This article develops a racial capitalist theory of predatory inclusion to explain how consumer credit reproduces racial hierarchy in the United States. Predatory inclusion describes how marginalized groups gain access to credit on exploitative terms, transforming inequality into profitability. I argue that predatory inclusion is best understood as a racial capitalist logic of accumulation through dispossession, naturalized by race and structured through intersectionality. Historically, three pivotal contingencies entrenched this logic: the Fair Credit Reporting Act institutionalized credit bureaus, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited explicit discrimination while legitimating actuarial risk, and the Supreme Court's Marquette decision dismantled state usury laws, enabling banks to profit directly from interest and fees. Drawing on survey and administrative data, I show how credit scores map structural disadvantage into individualized "risk," sorting borrowers by race, gender, class, and place. These hierarchies expose Black, Hispanic, American Indian, and working-class borrowers - especially in the South and border regions - to persistent debt that subsidizes the rewards and lower costs enjoyed by disproportionately White and Asian prime borrowers and drives credit card profitability. Financial inclusion, far from closing the racial wealth gap, embeds inequality into credit markets and stabilizes racial capitalism at the core of American political economy.
Union locals have been overlooked as political organizations even though they are critical for socializing members into the politics of the union. In this article I develop and test a theory to explain why locals engage in politics. Drawing on social movement literature, I argue that locals engage in politics when they have excess resources but that this could be limited by internal divisions. I test this using a survey of private and public sector locals in Ohio. I find clear evidence for increased resources, as measured by membership, leading to political engagement but no evidence for the limiting effects of internal divisions.
The study of democratization processes undergoes constant revitalization within the discipline. CER enables the inclusion of diverse voices, experiences, frameworks, and questions which might challenge conventional explanations. This article explores how the Environmental Justice (EJ) movement contributes to understanding democracy, emphasizing the role of engaged research. It delves into the adoption and application of the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing by EJ groups, examining their potential relevance to CER in political science. The case of Uprose, a grassroots EJ organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY, illustrates how it holds government and larger environmental organizations accountable, ensuring democratic participation is not compromised by their actions. Through these examples, the article highlights the transformative potential of CER for enriching political science with insights from real-world civic engagement.
Family life is central to political campaigns in the U.S.; yet relatively little is known about whether voters apply different standards of parental responsibility to mother and father candidates. This article investigates whether parenting-related criticism, such as missing children's events due to professional demands, affects evaluations of women and men candidates in distinct ways. Two pre-registered survey experiments, fielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, examine whether such negative information about a candidate's parenting reduces voter support and whether justifications mitigate such effects. Negative parenting information significantly lowered candidate evaluations, and justifications improved evaluations for both candidates, but the magnitude of both the penalty and the recovery was equivalent for mothers and fathers. Exploratory analyses revealed no gendered penalties by respondents' gender or parental status. A follow-up question about candidates' spouses suggested that gendered assumptions about caregiving roles remain salient, even when candidate evaluations did not differ. Together, these findings refine theories of gender stereotypes and parenthood in politics by identifying a boundary condition: under realistic, pandemic-era depictions of everyday parenting strain, voters judge mothers and fathers by similar standards even as cultural expectations remain gendered.
Despite the ubiquity of maps presenting 48 contiguous states, Alaska, and Hawai'i, the territorial expanse of land subject to the laws of the United States comprises more than that. The federal government also controls and administers island territories in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. Though they exist in constitutional limbo, US territories retain certain autonomy over local affairs. The policy portfolio of territorial governments thus includes the construction of civil rights for their queer residents. Further, the territories do not regulate queer life uniformly. Here, I provide an overview of how the five permanently inhabited US territories have approached the expansion or contraction of rights for sexual minorities. After an analysis of debates related to such rights among territorial officials, I provide a framework for understanding how territorial governments regulate the lives of sexual minorities.
In this article, we show how, through a civically engaged research (CER) process, a political science project on Latino civic organizations was transformed by community-based leaders with decades of experience in organizing, movement-building, and driving change. We offer lessons for building community-academia research partnerships and, through three case studies, demonstrate the benefits of CER methodologies. Ultimately, by drawing on evidence from a multi-phase, multi-year community-academia collaboration, we show how a CER process can produce a more ethical, rigorous, and potentially useful research project for communities under study.
