Search Results

This chapter provides an account of opposition party formation and development in Zimbabwe from 1999 to 2008. It argues that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was able to maintain a strong and cohesive party organization, despite significant state-sponsored violence and repression, for two reasons. First of all, the party benefited from the strong organizational structures and collective identity that organized labor and other civil society actors built prior to the launch of the opposition parties. Activists and grassroots constituencies had a track record of successful protest, and there were established procedures for decision-making and conflict resolution. Secondly, political polarization in Zimbabwe strengthened the opposition’s cohesion and the commitment of its activists. By increasing the salience of partisan identity, conflict and violence made defection difficult. The chapter suggests that conflict and polarization can have important party-building consequences, for both opposition and ruling parties alike.

Expanding on the theme of bulk waves from the previous chapters, we will examine the problem of plane wave sound propagation in layered media. We assume we have an finite stack of planar layers with perfect, rigidly bonded planar interfaces, but infinite in their lateral extent. The problem has significant industrial interest. Most practical composite laminates are composed of layers of uniaxial fibers and plastic, i.e., plies, whose fiber orientation directions vary from ply to ply through the thickness of the laminate. The mechanical purpose of this directional variation is to render the product stiff and strong in all in-plane directions, much as plywood is layered in cross-grain fashion. Almost no practical composite would be fabricated as a uniaxial product, because of the low bending strength normal to the fiber direction. Instead, various types of layering have been devised to give either tailored stiffness for a specific purpose or approximate in-plane isotropy, also known colloquially as a “quasi-isotropic” laminate. In fact, the approximate isotropy is achieved only in the plane of the plies, because the out-of-plane direction still has significant and unavoidable stiffness differences, since it contains no fibers. The scale of the layering is also important. When the laminations are fine, i.e., when each directional lamina is no thicker than an individual ply as we go through the thickness, only acoustic waves of relatively short wavelength will be able to discern the effect of the layering. At longer wavelengths, the laminate may behave more like an effective medium, still anisotropic, but with averaged elastic properties. On the other hand, if each lamina contains multiple numbers of individual 1/8-mm plies, then the frequency at which an acoustic wavelength approaches the layer thickness will be proportionately lower. This is an important distinction, because it suggests the point at which the layering must be treated as a discrete substructure in order to develop an accurate description of waves in a layered medium. The situation is illustrated schematically in Fig. 6.1. The figure illustrates laminations for a quasi-isotropic composite.

Jouet begins his book by describing his work as a human rights lawyer representing poor prisoners in New York at the time of mass incarceration on a scale unprecedented in global history. He goes on to describe how the degeneration of American justice embodies troubling dimensions of American exceptionalism, including acute wealth inequality, systemic racism, anti-intellectualism, Christian fundamentalism, and chronic human rights abuses. While the word “exceptional” can imply greatness or superiority, American exceptionalism historically referred to how America is “exceptional” in the sense of “unique,” “different,” “unusual,” “extraordinary” or “peculiar.” Ironically, scores of Americans equate “exceptionalism” with their nation’s superiority when it might be its Achilles Heel—a self-destructive vicious circle threatening admirable dimensions of American society.

The misconception that “exceptionalism” means American superiority stems from how Republicans turned this longstanding concept into a rhetorical weapon against Obama by accusing him of unpatriotically lacking faith in “American exceptionalism” given his “socialist” and “un-American” agenda. These accusations paralleled conspiracy theories claiming that Obama is not really American due to his fake U.S. birth certificate and Islamism. Meanwhile, intense polarization became a major dimension of American exceptionalism’s true meaning. The huge rift between conservatives and liberals under George W. Bush worsened under Obama. It may grow worse following the Clinton-Trump presidential election. Intriguingly, America and other Western nations are moving apart and closer at the same time. While liberal America is mainly evolving in the same direction as the rest of the West, conservative America is an outlier in light of its peculiar ideology, including profound anti-intellectualism, anti-governmentalism, and Christian fundamentalism. Liberal America’s worldview is not simply different from the worldview in conservative America, but also closer to the dominant worldview elsewhere in the West: Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Tellingly, universal health care is broadly supported by both liberals and conservatives in all Western nations except America, where Republicans relentlessly denounce the evils of “socialized medicine.”

Mitigating the effects of drought can be improved through better information on the current status, the prediction of occurrence, and the extent of drought. Soil moisture can now be measured using a new generation of microwave remote sensing satellites. These measurements can be used to monitor drought conditions on a daily basis over the entire earth. The quality of these products will continue to improve over time as new sensors are launched. These satellite products, combined with existing in situ observations and models, should be exploited in drought monitoring, assessment, and prediction. Measuring soil moisture on a routine basis has the potential to significantly improve our understanding of climatic processes and strengthen our ability to model and forecast these processes. Leese et al. (2001) concluded that the optimal approach to monitoring soil moisture would be a combination of model-derived estimates using in situ and remotely sensed measurements. In this regard, each method produces soil moisture values that are both unique and complementary. This concept is essentially the process of data assimilation described by Houser et al. (1998). In situ measurements of soil moisture have been made in a few countries over the past 70 years (Robock et al., 2000). However, due to cost and sensor limitations, there are few soil moisture sensor systems available today, especially for automated measurements. A lack of routine observations of soil moisture has led to the use of surrogate measurements (i.e., antecedent precipitation index) and modeled estimates, which limits the possibility of physically based model validation and acceptance. Current tools to predict drought, such as drought indices and Global Climate Models (GCMs), do not include any direct observations of the soil condition, which is critical for agriculture. Passive microwave remote sensing instruments respond to the amount of moisture in the soil. Several methods have the potential to provide both soil moisture and drought information. In the past, the options have been limited by the availability of satellite systems. Even with these limitations, investigators have explored the potential of these data in soil moisture studies with some success.

