Ideologies and Institutions: Analyzing the Character of Institutional Contradictions in US Electoral Politics, 1952-2008

• In Event: 160 - Regular Session. Sociology and the Politics of Education

Abstract

Institutional contradictions provide the foundation for political struggles and the resource material for change. Despite a legacy of research that emphasizes the presence of contradictions and their role in explaining change, less is understood about their character or the mechanisms that support them once in place. This gap is especially problematic when making causal claims about the sources of institutional change, the likelihood that field members will exploit contradictions, or whether such exploitation might successfully alter institutions. We address this gap in the context of US electoral politics and public education 1952-2008 through an analysis of presidential party platforms. We ask how contradictions take hold, persist and might be observed prior to, or independently of, their strategic use. We develop a novel combination of content analysis and computational linguistics. We demonstrate how contradictions take hold and persist through dynamics of competing discourse about social mechanisms that delineate actors, problem situations, and responses to those situations. Through this lens we observe contradictions in qualitative differences in form and quantitative differences in degree.

Authors

• Debbie Heesun Kim, Northwestern University

• Jeannette Anastasia Colyvas, Northwestern University