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Democratic theorists delineate several requirements for mass publics in democratic societies. These include holding policy preferences, deliberating over competing viewpoints, and making informed choices. This dissertation contributes to debates about the public’s performance in each of these areas. In the first chapter, I argue that a statistical method that has been used to characterize the public’s ideological consistency has produced misleading results. In the second, I demonstrate that two aspects of Americans’ social networks differ in their relationships to important political attitudes necessary for productive deliberation. In the third, I show that Americans with politically diverse social networks trust more of the content they encounter on social media but are no more likely to discern truth from falsehood or respond to accuracy nudging interventions. In total, this dissertation employs analytical, observational, and experimental research methods to address questions that concern old and new threats to mass democratic behavior in the United States.

The concepts of power and state - particularly embedded in the idea of the Great Power, with a geopolitical perspective and a profoundly aggressive character - are tantamount in importance to the Russia's elite political ideology. However, the existence of different emphases within such a political ideology, ranging from the active-obstructive to the passive stances, brings into question the factors of variation that might be responsible for the elite's level of determination to pursue these concepts over an internal or foreign policy development. In addressing this query, two tasks are set: descriptive - involving a survey of the content of Russian aggressive political ideology over different periods in history; and explanatory - determining circumstances that might account for the empowerment of one or other option of Russian aggressive political ideology. Therefore, the thesis includes a comparison of historical periods with similar relevance to the Russian state. The concern here is in relation to shifting factors of variations of aggressive political ideology acting in the space-frame of one state, but in different time-frame. Resting on these frames the thesis explores the shaping of the Russian elite's defining principles of state internal and foreign policy development and traces the factors of variation responsible for the empowerment of one or other particular form of the aggressive political ideology. The factors of variation discussed in the thesis are different in nature and intensity. The primary impetus for variation in the form that aggressive political ideology would take is determined by the factor of national distress. Other factors (regime volatility, political and economic motivations, information dissemination, and challenges within the international system) are responsible for the depth and extent to which aggressive ideology is going to resonate. No factor could create the variation by itself. The argument is that a specific set of factors is required to create the conditions for variations in the form the aggressive political ideology would take and to determine whether aggressive ideology would generate or not an obstructive political decision.

This thesis focuses on how well indicators of judicial ideology and institutional constraints predict whether a judge will vote to increase abortion access. I develop a model that evaluates a judge's decision in an abortion case in light of ideological factors measured at the time of a judge's nomination to the bench and legal and institutional constraints at the time a judge decides a case. I analyze abortion cases from all of the U.S. Federal District Courts from 1973-2004. Unlike previous studies, which demonstrate that the president and the home state senators are the best predictors of judicial ideology, I find that the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time of the judge's nomination is the only statistically significant ideological indicator. Also, contrary to conventional wisdom, Supreme Court precedent (a legal constraint) is also a significant predictor of judicial voting behavior in abortion cases.

Orientadores: Reginaldo Carmello de Moraes, Armando Boito Junior / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T13:17:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Assis_Lucianode_M.pdf: 3678413 bytes, checksum: e82a69904f5cf6f20e88b07834923ef2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: o objetivo geral da presente dissertação de mestrado é explorar a ideologia política individualista contemporânea em busca de seus pressupostos, matrizes e fluxos lógicos. Para tanto assumimos o objetivo específico de sintetizar algumas das teses favoráveis ao recuo da intervenção social do Estado, recolocadas no debate político nos EUA, nas décadas de 1970 e 1980.Propostas por autores contemporâneos entre si, e por vezes conterrâneos - novayorkinos -, as teses sobre as quais nos debruçamos estão associadas em geral ao que se convencionou chamar de neoliberalismo, e de modo mais circunscrito, ao termo neoconservadorismo. Empreendemos, portanto, uma ,síntesedas idéias deste grupo sobre o papel do Estado, precedido por uma breve localização histórica do debate. Ao final do presente trabalho propomos alguns pontos de partida para futuras pesquisas que visem o avanço na compreensão dos objetivos gerais propostos acima / Abstract: The general purpose of this research is to explore the contemporary individualístic polítical ideology, to finally undertake they bases and logical fluxoTherefore was assumed as specific issue, the synthesis of some thesis that criticizes the social State (Govemment) interferences, disputed in USA, on 1970 and 1980 decades. Them authors, in general contemporaries and neighbors - citizens ofNew York City of cited decades- produced thesis associated with the term neo-liberalísm, in general, and with neo-conservatism, more precisely. In sum, was made a synthesis ofthe main idea about the social role ofthe State (Govemment), preceded by a briefhistoricallocalization ofthe debate. Finally, at the end ofthis work, was presented some hypothesis and virtual interpretation ofthis intellectual movement, as an initial starting point to other researches / Mestrado / Ciencia Politica / Mestre em Ciência Política