When individuals are referred to as "the people" ((sic)(sic), Renmin), "citizens" ((sic)(sic), Gongmin), or "commoners" ((sic)(sic)(sic), Laobaixin), do their political attitudes reflect the special implications of "the people," "citizens," or "commoners," respectively? The experimental question sets embedded in the survey contribute to the theoretical investigation of the priming effect of political identity terms on individuals' political attitudes, as well as the methodological examination of the effect of wording on measurement outcomes. The analysis of data collected from residents of China's city N reveals that the modern political identification terms "the people" and "citizens" are more likely to inspire agreement to rights awareness than the traditional term "commoners." It suggests that modern terms for the general public can indeed inspire modern political attitudes. In terms of methodology, if the researcher focuses on interval and ordinal variables rather than nominal variables, the researcher has greater leeway in designing the questionnaire, using terms such as "people," "citizens," and "commoners." The findings help us understand the application of various political identity terms in real-life official and popular contexts, while also providing a reference for survey research design in the Chinese context.
Scholars increasingly call for nuanced approaches to studying gender in political behavior. This study demonstrates why such approaches matter by examining how exposure to rude versus civil political discourse influences anticipated political engagement. Using an online experiment with college students, we find that gendered measures based on masculine traits - rather than a binary classification - predict higher engagement and enjoyment of politics after exposure to rude politics . Additionally, when applying a gender binary lens, we observe that non-white women exposed to rude politics report greater anticipated engagement. We argue this mobilizing effect stems from rude politics clashing with their commitment to inclusive democracy, shaped by shared experiences in community organizing and activism. These findings underscore the importance of moving beyond simplistic gender categories to understand how political incivility interacts with gendered traits and intersectional identity.
Race-conscious redistricting is often viewed as a morally defensible mechanism for enhancing the descriptive representation of historically disadvantaged groups. However, in Chicago's Chinatown, community decision makers adopted different strategies for redistricting at the state and city levels. Civic leaders and nonprofit organizations consistently supported race-conscious redistricting, while business elites endorsed a unified legislative district at the state level but opposed the creation of the city's first Asian-majority ward. Through a case study of Chicago's Chinatown, this paper argues that redistricting outcomes are shaped by a tension between the moral imperatives of racial representation and the practical interests of political and economic actors. State-level redistricting in Illinois was driven primarily by partisanship, with Democrats using Chinatown symbolically to advance reforms that consolidated partisan advantage, creating an opening for a unified state legislative district. By contrast, Chicago's city-level redistricting was more vulnerable to personalized politics and transactional relationships between powerful elected officials and business elites, prioritizing economic development over creating an Asian-majority ward that might disrupt existing coalitions. The study contributes to the literature on descriptive representation and Asian American politics by showing how political scale and institutional context shape the strategies of ethnic community decision makers.
How do voters understand Indigenous politics? We use original survey data to explore attitudes around Indigenous politics and policy reforms in the context of a high-profile national constitutional amendment referendum to create an Indigenous advisory body to the Australian Parliament, known as the Voice. The proposed constitutional reform failed, with 60 percent of voters rejecting the change. We find that Indigenous voters supported the Voice significantly more than non-Indigenous voters. For non-Indigenous Australians, anti-Indigenous hostility and the perception that Indigenous support was divided were stronger predictors of opposition to the Voice referendum than standard predictors of political attitudes, including political and demographic variables and ideology. This paper adds to the growing literature on the policy demands of Indigenous peoples and offers important new evidence about how non-Indigenous people form attitudes on and evaluate Indigenous policy issues.
