Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion

by James L. Gibson , Amanda Gouws

• ISBN13: 9780521813907
• ISBN10: 0521813905
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa investigates the degree to which the political culture of South Africa - the beliefs, values, and attitudes toward politics held by ordinary people - impedes or promotes the consolidation of democratic reform. One set of values is of particular concern in this study - political tolerance. The authors contend that political tolerance is a crucial element of democratic political cultures in general, but that in the South African case, tolerance is perhaps more important than any other democratic value. Since South Africa is one of the most polyglot countries in the world, the only viable strategy for survival is tolerance toward the political views of others. The overwhelming emphasis throughout this book is on finding ways to enhance the willingness of South Africans to 'put up with' their political enemies, to allow open and widespread political competition, and to co-exist in their diversity.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures	x
Preface	xiii
Part I Introduction
Political Tolerance in the New South Africa	3	(12)
Political Tolerance: An Introduction	6	(3)
Objectives of Our Research	9	(3)
Summary	12	(1)
The Design of this Book	12	(3)
The South African Context	15	(26)
South Africa's Democratic Transition	16	(8)
The Importance of Tolerance as an Antidote to Conflict in a Divided Society	24	(2)
Impediments to Tolerance in South Africa	26	(8)
Conclusions and Implications for this Research	34	(1)
A Note on Race in South Africa	35	(6)
Part II South African Intolerance as It Is
The Nature of Political Intolerance in South Africa	41	(31)
Tolerating South Africans?	42	(2)
The Meaning of Intolerance: Conceptual Discussion	44	(5)
Measuring Political Intolerance	49	(13)
Perceived Threats From Target Groups	62	(5)
Connecting Threat Perceptions and Intolerance	67	(3)
Discussion	70	(2)
Social Identities, Threat Perceptions, and Political Intolerance	72	(23)
Social Identity Theory	73	(1)
Identities, Subcultural Pluralism, and Democracy	74	(3)
Empirical Dimensions of Social Identity	77	(6)
Hypotheses Concerning the Interconnections of Social Identity Subdimensions	83	(3)
Hypotheses Connecting Identities with Antipathy, Threat, and Intolerance	86	(4)
Multivariate Analysis	90	(3)
Discussion	93	(2)
Making Tolerance Judgments: The Effect of Context, Local and National	95	(24)
The Role of Context in Civil Liberties Disputes	97	(2)
Using Vignettes to Study Context	99	(1)
Modeling Context	100	(15)
Discussion	115	(4)
Part III South African Tolerance as It Might Be
The Persuasibility of Tolerance and Intolerance	119	(35)
The Mutability of Public Opinion	119	(8)
The ``Possibilities'' for Political Tolerance: The ``Sober Second Thought'' Experiment	127	(22)
Conclusions	149	(2)
Appendix: The Measurement of Support for Democratic Institutions and Processes	151	(3)
The Law and Legal Institutions as Agents of Persuasion	154	(22)
Courts, Law, and Compliance	155	(3)
The Acquiescence Experiment	158	(14)
Discussion: The Effectiveness of South African Institutions as Protectors of Civil Liberties	172	(4)
Becoming Tolerant? Short-Term Changes in South African Political Culture	176	(36)
Understanding the Etiology of Political Tolerance	177	(2)
Theories of Short-Term Attitude Change	179	(3)
Measuring Political Intolerance	182	(4)
The Origins of Intolerance	186	(2)
Basic Panel Results	188	(1)
Changing Political Tolerance	189	(9)
A Dynamic Model of Tolerance	198	(11)
Conclusions and Discussion	209	(3)
Conclusions: Experimenting with Tolerance in the New South Africa	212	(11)
Experiments in Creating Tolerant South Africans	212	(8)
The Experiment with Democratic Tolerance in South Africa	220	(3)
Appendix A Research Design and Methodology	223	(14)
The Survey Firm	223	(1)
Sampling and Fieldwork	224	(5)
The Questionnaire	229	(2)
The Quality of the Responses	231	(4)
Conclusions	235	(2)
References	237	(16)
Index	253