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This chapter discusses a host of psychological phenomena and their supporting mechanisms that favor status quo maintenance. These phenomena are placed into two loose clusters: those that describe cognitive processes and those that describe evaluative processes. The chapter argues these processes work in tandem, providing existing states with a psychological advantage; relative to alternatives, the status quo requires less effort, intention, control, and/or awareness for support and/or endorsement. As such, status quo maintenance is more ubiquitous and subtle than often believed.

This chapter discusses the complaint that the statist ideal is excessively biased in favour of the status quo and argues that this critique is only partly successful. While the statists’ (especially Rawls’s) refusal to extend egalitarian justice to the global realm does not in itself indicate subservience to the status quo, statist principles have unduly conservative implications because they are insufficiently sensitive to morally relevant phenomena characterizing the global realm. Although statists rightly identify peoples (states) as important subjects of international justice in virtue of the particular forms of coercive power they exercise by directly interfering in one another’s affairs, they fail to appreciate that these are not the only forms of international coercion in need of justification. Because the normative outlook underpinning Rawlsian statism is blind to these other potential sources of injustice, its principles may very well turn out to be status-quo biased and, therefore, rightly criticized on guidance grounds.

This chapter discusses the constituency effect. By this, it is meant that when a labour market institution is in place, it creates its own political support. This in turn generates status‐quo bias and resistance to reform. The effect is illustrated in the case of employment protection. Other applications include the role of initial conditions and of pre‐announcing the reform.

This chapter identifies and discusses the methodological flaws that make statism excessively subservient to the status quo. It focuses on three methodological commitments on the basis of which statist conclusions have been advocated. These are (a) the view that principles of justice are constructed by interpreting the values informing the specific practices they aim to regulate; (b) the view that principles of justice can only guide the conduct of authoritative agents, such as the state; and (c) the view that principles of justice apply only in the presence of specific cooperative or coercive relations. The chapter shows that all of these methodological commitments contain a bias in favour of the status quo, preventing the principles developed on their basis from being genuinely critical and action-guiding.

This chapter focuses primarily on the system justifying properties of a belief in a just world (BJW); that is, a belief that people get what they deserve. The chapter presents a review of research on the relation between individual differences in the strength of BJW and attributions and attitudes that justify the status quo by increasing one’s sense that outcomes are fair or deserved. One implication of the system justifying properties of a strong BJW is examined; namely, that a strong BJW is related to less perceived discrimination. The chapter presents original research suggesting that a strong BJW might lead to less perceived discrimination directed at one personally when the presence of that discrimination is relatively ambiguous. System justifying beliefs are more generally examined by discussing moderators and mediators of the relation between these various beliefs (including a BJW) and justification of the status quo.

Both conservatism and liberalism have, on one dimension, been accorded similar treatment by some of the salient schools of ideological analysis, in that they have been denied the status of a fully fledged ideology by those who would restrict the phenomenon to total, closed, and cohesive views of human beings in society. However, whereas liberals challenge, most conservative ideologists, as well as most exponents of conservative ideology, go out of their way to dispel any suspicion that theirs is an ideology. Obviously, if the notion of ideology is confined to an a priori, abstract, closed, and total system of mass‐consumed political thinking, then a creed that claims (as conservatism usually does) to be experiential, concrete, and delimited is not an ideology. Consideration of conservative thought, however, may query whether conservatives escape the features of that very definition of ideology, and it could not escape categorization within the approach that this book has already advanced: that of presenting ideology as a structural configuration of political concepts. After asking why there is such a dearth of capable and sophisticated enquiry into the nature of conservatism, this chapter addresses the issues outlined here in three sections: (a) [Michael] Oakeshott: conservatism à la carte; (b) The chameleon contra the status quo: two discarded theories; and (c) The conservative core: resolving a morphological puzzle.

Rules are cognitive entities that carry behavioural consequences. Phenomena of commitment, obedience, status quo preference, and reciprocity are brought about by rule preference, viz. the desire of men to act sensibly and in a justifiable way.

Legal and political theories have focused on supermajority rules, which require a fraction of votes greater than 1/2+1 to change the status quo, and thus empower a minority to block change. This chapter considers the opposite deviation from simple majority voting — submajority rules — under which a voting minority is granted the affirmative power to change the status quo. Institutions use submajority rules only for preliminary and procedural questions, and to set agendas — for voting on the question of which issues are to come up for a substantive vote by simple or special majorities. Submajority rules enable minorities to force public accountability and a kind of transparency upon majorities.

This chapter uses terror management theory to explore the psychological functions of political ideology and factors that produce stability and change in ideologically relevant attitudes and behaviors. Terror management theory perspectives are compared and contrasted with system justification theory, and points of agreement and disagreement between these conceptualizations are discussed. The relationship is explored between "external" cultural ideologies and individual interpretations and how such external belief systems interact with psychological forces to create individualized cultural worldviews. The impact of individual ideological changes on the collective mainstream worldview of a culture is explored. Also discussed is the possibility that some ideological positions may be better at providing existential comfort than others, and the conditions under which this is likely to be the case, as well as conservative and liberal ideological shifts. The chapter concludes with a consideration of variables that determine which aspects of a particular worldview people gravitate toward when their need for protection is aroused.

