Dietlind Stolle

• PhD
• Managing Director at McGill University

Social role theorists argue that the roles that people inhabit and their experiences within can alter their attitudes. We use Swedish panel data to demonstrate how involvement in the parental role changes attitudes toward government policies differently for fathers and mothers. For fathers who take parental leave, the caregiving activities accompan...

Rationale Holistic antenatal care requires knowledge of individuals’ emotional response to pregnancy. Little is known about how a pregnant woman and her partner influence each other emotionally during a pregnancy. Objective This study examines six discrete emotions that expectant couples experience during pregnancy, how these emotions change mid-t...

This chapter provides an assessment of the current research on how people are mobilized into political action. We consider three key mobilization spheres: voluntary associations, informal social ties, and digital networks. Each of the three mobilizational spheres is discussed in detail and the findings, strengths, and weaknesses of empirical work i...

How do pregnancy and childbirth affect engagement in politics and society? Our data from a large-scale citizen panel record political engagement before, during, and after pregnancy for (future) mothers and fathers. We find that women demobilize from politics and societal issues during pregnancy. This disengagement is strongest for indicators of pol...

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a critical opportunity to assess the extent to which Canadians can be considered reliable defenders of democratic norms and institutions. In the face of such a serious threat to their physical and economic well-being, how willing are Canadians to condone the loosening of restraints on the power of the executive? This ar...

This article asks whether the willingness of partisans to condone democratic backsliding is a uniquely American phenomenon and explores why partisans would tolerate a party leader subverting democratic norms. We focus on executive aggrandizement as a key mechanism through which democratic backsliding occurs and develop three potential explanations...

Following public debates on the topic of trust in Quebec, this article examines the alleged social capital differential between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The literature has found lower levels of generalized trust in Quebec, but explanations offered are diverse and conjectural, with historical, sociological and political factors all in contenti...

In their attempts to mobilise supporters and justify their actions, violent religious extremists often refer to parts of scripture that legitimize violence against supposed enemies of the faith. Accounts of religious extremism are divided on whether such references to scripture have genuine motivating and mobilising power. We investigate whether re...

Background One of the groups that is most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic is pregnant women. They cannot choose to refrain from care; they and their children are at risk of severe complications related to the virus; and they lose comfort and support as clinics prohibit their partners and as societal restrictions demand isolation from friends an...

Background One of the groups that is most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic is pregnant women. They cannot choose to refrain from care; they and their children are at risk of severe complications related to the virus; and they lose comfort and support as clinics prohibit their partners and as societal restrictions demand isolation from friends an...

How stable is gender identity when facing important gendered life events? In the study of gender identity, little research has focused on adulthood experiences that might modify or reinforce self-perceptions of gender traits. This article uses pregnancy and early parenthood to study stability and change in self-perceived female and male traits. We...

How stable is gender identity when facing important gendered life events? In the study of gender identity, little research has focused on adulthood experiences that might modify or reinforce self-perceptions of gender traits. This article uses pregnancy and early parenthood to study stability and change in self-perceived female and male traits. We...

This article compares two different measures of gender identity. Drawing on an online survey conducted with a representative sample of Americans that included both a single bipolar scale and separate masculinity and femininity scales, we compare how the same people respond depending on how gender identity is measured. The results of validation test...

Self-presentation is a crucial aspect of candidate communication. In contrast to media coverage, it is an aspect over which candidates can exercise a degree of control. The gendered mediation thesis, however, suggests that constructing an appropriate public image can pose a particular challenge for aspiring female politicians, given the stereotypic...

Both, in Germany as well as the USA, right-wing populist voters are characterized by anti-elitist attitudes and glorification of the past. However, differences between such voters and the general public are more substantive in Germany and only in Germany right-wing populist voters are also characterized by a strong sense of societal crisis. Hence,...

This chapter investigates the relevance of social trust for governance in areas of limited statehood (ALS), especially to compensate for the lack of third-party enforcement. To capture the forms of trust in a variety of societies from small-scale communities to larger social entities, we differentiate between personalized, particularized, and gener...

Becoming a parent is a profound change in one’s life that likely has consequences for political mobilization. This paper focuses on the earliest stages of parenthood, which have rarely been theorized nor empirically investigated. Close to childbirth, there may be substantial demobilizing effects due to hospital stays, immediate childcare responsibi...

