Attitudes of Canadians toward affirmative action: Opposition,value pluralism,and nonattitudes

Set against a backdrop of current public policy and case law, this study investigates Canadian attitudes toward affirmative action among both citizens and decision makers. We find low levels of support for such programs across a variety of contexts and intended beneficiaries, but we also discover that opinion on both sides of the issue is rather soft, for large portions of those taking positions on the matter are willing to reconsider their views when prompted. We interpret this finding as an indication of what Philip Converse has called nonattitudes. Thus, a substantial portion of Canadians appear to hold no genuine attitudes on the question of affirmative action and are relatively open to persuasion. In contrast, the preferences of those with stable attitudes are rooted in the tradeoff between values of equality and merit. Implications for policy activists in this issue area are discussed.The research reported here is part of a large project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Grant No. 411-85-001). The Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto has provided a home, and indispensable support, for the Charter Project. This research was also facilitated by a contribution from the Solicitor General of Canada to the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. Our thanks also go to Robert Vipond for his help in clarifying our concepts.     

Explaining judicial reform outcomes in new democracies: The importance of authoritarian legalism in Argentina,Brazil, and Chile

Recent judicial reforms after democratic transition have been substantial and relatively successful in Chile, but much less so in Argentina and Brazil. This article traces this variation in outcomes to the legal strategies of the prior authoritarian regimes. The Brazilian military regime of 1964–1985 was gradualist in its approach to the law, and had a high degree of civilian-military consensus in the legal sphere. It was not highly repressive in its deployment of lethal violence, and this combination of factors contributed to a gradualist and consensual transition in which judicial reform was not placed high on the political agenda. The Argentine case of military rule between 1976 and 1983 was almost the opposite. The military sidestepped and even attacked the judiciary, engaging in almost entirely extrajudicial violence. This generated a “backlash” reform movement after the transition to democracy that was mostly retrospective and only partially successful. In Chile, in contrast, the military engineered a radical break with previous legality, engaged in violent repression, but made considerable efforts to reconstruct a judicial order. It was in the aftermath of this situation that reformers were able to push through a prospective and relatively successful judicial reform. This article's findings suggest that judicial reform may be more likely to succeed where the prior authoritarian regime was both repressive and legalistic, as in Chile, Poland, and South Africa, than where high degrees of repression were applied largely extrajudicially, as in Argentina, Cambodia, and Guatemala, or where the authoritarian regime was legalistic but not highly repressive, as in Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines.     

Book reviews

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Candidates' Ideological Locations,Abstention, and Turnout in U.S. Midterm Senate Elections

Many spatial models of voting suggest that citizens are more likely to abstain when they feel indifferent toward the candidates or alienated from them. In presidential elections, previous research offers evidence that alienation and indifference affect individuals' probabilities of voting. We find evidence that indifference and alienation also affect the decision to vote in midterm Senate elections, a context not previously explored. These individual-level effects imply that candidates' ideological locations should influence aggregate turnout by affecting the proportions of citizens who feel indifferent toward or alienated from the candidates. Our aggregate-level analysis supports this (at least in contests featuring two previous and/or future members of Congress). Our findings underscore the importance of the electoral context for understanding citizen behavior and suggest that elections featuring at least one centrist candidate may be normatively appealing since they stimulate participation.     

Interstate Cooperation: The Roles of the State Attorneys General

State attorneys general are major participants in intergovernmentalrelations in the United States. This article presents six modelsthat may explain their interactions with each other and teststhree hypotheses associated with two models. Their interactionscomport with the cooperative and the innovation-diffusion models.Only limited evidence supports the hostility model and its associatedhypothesis. No evidence supports the mercantilist and competitivemodels. The response from only one attorney general suggestedhis actions are based on the benign neglect model. The conclusionis drawn that the cooperative activities of the attorneys generalhave produced a more harmonious federal system in terms of enforcementpolicies.