Racial Group Affinity and Religious Giving: Evidence from Congregation-Level Panel Data

Since giving to religious organizations constitutes a substantial portion of total charitable giving, an understanding of the determinants of religious giving is a vital policy concern. Drawing on a novel congregation-level panel dataset, we examine whether religious giving is driven by preferences for racial group affinity, that is, loyalty to one's own racial group. To address endogeneity concerns, we combine a fixed effects estimation framework with an instrumental variable approach. We find robust evidence consistent with the racial group affinity motive: a decrease in the percent of whites in the county is ceteris paribus associated with a decrease in the total giving receipts collected by predominantly white congregations

The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative: Investigating Immigration and Social Policy Preferences. Executive Report.

In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of selective model reporting and lack of replicability. The heterogeneity of countries obscures attempts to clearly define data-generating models. P-hacking and HARKing lurk among standard research practices in this area.This project employs crowdsourcing to address these issues. It draws on replication, deliberation, meta-analysis and harnessing the power of many minds at once. The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative carries two main goals, (a) to better investigate the linkage between immigration and social policy preferences across countries, and (b) to develop crowdsourcing as a social science method. The Executive Report provides short reviews of the area of social policy preferences and immigration, and the methods and impetus behind crowdsourcing plus a description of the entire project. Three main areas of findings will appear in three papers, that are registered as PAPs or in process

The Butterfly Effect: The Iraq War and Asylum Seeking in Sweden

On the fifth anniversary of “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” I discuss the implications of the U.S. invasion of Iraq for other countries. By 2006, 95% percent of the four million displaced Iraqis found refuge in other Middle Eastern countries. Most of the rest sought asylum in Europe. In 2006, Iraqis became the largest nationality to seek asylum in Europe. That year, over 40% of all Iraqi applications for asylum in Europe went to Sweden

Identifying Varieties of Nationalism : A Critique of a Purely Inductive Approach

Most theoretical and empirical approaches to nationalism not only distinguish between ethnic and civic notions of national belonging, but also differentiate national identity from national hubris, pride, and attachment. In this article, we examine recently published research on nationalist sentiments in the United States that takes a different approach. The study in question has already become quite influential in the field and has the potential to change how we conceptualize and operationalize attitudes about the nation. In this research note, we revisit its analytical strategy and exploratory methods. We ask two questions. First, does this study allow us to draw conclusions about American nationalism? To answer this, we replicate the original model and then execute additional postestimation analyses, whose results undermine the study's main conclusions. Second, we investigate whether judicious revisions to the study's model generate results that would lead us to the article's same conclusions. 385 additional models lend no support. Based on this evidence, we argue that the original study's conclusions stem from a misinterpretation of its LCA analysis, as our own analyses demonstrate that there is no empirical basis for its claims

The polarizing effect of anti-immigrant violence on radical right sympathies in Germany

While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective violence targeting immigrants raise the salience of the immigrant/native boundary, which activates both positive and negative views of immigrants and makes these attitudes more cognitively accessible and politically relevant. This argument implies that exposure to violence against immigrants should strengthen existing prejudice (or empathy) toward immigrants and engender feelings of affinity (or antipathy) for radical right parties. Analyses of the German portion of the European Social Survey (ESS 2014 − 2019) and the Anti-Refugee Violence in Germany (ARVIG 2014 − 2017) datasets reveal a powerful interaction effect: exposure to higher levels of collective violence increased the probability of feeling closest to radical right parties among those who held neutral, negative, and extremely negative views of immigrants. However, these events were not associated with radical right sympathies among those holding pro-immigrant attitudes. We conclude that when violence against immigrants resonates with public opinion on immigrants, it opens new political opportunities for radical right parties. These findings should inform future research on the politicization of international migration, especially studies investigating how anti-immigrant attitudes translate into political outcomes

Argumentum ad populum : A reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio

Our reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that the model being advanced fits the data. We present additional evidence supporting our original critique. Second, we discuss whether their new analyses bolster their original results and conclusions. Third, because their own results actually suggest that different levels of American nationalism exist rather than qualitatively different types, we question their claim of convergent validity. In short, we stand by our original critique

Immigrant Presence, Group Boundaries and Support for the Welfare State in Western European Societies

The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries; weaker for those with conditionally inclusive boundaries based on reciprocity; and weakest or non-existent for those with inclusive group boundaries. Group boundaries should interact with material self-interest leading individuals with less material security who are more likely to face social risks to be more supportive of the welfare state. Using data from the 4th European Social Survey linked to regional and national data we find that group boundary salience plays a large moderating role in the relationship of immigration and native support for the welfare state, and that this role is intricately linked to material self-interest. Group dynamics should therefore be viewed in conjunction with existing structural welfare state theories as opposed to an alternative or isolated mechanism

Immigrant presence, group boundaries and support for the welfare state in Western European societies

The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries; weaker for those with conditionally inclusive boundaries based on reciprocity; and weakest or non-existent for those with inclusive group boundaries. Group boundaries should interact with material self-interest leading individuals with less material security who are more likely to face social risks to be more supportive of the welfare state. Using data from the 4th European Social Survey linked to regional and national data we find that group boundary salience plays a large moderating role in the relationship of immigration and native support for the welfare state, and that this role is intricately linked to material self-interest. Group dynamics should therefore be viewed in conjunction with existing structural welfare state theories as opposed to an alternative or isolated mechanism

Does higher education have liberalizing or inoculating effects? : A panel study of anti-immigrant sentiment before, during, and after the European migration crisis

Previous research has consistently shown a negative correlation between education and anti-immigrant sentiment. This association is most pronounced when distinguishing between adults with higher education and those without a tertiary degree. Yet it remains unclear whether educational attainment actually matters for attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. This article investigates the so-called liberalizing effect of education on adults' attitudes towards immigrants by taking into account individual, regional, and period effects. Using 12 waves of the Norwegian Citizen Panel (2013-2020) combined with contextual data from Statistics Norway, we assess the effects of: 1) educational attainment at the individual level; 2) the expansion of higher education at the regional level; and 3) higher education during a time of social upheaval. Results from multilevel cross-classified, repeated measurement models show that within-individual and within-county changes in educational attainment have a small but liberalizing effect on attitudes. Further, individuals with at least 3-4 years of university education do not react as strongly to the highly salient European migration crisis than those with lower levels of education. This finding suggests that higher education inhibits perceptions of threat that may manifest during "big events" such as a dramatic increase in asylum seeking. We interpret these novel results as evidence of an inoculating effect, in that higher education protects individuals against whatever instinct exists to react strongly during such crises.