Taking up the case of climate change, the conclusion considers the argument for moretechnocracy in the face of ‘the end world as we know it’. Climate change is probably the strongest case for a technocratic model of political decision-making. At the very least, insufficient political adherence to the scientific evidence on climate change is an almost commonsensical part of the problem of in the current state of affairs. While fully acknowledging this problem, the chapter argues that attention to the destructive and mutually reinforcing interplay of technocracy and populism is necessary also in to the all-important challenge of climate change.

This chapter examines American sanctity during the papacy of John Paul II (1978-2005). John Paul II canonized more saints then all of his predecessors combined. He canonized Neumann and Duchesne, beatified six other U.S. candidates, and introduced dozens of others. Beyond the numbers, this chapter traces a fundamental shift in U.S. saint-seeking throughout this era. As polarization within the church supplanted marginalization in America as the keynote of U.S. Catholicism, U.S. Catholics became less likely to project their American stories onto candidates for canonization. Instead, prospective saints became signifiers of where Catholic individuals and groups position themselves within the church, often on issues related to gender, sexuality, and social and racial justice.

Diversity research has shown that ethno-linguistic, religious, and genetic diversity are related to a variety of socio-economic outcomes. We complement this literature by focusing on a dimension of diversity so far ignored in diversity research for lack of data: Diversity in key human values. Using data from all available waves of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study we develop a multi-item indicator of value diversity. This measure reflects the extent to which key human values are shared among the inhabitants of a country. Our newly developed measure is available for up to 111 countries and three decades (1981-2014). We conclude by comparing our newly developed measure of value diversity with existing measures of social diversity and relating it to various indicator of socio-economic performance.

American politics features very long cycles of polarization and depolarization between the political parties. Politics polarized around the Civil War and remained polarized until the end of the Gilded Age. Then began a long period of depolarization. Polarization started increasing once again in the middle of the twentieth century, and we are now at the peak of the current cycle. Polarization is a characteristic feature of the Reagan regime. Although Republican politicians used strategies of polarization to gain power, polarization made it increasingly difficult for them to govern, and will eventually lead to the regime’s undoing.

Cultural conflicts about the family, such as those concerning abortion and same-sex marriage, have intensified over the last few decades among American Catholics. These conflicts comprise much of the moral polarization that characterizes our public politics, as can be seen in the recent controversy over Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to give the commencement address. Why are these conflicts resonant among Catholics?This book answers this question by presenting a detailed ethnographic analysis of the local religious cultures in two Catholic parishes: religiously conservative Our Lady of the Assumption Church and theologically progressive St. Brigitta Church. It reveals how two congregational social processes—the practice of central ecclesial metaphors, and the construction of Catholic identities—matter for the ways in which parishioners work out the routines of marriage, childrearing and work-family balance, as well as to the ways they connect these challenges to the public politics of the family.

The other opposition that structures crime reporting in Venezuela is the polarized political distinction between the opposition and supporters of President Hugo Ch൥z (chavistas). Chapter five uses the death of the crime photographer Jorge Tortoza–murdered while covering the failed 2012 coup d'賡‎t against President Ch൥z–to illustrate this polarized dynamic and the precarious position occupied by ordinary beat journalists.

One Gingrich Senator in particular, Jim DeMint, was instrumental in recruiting, funding, and mentoring the Tea Party Senators. In turn, the Tea Party Senators have behaved much as the Gingrich Senators even when they have not previously served in the House. Many of the strategies of the Tea Party Senators had been legitimized by the Gingrich Senators over the last decade.

Nothing in the Senate’s current development suggests that the party polarization or the partisan warfare will subside. Rather, all trends point to a more dysfunctional Senate than the one that currently exists.

I show how the Senate has entered a new period following the Textbook Senate from the mid-twentieth century and the individualized era from the 1960s and 1970s. In the Partisan Senate, the senators are no longer individuals, but members of a team that strive for majority party status—sometimes at all costs. I explicate the differences between ideologically based party polarization and competition-based partisan warfare. I show how the Senate is better able to absorb those senators with extreme ideological positions. Members with extreme partisan warfare tendencies make legislating in the Senate much more difficult.

The Gingrich Senators are at the root of party polarization in the Senate. In fact, almost all of the increase in polarization over the last 30 years is a direct consequence of the increasing numbers and increasing conservative voting patterns of the Gingrich Senators. The other Republican senators and the Democratic senators contribute about as much to party polarization as they have since the early 1970s.