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Abstract
Scholars have been taking the impact of weather on social movements for granted for some time, despite a lack of supporting empirical evidence. This paper takes the topic more seriously, analyzing more than 7000 social movement events and 36 years of weather records in Washington, D.C., and New York City (1960–95). Here, "good weather" is defined as midrange temperature and little to no precipitation. This paper uses negative binomial regression models to predict the number of social movements per day and finds social movements are more likely to happen on good days than bad, with seasonal patterns controlled for. Results from logistic regression models indicate violence occurs more frequently at social movement events when it is warmer. Most interestingly, the effect of weather is more salient when there are more political opportunities and resources available. This paper discusses the implications and suggests future research on weather and social movement studies.

AbstractSecularization, expansion of higher education, and urbanization have led to disenchantment with politics and the erosion of political trust in many societies. Religion may continue to be salient, however, how these forces interact with enduring religious influences to shape political trust is unclear. This paper examines the issue using Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2016) data with hierarchical age–period–cohort (HAPC) models. Our results show supportive evidence for the following findings: in East and Southeast Asia, urbanization is associated with less political trust for most religions except Islam; education is associated with less political trust; education's effect is the most salient for the atheists and Buddhists, but it disappears among the Muslims. The findings suggest the power of modernization and secularization significantly differs across cultures and religions. We should not simply perceive religion as a universally conservative force; instead, we need to understand religions through an integrated macro‐micro perspective by situating it in the social contexts.

AbstractThis article examines how education, corruption perception, and urbanization jointly influence political trust in Asia. Previous literature proposes a "performance-based evaluation" thesis whereby corruption perception is associated with political trust. We hypothesized this association could be moderated by individual educational attainment and socioeconomic statuses. Applying multilevel models to the Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2016) data, we found interaction effects of education, the urban–rural divide, and corruption perceptions in shaping political trust in 14 East and Southeast Asia societies. For rural Asians, education does not affect political trust when they perceive low corruption; it leads to lower trust when they perceive high corruption. For urban Asians, such an interaction does not exist, and education monotonically erodes political trust no matter how they perceive the severity of corruption.