A typology of communication functions in ballot issue campaigns

The increased importance of ballot issue campaigns creates a need for communication and political science scholars to study the rhetorical strategies employed in such campaigns. This essay presents a typology of four communication functions employed in successful ballot issue campaigns: education, trust development, development of a positive message, and neutralization of the opposition. The typology is applied to an analysis of the 1986 campaign for liquor‐by‐the‐drink in Kansas.     

Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics

This article addresses the conceptual challenges involved in mapping political regimes. The first section offers a critique of regime typologies that adopt a uni-dimensional approach to differentiating between political regimes. The second section shows why a two-dimensional typology is better grounded in liberal democratic theory as well as for analytically grasping the empirical variation between political regimes and regime change. The penultimate section proposes a classificatory scheme on the basis of a clear set of defining attributes of the two constitutive dimensions of liberal democracy – electoralism and constitutionalism. Equipped with this two-dimensional classificatory device the article proceeds in the last section to propose a regime typology with four main types of regime: democratic, constitutional-oligarchic, electoral-autocratic, and authoritarian. This provides a conceptual map in which the categories and subcategories developed by the literature on hybrid regimes can be located and analytically related to each other. The last section further divides the category of democratic regimes into four subtypes: liberal, constitutional, electoral, and limited.     

What do ESDP actors want? An exploratory analysis

Abstract

This paper analyzes the preferences of European defense actors vis-à-vis the European security and defense policy (ESDP) with a view to identifying the main ideational points of convergence and fault lines that structure this policy domain. In an exploratory analysis that relies on an original data-set compiled from systematic interviews conducted with 73 ESDP actors in France, the UK, Germany, and Brussels, we address two research questions. First, what do ESDP actors think about ESDP? Second, can we classify their preferences according to sociological factors that underpin the ESDP domain? To conceptualize the belief system of ESDP actors, we propose a typology that distinguishes (1) the social context in which ESDP actors are embedded and (2) the specific ESDP aspects about which preferences are shaped. Our results suggest that both national and occupational variables play an important role in explaining the preferences of ESDP actors.     

Conceptualizing regional powers’ geoeconomic strategies: neo-imperialism,neo-mercantilism,hegemony, and liberal institutionalism

This article argues that geoeconomics, defined as the geostrategic use of economic power, has become an increasingly important feature of regional powers’ strategic behavior. Yet, we still lack analytical tools to identify and compare regional powers’ geoeconomic strategies. The article marks a first attempt to develop a typology for differentiating potential geoeconomic strategies that regional powers may pursue in dealing with their corresponding regions. It merges the regional power focus with a geoeconomic perspective, producing the following four ideal-typical strategies: neo-imperialism, neo-mercantilism, hegemony, and liberal institutionalism. This new typology serves as a conceptual device for creating analytical differentiation between regional powers and the range of possible geoeconomic strategies pursued by them. The paper discusses ways in which the new typology may contribute to our understanding of regional powers’ foreign policy conduct and to the emerging geoeconomic research agenda. While the purpose of the article is not to test any specific hypothesis or to empirically analyze cases, brief case study vignettes will be presented for illustrative purposes, looking particularly at Brazil, the EU, Germany, and Russia.     

Right‐wing terrorism in a comparative perspective: The case of split delegitimization

The purpose of this article is to identify the distinctive features of right‐wing terrorism and to develop an analytical typology of particularistic terrorist organizations. The article is based on the conceptual framework of the process of delegitimization developed earlier by this author. It argues that right‐wing radicals usually reach terrorism through a trajectory of split delegitimization, which implies a primary conflict with an ‘inferior’ community and a secondary conflict with the government. Six sub‐types of right‐wing terrorism are identified: revolutionary terrorism, reactive terrorism, vigilante terrorism, racist terrorism, millenarian terrorism and youth counterculture terrorism.     

Media and the institutional perspective: U.S. and Canadian coverage of terrorism

Abstract

This paper reports data from a content analysis of television news coverage of terrorism. A proposed typology of terrorism and media coverage is tested with stories from network news in the United States and Canada. The typology posits that media coverage of terrorism depends on the act's relation to institutional power bases. The two types of terrorism outlined either seek out or avoid media coverage, depending on whether they challenge or reinforce institutional power. Because of media's interrelationship with the economic and political institutions, coverage of terrorism will take on the flavor of these institutions’ perspective. The data show that although media cover terrorist acts that are linked to U.S. institutional interests, the tone of such coverage casts uncritical perspective. The implications for the general message system of news, with particular regard to the media's contribution to international understanding, are explored.     

