Using data drawn from the adult population in Northern Ireland (N = 1,515), this article examines the relationship between perceived intergroup threat and psychological well-being, taking into ...consideration the mediating role of social identification and the moderating role of political conflict exposure. Results by and large confirmed our predictions that perceived threat would be directly associated with poorer well-being but would also exert a positive indirect effect on well-being via increased social identification. However, these relationships were dependent on individuals' prior conflict exposure, such that the positive indirect relationship between perceived threat and psychological well-being emerged only for two subpopulations: individuals who had high direct and high indirect exposure to conflict, and individuals who had low direct, but high indirect conflict exposure. No indirect effects emerged for individuals with relatively lower conflict exposure. Results are discussed with regard to their implications for research on the consequences of intergroup threat in political conflict settings and beyond.
A key characteristic of democratic politics is competition between groups, first of all political parties. Yet, the unavoidably partisan nature of political conflict has had too little influence on ...scholarship on political psychology. Despite more than 50 years of research on political parties and citizens, we continue to lack a systematic understanding of when and how political parties influence public opinion. We suggest that alternative approaches to political parties and public opinion can be best reconciled and examined through a richer theoretical perspective grounded in motivated reasoning theory. Clearly, parties shape citizens' opinions by mobilizing, influencing, and structuring choices among political alternatives. But the answer to when and how parties influence citizens' reasoning and political opinions depends on an interaction between citizens' motivations, effort, and information generated from the political environment (particularly through competition between parties). The contribution of motivated reasoning, as we describe it, is to provide a coherent theoretical framework for understanding partisan influence on citizens' political opinions. We review recent empirical work consistent with this framework. We also point out puzzles ripe for future research and discuss how partisanmotivated reasoning provides a useful point of departure for such work.
Does the occurrence of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, volcanic eruption, tsunami, flood, hurricane, epidemic, heat wave, and/or plague increase the risk of violent civil conflict in a ...society? This study uses available data for 187 political units for the period 1950-2000 to systematically explore this question that has received remarkably little attention in the voluminous literature on civil war. We find that natural disasters significantly increase the risk of violent civil conflict both in the short and medium term, specifically in low- and middle-income countries that have intermediate to high levels of inequality, mixed political regimes, and sluggish economic growth. Rapid-onset disasters related to geology and climate pose the highest overall risk, but different dynamics apply to minor as compared to major conflicts. The findings are robust in terms of the use of different dependent and independent variables, and a variety of model specifications. Given the likelihood that rapid climate change will increase the incidence of some types of natural disasters, more attention should be given to mitigating the social and political risks posed by these cataclysmic events.
Social conflicts have repercussions on the mental health of the economically active population.
To adapt and validate the Financial Stress Scale in the context of social conflicts (ESECPS).
An ...instrumental study involving 2,242 owners of small and medium enterprises (50.9% women), aged between 18 and 74 years old, selected through a non-probabilistic purposive sampling. The participants were recruited across three regions of Peru during periods of protests and strikes against the incumbent Peruvian government. The instrument for adaptation was the financial stress scale EFEmp-Cov19, created in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact.
All items proved to be clear, relevant, and representative (V > 0.70). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed the existence of one underlying factor across the 11 items (KMO = 0.962, Bartlett = 5434.3; df = 55;
< 0.001). However, for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), items 4 and 11 were removed, resulting in support for a unidimensional model with 9 items (
2 = 262.73, df = 23,
< 0.001; RMR = 0.022; TLI = 0.972; CFI = 0.980; and RMSEA = 0.072). Regarding reliability, a very high value was found (
= 0.92).
The ESECPS demonstrates adequate psychometric properties, making it a suitable measure to assess financial stress among Peruvian entrepreneurs facing economic instability and financial threats in the context of social conflicts.
Contemporary large-scale land deals are widely understood as involving the expulsion of people who, in turn, struggle instinctively to resist dispossession This is certainly true in many instances. ...Yet this chain of events evidently does not always occur: large-scale land deals do not always result in people losing the land, and many of those who face expulsion do not necessarily respond with the kind of resistance often expected of them. Indeed, much evidence shows that the nature of and responses to big land deals can (and do) vary across and within 'local communities'. Taking off analytically from a relatively narrow selection of cases, the expulsion-resistance scenario is too often assumed rather than demonstrated, thereby leaving many inconvenient facts undetected and unexplained. This suggests a need to step back and problematise the variable and uneven responses 'from below' to land grabbing, both within and between communities. This paper offers an initial exploration into why poor people affected by contemporary land deals (re)act the way they do, noting how issues and processes unite and divide them. This helps explain variation in political trajectories in the context of land grabbing today.
Studying Native American reservations, and their historical formation, I find that their forced integration of autonomous polities into a system of shared governance had large negative long-run ...consequences, even though the affected people were ethnically and linguistically homogenous. Reservations that combined multiple sub-tribal bands when they were formed are 30% poorer today, even when conditioning on prereservation political traditions. The results hold with tribe fixed effects, identifying only off within-tribe variation across reservations. I also provide estimates from an instrumental variable strategy based on historical mining rushes that led to exogenously more centralized reservations. Data on the timing of economic divergence and on contemporary political conflict suggest that the primary mechanism runs from persistent social divisions through the quality of local governance to the local economic environment.
Political conflicts thrive on a cycle of violence, the short-circuiting of which is essential for lasting peace. The essay argues that it requires more than a political solution to usher in lasting ...peace. Breaking the cycle of violence once and for all requires a restorative experience of reconciliation. While many stakeholders are at play towards bringing a solution to the political impasse in Naga society, the essay argues that Naga churches have a vital role to play, by providing an alternative to the geopolitical solutions and offering a space for dialogue, reconciliation, and restoration.
This article returns to Marxist commentaries during a previous period characterized by profound contradictions and conflict-especially the writings of Nicos Poulantzas and Stuart Hall on ...authoritarian statism/populism from the late 1970s to the 1980s-in order to make sense of the present era. The article argues that we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, which is rooted in the reconfiguring of the state into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political conflict. The apparent strengthening of the state simultaneously entails its growing fragility, for it is becoming an increasingly direct target of a range of popular struggles, demands, and discontent by way of the pressures emanating from this strengthening. A primary reference point for the article is a notable casualty of the post-2007 crisis, European social democracy, but the implications for radical politics more broadly are also considered.
•The impacts of political risks on airline strategies are analyzed.•Significant differences in performance between LCC and FSCs during a crisis were identified.•Operational strategies during a ...political crisis can differ depending on the type of airlines.
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