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The status of the Conservative Party in the UK is examined; specific attention is dedicated to exploring the vitality of the foundations of Conservative political hegemony. Developments that suggest the decline of the Conservative Party's political authority are highlighted including a severe reduction in the Conservatives' lead in public poll ratings & its inability to develop a consensual approach toward European economic & political policy. Analysis of 20th century British politics revealed that the Conservative Party successfully recovered from previous threats to its political hegemony; nevertheless, it is demonstrated that the Conservative Party's neo-liberal agenda & other factors have weakened the foundations of its political hegemony. Indeed, it is shown that the Margaret Thatcher government actually eroded support from the established political leaders & classes, enervated efforts to preserve the Union, downplayed the importance of the national economy & capital, & failed to consistently support impending European integration. It is concluded that intra-party tensions regarding the UK's position toward European integration will further reduce the Conservatives' political dominance; however, it is stressed that John Major's electoral victory should disperse neo-Thatcherites for the short term. 1 Figure. J. W. Parker

Have George W. Bush's administrations produced a large shift to the right in politics in the United States since 2001? The answer is no—but this is mainly because of prior shifts in that direction. My aim in addressing this question is to understand the recent past and to help provide a framework for thinking about the next presidential election. With the administration's approval ratings plummeting, Democratic victories seem possible. But no outcome is guaranteed. I will begin with the political context of Bush's evident decline, and then assess the effects of the administrations' efforts both for public opinion and policies.

The vetting of potential federal judges by the Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary of the American Bar Association (ABA) is politically controversial. Conservatives allege the Standing Committee is biased against Republican nominees. The ABA and its defenders argue the ABA rates nominees objectively based on their qualifications. The authors investigate whether accusations of liberal bias have merit. They analyze all individuals nominated to the U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1977 to 2008. Using genetic matching methods and ordered logit models, the authors find evidence of bias against Republican nominees in the ABA's ratings. They conclude by discussing the implications of these results. Adapted from the source document.

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of ESMA credit rating identifiers on the quality of ratings. These identifiers form part of the disclosure requirements placed upon credit rating agencies (CRAs) since 2012 under a new EU regulatory regime and have not featured in any prior empirical literature. Rating informativeness is gauged from bond market data. Using a rich dataset of sovereign rating actions by the three major CRAs for 70 countries during the period 2006–2016, we find that the ESMA requirement for identifiers yields varying outcomes across downgrades and upgrades. The rating quality associated with downgrades by Moody's improves, whereas upgrades by S&P, Moody's and Fitch are of lower quality. These results are consistent with greater conservatism in rating policies after the regulatory reforms. ESMA's additional focus on analyst location does not reveal any consistent difference in the quality of ratings.

In the aftermath of a potentially demoralizing 2008 electoral defeat, when the Republican Party seemed widely discredited, the emergence of the Tea Party provided conservative activists with a new identity funded by Republican business elites and reinforced by a network of conservative media sources. Untethered from recent GOP baggage and policy specifics, the Tea Party energized disgruntled white middle-class conservatives and garnered widespread attention, despite stagnant or declining favorability ratings among the general public. As participant observation and interviews with Massachusetts activists reveal, Tea Partiers are not monolithically hostile toward government; they distinguish between programs perceived as going to hard-working contributors to US society like themselves and "handouts" perceived as going to unworthy or freeloading people. During 2010, Tea Party activism reshaped many GOP primaries and enhanced voter turnout, but achieved a mixed record in the November general election. Activism may well continue to influence dynamics in Congress and GOP presidential primaries. Even if the Tea Party eventually subsides, it has undercut Obama's presidency, revitalized conservatism, and pulled the national Republican Party toward the far right.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how conservatism affects a person's perception of everyday details. It is hypothesized that there will be a positive correlation between the participants' conservative ratings and the amount of details from the readings they recall that are also conservative. This will also mean that there will be a negative correlation between the participants scoring higher on the conservatism scale and the amount of liberal details they recall. A similar pattern is expected to be discovered pertaining to participants that identify as more liberal. How is this measured? The participants will be asked to rate the their political views on a scale of 1-6, 1 being extremely liberal, and 6 being extremely conservative. A transcript of a political debate will contain views that are both conservative and liberal. Each view will be backed up by details supporting each of a candidate's policies. The transcript will include minor grammatical errors including punctuation, spelling, and tenses, all of which the participant will be asked to correct. Following this will be a mathematical task which will include converting mixed numbers to improper fractions at the difficulty of a fifth grade level. A memory recall task will then be administered to the participants asking them to recall as many of the details from the debate as possible. ; 2011-05-01 ; B.S. ; Sciences, Department of Psychology ; Masters ; This record was generated from author submitted information.

