Professionalization of Political Communication

Abstract

Americanization of Western European election campaigns has frequently been discussed, particularly in the media, but rarely defined. This article argues that the concept of professionalization better encompasses the process of change that can be observed in electoral communication. Professionalization is here regarded as a process by which the political actors adapt their strategies to changes in society and in the political system as well as to changes in the media system. The campaign of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) for the 1998 Federal Election is here described as an example of professionalized electioneering.     

Professionalised Campaigning in Latin America

Abstract

This paper analyses the process of democratisation within Latin American by focusing on the nature of election campaigning in the region. Particular attention is paid to developments in three former military dictatorships, which now regularly hold elections. The states are Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and consideration is given to the insights and limitations of applying the “Americanisation” or modernisation thesis in studying their distinctive media and political cultures. The elections held in each state during 1999 are used as case studies. What emerges is a complex pattern in which candidates and parties have simultaneously adopted some of the professional forms of electioneering whilst retaining and valuing the more traditional and interpersonal electioneering techniques. Furthermore, it was pointed out that there were marked differences in politicians' approaches to campaigning both between as well as within the three different political systems.     

War and (the Democratic) Peace: Military Service,Citizenship, and the International Environment

Is there a significant relationship between military structure and political liberalization? If so, can military structure and organization be manipulated to influence the process of democratization for the purpose of enhancing inter-state peace? To test the implications of these questions, I will investigate a decidedly contentious premise. Military factors traditionally considered destabilizing in the international environment (to include large, well-trained armed forces organized for offensive or out-of-country operations) have, at critical junctions in the Western experience, had a distinctly positive impact on the emergence and maintenance of the liberal democratic state. If this is indeed the case, and liberal democracy can be shown structurally and normatively to produce inter-state peace, then the preferred policy of peace-desiring states should be to promote and implement military reform at home and abroad that most efficiently generates democratic structures and values, regardless of intuitive fears of international instability. In short, I will argue that if liberal democratic states do not go to war with each other, then the size, proficiency, and strength of their military forces should not be a security dilemma issue.     

Much ado about religion: Religiosity, resource loss, and support for political violence

The association between religion and violence has raised much interest in both academic and public circles. Yet on the individual level, existing empirical accounts are both sparse and conflicting. Based on previous research which found that religion plays a role in the support of political violence only through the mediation of objective and perceived deprivations, the authors test Conservation of Resource (COR) theory as an individual level explanation for the association of religion, socio-economic deprivations, and support for political violence. COR theory predicts that when individuals' personal, social or economic resources are threatened, a response mechanism may include violence. Utilizing two distinct datasets, and relying on structural equation models analysis, the latter two stages of a three-stage study are reported here. In a follow-up to their previous article, the authors refine the use of socio-economic variables in examining the effects of deprivation as mediating between religion and political violence. Then, they analyze an independent sample of 545 Muslims and Jews, collected during August and September 2004, to test a psychological-based explanation based on COR theory. This study replaces measures of deprivation used in the previous stages with measures of economic and psychological resource loss. Findings show that the relationship between religion and support of political violence only holds true when mediated by deprivations and psychological resource loss. They also suggest that the typical tendency to focus on economic resource loss is over-simplistic as psychological, not economic, resources seem to mediate between religion and support of violence.     

How Governments Shape the Risk of Civil Violence: India's Federal Reorganization, 1950–56

Governments are absent from empirical studies of civil violence, except as static sources of grievance. The influence that government policy accommodations and threats of repression have on internal violence is difficult to verify without a means to identify potential militancy that did not happen. I use a within‐country research design to address this problem. During India's reorganization as a linguistic federation, every language group could have sought a state. I show that representation in the ruling party conditioned the likelihood of a violent statehood movement. Prostatehood groups that were politically advantaged over the interests opposed to them were peacefully accommodated. Statehood movements similar in political importance to their opponents used violence. Very politically disadvantaged groups refrained from mobilization, anticipating repression. These results call into question the search for a monotonic relationship between grievances and violence and the omission of domestic politics from prominent theories of civil conflict.     

政治安全问题的微观根源：基于制度与生活逻辑的分析

经济社会的深刻转型与风险社会的渐趋深化，渐次引发了现代理性对传统制度价值的撕裂式解构“，生活的政治”日渐进入民众的日常生活体验中。基于宏观层面的分析视角已然无法有效概括、诠释乃至应对政治安全话语体系中的诸多问题，由此引发的理论迷思与实践困境启示我们应突破国家与社会的实体论和二元对立思想，打通从国家逻辑的宏大叙事到生活逻辑的日常叙事之间的壁障，从而在对政治安全制度逻辑的分析过程中，建构一个基于微观层面的替代性分析框架。制度的失场、僵化以及制度间的抵牾，都会成为政治安全问题衍生的结构性根源，应基于对制度与生活逻辑的细致观察而探寻政治安全实现与维系的微观基础。     

Democracy and local political participation in Sumedang,Indonesia

Indonesia is a country that implements a democratic political system. As such, the involvement of society in the political process becomes very important. The purpose of this article is to research the democracy and local political participation in Sumedang. The study uses qualitative methods with primary data obtained from field observations and direct interviews of several informants. Additionally, the researchers use secondary data as a complement to the analysis. The results of this study indicate that the community at the local level truly understands the importance of political participation. However, due to disappointment in government performance, a part of the community has become discouraged from participating in the political process conducted by local governments. Several factors hinder efforts to encourage political participation. These include limited access to political aspirations that are still rare and the process of political education that is still low.     

