拉美民众意识形态极化趋势及其影响

拉美国家近年来政局不稳的一个重要原因在于民众的意识形态出现了极化的趋势。本文分析了2012—2019年间“美洲晴雨表”中18个拉美国家的数据,发现自2014年以来,持极端意识形态的民众尤其是持极左观点的民众比重出现了显著上升,这主要是受到经济发展形势和各国执政党意识形态两个因素的交互影响。宏观上,以极左民众比重上升为特征的极化趋势主要是受到整个区域经济持续低迷和右翼政府的紧缩性经济政策影响。微观上,本文通过回归分析发现,民众对国家经济形势的判断与其所在国执政党的意识形态共同影响着其极化方向。在右翼执政的国家,民众对国家经济形势的评价越负面,其持极左观点的概率越高,持极右观点的概率越低;在左翼执政的国家,民众对国家经济形势的评价越负面,其持极左观点的概率越低,持极右观点的概率越高。最后,本文讨论了民众意识形态极化对拉美国家政局稳定的影响。本文发现,拉美极端民众尤其是极左民众参加抗议游行的概率显著高于温和民众。这意味着一国的极端民众比重越高,其发生大规模示威游行的概率越高。     

Political parties and democratization in South Korea: The mass public and the democractic consolidation of political parties

This study examines the growth of popular support for a competitive multi‐party system as an indicator of democratic consolidation in South Korea. Using a national sample survey conducted in November 1993, it demonstrates that the South Korean mass public has been very slow to develop affective, behavioural, cognitive and evaluative links to political parties which, however, constitute an integral channel for representing its preferences in the policy‐making process. Contrary to the tenets of the neo‐corporatist and other theoretical models, this study finds that the failure of political parties to democratize their performance has been, and remains, a major factor inhibiting the development of popular support for a democratic party system. Based on this and other findings, we would predict much continuing difficulty and uncertainty in the process of consolidating South Korean political parties into a fully democratic party system.     

Radical right parties in Europe and anti‐foreign violence: A comparative essay

This is a comparative survey of contemporary patterns of anti‐foreign violence in Europe and some historical antecedents, such as pogroms and individual and small group attacks on visible foreigners. It considers the perpetrators and the long list of different categories of victims, many of them not foreigners at all. Against the background of general youth violence in schools and neighborhoods and waves of asylum‐seekers, the motives of anti‐foreign violence are examined and attributed to the under‐educated, ‘no‐future’ youth or underclass ‘losers’ of the ‘communications revolution’ of the 1980s. The skinhead and soccer hooligan anti‐foreign violence is, on the whole, not remotely as political as the fascist blackshirts and Nazi stormtroopers of the inter‐war period were. A look at the evidence from different European countries reveals on the one hand recruitment attempts by extreme right‐wing organizations among the skinhead and hooligan groups ‐ but rather limited success. On the other hand, most of the violent actions appear to be uncoordinated and responsive to community panic and media hype regarding the ‘floods’ of asylum‐seekers and illegal immigrants in the offing. By making themselves the executors of the community panic, the otherwise despised skinheads are grasping at personal acceptance and legitimacy.     

Contemporary radical right‐wing violence in Canada: A quantitative analysis

Despite the presence of radical right‐wing movements, groups, and individuals in Canada, a paucity of academic research on this topic exists. Concurrently, the majority of material on this particular area has employed either journalistic or ethnographic methodologies. What remains is several thesi and dissertations and a couple of excellent case studies describing not only membership, but also the most salient activities of radical right‐wing groups and parties. These studies, however, have been short on examining these actors’ proclivity to engage in violence. In contrast, this article, uses an events data methodology to show the dynamics of radical right‐wing violence in Canada over the last three decades. The author then maps out the attributes of this particular type of violence and where possible specifies its correlates. This work is a part of a larger project on violence in Canada.     

