Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Two experiments examined the relationship between Terror Management Theory and Social Dominance Theory in predicting group prejudice. Substantial research has shown that increasing peopleâ??s awareness of their own mortality (mortality salience) increases prejudice and discrimination against those who violate oneâ??s cultural worldview. Another body of research has shown that social dominance orientation is a robust predictor of group prejudice. Experiment 1 tested whether Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) moderates mortality salience effects on prejudice. Participants who were pre-tested on SDO were randomly assigned to a mortality salience or no-treatment control condition. SDO moderated the effects of mortality salience on attitudes toward social groups that were either marginalized (e.g. Blacks, Latinos) or perceived as non-American (e.g., Arabs, Illegal Immigrants). Participants who scored low on the SDO pre-test showed significantly less favorable attitudes toward these groups in the mortality salience condition as compared to the control group, whereas participants who scored high on SDO showed no significant difference between conditions.The second experiment tested whether different ways of inducing transcendence following mortality salience could reduce prejudice. Following measures of SDO and the mortality salience task, participants were randomly assigned to write an essay either on their future legacy (personal transcendence), future transportation (transportation transcendence), or directions to the post office (control). SDO moderated the effects of the different transcendence manipulations: future orientation reduced prejudice among those low on SDO and personal transcendence reduced prejudice among high SDO participants. Implications for the psychology of meaning and prejudice are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Dominant parties are widely seen as stabilizing hybrid regimes, but there is less agreement on how these parties emerge and serve their stabilizing function. This paper draws on a logic of elite and mass collective action to argue that ideas and other sources of genuine popular support are likely to be crucial in underpinning the initial emergence and subsequent success of dominant parties in ways not usually recognized. In particular, such support can be crucial to the successful functioning of even the most coercive sources of party and regime power. Russia provides a rare opportunity in the world of comparative scholarship to study the initial emergence of a hybrid regime dominant party at the micro level, using mass opinion surveys. This paper demonstrates the important role of ideas and other forms of popular support (most notably economic assessments) using the Russian Election Studies series of surveys that span the emergence of Russia's increasingly dominant United Russia Party as well as the election cycle before that party first appeared (that is, 1995-2008). The most recent survey wave, conducted in spring 2008, includes embedded experiments and other items specially designed to identify more precisely the bases of United Russia’s power. This includes the party’s relationship to Putin, which turns out to be more complicated and less one-sided than previously thought.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Drawing on the game-theoretical dominant player concept and power indices, this paper introduces a re-conceptualization of single-party dominance that we consider to be more intuitive and less dependent on ad hoc criteria than standard operationalizations of the phenomenon. This operational definition is then used in the presentation of a few descriptive inferences on the incidence and nature of single-party dominance in the subnational jurisdictions of four federally organized parliamentary democracies, namely, Canada, Australia, Germany and Austria. The paper also reviews extant hypotheses on the rise and fall of dominant party regimes and discusses their plausability against the backdrop of our cases. We conclude that there are few, if any, individually necessary or sufficient causes of single-party dominance. Instead, nationally and perhaps even regionally specific configurations of factors seem to account for the rise and fall of dominant party regimes - a finding that underlines the necessity of further multi-method research on the topic.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: How wide a range of social practices should be tolerated? One issue of concern here -- raised by Okin and others -- is that some social practices entail the domination of minorities within minorities, and so the toleration of those practices might entail social injustice. Suppose we want to take this concern very seriously, and thus start with the assumption that freedom from domination should be our first priority. What then would be the appropriate bounds of toleration? Approaching the problem of multicultural accommodation from this point of view greatly clarifies the debate, and yields some interesting results. In particular, this paper concludes that there are circumstances under which the goal of minimizing domination itself would be furthered by policies of special accommodation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The most striking characteristic of the Korean economy during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was that the whole economic system abruptly fell apart like a house of cards. In 1997-1998, about a half of the top 30 Korean business groups filed for bankruptcy. The country was virtually on the verge of collapse. This paper explains that the fundamental cause of the crisis was not just the financial defaults of the chaebol; rather it was structural in nature. The crisis was not independent of the Korean economic structure that is dominated by a very few extraordinarily powerful business groups, the chaebol. To understand the dynamics of the crisis, this paper digs deeper into the nature of Korean capitalism, a form of capitalism in which oligopolistic economic dominance of a few chaebol shapes the economy. This paper challenges the long-standing view of the Korean developmental state as rational industry shaper. This paper argues that industrial choices by the Korean state from one to another are fundamentally the reactions to, not the directions for, the chaebol. The Korean state's role reflected the chaebol-dominated industrial structure. These characteristics of the industrial process are what created the developmental role of the Korean state.