Browsing by Subject "Partisanship"

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    Replication Data for Issues, Groups, Or Idiots? Measuring Which Attributes are Central to Partisan Stereotypes
    (2022-12-19) Myers, C. Daniel; cdmyers@umn.edu; Myers, C. Daniel
    When individuals picture the two parties, what do they think of? Given the dominant understanding of partisanship as a social identity, understanding the content of these mental images – individuals’ stereotypes of the two parties – is essential, as stereotypes play an important role in how identity affects attitudes and behaviors, perceptions of others, and inter-group relations. The existing literature offers three answers to this question: one that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of their constituent social groups, a second that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of policy positions, and a third that claims that people view the two parties in terms of individual traits they associate with partisans. While not mutually exclusive, these theories have different implications for the effects of partisanship and the roots of partisan animosity. This paper adjudicates between these theories by employing a new method that measures stereotype content at the collective and individual level using a conjoint experiment. An important advantage of the conjoint measure is that it allows for the direct comparison of the importance of different attributes, and different kinds of attributes, to the stereotype. Using a pre-registered 2,909-person survey, I evaluate the relative importance of issues, groups, and traits to stereotypes of partisans. I find strong evidence that issue positions and ideological labels are the central elements of partisan stereotypes. I also find that individuals who hold issue-based stereotypes are more affectively polarized than those whose stereotypes are rooted in groups or traits.
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    A Speculative Theory of Politics: Logic of the Party-Form
    (2017-03) Valverde, Sergio
    The dissertation provides a defense of political partisanship from a philosophical perspective by a) arguing that classical and contemporary philosophy have been unable to understand such phenomenon due to its moral and metaphysical prejudices, b) that the Hegelian speculative tradition has been almost alone in defending something like a partisan conception of truth, and that c) Marx and the socialist and communist tradition that followed preserved this speculative conception of truth by tracing it to the social universe and applying it to the practical tasks of party building and organization. In tracing and reinterpreting that history, the dissertation provides a marker on how to connect abstract philosophical questions with practical matters of politics. I believe following Lenin that there is no revolution without revolutionary theory, no politics without philosophy, and conversely, that there is no political philosophy if it does not provide guidelines for political practice and exercise.