Development,patterns and causes of violence against foreigners in Germany: Social and biographical characteristics of perpetrators and the process of escalation

Acts of violence against foreigners have increased dramatically since 1991 in Germany. The author underlines the wave‐like process of escalation and tries to identify triggering and amplifying factors (police reaction, political deficits, public opinion). He analyses police data concerning biographical and socio‐demographic characteristics of the perpetrators and discusses some of the prominent scientific interpretations (disintegration, individualisation, right‐wing activities) concerning the recent waves of right‐wing and xenophobic violence in Germany.     

Extreme nationalism and violent discourses in Scandinavia: ‘the resistance’, ‘traitors’, and ‘foreign invaders’

This is a comparative analysis of neo‐Nazis and anti‐immigration activists in Norway, Denmark and Sweden with regard to their rhetoric and justifications for violence against ‘foreigners’ and political opponents, and actual patterns of violence and harassment. Different traditions of nationalism in the three Scandinavian countries, and highly dissimilar historical experiences ‐ especially during World War II ‐influence the rhetorical strategies of the two types of extreme nationalists, and their respective abilities to appropriate national symbols. However, based on divergent historical analogies, most extreme nationalist groups present themselves as a ‘resistance movement’ fighting ‘foreign invaders’ and ‘traitors’.     

Fighting your friends? A study of intra-party violence in sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a less visible and less studied type of political violence, namely violence that occurs within political parties. We use new, district-level data to compare the temporal and spatial dynamics of intra-party violence to those of general election violence across selected sub-Saharan African countries, including both democracies and autocracies, from 1998 to 2016. Relying on cross-national and sub-national analyses, we show that intra-party violence follows a unique pattern. First, unlike general election violence, intra-party violence peaks prior to election day as it is often sparked by individual parties’ candidate nomination processes. Second, low levels of competitiveness – typically theorized to reduce the risk of election violence – increase the risk of intra-party violence on the sub-national level. Thus, dominant party elections do not necessarily see less election-related violence than hotly contested elections. Rather, violence may be pushed from election day to intra-party competitions. If we neglect the study of violence within political parties, we thus risk underestimating the threat of election violence and misdiagnosing its causes.     

Wrapping up in something long: Intimidation and violence by right‐wing groups in postwar Japan

Political organizations enjoy considerable legal protection under Japan's postwar constitution, and right‐wing organizations acquired additional political protection during four decades of uninterrupted rule by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. These circumstances facilitated the development or re‐emergence of (1) complex links and overlapping memberships between right‐wing political groups, organized crime groups (yakuza), and professional corporate extortionists (sōkaiya); (2) tolerance and encouragement by state authorities of the use of violence by such groups as forms of private policing; and (3) the formation of bogus right‐wing groups to facilitate extortion, intimidation, and political corruption under cover of legal protections afforded to political organizations. This situation is reassessed in light of new legislation, current changes in the Japanese political situation and a recent influx of foreign workers.     

Electoral violence during party primaries in Kenya

ABSTRACT

Since the restoration of multi-party democracy in Kenya in 1991, elections have witnessed intra-party violence during the primaries for selecting parliamentary and civic seats candidates. This article addresses the question of why electoral violence occurs during party primaries in Kenya and argues that violence is an outcome of the organization of political parties, which has revolved around personalities identified with ethno-regional interests rather than institutionalism. The upshot has been the absence of party institutionalization to establish structures for recruitment of members and organization of primaries. Such organizational weaknesses have denied parties the capacity to match the intense competition for tickets of ethno-regional dominant parties that guarantees nominees to win seats in their strongholds. Intra-party violence has followed. The article submits that intra-party electoral violence in Kenya is a function of the politics of clientelism and ethnicity, both of which have severely hampered the institutionalization of political parties and their capacity to cope with the stiff competition for the tickets of ethno-regional dominant parties.     