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of ESMA credit rating identifiers on the quality of ratings. These identifiers form part of the disclosure requirements placed upon credit rating agencies (CRAs) since 2012 under a new EU regulatory regime and have not featured in any prior empirical literature. Rating informativeness is gauged from bond market data. Using a rich dataset of sovereign rating actions by the three major CRAs for 70 countries during the period 2006–2016, we find that the ESMA requirement for identifiers yields varying outcomes across downgrades and upgrades. The rating quality associated with downgrades by Moody's improves, whereas upgrades by S&P, Moody's and Fitch are of lower quality. These results are consistent with greater conservatism in rating policies after the regulatory reforms. ESMA's additional focus on analyst location does not reveal any consistent difference in the quality of ratings.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- 1. Attitudes and "Attitude Man -- Attitude Man -- Liberalism and Conservatism -- Attitudes, Social Attitudes, Beliefs -- Structures and Factors -- Liberalism, Conservatism, and Attitude Man -- 2. Liberalism and Conservatism -- Definitions -- Liberalism -- Conservatism -- Radicalism -- Attitudes Toward Education: Progressivism and Traditionalism -- Progressivism -- Traditionalism -- Implications for Educational Practice -- 3. The Criterial Referents Theory of Attitudes -- General Background -- The Theory -- Definitions -- Criterial Referents, Shared Predispositions, and the Positivity Principle -- Duality and Orthogonality -- Bipolarity -- A Research Example -- The Theory and the Individual -- Implications for Attitude Research and Measurement -- Addendum: Two Approaches to Attitude Measurement and the Meaning of Negative Criteriality and Bipolarity -- 4. Methodology -- Structure -- An Example of Structure -- Routine Psychometric Analysis -- General Statistics, Reliabilities, and L-C Correlations -- Item Analysis -- Scales, Items, and Item Selection and Writing -- Types of Measurement Instruments -- Summated-Rating Scales -- Q Methodology and Q Sorts -- Subjects, Samples, and Administration of Instruments -- Factor Analysis -- First-Order Factor Analysis -- Second-Order Factor Analysis -- Factor Analysis as a Research Method -- Analysis of Covariance Structures -- Some Difficulties -- Factor Reification and Naming Factors -- Technical Problems -- What Factors Are and Are Not -- 5. The Measurement of Liberalism and Conservatism: A Review -- Anthologies of Attitude Scales -- Structural and Factor Analytic Studies -- Kerr -- Ferguson -- Eysenck -- Wilson -- Comrey and Newmeyer.

This work explains the applicability of the Barthesian notion of myth to one (1) television, one (1) film, and one (1) television and film ratings and classifications informercials produced by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB). Media does not only disseminate information but also promulgates images wherein myths are inevitably present. The wide range of audience that both media reach necessitates state intervention on Media, which has a significant effect on the publi?s value formation. The proponent employed Barthesian Myth analysis in providing the interconnectedness of the MTRCB?s role as a government agency that regulates TV shows and films and the proliferation of myths on the dynamics of a Filipino family as seen in theses infomercials. In doing so, further light is shed on the role of Media in the public sphere.

This article examines the origins and influence of ideological index scores—where liberal and conservative interest groups rate legislator performance on selected roll call votes. Two such groups founded in the mid-twentieth century—the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA)—were crucial to the development of this type of metric, transforming roll call analysis from detailed tabular scorecards into streamlined percentage scores showing how often a lawmaker voted "right." ADA and ACA scores have been heavily utilized in political science as proxies for liberalism and conservatism and used to demonstrate the growing polarization of the congressional parties. Archival evidence suggests, however, that those scores were intended to create the very phenomenon they have been used to measure. They were deeply political rather than objective metrics, which the ADA and ACA used to guide their electoral activities in accordance with an increasingly partisan strategic plan. Each group directed campaign resources toward incumbent lawmakers they rated highly, but they did so unevenly—with the ADA favoring liberal Democrats over Republicans and the ACA showing a preference for conservative Republicans over time. By rewarding favored lawmakers in their preferred party, and using scores to highlight and discourage ideological outliers, they hoped to reshape the parties along more distinct and divided ideological lines—to create more "responsible" parties, as prominent political scientists then desired.

This article describes a computationally simple, statistically consistent, reasonably efficient, and statistically informative generalized least squares (GLS) estimator for a general class of nonlinear, multidimensional scaling (MDS) models including the "ideal-point" models of voters' and legislators' behavior proposed by Melvin Hinich, Keith Poole, and others. Unlike other methods, the method described in this article provides a statistical framework for testing a wide range of hypotheses about these models including their functional form, their dimensionality, and the values of specific parameters. The Hinich ideal-point model is estimated using this method. It fits the data remarkably well compared to a standard factor analysis model that does not provide a reasonable fit to the data. This has the substantive implication of suggesting that voters base their voting decisions upon ideal-point dimensions like liberalism-conservatism and not upon factor analysis dimensions like competence and leadership.