Brendon Swedlow
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 95536 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Brendon Swedlow |
| NOMBRES | Brendon |
| APELLIDO | Swedlow |
| FIRMA | SWEDLOW B |
| AFILIACIONES | Northern Illinois University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2117-9639 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 311 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2002 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Do Culturally Varying Expert Narratives and Social Group Cues on Covid ‐19 Influence Chinese Support for Policy Change?
We synthesize the Narrative Policy Framework and Grid‐Group Cultural Theory to develop two sets of hypotheses about how culturally varying expert narratives and social group cues on COVID‐19 influence Chinese support for policy change. We construct culturally appealing expert narratives variously presenting the goal of policy change as being to achieve economic efficiency, social equity, and national order. We also culturally cue expert organizat…
Social Identity Group Cues in Judicial Ideology and Decision-Making on the U.S. Supreme Court
While interest group influences on U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been extensively studied, research on the role that litigants’ social identity group cues play in judicial ideology and decision-making is in its infancy. We hypothesize that justices will rely on both their policy preferences and group cues to decide cases. To test these hypotheses, we develop new measures of litigant social group identity, relying on both left-right ideology a…
Chinese Policy Responses to Covid ‐19, Trust in Government, and Cultural Worldviews
Using Policy Feedback Theory and Grid Group Cultural Theory, we show how COVID‐19 policy stringency and individuals' cultural worldviews influence trust in different levels of Chinese government. Relying on the Oxford COVID‐19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) and independent surveys in 2020 and 2022, we find that, as expected, Chinese respondents trust the central government more than local governments in 2020, but that increasing stringency …
How Alike Are Universal Values, Moral Foundations, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Cognition Theory? A Comparison of Theories, Concepts, and Measures
Objectives We assess similarities and differences of research programs on universal values (UVs), moral foundations (MFs), cultural theory (CT), and cultural cognition theory (CCT). The first two have not been compared to the last two. We expected items reflecting hierarchical values including order to dominate item overlaps, followed by items reflecting egalitarian values including equality, with CT and CCT items overlapping most. Methods Item‐l…
Using Cultural Theory to Specify the Policy Actors, Belief Systems, and Sources of Coalition, Conflict, Stability, and Change in Policy Advocacy Coalitions and Environmental Resource Policies
We use grid‐group cultural theory (CT) to specify underspecified aspects of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Our theoretical synthesis of CT and the ACF provides, first, an exhaustive typology of policy actors and their cultural cognitive biases that entail, guide, and constrain policy core beliefs about problem definitions and solutions. Second, linking CT and the ACF allows us to conceptualize further the cognitive mechanisms for strateg…
Scale reliability of alternative cultural theory survey measures
Measuring cultural identities in cultural theory survey research
Objective Efforts to measure cultural identities in survey research rely on self‐reported ethnic, racial, and national identities. We test how survey operationalization of grid–group cultural theory (CT) influences the classification of individuals’ (sub)cultural identities. Methods A national online sample of Americans ( n = 697 for current analyses) rated items from CT indices, CT statements, and cultural cognition theory (CCT) indices in a 201…
A cultural theory of the culture wars
We provide the first account of the culture wars in the political psychology and public opinion literature based on a theory of culture. Using innovative measures of grid‐group cultural theory (CT), we identify the cultures associated with ideological and partisan identifications in annual U.S. national surveys from 2011 to 2022, a unique data set of 24,870 respondents. As hypothesized, we find that the culture wars occur not just between ideolog…
Explaining compliance with Covid-19 regulation in China and the United States
How do cultural biases, trust in government, and perceptions of risk and protective actions influence compliance with regulation of COVID-19? Analyzing Chinese (n = 646) and American public opinion samples (n = 1,325) from spring 2020, we use Grid–Group Cultural Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to specify, respectively, cultural influences on public risk perceptions and decision-making regarding protective actions. We find that cul…
Chinese cultural biases, value congruence, and support for and compliance with protective policies during the Covid-19 pandemic
Public support for and voluntary compliance with protective policy measures are crucial to mitigating the spread of infectious disease. However, it is unclear why and how people with diverse cultural biases support particular protective policies. Relying on the Cultural Theory (CT) of risk, we hypothesize that value congruence with social distancing and a vaccine mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic influences the level of public support for and …
Cultural theory, rejection of cultural bias, and party preference
What explains party preference? Ideology and values do but these explanations are undertheorized. We offer grid-group cultural theory (CT) to provide a theory of ideology and values to explain party preference. We aim to demonstrate the value of an operationalization of CT that includes rejection of cultural bias (rejection of political values and beliefs) to explain party preference. Our study builds on research that recognizes the importance of…
Environmental concern among Chinese youth
This article uses Cultural Theory (CT) to complement the Knowledge Deficit Model (KDM) in explaining the environmental concern of Chinese youth. We use a large-scale nationwide sample and adopt multiple multi-level models. We find that the effect of knowledge varies with measurements of knowledge and environmental concern. Youth whose cultural orientation is dominated by egalitarianism are most concerned, followed by those for whom hierarchy is d…
Cultural Theory's Contributions to Risk Analysis
Cultural theory (CT) developed from grid/group analysis, which posits that different patterns of social relations—hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist—produce compatible cultural biases influencing assessment of which hazards pose high or low risk and how to manage them. Introduced to risk analysis (RA) in 1982 by Douglas and Wildavsky's Risk and Culture , this institutional approach to social construction of risk surprised a fie…
Construct Validity of Cultural Theory Survey Measures
Objective Cultural Theory (CT) has attracted significant attention across the social sciences and is increasingly being used in survey research. We assess the construct validity of three CT survey operationalizations to help interpret and improve these measures. Methods A coding protocol for face and content validity of survey items was developed with input from several CT scholars and applied independently by two of authors of this article. Conv…
A cultural theory and model of power relations
Power is a central but frequently implicit and rarely modeled concept in political science. We integrate several diverse and seemingly incommensurate conceptions of power into a model classifying network ties between dyads along the dimensions of asymmetry and probability of compliance. We argue that this model mirrors the relational dimensions and patterns in Douglasian cultural theory (CT) and illustrate these varying configurations of power wi…
Cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures
Two survey approaches to measuring cultural effects on risk views have been developed, both informed by the grid/group approach of Douglas and Wildavsky, well known to many risk analysts. Using data from an online national US panel, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted of ‘cultural theory’ (CT) and ‘cultural cognition theory’ (CCT) measures, which respectively purport to measure (1) four worldviews or cultural biases – hierarchism, individ…
Comparing cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures to each other and as explanations for judged risk
Different approaches to operationalizing the cultural theory (CT) developed by Douglas, Thompson, Wildavsky, and others in survey research on risk perceptions are rarely compared, never for the same people outside of China. We compare for US respondents the construct validity of cultural worldview measures developed by Jenkins-Smith and colleagues—including both indices of items refining the Wildavsky and Dake approach, and short paragraphs (cult…
On the Social Construction of Distinctions
This chapter describes well-known distinctions with powerful implications for public policy. It includes the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy to explain the relative acceptability of risks, consent versus coercion in sexual relations, the justification of governmental action based on the dichotomy between public and private goods, and the long-standing efforts to distinguish between selfishness and altruism as a moral basis for evaluating behavior…
Culture and Social Theory
Aaron Wildavsky, along with Mary Douglas, identified what they called grid-group theory. Wildavsky began calling this and applied it to an astounding array of subjects. The essays in this volume exemplify the theory's potential contributions to three seemingly disparate, but related, areas: the social construction of meaning, normative/analytic political philosophy, and a theory of rational choices. This book is the first in a series of Aaron Wil…
Beyond Liberal and Conservative
A significant undiscussed problem with the leading conceptualization of ideologically based judicial behavior, Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth’s attitudinal model, is its lack of theory. This problem leads to circular reasoning, ad hoc coding adjustments, and inaccurate characterizations and explanations of case outcomes, judicial votes and ideologies, and trends in judicial behavior. A values-based theory of ideology, such as the cultural theory…
Three Cultural Boundaries of Science, Institutions, and Policy
To help explain the role scientists play in policy change, concepts such as coproduction, boundary-work, and pollution and purity claims as they are used in science studies should be incorporated into policy theory. Moreover improved policy theory should specify the kinds of boundary-work that can occur and the kinds of values and beliefs that drive boundary-work, explaining how boundary-work leads to policy change. The cultural theory (CT) devel…
Introduction to the Symposium
This symposium showcases diverse contributions that a particular institutional theory of cultural biases makes to public administration and policy research. Bridging and integrating these subfields, the theory offers powerful explanations for the ways in which institutional processes drive policy‐making. Developed initially by Douglas using Durkheimian theory, Hood and Wildavsky made the theory increasingly influential in public administration an…
Judicial Contributions to US National Policy Change since 1945
How often, at what times, and on what issues do courts directly make policy or indirectly influence policy making by other branches of government? We assess the judicial contribution to policy change using 268 policy histories covering 14 issue areas of US domestic policy making from 1945 to 2004. Contrary to the prominent view that courts are relatively inconsequential policy-making institutions, we find that federal courts made or influenced ne…
Policy Advocacy Coalitions as Causes of Policy Change in China? Analyzing Evidence from Contemporary Environmental Politics
This article employs the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a set of concepts developed to account for policymaking primarily in the United States, to analyze factors that led China to downsize its latest big hydropower project, on the Nu River. The ACF helps us identify two conflicting coalitions based on their policy beliefs and the resources they mobilized to translate their beliefs into policy change, which the ACF also helps us explain. Con…
Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory (CT) is a constructivist theory, developed byMaryDouglas,AaronWildavsky, and others, that seeks to participate in the positivist project of discovering, explaining, and predicting regularities in human behavior.SpecialIssue contributions and this introduction suggest some ways in which this theory can help advance policy studies. One wayCTcan help is by further specifying other approaches to policy theory. Thus,HankJenkins‐Smith a…
Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory (CT) is a constructivist theory, developed byMaryDouglas,AaronWildavsky, and others, that seeks to participate in the positivist project of discovering, explaining, and predicting regularities in human behavior.SpecialIssue contributions and this introduction suggest some ways in which this theory can help advance policy studies. One wayCTcan help is by further specifying other approaches to policy theory. Thus,HankJenkins‐Smith a…
Beyond liberal and conservative
This article analyzes conceptual similarities and differences in selected prior work on ideological multi-dimensionality and finds substantial conceptual convergence accompanied by some provocative divergence. The article also finds that evidence from a recent survey of the American public largely validates areas of conceptual convergence. Respondents' political attitudes vary in two dimensions that are associated with different value structures—…
Policy Advocacy Coalitions as Causes of Policy Change in China? Analyzing Evidence from Contemporary Environmental Politics
This article employs the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a set of concepts developed to account for policymaking primarily in the United States, to analyze factors that led China to downsize its latest big hydropower project, on the Nu River. The ACF helps us identify two conflicting coalitions based on their policy beliefs and the resources they mobilized to translate their beliefs into policy change, which the ACF also helps us explain. Con…
A Cultural Theory of Politics
Many political scientists first learned of anthropologist Mary Douglas's cultural theory (CT) through Aaron Wildavsky's APSA presidential address (Wildavsky 1987), in which he sought to explain the value of this theoretical approach for political science. Since then, much additional work has been done to develop CT as an ambitious general theory of politics
Value Preferences and Ideological Structuring of Attitudes in American Public Opinion
In this study, we investigate four attitudinal structures (including liberal, conservative, and libertarian configurations) associated with two ideological dimensions among American voters and demonstrate that these attitudinal structures are related in expected ways to differential preferences for the values of freedom, order, and equality/caring. Liberals are inclined to trade freedom for equality/caring but not for order, whereas conservatives…
Toward cultural analysis in policy analysis
To generate policy alternatives and offer policy advice, the policy analysis and planning literature counsels analysts to assess the values and beliefs of policy actors, as well as the organizational and political contexts in which an analyst's proposed solution will have to be enacted and implemented, but does not further specify what these values, beliefs, and contexts might be. Analysts can anticipate the kinds of political values and the kind…
Construct Validity of Cultural Theory Survey Measures
Objective Cultural Theory (CT) has attracted significant attention across the social sciences and is increasingly being used in survey research. We assess the construct validity of three CT survey operationalizations to help interpret and improve these measures. Methods A coding protocol for face and content validity of survey items was developed with input from several CT scholars and applied independently by two of authors of this article. Conv…
Introduction to the Symposium
This symposium showcases diverse contributions that a particular institutional theory of cultural biases makes to public administration and policy research. Bridging and integrating these subfields, the theory offers powerful explanations for the ways in which institutional processes drive policy‐making. Developed initially by Douglas using Durkheimian theory, Hood and Wildavsky made the theory increasingly influential in public administration an…
Comparing cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures to each other and as explanations for judged risk
Different approaches to operationalizing the cultural theory (CT) developed by Douglas, Thompson, Wildavsky, and others in survey research on risk perceptions are rarely compared, never for the same people outside of China. We compare for US respondents the construct validity of cultural worldview measures developed by Jenkins-Smith and colleagues—including both indices of items refining the Wildavsky and Dake approach, and short paragraphs (cult…
Theorizing and Generalizing about Risk Assessment and Regulation through Comparative Nested Analysis of Representative Cases
This article provides a framework and offers strategies for theorizing and generalizing about risk assessment and regulation developed in the context of an on‐going comparative study of regulatory behavior. Construction of a universe of nearly 3,000 risks and study of a random sample of 100 of these risks allowed us to estimate relative U.S. and European regulatory precaution over a thirty‐five‐year period. Comparative nested analysis of cases se…
Cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures
Two survey approaches to measuring cultural effects on risk views have been developed, both informed by the grid/group approach of Douglas and Wildavsky, well known to many risk analysts. Using data from an online national US panel, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted of ‘cultural theory’ (CT) and ‘cultural cognition theory’ (CCT) measures, which respectively purport to measure (1) four worldviews or cultural biases – hierarchism, individ…
A cultural theory and model of power relations
Power is a central but frequently implicit and rarely modeled concept in political science. We integrate several diverse and seemingly incommensurate conceptions of power into a model classifying network ties between dyads along the dimensions of asymmetry and probability of compliance. We argue that this model mirrors the relational dimensions and patterns in Douglasian cultural theory (CT) and illustrate these varying configurations of power wi…
Three Cultural Boundaries of Science, Institutions, and Policy
To help explain the role scientists play in policy change, concepts such as coproduction, boundary-work, and pollution and purity claims as they are used in science studies should be incorporated into policy theory. Moreover improved policy theory should specify the kinds of boundary-work that can occur and the kinds of values and beliefs that drive boundary-work, explaining how boundary-work leads to policy change. The cultural theory (CT) devel…
Reason for Hope? The Spotted Owl Injunctions and Policy Change
Under what conditions can US courts contribute to policy change? This article shows how a case study can be used to test and develop a theory of judicial policy making answering this question. In The Hollow Hope (1991, 2008), Gerald Rosenberg theorizes that judicial policy making is constrained by the limited nature of constitutional rights, the lack of judicial independence, and the judiciary's inability to implement its rulings. Ninth Circuit i…
Cultural theory, rejection of cultural bias, and party preference
What explains party preference? Ideology and values do but these explanations are undertheorized. We offer grid-group cultural theory (CT) to provide a theory of ideology and values to explain party preference. We aim to demonstrate the value of an operationalization of CT that includes rejection of cultural bias (rejection of political values and beliefs) to explain party preference. Our study builds on research that recognizes the importance of…
Cultural Coproduction of Four States of Knowledge
In States of Knowledge (2004), Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not yet offer a theory of the coproduction of scientific knowledge and social order. This article uses Mary Douglas's cultural theory to identify four recurring states of knowledge and to specify political-cultural conditions for the coproduction of scienti…
A cultural theory of the culture wars
We provide the first account of the culture wars in the political psychology and public opinion literature based on a theory of culture. Using innovative measures of grid‐group cultural theory (CT), we identify the cultures associated with ideological and partisan identifications in annual U.S. national surveys from 2011 to 2022, a unique data set of 24,870 respondents. As hypothesized, we find that the culture wars occur not just between ideolog…
