A model of ideological struggle

A general model for opinion formation and competition, like in ideological struggles is formulated. The underlying set is a closed one, like a country but in which the population size is variable in time. Several ideologies compete to increase their number of adepts. Such followers can be either converted from one ideology to another or become followers of an ideology though being previously ideologically-free. A reverse process is also allowed. We consider two kinds of conversion: unitary conversion, e.g. by means of mass communication tools, or binary conversion, e.g. by means of interactions between people. It is found that the steady state,when it exists, depends on the number of ideologies. Moreover when the number of ideologies increases some tension arises between them. This tension can change in the course of time. We propose to measure the ideology tensions through an appropriately defined scale index.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 46 references, working pape

Frozen in Place: European American Ideologies and the Inuit

It has been claimed by Hugh Brody that European Americans maintain strong ideological connections between Inuit people and the Arctic environments they inhabit. I expand upon this claim, giving three primary ideological connections that tie the Inuit directly to their environments. These are termed the natural, temporal, and material connections. Textual examples are given to illustrate each type of connection. I also show how each ideological connection serves to disempower the Inuit by situating them within the confines of nature while empowering European American patriarchs who conceive themselves as existing outside of or beyond nature. These three connections, working together with other ideological tools, serve to subordinate the Inuit and other Arctic peoples to larger political and economic powers. In the conclusion, I suggest that these ideological connections must be examined, understood, and abandoned in order to improve the quality of life of the Inuit

Defusing Ideological Defenses in Biology

Ideological language is widespread in theoretical biology. Evolutionary game theory has been defended as a worldview and a leap of faith, and sexual selection theory has been criticized for what it posits as basic to biological nature. Views such as these encourage the impression of ideological rifts in the field. I advocate an alternative interpretation, whereby many disagreements between different camps of biologists merely reflect methodological differences. This interpretation provides a more accurate and more optimistic account of the state of play in the field of biology. It also helps account for biologists' tendency to embrace ideological positions

Book review: Handbook of early childhood literacy

Joanne Larson and Shira May Peterson highlight the paucity of research on how talk is used in pre-school settings compared to school settings. They locate the wealth of research studies on talk and discourse in formal learning settings in terms of the different ideological positions adopted. They use two continua; Streets (1995) distinction between ideological and autonomous conceptions of literacy and whether the function of literacy is seen as fixed or fluid to separate the studies into four quadrants, each with a distinctive ideological base. This means that their analysis does not highlight the groundbreaking impact of individual studies, but it does illustrate very effectively how ideological assumptions shape both research design and the resulting recommendations for practice. It also highlights some key research problems: that ideological rigidity means researchers can miss opportunities to build on each others' findings

Ideology, Shirking, and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives

This paper examines how the incumbency advantage is related to ideological voting or legislative shirking that causes the incumbents to diverge from the preference of the median voter using aggregate data for the U.S. House of Representatives between 1948 and 2000. I find that a rise in the incumbency advantage manifested in higher reelection rates increases the ideological divergence or polarization the U.S. House of Representatives. I also find that the average number of bills per congressman falls with greater ideological polarization. These findings suggest that ideological and non-ideological shirking rise with the incumbent reelection rate.

A Lack of Ideological Diversity is Killing Social Research

The lack of ideological diversity in social research, paired with the lack of engagement with citizens and policymakers who come from other places on the ideological spectrum, poses an existential risk to the continued credibility, utility and even viability of social research. The need for reform is urgent

- IDEOLOGICAL VERSUS DOWNSIAN POLITICAL COMPETITION

We analyze a one-dimensional model of spatial political competition with two parties and uncertainty on the distribution of voters types. We assume that parties are formed by regular members and professional politicians; members care about the policy enacted, while professional politicians, on the contrary, only care about winning the election. We consider two possibilities: that members choose the political platforms and that professional politicians are the ones who choose such platforms. The expected utility for party members is analyzed under these two cases. We find that when professional politicians have no informational advantage, it is on the interest of both parties to let professional politicians choose the platforms. Only in the case in which professional politicians have much better information than the members of the party about voters is it possible that party members obtain a greater expected utility choosing the platforms themselves rather than letting the professional politicians choose.party competition, delegation, asymmetric information

Rhetoric in Legislative Bargaining with Asymmetric Information

In this paper we analyze a legislative bargaining game in which parties privately informed about their preferences bargain over an ideological and a distributive decision. Communication takes place before a proposal is offered and majority rule voting determines the outcome. When the private information pertains to the ideological intensities but the ideological positions are publicly known, it may not be possible to have informative communication from the legislator who is ideologically distant from the proposer, but the more moderate legislator can communicate whether he would "compromise" or fight" on ideology. If instead the private information pertains to the ideological positions, then all parties may convey whether they will "cooperate," "compromise," or fight" on ideology. When the uncertainty is about ideological intensity, the proposer is always better on making proposals for the two dimensions together despite separable preferences, but when the uncertainty is about ideological positions, bundling can result in informational loss which hurts the proposer.

Ideological diversity, hostility, and discrimination in philosophy

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline