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A bold re-examination of how political attitudes change in response to information. Many mistakenly believe that it is fruitless to try to persuade those who disagree with them about politics. However, Persuasion in Parallel shows that individuals do, in fact, change their minds in response to information, with partisans on either side of the political aisle updating their views roughly in parallel. This book challenges the dominant view that persuasive information can often backfire because people are supposedly motivated to reason against information they dislike. Drawing on evidence from a series of randomized controlled trials, the book shows that the backfire response is rare to nonexistent. Instead, it shows that most everyone updates in the direction of information, at least a little bit. The political upshot of this work is that the other side is not lost. Even messages we don't like can move us in the right direction.
This comprehensive and authoritative Encyclopedia, featuring entries written by academic experts in the field, explores the diverse topics within the discipline of political sociology. By looking at both macro- and micro-components, questions relating to nation-states, political institutions and their development, and the sources of social and political change such as social movements and other forms of contentious politics, are raised and critically analysed.
Contents INTRODUCTION Listening Practices in a Synodal Church: Interim Reflections from a Symposium in Rome Anna Rowlands ORIGINAL ARTICLES Listening across the Américas: Base Ecclesial Communities and Relational Organizing as Listening Practices for a Synodal Church Richard L. Wood Beyond Synodal Listening: Theological Action Research and Cultures of Conversation Clare Watkins French Catholics and Synodality: Spiritual Sensibilities and the Will to Participate or Abstain Yann Raison de Cleuziou Doing Theology by Listening to Marginalized Voices? Methodological Elements from Encountering Indigenous Families in a Northern Canadian Community Julian Paparella Listening a Synodal Church into Be...
Digital transformation increasingly drives economic growth in the rich capitalist democracies, but orienting production around digital technologies is associated with rising inequality and spreading precarity. In Recoding Power, Rothstein outlines three tactics that workers can use to build power in the current episode of economic transition, where they otherwise lack access to traditional power-resources like unions and institutions for social protection. Drawing on four in-depth case studies of workers responding to mass layoffs at tech firms in the United States and Germany, Rothstein shows how workers can develop creative tactics to "recode" management's discursive techniques for control, transforming them from obstacles into resources for collective action. By centering workers' lived experiences in the workplace, Recoding Power develops an account of existing digital transformation, illustrating how the path of capitalist development is shaped not by economic necessity, but by political creativity.
A pioneering exploration of the unexamined roots and effect of racial sympathy within American politics. There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. This is a book about white people who feel that distress. For decades, political scientists have studied the effects of white racial prejudice, but Jennifer Chudy shows that white racial sympathy for Black Americans’ suffering is also a potent force in modern American politics. Grounded in the history of Black-white relations in America, racial sympathy is unique. It is not equivalent to a low level of racial prejudice or sympathy for other marginalized groups. Some White Folks reveals ho...
A new perspective on policy responsiveness in American government. Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of ordinary citizens’ capacity to influence, let alone control, their governments. Drawing on over eight decades of state-level evidence on public opinion, elections, and policymaking, Devin Caughey and Christopher Warshaw pose a powerful challenge to this pessimistic view. Their research reveals that although American democracy cannot be taken for granted, state policymaking is far more responsive to citizens’ demands than skeptics claim. Although governments respond sluggishly in the short term, over the long term, electoral incentives induce state parties and polit...
How did democracy become so vulnerable in America? Donald Trump is a shrill warning of the political system's fragility, but he alone is not the problem. The vulnerability is broader and deeper-and looms still. Even before Trump ran for president, his disdain for the rules and norms of democracy and the US Constitution was well-known by many prominent Republicans who were unable to stop his nomination. Trump's presidency is the culmination of a series of political decisions since the late 18th century that ceded party nominations to small cliques of ideologues. Democracy Under Fire provides a readable, if disturbing, history of American democracy and proposes recommendations to restore it.
Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth. Democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions imperil its survival. Present political concepts have proven inadequate to meeting these challenges, and their inadequacies are themselves symptoms of the failures of prevailing political, cultural, and ecological stories and practices. This book offers a new vision of ecological and participatory democratic life for a time of crisis. Identifying myth and ritual as key resources for contemporary politics, Earthborn Democracy excavates practices and narratives that illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire ecological renewal. It ...
An enlightening examination of what it means when Americans rely on family and friends to stay on top of politics. Accurate information is at the heart of democratic functioning. For decades, researchers interested in how information is disseminated have focused on mass media, but the reality is that many Americans today do not learn about politics from direct engagement with the news. Rather, about one-third of Americans learn chiefly from information shared by their peers in conversation or on social media. How does this socially transmitted information differ from that communicated by traditional media? What are the consequences for political attitudes and behavior? Drawing on evidence from experiments, surveys, and social media, Taylor N. Carlson finds that, as information flows first from the media then person to person, it becomes sparse, more biased, less accurate, and more mobilizing. The result is what Carlson calls distorted democracy. Although socially transmitted information does not necessarily render democracy dysfunctional, Through the Grapevine shows how it contributes to a public that is at once underinformed, polarized, and engaged.
What is the relationship between evangelical Christianity and democracy in America? In Good News for Common Goods, sociologist Wes Markofski explores how multicultural evangelicals across the United States are addressing race, poverty, inequality, politics, and religious and cultural difference in America's increasingly plural and polarized public arena. Based on extensive original research on multicultural evangelicals active in faith-based community organizing, community development, political advocacy, and public service organizations across the country-including over 90 in-depth interviews with racially diverse evangelical and non-evangelical activists, community leaders, and neighborhoo...