Explaining compliance with Covid-19 regulation in China and the United States
How do cultural biases, trust in government, and perceptions of risk and protective actions influence compliance with regulation of COVID-19? Analyzing Chinese (n = 646) and American public opinion samples (n = 1,325) from spring 2020, we use Grid–Group Cultural Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to specify, respectively, cultural influences on public risk perceptions and decision-making regarding protective actions. We find that cul…
Cultural Surprises as Sources of Sudden, Big Policy Change
A major complaint against cultural theories is that they cannot explain political change (Lockhart 1997). Cultural and institutional accounts of politics are also often seen as antagonistic (Chai 1997; Grendstad and Selle 1995; Lockhart 1999). The cultural theory (CT) developed by Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, and others (see, e.g., Schwarz and Thompson 1990; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990), by contrast, offers a theory of culture that incl…
Beyond Liberal and Conservative
A significant undiscussed problem with the leading conceptualization of ideologically based judicial behavior, Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth’s attitudinal model, is its lack of theory. This problem leads to circular reasoning, ad hoc coding adjustments, and inaccurate characterizations and explanations of case outcomes, judicial votes and ideologies, and trends in judicial behavior. A values-based theory of ideology, such as the cultural theory…
Chinese cultural biases, value congruence, and support for and compliance with protective policies during the Covid-19 pandemic
Public support for and voluntary compliance with protective policy measures are crucial to mitigating the spread of infectious disease. However, it is unclear why and how people with diverse cultural biases support particular protective policies. Relying on the Cultural Theory (CT) of risk, we hypothesize that value congruence with social distancing and a vaccine mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic influences the level of public support for and …
Environmental concern among Chinese youth
This article uses Cultural Theory (CT) to complement the Knowledge Deficit Model (KDM) in explaining the environmental concern of Chinese youth. We use a large-scale nationwide sample and adopt multiple multi-level models. We find that the effect of knowledge varies with measurements of knowledge and environmental concern. Youth whose cultural orientation is dominated by egalitarianism are most concerned, followed by those for whom hierarchy is d…
Judicial Contributions to US National Policy Change since 1945
How often, at what times, and on what issues do courts directly make policy or indirectly influence policy making by other branches of government? We assess the judicial contribution to policy change using 268 policy histories covering 14 issue areas of US domestic policy making from 1945 to 2004. Contrary to the prominent view that courts are relatively inconsequential policy-making institutions, we find that federal courts made or influenced ne…
Using Cultural Theory to Specify the Policy Actors, Belief Systems, and Sources of Coalition, Conflict, Stability, and Change in Policy Advocacy Coalitions and Environmental Resource Policies
We use grid‐group cultural theory (CT) to specify underspecified aspects of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Our theoretical synthesis of CT and the ACF provides, first, an exhaustive typology of policy actors and their cultural cognitive biases that entail, guide, and constrain policy core beliefs about problem definitions and solutions. Second, linking CT and the ACF allows us to conceptualize further the cognitive mechanisms for strateg…
Measuring cultural identities in cultural theory survey research
Objective Efforts to measure cultural identities in survey research rely on self‐reported ethnic, racial, and national identities. We test how survey operationalization of grid–group cultural theory (CT) influences the classification of individuals’ (sub)cultural identities. Methods A national online sample of Americans ( n = 697 for current analyses) rated items from CT indices, CT statements, and cultural cognition theory (CCT) indices in a 201…
Toward cultural analysis in policy analysis
To generate policy alternatives and offer policy advice, the policy analysis and planning literature counsels analysts to assess the values and beliefs of policy actors, as well as the organizational and political contexts in which an analyst's proposed solution will have to be enacted and implemented, but does not further specify what these values, beliefs, and contexts might be. Analysts can anticipate the kinds of political values and the kind…
Beyond liberal and conservative
This article analyzes conceptual similarities and differences in selected prior work on ideological multi-dimensionality and finds substantial conceptual convergence accompanied by some provocative divergence. The article also finds that evidence from a recent survey of the American public largely validates areas of conceptual convergence. Respondents' political attitudes vary in two dimensions that are associated with different value structures—…
Reason for Hope? The Spotted Owl Injunctions and Policy Change
