Seeking the Soul of Democracy: A Review of Recent Research into Citizens' Political Talk Culture

This article provides a review of extant empirical research on ordinary citizens' everyday political communication, its phenomenology, determinants, consequences, and relevance for democratic politics. It highlights the recent upsurge in interest in the study of political conversations against the background of both classic and more recent developments in democratic theory and empirical research that served as intellectual inspirations. The article discusses conceptual and methodological issues of research into interpersonal political communication and presents key findings with regard to the background and consequences of political talk, tapping into fundamental aspects of democratic citizenship such as political preferences, participation, cognitive involvement with politics as well as orientations towards fellow citizens and towards the democratic political system. It concludes with an assessment of the state of the art in this field of study, highlighting desirable avenues for future empirical research.     

从泰国军人干政看发展中国家政治制度危机

军事政变不仅是一种军事行动,更是一种政治行动.本文试图通过对泰国军事政变的分析,探讨在发展中国家军人干政的原理.本文认为,政变的发生取决于一个国家的社会结构因素和政治制度因素,其中政治参与的无序化与领导人退出机制的不完善是引发军事政变的最重要原因.虽然军人干政在历史上曾经起过积极作用,但在现代社会,军人干政已经不适应甚至危害民主政治的发展.为解决这个问题,发展中国家应该从调整社会结构、扩大政治参与和提升政治制度化水平等三个方面持续地付出努力.     

韩国政治社会化的历史分析及启示

政治社会化是政治文化的传播、维持和改变。一国政治文化主要依赖于内部诸条件的相互作用与耦合,但外部因素也是影响政治文化乃至政治社会化进程的重要变量。由于特殊的历史原因,韩国社会经历过多次传统社会的价值观和生活规范的解体、分化与重组。韩国政治文化及其社会化受外部因素的影响特别大,尤其是受中国、日本和美国的影响巨大。从历史的角度考察三国对韩国政治文化和政治社会化的影响,分析韩国政治社会化的历史与现实,将为包括中国在内的诸多发展中国家走向政治现代化提供有益借鉴与启示。     

原地转圈:日本政治捐款制度改革

从1948年到2011年,规范日本政治捐款制度的《政治资金规正法》历经了多次修改,但对政治捐款数量的限制保留了1975年第1次修改时的标准。派阀和政治家仍然能够通过多种迂回途径获得企业团体捐款。政治宴会作为变相的政治捐款受法律制约较小,成为最有效的收集政治资金方式。日本政治捐款制度改革之所以原地转圈主要是因为日本型民主制度的先天性缺陷。     

Does Associational Involvement Spur Political Integration? Political Interest and Participation of Three Immigrant Groups in Zurich

This article looks at the determinants of the political integration of migrants at the local level, focusing on two dimensions of political integration: political interest (attitudinal dimension) and political participation (behavioral dimension). Based on a representative survey among Italians, Kosovars, and Turks in the city of Zurich, we tested the thesis advanced by the social capital approach which posits a link between membership in voluntary associations and political integration. Our findings suggest that membership in voluntary associations favors the political integration of the three groups under investigation. Furthermore, we find an impact of both ethnic and cross‐ethnic membership. However, while the effect of associational involvement on the behavioral dimension of political integration is strong and consistent across national groups, the attitudinal dimension displays a weaker and differential impact. Political attitudes and socio‐demographic characteristics play a less important role, except for the effect of the former on political interest, and also tend to have a differential impact on the three groups.     

Obtaining Party Positions on Immigration in Switzerland: Comparing Different Methods

The position of political parties on policy issues is crucial for many questions of political science, including studies of political representation. This research note examines different methods for obtaining party positions on immigration in retrospective. Party positions are obtained using pooled expert surveys, manual coding of party manifestos with a conventional codebook, manual coding of manifestos using check‐lists, and automatic coding of manifestos using Wordscores and a dictionary of keywords respectively. In addition, positions from a media analysis and a retrospective evaluation of researchers in the field of immigration are used. The results suggest that most methods differentiate the same order of party positions. While there are high correlations between many methods, the different methods tend not to agree on the exact positions. The automatic dictionary approach does not seem to measure party positions reliably.     

