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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Manufacturing A Protestant Consensus: Religion And Regime Entrenchment In The Eisenhower Era, John W. Compton
Manufacturing A Protestant Consensus: Religion And Regime Entrenchment In The Eisenhower Era, John W. Compton
Political Science Faculty Articles and Research
The party regime concept is central to the study of American political development. Yet many questions about the processes through which party regimes are created, maintained, and dismantled remain unanswered. This article argues that religious bodies have historically played an important role in these processes. Specifically, I demonstrate that “mainline” Protestant groups made three distinct contributions to the entrenchment of the post–New Deal Democratic regime. First, the National Council of Churches (NCC) credibly reframed Democratic policy commitments as embodying universal values (as opposed to the preferences of favored interest groups). Second, the NCC's economic policy arm, which included representatives from …
Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin
Competing Social Influence In Contested Diffusion: Luther, Erasmus And The Spread Of The Protestant Reformation, Sascha O. Becker, Steven Pfaff, Yuan Hsiao, Jared Rubin
ESI Working Papers
The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiple and competing network diffusion. To apply the contested-diffusion model to real data, we look at the contest between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two most influential intellectuals of early 16th-century Central Europe. Whereas Luther championed a radical reform of the Western Church that broke with Rome, Erasmus opposed him, stressing the unity of the Church. In the early phase of the Reformation, these two figures utilized influence …