Under what conditions can US courts contribute to policy change? This article shows how a case study can be used to test and develop a theory of judicial policy making answering this question. In The Hollow Hope (1991, 2008), Gerald Rosenberg theorizes that judicial policy making is constrained by the limited nature of constitutional rights, the lack of judicial independence, and the judiciary's inability to implement its rulings. Ninth Circuit i…
Value Preferences and Ideological Structuring of Attitudes in American Public Opinion
In this study, we investigate four attitudinal structures (including liberal, conservative, and libertarian configurations) associated with two ideological dimensions among American voters and demonstrate that these attitudinal structures are related in expected ways to differential preferences for the values of freedom, order, and equality/caring. Liberals are inclined to trade freedom for equality/caring but not for order, whereas conservatives…
Theorizing and Generalizing about Risk Assessment and Regulation through Comparative Nested Analysis of Representative Cases
This article provides a framework and offers strategies for theorizing and generalizing about risk assessment and regulation developed in the context of an on‐going comparative study of regulatory behavior. Construction of a universe of nearly 3,000 risks and study of a random sample of 100 of these risks allowed us to estimate relative U.S. and European regulatory precaution over a thirty‐five‐year period. Comparative nested analysis of cases se…
Heroes of Invention
A Cultural Theory of Politics
Many political scientists first learned of anthropologist Mary Douglas's cultural theory (CT) through Aaron Wildavsky's APSA presidential address (Wildavsky 1987), in which he sought to explain the value of this theoretical approach for political science. Since then, much additional work has been done to develop CT as an ambitious general theory of politics
Cultural Surprises as Sources of Sudden, Big Policy Change
A major complaint against cultural theories is that they cannot explain political change (Lockhart 1997). Cultural and institutional accounts of politics are also often seen as antagonistic (Chai 1997; Grendstad and Selle 1995; Lockhart 1999). The cultural theory (CT) developed by Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, and others (see, e.g., Schwarz and Thompson 1990; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990), by contrast, offers a theory of culture that incl…
Cultural Coproduction of Four States of Knowledge
In States of Knowledge (2004), Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not yet offer a theory of the coproduction of scientific knowledge and social order. This article uses Mary Douglas's cultural theory to identify four recurring states of knowledge and to specify political-cultural conditions for the coproduction of scienti…
Policy Advocacy Coalitions as Causes of Policy Change in China? Analyzing Evidence from Contemporary Environmental Politics
This article employs the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a set of concepts developed to account for policymaking primarily in the United States, to analyze factors that led China to downsize its latest big hydropower project, on the Nu River. The ACF helps us identify two conflicting coalitions based on their policy beliefs and the resources they mobilized to translate their beliefs into policy change, which the ACF also helps us explain. Con…
Advancing Policy Theory with Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory (CT) is a constructivist theory, developed byMaryDouglas,AaronWildavsky, and others, that seeks to participate in the positivist project of discovering, explaining, and predicting regularities in human behavior.SpecialIssue contributions and this introduction suggest some ways in which this theory can help advance policy studies. One wayCTcan help is by further specifying other approaches to policy theory. Thus,HankJenkins‐Smith a…
Judicial Contributions to US National Policy Change since 1945
How often, at what times, and on what issues do courts directly make policy or indirectly influence policy making by other branches of government? We assess the judicial contribution to policy change using 268 policy histories covering 14 issue areas of US domestic policy making from 1945 to 2004. Contrary to the prominent view that courts are relatively inconsequential policy-making institutions, we find that federal courts made or influenced ne…
Introduction to the Symposium
This symposium showcases diverse contributions that a particular institutional theory of cultural biases makes to public administration and policy research. Bridging and integrating these subfields, the theory offers powerful explanations for the ways in which institutional processes drive policy‐making. Developed initially by Douglas using Durkheimian theory, Hood and Wildavsky made the theory increasingly influential in public administration an…
Three Cultural Boundaries of Science, Institutions, and Policy
To help explain the role scientists play in policy change, concepts such as coproduction, boundary-work, and pollution and purity claims as they are used in science studies should be incorporated into policy theory. Moreover improved policy theory should specify the kinds of boundary-work that can occur and the kinds of values and beliefs that drive boundary-work, explaining how boundary-work leads to policy change. The cultural theory (CT) devel…
