Blood of Patriots
Alexander Hamilton's Notes on Plutarch in His Pay Book
Philip Stadter
Review of Politics, Spring 2011, Pages 199-217
Abstract:
Alexander Hamilton's notes to his reading of two pairs of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Theseus-Romulus and Lycurgus-Numa, probably made in the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge, reveal his early attention to the rewards of founding a new state, the natures and advantages of different political institutions, and economic, social, military, and cultural practices. They furnish a valuable testament to Hamilton's early intellectual development. He focuses on monarchy and the danger of tyranny and on the institutions by which states had limited the power of monarchs and of the popular will: the senate at Rome and the gerousia and later the ephors at Sparta. Hamilton admires Numa's use of religion to nourish civil society, while his interest in the Spartans' treatment of their helots is a testimony to his early concern about the problem of slavery.
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Democratic Dividends: Stockholding, Wealth and Politics in New York, 1791-1826
Eric Hilt & Jacqueline Valentine
NBER Working Paper, June 2011
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the early history of corporate shareholding, and its relationship with political change. In the late eighteenth century, corporations were extremely rare and were dominated by elites, but in the early nineteenth century, after American politics became significantly more democratic, corporations proliferated rapidly. Using newly collected data, this paper compares the wealth and status of New York City households who owned corporate stock to the general population there both in 1791, when there were only two corporations in the state, and in 1826, when there were hundreds. The results indicate that although corporate stock was held principally by the city's elite merchants in both periods, share ownership became more widespread over time among less affluent households. In particular, the corporations created in the 1820s were owned and managed by investors who were less wealthy than the stockholders of corporations created in earlier, less democratic periods in the state's history.
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Implicit Nationalism as System Justification: The Case of the United States of America
Travis Carter, Melissa Ferguson & Ran Hassin
Social Cognition, June 2011, Pages 341-359
Abstract:
America as a nation has self-perpetuating needs that do not always align with the needs or beliefs of individual Americans. As much as Americans may love their country and way of life, they do not always explicitly agree with the policies that best serve to bolster and perpetuate the nation, such as unyielding diplomatic stances, unilateral military action, or giving up civil liberties in exchange for security. How then does a country with such diverse explicit opinions maintain its national power structures and the support of the populace? System justification theory contends that members of a system have an implicit motive to justify and bolster that system (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Based on recent work on the implicit nationalism, we argue that the types of information that become associated with the nation in memory are the same types of information that help bolster and perpetuate the American system. In the present study, we find that a subtle reminder of America increases system justification for those with some moderate exposure to the political media, regardless of their explicit ideology. We argue that the implicit activation of information associated with America ultimately serves a nationalistic function, and more broadly, the system justification motive.
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A History of Violence: The "Culture of Honor" as a Determinant of Homicide in the US South
Pauline Grosjean
University of San Francisco Working Paper, January 2011
Abstract:
According to the culture of honor hypothesis, the high prevalence of homicides in the US South originates from the settlement of the region by herders from the fringes of Britain. This paper confirms that Scot or Scots-Irish settlements are associated with higher homicide today, but only in the South. The effect is strongest among whites and more pronounced where herding was more prevalent and institutional quality weaker. Results indicate that other white settlers adopted the Scots-Irish culture. The interpretation is that the culture of honor persisted in the South as an adaptive behavior to economic vulnerability and weak institutions.
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Peter Stamatov
Theory and Society, July 2011, Pages 437-473
Abstract:
This article examines the formative influence of the organizational field of religion on emerging modern forms of popular political mobilization in Britain and the United States in the early nineteenth century when a transition towards enduring campaigns of extended geographical scale occurred. The temporal ordering of mobilization activities reveals the strong presence of religious constituencies and religious organizational models in the mobilizatory sequences that first instituted a mass-produced popular politics. Two related yet analytically distinct generative effects of the religious field can be discerned. First, in both cases the transition toward modern forms of popular mobilization was driven by the religious institutionalization of organizational forms of centralized voluntarism that facilitated extensive collective action. Second, the adoption of different varieties of the same organizational forms led to important divergences. The spread in the United States of societies for moral reformation - in contrast to their non-survival in Britain - steered popular politics there towards a more moralistic framing of public issues. These findings indicate the importance of the organizational field of religion for the configuration of modern forms of popular collective action and confirm the analytical importance of religion's organizational aspects for the study of collective action.
