Faith, Political Parties, and Elections

This comes more out of my personal than professional academic thinking, but The Atlantic laid out a good piece for how hard it is to align faith with politics, particularly when it comes to supporting a particular political party. This is why we advocate the separation of church and state, even though in reality our political culture is shaped by religion (and vice-versa). To quote the opening paragraph

There are lots of ways to be a Catholic public leader in the United States. But the only path that’s impossible, it seems, is to advocate policies that fully follow the Church’s teachings on Jesus. Politicians of both parties have to pick and choose their theology, sticking to party lines that defy the United States Conference on Catholic Bishops’ guide to faithful citizenship. For their part, lay Catholics have largely blended into the general electorate. Far from taking positions that are distinctive to their faith, many hold views that reflect their partisan allegiances.

Intro to IR Roundup: Nukes, Migration, Syria and IR Research

Today is the first day of fall 2016-17 classes. I usually teach Intro to International Relations in the fall, but am out of my routine due to a conference I'm organizing. However, I thought I'd post several good sound bytes which I would have offered to students had I been kicking off class with a dose of current events and international crises.

Syria: Why is the war so damn long and bloody. It's gets more violent by the day. Drawing on IR

 AFP/Getty Images

research, Max Fisher of the New York Times provides a run-down of some of the factors contributing to the ugly nature of the Syrian war. The usual suspects like multiparty factions and ethnic/sectarian divisions. But a big culprit appears to be foreign sponsorship/intervention. As Fisher writes:

"Foreign interventions that were intended to end the war ...have instead entrenched it in a stalemate in which violence is self-reinforcing and the normal avenues for peace are all closed...Whenever one side loses ground, its foreign backers increase their involvement, sending supplies or air support to prevent their favored player’s defeat. Then that side begins winning, which tends to prompt the other’s foreign backers to up their ante as well. Each escalation is a bit stronger than what came before, accelerating the killing without ever changing the war’s fundamental balance."

Intervention: Recent interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) have left us pondering the costs of such intervention.  Anne Applebaum asks what the costs of non-intervention have been in Syria in terms of total deaths, the refugee crisis, the destabilization of the region, and security threats in Europe . Of course, intervention could have made all of this even worse. Fareed Zakaria earlier argued that it was probably best for the U.S. not to intervene, but it could/should have done much more on humanitarian assistance, even if it rightfully chooses not to pursue humanitarian intervention. Part of the problem may be the politicization of aid.

Nuclear Weapons: Obama is toying with the idea of changing U.S. strategic doctrine by declaring a no first use nuclear weapons policy. Some pros and cons of a first no use policy are outlined by the WSJ.  While reducing nukes sounds good in theory, Stephen Sestanovich of CFR pushes back against this change.

Migration: Want to know the difference between migrants and refugees. A CFR video and backgrounder explains here.

Russia, Turkey, and IR Paradigms

In a nod to ideological alliances, Anne Applebaum argues that dictators will choose other dictators at the end of the day and cites Turkish President Recep Erodgan's recent meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin as an example. Despite Turkey's membership in NATO, Edrogan has used the military coup to crackdown on even the slightest potential for opposition.  As Applebaum writes:

(Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press)

Geostrategic, military and even historical calculations should make Turkey and Russia antagonists. But their meeting illustrates something that many Western politicians and “realist” thinkers find difficult to understand: that ideas and ideology sooner or later trump “interests.” If Turkey were still a democracy, Erdogan would be looking to his Western allies to help him push back against Russia. But contact with the West also means contact with Western ideas. Dependence on the West means dependence on states that believe in the legal norms which Erdogan wants to repress, states that might support the people Erdogan wants to lock up.

Victory for constructivists? Does this really mean ideas trump interests? Well, Turkey's move does indicate the power of ideas. But ideas too reflect particular interests. What's important here (for IR students) is the relationship between ideas and interests and whether in the case of Turkey and Russia, ideas are defining actors' interests.

What Psychology Tells Us About Dispelling Worldviews

Apparently it's difficult. This piece by David Ignatius on why facts don't seem to matter for Trump supporters is apt for my own research on contrasting views between peace activists and policymakers. In fact, trying to persuade the other and convincing them why they're wrong (or you're right) seems particularly onerous if the research of this 1979 study, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence" stands correct. It appears that attempts to debunk myths even has the potential opposite effect of reinforcing myths.

So applied to the politics of peace, activists are socialized at an early stage to hold particular views about nukes, bases, drones etc...As they interact with policymakers, who themselves are socialized into viewing peace through a different lens (i.e. realist, liberal international etc...), neither side cedes ground in trying to understand the facts. The result is polarization of views.

I'm going to need to find some collaborators in psychology and sociology to help me out here.

What Psychology Tells Us About Dispelling Worldviews

Apparently it's difficult. This piece by David Ignatius on why facts don't seem to matter for Trump supporters is apt for my own research on contrasting views between peace activists and policymakers. In fact, trying to persuade the other and convincing them why they're wrong (or you're right) seems particularly onerous if the research of this 1979 study, "Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects ofPrior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence" stands correct. It appears that attempts to debunk myths even has the potential opposite effect of reinforcing myths.

So applied to the politics of peace, activists are socialized at an early stage to hold particular views about nukes, bases, drones etc...As they interact with policymakers, who themselves are socialized into viewing peace through a different lens (i.e. realist, liberal international etc...), neither side cedes ground in trying to understand the facts. The result is polarization of views.

I'm going to need to find some collaborators in psychology and sociology to help me out here.

IPR Conference on Declining Trust in Social and Political Life

National Catholic Reporter finally came out with an article featuring a conference I organized on rebuilding (or really declining) trust. This was something I started two years ago as I felt like I was being bombarded by news stories screaming mistrust, declining trust etc...in our political system, among ethnic and racial minorities, between police and black youth, and in our institutions. To help me make sense of all this, I started a series of informal brownbag lunches which eventually led to the conference. To find out why trust is broken and how we get it back, watch our conference!

Worldviews, Beliefs, and Psychology

So apparently, neither Trump nor Clinton supporters will change their minds according to this study. More relevant to my research is the reasoning outlined below:

As much as we like to think that we use reason to evaluate evidence and come to conclusions, “It really goes back assward, a lot of times,” said Peter Ditto, a psychologist at University of California, Irvine. “People already have a firm opinion, and that shapes the way they process information.” We hold beliefs about how the world works and tend to force new information to fit within these pre-existing narratives. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning, and it means that once people have thrown their support behind Trump or Clinton, they will tend to downplay or ignore things that paint their candidate in a bad light.

In a similar vein, once activists (i.e. anti-war groups) adopt a particular position about nukes, drones, bases etc....they rarely change minds and adopt the alternative view often represented by government officials.