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Policy Research
Not All Cues Are Created Equal: The Conditional Impact of Female Candidates on Political Engagement
Lonna Rae Atkeson
November 2003
This article examines how political cues may influence the political participation and engagement of women. It did so by looking at how political races involving women candidates impacted engagement among women citizens. It found that women were much more likely to be politically engaged during intergender competitive races involving women, than noncompetitive races involving women, as well as races with no women present. Men were no more or less engaged during these kinds of races.
Framing gender on the campaign trail: Female gubernatorial candidates and the press
James Devitt
June 2002
This article found that male and female candidates for governor receive roughly the same amounts of media coverage, but they also receive different types of coverage. Male candidates received more issue coverage and female candidates received more personal coverage. However, the study found that much of this may be due to incumbency. The author suggested incomers may receive more personal coverage because they need to be “introduced” to the electorate first. The study also found evidence that male journalists held significant bias towards female candidates, while female journalists held none.
Emotional, Sensitive, and Unfit for Office? Gender Stereotype Activation and Support Female Candidates
Nichole M. Bauer
December 2015
This study measured how gender stereotypes affect support for female candidates. It found that women are not negatively impacted by stereotypes until they are seen to possess stereotypical traits. Both men and women rank female candidates with stereotypical traits lower than those that do not. However, this effect is stronger among men than women. When gender stereotypes are activated for female candidates, they receive less electoral support, but they receive equal support as men when they do not activate these stereotypes.
Cosmopolitan Patriotism as a Civic Ideal
Lior Erez, Cecile Laborde
October 2019
This article is about the recent theoretical debates concerning whether there is compatibility between patriotism and political responsibilities. The article details justification and the scope of global justice. The example used by the author posed an inference that Patriotism blocks off and stands in the way of cosmopolitanism. Although this conclusion may be a possible inference, it doesn’t take into account the level of loyalty from an individual of the United States. The attitudes and beliefs of an emotionally effective cosmopolitan patriot are the sense of collective identification and an attitude of critical engagement.
Access to Dual Enrollment in the United States: Implications for Equity and Stratification
Rivera, Kotok, Ashby
July 2019
Using the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 data set, which is the most recent nationally representative sample of high school students in the U.S., the authors of this article can analyze the distribution of dual enrollment (DE) access throughout the country. The articles provided a history of the policy and a framework of analysis focusing on the “The Three E’s”: Equity, Excellence, and Efficiency. Their study, using logistic regression (based on the data) to estimate the probability of a student enrolling in DE during high school, found that DE participants “tended to differ on demographics such as gender, race, and SES as well as achievement levels. For example, the study found that DE students “were relatively more advantaged.” DE participants also reported having “higher average levels of engagement and social belonging.”
SLAPPing Accountability Out of the Public Sphere
Daniel Murphy, Lee Moerman
August 2018
This paper investigated the disruption to civic accountability by strategic corporate action in the form of SLAPP suits. The use of SLAPPs by corporations is dangerous to civic accountability because it has the potential of acquiring full political control over public discourse. This paper showed how corporations utilize these policies to prevent the public from expressing opposition to corporate behavior. Through strategically organized limitations, corporations impose control over public political discussion and protest. This is examined throughout the paper’s use of legal SLAPP cases. Through these investigations, the paper applies Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action and the “public sphere,” to explore how SLAPPs function within a participatory democratic space and how they result in a “crisis of legitimacy” because of the ways in which they are able to exploit the legal system through SLAPP suits.
SLAPPed by RICO: Corporations Punishing Social Activism
Robert Sprague
January 2018
This article traces the development and effect of state Anti-SLAPP laws. It emphasized that state anti-SLAPP suits can be systematically overturned through existing federal law. Because of this, procedures to discourage these meritless lawsuits do not fully exist yet. Until Congress and the President can approve a federal statute that would end these types of lawsuits against social activists, state anti-SLAPP legislation can only do so much. The article discusses these concerns to provide an analysis of how the U.S. federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) can overturn state policy that protects against SLAPP legislation by treating social activism as a crime. It analyzes different legal cases and their effects under federal law and concludes by providing an analysis of the effects of a federal anti-SLAPP statute if it was put into action.
Cosmopolitan Patriotism as a Civic Ideal
Cecile Laborde, Lior Erez
October 2019
This article is about the recent theoretical debates concerning whether there is compatibility between patriotism and political responsibilities. The article details justification and the scope of global justice. The example used by the author posed an inference that Patriotism blocks off and stands in the way of cosmopolitanism. Although this conclusion may be a possible inference, it doesn’t take into account the level of loyalty from an individual of the United States. The attitudes and beliefs of an emotionally effective cosmopolitan patriot are the sense of collective identification and an attitude of critical engagement.
Why Aren’t There More Republican Women in Congress? Gender, Partisanship, and Fundraising Support in the 2010 and 2012 Elections
Karin E. Kitchens , Michele L. Swers
April 2016
This article examines why there is a gap not only just between the number of men and women in Congress, but also between the number of Democratic and Republican women. The researchers find that this is mainly due to fundraising. While Democratic women often outperform their male counterparts in primary fundraising, the same cannot be said for Republican women. In fact, Republican women often receive less primary funding than men. This is because organizations focused on diversity and electing more women are often very left-leaning (if not explicitly only for Democrats). On top of fundraising issues, Republican women are also less likely to run in the first place than Democratic ones (who are additionally less likely than men of either party), further deepening the divide.
Land Justice as a Historical Diagnostic: Thinking with Detroit
Sara Safransky
March 2018
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Professor Sara Safransky uses the historical, “justice-oriented” Case Study of Detroit to discuss the ways property relations are racialized and class-based. Looking through the prism of the post-recession years of the late aughts and early 2010s, Safransky illustrates the clear trend of gentrification, wealth disparities, and mortgage accessibility that are producing an affordable housing crisis in urban and post-industrial cities nationwide, particularly inflicting members of marginalized racial and sexual communities. Despite these troubling developments, though, the author posits that a new social movement for property rights and tenant rights is springing up to meet the problems of displacement and gentrification head-on.