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The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution
Daron Acemoglu et al.
American Economic Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century. We present within-Germany evidence on the long-run implications of these institutional reforms. Occupied areas appear to have experienced more rapid urbanization growth, especially after 1850. A two-stage least squares strategy provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the reforms instigated by the French had a positive impact on growth.
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Ruth Ditlmann, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns & Richard Eibach
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, July 2011, Pages 395-405
Abstract:
The present research examines the meaning of national identity in the United States and Germany and its implications for immigrant citizen relations. In Study 1, American and German participants responded to the question "What does it mean to be American [German]?" Results revealed that the American national identity is ideology-based as characterized by an endorsement of a core set of transcendent and abstract values. The German national identity is heritage-based as characterized by self-descriptive traits and cultural traditions. In Study 2, American participants were less likely than German participants to express exclusion from national identity in response to an immigrant who gave affective versus pragmatic reasons for becoming a citizen. The reverse was true for German participants. In sum, culture shapes national identity and responses to immigrants.
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Anthropometric History of the French Revolution in the Province of Orleans
Hermann Schubert & Daniel Koch
Economics & Human Biology, July 2011, Pages 277-283
Abstract:
We estimate the trend in average height of the population of the French province Orleans from 1715 to the beginning of the 19th century using data on recruits who were drafted either through a lottery system or through general conscription. After controlling for age, residence, and occupation, we find a general decline in the biological standard of living in the decades before the French Revolution. The results support a Ricardian-Malthusian interpretation of the causes of the French Revolution. In the debate ‘Revolution de la misère ou de la prospérité' our findings support the side which argues that the French Revolution was a culmination of a long-lasting economic malaise during the final phases of the Ancien Regime.
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Demis Glasford & John Dovidio
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, September 2011, Pages 1021-1024
Abstract:
Recent work on social change illustrates that disadvantaged-group members are sometimes less influenced by prejudice-reduction strategies than are advantaged-group members, and interventions to improve intergroup relations (e.g., commonality) can sometimes have the unintended consequence of reducing social-change motivations among members of disadvantaged groups. Focusing on disadvantaged groups (i.e., racial/ethnic minorities) orientations toward advantaged groups, the present research experimentally investigated the potential of dual, relative to common, identity to produce greater willingness to engage in contact, while maintaining social change motivation. Relative to common identity, dual identity produced not only greater willingness to engage in contact, which was mediated by perceptions of shared values, but also greater social change motivation, mediated by decreased optimism about future relations. Thus, for dual identity, enhancing approach motivation (willingness for contact) does not necessarily undermine social change motivation. Implications for intergroup relations and more broadly social change are discussed.
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American Patrimonialism: The Return of the Repressed
Richard Lachmann
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 2011, Pages 204-230
Abstract:
Patrimonialism, until fairly recently, seemed an archaic social form, largely replaced by bureaucratic rationalism. That confident view of modernity, in the histories that Max Weber and his followers wrote, deserves to be challenged as patrimonial regimes reappear in states and firms throughout the world. This article is my attempt to mount that challenge. I first revisit Weber's conception of patrimonialism and discuss how gendered and elitist studies of early modern Europe require a reevaluation of patrimonialism's dynamics and resilience. I then present an overview of evidence for the return of patrimonialism and of ideological justifications for its legitimacy, focusing on the United States. Since Weber and his successors all see patrimonialism and bureaucracy as incompatible, it is necessary to develop a theory of how the dynamics of elite conflict within bureaucratic, capitalist societies can generate patrimonialism. I do so in the penultimate section of this article, and I then explore the implications of that theory for predicting the future course of patrimonialism in the twenty-first century.