Linking Birth Order to Political Leadership: The Impact of Parents or Sibling Interaction? (original) (raw)
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Previous studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have ...
The Social Science Journal, 2012
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The impact of parental status on the visibility and evaluations of politicians
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 2018
In increasingly personalised electoral contests, voters use evaluations of candidates’ personal characteristics in their vote decisions, and candidates deploy personal information about themselves which they believe convey a positive message in their communications with voters. We expand the study of candidate characteristics to include parental status, examining the public’s view of politicians with and without children and the behaviour of politicians in their communications with voters. Men and women are equally likely to refer to their children regardless of party. We find a preference for candidates who are parents and no punishment effect for women politicians with children. Our findings, from a British study, contradict some of the research from the United States which finds that voters’ reactions to candidates’ parental status vary depending on candidate gender; as such, our results suggest that political and cultural context are important factors determining the role gender...
Politics across Generations: Family Transmission Reexamined
The Journal of Politics, 2009
Issues of measurement have also come to light that help account for variations in dyadic agreement. See Dalton (1980 analysis of the original Jennings and Niemi data that uses LISREL techniques to "correct" for measurement unreliability. A consequence of doing so is to increase the apparent level of parent-child agreement. See Appendix for further discussion. 2 2 All respondents were interviewed face-to-face in 1965, as were the great majority in 1973 and 1982 as well, when an abbreviated mail-back questionnaire was used for the more remotely located individuals. In 1997 approximately one-half interviews were face to face and the other half by telephone; computer-assisted technology was used for each mode. 3 Panel attrition and the absence of an initial parent interview account for the difference between the 935 members of th wave high school senior panel and the 636 parent-child pairs. The retention rate from the original 1556 pairs is 41%. 3 to decline, to level off, or even to increase as the offspring enter life stages resembling those occupied by their parents and political landscape shifts. A second central question about the dynamics of parental influence involves the presence of variations across political orie and subgroup variations among parent-child dyads. As noted above, certain kinds of parental orientations are more succe implanted by late adolescence than are others. Are these the ones that survive most readily over time? What properties are associated with these traits? We also noted that certain aspects of the parent-child nexus, especially parental characteristic enhanced the likelihood of political reproduction. Although a variety of such mediating variables have theoretical credenti can affect parent-child similarity on particular measures, explicitly political characteristics are of particular interest. After subject at hand is political socialization. In terms of social learning theory, transmission success should vary according to the strength of cue giving and reinforcem part of the socializer. Our analysis will employ two measures to evaluate this expectation, to be explained in more detail b of these mediating variables is traditional: the level of politicization within the family. The second capitalizes on the longi design of the study and is an indicator of parent salience and cue giving with respect to specific political orientations. The third topic we address is that of replication. One potentially troubling aspect of the Jennings and Niemi reports is that based on pairs formed from high school seniors of 1965, a cohort coming of age during such dramatic happenings as civil disturbances, the Vietnam war, political assassinations, and Watergate. That being so, it has been suggested that our findin cohort-centric, that preceding and succeeding cohorts would show different patterns of relationships, presumably including faithful political reproduction of their parents (Sears 1990; Sears and Funk 1999). Although some partial replications do not support this proposition (Allerbeck, Jennings, and Rosenmayr 1979), a more tho would include a replication of the measures with a subsequent cohort of parent-child pairs, one where the offspring were so under quite different historical circumstances. To make the test even stronger, these pairs should have the same family line original pairs. Which is to say, a third biological generation should be added to the two already available. One of our maj then, is to ascertain to what extent patterns of parent-child correspondence transcend eras. Study Design To address these topics we draw on a portion of the longitudinal parent-child political socialization project carried out by t University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and Center for Political Studies. Constituting the original core of the pro interviews with a national sample of 1669 high school seniors from the graduating class of 1965. Subsequent surveys cond 1973, 1982, and 1997 resulted in a four wave panel of 935 individuals, which represents an overall, unadjusted retention ra 56%. 2 During the first three waves efforts were also made to interview at least one parent, thereby enabling the constructio parent-child pairs as units of analysis. Altogether there are 636 pairs that have survived over the course of the study. 3 We to such dyads as being composed of Generations 1 (the parents) and 2 (their offspring).
