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Dissatisfied with their relative standing in the world, China and Russia are challenging the US-dominated liberal order. Could US accommodation of their status concerns reduce conflict? The psychological rationale for status accommodation is rooted in the insights of social identity theory (SIT), which argues that persistent status denial leads lower-status groups to "lash out." Steven Ward (2017) objects that political scientists have misinterpreted SIT. In his view, impermeable group boundaries only affect individuals and do not lead to intergroup conflict. Ward's narrow critique overlooks the larger meaning and significance of SIT, which is about how frustration and anger over status barriers and unfair treatment motivate lower-status groups to challenge the status quo. Social competition is positional and zero-sum. Given the insights of SIT, Ward's recommendation that the United States demonstrate to China and Russia the futility of status competition is likely to provoke a backlash and increase the risk of military conflict. Instead, SIT implies a continuing process of status accommodation and efforts to maintain the legitimacy and stability of US leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Believing that reduced discrimination against women directly corresponds to increased discrimination against men, referred to as a zero-sum perspective (ZSP), may inhibit further attempts toward gender equality. Based on a sample of 313 men and women, we developed and tested both a general measure and a domain-specific measure of the ZSP of gender status then examined sociodemographics (age, education, political orientation, religious beliefs, and past experience with discrimination) and social dominance orientation as predictors of the ZSP of shifts in gender status. Hostile and modern sexism were examined as potential mediators of this relationship. Structural equation models were computed to examine predictive paths separately for men and women. Although some similarities were found, results showed important differences in predictive paths for women and men, and supported the expected mediating role of sexism in the relationships between sociodemographic predictors and the ZSP. Findings have implications for targeting intervention efforts to enhance a win-win or non-zero-sum perspective that may facilitate efforts toward reducing gender discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the idea that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a zero sum game as of March 2013, focusing on the application of economic principles to Fourth Amendment law in America as a means of decreasing costs and increasing the efficiency of the nation's criminal justice system. The benefits and costs associated with law enforcement surveillance are addressed, along with crime control and Richard Posner's book "Economic Analysis of the Law."

The article offers the author's criticisms of what he calls U.S. President Barack Obama's zero-sum philosophy and his related views on wealth redistribution. He offers examples of areas where redistribution has failed, discussing the economic situation in the euro zone as of January 2013, Somali pirates, and political corruption in the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. China's economic philosophy, the al-Qaeda terrorist group, and imperialism in Darfur, Sudan, Kosovo, and Tibet, China.