E-Government

Abstract

THE POLITICS OF MARKETING THE LABOUR PARTY Wring, Dominic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, 2005, 262 pages. Reviewed by Dr. Paul Baines     

BOOK REVIEWS

Abstract

THE CLINTON WARS. Sidney Blumenthal. London: Viking Press, 2003, 822 pages. £25.00. Reviewed by Jerry Palmer.

THE ILLUSION OFPUBLIC OPINION: FACT AND ARTIFACT IN AMERICAN PUBLIC OPINION POLLS. George F. Bishop. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004, 248 pages. Reviewed by Lawrence Hamer.     

On protectionism

Whose Congress?

John C. Berg, UNEQUAL STRUGGLE: CLASS, GENDER, RACE AND POWER IN THE U.S. CONGRESS (Boulder, CO: Westview Press (Harper Collins), 1994).

Karl Mannheim's Liberalism

David Kettler and Volker Meja, KARL MANNHEIM AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERALISM: THE SECRET OF THESE NEW TIMES (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995).

Red Not Dead

Constance Coiner, BETTER RED: THE WRITING AND RESISTANCE OF TILLIE OLSEN AND MERIDEL LE SUEUR, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

For further reading

Mendel LeSueur. Corn Village. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Stanton and Lee, 1970.

The Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: West End Press, 1978.

Tillie Olsen. Tell Me a Riddle. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence, 1989.

Silences. New York: Dell, 1978.

My Mother The Teacher

Ruth Jacknow Markowitz, MY DAUGHTER, THE TEACHER: JEWISH TEACHERS IN THE NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993).

A Personal Response     

BOOK REVIEW

Abstract

THE SPIN DOCTOR'S DIARY. Lance Price. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2005, 393 pages. Reviewed by Dr. Dominic Wring.     

Exchange on Eurasianism

Sol Dollinger and Genora Johnson Dollinger. NOT AUTOMATIC: WOMEN AND THE LEFT IN THE FORGING OF THE AUTO WORKERS UNION. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.     

Political Marketing

Abstract

This paper examines the emerging practices and literature of what has been termed ‘political marketing.’ It attempts, through an investigation of underlying theoretical frameworks, to shed light on the impact and implications of this ‘new’ phenomenon. Specifically, it examines whether the above mentioned practices can rightfully be seen as transforming political parties into professional market-oriented organizations, as has been claimed in some recent academic studies. It does so by introducing and examining an increasingly strong-positioned marketing paradigm, services/relationship marketing. This paradigm's focus on the organizational perspective of marketing is discussed as is its applicability to analysis of politics and democracy. Furthermore the paper links this discussion to the wider concern over the ‘crisis in democracy’ resulting from a decline in civic engagement, decreasing voter turnouts and declining party-membership.     

Institutes,research groups,study centers in German‐speaking countries

Raul Hilberg, THE POLITICS OF MEMORY; THE JOURNEY OF A HOLOCAUST HISTORIAN (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1966).

History from below: the narrative of an ex‐slave

Miguel Barnet, BIOGRAPHY OF A RUNAWAY SLAVE, translated by W. Nick Hill (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1994).     

Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress

Seeking and speaking the truth

>William Blum, ROGUE STATE: A GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S ONLY SUPERPOWER (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000).

Johanna Brenner, WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF CLASS (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).

Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT: FROM CHARITY TO CONFRONTATION (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

AND THEN, Vol. 10 (2001). Copies @ $5 may be ordered from Robert Roth, 210 West 10^th Street (# 3D), New York, NY 10014.     

Reviews

Jean‐Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié. BEN LADEN: LA VÉRITÉ INTERDITE (Paris: Denoël, 2001).

Leo Panitch, RENEWING SOCIALISM: DEMOCRACY, STRATEGY, AND IMAGINATION (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001).

The global question in an Urban World*

David Harvey, SPACES OF HOPE (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

Liberatory Urbanism vs. Control of Public Space

Jeff Ferrell, TEARING DOWN THE STREETS: ADVENTURES IN URBAN ANARCHY (New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 2001).

Jamie Peck, WORKFARE STATES (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).

Patrick Colm Hogan, THE CULTURE OF CONFORMISM: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CONSENT (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001).