State Violence and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (lgbt) Rights

Most societies, and the governments that represent them, regard lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) people to be immoral, decadent, and a threat to public order. Throughout the world, this homophobia long has caused lgbt people to be subject to ''legal'' violence made up of discriminatory laws and practices by state agencies, ''semi-legal'' violence of killing, torture, and harassment by police forces, and extra-judicial violence by individuals and groups in society. Yet as an unprecedented number of countries democratize, they adopt constitutions that prohibit and prosecute such practices. At the same time, rapidly growing lgbt organizations are using newfound freedoms to demand an end to abuse. Most of these democracies have proven unwilling or unable to enforce legal protections, however, while the economic and political uncertainties accompanying democratization often incite further violence. After examining the forms and patterns of anti-lgbt violence, this paper will analyze why democratic transitions have not led to its elimination.     

Competing masculinities: Probing political disputes as acts of violence against women from Southern Sudan and Darfur

This article identifies the major forces militating against the promotion of women's rights in the Sudan. These factors are intimately linked to the country's multiple political disputes including Darfur and southern Sudan. The effects of political violence is elaborated through a detailed examination of women’s political, economic and cultural rights. The article concludes by identifying the promotion of good governance and democratization as fundamental pre-requisites for advancing human rights and sustainable peace in the war-torn nation. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each state, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. The University Declaration of Human Rights (Article 22)     

Who Cuts Back and When? The Politics of Delays in Social Expenditure Cutbacks, 1980–2005

This article investigates the politics of delays in social spending cutbacks in OECD democracies. In the context of fiscal austerity, policymakers are assumed to have a strong incentive to manipulate the timing of cutbacks strategically. Applying event history analysis to small and large cutbacks in 21 mature welfare states, the authors test whether partisanship, electioneering and institutional constraints contribute to explain the timing of cutbacks. Macro-economic determinants such as worker productivity, economic growth and unemployment are found to be more important than these political variables. However, left-wing governments and welfare states with more institutional rigidity or a greater degree of contribution financing do tend to delay welfare cutbacks, while cabinets that have recently changed their party composition implement cutbacks earlier.     

Human (In)Security and Democracy in Central America

Human security has increasingly shifted attention to the individual, while the state has become guarantor (or violator) of security given its role in governing the domestic environment. This article examines how variations in regime forms influence security, pointing to the importance of political security in the wider human security framework. To illustrate, the article examines the nature of political security in Central America, a region with weakly democratized states and histories of political violence. The findings suggest a link between democracy and human security that is mediated by state capacity and the ability to control non-state violence against individuals.     

Intelligence and the management of national security: the post 9/11 evolution of an Australian National Security Community

Since 2001 expenditure on the security services has increased exponentially in Western democracies and particularly amongst the Five Eyes community of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This has occurred in conjunction with the expansion of counter-terror laws. Yet somewhat problematically the phenomenon of Islamist inspired violence became more threatening to the internal security of western democracies in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This study examines the Western managerial approach to security using Australia as a case study. It argues that the growth of Australian security agencies since 2001 and their evolution into a National Security Community after 2008 has neglected basic maxims of political and constitutional prudence and eschews the modern state’s own contractual self -understanding of sovereignty and political obligation.     

Governing peacekeeping: the role of authority and expertise in the case of sexual violence and trauma

Abstract

The surprising authority of gender expertise on sexual violence within post-Cold War peacekeeping can be understood by tracing how sexual violence became linked with political torture and combat violence in peacekeeping security rationality. The linkage emerged from the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) theory within anti-Vietnam war activism, which gained international authority during the 1980s. Post-Cold War narratives of ‘multi-dimensional’ peacekeeping as the policing and rehabilitation of perpetrators and victims for self-government drew on PTSD expertise on ‘integrity violations’, thus problematizing sexual violence. However, gender expertise should not be dismissed as providing ideological cover for imperialist projects: the contingent authority gender expertise has claimed has disrupted the peacekeeping narrative by representing peacekeeping operations as fostering flourishing sex industries in which integrity violations are a norm.     

