Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity,Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.     

It Can't Happen Here,1 or Has It? Sinclair Lewis's Fascist America

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, anticipated many aspects of Donald J. Trump's 2016 campaign and election in his 1935 satirical dystopia, It Can't Happen Here. It was his most popular novel to date and is still satisfying, thought-provoking political theater. Lewis was influenced by growing totalitarianism in Europe, reported on by his second wife, foreign correspondent, Dorothy Thompson. Noting the power of Father Coughlin and Huey Long, among others, to mobilize a public still suffering from the Great Depression, Lewis feared a fascist takeover of the American government by democratic means. Lewis's fictional nightmare features a loutish, ignorant demagogue, who is manipulated by a sinister ghostwriter adviser. With support from a resentful League of Forgotten Men, the demagogue is elected President and quickly establishes a military, racist, and anti-Semitic dictatorship. It Can't Happen Here dramatizes the dire consequences of this takeover, which is not taken seriously at first by Lewis's newspaper editor protagonist, but then is increasingly resisted. Lewis is a social satirist in the Mark Twain tradition, and his novel is worth reading today for its suggestive parallels with current history and its good-hearted humor.     

中国行政体制改革的进展及其重点

当前中国的行政体制改革,在推进行政审批制度改革、商事制度改革、政务公开、政府重大决策科学化民主化和法治化、政府工作的第三方评估和社会评价、公正有效地提供公共产品和公共服务、地方政府的权力和责任清单制度改革、公车制度改革、公务员职务与职级并行制度改革、贯彻中央八项规定深入反腐倡廉等十个方面,取得了显著进展。推及未来“,十三五”期间的中国行政体制改革将重点围绕推动简政放权、放管结合、优化服务改革向纵深发展,大力推行“互联网+政务服务”、推进政府信息化建设,推进大部制改革、优化行政层级和行政区划设置,推进事业单位制度改革,加快和加大力度建设“四个政府”,推进政府廉洁履职和反腐败斗争,坚决处理为官不为、克服庸政懒政怠政,推进国家治理体系现代化,提升国家治理能力,加快各项行政制度的更加成熟定型等十个任务展开。     

Law enforcement access to personal data originally collected by private parties: Missing data subjects' safeguards in directive 2016/680?

Access by law enforcement authorities to personal data initially collected by private parties for commercial or operational purposes is very common, as shown by the transparency reports of new technology companies on law enforcement requests. From a data protection perspective, the scenario of law enforcement access is not necessarily well taken into account. The adoption of the new data protection framework offers the opportunity to assess whether the new ‘police’ Directive, which regulates the processing of personal data for law enforcement purposes, offers sufficient safeguards to individuals. To make this assessment, provisions contained in Directive 2016/680 are tested against the standards established by the ECJ in Digital Rights Ireland and Tele2 Sverige on the retention of data and their further access and use by police authorities. The analysis reveals that Directive 2016/680 does not contain the safeguards identified in the case law. The paper further assesses the role and efficiency of the principle of purpose limitation as a safeguard against repurposing in a law enforcement context. Last, solutions to overcome the shortcomings of Directive 2016/680 are examined in conclusion.     

Opinion 1/15 of the Grand Chamber dated 26 July 2017 about the agreement on Passenger Name Record data between the EU and Canada

On 26 July 2017, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice rendered its seminal Opinion 1/15 about the agreement on Passenger Name Record data between the EU and Canada. The Grand Chamber considered that the decision of the Council about the conclusion, on behalf of the Union, of the agreement between the EU and Canada about the transfer and processing of PNR data must be based jointly on Article 16(2) about the protection of personal data and Article 87(2)(a) about police co-operation among member states in criminal matters, but not on Article 82(1)(d) about judicial co-operation in criminal matters in the EU of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. The Grand Chamber also considered that the agreement is incompatible with Article 7 on the right to respect for private life, Article 8 on the right to the protection of personal data, Article 21 on non-discrimination and Article 52(1) on the principle of proportionality of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU since it does not preclude the transfer, use and retention of sensitive data. In addition to the requirement to exclude such data, the Grand Chamber listed seven requirements that the agreement must include, specify, limit or guarantee to be compatible with the Charter.The opinion of the Grand Chamber has far-reaching implications for the agreement on PNR data between the EU and Canada. It has also far-reaching implications for international agreements on PNR data between the EU and other third states. Last, it has far-reaching implications for Directive 681 of 27 April 2016 on PNR data.     

Piercing the Incumbency Syndrome: Ghana’s Democratic Transition in 2017

Ghana’s political landscape changed dramatically in 2017, with the election of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo as president. Ghana’s political transition in 2017 raises new insights into presidential recruitment and politics in Ghana. The purpose of this article is to examine the 2016 elections within the spectrum of the politics of Ghana’s presidential recruitment. This article discusses the hurdles that were surmounted by the opposition New Patriotic Party party, in unseating the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. The author coins the term ‘the John Syndrome’ to highlight the mythology held by some commentators that Akufo Addo could not be elected president, because his name is not ‘John’. Discussions about intra-party squabbles that resulted in the loss of NDC’s incumbency are provided. The article concludes that Akufo Addo’s presidency symbolises a de-mythologisation of ‘the John Syndrome’. The perception that Akufo Addo saved the nation in 2012 was his major weapon in piercing John Mahama’s incumbency. The demise of the NDC is likely to create an intra-party shift in favour of the party’s founder.     

The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently employ the ideal candidate frame in their images, which also garnered the highest number of user likes and comments. Results also reveal that among Instagram image attributes, candidates frequently and successfully used text within their images, but filters were inconsistently applied across the candidates.     

The Myths of Data-Driven Campaigning

Campaigns’ ability to use data and analytics to make informed decisions about the strategies and tactics they deploy is unparalleled, and also understudied. While much has been written about the possibilities of data driven campaigning, the on-the-ground realities are often much less precise and much less novel than journalistic coverage implies. This piece investigates the gap between the rhetoric of data driven campaigning and actual campaign practices, especially as it relates to how the 2016 Trump campaign compares to the 2016 Clinton campaign, other prior presidential campaigns, and down-ballot races in recent years. It focuses on the use of analytics in two channels in particular, social media and email, as those offer many opportunities for targeting and message testing. Ultimately, I argue that despite the great amount of journalistic attention paid to the Trump campaign’s novel use of data and analytics, their email campaign was significantly underpowered, while their use of Facebook analytics was comparable in quality and greater in quantity than other leaders in the field.