Blood is Thicker than Water: Family Ties to Political Power Worldwide
Historical Social Research, 2018
This article analyzes the relevance of family ties for the recruitment of chief executives - presidents or prime ministers - with special emphasis on gender. Based on a cross-national data-set examining political chief executives from 2000-2017 in five world regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America), we test several hypotheses and present four main results. First, belonging to a political family (BPF), is an advantage to entering national executive positions around the world, for both democracies and non-democracies. Among those with a sizeable number of executives in this period, regions range from 9 percent (Africa) to 13 percent (Latin America and Europe) of executives BPF. Second, executives’ family ties are more powerful (with a previous chief executive) in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and more direct (with an immediate family member) in Asia and Africa. Across the globe, women only made up 6% of chief executives in the time period. Third, females who manage to become chief executives are more often BPF than their male counterparts, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Fourth, regardless of region, family ties nearly always originate from men, not women.
Birth order and conservatism: A multilevel test of Sulloway’s “Born to rebel” thesis
Personality and Individual Differences, 2014
We analysed differences in conservative values between firstborn and secondborn siblings, in the context of idea that firstborns favour the status quo more than secondborns do. Using multilevel analysis to predict siblings' conservatism, we tested two hypotheses from Sulloway's theory: (a) firstborns are more conservative than are secondborns; and (b) firstborns internalize their parents' conservative values stronger than secondborns do, independent from the degree of their parents' conservatism. Ninety-six Italian families (composed of both parents, the firstborn and the secondborn, total N = 384) filled out the Portrait Values Questionnaire . Results supported Sulloway's first, but not his second prediction: Birth order fostered children's conservatism directly, but not in interaction with parents' conservatism. Implications of the results for the children's socialization and their possible developments are discussed.
International Political Science Association - 24th World Congress of Political Science (Poznan, Poland)
In its pursuit of liberty and determination to prevent the rise of a political monarchy, the United States’ developed a highly democratic system of government that may have inadvertently fostered pseudo-aristocratic tendencies in enabling an oligarchy. The political dynamics and lived experiences of its ostensibly democratic development appear at odds with the nation’s founding principles. In America’s úber-democracy, voters elect almost every conceivable public office; yet the democratic process often contradicts its egalitarian foundations. One such contradiction is the prevalence of political elites within the public sphere, and the hegemonic role of America’s political dynasties. The existence and prevalence of political families speaks to the enduring power of pedigree in a society that supposedly apportions democratic authority based on merit. The persistence of political families in a democratic country raises concerns about imperfections in popular representation. My research focuses on twelve US case study families with at least four successive generations in the direct line elected to state or federal office. I will outline what I have found thus far that accounts for the perpetuation of these families throughout the decades; why political dynasties so entrenched in American politics; and what causes one dynasty to ultimately decline, only to have their place taken by another. This examination aims to understand why certain families are able to succeed in public office, generation after generation, and what this ultimately tells us about the value of class merit in American democracy.
Previous research has shown a consistent effect of social origin on political participation: people originating from low-socioeconomic-status families participate in politics less than people from high-socioeconomic-status families, – which violates the democratic premise and one of the most fundamental human rights – equality of political voice. We investigated in this paper whether education compensates or reinforces the political inequality shaped by social origin. We used a German representative sample of 1,046 identical twins of 21-25 years old and applied family fixed effects regression models, which allowed to control for measured and unmeasured genetic and social confounding. We found a positive causal effect of educational attainment on participation. Family disadvantage caused by low parental education is compensated by children obtaining intermediate or high levels of education. At the same time, family advantage originating from high parental occupational status is reinf...