politics

Barack Obama issued 78 pardons and 153 commutations before leaving office, including commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning. While commutations shorten the sentences of incarcerated individuals, but do not alter their criminal record, pardons remove the conviction from the individual’s record. Obama’s latest string of clemency decisions brings his administration’s total to 1,324, the majority of which were commutations.

Research on federal executive clemency shows that rates of clemency are highest when Democratic presidents are in power, when crime rates are lower, and during periods of war. Legal research also highlights variation between states, with certain governors utilizing clemency measures more than others, though not necessarily along party lines. While executive clemency was once a practice commonly employed by U.S. presidents, its use has declined in recent decades. This decreased use of executive clemency has coincided with a sharp increase in arrests, both of which have contributed to the substantial rise in incarcerated individuals across the U.S. 

• Bruce Western. 2006. “Punishment and Inequality in America.” Russell Sage Foundation.
• Margaret Colgate Love. 2010. “The Twilight of Pardon Power.” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 100(3): 1169–1212.
• William M.Landes and Richard A. Posner. 2009. “The Economics of Presidential Pardons and Commutations.” The Journal of Legal Studies 38(1): 61–88.
• Rachel E. Barkow . 2009. “The Politics of Forgiveness: Reconceptualizing Clemency.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 21(3): 153–59.

Scholarship also hints at who is likely to receive a commutation or pardon. Analyses of death sentences shows that women, youth, the elderly, and those who have spent a significant amount of time on death row are more likely to have their death sentences commuted. Additionally, death penalty commutations are more common among governors who are not returning to office (lame duck) and when the death row population is particularly old. However, even though female prisoners are more likely to receive clemency, recent qualitative investigations of commutation hearings suggest that women encounter a systemic gender bias when applying for a pardon or commutation.

• Laura M. Argys and H. Naci Mocan. 2004. “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? An Analysis of Prisoners on Death Row in the United States.” The Journal of Legal Studies 33(2): 255–82.
• Carol Jacobsen and Lora Bex Lempert 2013. “Institutional Disparities: Considerations of Gender in the Commutation Process for Incarcerated Women.” Signs 39(1): 265–89.

The New York Times recently faced criticism after publishing a factually incorrect op-ed about how much money people receiving SNAP benefits (food stamps) spend on soda and other sweetened beverages. In a piece challenging the findings, Professor of Public Policy Joe Soss revisits the numbers and finds no substantial difference in spending between people who receive these benefits and people who don’t. Non-SNAP households spend about four cents on soft drinks for every dollar on groceries, and SNAP households spend about five cents per dollar. Soss points out that this error perpetuates stereotypical moral judgments about the poor. Research finds time and time again that these moral judgments often miss the facts, but they nevertheless have a big impact on our social safety net policies.

Historical work finds that aid to the poor in the United States developed to be highly conditional — political leaders often justified policies by focusing on certain “deserving” categories of people like soldiers and mothers. As a result, moral narratives about who deserves aid became central to the policymaking process and continue to shape attitudes about helping the poor.

• Theda Skocpol. 1996. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
• Brian Steensland. 2006. “Cultural Categories and the American Welfare State: The Case of Guaranteed Income Policy.” American Journal of Sociology 111(5):1273–1326.
• Linda J. Skitka and Philip E. Tetlock. 1993. “Providing Public Assistance: Cognitive and Motivational Processes Underlying Liberal and Conservative Policy Preferences.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65(6):1205–23.

These moral narratives bias our thinking about people who are poor and hide the fact that they are often no different from people who aren’t. For example, despite efforts to drug test welfare recipients, substance use rates are not much higher among the poor. And single motherhood in poor communities does not come from different sexual behavior — it happens because poor mothers value family just as much as everyone else. By treating poor people as morally deviant, our public policy can do more harm than good.

• Bridget F. Grant and Deborah A. Dawson. 1996 “Alcohol and drug use, abuse, and dependence among welfare recipients.” American Journal of Public Health 86(10): 1450-1454.
• Kathyrn Edin and Maria Kefalas. 2005. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford Schram. 2011. Disciplining the Poor Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In one of the largest days of protest in recent history, the Women’s March on Washington and its sister marches drew millions of people out into the streets of major American cities to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump and to call for protecting the rights of women, immigrants, and other groups that are likely to be further marginalized by the Trump administration. A look at research on past women’s movements sheds light on the ways that gender shapes when and how women protest, and the important roles they have played in social movement history.