"碎片化"社会的政治整合——马来西亚的政治文化探析

复杂多元、碎片化的政治亚文化使马来西亚的各种族、各政党、各团体之间存在着紧张关系,削弱了政治整合的效能,而自由民主制度的竞争性特征更加剧了这一趋势。然而,由于各种族、各阶层的政治文化存在着相近的或共融的内容,比如权威主义心理取向和集体主义价值观等,再加上政治运作过程中逐渐磨合出的政治妥协、合作和理性等精神,既构成了马来西亚主流政治文化的内在机理,也为马来西亚的政治整合提供了有效的政治文化资源。这种政治文化奠定了马来西亚软权威主义政治的重要基石,从而成为后发国家政治发展中的一道独特的政治景观。     

台湾海归与台湾政治

对20世纪80年代以来台湾历任最高领导人及各部委第一负责人最高学历的分析统计显示,在美国、欧洲地区各国及日本名校获得高学历之海归人士,已经构成台湾政坛的精英主体。本文梳理台湾政坛海归的基本构成、比例及影响,剖析台湾海归在台湾政治中具有的特殊软实力,同时也指出他们的政治软肋,评介台湾当局成文与不成文的相关政策法规,深化对海归参政之现实意义的认识。     

Political Efficacy und Wahlbeteiligung in Ost‐ und Westdeutschland

Es wird die Frage untersucht, ob in Ostdeutschland die Beteiligung an den Bundestagswahlen unter anderem deswegen geringer ist als in Westdeutschland, weil ostdeutsche Wähler weniger davon überzeugt sind, mittels der Beteiligung an politischen Wahlen persönlich die Politik beeinflussen zu können. Die empirischen Analysen erfolgen mit Querschnittdaten des ALLBUS 1998. Sie zeigen, dass sich die Einflusserwartungen in Ost und Westdeutschland nur zufällig voneinander unterscheiden. Daher können die Einflusserwartungen nicht das entscheidende Kriterium für die unterschiedlichen Wahlbeteiligungen sein. Von Bedeutung für die Stärke der Einflusserwartungen sind persönliche Überzeugungen über eigene politische Kompetenzen und Reaktivität des politischen Systems, deren Einflüsse bei den Ostdeutschen grösser sind als bei den Westdeutschen.     

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM IN IRAQI KURDISTAN: PARTY RIVALRIES AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) possesses many of the traditional hallmarks of political authority and society, such as state institutions (an Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary), political parties, civil society, elections, and local government. Nevertheless, for the past twenty-five years, it has failed to create a unified political system that adheres to a mutually accepted form of government. Political division, in particular, a rivalry between the main parties, has proved to be a real impediment to the political development and stability of the Region.

This article argues that there is a relationship between the nature and structure of the political parties, which reflects interests' political views of party leaders, and the political systems that have been proposed as solutions to a lack of political stability in Iraqi Kurdistan. Specifically, it argues that the individual character of the main parties, the PUK and the KDP above all, explains why they favour one system of government over the one advanced by their rival and is the core political dispute in Iraqi Kurdistan currently. Finally, the article concludes by identifying prospective systems of government available the KRI and the potential consequences of each.     

Voting Advice Applications and the Estimation of Party Positions – A Reliable Tool?

Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAA s) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAA s can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAA s offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAA s furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA ‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively.     

Institutional Foundations of Legislative Turnover: A Comparative Analysis of the Swiss Cantons

Abstract: The rate of turnover within parliaments remains an understudied area of research. The present paper contributes to filling this gap by presenting the first comparable macro‐level data on legislative turnover in the 26 Swiss cantonal legislatures. In examining the strikingly different levels of turnover in sub‐national Swiss parliaments between 1993 and 2011, the focus is on politico‐institutional features. Multilevel models reveal that two hitherto neglected institutional variables are correlated with legislative turnover. In addition to the reduction of parliamentary size, we find the strength of a cantonal parliament to affect turnover rates on the Swiss sub‐national level. Moreover, we show that proportional representation significantly promotes parliamentary elite circulation. Among the non‐institutional covariates, we find that electoral volatility is also relevant in explaining legislative turnover rates.     

Vom Extremtyp zum Normalfall? Die schweizerische Konsensusdemokratie im Wandel: Eine Re‐Analyse von Lijpharts Studie für die Schweiz von 1997 bis 2007

Can Switzerland still be seen as an extreme case of federal consensus democracy, as illustrated by Arend Lijphart (1999)? A reanalysis of Lijphart's study of the Swiss political system from 1997 to 2007 clearly demonstrates that a consensus democracy has emerged that bears strong tendencies toward adjustment and normalization of the original exceptional Swiss case to the rest of the continental European consensus democracies. Switzerland can be considered a typical, rather than extreme, case of consensus democracy.     

