Clear as black and white: the effects of ambiguous rhetoric depend on candidate race

Campaign advisors and political scientists have long acknowledged the benefits of ambiguous position taking. We argue, however, that these benefits do not extend to black candidates facing nonblack voters. When a white candidate makes vague statements, many of these voters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy. We test these claims with an original two-wave survey experiment varying the race of male candidates on a national sample of nonblack voters. We find that ambiguity boosts support for white male candidates but not for black male candidates. In fact, black male candidates who make ambiguous statements are actually punished for doing so by racially prejudiced voters. These results clarify limits on the utility of the electoral strategy of ambiguity and identify a key condition under which prejudice shapes voter behavior.https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/696619Accepted manuscrip

Explaining public support for counterproductive homeless policy: the role of disgust

Federal, state, and city governments spend substantial funds on programs intended to aid homeless people, and such programs attract widespread public support. In recent years, however, state and local governments have increasingly enacted policies, such as bans on panhandling and sleeping in public, that are counterproductive to alleviating homelessness. Yet these policies also garner substantial support from the public. Given that programs aiding the homeless are so popular, why are these counterproductive policies also popular? We argue that disgust plays a key role in the resolution of this puzzle. While disgust does not decrease support for aid policies or even generate negative affect towards homeless people, it motivates the desire for physical distance, leading to support for policies that exclude homeless people from public life. We test this argument using survey data, including a national sample with an embedded experiment. Consistent with these expectations, our findings indicate that those respondents who are dispositionally sensitive to disgust are more likely to support exclusionary policies, such as banning panhandling, but no less likely to support policies intended to aid homeless people. Furthermore, media depictions of the homeless that include disease cues activate disgust, increasing its impact on support for banning panhandling. These results help explain the popularity of exclusionary homelessness policies and challenge common perspectives on the role of group attitudes in public life.Accepted manuscrip

Revisiting the Theory of Broken Windows Policing

How has the academy contributed to the horrors of policing in the United States? While many scholars study policing, few do so from a self-reflective position, which would examine how the production of knowledge has often legitimized policing’s harms. As part of a larger effort to encourage researchers to come to terms with the role we have played in facilitating contemporary atrocities, here I reconsider political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George L. Kelling’s 1982 “Broken Windows” essay, as well as its intellectual legacy. Their essay is best known for speculating that police foot-patrols, by cracking down on low-level offenses, will reduce serious crime. While this speculation has become the subject of much public and academic debate, the relationship between policing and crime is only a secondary point in the article. Unfortunately, focusing on this secondary point has led scholarly and public discourse to distort the essay’s arguments. I correct this distortion through a close reading of the essay. Wilson and Kelling argue that the primary objective of the police should be to maintain order rather than to prevent crime or even to enforce the law. As such, police should discourage behavior inconsistent with neighborhood standards (even if it is not criminal) and should also remove “disorderly” people from public life (even if they are not breaking the law). Indeed, Wilson and Kelling actually endorse illegal actions in certain instances: when these actions are committed by either police or vigilantes to fashion and maintain the authoritarian, classist, ableist, and racist order that the authors envision. After discussing how an accurate understanding of the original “Broken Windows” article has the potential to reorient contemporary studies policing, I conclude by locating broken windows theory as an important member of a family of harmful ideas, generated by academics, that have underwritten a wide range of authoritarian policing practices

Henri Temianka Correspondence; (piston)

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/temianka_correspondence/2561/thumbnail.jp

Historical Narrative of a Veteran Service Network Implemented by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University

The purpose of this project was to author a historical narrative of a community engagement program, AmericaServes, implemented by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families. AmericaServes aids veterans, service members, and their families in navigating through the maze of non-profit and public services offered to them. This program uses a model called Collective Impact (Kania & Kramer, Collective Impact, 2011) as its fundamental principal. Since its inception, there has not yet been a proper record chronicling the history of program, the key players involved, and lessons learned from challenges faced during each stage of its evolution. To conduct this project, qualitative and quantitative information was collected from various sources. First, interviews were used as primary sources of information for documenting each stage of the initiative, as well as the challenges, and lessons learned. Individuals chosen for the interviews were IVMF, Accenture, and Unite US staff. Additionally, staff members from the coordination centers in Charlotte, NC, and Pittsburgh, PA were interviewed. Background information was collected from news releases from each organization, and information already collected and used by the IVMF. Information on collective impact, and veteran health and wellness were collected from journal and other published papers from experts in the field. From the data collected, the story of AmericaServes Coordinated Network was separated into three case studies for the three initial cities in the pilot program: NYServes in New York City, NY; NCServes in Charlotte, NC; PAServes in Pittsburgh, PA. From the cross case analysis my recommendations for the AmericaServes staff and for the communities were as follows: AmericaServes Staff: 1) Treat each community with a fresh lens. 2) Actively engage service providers for community feedback. 3) Ensure communication and education to all levers of the service providers. AmericaServes Communities: 1) The coordination center needs to set the example for the community. 2) Educate all levels of your organization

Pride or prejudice? Racial prejudice, Southern heritage, and White support for the Confederate battle flag

Debates about the meaning of Southern symbols such as the Confederate battle emblem are sweeping the nation. These debates typically revolve around the question of whether such symbols represent “heritage or hatred:” racially innocuous Southern pride or White prejudice against Blacks. In order to assess these competing claims, we first examine the historical reintroduction of the Confederate flag in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s; next, we analyze three survey datasets, including one nationally representative dataset and two probability samples of White Georgians and White South Carolinians, in order to build and assess a stronger theoretical account of the racial motivations underlying such symbols than currently exists. While our findings yield strong support for the hypothesis that prejudice against Blacks bolsters White support for Southern symbols, support for the Southern heritage hypothesis is decidedly mixed. Despite widespread denials that Southern symbols reflect racism, racial prejudice is strongly associated with support for such symbols.Accepted manuscrip

Faith in Health and Health in Life

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. It is all too common that people must learn to cope with the knowledge that a loved one is fighting a potentially deadly disease. The advancements of modern medicine, while helping to heal the body, oftentimes neglect the emotional and psychological effects an affliction has on the patient as well as his family and friends. Faith and religion of any sort can be an incredibly effective tool in dealing with such a distressing situation; not as a salve for the physical pain, but in addressing the emotional wounds that may result for both the patient and his loved ones. For example, it is simple to explain the cause of a disease: the mutation of cells or the failure of the immune system. It is infinitely more difficult to explain, and impossible in medical terms, why a certain person was inflicted to begin with. What, in particular, did that person do to “deserve” such misfortune? This is where faith and religion may offer answers, and more importantly comfort, that cannot be found in any physician’s reference book

Why State Constitutions Differ in their Treatment of Same-Sex Marriage

Some states treat a same-sex marriage as legally equal to a marriage between a man and a woman. Other states prohibit legal recognition of same-sex marriages in their constitutions. In every state that has a constitutional restriction against same-sex marriage, the amendment was passed by a popular vote. The conventional wisdom about allowing voter participation in such decisions is that they yield constitutional outcomes that reflect attitude differences across states. We reexamine the attitude-amendment relationship and find it to be weaker than expected. In particular, we show that states vary in the costs they impose on constituencies that desire constitutional change. Some states impose very low costs (i.e., a simple majority of voters is sufficient for change). Other states impose very high costs (i.e., substantial legislative and voter supermajoriries are requires). We find that variations in the legal status of same-sex marriage across US states is better explained by these variations in costs than they are by differences in public opinion. Our method yields an improved explanation of why states differ in their constitutional treatment of same-sex marriage today. Our findings have distinct implications for people who wish to understand and/or change the future status of same-sex couples in state constitutions

The characterization of Thomas Jefferson Durgin (The Landlord at Lion\u27s Head: William Dean Howells)

This thesis is an examination of the characterization of Thomas Jefferson Durgin, the protagonist of The Landlord at Lion\u27s Head by William Dean Howells. As a character study rather than an evaluation of the novel itself, its objective is to examine and establish Durgin as the aesthetic success which Howells considered him

Irrigation Water Value Scenarios for 2015: Application to Guadalquivir River

This paper reviews the application of a scenario for the 2015 agricultural policy and markets for the irrigated agriculture in Europe. Scenarios for irrigated agriculture 2015 are also described in detail including Reformed CAP and biomass demand. It is applied at the basin level for the Guadalquivir River in southern Spain. The methodology is based upon residual value of water and it combines budget and farm analysis at municipality level, with the Guadalquivir basin divided at 50 ‘comarcas’; in each of them 24 possible crops are selected with specific ‘comarca’ data bases. The 2015 scenario studies the present level of water use and value, and makes an analysis for 2015.This model allows the knowledge of water value and irrigated agriculture at ‘comarca’ level and ‘aggregated basin level’.Water pricing, Irrigated agriculture, Value of water, Scenario analysis, Agricultural and Food Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,