Media consumption: Using social attitudes to segment society – a typology of a South African sample

Abstract

In this, the first of a two-article series, an attitudinal typology was developed for use in a subsequent study of media consumption and psychographic variables. The current study used multivariate statistics to identify types of individuals who are similar to one another, across multiple measures of attitudes towards social issues. Agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of data from 11 533 South Africans, aged 16 years and older, revealed six distinct types based on the component ‘attitudinal variables’. The types were labelled Contemporaries, Conventionals, Unconcerneds, Self-involveds, Old-schoolers and Confidents. Preliminary analysis of available demographic variables revealed significant differences for age, population group, gender, work status, home language, SAARF Lifestages and SAARF Universal Living Standard Measure (SU-LSM®) for the six types. The typology illustrates the possibility of empirical identification of distinct attitudinal types of a South African sample. Methodological limitations and recommendations for further research are discussed.     

Universal soldiers or parochial actors: Understanding jihadists as products of their environments

ABSTRACT

Why did the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra (JN)—two groups that shared similar ideological preferences and were both initially part of the Al Qaeda network—take different paths in the Syrian conflict? Part of the answer lies in the fact that JN is primarily a Syrian organization, whereas Iraqis lead ISIS. A jihadist group’s relationship to its country of origin and domicile (the two are not always the same) helps to explain that organization’s ideological preferences and alliance behavior. Yet no method of categorization based on jihadist-state relations exists. I fill this gap by theorizing an explanatory typology based on a jihadist group’s relationship with its country of origin and/or domicile. This typology consists of two tiers. The first classifies jihadist organizations based on whether they are nationally homogeneous or heterogeneous, and whether they are based in their country of origin, exile, or multiple locations. The second tier categorizes groups based on the nature of their engagement—collaborative, belligerent, or neutral—with a state. This new typology enables the generation of multiple hypotheses and has practical implications given that most U.S. counterterrorism efforts require cooperation from partner nations.     

Beyond the Arab revolts: conceptualizing civil society in the Middle East and North Africa

How do we make sense of the potential role of civil society in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in bringing the region into a new era of reform and political participation? This article critically examines how the civil society landscape in the region has been conceptualized in the past and proposes a new typology of MENA civil society actors. I employ this typology in two cases – the revolutionary uprising in Egypt in 2011 and “evolutionary” long-term efforts to broaden the space for political participation in Lebanon. Comparing these two very different cases illustrates the utility of a typology of civil society actors (CSAs) that (a) emphasizes temporary coalitions between diverse actors; (b) highlights the both contentious and collaborative struggles through which political change actually happens; and (c) recognizes that different types of CSAs face different constraints and opportunities. I argue that employing such a typology can help structure comparison between disparate cases of civil society efforts for democratization and bring to the forefront issues of authenticity and legitimacy – challenges emanating not only from an oppressive state, but from within civil society itself.     

Framing Peace Policies: The Competition for Resonant Themes

Political organizations make use of culturally resonant symbols to bring their message to the public. In response to a political organization's use of a culturally resonant symbol, competing political organizations attack the connection between that organization's message and the symbol. Rochon and Wolfsfeld propose a process for the movement of policy justification symbols from interest groups and social movements to governments. This article examines this process in the context of the struggle among the Israeli nationalist movement, the Israeli peace movement, and the Israeli government, identifying a typology of tactical frames applicable to research beyond the Israeli context: denial, incorporation, and end run. Press releases by these political competitors show a specialization of tactical frames by social organization. Nationalists prefer to deny the validity of competing resonant symbols. Peace activists prefer to invent or search for new symbols, in an end run. Governments tend to absorb and redirect symbols initially used by the competing movements to justify government actions. An analysis of the political opportunity structures and organizational conditions that determine a political organization's tactics for attacking resonant frames is conducted.     

Who Are the Palestinian Suicide Bombers?