While some argue that women are too diverse to constitute an “issue group,” women’s social mobilization around issues of reproductive, labor, and voting rights has had an important impact on movement culture in the United States. In fact, women’s groups were some of the first to work outside of the existing political system by relying on changing public opinion, rather than voting, as a movement strategy.

• Heather Mckee Hurwitz and Verta Taylor. 2012. “Women’s Cultures and Social Movements in Global Contexts.” Sociology Compass 6(10): 808-822.
• Holly McCammon, Ellen Granberg, Karen Campbell, and Christine Mowery. 2001. “How Movements Win: Gendered Opportunity Structures and U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movements, 1866 to 1919.” American Sociological Review 66(1): 49-70.
• Elisabeth S. Clemens. 1993. “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women’s Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920.” American Journal of Sociology 98(4): 755-798.

But women have to contend with a social movement culture that is structured around already pervasive gender norms, which means that the strategies used by women’s movements, and women’s roles in social movements more generally, are in many ways reflective of existing gender norms. For example, women’s movements are more likely to rely on nonviolent strategies, like marches, and women are more likely to be recruited into movement groups to perform nonviolent, gendered tasks, such as canvassing or managing the movement’s social networks.

• Selina Gallo-Cruz. 2016. “More Powerful Forces? Women, Nonviolence, and Mobilization.” Sociology Compass 10(9): 823- 835.
• Karen Beckwith. 2002. “Women, Gender, and Nonviolence in Political Movements.” PS: Political Science & Politics 35(1): 75-81.

Though women are often relegated to the subordinate roles and more menial tasks of political organizing, research finds that these roles have been a key ingredient to social movement success. A historical analysis of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. reveals that African American women acted as “bridge leaders,” making the necessary connections between movement leaders and constituents that helped grow the movement. Women have also played a vital role in the U.S. environmental justice movement and drawn on their grievances and experiences as mothers to challenge pollution and toxic waste.

• Belinda Robnett. 1996. “African-American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965: Gender, Leadership, and Micromobilization.” American Journal of Sociology 101(6): 1661-1693.
• Celene Krauss. 1993. “Women and Toxic Waste Protests: Race, Class and Gender as Resources of Resistance.” Qualitative Sociology 16(3):247–62.
• Shannon Elizabeth Bell. 2013. Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice. University of Illinois Press.

The success of the recent Women’s March is further evidence that when women mobilize, they can be a powerful force for change. 

President Trump has made several high-profile picks for his cabinet, but he has one of the least diverse cabinets in recent history; there are no Latinos and very few other minorities or women. This has drawn criticism, but why is diversity a good thing for governments and other organizations? Social science research shows how diversity helps, but also how organizations often limit diversity by warping what it means to their members.  

Diversity can be quite beneficial for organizations. For example, schools with a more diverse student body experience superior educational outcomes. Similarly, in business, employee racial or gender diversity predicts higher sales revenue and market share.   

• Nida Denson and Mitchell J. Chang. 2009. “Racial Diversity Matters: The Impact of Diversity-Related Student Engagement and Institutional Context.” American Educational Research Journal 46(2): 322-353.
• Cedric Herring. 2009. “Does Diversity Pay?: Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity.” American Sociological Review 74(2): 208-224.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer responded to questions regarding the lack of diversity by stating that this cabinet is diverse; it has a “diversity of thinking…diversity of ideology.”  This is an example of how diversity acts as “Happy Talk,” a way people can show off their affections for modern equality without any attention to existing inequality. In short, many people talk about “diversity” in abstract ways, but avoid any real discussion of race, gender, and the like.

• Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann. 2007. “Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural Ambiguities and Consequences of ‘Happy Talk’“ American Sociological Review 72(6): 895-914.

This inattention toward issues of race, gender, sexuality, and other axes of oppression can take the “oomph” out of claims to diversity and misses its original intent: increasing access for marginalized groups. Ellen Berrey succinctly describes the effects of watered down, amorphous diversity as “taming demands for racial justice.” As the remaining 5,000 cabinet sub-positions are filled, pay attention to whether these selections are diverse and what kind of “diversity” they really represent.

• David Embrick. 2011. “The Diversity Ideology in the Business World: A New Oppression for a New Age.” Critical Sociology 37(5): 541-556.
• Ellen Berrey. 2015. The Enigma of Diversity. University of Chicago Press; Chicago, IL.  

From climate change to stem cell research, public discourse in the United States is highly divided about the legitimacy and authority of science. Depending on your views, it’s easy to dismiss the other side as uninformed or uneducated, but sociologists know that views about science are more complicated than that.

