We investigate how conditions of crisis affect perceptions of charisma and how these, in turn, affect blame attribution and self-sacrificial behavior. Our data are from a 2004 experimental study that preceded the U.S. presidential election, in which we manipulated concerns of a terrorist attack. The results show that those in the Crisis condition rated Bush higher on perceptions of charisma compared to those in the Good Times condition. The Crisis condition also directly and indirectly, via perceptions of charisma, affected whether Bush was blamed for failures in Iraq and our subjects' willingness to sacrifice their personal resources for his candidacy.

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We seek to understand how ideological preferences in the domestic realm are linked to those in the foreign policy arena. We suggest that stances in both are arrayed along two dimensions: one anchored by self-regarding and other-regarding objectives, the other by preferences for either positive or negative incentives-based means of policy. Using public opinion data from the Pew and Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, we find that these dimensions separate conservatives from liberals on domestic issues as well as on foreign policy preferences. Moreover, international conditions shape the precise manner in which this ideological matrix shapes foreign policy preferences, and the effects of such conditions vary by ideology.Our purpose is to examine how ideology shapes societal preferences on foreign policy and international affairs, and how ideological positions respond to major international developments. As such, this paper places itself within a stream of work addressing the societal foundations of foreign policy and the nature and sources of attitudes on international affairs. Some related work bears on specific aspects of foreign policy beliefs, such as support for war 1 or military spending. 2 Other work, which is rigorous and theoretically developed, has a broader purpose: to establish the underpinnings of overall foreign policy belief systems. 3 In the latter regard, the contribution of authors, such as Eugene Wittkopf, 4 who provides a framework within which to view the extent and nature of isolationism and internationalism, as well as their social correlates, has proven particularly valuable. Our aim is to take the discussion in a related, but different direction. While the above-cited work explores the structure and correlates of specific foreign policy preferences, our aim is to reveal, as closely as possible, the ideological matrix within which foreign policy beliefs are located, adding another layer to the work that has gone before us. Our aim is to discern structures

Has the global COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the scholarly productivity of academics? Do gender and parenting magnify its effect? To obtain insight into the changes the pandemic has wrought in the lives and careers of women and parents in academia, we surveyed scholars in political science and international studies. The survey was in the field during the period in which many academics were experiencing shelter-at-home orders and adjusting to a new reality. It captures initial reactions to changed circumstances as well as the fears and anticipated consequences of the disruptions. We find that perceptions of a negative impact are broadly shared. The open-ended responses suggest that the pandemic may widen the gender and parent productivity gaps. Although further analysis is needed to better understand the effect of the pandemic on scholarly productivity, we conclude that the pandemic exacerbates existing structural inequalities.

This study considers the clash between views on what is ethically permissible and the claimed imperatives of the war on terror. It does so by examining the forms of reasoning that members of the US public apply when judging the acceptability of torture as a tool of that war. Moral judgments are formed around two models of ethical reasoning. The first, usually referred to as the deontological perspective, deems that the ethical merit of an act is intrinsic to its character. The second, consequentialist, view, evaluates ethical merit by the consequences an act produces (for example, lying might be good). Because, however, policies often are judged in light of both perspectives, ethical impulses do not always point in the same direction. Our study uses both survey analysis and experimental methods to elicit the relative weight of deontological and consequentialist arguments that have been marshaled for and against torture. We find that across various levels of torture, the former dominate in the public mind. We also find that, counterintuitively, attitudes toward the abusive treatment of terrorist suspects are not significantly related to the intensity of the perceived foreign threat.