Since the late 1990s, federal government programs have given billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies and has subsidized the purchase of surveillance drones, lethal robots, and facial recognition software. The assessments used to determine which local departments to target rely on factors that are highly correlated with non-White populations.
Employee Hardship Funds (EHFs) are a fast-growing form of employer-driven worker mutual aid. Over 300 firms, including nine of the ten largest retailers, maintained an EHF as of December 2022. However, little is known about their effects. Political scientist John Ahlquist will examine the extent to which EHFs affect workers’ feelings of financial security, workplace attachment, and support for unionization. He will conduct surveys and survey experiments for his study.
Racially restrictive housing covenants – used by white homeowners to prevent migration of people of color into their neighborhoods – contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation, social stratification, and inequality. Yet, policy proposals to correct these historical wrongs have not gained broad support. Political scientist Bryant Moy will investigate whether awareness of racially restrictive housing covenants bolsters support for reparations. He will conduct a nationally representative survey experiment for his study.
People of Color (PoC) differ by their time and mode of arrival in the U.S., their contact with institutions, and individual and group experiences with discrimination. This social category aims to capture the collective identity of different low-status groups, as a shared sense of being treated differently than Whites might lead to greater solidarity with other PoC and increase support for policies that benefit other minoritized groups. To what extent does inter-minority solidarity translate into political action?
In August 2022, the Biden Administration announced plans to forgive billions in student loan debt. Proponents of the plans see it as responsible public policy, while critics see it as placing an unfair burden on taxpayers. Political scientist Alessandro Del Ponte and colleagues will examine the factors that are associated with attitudes toward loan forgiveness using a nationally representative survey experiment of 8,000 respondents.
Research on the effectiveness of prejudice reduction techniques has shown mixed results, and rarely explores their effects on policy attitudes. One method of reducing prejudice draws on the psychological theory of perspective-taking, which posits that encouraging individuals to adopt the perspective of out-group members can decrease prejudice towards the group.
The U.S. is undergoing a historic demographic shift as, collectively, Asian, Black, Latino, multiracial, and other people of color are projected to become the numerical majority. To date, most social science research has employed controlled experiments to study the response of non-Hispanic Whites to this projected change. This project will center people of color and take advantage of a natural experiment—the release of new census projections in 2023—to understand the effects of real-world exposure to racial projections on public opinion.
Books
Democracy's Destruction?
Changing Perceptions of the Supreme Court, the Presidency, and the Senate after the 2020 Election
Publication Date
1 in. × 1 in.
300 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-865-8
About This Book
“James Gibson tackles one of the most pressing issues in contemporary American politics: the health and likely trajectory of our constitutional democracy. His extensive and careful analysis of the 2020 presidential contest, and its aftermath, lead him to a startling conclusion. By and large, Americans’ faith in their political institutions held steady. Scholars, and anyone concerned about the future of our democracy, should read this fascinating book.”
—VINCENT HUTCHINGS, Hanes Walton Jr. Collegiate Professor, Political Science Department and Department of Afro American and African Studies (by courtesy), University of Michigan
“James Gibson advances a cogent analysis showing that our national political institutions remain robust despite efforts to undermine them during and after the 2020 election. Loaded with critical empirical findings and normative implications, Democracy’s Destruction? is a book one will want to keep handy as we sort through future contentious elections and risks to democratic norms and institutions.”
—BRANDON BARTELS, professor of political science, George Washington University
On January 6, 2021, an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. This assault on America’s democratic system was orchestrated by then President Donald Trump, abetted by his political party, and supported by a vocal minority of the American people. Did denial of the election results and the subsequent insurrection inflict damage on American political institutions? While most pundits and many scholars say yes, they have offered little rigorous evidence for this assertion. In Democracy’s Destruction? political scientist James L. Gibson uses surveys from representative samples of the American population to provide a more informed answer to the question.
Focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court, the presidency, and the U.S. Senate, Gibson reveals that how people assessed the election, the insurrection, and even the second Trump impeachment has little connection to their willingness to view American political institutions as legitimate. Instead, legitimacy is grounded in more general commitments to democratic values and support for the rule of law. On most issues of institutional legitimacy, those who denied the election results and supported the insurrection were not more likely to be alienated from political institutions and to consider them illegitimate.
Democracy’s Destruction? offers rigorous analysis of the effect of the Trump insurrection on the state of U.S. democracy today. While cautioning that Trump and many Republicans may be devising schemes to subvert the next presidential election more effectively, the book attests to the remarkable endurance of American political institutions.
JAMES L. GIBSON is Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis.