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Polarization often happens asymmetrically. One political actor radicalizes, and the results reverberate through the political system. This is how the deep divisions in contemporary American politics arose: the Republican Party radicalized. Republican officeholders began to use extreme legislative tactics. Republican voters became animated by contempt for their political rivals and by the defense of their own social superiority. The party as a whole launched a wide-ranging campaign of voter suppression and its members endorsed violence in the face of electoral defeat. This paper is about how such asymmetric polarization affects everyone else's obligations. My core claim is that two kinds of relationship – civic friendship and non-subordination – underpin critical democratic norms. Republican misbehavior has severed cross-partisan civic friendships. Their authoritarianism forfeits their claim to non-subordination. The former means that non-Republicans need not justify policy on public grounds. The latter undercuts Republicans' claim to enjoy minority vetoes when out of power and it gives their rivals reason to disobey the laws that Republicans make when they are in power. More generally, when one political actor contravenes the proper norms of democratic politics, their opposition is not bound by those norms.

AbstractThis article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.

Population statistics reflect a nation's quality of life and accordingly have the potential to be highly politically charged, with implications for a government's legitimacy. In the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, emerging negative trends regarding life expectancy, fertility and mortality had the potential to de-legitimise the Soviet regime just at the moment when population issues were taking the spotlight through the United Nations. For this reason, population statistics were subject to significant censorship. The article examines how this censorship worked for domestic and international audiences. I show the main form of censorship was an editorial review by trusted experts in the Party and argue that the process was defined by uncertainty and negotiation, with personal networks mediating the result. In general, the period was characterised by tension between the need to expand demographic research and leaders' desire to suppress knowledge of unfortunate demographic truths.

I explore the idea that the state should love its citizens. It should not be indifferent towards them. Nor should it merely respect them. It should love them. I begin by looking at the bases of this idea. First, it can be grounded by a concern with state subordination. The state has enormous power over its citizens. This threatens them with subordination. Love ameliorates this threat. Second, it can be grounded by the state's lack of moral status. We all have reason to love everyone. But we beings with moral status have an excuse for not loving everyone: we have our own lives to lead. The state has no such excuse. So, the state should love everyone. I then explore the nature of the loving state. I argue that the loving state is a liberal state. It won't interfere in its citizens' personal spheres. It is a democratic state. It will adopt its citizens' ends as its own. It is a welfare state. It will be devoted to its citizens' well-being. And it is an egalitarian state. It will treat all its citizens equally. This constitutes a powerful third argument, an abductive argument, for the ideal of the loving state.

This project argues that Black Lives Matter's use of social media for political activity challenges the definition Hannah Arendt gives for her socio-political theory on human plurality. Arendt describes human plurality as the necessary condition for the functions of speech and action in political activity. For Arendt, appearance in the physical world is an essential element for human activity to be considered valid. She characterized the modern age of technology as the rise of the social, in which she warned was a danger to political life. Her position was that nation-state power lies in the idea of the public and private distinctions being blurred by the new social realm, which finds its political form in the nation-state. How do we reconcile with the fact that Arendt would disagree with BLM's use of social media for political activity, since it blurs the line between the public and private, yet she would agree with the outcome of BLM's opposition to nation-state power? I propose a potential alternative view of human plurality that accounts for social media being used as an effective means for political activity.

This article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.

Population statistics reflect a nation's quality of life and accordingly have the potential to be highly politically charged, with implications for a government's legitimacy. In the Brezhnev era Soviet Union, emerging negative trends regarding life expectancy, fertility and mortality had the potential to de-legitimise the Soviet regime just at the moment when population issues were taking the spotlight through the United Nations. For this reason, population statistics were subject to significant censorship. The article examines how this censorship worked for domestic and international audiences. I show the main form of censorship was an editorial review by trusted experts in the Party and argue that the process was defined by uncertainty and negotiation, with personal networks mediating the result. In general, the period was characterised by tension between the need to expand demographic research and leaders' desire to suppress knowledge of unfortunate demographic truths.

Among the more distinctive features of the republican tradition is the importance it accords to civic virtue. This paper explores the views of Algernon Sidney, one of the first of the English republicans to write about civic virtue in detail. His relatively neglected arguments are worth examining both because they are more interesting and novel than often believed, and also because examining them will shed much-needed light on important aspects of republican theory generally. As this paper shows, the republican concern with civic virtue is one aspect of a broader effort to show how well-ordered republics might internally generate their own long-run support, and thus achieve stability in the sense described by John Rawls. Thus, in correcting a common misimpression regarding Sidney's ideas, this paper enhances our appreciation of the republican politics of virtue in general.

This paper attempts to begin to address possible brand name conflict related to the Republican Party's use of the acronym, "The GOP," as a second brand name. The use of multiple brand names for the same product or service may lead to weaker overall brand awareness and brand identity. The use of the brand names, "The Republican Party" and "The GOP," within promotional and news items may result in content being attributed to the incorrect political party by the American electorate. Current news items often include the brand name, "The GOP," and often interchange the brand name, "the GOP," with the brand name, "The Republican Party/Republicans." This paper provides a review of the origin of the brand name, "The GOP," followed by a review of related branding issues. The results of a related survey exploring the recognition of the brand name, "The GOP," among college students is presented followed by various implications, limitations, and recommendations.