A growing number of scholars have documented how social identities defined by an attachment to place influence individuals’ understandings about political power and representation. Drawing on this theoretical framework, we explore how place-based identities matter for American federalism by documenting how attachments to the American states alter individuals’ decisions to leave, or exit, as well as to welcome newcomers into their local communities. Using a set of conjoint experiments designed to measure individual attitudes about place, politics, and America’s federal polity, we find evidence that Americans hold deep and consequential attitudes about the places in which they live. Our evidence confirms that state identities are still highly relevant in shaping American federalism and the competitive pressures between intergovernmental jurisdictions. While federalism may encourage individuals to leave, federalism also nourishes place-specific attachments, motivating people to stay.
This article considers the ways in which partisanship structured public attitudes about the United States’ multiple governments as each tried to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during the spring and summer of 2020. The evidence shows that Democrats and Republicans both made distinctions among their local, state, and federal governments, assigning them different functional responsibilities. Yet, members of the two parties did not agree on that division of intergovernmental responsibility. Rather, across a variety of issues, polarized partisan identities structured beliefs about the operation and efficacy of the American federal system’s ability to contend with the spread of coronavirus. Moreover, these beliefs did not stem from prior ideological commitments or the different composition of Democratic or Republican communities. Instead, party leaders proved especially capable of shifting public attitudes on questions of federal versus state authority through their shifting rhetoric and strategic framing.
How did a country once praised or blamed for its pragmatism came to be so sharply divided? What Happened to the Vital Center? demonstrates that American politics has become so rancorous because it has been unable to heal wounds opened up by 1960s-era protest and institutional change. As various chapters document, this tumultuous decade resulted in the joining of presidential power, social activism, and high stakes battles over domestic and foreign policy. Surveying the course of American history, the book further shows that previous social divides had been negotiated in a constitutional system buttressed by strong partisan organizations. But beginning in the 1960s, both Democrats and Republicans came to embrace the myth of presidential grandeur, sacrificing collective party responsibility on the altar of executive aggrandizement. While many scholars suggest that the answer to our current predicament is greater presidential power, this work shows that doubling down on the myth of transcendent presidential leadership is likely to exacerbate, not heal, our wounds. Instead, the authors recommend that a reconstituted party system may once again permit political leaders to act as “gatekeepers” to the system, and prevent the worst excesses to democracy that now routinely roil the country.
The proliferation of technology has changed the ways we are able to interact with the world, and, in turn, how we are able to interact with others. In recent years, online dating applications have become commonplace for connecting with others in search of romantic relationships. This paper reflects on the phenomenology of the first date after connecting online and explores several aspects of this unique experience of introduction, expectation, and relation. What occurs between two people online that leads them to suggest meeting for the first time in the real world? How does communicating online differ from face to face encounters? Exploring the phenomenology of the first date after connecting online invites us to wonder about the nature of dating today and in the past.
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