The purpose of this paper is to assess if and how a prominent conservative think tank borrows framing tactics from dominant racial ideologies in public discourse to oppose prominent cases of police brutality (e.g., George Floyd Jr.) and related social justice protests. This paper also seeks to assess how these framing tactics changed over the summer of 2020 when the push for social justice ramped up. Data for this project come from 51 op-ed articles published by a conservative think tank from late May of 2020 (after the death of George Floyd Jr.) through the end of the year. Findings revealed that contributors used racialized framing tactics, where they promoted strong support for principles of peaceful protests while focusing almost exclusively on the riots that followed, describing them as a threat to society, the police, and the local community. Our findings also revealed that the organization almost universally omitted discussion of systemic racism within the criminal justice system. We argue that these tactics minimize persistent issues with racism through color-blind appeals while concomitantly activating racial animosity through pleas of threat, ultimately leading them and their audience to oppose the pursuit of social justice.
The self-image of a tolerant, progressive, and homo-friendly Dutch state is often opposed to images of Arab/Muslim cultures as "backward" and homophobic. In this context, LGBT refugees from the MENA regions often feel forced to pledge for a limited notion of safety and choose between two supposedly incompatible "homes," directly opposed culturally, socially, and historically. This article discusses the weaponization of the concept of safety by LGBT organizations to advocate for specific policies promoting justice concerning LGBT refugees, and their investment in the vilification of straight males, framed as the primary threat to the safety of LGBT asylum seekers in asylum centers. Simultaneously, it explores how LGBT refugees deploy the notion of safety as they navigate the escalating homonationalist and Islamophobic regimes prevalent in the Netherlands. Contrary to this culturalist framework, I demonstrate that networks of affinity emerge between LGBT refugees and heterosexual refugees, forged through shared experiences of violence and poverty within the carceral space of asylum centers and through common political values, such as solidarity with Palestine. This complexity challenges the conventional notion of "queer safety," which tends to be fixated on Eurocentric binaries of queer/heterosexual, cis/trans, and progressive West/barbaric East based on rigid sexual identity lines.
U.S. public opinion has traditionally supported Israel in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, in recent years, support for Israel has declined, especially among younger left-leaning Americans. At the same time, Israel has received unprecedented criticism from international human rights organizations and left-wing Jewish-American organizations for its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, particularly with respect to its military campaigns in Gaza. Has critical information from these sources helped shape U.S. public opinion of the conflict? We conduct a survey experiment analyzing the extent to which information from Human Rights Watch and Jewish Voice for Peace impacts views of who is to blame for the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict. We find individuals who are treated with criticism of Israel from Jewish Voice for Peace or are informed of the death toll of the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict (which killed far more Palestinians than Israelis) to be more likely to blame Israel for the violence and to support U.S. foreign policy taking a more pro-Palestinian stance. The effects of the treatment are stronger amongst Democrats and independents than Republicans. These results demonstrate that critical cues from Jewish-American organizations and death-toll information negatively impact U.S. public opinion toward Israel.
While lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) and Christian identities are often thought of as being politically conflicting, many LGBT Americans identify as Christian. Yet, there is limited research on how these identities interact to shape the political attitudes and behaviors of people at their intersections. Even less is known about how these dynamics vary by indicators of religious belonging and religiosity. Using 2020 Cooperative Election Study data, we examine whether politically conflicting LGBT and Christian identities correspond with higher levels of three indicators of political cross-pressures: ambivalence, moderation, and disengagement. Our findings reveal inconsistent patterns. While LGBT Christians and non-religious cisgender-heterosexual people exhibit more signs of being cross-pressured than non-religious LGBT people, cisgender-heterosexual Christians were often more cross-pressured than other groups. These findings suggest that (1) the influence of cross-pressures on political attitudes and behaviors may be more complex than previously theorized, and (2) who engages in politics and vocalizes their policy preferences may have implications for whose policy preferences are enacted.
How do administrative burdens shape who shows up to their scheduled immigration court hearings? In this reflection, I use the administrative burdens framework to argue that challenging commutes exacerbate the costs of attending immigration court, leading to missed court hearings, and consequentially, near certain deportation orders. Using the Executive Office for Immigration Review's case data from 2021 to 2022, I find that holding virtual hearings increases the likelihood that an immigrant attends their court hearing. These findings have implications for the case outcomes of tens of thousands of immigrants each year. Additionally, these results have implications for research across various subfields of political science, ranging from immigrant political behavior to administrative studies.
While millions of Americans struggle with student loan debt, Black students are disproportionately reliant on loans to finance their education and bear the largest debt burdens as a result. Many political elites have framed their support for student debt relief explicitly in terms of ameliorating racial injustice and shrinking the Black-White wealth gap. Yet, we know relatively little about whether and how racial identity drives support or opposition for student debt relief policy. This study employs conjoint and framing experiments with a qualitative probe to examine how racial identity and race-based messages influence people's support for student debt cancellation. While we find that people view individual Black borrowers as slightly more deserving of debt relief relative to other groups-a reversal of the typical pattern in social welfare policy-these attitudes do not translate into preferences for racially-targeted policies, nor do they make people more receptive to positive race-based messaging for student debt relief. Among Republicans, they weaken support. Our work sheds light on the complex ways in which racial identities affect people's preferences for this key issue in American political economy.
States like Florida place a heavy administrative burden on transgender people who want to change their names. Applicants face a dozen pages of legal forms, fingerprinting, a background check, a $400 fee, and a court hearing - requirements which do not apply to most cisgender people. County clerks and judges impose additional barriers on some applicants but not others. In this community-engaged, collaborative study with two transgender advocacy organizations, we followed 61 transgender people in Florida who started the name change process in 2022 and 2023. 31 participants completed the process. Why did some people receive name changes relatively quickly, while others discontinued the process, faced barriers, or were denied name changes? We use the racialized and gendered administrative burdens framework to explain how apparently neutral rules for preventing fraud place significant burdens and costs on multiply marginalized applicants. We use survey data, participant observation, interviews, and administrative data to find that the people most likely to encounter additional barriers in our study are unhoused people and those with prior contact with the criminal justice system. These additional barriers fell disproportionately on Black transgender women, who were then more likely to leave the process without a name change.
"Bathroom bills" that require transgender individuals to use public restrooms that correspond to their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity have become law in many states, some imposing criminal penalties for violations. American public opinion may facilitate the passage of bathroom bills. In this research, we use original nationally representative surveys from 2016 and 2022 to explore attitudes on the bathroom issue. We argue that underlying beliefs about the major elite-driven frames of the bathroom issue - including safety of women and children, discrimination against transgender people, and safety of transgender people - shape opinions. Our results show that all three beliefs have independent direct effects on bathroom issue attitudes and that the patterns in the data of information effects, effect strength, and resolution of conflicting beliefs may provide insight into recent anti-transgender drift in bathroom issue opinions.
This study reports on the prevalence of racist attitudes in Germany, comparing a conventional survey question with a list experiment (LE). In a nationally representative survey, respondents were asked whether they oppose the nomination of athletes of color for German national teams. Given that opposition to athletes of color indicates a racist attitude, the questions arise whether social desirability could bias responses in a conventional survey question and whether this is less the case in an LE format. The two methods yield very different prevalence rates: 12.5% of Germans ( = one in eight respondents) expressed a racist attitude in the covert LE format, but only 1.4% ( = one in 71 respondents) in the conventional format. This is a strong indication that social desirability leads to massive underreporting of racist attitudes in surveys. Issues of race and ethnicity in national representation in elite sports are apparently more controversial and politicized than they appear at first glance.
What drives engagement with civic organizations addressing women's issues? While past work suggests that individuals' preferences regarding civic engagement are influenced by geographic proximity, it remains unclear whether proximity or other organizational attributes shape civic engagement with organizations focused on women's issues. Drawing on interviews of volunteers with women's civic organizations, this study develops an inductive theory about how proximity - both geographic and in terms of the intervention or approach to advocacy - shapes engagement with women's organizations. More specifically, it argues that individuals are more likely to engage with organizations that are local and that provide direct interventions that target individual needs. We test the implications of this theory with an original survey experiment in the United States. We find that individuals prefer to volunteer with local over national women's organizations and prefer organizations that provide direct support rather than indirect interventions. There are no significant differences between men and women; those that identity as feminist and not; and those with past volunteer experience. These findings help us understand how organizational attributes shape preferences for civic engagement and demonstrate that, even amid deep political polarization, individuals still prioritize local and immediate responses to women's issues rather than national and institutional solutions.
