"While ethnic identities are found to play a key role in politics, not all members of a group toe their group's line and vote for its affiliated party. Why do some voters choose not to vote with their group when doing so can often be advantageous given the norms of ethnic favoritism observed across Africa? According to Afrobarometer data, between 30-52% of voters in Sub-Saharan Africa do not vote for their ethnic groups' party. This book argues that as individuals are less readily identified as members of their ethnic group, they are less likely to be treated as if they are members of that group, which in turn weakens their identification with the group. Individuals who weakly identify with their group are less likely to be influenced by their identity when voting. This approach makes this book the first study to theorize and empirically test the effects of the everyday identity construction process on ethnic salience and in turn on vote choice. To test the theory, the book develops the concept of ethnic distance and measures it empirically. Empirical tests find support for the argument in South Africa, Uganda, and the United States. These cases allow me to test the effect of ethnic distance on several different ethnic dimensions (race, language, and region) in a variety of contexts. As a first step toward matching our scholarly concepts of ethnicity to its complexity in the real world, this study is poised to alter the way we think about ethnicity in politics"--

Between one third and half of voters in Sub-Saharan Africa do not vote for their ethnic group's party. The magnitude of these numbers suggests that not voting in line with one's ethnic group may often be the norm, not the aberration in many ethnically divided societies. So when and why do voters choose not to vote for their ethnic group's party even when it is often advantageous to do so? In Everyday Identity and Electoral Politics, Adam S. Harris explores how social identities, such as ethnicity and race, influence politics and voting behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a continuous conceptualization of ethnicity, he explains that individuals who are not readily associated with their ethnic group are less likely to vote along ethnic lines and more likely to be swing voters in elections that are centered around ethnic divisions. Drawing upon original survey data, survey experiments, interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, Harris conceptualizes a theory of identity construction that both predicts differences in vote choice and theorizes how the identity construction process shapes differential outcomes in vote choice within ethnic groups. A novel study of "atypical" voters who do not go along with their ethnic or racial cohorts in the voting booth, this book sheds new light on the complex and nuanced relationship between ethnic group membership and political preferences, as well as the malleability of ethnicity and race as categories.

Gender Revolution carefully examines the profound transformations happening in both public and private arenas of gender relations. It also draws critical attention to the simultaneous and potent challenges that have risen in response. The authors look to large-scale phenomena in this contemporary study and address how electoral politics and the #MeToo movement are reshaping everyday life. This gender revolution has led to a culture in which women, and increasing numbers of men, refuse to accept traditional gender norms and gender inequalities. People of all genders no longer tolerate abuses of power in politics or in their interpersonal relationships. Despite vigorous resistance, women are seizing power and refusing to back down, in ways both large and small. The authors note on the one hand that people of all genders in support of these transformations are voting for progressive candidates, engaging on social media, and making their interpersonal relationships more equal. On the other hand, they document considerable backlash and contestation, as some people are resisting these changes and creating adversarial gender divisions. Probing across these issues, the book develops an analysis of gendered social and cultural change that reveals how movement ideas diffuse into broader culture. Gender Revolution presents a vibrant and essential study for a moment marked by significant changes to attitudes, beliefs, and views surrounding gender and gender relations and will appeal to readers interested in the scholarly study of gender, society, politics, media, law, and culture.

Elections are episodic; governance is routine. This book studies patterns in public opinion on politics and society between elections in India. By using the survey data covering 24 Indian states including the National Capital Region of Delhi (NCR), it will serve as State barometers of public opinion. The surveys seek to understand how politics and governance processes are nested in the social and political relationships between citizens inter se and with government functionaries. The book explores citizen perceptions about the social and political universes they inhabit in periods between elections. It examines social attitudes of citizens, friendship ties across social groups, gender roles and relationships; opinions on governance, ease of public service access, the citizen-state interface, and trust in political institutions; and, political attitudes and identity, nationalism, freedom of expression, and populism. This book explores public perceptions of everyday development and governance outcomes that are shaped by how the government functions between elections: how it relates to citizens on a regular basis; how it provides routine public services to them; and how public order is maintained. An incisive study on public opinion on politics, society, and governance in India, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, governance, public policy, and South Asian studies. It will also be of immense interest to bureaucrats, policymakers, think tanks, and organisations working in the areas of development studies, politics, society, and governance. Section 3.3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This interdisciplinary volume presents a comprehensive framework to understand political awareness. Political awareness has become an important part of research on political attitudes and political behavior since the publication of John Zaller's work on political opinion. The authors elaborate on his theory and present a new conceptualization, which stipulates that political awareness is the attentiveness, knowledge, and understanding of politics. Hence, the book discusses different aspects, such as the concept of political awareness, its formation, significance, measurement, and exploration. The result is a new framework that addresses conceptual, theoretical, and methodological questions, such as: What does the concept mean? How to study political awareness? How is it connected to other orientations? How do children and youth develop political awareness? Addressing researchers and graduate students, as well as scholars in political science, sociology, and education, this book is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of political awareness.

Following the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016, many prominent scholars and political pundits argued that a successful Democratic Party in the future must abandon identity politics. While these calls for Democrats to distance themselves from such strategies have received much attention, there is scant academic work that empirically tests whether nonracial campaigns provide an advantage to Democrats today. As Christopher Stout explains, those who argue for deracialized appeals to voters may not be considering how several high-profile police shootings and acquittals, increasing evidence of growing racial economic disparities, retrenchments on voting rights, and the growth of racial hate groups have made race a more salient issue now than in the recent past. Moreover, they fail to account for how demographic changes in the United States have made racial and ethnic minorities a more influential voting bloc. The Case for Identity Politics finds that racial appeals are an effective form of outreach for Democratic candidates and enhance, rather than detract from, their electability in our current political climate.