Despite common misconceptions that climate change skepticism is linked to education, trust in science has only a small correlation with educational attainment or scientific literacy.

• Nick Allum, Patrick Sturgis, Dimitra Tabourazi, and Ian Brunton-Smith. 2008. “Science Knowledge and Attitudes across Cultures: A Meta-Analysis.” Public Understanding of Science 17: 35–54.

Rather, distrust of science is closely linked to political and religious affiliations. Conservatives have the lowest level of trust in science; this holds true even among highly educated conservatives. As for religious folks, studies find that it is not necessarily that religious people completely distrust the scientific method, but rather they reject science’s influence on issues they see as a moral concern.

• Gordon Gauchat. 2012. “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010.” American Sociological Review 77(2): 167-187.
• John Evans. 2011. “Epistemological and Moral Conflict Between Religion and Science.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(4): 707-727.

However, research cautions against thinking about trust in science as simply a liberal versus conservative binary. A recent study offers a more complicated analysis, arguing that a third perspective defies this binary. This group, labeled “postseculars,” have more complicated views — they often trust science in certain domains, but distrust it in others, reflecting a much more complicated picture of how cleavages in social, political, and economic attitudes influence public opinion of scientific authority.

• Shiri Noy and Timothy L. O’Brien. 2016. “A Nation Divided: Science, Religion, and Public Opinion in the United States.” Socius 2:1-15.

The recent U.S. presidential election has everyone thinking about the role of media and religion in political life. From fake news to mainstream media spectacle, both the left and the right have been criticizing American journalism. White evangelical Christians also overwhelmingly broke for Trump, despite concern that he was not particularly pious himself. The intersection of politics, media, and religion is clear, but what can research tell us about how they interact?  Some of the best work suggests we can learn a lot by making an unexpected comparison: the role of religion and politics in the media in the United States and Africa.

First, political leaders across the globe use religious media in similar ways. Religious programming and discourse in the media creates new ways for people to use religion to signal their social status. Politicians in both the U.S. and countries like Nigeria have harnessed the power of these shows and their large audience numbers as a tool to publicly cultivate their spiritual image by integrating administrative goals with images of divine will.

• Ebenezer Obadare. 2006. “Pentecostal Presidency? The Lagos-Ibadan ‘Theocratic Class’ & the Muslim ‘Other’.” Review of African Political Economy 33(110): 665-678
• Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar. 2007. “Religion and Politics: Taking African Epistemologies Seriously.” Journal of Modern African Studies 45(3): 385-401
• David Scott Domke and Kevin M. Coe. 2008. The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Second, religious leaders also use secular media outlets in similar ways. The political economy of the media both in Africa and the U.S. means that secular media organizations are willing to broadcast religious programs because they garner large audience numbers. Additionally, religious leaders embed themselves in the elite, administrative networks that run secular media outlets, political groups, and academic organizations to disseminate their messaging to both religious and non-religious audiences. This also means that religious media personalities are firmly ensconced in today’s globalized media and public culture that is characterized by a focus on media icons, spectacle, and a penchant for dramatization.

• Tamar Gordon and Mary Hancock. 2005. “‘The Crusade is the Vision’: Branding Charisma in Global Pentecostal Ministry.“ Material Religion 1(3): 386-404.
• Marleen De Witte. 2011. Business of the Spirit: Ghanaian Broadcast Media and the Commercial Exploitation of Pentecostalism. Journal of African Media Studies 3(2): 189-204.
• Michael Lindsay. 2008. Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Studying media as a central category across different international cases provides fresh perspectives on religion, citizenship, authority, and political engagement.

• Rosalind Hackett, Anne Mélice, Steven Van Wolputte and Katrien Pype. 2014. “Interview: Rosalind Hackett Reflects on Religious Media in Africa.” Social Compass 16(1): 67-72.
• Stewart Hoover. 2011. “Media and the Imagination of Religion in Contemporary Global Culture.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 14(6): 610-625.

A major point of discussion after the 2016 U.S. election has been the fact that while many polls predicted a win for Hillary Clinton, she ultimately lost the electoral college. Numerous estimates showed a commanding lead for the Democratic candidate, but they were decidedly off when it came to calling the results on election night. People were quick to blame the pollsters for misinterpreting the results or collecting bad data, but social scientists point to methodological issues that plague almost every poll and survey that can help explain some of what happened in November. 

