Title       : Democracy, Toleration, and the Strains of French Politics
Type        : Award
NSF Org     : SES 
Latest
Amendment
Date        : April 1,  1999      
File        : a9818742

Award Number: 9818742
Award Instr.: Standard Grant                               
Prgm Manager: James S. Granato                        
	      SES  DIVN OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCES    
	      SBE  DIRECT FOR SOCIAL, BEHAV & ECONOMIC SCIE
Start Date  : April 1,  1999      
Expires     : March 31,  2002      (Estimated)
Expected
Total Amt.  : $135000             (Estimated)
Investigator: Paul M. Sniderman paulms@stanford.edu  (Principal Investigator current)
Sponsor     : Stanford University
	      651 Serra Street
	      Stanford, CA  94305    650/723-2300

NSF Program : 1371      POLITICAL SCIENCE
Fld Applictn: 0000099   Other Applications NEC                  
              0116000   Human Subjects                          
Program Ref : 0000,OTHR,
Abstract    :

     The commitment of citizens to democratic practices under pressure is the
     distinctive objective of the study that we propose.  A celebrated series of
     studies has provided a benchmark view of citizens' support for an array of
     democratic values (Stouffer, 1955; McClosky, 1964; McClosky and Brill, 1983;
     Gibson, 1988; Sullivan et al., 1978, 1982).  Although the coverage of
     democratic values is wide, the examination of the conditions of commitment to
     them remains narrow.  The assessment of attitudes toward political issues
     typically is carried out in conditions that deliberately are studiously
     neutral.  The wording of questions, the framing of alternatives, and even the
     demeanor of the interviewers are designed to eliminate (or at least to balance)
     the pressure on respondents to take one, rather than another, side of a public
     issue (for pioneering exceptions, see Marcus et al., 1995; Gibson, 1998). These
     studies are valuable but, if the politics of democracies under strain is to be
     grasped, it is necessary to examine the commitments of citizens under pressure.
      How willing are they to honor their commitments to democratic values, not when
     they weigh their choices in an an artificially neutral situation, but when they
     must make them under pressure?  How ready are they to qualify, or even abandon,
     them when they come face-to-face with competing values?  What kinds of pressure
     - informational, normative, social or ideological, impose the greatest strain
     on the commitment of citizens to democratic values?  For whom?  And why?  And
     with what consequences for the practice of democratic politics? The study that
     we propose is designed to break new ground in understanding when citizens, in
     France or elsewhere, stand by or forsake democratic principles under the
     pressure of competing values or in the face of an appeal to authority -
     including the authority of the popular will.  To make this possible, we have
     partnerships with the Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique Francaise (CEVIPOF) in
     Paris and the Institute d'Etude Politiques (CERIP) in Lyon.  Each has a
     distinctive methodological expertise. The CEVIPOF group has been the leading
     survey research team in the study of electoral politics in France over the last
     two decades (Boy and Mayer, 1993; Boy and Mayer, 1997; Mayer, 1997).  The CERIP
     group has been the principal forum for the study of the politics of ordinary
     citizens through close observation and intensive interviewing.  Our group
     concentrates on marrying, through computer-assisted interviewing, the
     inferential strength of the randomized experiment with the descriptive strength
     of the representative sample.  Working together, we can carry out a study that
     none of could accomplish on our own.