Psychological Underpinning Of Democracy Summary

The behavior of voters has great importance to politics as the people decide mainly who wins. The study of the behavior of the electorate has increased as politicians seek to appeal to the voters and find ways to gain followers and most importantly votes. The two articles Democratic Practice and Democratic Theory and The Responsible Electorate discuss the behavior of voters in the United States, and the importance of the electorate.

While there are many hypotheses and theories as to why education is important for democratic citizens, there is common and consistent agreement within the literature since the 1970s. There is consistency in the belief that education provides both the skills to become politically engaged and the knowledge to understand and accept democratic principles leading to correlative effects on party identification on both individual and aggregate levels (Golebiowska 1995; Galston 2004). Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse (1972) describe education as the universal solvent, strongly and positively correlated with a host of valued civic attitudes and behaviors such as political party or ideology formation.

Public opinion plays a huge role in the development of democracy. “A society is unlikely to maintain democratic institutions over the long term, unless democracy has solid support among the public” (Andersen 2012). Most research on the issue demonstrates a positive link between economic development and support for democracy(Andersen 2012). Some researchers also consider social trust (Putnam 1993) and social tolerance (Andersen and Fetner 2008) to be a major factor of support of democracy. Most Americans see unequal economy as a result of individuals work ethics and talent rather then a flaw in the economic system. However, most Americans accept inequality because they believe everyone has the same chances in life to make the best. A properly running government is supposed to make positive that all the citizen are equal. By believing in equal democratic rights Americans support everyone citizen having the same level of equality and the same equal voice in representative government. Since citizens don’t feel that they can trust the government to create and equal ground for all they are much less likely to be involve and participate in political field. Concerned citizens have the right to be worried about the health of our democracy. It seems that the government resounds more often and effectively to the more privileged group in society then to needs of the

Although the American political culture contains numerous core ideals and values as all American share different views, the vast majority of people support general ideas including equality, liberty, and order. America guarantees each individual political equality, allowing each individual to have their own personal beliefs within the political sphere. However, the environment, combined with the media, has a powerful influence on the views Americans chose to hold. Different generations live through different experiences which significantly shapes the thinking of individuals. Therefore, political beliefs and ideologies form due to the resolutions regarding different conflicts. Even though there seems to be many opposing viewpoints, the American

The first examined effect was political action as a function of instrumental concerns such as strongly held stances on issues and contrasted their effects with that of expressive partisan identity. Secondly, the degree to which action-oriented political emotions, such as anger and enthusiasm, are instrumental or expressive in nature was examined. The studies looked at how much political anger is driven instrumentally by threats to ideology and issue positions or whether it reflects a threat to someone’s party status, making it expressive. Lastly, the studies examined the degree to which political enthusiasm is driven by similar competing forces: the likely success of one’s ideology and issue positions or promised electoral victory and enhanced party

Have you ever thought about why you have the political beliefs and values you do? Where did they come from? Are they simply your own ideas and experiences or have you been influenced by others in your thinking? This process by which individuals acquire their political beliefs and attitudes is called political socialization. In another words, Political socialization is a concept where the study of the developmental processes by which children and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes and behaviors. What people think and how they come to think it is of critical importance to the stability of the government. The beliefs and values of the people are the basis for a society's political culture and that culture defines the

Political preferences seem an obvious topic of research, as the findings of such research are highly sought after. As such any research relating to what motivates political orientation would be very useful. For this reason a great deal of research into the relationship between moral foundation and political orientation has been done in recent years.

Most citizens have democratic values even if they do not realize it. As Americans, citizens have freedom of speech, once an individual turns eighteen he has the right to vote and every citizen has access to be informed about current events occurring in America. It is every citizen’s duty to be a responsible adult and take part in their country’s democratic system. The democratic value freedom of speech is valued by every American because the opinions of others are worthwhile because they serve as a learning basis for everyone to learn something new.

148). In essence, every voter has some political beliefs and values that often influence the way he or she views political parties, candidates, and ideals. Some conservative people tend to vote to Republican, while some people tend to vote Democratic. Voters have their own political attitudes, and these attitudes determine how society goes, whom they are voting for, and what kind of political parties they are supporting. Many elements have the ability to contribute the political attitudes, such as family, gender, education, income, religion, age, race, and etc. According to Ginsberg et al., the first place where people start forming their beliefs on politics is their families and society (148). This idea explains the reason some areas in the U.S. have more Democratic representatives while others have the majority of their residents being Republicans. The fact that most people possess these ideals means that in the event that the candidates in a ballot do not have the qualities that a particular group of voters is looking for, these voters will not partake in voting. When the impact of race in political socialization is factored in, it becomes increasingly evident that some people of one race are unlikely to spend their time voting for a candidate who does not represent their beliefs pertaining to racial issues. For instance, African Americans’ perception of the extent of racism is different from that of whites. This has a significant bearing on the motivation of voters from each divide to participate in an election (Ginsberg et al.

Different ideologies tend to appeal to different demographic characteristics such as gender, class, race, etc. because a person’s background will affect which system of ideas they most closely align with. Liberalism and conservatism, for example, are ideologies that regularly contradict each other, because they appeal to different demographics based upon many factors such as class, race, gender, religion, etc. The general worldview of liberalism is that people have individual rights and liberty, while promoting progress. On the other hand, conservatism places greater importance of keeping tradition and strict regulation of rules. In determining the extent of appeal to different demographics, one must assess the ways in which both ideologies

Specifically, an ideology is a cohesive set of beliefs or values that forms a general philosophy about the proper role of government. Through political socialization as a process, people will develop ideologies to serve as a basis of reference for one’s own political thinking even though everyone has this type of belief system. According to studies, no higher one-third of Americans possess ideology. Two of the four main ideologies in the Unites States that are important in determining America’s healthcare initiative are liberalism and conservatism. In contrast to one another, liberalism is a belief in using the government for the purpose of economic regulation and redistribution but not for the purpose of preserving traditional values while conservatism is a belief in using the government for preserving traditional values but not using it for economic regulation/redistribution. In terms of conflicts between individual liberty and law and order, a liberal tends to side with individual liberty while a conservative tends to side with law and

A truth universally acknowledged in political science is that while politicians are strategic actors, voters are not. Converse’s The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Politics broke the electorate into five groups based on the manner in which they form the belief systems that then serve to inform their vote. From this, he determined that only about 15% of the electorate has a moderate to fully formed ideology which guides their opinions and their votes (Converse 17).

This article presents the history of the “authoritarian personality trait”, from the moment it was “revealed/coined” to its modern use as well as the main studies designed to measure it. We then focus on the effects of social conformity and obedience have on people who score high on authoritarian scales, trying to see if there is a correlation. With empirical findings, this paper argues that XXX, which can be explained by XXXX This paper further develop that the results cannot predict political orientation and behaviors as the answers given can be influenced by the XXX (media/news/fear of threat for people with low authoritarian VS high authoritarian affected by fear of social deviance)

The data provided is helpful in determining the nations perception of democracy so that it may help improve and put in place interventions that promote

Political culture refers to believes, feeling and how people think they should act about government. In the US political culture lays some core ideals and values which are of course not shared by all the Americans. However, the two shared political values in the US by vast majority the regardless of race, creed, national origin are liberty and democracy. In most political debates, there is a tendency to come up with the best framework on how best to achieve these ideals and values assert (Schudson, 271).