Often, issues with sample distribution are part of the problem. A common method within polling circles is “Random Digit Dialing” (RDD), where researchers make a list of potential phone numbers and take a random sample from that set. Next, they call those numbers and ask people to take their survey by phone. This method can create a coverage bias, which can exclude some groups or people from being part of the respondent pool — not everyone has a phone or is able to stop and take a survey via phone in the middle of the day. This means that any conclusions drawn from that sample cannot be used to make conclusions about the general population because it is not truly representative. To correct for this, some researchers use address-based sampling (ABS) to make a respondent pool by sending mail invites to randomly selecting home addresses. Sometimes, this method can elicit a higher response rate than RDD, but the research shows that both RDD and ABS tend to over-represent non-Hispanic whites and people with college educations. In short, it is difficult to get a representative sample. 

• Andy Peytchev, Lisa R. Carley-Baxter, and Michele C. Black. 2011. “Multiple Sources of Nonobservation Error in Telephone Surveys: Coverage and Nonresponse.” Sociological Research Methods 40(1): 138-168.
• Michael W. Link, Michael P. Battaglia, Martin R. Frankel, Larry Osborn and Ali H. Mokdad. 2008. “A Comparison of Address-Based Sampling (ABS) Versus Random-Digit Dialing (RDD) for General Population Surveys.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72(1): 6-27.

Another common set of problems with polling is with respondents themselves. Social desirability bias occurs when participants provide answers that they feel are more socially acceptable, even if they are not necessarily their true beliefs. Krumpal provides an overview of the various forces that drive social desirability bias and the impacts it can have on both survey results and the ways that researchers interpret the data. Another prominent issue is panel conditioning, which happens when a survey respondent is asked the same questions repeatedly overtime. Respondents will often change their answer each time, revealing how fleeting survey responses can be.

• Ivar Krumpal. “Determinants of Social Desirability Bias in Sensitive Surveys: A Literature Review.” 2013. Quality & Quantity 47(4): 2025-2047.
• John Robert Warren and Andrew Halpern-Manners. 2008. “Panel Conditioning in Longitudinal Social Science Surveys.” Sociological Methods & Research 41(4): 491-534.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments for Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, a case concerning allegations of racial bias in jury deliberations. Many states prohibit hearing juror testimony following the conclusion of a trial; however, following the deliberations of Peña-Rodriguez’s case, two jurors signed affidavits attesting to racial bias by a fellow juror. They allege that the juror referred to an alibi witness as discreditable because he was “an illegal,” and asserted that the defendant was guilty “because he’s Mexican.” After initially being struck down by both the trial judge and the Colorado Supreme Court, Peña-Rodriguez is now making his case to the highest court, a task which research suggests may prove extremely challenging.

In her book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander illustrates why challenging racial bias in juries is so difficult. Despite the passage of laws such as Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits prosecutors from discriminating on the basis of race when selecting juries, both prosecutors and defense attorneys are allowed peremptory strikes, or the ability to strike potential jurors for just about any reason they choose. Challenging instances of racial bias is even more difficult following the Supreme Court decision in Purkett v. Elm, which ruled that even if there is a pattern of striking a particular racial group by a prosecutor, providing any race-neutral reason (the prosecutor in this case used hair length) is enough to justify that the decision is not based on race.

• Nijole V. Benokaritis. 1982. Racial Exclusion in Juries. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 18(1), 29-47.
• Hiroshi Fukurai. Edgar W. Butler, & Richard Krooth. 1991. Where Did Black Jurors Go? A Theoretical Synthesis of Racial Disenfranchisement in the Jury System and Jury Selection. Journal of Black Studies, 22(2), 196-215.

Moreover, it is not just legal precedents that solidify racial bias, but also the initial selection process itself that is discriminatory. Potential jurors are drawn from registered voters or Department of Motor Vehicle lists, which contain fewer minorities. Forty-seven states also restrict the rights of felons to serve on juries, which disproportionately limits the presence people of color. Most states and the federal government place a lifetime exclusion for felonies, which automatically bans nearly 30 percent of adult black men from jury service.

• Brian C. Kalt. 2003. Exclusion of Felons from Jury Service. American University Law Review, 53, 1-149.
• Darren Wheelock. 2005. Collateral Consequences and Racial Inequality: Felon Status Restrictions as a System of Disadvantage. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 21(1), 82-90.

In short, jury selection is not only inherently racially biased, but many Supreme Court decisions appear to support a system of racial discrimination rather than dismantle it. As a result, legal precedents such as the rules of evidence may bolster, or at the very least shield, racial bias within jury deliberations.

