refugees from 1933 to 1948, London compares that past with present British immigration policy and attitudes towards it. She argues, above all, that the same worry about the long-term effects of immigration—that is, that refugees would settle in the country and not return home or move on—that very much influenced the tendency to inhibit aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, is still very much alive today. While the legal situation of refugees and the kinds of persecution from which they seek refuge are different in the two periods in question, the 1930s and the 1990s—there are now, for instance, international conventions on refugees to which Britain is a signatory—British immigration policies of both periods are marked by many of the same priorities and many of the same attitudes towards and perceptions of refugees. In closing, she sounds a warning that an understanding of the past, crucial as it is, should not be mistakenly used to justify a lack of humanity in the present.     

Public Managers' Religiosity: Impacts on Work Attitudes and Perceptions of Co-Workers

ABSTRACT

Do public managers' religious beliefs and behaviors affect their work and their work-related attitudes? Perhaps due to the sensitive nature of this question, there is almost no empirical work on the topic. Our study uses questionnaire data (n = 765) from the National Administrative Studies Project-III to test hypotheses about the impacts of U.S. public managers' religiosity, as well as their political activity, on work attitudes. Religiosity is defined by public managers' responses about attending religious services. Political behavior is defined in terms of membership in political organizations and election groups. An application of ordinary least squares regression shows that religious public managers tend to have a stronger orientation toward job security and a more favorable view of their organization and fellow employees. Public managers are no more or less oriented to security than other respondents in the sample, but they have more negative views about their organization and fellow employees. These findings do not change when obvious controls are introduced into the model.     

A Question of Culture or Economics? Public Attitudes to the European Union in Britain

Previous research has suggested that attitudes towards the European Union (EU) are shaped by two sets of considerations—economic and cultural. Using data from the 2015 British Social Attitudes survey, this article assesses which matters more in shaping attitudes in Britain towards the EU as the country prepares to vote in a referendum on whether it should remain in or leave the European Union. It shows that while concern about the cultural consequences of EU membership is widespread, voters are inclined to think that membership is economically beneficial. This cultural concern underpins a widespread scepticism about Europe, but voters are only likely to want to leave the EU if they are also convinced of the economic case for doing so.     

Religion and Euroscepticism: Direct,Indirect or No Effects?

Taking as starting points the (growing) political significance of religion and increasing scepticism towards European integration, this study sets out to investigate the impact of religious divides and religiosity on attitudes towards the EU, both on the micro and on the macro level. In addition to considering direct effects, it focuses on the mediated nature of relationships between religion and Euroscepticism through immigration attitudes and authoritarian value orientations. Drawing on data from the 2006 European Social Survey the authors find that individuals' religious attachments have only indirect relevance for explaining Euroscepticism when controlling for immigration attitudes and value orientations. Religious context, however, does contribute to explanatory models of Euroscepticism, with citizens of Protestant countries being more Eurosceptic than those in religiously mixed or in Catholic countries. The authors furthermore show that both authoritarianism and anti-immigration attitudes are to some degree influenced by individuals' denomination and level of religiosity and in turn predict Euroscepticism. Yet, even indirect effects of religion on Euroscepticism are small or appear to cancel each other out. The article concludes that religion on the micro level is largely irrelevant for explaining Euroscepticism, whereas it is an important macro-level explanatory variable.     

Pacific men: how the feminist gap explains hostility

The gender gap in attitudes to foreign policy is well established in public opinion literature. Studies have repeatedly reported that women tend to be more peaceful and less militaristic than men. This article reexamines attitudes of individuals in relation to foreign policy and pits the gender gap against the largely forgotten feminist gap. We argue that the individual-level relationship between gender equality attitudes on the one hand, and tolerance and benevolence on the other, is under-researched, but also that key contributions about the effects of feminism have been mostly ignored in research on the gender gap in public opinion. We return to the notion of a causal relationship between gender equality attitudes, and peaceful attitudes, and of a feminist gap that also exists among men. In a series of novel empirical tests, we demonstrate that attitudes to gender equality, not biological sex, explain attitudes towards other nationalities and religious groups. Using individual-level survey data from five countries around the Pacific: China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States of America, we show that both men and women who reject gender equality are much more hostile both to other nations and to minorities in their own country.     

