Political Mobilization/Activism

One of the critiques of Inconvenient Truth that has emerged is that Gore spends a lot of time warning viewers about global warming, but strays from actually providing concrete suggestions for policy action. Some have argued that this reflects his eye on the Presidential race in 2008, and that candidate Gore wants to avoid locking himself into costly policy proposals that might lose certain key constituencies or that might be used as fodder by opponents. But in an extensive interview, Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim tells a different side. The main goal of the movie was to…
A pre-publication release of a study I did with Kirby Goidel of LSU is now available at the website of the journal POLITICAL BEHAVIOR. Analyzing national survey data collected in 2003, the study finds that the most consistent predictor of citizen activism in the stem cell debate (measured as donating money, contacting officials, writing letters to the editor etc) is church-based mobilization, including the distribution of materials at church, and requests to participate from church leaders. Below is the abstract and article information. Readers at universities should be able to download…