Regin Schmidt, RED SCARE: FBI AND THE ORIGINS OF ANTICOMMUNISM IN THE UNITED STATES (University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000).

DOKUMENTE ZUR GESCHICHTE DER KOMMUNISTISCHEN BEWEGUNG IN DEUTSCHLAND [Documents on the History of the Communist Movement in Germany]. Reihe 1945/1946, 6 vols. Edited by Günter Benser and Hans‐Joachim Krusch, K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich 1993–1997.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe Januar bis Dezember 1855. Hans‐Jürgen Bochinski, Martin Hundt et al. (eds.), GESAMTAUSGABE (MEGA) Sec. I, Vol. 14 (Berlin: Akademie‐Verlag, 2001).

Frank Rosengarten, THE WRITINGS OF THE YOUNG MARCEL PROUST (1885–1900): AN IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

Three short works on Cuba

1. Lilah Rosenblum, A TIME FOR CHANGE: RETHINKING US‐CUBA POLICY (Washington Office on Latin America [WOLA], Washington, D.C. 2002). 75pp

2. WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN CUBA. Report of the United States Delegation to the 2002 Exchange Between U.S. and Cuban Labor and Employment Lawyers, Neutrals, and Trade Unionists. Sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee [c/o Eisner & Hubbard, P.C., 113 University Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003] and the U.S. Health Care Trade Union Committee. 32pp.

3. Debra Evanson, WORKERS IN CUBA: UNIONS AND LABOR RELATIONS (The NLG/Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice, Detroit, 2002). 105pp.     

Resources: Left Listservs and Websites

Gerald Meyer, VITO MARCANTONIO: RADICAL POLITICIAN 1902–1954 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989)

Charney, George, A Long Journey (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968).

Gallagher, Dorothy. All the Right Enemies: The Life and Murder of Carlo Tresca (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988).

Lader, Lawrence. Power on the Left: American Radical Movements Since 1946 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979).

Lagumina, Salvatore J. “Case Studies in Ethnicity and Italo‐American Politicians.” The Italian Experience in the United States, eds. Silvano H. Tomasi and Madeline H. Engel. (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1970), pp. 143–61.

Luthin, Reinhard H. American Demagogues: Twentieth Century (New York: Peter Smith, 1954).

Mills, C. Wright; Senior, Clarence; and Goldsen, Rose Kohn. The Puerto Rican Journey: Newest Migrants (New York: Harper &; Brothers, 1950).

Naison, Mark. Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

Riesman, David. Faces in the Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951).

Rolle, Andrew. The Italian Americans: Troubled Roots. (New York: The Free Press, 1980).

Sasuly, Richard. “Vito Marcantonio: The People's Politician,” in American Radicals: Some Problems and Personalities, ed. Harvey Goldberg (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957), pp. 115–59.

Schaffer, Alan. Vito Marcantonio, Radical in Congress (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1966).

Starobin, Joseph. American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

Walzer, Kenneth. “The Party and the Polling Place: American Communism and an American Labor Party.” Radical History Review; 23 (Spring 1980), pp. 104–35.

Herbert G. Gutman, POWER AND CULTURE: ESSAYS ON THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS, Ira Berlin, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987)

Peter H. Rossi, DOWN AND OUT IN AMERICA: THE ORIGINS OF HOMELESSNESS (Chicago and London: University Of Chicago Press, 1989). Charles Hoch and Robert A. Slayton, NEW HOMELESS AND OLD: COMMUNITY AND THE SKID ROW HOTEL (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).

Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., Jeffrey Paul, John Ahrens eds. (Basil Blackwell, 1989), CAPITALISM and Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene eds. ALTERNATIVES TO CAPITALISM‐STUDIES IN MARXISM AND SOCIAL THEORY (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Michael Walzer, INTERPRETATION AND SOCIAL CRITICISM (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)

Andrew Gamble, THE FREE ECONOMY AND THE STRONG STATE: THE POLITICS OF THATCHERISM (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988)     

Political Marketing Matters

ABSTRACT

The effects of political marketing are difficult to measure. This article contends that “multi-dimensional case analysis”-i.e., the comparison of similar elections across demographic levels and across time-can reliably assess the impact of political marketing on campaign outcomes. A multi-dimensional examination of Congressman Harold Ford Jr.'s sophomore surge demonstrates the potential impact of candidate positioning. Specifically, the congressman's shift to the center of his Memphis, Tennessee, constituency significantly enhanced his electoral performance. This substantive finding carries a methodological lesson: the evaluation of marketing effects is greatly improved through the use of a tightly structured research design that employs, not large-scale statistical analysis or controlled field experimentation, but in-depth, case-by-case investigation.     

