Stanley Rothman

Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty

This article first examines the ideological composition of American university faculty and then tests whether ideological homogeneity has become self-reinforcing. A randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.

Systematic Political Theory: Observations on the Group Approach

Of the spate of articles on interest group behavior and interest group theory which have appeared since the “rediscovery” of Bentley, only a few have been mildly critical. Two American commentators have criticized the vagueness of certain terms and a British observer has noted that, somehow, empirical research on group behavior rarely makes use of the theoretical schemes which have been devised. But surely if we are to accept the claim of the group theorists that this is indeed the key to a science of politics, it is legitimate to ask that they submit their propositions to the tests imposed by science as a method. Perhaps the gap between research and theory stems less from a lack of data than from some limitations inherent in the group approach itself? This, in fact, is the argument of the present essay. The failure of group theory to serve as an adequate guide to research is the result both of the logical inconsistencies of its propositions and of its inability to explain what it purports to explain. The two weaknesses are related, for in their empirical work group theorists are constantly forced into inconsistencies as a result of the inability of the theory to deal with certain dimensions of experience. The ability of those who use the approach to ignore these consequences stems both from a certain looseness of vocabulary and a tendency, not limited to American scholars, to universalize their own political experience.

Transformation of gender roles in hollywood movies: 1946–1990

Abstract Over the past 25 years Hollywood filmmakers have gradually broken with tradition and now portray men and women in new ways. Female characters, no longer so exclusively focused on romance, have emerged as more complex, alienated, and violent. Through a systematic content analysis of the movies from the 1940s through 1989, the authors explore the shift in gender roles, showing how the images reflect the attitudes of a new Hollywood elite of filmmakers who have succeeded in replacing old myths with new.

Personality, Ideology and World View: A Comparison of Media and Business Elites

For some time we have been engaged in a large scale study of various leadership strata in the United States. Our goal is to clarify similarities and differences in background, ideology and personality among members of such strata. We are also interested in the relationship between these variables and the manner in which members of different leadership groups perceive ‘reality’. This article reports preliminary findings on two groups – leading business executives and top level journalists. Our work has been partly informed by hypotheses developed by social scientists as diverse as Max Weber, Harold Lasswell, Joseph Schumpeter, S. M. Lipset, Alvin Gouldner, Jurgen Habermas, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell and others.

THE RADICAL PERSONALITY: Social Psychological Correlates of New Left Ideology

This paper describes and tests a model of radical personality based upon social psychological correlates of New Left ideology. Following methodological criticism of studies that portrayed radicals as psychologically “liberated,” a model of psychopolitical rebellion is described as an inverted form of authoritarian personality. This model was tested by administering projective psychological instruments to a large sample of American college students during 1971–73. As hypothesized, radicalism was associated with measures of power motivation, narcissim, self-assertive psychosocial orientation, lack of affiliative motivation, and perceptions of protest and militancy as sources of power. The developmental sources of rebellion are also examined, and the implications for studies of personality and politics are discussed.

Barrington Moore and the Dialectics of Revolution: An Essay Review

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be the master—thats all.” Through the Looking Glass It is not hard to find reasons why Barrington Moores Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship has had such widespread influence. Its approach, that of comparative, historical sociology, seeks clues to the present in the past, and Moore demonstrates mastery of a wide range of historical materials. Yet I feel that the book is ultimately unsatisfactory, for it is marred by a lack of respect for its own sources of information and by contradictions and non-sequiturs at critical points in the argument. In this critique I shall first examine the general thesis of the book and then turn to the case studies which Moore uses to support his arguments. I shall also attempt to account for the sharp contrasts in the quality of scholarship which characterize the study, and will attribute them to Moores preconceived ideological assumptions about the nature of the good society.

The Politics of Catholic Parochial Schools: An Historical and Comparative Analysis

T HE DEFEAT OF RECENT attempts to secure legislation providing Federal aid to public education has raised once again the question of the role of private religious schools (primarily Catholic parochial schools) in the American educational system. The issue has emerged with especial sharpness because Catholic opposition to legislation which did not, at the same time, provide loans or grants to parochial schools played a substantial role in the defeat of the Kennedy administrations recommendations. And it seems quite unlikely, other things remaining equal, that any legislation providing for substantial Federal aid to public education will be enacted unless the issue is resolved.1 But the problems involved can not be discussed intelligently, nor the right questions asked, unless these are placed in a proper context, for the problems have both a comparative and an historical dimension.

Is Opposition to Nuclear Energy an Ideological Critique

In the June 1987 issue of this Review, Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter offered evidence to support their argument that “the new environmental movement in the United States is partly a symbolic issue,” that elites in the news media and in public interest groups misrepresent the dangers of nuclear energy as a surrogate for more direct criticism of liberal capitalism in the United States. In this controversy, Charles J. Helm expresses skeptictem about the Rothman-Lichter line of argument; and they respond .

Hollywood views the military

D id Hollywood movies in the 1980s reaffirm traditional ideas about patriotism and begin, once again, to portray the military in a favorable light? Many critics argue that a tendency to do so began to appear in the late 1970s and grew stronger throughout the following decade. The critic Terry Christensen, among others, laments this Hollywood susceptibility to the political winds of the Reagan era in his book Reel Politics:

Liberalism and the decay of the American political economy

Abstract Free markets and liberalism in Europe both emerged as the result of a particular combination of structural, cultural and personality variables. Both functioned relatively successfully because they operated within the framework of certain assumptions about the nature and acceptable limits of self-interest. These assumptions are now collapsing, in part as a function of internal contradictions in liberal capitalism itself, and, in part, as a function of the challenge of new elites which have become increasingly significant in advanced capitalist societies.