Textbook citizens: Education for democracy and political culture in el Salvador

Political education can play a crucial role in the process of democratization precisely because it is moulding the norms and expectations of the ‘ordinary’ citizen. After identifying three politico‐cultural obstacles to democratization, ‐ exclusion, violence and institutional manipulation ‐ the article explains how education for democracy programmes might undermine these obstacles. An assessment of several projects follows, including a new school curriculum and non‐governmental organization programmes among young people and poor communities. Given the enthusiasm shown towards such initiatives, it is paradoxical that levels of formal political participation via the parties are very low. The article explores the credibility gap of the parties, especially notable during elections, and which is leading the parties to respond by adopting more participatory practices at the base. El Salvador is in an advantageous position precisely because of its greatest problem: the lack of a liberal democratic history which is now allowing ordinary citizens to ‘create’ their democracy from scratch and to imagine for themselves a new identity as citizens.     

Globalization,Democratization and the Far Right: Turkey's Nationalist Action Party in Critical Perspective

Ultra-nationalist political parties of the far right have been an endemic feature of European politics in recent years. This article investigates the rise of the Nationalist Action Party (the MHP) in Turkey, a party that has a number of characteristics in common with its European counterparts. The objective of the article is to illustrate a paradox. These types of parties tend to display a considerable degree of adaptability and exhibit a tendency to move in a more moderate direction. They shed some of their violent and extremist leanings in the process as they try to transform themselves from closed communities or networks to mass parties of national standing. This apparent moderation should not disguise, however, the key underlying weakness of such parties, namely their limited commitment to the core values of liberal democracy and political pluralism. Indeed, such parties can continue to play an important negative role in terms of their ability to block the process of democratic deepening in nascent democratic regimes.     

Liberation movements and stalled democratic transitions: reproducing power in Rwanda and South Africa through productive liminality

The lack of convergence towards liberal democracy in some African countries reflects neither a permanent state of political aberration, nor necessarily a prolonged transitional phase through which countries pass once the “right” conditions are met. Examining the cases of two ruling parties, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the African National Congress in South Africa, we develop the concept of productive liminality to explain countries suspended (potentially indefinitely) in a status “betwixt and between” mass violence, authoritarianism, and democracy. On the one hand, their societies are in a liminal status wherein a transition to democracy and socio-economic “revolution” remains forestalled; on the other hand, this liminality is instrumentalized to justify the party’s extraordinary mandate characterized by: (a) an idea of an incomplete project of liberation that the party alone is mandated to fulfil through an authoritarian social contract, and (b) the claim that this unfulfilled revolution is continuously under threat by a coterie of malevolent forces, which the party alone is mandated to identify and appropriately sanction.     

The Challenge of Revolutionary Terrorism to Turkish Democracy 1960-80

After the dramatic failure of the socialist Turkish Labour Party in the election of 1969 many extremist left-wing ideologists seemed to regard terrorism as a legitimate method of achieving their objectives. Cayan, for instance, made it clear early in the 1970s that he considered that there was no alternative and that political power had to be obtained through the methods of armed violence. Although one of the main factors responsible for political violence was the autocratic state tradition and the rigid understanding about prevention of political terrorism and violence, the major political parties also failed to play a constructive role in protecting democracy in Turkey. The left in the period of 1960-80 claimed that parliamentary democracy in Turkey was a device to perpetuate social injustice and backwardness, allowing the upper classes to enrich themselves by maintaining semi-feudal relations in society while the right-wing groups considered that democracy had destroyed the traditional social order and its values, allowing the left the freedom to subvert and undermine the national integrity and character. In this framework, this article assumes that these bloody years in Turkey have many lessons for preventing revolutionary terrorism in a pluralistic environment.     

Public Information and Field Theory

The unsolved question of whether the media affect political agendas is tackled with an innovative research method: a survey among politicians and journalists in Belgium. This article shows that this new approach can complement existing knowledge and yield new insights. Results largely support the contention that media matter for politics; politicians and journalists state that the media are important agenda setters, even compared to more established political actors such as political parties and interest groups. Though not all issues are equally conducive to media agenda-setting, media always seem to matter to some extent. Some politicians more than others evaluate the media's agenda impact to be high. The actual parliamentary action of some MPs is affected more by prior mass media coverage than others. I account for these differences and show that it is mainly their political role (government or opposition), the negativity of their evaluation of media power, and their perception of the impact of public opinion on politics that determine politicians' perceptions and behavior regarding political agenda-setting.     

Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

Many scholars speculate about the political implications of Internet proliferation. The Internet might, for example, open new channels of communication, which should benefit ideologically extreme and electorally small parties. On the other hand, the Internet might push party systems toward normalization, ultimately reinforcing the extant dominance of incumbent parties. We draw on data from 205 small and extreme parties in 35 countries and focus on both party- and system-level outcomes to investigate some of the most pressing research questions from this debate. We find that where party systems were previously concentrated or restrictive, Internet proliferation has no effect on votes for small and extreme parties. By contrast, in more permissive settings, Internet proliferation has had the small—but measurable—effect of driving up votes for these parties. At the level of the party system as a whole, however, we find little evidence that Internet proliferation increases either polarization or fragmentation.     

Constituent Influence on International Trade Policy in the United States, 1987–2006

The debate on whether class-based or industry-based coalitions are politically salient in American trade politics has illuminated domestic sources of international trade policy but remains unresolved. In particular, the literature offers contradictory evidence on the dominance in recent years of class-based or industry-based trade politics. This contradiction is mainly due to selective use of congressional votes. This article contributes to this debate by applying a multilevel item-response-theory model to the entire universe of trade-related votes since 1987. This study finds that class-based coalitions are politically salient in current U.S. trade politics. Furthermore, while this study confirms the significance of party influence on trade voting, it finds little support for the view that political parties have dyadic relationships with particular groups of constituents.     

Terrorism in Colombia: Logic and Sources of a Multidimensional and Ubiquitous Phenomenon

This article examines contemporary uses of terrorism in Colombia. Combining an historical analysis with the most complete database available on political violence, we illustrate how terrorism in Colombia constitutes a specific strategy that can be distinguished from other manifestations of violence. We argue that Colombia's non-state armed groups have turned terrorism into a pivotal element of their repertoires of action. These parties have not only increased their reliance on this strategy and introduced more refined forms such as de-territorialized terrorism, but also have specialized in particular terrorist attacks that suit their general objectives. While paramilitary groups rely mostly on massacres and forced disappearance, guerrillas concentrate on agitational terrorism including kidnappings and indiscriminate bombings.     

Business engagement in violence prevention and peace-building: the case of Kenya

Kenyan business was important in mitigating episodes of election violence in 2007–2008 and 2013. This article finds that this role was motivated by the ethical and moral commitments of key business leaders to further peace in times of violence; and by interests in preventing future economic loss. However, by adopting a lens that situates business roles in violence prevention and peace-building within Kenya’s conflict systems and political economy, the article finds a paradox: this lens confirms the Kenyan ‘success story’ with respect to specific violent episodes; but it also reveals a much more limited role for business in transforming the underlying sources of conflict; especially when these are congruent with key business fundamentals connected to land ownership, property rights, export-oriented production or services, or a ‘limited’ access order. Overall, the article highlights that business should leverage its comparative advantages within broader multi-stakeholder coalitions, especially in terms of its ability to influence political leaders, entry-points for informal dialogue to diffuse crises and capital to support peace-building initiatives.     

The Ancient Fire: Religion and Suicide Terrorism

Does religion lead to greater destructiveness from suicide terrorism? And if so, how does it influence this form of political violence? Recent analyses of terrorism point to the significance of religion, but are divided as to whether religion itself matters, or certain types of religious terrorist groups are actually driving suicide terrorist violence. This article draws on social movement theory and recent work in the study of suicide terrorism to argue that religion influences the severity of suicide terrorist attacks as an ideology groups use to justify their struggle and gain public support. This effect occurs regardless of a group's goals or organizational nature. The theory is tested using a generalized estimating equation to account for multiple attacks by several groups. The study finds that the religious ideology of a group greatly increases the number of deaths from a suicide attack, even if varying group motivations and structural factors are taken into account. The article helps to clarify the effect of religion on contemporary terrorism, contributing to the study of both terrorism and religion and politics.