The current study uses the content analysis method while focusing on identification of repeated patterns of behavior by suicide terrorists and the society within which they grow and develop. The present study presents a typology—a classification into categories, each represented by a prototype, of suicide terrorists in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also identifies prerequisite factors (as without these factors, there is little opportunity for a particular prototype to emerge) and supporting factors (which may assist in the emergence of the prototype, but are not essential) for each of the suicide terrorist prototypes. The suggested typology is based on a convenient sample: details which have been published in the literature describing suicide terrorists. The typology suggests four categories of suicide bombers: religious fanatic, exploited, avenger, and nationalist fanatic. This typology is based on the main motive of the perpetrator, and different trajectories which each suicide bomber undergoes from recruitment to detonating the bomb. The major difference among the four categories lies in the prerequisite factors and their relative importance in comparison to the supporting factors.     

A typology of international political communication: Factual statements,propaganda, and noise

Abstract

Communication and information are important instruments of foreign policy‐making in the latter portion of the twentieth century, particularly among the superpowers. This paper seeks to present researchers and policy‐makers with a workable definition of international political communication. It also provides a typology of three categories of international political communication: factual statements, propaganda, and noise.     

Exploring the impact of mass cultural changes on the patterns of democratic reform

In this article, a typology of reforms most suitable for Western democracies is built using two dimensions. These are the aggregative–integrative dimension and the indirect–direct dimension. Using a data set of reforms, consisting of 21 democracies, reforms in the last two decades are categorized as either pendulum, consensus, voter or participatory reforms. In the second part of this article, it is explored whether patterns of reforms follow mass-level cultural changes in four egalitarian societies. Following grid-group cultural typologies some of the patterns of democratic change anticipated are: that pendulum reforms are accompanied by changes towards a more atomistic culture, consensus reforms are associated with hierarchical societies, voter reforms are guided by accelerated individualism, and finally, that participatory reforms match increasingly egalitarian societies. This article concludes that these expectations have not been met. Elites are trying to restore the slump of the hierarchical culture and with it the consensus democratic model despite the resulting mismatch with mass cultures.     

Journalism education: bridging media and cultural studies

ABSTRACT

Journalism is more than an ensemble of newsgathering and writing techniques. It is, firstly, a way of viewing and writing about the social world for the public benefit. Similarly, journalism is a means of fomenting conversations in the public domain about events and issues of immediate public interest. While much of journalism training concerns the techniques of text production, too little attention is given to educating students in the ontology or ‘mindset’ within which those techniques and conventions work. Almost no attention is given to the epistemology or ‘research’ approaches by which journalists monitor social phenomena.

Short of calling for a more thorough grounding (as a framework) in critical thinking, we suggest that a more constructivist approach be taken to journalism training. This approach need not be prejudiced towards the more technical and functionalist approaches evident in so many textbooks on the subject. Constructive learning is described by some scholars as ‘active, cumulative, goal-directed, diagnostic and reflective behaviour’ (Breen 1996: 4). All these behaviours are found in journalism practice, and should frame both words in journalism training. This requires a more interpretive approach that teaches the practice of journalism as many of the same processes commonly understood as learning.     

Promoting NGO–academic partnerships for population,health, and environment learning

Population, health, and environment (PHE) projects integrate family planning, community health, conservation, and livelihoods activities into a single effort. Despite growing calls for integrated services, relatively little academic research on PHE has been published, which has hampered the development of the approach. This article argues that additional partnerships between academics and NGOs are necessary to further advance learning around PHE. However, such partnerships need not be approached in the same way. The article discusses barriers that currently impede the development of stronger partnerships and adapts (Roper, L. 2002. “Achieving Successful Academic-Practitioner Research Collaborations.” Development in Practice 12 (3–4): 338–345) typology of NGO–academic partnership models to describe how different relationship types are currently leveraged within the PHE community.     

Death is in the eye of the beholder: a study of casualty count framing in the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict

The 2014 Israel–Gaza war was the third of a string of conflicts to erupt between the State of Israel and Hamas in neighbouring Gaza and quickly became the deadliest for both sides. Even with the extensive media attention this crisis received, calls for more objective reporting were widespread, as locating sources that were not clearly influenced or reflective of political biases seemed near impossible. This paper seeks to explore the role “cultural proximity” plays in informing casualty count reporting in times of conflict. Qualitative content analysis is conducted on news coverage of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict in the American daily newspaper, The New York Times, and the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, to assess whether significant differences exist in the way casualty figures are addressed across varying degrees of political and cultural involvement. This research reveals that variations in casualty count reporting do indeed exist across cultural and national contexts, and deems this subject worthy of further research.     