This chapter reminds us that we are still discussing an unfinished period. While one can make the argument for a disrupted relationship between the United States and Europe, “the rupture has been relatively brief; the [Bush] administration appears to wish to repair it; the imperial intoxication that was one cause of the strains has perhaps worn off.” Deeper continuities may well keep the United States and Europe together: their basic status quo orientation in a world of increasing turmoil, their shared politics of productivity, the basic role of the political center on both sides of the Atlantic, etc. “A shared community of interests, domestic as well as international, make it logical for the United States and Europe to continue cooperation.” The Bush years could then be seen simply as an “imperial interlude.”

This chapter focuses on the Holy Sepulchre or Church of the Anastasis, the “mother church” of Christianity, in an attempt to shift the analytic logic away from the identities of communities that cohabit sites toward institutions that attempt to own, or at least control, those sites. Pilgrims and celebrants in Jerusalem's holy places come to the places as guests; the Anastasis, like all of the other sites falling under the regimen of the status quo agreements, is not a parish church and hence has neither parishioners nor parochial duties. The situation is very different for the clergy affiliated with the monasteries of the authorities who hold possessory rights over the status quo holy places. The three major communities within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—the Greek Orthodox, the Latin Franciscans, and the Armenian Orthodox—all claim exclusive praedominium to [preeminence over] the places they believe they own. However, such claims are always mediated through structures of state power, and these shape choreographies of conflict or of sharing.

This chapter argues that status quo biases in civic education can be and often are justified. The chapter begins by acknowledging the considerable force of two objections to such biases: the fallibility and legitimacy objections. The rest of the chapter explores the various arguments that could jointly defeat these objections in particular cases. It shows the possibility of constructing compelling content-dependent reasons for status quo bias, i.e., reasons that invoke widespread beliefs about the substantive merits of existing institutions, notwithstanding the fallibility objection. And it identifies four reasons that appeal not to the substantive merits of the institutions favored by status quo bias but merely to the fact that those institutions are the status quo: these content-independent reasons generate important arguments from stability, contentment, compliance, and civic identification.

This chapter addresses strategies for assessing and predicting the risk of school violence. The review is framed by a seven-step planning strategy: results-focused planning (RFP). Working with student, school, and community stakeholder groups in planning strategies to decrease school violence (the performance team), a status quo assessment is the first step in this planning strategy. Four critical status quo data collection tasks are discussed. A survey of students, the School Success Profile (SSP), is introduced as a tool that supports the status quo assessment for school social workers and other school-based professionals.

This concluding chapter frames Haredi deviant and unconventional behavior within symbolic processes of social change and social stability. The most prominent media reported Haredi infraction is violence. Most of this violence is planned and calculated and aims to push Israel into becoming a Halakhic state. This pressure is absorbed within the flexible structure of the theocratic democracy that Israel is made of. Religious and theocratic pressures are not unique to Israel. Such pressures characterize many other democracies and they challenge status quos in public arenas. Clearly, what we observe in a theocratic democracy is a cultural conflict. Globally, it is a conflict between secularism and religious fundamentalism, a conflict that a theocratic democracy can cope with, as long as it is not too extreme.

This chapter analyses the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi controversy by focusing on the legal and administrative literature through which the Ayodhya dispute acquires a life in law. The law in relation to the dispute is concerned more with the restoration of the status quo, and less with issues related to justice, restitution and rehabilitation. The status quo becomes a title of legitimation open to occupation from all sides so much so that specific legal and administrative strategies are no longer be possible without it.

This chapter discusses the restoration of the rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The planning for the restoration started on May 28, 1969 and the principal architects were confronted with a huge restoration challenge. This was the problem of recreating a setting that would convey the mystery of the Resurrection while at the same time remaining true to the original plan and within the iron grip of the Status Quo.

This chapter examines how historical antagonists managed to overcome their profound differences in order to complete the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Some of the obstacles to the restoration included contested possession of the church, deep-seated mistrust and differences of theology, language and culture. The chapter suggests that the complete breakdown of order in the Holy Sepulchre was prevented by the presence of the state, which performed peacekeeping or policing functions and the Status Quo which removed the underlying causes of conflict by ruling out access to the courts. It also explains Jean Trouvelot's thoughts on the success of the restoration project.

This chapter surveys the many kinds of political bias. These include special interest bias, “knowledge falsification” by the majority, innate majoritarian bias, status quo bias, cultural cognition and motivated reasoning, and framing. It then shows that democracy is often able to overcome biases within the citizenry, because it takes only a majority or a relatively modest supermajority of people to change ordinary legislative policy. Thus, if many, or even most, people are imprisoned by their own worldviews, misled by politicians' frames, or remain ignorant of all new information relevant to public policy, the shift of a relatively small portion of voters can often make a decisive difference.