Signals intelligence in India

In May 1945, as France celebrated the end of the Second World War in Europe, its foremost overseas dependency, Algeria, erupted into rebellion. Revisiting the roles and responses of the colonial security forces to what came to be known as the Sétif uprising, this article suggests two things. One is that the intensity of repressive violence pursued becomes more explicable once we consider the part played by political intelligence gathering in the operation of French colonial government in Algeria. The other is that the decision to use the political intelligence amassed before, during, and after the rebellion to coerce the Algerian population at the rebellion's epicentre signified a fundamental shift in the nature of the French colonial state in Algeria. Intelligence-led security policing, much of it later adopted by police agencies in metropolitan France at the height of the Algerian War, became more repressive, less selective, and highly violent.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout

This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages—gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws—explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout.     

Conflict‐Induced Displacement,Understanding the Causes of Flight

This study investigates circumstances that affect individuals’ decisions of whether or not to flee their homes during civilian conflicts. Building on the “choice‐centered” approach to studying forced migration, I test the argument that people make a decision to flee or stay even under highly dangerous circumstances. Using primary data collected through a public opinion survey in Nepal, I test a number of hypotheses regarding the impact of factors such as violence, economic opportunity, physical infrastructure or geographical terrain, and social networks on forced migration, providing an individual‐level test of the choice‐centered approach to studying forced migration. The empirical results are consistent with the major hypotheses developed in aggregate‐level studies and provide better insights into the factors that affect individual‐level behavior. Beyond conflict, there are a number of significant economic, social, physical, and political factors that affect individuals’ choice to flee.     

The politics-violence frontier

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how early twenty-first century political activists in Italy construct the frontier between politics and violence. It puts these constructions into the context of more conventionally theoretical accounts of violence and politics. Analysis of internet discourse published by left/anarchist bloggers and group members focusses on how activists criticize the conventional view that electoral politics is non-violent, and endorse the view that violence is politics’ main means. This means that the role of violence in oppositional politics then has to be negotiated. Discourse analysis shows how ideas of resistance, and anti-state force, are articulated in such a way as to draw distinctions between us and them, and their politics and ours. The article discusses the significance of these articulations of the politics-violence distinction for the construction of political agency, and for the justification of forms of political action, seeking to show that boundary work is fundamental to political agency.     

Politics of God or Politics of Man? The Role of Religion and Deprivation in Predicting Support for Political Violence in Israel

This study examines the associations between religious affiliation and religiosity and support for political violence through a nationwide sample of Israeli Jews and Muslims. Based on structural equation modeling, the findings show that by and large Muslims are more supportive of political violence than Jews and more religious persons are less supportive of political violence. Deprivation, however, was found to mediate these relations, showing that the more deprived – whether Muslims or Jews, religious or non-religious persons – are more supportive of political violence. The explanatory strength of religion and deprivation combined in this manner was found to be stronger than any of these variables on their own. The findings cast doubt on negative stereotypes both of Islam and of religiosity as promoting political violence. They suggest that governments which want peace at home, in Israel as elsewhere, would do well to ensure that ethnic and religious differences are not translated into, and compounded by, wide socio-economic gaps.     

An economic theory of governability: Choosing policy and optimizing performance

When collective violence occurs, a management and decision-making crisis exists for governmental authorities. We examine this situation with an economic model of governability within states. Political decision-makers wish to minimize two goals that enter as components of the government's performance function: political violence and revolutionary change of regime. We further assume that authorities have only a scarce supply of two policy instruments available with which to respond to violence: the accommodation and repression of the demands of their oppositions. Moreover, these elites confront a number of structural determinants of violence and revolution. After laying out these basic components of the model, we propose several theorems about the causes of political performance and about the regime's decision-calculus. These are then proven through a comparative static analysis of the model and by optimizing the performance function. The deductions indicate that the regime's policy instruments produce contradictory effects on the targetted levels of violence and revolution. In general, both accommodation and repression of opponents will, up to some point, reduce violence (an intended consequence) but increase revolution (an unintended consequence). Thus, upon close examination the goals of political decision-makers, to simultaneously minimize both violence and revolution, turn out to be inconsistent. Authorities therefore select an optimal level of performance by balancing the costs and benefits that come from accommodating and repressing their opponents.     

Corruption experiences and attitudes to political,interpersonal, and domestic violence

It is understood that corruption can change the incentives to engage in political violence. However, the scope for corruption to change attitudes toward the permissibility of violence has received less attention. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we argue that experiences of corruption in the social environment are likely to shape individual attitudes toward violent behavior. Using Afrobarometer data, we document a statistically significant and sizable relationship between an individual's experience of paying bribes and their attitudes to political, interpersonal, and domestic violence. These relationships are evident, and not significantly different, for men and women and are robust to the inclusion of variables capturing the local incidence of corruption, local norms regarding violence, and a proxy for the local incidence of violence with the community. Corruption is associated with permissive attitudes to violence even after controlling for the perceived legitimacy of the police and courts.