During recent years, empirical trust research has significantly advanced our understanding about the interdependencies of social and political trust. This progress can mostly be attributed to major improvements of measurement instruments in survey research. Research on the causes of both forms of trust have examined the top-down approach of trust b...

This paper examines whether the effect of interethnic encounters on natives' attitudes toward immigration varies with the Big Five personality trait Openness to Experience. We hypothesize that individuals who score high on openness, and who therefore are more appreciative of and responsive to new experiences, react more positively/less negatively t...

Political trust – of citizens in government, parliament or political parties – has been centre stage in political science for more than half a century, reflecting ongoing concerns about the legitimacy of representative democracy. This Handbook offers the first truly global perspective on political trust and integrates the conceptual, theoretical, m...

Response to Richard Locke’s review of Political Consumerism: Global Responsibility in Action . - Volume 14 Issue 2 - Dietlind Stolle

The Promise and Limits of Private Power: Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy. By Locke Richard M. . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 228p. $89.99 cloth, $29.99 paper. - Volume 14 Issue 2 - Dietlind Stolle

Multicultural policy is an increasingly salient, and contested, topic in both academic and public debate about how to manage increasing ethnic diversity. In spite of the longstanding commitment to multiculturalism policy in Canada, however, we have only a partial understanding of public attitudes on this issue. Current research tends to look at gen...

Increasing interest in the political consequences of exposure to politically divergent viewpoints has revealed contrary findings. Although there is reason to believe that politically diverse networks should mobilize people into participation, some research finds inhibiting or negative effects on political participation. In recent work, this dis- cr...

The methods of cognitive neuroscience are beginning to be applied to the study of political behavior. The neural substrates of value-based decision-making have been extensively examined in economic contexts; this might provide a powerful starting point for understanding political decision-making. Here, we asked to what extent the neuropolitics lite...

This chapter turns to core results of the project. We outline the social interactions between those without and those with migration background. Here we present results for three different interactions: contacts in the neighbourhood, and weak as well as strong ties, both within and beyond the neighbourhood. We show to what extent different levels o...

The first chapter outlines major research findings and controversies and places the book in this context.

This chapter explains the design of the Diversity and Contact study and the methods used. We explain how the 50 neighbourhoods were selected and provide details about the panel survey, the area explorations and the field studies in five selected neighbourhoods.

This chapter explores the connections between neighbourhood features, intergroup interaction and attitudes to diversity further in portraits of five selected neighbourhoods. We use both survey results as well as empirical material from qualitative fieldwork to explore the ways in which residents see their neighbourhoods, and how they experience soc...

While the previous chapters focused on the impact of diversity on neighbourhood populations more generally, sometimes contrasting the non-immigrant and the immigrant parts of such populations, this chapter focuses specifically on how immigrants experience and perceive diversity. Analyses are presented for different groups of the immigrant populatio...

This chapter first briefly outlines the history and structure of immigration to Germany. It then explains the diversity of its cities and of city neighbourhoods. This includes discussion of immigrant concentration, extent and features of spatial segregation and nation origins of the immigrant population. Drawing on our own ‘area explorations’ we pr...

This chapter we investigate perceptions of diversity and attitudes to others with data from our survey, specifically by way of the three-wave panel data. These data allow a more convincing analysis of causal mechanisms than work using correlations. We investigate what our interview-partners think about immigration-related diversity and how they see...

Recent studies of political behavior suggest that voting decisions can be influenced substantially by "first-impression" social attributions based on physical appearance. Separate lines of research have implicated the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the judgment of social traits on the one hand and economic decision-making on the other, making this r...

We test whether a larger percentage of non-Whites in neighborhoods decreases associational involvement and build on earlier research in three ways. First, we explicitly consider the ethnic composition of organizations, distinguishing involvement in bridging (with out-group members) and bonding (only in-group members) organizations. Second, we start...

Political participation refers to all forms of involvement in which citizens express their political opinion and/or convey that opinion to political decision-makers. Some of the most innovative forms of political participation developed during the past decade are based on the use of online communication tools. There is still no consensus in the sci...

The nonverbal display of confidence is strongly associated with leadership and power. However, its importance for the persuasiveness of campaign messages has not been explored. How important is showing confidence for a political candidate’s ratings? How does confidence condition the effect of the quality of a candidate’s arguments? This article add...

The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, eac...

