Infections and deaths associated with COVID-19 show a high degree of heterogeneity across different populations. A thorough understanding of population-level predictors of such outcomes is crucial ...for devising better-targeted and more appropriate public health preparedness measures. While demographic, economic, and health-system capacity have featured prominently in recent work, cultural, and behavioral characteristics have largely been overlooked. However, cultural differences shape both the public policy response and individuals' behavioral responses to the crisis in ways that can impact infection dynamics and key health outcomes. To address this gap, we used meta-analytic methods to explore the global variability of three public health outcomes (i.e., crude test positivity, case/infection fatality, and mortality risk) during the first wave of the pandemic. This set of analyses identified several cultural/behavioral attributes (e.g., uncertainty avoidance and long-term vs. short-term normative orientation) as independent predictors of public health outcomes after adjusting for key demographic, political, economic, and health-system-related predictors; which were robust in sensitivity analyses. In conclusion, this study clearly demonstrates that cultural attributes do in fact account for some of the global disparities in COVID-19-attributed health outcomes. As a consequence, policymakers should more explicitly consider a society's cultural attributes alongside other important parameters such as demographic characteristics and health system constraints in order to develop better tailored and more effective policy responses.
This research examines the influence of political candidates’ personality dispositions and constituency characteristics on their assessments of the needs of immigrants and religious minorities. ...Previous research, drawing on data from citizens, links personality differences to attitudes toward diversity and support for minority communities. Extending this research to candidates during an ongoing election campaign, this study examines the interaction between constituency diversity and politicians’ intrinsic motivations to recognize the interests of immigrants and religious minorities. Using data from a unique candidate survey during the 2018 municipal elections in two large Canadian provinces (N = 1,073), results show that personality traits provide an intrinsic motivation, independent of candidates’ descriptive characteristics or the level of diversity in their constituency, to recognize a higher level of support needed by members of these diverse communities. More agreeable candidates are consistently more likely to acknowledge that more should be done for immigrants and religious minorities whereas the negative influence of conscientiousness on minority recognition is suppressed in highly diverse constituencies. The results extend previous research on personality and intergroup dynamics and situate candidates’ recognition of the needs of others as an important antecedent to political representation.
Populism's electoral success has been linked to socio-economic crises and to inflammatory political discourse. However, little is known of populist attitudes in contexts in which these supply-side ...factors are not salient. The present article diverges from the conception of populism that sees it as being activated or fuelled by contextual factors and, rather, conceives populism as an ideological attitudinal dimension that can have an impact on vote choice when supply-side factors are not salient. Using the particular context of the 2015 Canadian federal election as a case to test this theory, empirical analyses support this conception of populism by demonstrating that populist attitudes can be relatively prominent and even impact vote choice in a setting in which the traditional supply-side factors to activate or fuel populism are not salient. Ultimately, populism is shown to be an important demand-side attitudinal dimension even when there is little or no fertile ground for it.
Intergroup sentiments have been shown to be an important determinant of social stability in multinational countries. The present study explores the present state of linguistic intergroup tensions in ...Canada to contribute to the understanding of outgroup attitudes among minorities and majorities. Four main findings are derived from the results of empirical analyses on survey data. (1) Cultural threat impacts outgroup attitudes in both the national minority and the national majority. (2) Education has a strong impact on feelings towards the linguistic outgroup. (3) Unexpectedly, age does not display a statistical influence on intergroup attitudes. (4) Specifically relating to Canada, intergroup feelings between Francophones and Anglophones have over the last quarter century become considerably more positive, both groups hold quite positive attitudes towards one another.
This study investigates the relationship between personality and political careers. Drawing on a unique survey of municipal candidates from two Canadian provinces (N = 1193) and supplemented with ...survey data from citizens (N = 1665), we test for personality differences in candidate recruitment and electoral success. Results reveal significant personality differences between candidates and citizens, as well as between winning and losing candidates. Compared to other citizens, candidates are higher in extraversion, openness to experience, and emotional stability. As for the difference between electoral winners and losers, openness to experience is associated with a slightly higher likelihood of losing an election. These differences in personality traits emerge independent of other background characteristics such as age, education, and gender. Ultimately, the psychological dispositions that influence running for office and winning an election are not the same.
This article studies support for upper chamber reforms in multinational countries. In his seminal work on the topic, Lijphart argues that the upper chamber can be used to accommodate minority groups. ...However, to date, we still know very little about the perception of minority populations of this institution. We explore this topic building upon an original survey experiment conducted in Scotland and Quebec, where there has been a recent debate about reforming the upper chamber. The results demonstrate that the national minorities in the UK and Canada strongly support a reform of the upper chamber. Also, we find that a reform that would increase the democratic legitimacy of the institution is more popular than one that would foster the regional representation of the minority group, even among respondents who report a strong regional identity.
While religiosity can help immigrants maintain their ethnic identity, some have argued that it can hinder national identification with the host country. This study looks at the relationship of ...religiosity with both German and Turkish identification among Germans of Turkish descent, the largest minority group in Germany. Adopting a three-dimensional conception of religiosity, it distinguishes between individual, subjective and communal forms. The results of ordered logistic regression analyses underscore a significantly positive relationship between subjective religiosity and Turkish identification. Concerning German identity, the findings do not show, in the full model, any form of religiosity having a significant relationship with German identity. The results demonstrate that not all forms of religiosity are of equal importance for identity formation. Furthermore, the findings also call into question the importance of religiosity on the identity formation of allochthonous groups, especially when compared to other factors.
The Kosovo War (1998–1999) that played out between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia is often portrayed as an ethnic conflict because it involved different ethnic groups in ...confrontation with each other. This characteristic presupposes that ethnicity played an important role in the Kosovo conflict, but is that actually the case? To explore this question, the experience of Albanians in Kosovo is compared with that of Hungarians in Vojvodina. The latter formed the second largest minority in Serbia, behind Albanians, and their institutional and legal position greatly paralleled that of Kosovar Albanians. Despite this, Hungarians experienced far less conflict with the Serbian majority than did their Albanian counterparts.
The language of conflict Medeiros, Mike
Ethnicities,
10/2017, Letnik:
17, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Intergroup conflicts represent a risk of social instability and even violence. Understanding the reasons that push group members to adopt a certain level of conflict intensity is of the utmost ...importance. In the hope of shedding new light into this phenomenon, this paper explores how ethnic conflict intensity may be influenced by linguistic vitality, the social health of a language. The paper presents a theoretical model in which low and high levels of linguistic vitality are presented as being linked to lower conflict intensity than moderate vitality levels. The results of multilevel modeling lend support to this hypothesis for language-based ethnic tensions in a general context and, more precisely, within countries.
Fears related to a group's culture can negatively impact national attachment. This article brings new insight into minority groups' national attachment by empirically exploring the influence of ...language threat perceptions on it. Quebec is used as a case because of its longstanding tensions with Canada. The results of the analyses not only demonstrate that perceiving French as threatened positively influences Quebecers' support for independence and negatively impacts their feelings towards Canada, but the findings also permit the conclusion that it is an individual's linguistic perceptions that directly determine their national attachment rather than simply their linguistic group membership.
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