韩国选民的政治社会化和支持候选人决定的稳定性——以第十七、十八届总统大选为中心

本文旨在从经验的角度,探讨不同的政治社会化经历对选民支持候选人决定的稳定性产生的影响。鉴于韩国政党政治历史不长,笔者将西欧意义上的政治社会化概念引入韩国社会。因此,本文以"和参照组的政治沟通"作为政治社会化指标,考察在2007年和2012年两次总统选举中韩国选民的政治社会化水平对支持候选人决定的稳定性产生的影响力。研究结果表明,韩国选民越是通过具有相同政治倾向的周围人实现政治社会化,稳定地支持同一政党候选人的倾向就越明显。这个结果意味着不同于以往不同居住地选民支持不同政党的惯例,韩国选民通过政治社会化来加强与特定政党之间关联性的基础正在形成。     

转型时期泰国政治力量的结构分析

在发展中国家由传统社会向民主化转型过程中,国家政治力量结构呈现出新旧交替、传统与现代的博弈局面.作为国家政治结构的主要力量,官僚阶层、军队与政党之间存在着一种动态的三角关系.在泰国的政治结构中,官僚阶层是基本的和不变的常量,军队始终发挥着重要的干预变量角色,而政党是一种集合性变量.本文通过分析泰国三大政治力量的结构及相互关系,推演出泰国现当代政治格局发展的基本规律.     

从政治竞争看宪法法院在亚洲的不同命运——对韩国、印尼和泰国的比较分析

作为西方国家法治进步的产物,宪法法院在20世纪后期陆续进入亚洲国家,成为民主转型过程中重要的制度设计,但其实际效果却存在差异。韩国宪法法院在功能上呈现"多点开花"的态势,在民主、法治和人权等领域均表现良好。印尼宪法法院成功解决了总统选举过程中的争议,维护了基本的民主规则。相比之下,泰国宪法法院则经历了"高开低走"的蜕变。它在成立初期相对较好地履行了宪法赋予的职责,2006年之后却越来越深入地卷入到政治斗争之中,丧失了独立品格,做出了一系列明显违反法治精神的判决。对此,既有解释存在"西方中心主义"的弊端,而且难以同时解释宪法法院在建立和运行两个阶段的不同情况。作为一种以民主转型国家实践经验为基础的学说,政治竞争理论因其内生性、系统性的视角而具有更强的解释力。以该理论视角观察宪法法院在韩国、印尼和泰国的不同命运,在验证其科学性的同时,可以发现其中隐含的前提条件及其适用范围的有限性。     

Rising Tides of Ideological Simplifications: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Local Parties

This article explores the strength and causal determinants of ideological thinking within Swiss local political parties. The concept of “ideologization” refers to (1): “horizontal couplings”, as they are manifested in intercorrelations between different opinions, and to (2) “vertical couplings” of specific opinions to abstract concepts of “left” and “right”. Results show high ideologization on the left‐center section of the LR‐scale, especially in the vertical dimension. On both sides of the spectrum, ideological constraints are significantly higher in larger communities than in than in smaller ones. Only in rather small communities, does ideologization correlate positively with the educational level, the modern occupational background of party members and the number of other local parties with which they have to compete. In communities of given size, ideological thinking is more pronounced when parties possess a small share of political power. Finally, it is found that ideological constraints have increased somewhat between 1989 and 2002.     

Identifying with the Nation: Spain's Left-Wing Citizens in an Age of Crisis

This study analyses the extent, sense, and strategies employed by sympathisers with Spanish state-wide left-wing parties to ‘reconstruct’ their affective ties with the Spanish nation after the ‘monopolisation of patriotism’ by Franco's regime. Such an undertaking is further complicated within the context of economic crisis and intensified peripheral nationalism found in Catalonia and the Basque Country. This article applies qualitative analysis to the discourse of left-wing participants from 11 focus groups held in March 2012 amidst the economic (and political) crisis. As expected, this context of crisis favoured the emergence of explicit discourse on the Spanish nation, providing an opportunity to gain a better understanding of its nature. Findings show that welfare nationalism and social patriotism define the kind of attachment developed by the interviewees towards Spain better than the concept of constitutional patriotism, or any kind of ethnic-cultural feeling of belonging.     

Mixing Habermas with Bayes: Methodological and Theoretical Advances in the Study of Deliberation

Two challenges stand out in the study of deliberation: the development of appropriate methodological tools and the development of more unified analytical frameworks. On the one hand, analysing deliberative processes is demanding and time‐consuming; hence we tend to have only few and non‐randomly selected cases at the group or context level. In addition, the real world of deliberation presents us with a complex matrix of nested, cross‐classified, and repeated speakers. This article shows that Bayesian multi‐level modelling provides an elegant way to tackle these methodological problems. On the other hand, we attempt to enrich comparative institutionalism with individual characteristics and psychologically relevant variables (such as group composition). Focusing on Swiss and German parliamentary debates we show that institutional factors ‐ in particular, consensus systems ‐, the gender composition of committees and plenary sessions, and age matter for the quality of deliberation. Furthermore, we also show that partisan affiliation ‐ government or opposition status of MPs ‐ affects deliberative quality and can refine institutional arguments. We conclude that a multi‐level approach to deliberation focusing on contextual and actor‐related characteristics and using Bayesian hierarchical modelling paves the way toward a more advanced understanding ‐ and methodological handling ‐ of deliberative processes.