Done and dusted. Brazil’s run of hosting global sporting events has officially ended. From the opening game of the FIFA Confederation Cup in 2013, to the closing ceremony of the Paralympics on September 18, it has been quite a ride. Spectacles of the grandest of scales were to be portrayed on television with mostly smiles and laughs, but also some sadness. In the eyes of the world, Brazil’s sporting exploits look to be a success, but was it worth it?  Was the estimated $30 billion the Brazilian government spent hosting these events a good investment? It is probably too early to say for sure, but sociological research can give us a sense of what kind of analyses need to be done to find out. 

In the past, economic growth has often been seen as the primary reason for hosting major sporting events for developing nations. But when even economists acknowledge that little economic revenue will be produced, we must look to other rationales. The hope of breaking into the upper-echelon of nations with positive news coverage and prestige has emerged as one of the justifcations for hosting global sports spectacles today. For example, South Korea, who co-hosted the 2002 World Cup, used the event to promote itself as a modern state, just like its neighbors Japan and China.

• John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter. 2004. Accounting for Mega-events: Forecast and Actual Impacts of the 2002 Football World Cup Finals on the Host Countries Japan/Korea. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 39(2) 187-203.
• John Horne. 2015. Assessing the Sociology of Sport: On Sports Mega-events and Capitalist Modernity. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 50(4-5) 466–471.
• Martin Curi, Jorge Knijnik, and Gilmar Mascarenhas. 2011. The Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro 2007: Consequences of a sport mega-event on a BRIC country. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42(6) 140-156.
• Barbara Schausteck de Almeida, Chris Bolsmann, Wanderley Marchi Junior, and Juliano de Souza. 2015. Rationales, rhetoric and realities: FIFA’s World Cup in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 50(3) 265-282.

Other countries like Brazil, China, and Russia have used their recent Olympic and World Cup events to help build positive public opinion around the globe. Who knows if Brazil’s exploits will make a lasting impact on the world stage, but this criteria will surely be among the most important in how these Games are judged in the future.

It’s no secret that the U.S. lags behind many other countries in terms of the number of women in politics. In Congress and state legislatures, women occupy less than a quarter of available positions. Hillary Clinton enters this arena, hoping to be the first female president in the US (but not first in the world: see Mindy Fried’s “Global Women at the Top”). Sexist critiques of Clinton range from criticizing her voice for being too loud, too shrill, and too naggy, to anti-Clinton merchandise that reads, “Don’t be a pussy. Vote for Trump,” or “Hillary sucks but not as hard as Monica.”

While there is some incentive for women to enter male-dominated fields–the pay and status is often greater–there are also negative consequences. Sexual harassment may function as a form of backlash against powerful women who challenge gender norms by entering male-dominated fields or positions. Many women report sexual harassment at work and female supervisors report especially high levels. These consequences occur on a much broader scale, as well. For instance, when women enter occupational fields traditionally dominated by men in large numbers, the average pay for those jobs decreases over time. To explain this phenomenon, scholars point to society’s devaluing of women’s work more generally.

• Youngjoo Chaa and Kim A. Weeden. 2014. “Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages.”  American Sociological Review 79(3): 457-484.
• Asaf Levanon, Paula England, and Paul Allison. 2009. “Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950-2000 U.S. Census Data.” Social Forces  88(2):865-892.
• Christopher Uggen and Amy Blackstone. 2004. “Sexual Harassment as a Gendered Expression of Power.” American Sociological Review 6(1):64-92.

So, what happens when men enter fields traditionally dominated by women? In workplaces where women often outnumber men, such as nursing, men actually advance much faster and to higher positions than their female counterparts. This mechanism is known as “the glass escalator.” Moreover, when men are outnumbered by women in a workplace, they perceive more support from coworkers and supervisors than women who work in male-dominated jobs.

• Christine L. Williams. 1992. “The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the ‘Female’ Professions.” Social Problems 39(3):53-267.
• Catherine Taylor. 2010. “Occupational Sex Composition and the Gendered Availability of Workplace Support.” Gender & Society 24(2):189-212.

Overall men benefit from working in female-dominated fields, while women face greater burdens when they work in male-dominated fields. It is no surprise that Hillary Clinton is experiencing her fair share of harassment and critique: Not only is she pursuing a position dominated by men, but one that has only been occupied by men.

For more on this, check out our TROTs on female leaders and sexual harassment in law professions, as well as this Soc Images post, “Why Aren’t There More Women in Politics?”