Overview
- Sheds light on the changing role of
- political ideology in an increasingly complex American society
- Provides valuable insights into which
- variables are crucial and how they have changed
- Clarifies notions of party alignments,
- liberalism and conservatism, independent voting, and the radical right
- Examines the intertwining of religious doctrine and sentiments about the possession and use of guns
- Offers suggestions that may ameliorate dysfunctional consequences
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Practical Voting
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book analyzes practical and moral influences on voting decisions. Undermining the widespread assumption that economic self-interest is the key determinant of voting choices, it discovers that moral considerations rooted in religious traditions are often the more decisive. This finding is confirmed through a close analysis of tangible problems, such as child neglect and crime, problems which one would expect to trouble practical voters. Further, this book suggests that political ideologies influence party affiliation, rather than the other way around. It defines four categories of states in terms of human development and income equality—South, Heartland, postindustrial, and “balanced.” It then explains why political color (red, purple, or blue) and societal problems vary across these categories. Voters’ moral ideologies, it shows, combine with a state’s measure of income equality and human development to shape a state’s readiness to pursue practical solutions to societal problems. Finally, it shows that moral ideologies of the religious right and authoritarianism, two very different concepts, are in fact intertwined empirically. This book thus suggests that education—a key driver of human development, anti-authoritarianism, and deliberative voting—should begin in preschools that are both nurturant and instructive.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Social Structure and Voting in the United States
Authors: Robert B. Smith
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7487-1
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-017-7485-7Published: 18 March 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-024-1358-8Published: 25 April 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-7487-1Published: 09 March 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXX, 399
Number of Illustrations: 57 illustrations in colour
Topics: Social Structure, Social Inequality, Methodology of the Social Sciences, Political Theory