On the Social Construction of Distinctions
This chapter describes well-known distinctions with powerful implications for public policy. It includes the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy to explain the relative acceptability of risks, consent versus coercion in sexual relations, the justification of governmental action based on the dichotomy between public and private goods, and the long-standing efforts to distinguish between selfishness and altruism as a moral basis for evaluating behavior…
Culture and Social Theory
Aaron Wildavsky, along with Mary Douglas, identified what they called grid-group theory. Wildavsky began calling this and applied it to an astounding array of subjects. The essays in this volume exemplify the theory's potential contributions to three seemingly disparate, but related, areas: the social construction of meaning, normative/analytic political philosophy, and a theory of rational choices. This book is the first in a series of Aaron Wil…
Beyond Liberal and Conservative
A significant undiscussed problem with the leading conceptualization of ideologically based judicial behavior, Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth’s attitudinal model, is its lack of theory. This problem leads to circular reasoning, ad hoc coding adjustments, and inaccurate characterizations and explanations of case outcomes, judicial votes and ideologies, and trends in judicial behavior. A values-based theory of ideology, such as the cultural theory…
A cultural theory and model of power relations
Power is a central but frequently implicit and rarely modeled concept in political science. We integrate several diverse and seemingly incommensurate conceptions of power into a model classifying network ties between dyads along the dimensions of asymmetry and probability of compliance. We argue that this model mirrors the relational dimensions and patterns in Douglasian cultural theory (CT) and illustrate these varying configurations of power wi…
Cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures
Two survey approaches to measuring cultural effects on risk views have been developed, both informed by the grid/group approach of Douglas and Wildavsky, well known to many risk analysts. Using data from an online national US panel, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted of ‘cultural theory’ (CT) and ‘cultural cognition theory’ (CCT) measures, which respectively purport to measure (1) four worldviews or cultural biases – hierarchism, individ…
Comparing cultural theory and cultural cognition theory survey measures to each other and as explanations for judged risk
Different approaches to operationalizing the cultural theory (CT) developed by Douglas, Thompson, Wildavsky, and others in survey research on risk perceptions are rarely compared, never for the same people outside of China. We compare for US respondents the construct validity of cultural worldview measures developed by Jenkins-Smith and colleagues—including both indices of items refining the Wildavsky and Dake approach, and short paragraphs (cult…
Construct Validity of Cultural Theory Survey Measures
Objective Cultural Theory (CT) has attracted significant attention across the social sciences and is increasingly being used in survey research. We assess the construct validity of three CT survey operationalizations to help interpret and improve these measures. Methods A coding protocol for face and content validity of survey items was developed with input from several CT scholars and applied independently by two of authors of this article. Conv…
Cultural Theory's Contributions to Risk Analysis
Cultural theory (CT) developed from grid/group analysis, which posits that different patterns of social relations—hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist—produce compatible cultural biases influencing assessment of which hazards pose high or low risk and how to manage them. Introduced to risk analysis (RA) in 1982 by Douglas and Wildavsky's Risk and Culture , this institutional approach to social construction of risk surprised a fie…
Environmental concern among Chinese youth
This article uses Cultural Theory (CT) to complement the Knowledge Deficit Model (KDM) in explaining the environmental concern of Chinese youth. We use a large-scale nationwide sample and adopt multiple multi-level models. We find that the effect of knowledge varies with measurements of knowledge and environmental concern. Youth whose cultural orientation is dominated by egalitarianism are most concerned, followed by those for whom hierarchy is d…
Cultural theory, rejection of cultural bias, and party preference
What explains party preference? Ideology and values do but these explanations are undertheorized. We offer grid-group cultural theory (CT) to provide a theory of ideology and values to explain party preference. We aim to demonstrate the value of an operationalization of CT that includes rejection of cultural bias (rejection of political values and beliefs) to explain party preference. Our study builds on research that recognizes the importance of…
Scale reliability of alternative cultural theory survey measures
Political science (20 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Politics (18 obras) · Psychology (16 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Epistemology (12 obras) · Economics (11 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Cultural Differences and Values (10 obras)