This study surveyed 527 high school seniors in five Indiana high schools. It measured their political attitudes regarding high school and the local community. The study is based on two assumptions: first, that high school is a significant agency in the political socialization process, and second, that high school plays an important part in the creation of political attitudes. The overall scope of this study deals with the effect of high school on the political attitudes of students. It is concerned with these attitudes as they relate to the political process and culture of high school and the local community. Four hypotheses are tested:1. There is no significant difference between a student's perception of the political culture of high school and his perception of the political culture of the local community.2. The student's sense of political efficacy is related to his discernible view of the willingness of teachers and school administrators to discuss school related problems with him.3. The student's discernible view of his ability to influence decision makers in school is related to his sense of political efficacy.4. The perception that high school students have of their ability to influence decisions made by high school authorities is related to their perception of their ability to influence decisions made by local governmental authorities.The final survey was developed from a pool of 72 questions whose reliability and validity were proven by their use on prior instruments, and by a pilot study. A Pearson correlation and a factor matrix were the statistical tools used to determine which questions would be used in the final survey.The survey dealt with three aspects of the political socialization process: political culture, political efficacy and political cynicism. The null hypothesis was supported by use of the Pearson correlation of student responses. There is a similarity in student minds between the political culture of high school and the local community. However, insofar as political efficacy is concerned, students do not feel that their effectiveness is the same in both cultures. Students feel that they would be willing to try to use their political influence on high school authority figures, something they would not do with authority figures in the local community. This is particularly true when a comparison is made between student feelings about high school authorities and community authorities. While feelings of cynicism are not at a level that would indicate wide distrust of those in authority, the start of such feelings did appear to exist.Data gathered on the second, third and fourth hypotheses were inconclusive. Student feelings of efficacy are not the same in school as they are outside. Students are willing to talk to school authorities yet they feel that the principal may listen to them but does not seek their opinion. Students feel they cannot use the same methods of influencing high school decisions on community leaders. Student feelings of efficacy in school are such that they think they can or should be influential in school, particularly insofar as curriculum decisions are concerned. Student perception of community leaders is such that they do not see themselves as being able to influence these figures. They feel that authority figures outside school are not as concerned about them as those in school. It appears that what the adolescent has learned to use in school he would not use outside school. Students seem to feel that community leaders care about them, but that they do not actively solicit student opinion. While students feel they can be or may be influential via direct action in school, they cannot see this same course of action being used elsewhere.

Political advocacy research has often relied on concepts from social movement literature to explain the success or failure of lobbying efforts. The following study builds on recent efforts to partner social movement concepts with neo-institutional theory in order to better understand political mobilization. Specifically, I aim to contribute to an understanding of how non-state actors, with little or no formal power, attempt to influence public policy. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with participants of a nonprofit lobbying campaign that occurred in Alberta, Canada, in 2007. By examining the processes and the structural elements of the lobby’s activities, I assess the utility of combining these two theoretical literatures to enhance explanatory power. This study also emphasizes the multi-faceted nature of lobbying campaigns. Advocacy outcomes are influenced not only by challenger strategies and arguments, but by the responses and contexts of their challenges. Social movement concepts, such as frame analysis and resource mobilization, shed light on the lobbying processes undertaken by nonprofit advocacy participants. However, neo-institutional theory allows us to situate these processes within a larger political context, and understand how this context influences the decisions made by political decision makers. In addition to arguing these theoretical claims, I discuss the opportunities and limitations that facilitate and constrain collaborative processes between the Government of Alberta and the province’s nonprofit sector.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Politics, University of Adelaide, 1990. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 779-813).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northern Illinois University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [281]-291).

This thesis examines to what extent there are generational differences in gender gaps in political behaviour and attitudes, and what explains this generational variation. Generations differ considerably on factors such as women's role in the family and the workplace, gender inequality, and formative experiences, and I argue this leads to different gender gaps for different generations. I examine such generational variation in gender gaps in vote choice, left-right self-placement, attitudes towards spending and redistribution, and attitudes towards gender-egalitarianism. Broad cross-national trends in Europe and Canada are identified, as well as country-specific patterns using Britain and the US as case studies. This thesis finds that generally, in the countries studied, men are more left-wing than women in older birth cohorts, whilst women are more left-wing than men in younger birth cohorts. This 'gender-generation gap' is produced through processes of modernisation, especially secularisation. In addition to this broad trend, the political context or zeitgeist during a generation's formative years produces gender gaps in both vote choice and attitudes that differ between generations according to this socialisation experience. The influences of modernisation and such political socialisation interact to create complex patterns of generational variation in political gender gaps that differ across political contexts. For example, in the British case, women of younger cohorts are not more left-wing in their vote choice than men. These results suggest that we should focus on gender gaps at the level of generational subgroups in order to fully understand political differences between men and women. Furthermore, they predict that gradually, the gender gap where women are more left-wing than men will grow over time through generational replacement. However, they also indicate that this will not occur in all contexts, and that more work needs to be done to understand how the political context shapes gender gaps.

No description available.

This qualitative interview study examines challenges college students may experience in extracurricular dialogues on contested sociopolitical issues. It also discusses approaches that students claim support them through the challenges of contested issues dialogues. This study found that college students encountered challenges including difficulty expressing disagreement, tensions related to their identities and group representation, and difficulty building trust and openness with peers in dialogue. Despite these difficulties, students also developed skills and capacities to bridge differences, to build community within dialogue, as well as to learn about themselves, others and sociopolitical issues. Through participants' accounts on how they perceive and negotiate these challenges, the study is intended to portray in-depth student perspectives about this critical aspect of peer dialogues on sociopolitical issues.

No description available.

Why do some organizations in a movement seeking social change gain extensive national newspaper coverage? To address the question, we innovate in theoretical and empirical ways. First, we elaborate a theoretical argument that builds from the political mediation theory of movement consequences and incorporates the social organization of newspaper practices. This media and political mediation model integrates political and media contexts and organizations' characteristics and actions. With this model, we hypothesize two main routes to coverage: one that includes changes in public policy and involves policy-engaged, well-resourced, and inclusive organizations and a second that combines social crises and protest organizations. Second, we appraise these arguments with the first analysis of the national coverage of all organizations in a social movement over its career: 84 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and AIDS-related organizations in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal from 1969 to 2010. These analyses go beyond previous research that provides either snapshots of many organizations at one point in time or overtime analyses of aggregated groups of organizations or individual organizations. The results of both historical and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analyses support our media and political mediation model.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Robert K. Schaeffer / Street and DiMaggio (2011) argue that the national Tea Party movement is an extension of the Republican Party in the United States, claiming that it’s an “ugly, authoritarian, and fake-populist pseudo movement directed from above and early on by and for elite Republican and business interests” (p.9). On the other hand, Skocpol and Williams (2012) argue that “the Tea Party is neither a top-down creation nor a bottom-up explosion” (p.12). I argue that the North Carolina movement, at the local level, represents a group of grassroots activists who were first mobilized on December 2nd, 2005, according to the “Triangle Conservatives Unite!” website. Because of the South’s history with race relations and Ku Klux Klan violence in North Carolina around the issue of public education, for the purposes of this study I want to pose the following questions: How is Tea Party “craziness” functional for the local 9/12 project group, “Triangle Conservatives Unite!”? How is symbolic racism used as a framing device by the Tea Party, as a social movement, around public education in North Carolina? In order to capture Tea Party member and civil society attitudes toward the Wake County Board of Education decision to scrap the old, nationally-recognized socioeconomic diversity policy in favor of one that much resembled the 1960s neighborhood/community schools policy, I use a case study approach to look at how the Tea Party Social Movement deals with race, with regard to the Wake County School Board decision to go back to neighborhood/community schools. When analyzing popular news sources, I draw on Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) theory of Color-Blind Racism. I also draw on Tilly’s (1978) Resource Mobilization Theory to explain how the Tea Party Movement came to power in North Carolina, affecting the Wake County School Board Decision to go back to neighborhood schools. Major findings suggest that sometime after 2005, the group began to adopt the goals and mission statement of the national 9/12 project group, led by conservative commentator Glenn Beck. I also find mixed support for Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) theory of Color-Blind Racism as well as support for Tilly’s (1978) Resource Mobilization Theory in my study.