11/25/2008 Clem Brooks,
Indiana University, Bloomington
Rights Reversal? Policy, Opinion, and Feedback in the Post-9/11 Era
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, new legislation such as the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts have set in place limitations on individual liberties and constitutional protections. In doing so, post-9/11 legislative and policy changes begin to slow or even ratchet-back the widely-discussed “rights revolution” that originated in the 1960’s. How much support does the rights reversal and these new policies have? And is there evidence of policy feedback, where the passage of legislation itself influences mass opinion? We investigate these questions using data from a new, 2007 national survey. Embedded survey experiments suggest greater malleability and lower support when counter-terrorist policies are described in abstract terms without reference to the details of actual legislation. Multivariate results provide evidence that education, ideology, and especially nationalism shape underlying policy attitudes. Implications for understanding policy feedback processes and existing theories of rights support are discussed.
Thursday, December 4
12:00 Noon
311 Condon Hall
Clem Brooks is Rudy Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research is in the fields of American politics, comparative social policy, and political psychology. With Jeff Manza, he is the author of Why Welfare States Persist (University of Chicago Press 2007), and Social Cleavages and Political Change (Oxford University Press 1999). With funding from the European Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, Brooks is studying the dynamics of policy attitudes toward social welfare, civil liberties, and counter-terrorism. |