Who's Welcome and Who's Not? Opposition towards Immigration in the Nordic Countries, 2002–2014

This article demonstrates the analytical advantages of studying not only the degree to which people oppose immigration in a country, but also the character of their opposition. Using Latent Class Analysis and data from the European Social Survey, Nordic patterns and trends are examined with the aim of identifying different kinds of immigration attitudes and how they develop in different national contexts. The Nordic countries are interesting to compare as, while they are similar in many respects, they also diverge significantly from each other in areas theoretically considered important to the formation of attitudes towards immigration. Studying the character of immigration opposition reveals five different types of immigration attitudes. These are differently distributed between the Nordic countries as well as over time, and include nativist opposition (opposition only towards immigrants of ethnic/racial groups other than that of the majority population) and economic opposition (opposition that entails a separation between immigrants considered to be an economic resource and an economic burden). By demonstrating how immigration opposition in the Nordic countries varies not only in degree but also in character, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of immigration opposition as well as of how different attitudinal profiles evolve under different contextual circumstances.     

The Moral Minority: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland and Their Political Behaviour

It has long been asserted that strong evangelical religious beliefs underpin strong unionist and loyalist political attitudes in Northern Ireland. Although recent literature has argued for a wide diversity of political attitudes amongst evangelicals, this has not been quantified. Based on analysis of the 1991 Northern Irish Social Attitudes Survey and the 1998 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, this article argues that evangelicals are attitudinally different to other Protestants in Northern Ireland. However, their distinctiveness arises from their conservative moral attitudes and not, as widely claimed, from stronger unionist political values. Indeed, in terms of party identification, in 1991 evangelicals were less likely than other Protestants to support the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). And although there has been a small shift towards the DUP over the course of the 1990s, it is not due to any strengthening of the unionism of evangelicals, but rather the increasing importance of moral conservatism in predicting voters' party choice in Northern Ireland.     

Is gender on the 'new agenda'?

Abstract. This paper examines the politicization of gender inequality through a cross-national analysis of attitudes towards inequality between men and women. The data were obtained from national surveys in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Italy. In all of these countries, attitudes towards gender inequality were found to be associated with the 'left-right' cleavage over economic inequality and redistribution, but they were unrelated to 'new politics' issues. It was also found that attitudes towards gender inequality were more closely integrated into the left-right cleavage in those countries where there was greater awareness of gender issues, and that they had very little net impact on partisanship. Thus high levels of awareness of gender inequality are not associated with the emergence of a new cross-cutting political cleavage. It is concluded that inequality of opportunity between men and women does not constitute part of a new politics agenda, nor does it cross-cut other sources of political interests. It is more plausibly seen as a new element of the well-established left-right cleavage. Consequently, it leaves the structure of political divisions relatively intact.     

A Two-edged Sword: The Differential Effect of Religious Belief and Religious Social Context on Attitudes towards Democracy

Different components of the religious experience have differing effects on attitudes towards democracy. Using heteroskedastic maximum likelihood models and data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey for 45 democratic countries, we show that as a personal belief system, religiosity contrasts with democratic principles, generating opposition to democracy while increasing ambivalence towards democratic principles among religious people. Nevertheless, at the group level, religion also serves as a social institution which increases the homogeneity of one??s social network, leading to lower ambivalence, and makes for an active minority group which benefits from the democratic framework, consequently increasing support overall for a democratic regime. This double-edged sword effect explains the mixed results currently found in the literature on religiosity and democracy, and clearly illustrates the multidimensionality of religiosity.     

Prejudice against Gypsies among Spanish adolescents

This article examines the attitudes of Spanish adolescents towards Gypsies, the most discriminated group in Spain, by looking at two distinct attitudinal components: the first, the cognitive component, was studied by measuring a willingness to extend twelve rights to Gypsies; the second, the affective component, by assessing a liking for this group. The research demonstrated that the adolescents' willingness to extend rights to Gypsies was greater than their liking for them. Furthermore, the adolescents were more willing to extend social rights than political ones. Older adolescents, females, those with higher self-esteem, greater political experience, a more resolute endorsement of democratic norms and a stronger identification with a group of friends presented more positive attitudes towards Gypsies. On the other hand, adolescents who were more supportive of violent groups, more strongly identified with the Catholic Church, other religious groups or a soccer team showed more negative attitudes towards Gypsies.     

