“Divided we stand.” Perceived limits of ‘the right of free assembly’ among the US-public

• In Event: 1432 - Open Topic on Political Sociology

Abstract

Our paper focusses on an important political problem – the tension between a necessary degree of political tolerance and too much tolerance towards groups who would like to abandon basic democratic and human rights. Using public opinion data collected in more than three dozen countries in 2004 and 2014, we consider political tolerance in the form of accepting public assemblies of religious extremists; people, who want to overthrow the government; and groups who are prejudiced against any racial or ethnic group. Our analysis shows that the US public is the most accepting among the societies compared. Even more, US respondents have become more accepting from 2004 to 2014. At the same time, however, our analysis shows that the US public is divided in their views and has become more polarized from 2004 to 2014. We thus conclude that the categorization of the US as the most tolerant society holds true only for a part of the society.

Authors

• Markus Hadler, University of Graz

• Anja Eder