This article examines the medium-specific and spill-over effects from various aspects of using social networking sites (SNS) to other forms of online and offline political participation. The study relies on a two-wave panel survey of undergraduate students at a major Canadian university, which was designed to measure detailed aspects of political p...

This chapter examines the role of citizens and consumers as agents of the environmental state. It first considers the importance of citizen awareness before turning to a discussion of the concept of sustainable citizenship and its normative responsibility claim on all societal actors and institutions. It then compares the model with other citizensh...

Studies of environmental governance that show the relevance of the state's role in environmental politics and the analytical power of the comparative approach. Many recent studies on environmental governance focus on either the micro-level (the local and the individual) or the macro-level (the global) while neglecting governance at the nation-state...

Significance Although mixed social environments can provoke conflict, where this diversity promotes positive intergroup contact, prejudice is reduced. Seven multilevel studies demonstrate that the benefits of intergroup contact are broader than previously thought. Contact not only changes attitudes for individuals experiencing direct positive inter...

The results of the 2011 Canadian federal election were surprising. What accounts for the dramatic and largely unexpected shift in electoral fortunes? Most importantly, what accounts for the sudden leap in popularity of the New Democratic Party, particularly in Quebec? The aftermath of election day produced no lack of potential explanations. Pundits...

Recent research on the consequences of ethnic diversity for social cohesion indicates that the effects of diversity are not necessarily universal. In this article we hypothesise that the rhetoric of political parties conditions whether diversity negatively affects generalised trust. Political campaigns might highlight the salience of cultural diver...

Political Consumerism captures the creative ways in which citizens, consumers and political activists use the market as their arena for politics. This book theorizes, describes, analyzes, compares and evaluates the phenomenon of political consumerism and how it attempts to use market choice to solve complex globalized problems. It investigates theo...

This article investigates the relationship between neighbourhood diversity, various forms of intergroup contact and trust in a sample of native Germans clustered in 50 neighbourhoods in several German cities. The authors argue that the consideration and direct measurement of intergroup contact is essential for fully comprehending the consequences o...

Social capital researchers have suggested that bridging ties are important for political participation. However, thus far the literature lacks testing on the direction of this relationship: do diverse ties stimulate political participation or does political participation stimulate political diversity among friends and acquaintances? This article ex...

This article builds on the insights of the contact hypothesis and political socialization literatures to go beyond recent findings that racial and ethnic diversity have overwhelmingly negative effects on social capital, particularly generalized trust. Using the Canadian General Social Survey (2003), our results show that despite a negative relation...

This article develops the notion of “sustainable citizenship” and distinguishes it from more conventional forms of citizenship. The authors formulate indicators of the presence of sustainable citizenship among individuals, in corporations, and in nongovernmental organizations and apply those indicators in two empirical studies. The first study is o...

The paper presents selected results from a large-scale empirical study in German cities entitled “Diversity and Contact”. In the past few years, the consequences of the increasing migration-related diversity in the cities of Europe and North America have been the subject of controversial debates. While some assume disintegrative effects on social r...

Résumé. Avec une méthodologie double, nous portons notre attention sur un groupe très peu étudié : les jeunes non-engagés. Grâce à des entrevues, nous distinguons quatre types de non-engagés: les critiques, ceux qui manquent de ressources politiques, les occupés, et ceux en attente de mobilisation. Les critiques ne représentent qu'une minorité des...

In recent years, voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly switched to Internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. The existing body of empirical research on Internet-based mobilization, however, is not conclusive about the effects this form of mobilizat...

This article examines how much women know about government services and benefits and discusses why this type of knowledge matters. Using data from a survey as well as focus groups conducted in Montreal and Toronto, we show that the women who are most likely to need information about these programs are often the least likely to be aware of them. Thi...

Trust is a hypothesis about future behavior that is certain enough to serve as a basis for practical conduct. Many contend that trust is one of society’s integrative forces. Identifying how entities trust is especially important work for social scientists.

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Participation patterns in industrialized democracies have changed considerably in the last couple of decades. While institutionalized forms of participation (e.g., party membership) are declining, we can observe a rise in the occurrence of non-institutionalized forms of political participation. In this article we pose the question of what the effec...

How do parents in North America inculcate generalized values about trusting others in their children? Using a self-collected data set with over 1,400 children sampled in the U.S. and Canada as well as matching surveys and selective in-depth interviews with their parents, this article attempts to link parental child-rearing approaches and values to...

In recent years, voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly relied on Internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. Within the literature, one can observe an intensive debate about the possible consequences of this transition. Most importantly, the question...

In recent years, there has been increasing popular and academic debate about how ethnic and racial diversity affects democratic politics and social cohesion in industrialized liberal democracies. In this introduction, different interdisciplinary theoretical approaches for understanding the role of diversity for intergroup relations and social cohes...

While studies typically find that women know less about politics than do men, feminist scholars have argued that these findings reflect gender-biased measures that underestimate women's political knowledge. This article evaluates the feminist critique by taking a more expansive view of what constitutes political knowledge. Using data from a large C...

In the social sciences, the use of experimental research has expanded greatly in recent years. For various reasons, most experiments rely on convenience samples of undergraduate university students. This practice, however, might endanger the validity of experimental findings, as we can assume that students will react differently to experimental con...

In recent years, voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly relied on Internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. Within the literature, one can observe an intensive debate about the possible consequences of this transition. Most importantly, the question...

This article examines how immigrant women’s social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada’s two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings...

It is assumed that civic education has persistent effects on political attitudes and behaviours of young citizens. There is no consensus, however, on what kind of efforts have the strongest effects on specific outcomes, like political knowledge and intended political participation. In some of the older literature, it has been shown that effects of...

While most current research documents a negative relation between ethnic diversity and generalized trust, it has to be acknowledged that these results often originate from one-country analyses in North America. In this article, attitudinal measurements from the European Social Survey are combined with Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Deve...

Consumers, consumer goods, brand names, logos, and corporations are increasingly important in global struggles for social justice. Global social justice networks use a variety of innovative means to encourage shoppers to consider the hidden politics behind consumer goods and corporate brand names. They are using this power of mobilization to push t...

In the discussion of the sources of social capital, it has been stressed that generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. This approach has run into conceptual problems, and empirical evidence has provided only mixed support. An alternate approach is to h...

This article contributes to the debate about the effects of ethnic diversity on social cohesion, particularly generalized trust. The analysis relies on data from both the 'Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy' (CID) survey in the US and the 'Equality, Security and Community Survey' (ESCS) in Canada. Our analysis, one of the first controlled cross-na...

A fierce controversy has broken out recently in political and social science circles about the effect of socially mixed and multi-cultural populations on modern society. At the heart of the argument is an article by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discussing the impact of diversity and pluralism (eth-nic, religious, linguistic, national a...

This article studies the antisweatshop movement's involvement in global social justice responsibility-taking. The movement's growth (more than one hundred diverse groups) makes it a powerful force of social change in the new millennium. The rise of global corporate capitalism has taken a toll on political responsibility. As a response, four importa...

This article provides an assessment of the current state of research within these debates on social capital. A discussion of the various roots, conceptions, and measurements of social capital can be found in the first section of the article. It examines the different consequences and benefits of social capital, and the main theoretical frameworks,...

ENGL. TITLE: Institutional Foundations of Trust QUELLE/SOURCE: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 47, 2007, S. 113–140. KURZREFERAT: In diesem Artikel wird eine Theorie zu den Entstehungsbedingungen des Sozialkapitals präsentiert. Als Alternative zu den gängigen Erklärungen der Sozialkapitalproduktion wird das Hauptaugenmerk...

In this article an alternative theory on the generation of social capital is presented. Contrary to standard accounts of social capital theory that emphasize how generalized trust is built up by the citizens themselves through a culture that permeates the networks and organizations of civil society. The focus here is how social capital is embedded...

Final Report of Research Findings for the Status of Women; p. 1-119

Warum werden Käufer zu ‚politischen Verbrauchern'? Immer mehr Bürger suchen außerhalb des par-lamentarischen Systems nach Möglichkeiten, ihre politische Meinung auszudrücken und Ein-fluss zu nehmen. Eine der so entstehenden bisher unterschätzten Formen ist das ‚politi-sche Verbraucherhandeln' 1 : "Verbraucher über-legen und entscheiden sich auf der...

Both anecdotal and case-study evidence have long suggested that consumer behavior such as the buying or boycotting of products and services for political and ethical reasons can take on political significance. Despite recent claims that such behavior has become more widespread in recent years, political consumerism has not been studied systematical...