A view from the policy community: a new strategic narrative for Europe?

ABSTRACT

Reflecting on the results presented in articles in this special issue, European leaders should take greater account of external perceptions in crafting the European Union's strategic narrative and guiding its actions. Failure to do so has impaired external policies like the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership. Leaders emerging from the Arab uprisings perceived the EU as complicit with their countries’ former anciens régimes and Russian leaders see EU support for democracy and the market economy in former Soviet states as duplicitous and instrusive. Awareness of such perceptions should be filtered into EU decision-making, without validating views that European officials and diplomats consider misleading.     

Voter perceptions of parties’ left–right positions: The role of party strategies

Left–right semantics help voters simplify the complex political reality as they reduce party views on a variety of issues to a single dimension. Less studied, however, is the question of how voters arrive at parties’ left–right positions and how parties can influence voter perceptions. In this article, I demonstrate that the party can shape the voter’s understanding of the content of its left–right ideology by using three strategies: avoidance, ambivalence, or ambiguity. Specifically, the party may avoid or de-emphasize, embrace a conflicting position, or becloud its position on the controversial issue; by so doing, it induces voters to place less weight on this issue when perceiving the party’s left–right position. The empirical analysis connects voter and party data from 21 European democracies in the period 1996–2014 and finds empirical support for the effectiveness of these strategies. In particular, the study finds robust empirical evidence that strategic avoidance, ambivalence, and ambiguity strongly moderate the association between the party’s perceived ideological brand and its underlying issue content.     

From discourse to policy: US policy communities’ perceptions of and approaches to climate change and security

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, a diverse set of policy communities, including those with defence, development and environmental mandates, frame climate change as a security threat. Most often this discursive formation labels climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’. This framing, however, is vague, linear and leaves many questions unanswered regarding how institutions can develop and implement policy that addresses the joint challenges of climate change, conflict and security. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, and grounding data collection in US policy communities, this article examines how policy actors and institutions integrate climate-security discourses into policy processes. The objective of this research is to provide direct insight into how the discourses and technical understandings of climate-security transition into policy priorities and implementation realities. This research identified three common approaches to climate-security: (1) A challenge of adaptation and resilience; (2) A potent political argument; and (3) An issue of limited importance and feasibility. These approaches, however, are inconsistent across sectors and within organisations, suggesting a lack of cohesion and considerable challenges in identifying and responding to climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’.     

COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY,MINORITY THREAT,AND POLICE BRUTALITY: AN EXAMINATION OF CIVIL RIGHTS CRIMINAL COMPLAINTS*

A growing body of evidence shows that minorities are disproportionately the targets of police brutality, but important theoretical questions about the causes of that inequity remain unanswered. One promising line of research involves structural‐level analyses of the incidence of police brutality complaints; however, existing studies do not incorporate variables from alternative theoretical explanations. Drawing on the community accountability hypothesis and the threat hypothesis, we tested the predictions of two prominent structural‐level explanations of police brutality in a study of civil rights criminal complaints. The study included cities of 150,000+ population (n = 114). The findings reveal that two community accountability variables—ratio percent Hispanic citizens to percent Hispanic police officers and the presence of citizen review—were related positively to police brutality complaints, partially supporting that perspective. Two threat hypothesis measures of threatening people—percent black and percent Hispanic (in the Southwest)—were related positively to complaints, as predicted. The relative degree of support for the two hypotheses is assessed.     

中国面临的安全威胁及战略选择新思考

在冷战结束以后,世界上的安全威胁发生了很大变化。不仅冲突和战争的类型发生变化,而且其动因也有了变化。中国面临的主要安全威胁已经不再是某一现实或潜在的国家,套用冷战思维就会错判。更重要的是,在看待和应对威胁上应当具有符合新的时代条件的思考。     

匿名威胁爆炸案的新特点及其现场处置对策

近些年北京发生匿名威胁爆炸案件显现猛升势头,并出现一些新的特点.对这类案件的现场处置应遵循"信、严、快、判、细、敢"六字方针.     

The classification of electoral systems: Bringing legislators back in

It is widely assumed that electoral institutions shape politicians' incentive for personal vote-seeking, with important behavioral and policy consequences. Yet, there is a surprising lack of consensus on how to compare real-world electoral institutions. Using new data this paper examines how legislators' own perception of their electoral incentives in fifteen democracies correspond to some of the most seminal classification schemes in political science. Our survey of 2326 legislators – the empirically broadest study of personal vote orientation so far conducted – demonstrates that legislators do not always understand electoral incentives in the same way scholarly rankings do, highlighting the need for scholars of political institutions to justify their choice of classification scheme. If not, an entire body of literature may be misguided.     

Effects of Economic and Symbolic Threat Appeals in Right-Wing Populist Advertising on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes: The Impact of Textual and Visual Appeals

Right-wing populist parties portray immigrants as economic or symbolic threats in their political advertisements by constructing a moral divide between the “good” ordinary people and “bad” immigrants. Yet, it remains unclear how these different threat appeals contribute to the formation of anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens and what role visual elements play in producing these effects. A survey-experiment with a quota sample of 471 participants reveals that, overall, symbolic threat appeals exert stronger effects on anti-immigrant attitudes than economic ones. When presented via text alone, only symbolic—not economic—threat appeals increased anti-immigrant attitudes via the activation of heuristic processing such as the reliance on negative stereotypes or feelings of anxiety, in particular among lower-educated citizens. When visuals were present, both types of threat appeals enhanced anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens across all education levels based on heuristic processing. Additionally, high image-text congruency induced cognitive argument approval resulting in higher anti-immigrant attitudes.     

Vietnam: riding the Chinese tide

Vietnam's perception of China is nuanced and complex, a mixture of challenge and opportunity. Given its geographic proximity and overwhelming power, China represents a permanent strategic challenge Vietnam cannot escape. However, the two countries are partners in the defence of socialist ideals and communist rule. These circumstances have clearly shaped Vietnam's China policy, which is a mixture of cooperation and struggle. Vietnam's strategy is not about confronting China directly but finding a way to live with and benefit from its power.