Christopher Muste

Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations

This paper tests hypotheses concerning the effects of economic factors on public opinion toward immigration policy Using the 1992 and 1994 National Election Study surveys, probit models are employed to test diverse conceptualizations of the effects of economic adversity and anxiety on opposition to immigration The results indicate that personal economic circumstances play little role in opinion formation, but beliefs about the state of the national economy, anxiety over taxes, and generalized feelings about Hispanics and Asians, the major immigrant groups, are significant determinants of restrictionist sentiment. This restricted role of economic motives rooted in ones personal circumstances held true across ethnic groups, among residents in communities with different numbers of foreign-born, and in both 1992 and 1994.

Multiculturalism in American Public Opinion

Multiculturalism has emerged to challenge liberalism as an ideological solution in coping with ethnic diversity in the United States. This article develops a definition of political multiculturalism which refers to conceptions of identity, community and public policy. It then analyses the 1994 General Social Survey and a 1994 survey of Los Angeles County to assess the contours of mass support and opposition to multiculturalism, testing hypotheses concerning the role of social background, liberalism–conservatism and racial hostility. The main conclusions are that ‘hard’ versions of multiculturalism are rejected in all ethnic groups, that a liberal political self-identification boosts support for multiculturalism, and that racial hostility is a consistent source of antagonism to the new ethnic agenda of multiculturalism. There is strong similarity in the results in both the national and Los Angeles samples.

Is American Nationalism Changing? Implications for Foreign Policy

This article analyzes the degree of popular consensus about a nations identity, core values, and mission as a source of social integration and a broad constraint on foreign policy-making. It identifies cosmopolitan liberalism, nativism, and multiculturalism as three rival ideologies of American nationalism, comparing their main principles and competing approaches toward integrating a diverse society. The paper presents a synthesis of recent survey evidence to assess the relative degree of support for these competing conceptions of American identity. The relationship of these conceptions to the foreign policy orientations delineated in the Wittkopf-Holsti-Rosenau typology is examined to speculate about how shifts in American nationalism may shape the general direction of foreign policy in the future.

Reframing Polarization: Social Groups and “Culture Wars”

Recent analyses of American politics often invoke the term “culture war” depicting sharp and increasing divisions within the American polity. Most of this research defines culture in terms of values and beliefs about social issues and defines polarization in terms of partisan and issue divisions. I evaluate the claim of worsening “culture wars” by using a conceptualization of political culture that focuses on social groups and measuring polarization as both social group members’ attitudes toward their own social in-groups and out-groups, and the effects of group attitudes on partisanship. Analyzing inter-group attitudes from 1964 to 2012 for social group cleavages defined by race, class, age, sex, and religion shows that polarization in attitudes toward social groups is minimal and generally stable, and most group members feel positively toward out-groups. Partisan and issue polarization seen in prior research do not extend to deep or increasing inter-group hostility that could reinforce issue-based and partisan polarization.