Two steps forward, one step back? Bias in the 2008 presidential election

The candidates running during the 2008 presidential campaign were the most diverse in America’s history. Prior to this historic election, female and minority candidates had little success in pursuing the presidency. Barack Obama’s victory signals a decline in those barriers. Yet some groups, especially religious ones, continue to face barriers, including Atheists, Mormons and Muslims. The paper takes a close look at bias in presidential voting. This examination will provide an opportunity to consider new hypotheses about why barriers remain, shedding light on the nature and extent of bias within the American public. We consider social desirability, ideology, social contact, and group threat explanations. To test our ideas, we rely on list experiments using national representative samples in 2007 and in 2008. These data provide a unique opportunity to advance our understanding of the 2008 election, in particular, and the role of bias, in general. The results also offer some insight into future presidential elections.     

Cultural resistance and religious legitimacy in colonial Algeria ∗

Starting from a specific historical example, that of colonial Algeria, the paper seeks to examine religious movements which play a political role. Too often such movements have been viewed either as being only political or as utilising religion simply as a mask. It is argued here that religious movements having apparent political functions benefit (to the extent that they are religious) from being studied in contrast to other non-religious movements having similar or comparable functions in the same society at the same time (or in other societies with which comparison would appear justified). It is only in this way that one can see how the relation between the political and religious fields function. It is also in this way alone that we are able to see at what price (that of the relative autonomy of the religious field) the objective domination and manipulation of the religious by the political comes about. In studying societies which claim to be Islamic, it is particularly important to break with orientalist notion of the indivisibility of the religious and political, which obscures the real relationship between the two spheres.     

Who wants the euro – and why? Economic explanations of public attitudes towards a single European currency

The paper looks at whether public attitudes towards a single European currency held in the European Union member states reflect a rational evaluation of the involved benefits and costs. It finds that they do: the looser monetary and fiscal policy was in the past, and the more time a country spent in the EMS, the more citizens welcome the euro. Attitudes towards the euro do not seem consistent with attitudes towards a European Central Bank, however. Upon closer scrutiny, opponents of a single currency appear to be less consistent and less rational in their responses than proponents.     

Die Deutschen und die Türkeifrage: eine Analyse der Einstellungen zum Antrag der Türkei auf Mitgliedschaft in der Europäischen Union

In this paper, I examine the sources of support for Turkey’s EU-entry in the German public. I propose several models and explore their respective empirical validity using survey data gathered in May and June 2005. The analysis shows that neither trust in the federal government nor evaluations of the EU institutions play a role in attitudes toward Turkey’s bid for membership. By contrast, attitudes towards this issue are considerably affected by preferences about EU enlargement and, more strongly, by beliefs about whether Turkey at least partly belongs to Europe. Likewise, when forming attitudes towards Turkey’s bid for EU membership, Germans appear to consider the presumed consequences of including Turkey in the EU. Both East and West Germans are particularly likely to take consequences for regional security into account. The paper concludes with a discussion of several implications for German public opinion on this EU issue.     

Experimenting with a national sample: a Dutch survey of prejudice

The notion that beliefs and attitudes are flexible and often inconsistent has become a commonplace in social and political psychology. Beliefs and attitudes adapt to varying circumstances, issues and argumentative positions. This was the starting point for a Dutch survey on prejudice towards immigrants carried out in 1998. Measures of beliefs and attitudes were constructed in order to capture diverse aspects of prejudice. Some of these measures focused on negative evaluations of the characteristics of immigrant groups, others on the implications of prejudice, such as opinions on the rights and obligations of immigrants. In order to determine the flexibility and variability of prejudice, key aspects of the attitudes were experimentally manipulated, such as the (characteristics of the) target immigrant group, the arguments leading to these attitudes or the external support they received. The results show that prejudice is a variable set of attitudes for which a precise line between subjective bias and realistic concerns about immigrants cannot be easily drawn.     

Neighbourhood Ethnic Diversity and Orientations Toward Muslims in Britain: The Role of Intergroup Contact

A persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self‐reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non‐Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas—regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non‐Muslim members of ethnic minorities—have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims.