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Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of 'unreasonable' citizens who resist political liberals' favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals' insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics' complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals' own core principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold 'unreasonable', and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even 'unreasonable', illiberal citizens may be fair-minded : that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state's own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don't presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals' own commitments oblige them to address even 'unreasonable' political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two central questions concerning the role that persistent disagreements about philosophical, ethical, and religious issues in liberal societies are raised in this paper: (i) whether the state's authority may be justified on the basis of controversial views and (ii) whether the state may rely on controversial views when exercising authority. Many assume whatever motivates philosophers to respect disagreement in justifying the state--answering "no" to (i)--seems to also require the state to respect disagreement when it acts--answering "no" to (ii). Here I defend the consistency of answering "no" to (i) and "yes" to (ii), a position I call "political perfectionism." I argue, first, that one prominent reason for answering "no" to (i)--that citizens should be able to endorse the authority of the state--is consistent with answering "yes" to (ii) and, second, that the intuitions underlying why political liberals want citizens to be able to endorse the authority of the state can motivate answering "yes" to (ii). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a well‐ordered society, democratic officials face an assurance problem. They want to ensure that others will act reasonably when they do the same. According to political liberals, public reason can solve this problem, but the details of how assurance is generated are unclear. This article explains the assurance mechanism in political liberalism. Apart from public reason, mutual assurance is also provided by a long‐term record of civic deeds. By performing civic deeds over time, officials signal their reasonableness to each other. This record of civic deeds is costly to unreasonable officials and thus represents a reliable way to differentiate trustworthy fellows from others. The article also shows that a recent critique of political liberalism, which argues that public reason is merely cheap talk and thus political liberalism fails to provide mutual assurance, misses the point. It overlooks that assurance is created through talks and deeds together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1940s research has suggested that higher education has a liberalizing influence on sociopolitical orientation, although none has demonstrated how this might occur. In the U.S. there is an increasing trend among conservative politicians and media to depreciate the value of a college education, by alleging that college turns people into liberals. To examine the charge that 'college turns people into liberals', I conducted biographical narrative interviews with 24 American college-educated young adults who changed their sociopolitical orientation from conservative to liberal. Utilizing Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and habitus clivé, and grounded theory methods of analysis, I developed a processual model of such transformation. Findings from this study refute narratives of professorial or institutional indoctrination. Instead, the model indicates a more complex process of habitus transformation, that in most cases begins before college students arrive on campus. This study is important because a successful democracy requires an educated populace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directive authorities such as police officers, judges and employers demand our obedience. Demands for obedience come in two forms. First authorities issue commands meant to bind us to obey. Second authorities frequently threaten to enforce their commands by coercion, to extract obedience by force. Liberals, anarchists and others have long regarded command and coercion as being especially problematic ways of getting someone to act, as raising a question about the legitimacy of such directive authorities but it remains unclear why being ordered about is any worse than being subject to social rules, rules that require us to behave in various ways. I argue that someone who demands your obedience seeks to assume responsibility for your compliance. That is why the claims of a ruler threaten our liberty as those of binding social rules do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes two related points. First, as liberals have started to realize that the welfare state is unable to deliver on egalitarian theories of justice, they have increasingly tried to dissociate their theories from the welfare state. Second, dissociating from the welfare state type of thinking is difficult for some liberal egalitarian theories such as John Rawls's theory of justice as his theory shares some of the same underlying thinking as found in the welfare state. For example, Rawls's understanding of universal citizenship and the difference principle resembles some of the aspects of the welfare state on how social equality and citizenship are tied to productivity and society as a venture of mutual cooperation. Consequently, liberals are caught in a difficult relationship where they can only partially move beyond the welfare state. Because of this affinity liberals should move beyond a Rawlsian framework, as Rawls's theory is difficult to completely dissociate from the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become commonplace to argue that Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville form a distinct French liberal tradition going back to Montesquieu. Yet Tocqueville showed little interest in Constant, and early nineteenth-century French liberals did not recognize Montesquieu as the father of French liberalism. Based on these observations, this essay demonstrates that the French liberal tradition is a belated construction and explains how, when, and why it was invented. Exhuming the origins of the French liberal tradition, I argue, is important for our understanding of the history of liberalism and the mechanisms behind ideology formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of Liberalism in shaping British policy towards India in the early 20th century. It discusses key figures such as Lord William Bentinck, Lord Dalhousie, and Lord Ripon who implemented reforms aimed at modernizing India and promoting self-governance. The article also examines the impact of events like the First World War, the Rowlatt Acts, and the Amritsar Massacre on Indian nationalism. Despite the decline of the Liberal Party, Liberal influence continued indirectly through figures like Sir John Simon and William Wedgwood Benn. The article concludes that by 1939, the issue of Indian independence had effectively been settled. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the response of Gladstonian ethical Liberals to Britain's relationship with empire from 1895-1906. It discusses the tensions between Liberal internationalism and imperialism and how progressive Liberals understood these concepts during a time of party divisions. The article focuses on the impact of divisions over imperialism on the positions of ethical progressive Liberals and their efforts to articulate a revamped Liberalism that combined liberal morality, politics, and social principles. It also discusses the influence of humanitarian crises on their understanding of British imperial policy and their efforts to reconcile humanitarianism with imperialism. The text provides insight into the complex relationship between liberalism and imperialism during this period. [Extracted from the article]

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The article discusses Joshua L. Cherniss' book, "Liberalism in Dark Times," which explores the crisis of liberalism in the early twentieth century. Cherniss examines how liberal political thinkers such as Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Isaiah Berlin approached the challenges of the time and reconstructed liberalism in various ways. Cherniss refers to this alternative liberalism as "tempered liberalism," which prioritizes living out a liberal ethos in political life. The book draws on the work of Max Weber and emphasizes the cultivation of a liberal ethos, including qualities such as responsibility, modesty, fortitude, tolerance, and integrity. It offers a historically sensitive perspective on liberalism and provides inspiration for integrity and moderation in today's polarized political climate. [Extracted from the article]

The task for liberals in our time is to imagine a form of liberalism that is altogether original. If they don't, it does not seem likely that they will see their creed survive—and anyway, survival is not good enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cognitio - Revista de Filosofia is the property of Cognitio - Revista de Filosofia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An editorial is presented the winter 2023–24 edition of the Journal of Liberal History, introducing a redesigned internal layout for enhanced readability in both print and digital formats. It also pays tribute to Michael Steed, an advocate of Liberal values, psephology, and Liberal history, highlighting his intellectual rigor, commitment to Liberalism, and his contributions to gay rights and European integration.

Events in recent years have underscored the dependence of the liberal international order (LIO) on the domestic fate of liberalism in countries like the United States—where, according to critics such as Mark Lilla and Francis Fukuyama, liberals have imperiled themselves through an unwise embrace of identity politics. These critics argue that identity politics undermines solidarity and empowers the illiberal right, and that it should be rejected in favor of a unifying creedal nationalism based on common liberal values. This analysis, I argue, overlooks the fact that "common" creedal values have expanded in American history when their meanings were being controversially reinterpreted from identity-based perspectives. If American liberalism is to emerge from its current crisis, it will need to incorporate the claims of identity into a sense of national belonging that can resist the authoritarian, ethnoracial nationalism promoted by the LIO's enemies. The likelihood that such a process will be controversial is reason for liberal critics of identity politics to consider how the claims of identity might be an asset, not an obstacle, to revitalizing liberal democracy against its challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annelien De Dijn's book Freedom: An Unruly History presents a bold and innovative thesis about the history of freedom. According to De Dijn, our modern belief that individuals should be allowed to pursue their own goals without undue interference from the state was born much later than is usually assumed. It is conservative liberals in the nineteenth century who championed this new, negative understanding of freedom at the expense of an older, more political and collectivist use of the term. My article raises three critical questions about this thesis. i) De Dijn suggests that the triumph of individual freedom can be attributed to a single factor, to be found in nineteenth century politics. Does this not overlook the many other cultural factors involved? ii) Is there indeed a sharp conceptual and chronological opposition between collective and individual freedom, as De Dijn claims, or might individual freedom have evolved in a more gradual manner from collective freedom? iii) De Dijn's book appears to champion the classical ideal of freedom as collective self-government. Is it wise to favour collective self-government over individual liberty, or should we admit that these two ideals complement and maybe even need each other? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosopher Akeel Bilgrami's notion of identity is original and challenging to liberal political theory, but still largely unaddressed by it. In a nutshell, Bilgrami characterizes identity as holding certain values and commitments with a crucial addendum: as we want to continue living by those values and commitments in the future, we erect some social and legal barriers to prevent them from change. Liberals of a Millian and/or Rawlsian cast of mind, in turn, arrange political institutions to enable such change, as they assume that we are the kind of creatures that change their minds. In this sense, the identitarian and the liberal mindset are, as the philosopher claims, "mirror opposites". This article engages with Bilgrami's view in two senses: on the one hand, it highlights some potentially problematic areas that may call for further clarification and reinterpretation of the liberal canon, as well as offering other set of tensions that arise with non-liberal philosophical traditions. On the other hand, it contends that Bilgrami's ultimate claim is not merely that the identitarian mindset is more rational than the liberal mentality, as he does, but that it makes political demands that should be assessed against the liberal ideal of justification. While it may be the case that identitarianism is rationally superior to certain versions of comprehensive liberalism, the paper concludes that it loses out to political liberalism, to the extent that Bilgrami's identitarianism is willing to display the state's coercive muscle in oppressive ways, in a way that political liberalism does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish civil war saw two different Liberal presidencies in Colombia. Contrary to common belief, they did not follow a unified policy towards Spain but instead faced different parameters for action which shaped their response. These policies, in turn, illuminate both the internal dynamics of the two administrations and how they conceived of Colombia's position on the world stage. By providing the national, international and wider structural contexts, this article will therefore use the Spanish conflict to shine a spotlight on the Santos and López governments and the development of Colombian foreign policy during the late 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the existing scholarship's characterisation of Chinese liberal intellectuals as Trumpian intellectuals. By conducting a close reading of Chinese academic publications, lectures and opinions aired on social media, this article finds that besides Trump's Chinese liberal fans, many leading Chinese liberal intellectuals harshly criticised Trump. However, they do not align themselves with American liberals in making all-out partisan criticisms of Trump and American right-wing politics. Instead, their criticisms are mostly centrist. This article argues that Chinese liberal intellectuals' centrist criticisms of Trump reflect their Confucian, egalitarian and moderate nationalist sympathies, dimensions of their thoughts which have been ignored by existing scholarship regarding them. By exploring Chinese centrist liberal critics of Trump, this article brings to light the ideological heterogeneity within the Chinese liberal camp previously lumped together under the umbrella of "anti-authoritarianism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical works written during The Reform and the Second Mexican Empire, as well as their discussion in the press are significant for the construction of the modern Mexican State. This text analyses the reception in the newspapers of a corpus of representative historical works published between 1856 and 1874 by liberals and conservatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a first approximation to the electoral participation of liberals in Spain. Using the CIS monthly barometers and covering the period of a decade from 2010 to 2020, we analyze whether liberal ideology has influenced electoral participation. The logistic regression analyses employed include ideology in addition to other socioeconomic, attitudinal and conjunctural aspects as control variables. The results show that liberal voters have a lower electoral participation that is directly attributed to their ideological affiliation. For the elections studied, the differential behavior associated with liberal ideology is robustly maintained even after the self-placement on the left-right axis --namely, the metric traditionally used to approximate the effect of ideology-- is included in the model. This greater abstentionism associated with liberal ideology does not seem to be entirely explained by the greater distrust in political institutions that these voters tend to show. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore has been called a state that has "disavowed" liberalism. However, a number of liberals have emerged who see political freedoms as essential to achieve accountable government that acts in the general interest. They draw on an institutional foundation that has been deeply shaped by liberalism while the rejection of liberalism is not based on an ideological alternative. Instead, it is portrayed as a necessity because citizens are told they need to sacrifice freedoms in exchange for economic growth and political stability due to the many vulnerabilities of a small, multi-ethnic country. Over the years, as the city-state became more developed and more secure, the government has liberalized some aspects, although often followed by greater restrictions. Two types of liberals have emerged, one seeking to change the system from the outside, the other advocating for political reform from within. However, both have been unsuccessful as the ruling party has sidelined liberal voices within the party and increasingly insists on the need for illiberal authoritarian rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political liberals hold that the exercise of state power is legitimate only if it can be publicly justified—justified on the basis of public reasons. Many find this requirement too demanding and propose instead that there are just pro tanto reasons for laws and policies to be publicly justified. Here I argue that this alternative proposal fails to recognize that there are also distinct pro tanto reasons to have institutional requirements that laws and policies are publicly justified. This suggests an intermediate position between political liberals and their critics, which holds that states have reasons to adopt the kinds of institutions that political liberals favor—institutions that require public justification—but whether they should do so will depend on the costs and benefits of those institutions. This allows for a more practical approach to public justification by focusing on its application in particular political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines what the author calls 'the dispute about words and things': that is, the Mid-Nineteenth Century international debate on the location of Spanish American ideas and Neogranadan Liberalism (1849-1853). The debate sought to define the position occupied by European ideas in Spanish America and its correspondence, or lack thereof, with the continent's reality. The dispute's principal arguments are organized and unpacked via the comparison and juxtaposition of manifold primary sources such as periodicals and pamphlets: it analyzes how European ideas in Spanish America were accused of being (1) extemporaneous, (2) artificial and (3) potentially barbarous and bloody, before inspecting (4) the reasoned replies wielded by the Neogranadan Liberals, forced to refute their critics and re-think their peculiar position as Spanish American intellectuals. The text offers a structured introduction to a very complex, and still present ad vital, debate in which many actors intervened; and it contributes to Spanish American Intellectual History exploring how it was conceived, invisibilized and legitimated during a crucial juncture -the 1850's- characterized by rising imperialism, a vague consolidation of a 'Latin American conscience' and vigorous political and social mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occupy the centre ground of politics. Liberal critics and journalists accuse conspiracy theorists to their left and right of paranoia, irresponsibly excessive rhetoric, and fallacies such as strawtargeting, 'anomaly hunting' and 'determined flexibility'. At the same time, major liberal institutions from the BBC to CNN emphasise the risks that such conspiracy theories pose to public order, safety and trust - and to the very future of what they call 'our democracy'. However, we argue that many of the same threats, flaws and fallacies have characterised hegemonic liberal analyses of contentious recent political events in the West from Trumpgate to the British Labour Party's anti-Semitism 'crisis'. With a proclivity for ad hominems, deliberate misrepresentations of evidence and other dubious methods, liberal conspiracy theories have had harmful societal impacts such as discrediting progressive political movements and fanning the flames of war. These are arguably consequences of greater magnitude than those resulting from right-wing conspiracism. Moreover, we show that centrist conspiracy theories often involve the implementation of genuine conspiracies against anti-establishment figures such as Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. Despite the empirical existence of such conspiracies, we conclude by suggesting that the historical materialist critique of social reality has considerably more explanatory power than the conspiracist analytic. To demonstrate this we point to an epistemological weakness at the heart of liberal thought dating back at least to Thomas Carlyle's 'Great Man Theory of History' that, much like the marginal conspiracy theories liberals condemn, involves a vast exaggeration of the role of individual agency and intentionality - and covert interpersonal relationships particularly - in determining social, economic and political affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tabayyun is the property of Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many employees want to either retain their jobs or attain promotion. In doing so, they remain silent and conform to all the decisions taken by the top management. Most studies have treated the causes of this silence as unobserved intervening mechanisms and named them black boxes. The current study therefore, aims to explore those unobserved psychological characteristics of employees. More specifically, it examines the employee’s psychological ideology, namely liberalism and conservatism in affecting commitment to status quo mediated by employee silence and moderated by social dominance. This study proposes that employee ideologies (liberalism and conservatism) affect their voicing behaviour and ultimately their resistance or acceptance to the status quo. Data from 219 faculty members from different universities in Karachi, Pakistan was gathered. The study hypothesised that liberals will tend to voice their opinions and resist the managements status quo while conservatives tend not to voice their opinions and endorse status quo, and they accept management’s decision and will not question their actions. The results showed that liberals have an indirect relationship with silence, namely they do not remain silent. Additionally, silence had an indirect relationship with status quo. Even though they are silent it does not mean they endorse status quo. Further, it was found that silence mediates the relationship between liberals and commitment to status quo. t was also found that conservatives also endorsed status quo but there was no relationship between conservatives and silence. Further, silence did not mediate the relationship between conservatives and status quo. Moreover, social dominance orientation strengthens or moderates the relationship between silence and status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the decline of the liberal left and the shift of the Jewish majority to the right in Israel. Signs of this decline include the ousting of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the rise of a governing coalition that included an Arab party. He discusses the illiberalism in the country in political and juridical terms, results of a 2016 Pew survey of Jewish Israelis about the country's laws, and the role of the failure of the Camp David Summit in this transformation into illiberal democracy.

Enough End of History It is profoundly appropriate that I The End of History i concludes with an extended "wagon train" metaphor, complete with colonialist visions of attacking Indians, battle-weary settlers, and supposedly empty landscapes stretching into futurity.[43] Because, at the end of the day - at the end of Fukuyama's history - this is an imperialist book, linked with every rhetorical, ideological, and philosophical utterance to a universal theory that legitimates a history of expansionism and capitalist brutality in the name of liberal democracy. In essence, Fukuyama gave his speech just prior to (and thus seeming to predict) the fall of the Soviet Union.[7] Much ink has also been spilled about the wrongness of Fukuyama's thesis, with I Time i including it among its "Top 10 Failed Predictions" of all time, alongside Y2K and the claim that "The Titanic is Unsinkable."[8] Fukuyama, whose argument is much more complicated than such analyses usually imply, has been patiently correcting readers about "prediction" ever since. Here were two strong men, Fukuyama notes, whose respective regimes had "given way to popularly elected governments" in the late 1980s.[21] Toward the end of the chapter, Pinochet pops up again although this time linked in a chain of signifiers with "the Sandinistas" whose recent loss of a popular election also, for Fukuyama, represents the weakness of strong states.[22] Just two chapters later, Pinochet reemerges, but this time in the context of describing "The Worldwide Liberal Revolution.". [Extracted from the article]

Political liberals have regularly been accused of being antidemocratic. The standard version of this objection maintains that in prioritizing liberal rights, political liberals leave insufficient room for democratic self-legislation. Leading political liberals like Jonathan Quong have denied the force of this objection, by arguing that certain liberal rights are beyond reasonable dispute and that there is nothing objectionably undemocratic about having constitutional guarantees in place to protect them. In this article, I argue that the democratic problem with Quong's political liberalism is not the emphasis on constitutional safeguards for liberal rights. Rather, Quong's theory cannot ensure that even a basic desideratum for democratic decision-making is met. We are thus faced with the choice of granting citizens the right to make democratic decisions and Quong's antidemocratic political liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aumann's theorem states that no individual should agree to disagree under a range of assumptions. Political liberalism appears to presuppose these assumptions with the idealized conditions of public reason. We argue that Aumann's theorem demonstrates they nevertheless cannot be simultaneously held with what is arguably political liberalism's most central tenet. That is, the tenet of reasonable pluralism, which implies we can rationally agree to disagree over conceptions of the good. We finish by elaborating a way of relaxing one of the theorem's axioms that arguably lends itself to a coherent account of political liberalism, namely, the condition of indexical independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Eduardo Contreras thoughtfully and meticulously explores the connection between latinidad and liberalism in Latinos and the Liberal City by examining how and why Latinos become involved in politics. Noting that "contemporary deliberations on Latinos as liberal or as liberal leaning raise a number of fundamental questions.

Recent reforms to Canada’s system of federal judicial appointments have sought to make the process more transparent and better able to produce a bench reflective of the society it serves. This paper reviews these reforms and using judicial appointment data (2016–2020), considers whether the Liberal government has met these objectives. The relationship between official bilingualism and representation on the bench is also considered. The paper finds that “diversity” on Canada’s federally appointed provincial courts remains unbalanced. While women have made up the majority of appointments since the Trudeau Liberals formed government in 2015, other equity-deserving groups, like people of colour and people with disabilities, have been appointed in numbers below their proportion of the Canadian population. Additionally, an analysis of the official language skillsets of judicial appointees offers tentative evidence that there may be challenges to fostering a judicial branch that is both representative and officially bilingual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stark divide between the political right and left is rooted in conflicting beliefs, values, and personality—and, recent research suggests, perhaps even lower-level physiological differences between individuals. In this registered report, we investigated a novel domain of ideological differences in physiological processes: interoceptive sensitivity—that is, a person's attunement to their own internal bodily states and signals (e.g., physiological arousal, pain, and respiration). We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that greater interoceptive sensitivity would be associated with greater conservatism: one laboratory study in the Netherlands using a physiological heartbeat detection task and one large-scale online study in the United States employing an innovative webcam-based measure of interoceptive sensitivity. Contrary to our predictions, we found evidence that interoceptive sensitivity may instead predict greater political liberalism (versus conservatism), although this association was primarily limited to the American sample. We discuss implications for our understanding of the physiological underpinnings of political ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pregled is the property of University of Sarajevo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research in political psychology indicates that liberals are less motivated than conservatives by epistemic, existential, and relational needs to reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord, and are therefore more prone to challenge the status quo. In a compelling extension of this work into the field of consumer behavior, Jung, Garbarino, Briley, and Wynhausen (this issue) demonstrate that people residing in more liberal (vs. conservative) areas register more complaints with the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and dispute more resolutions offered in response to their complaints. Furthermore, liberals were found to object more strongly to the hypothetical imposition of an unanticipated banking fee, and this effect was mediated by system justification. Inspired by Jung and colleagues, we investigated the hypothesis that liberals would also be more likely to buy and boycott consumer products for political reasons. We analyzed data from the American National Election Studies and European Social Surveys and discovered that, even after we adjusted for demographic factors, liberals in the United States and leftists in all 15 European countries were more likely than conservatives and rightists to report having bought a product--or refrained from buying a product--for political reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic/national hybridity can be defined as a combination of plural ethnic/national aspects within an individual's self. This article proposes five such types: fused, dissonant, alternating, contradictory and reciprocal. Among them, the least focused type—reciprocal—can be represented by Russian Jewish Liberals who were Russified but active in both Russian and Jewish milieus from the late 19th century until the early 1920s (after the Russian Revolution, exiled in Western Europe). In such people's selves, the Jewish and Russian aspects reinforced each other. They believed that Russia and Russians provided a stage on which Jews could fulfil their potential, such as economic roles as intermediaries, proliferators of Western knowledge and defenders of the legal order, any of which, in their view, Russia and Russians needed, and feel pride in their Jewishness. Thus, they tried to defend Russia in times of crisis. Comparison with other Russian Jewish trends such as Jews in the Mensheviks and Russian Zionism suggests that such Liberals would be an extreme case but that the Late Imperial Russian multiethnic/national milieu would have been likely to generate such a trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social cultural and ethical discourse both in Slovakia and around the world is marked by the depth of the antagonism between conservatives and progressive liberals, with disputes characterized by mutual accusations of bigotry and prejudice, even extending to hatred. In such a climate, it would therefore be interesting to examine how the two sides of the ideological divide perceive the other and to identify the common internal reasons for the patterns of thought and behavior which they attribute to each other. This study investigates the issue using the classical attributive method on a sample of 543 newspaper opinion pieces (either editorials and columns) from conservative and liberal media sources in Slovakia. The texts are identified, quantified and compared based on "inputs" (the cultural-ethical themes of the articles), "outputs" (the attitudes of the authors) but especially the "attributes" themselves (the character traits attributed to the opposition). At the same time, the study also analyses the lexical-semantic aspect of the examined texts. The author combines qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to outline three general conclusions about the liberal-conservative relationship in Slovakia but also in a broader Central and Eastern European and global context: 1. the difference in perceptions of social and personal threats; 2. the integral role of the Church and Christianity in the dispute; 3. the division of the roles of older and younger "brother". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ayer: Revista de Historia Contemporánea is the property of Asociacion de Historia Contemporanea and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ayer: Revista de Historia Contemporánea is the property of Asociacion de Historia Contemporanea and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)