Racial appropriation in white expatriate South African discourses: Reading race on social club websites

Abstract

In South Africa the African moral philosophy ubuntuism is periodically raised as a framework for African normative media theory. At this stage, the ubuntu discourse cannot be described as a focused effort to develop a comprehensive theory on the basis of which media performance could be measured from ‘an African perspective’. It should rather be seen as an intellectual quest to rediscover and re-establish idealised values of traditional African culture(s) and traditional African communities. Yet, given South Africa's history of apartheid in which Christian nationalism was misused as a moral philosophy to mobilise a patriotic media in the service of volk (nationhood) and vaderland (fatherland), it is not too early to ask critical questions about ubuntuism as a possible framework for normative media theory. Such questioning is the purpose of this article. Against the background of postmodern and postcolonial perspectives on normative theory, questions related to the following are raised: the expediency of ubuntuism in the context of changed African cultural values, the distinctiveness of ubuntuism as an African moral philosophy, the vulnerability of moral philosophy to political misuse, ubuntuism in the context of the future of normative theory in a globalised world and changed media environment, and the implications of ubuntuism for journalism practice. It is concluded that ubuntuism may pose a threat to freedom of expression. Given the nature of contemporary South African society and its media system, the postmodern emphasis on diversity and pluralism as the cornerstone of future normative theory, is supported.     

A Social Movement Theory Typology of Militant Organisations: Contextualising Terrorism

Typologies are ubiquitous in terrorism studies, illustrating their continued appeal as a tool to further our understanding of this form of political violence. Despite this, to date, the promise of an empirically derived typology has largely been neglected. In addressing this gap, this article sets out a typology developed from Social Movement Theory. Using a novel statistical technique to derive a three-dimensional framework for categorising militant groups, the typology incorporates both organisational characteristics and the wider political context. The result is a typology defined by three conceptual constructs: political capacity, war-making capacity, and network capacity. Alongside these organisational features, imposing measures of the wider political opportunity structure reveals eight types of militant organisation. To explore the utility of the framework, a preliminary analysis interprets the typology in light of the presence of wider conflict. That a robust relationship is found between the various types and whether groups were operating in peacetime, civil war, or low-intensity conflict, goes some way to demonstrating its utility as an analytical tool. Conclusions draw attention to the importance of contextualising militant groups in their socio-political setting, and the benefits of combining theory alongside empirical analysis to develop robust characterisations of violent organisations.     

Civil Society and the Responsibility to Protect

While a vast and growing literature on various aspects of responsibility to protect (R2P) exists, little attention has yet been given to the role played by civil society in the development and implementation of this doctrine. This paper aims to fill this gap. After providing a typology of civil society organisations—categorising this amorphous sphere into advocacy, operational and indigenous groups—this paper examines the contribution of civil society to the discussion surrounding the development of R2P. In particular, civil society has debated three main issues: the pros and cons of building an international coalition to promote R2P, the possibility that great powers could hijack the doctrine and the opportunity of using force during R2P implementation. As a whole, this paper argues that not only advocacy, operational and indigenous civil society organisations hold different ideas about R2P and have different strategies for its implementation but, more importantly, their approaches, strategies and actions may end up undercutting one another. This argument is explored in the case of Darfur—the first crisis many analysts have described as an R2P situation.     

How the court made a federation of the EU

We analyze the European institutional integration that took place in the 1950s and 1960s as a two-stage process. Firstly, an explicitly political project aims at establishing a European political community. The project is abandoned in the mid-1950s and political integration stops. At that time, the institutions of the Union take the form of a confederation. In a second stage, because of the failure of the European political community, a legal process of integration driven by the European Court of Justice takes place. This second stage of unification is more centralizing and in effect leads to a federalization of the European institutional structure. The transformation of the political structure of the European Union thus appears to result from the actions and decisions of a legal entity, the European Court of Justice.