Reviews

THE ROOTS OF U.S. POLICY TOWARD LA TIN AMERICA

G. Pope Atkins, Latin America in the International Political System, second edition. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989. Pp. 421.)

Lars Schoultz: National Security and United States Policy toward Latin America. (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. 377.)

Kevin J. Middlebrook and Carlos Rico, eds.: The United States and Latin America in the 1980s (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986. Pp. 648. Second printing 1988.)

GENEROSITY AND SELF‐INTEREST

Teresa Odendahl: Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self‐interest among the Philanthropic Elite. (New York: Basic Books, 1990. Pp. 298.)

HOBBES AMONG THE PATRIARCHS

Arnold A. Rogow: Thomas Hobbes: Radical in the Service of Reaction. (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1986. Pp. 287.)

STRACHEY AND MACLEAN: BRITISH ALTERNA TIVES

Michael Newman: John Strachey. (Manchester: Manchester Press, 1989. Pp. 201.)

B. J. Ripley and J. McHugh: John Maclean. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. Pp. 201.)     

Arab Modernities: Islamism,Nationalism, and Liberalism in the Post-Colonial Arab World

Mumia Abu‐Jamal, ALL THINGS CENSORED. Edited with introduction by Noelle Hanrahan; foreword by Alice Walker (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000).

Eric Parens and Adrienne Asch, eds., PRENATAL TESTING AND DISABILITY RIGHTS (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000).

August H. Nimtz, Jr. MARX AND ENGELS: THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEMOCRATIC BREAKTHROUGH (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000).

Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds. with Greg Albo and David Coates, WORKING CLASSES: GLOBAL REALITIES. SOCIALIST REGISTER 2001 (London, New York, and Halifax: The Merlin Press, Monthly Review Press, and Fernwood Press, 2000 and 2001).

James Blaut, EIGHT EUROCENTRIC HISTORIANS (New York: Guilford Press, 2000).

Susanne Jonas, OF CENTAURS AND DOVES: GUATEMALA'S PEACE PROCESS (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000).

Bertell Oilman, HOW TO TAKE AN EXAM...AND REMAKE THE WORLD (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2001).     

Political Marketing

ABSTRACT

Political marketing is a relatively new approach to analysing political activity that draws upon management marketing assumptions to describe political behaviour. These assumptions are explicitly grounded in neoclassical economic assertions about behaviour. In political science these assumptions are utilised by orthodox rational choice theory. Thus, political marketing can be located within this perspective. Rational choice provides a series of analytic models through which ontological implications can be derived, and predictions made. Yet, the political marketing approach seeks to build upon orthodox rational choice accounts, by introducing a normative element to this perspective, prescribing the internalisation of these assumptions in order to achieve the desired objective. Further, this normative aspect claims that the adoption of marketing improves the democratic process. However, rational choice is an analytical ‘toolkit’ which does not seek to make normative claims. Indeed, normative arguments are inconsistent with rational choice, which seeks to provide a scientific, value-free approach to political analysis, and, consequently, the analytical and normative aspects of political marketing need to be rendered explicit and such normative aspects challenged.     

Marketing the Political Message

Abstract

The potential for Americanisation of UK political campaigning is discussed with a particular focus on message development and dissemination. The paper recognises that there is difference between policy and message development, arguing that it is through the latter that British parties have most to learn from their transatlantic counterparts. Contextual differences in operation mitigate wholesale migration of American know-how, restricting technology transfer to fund-raising techniques and the incorporation of opposition and market research techniques into the development and dissemination of the message. Parties should focus their research on how to make their messages more easily understood and where to disseminate them, but they should use a process that maintains the integrity of their content (i.e., the underlying policy).     

Greek Political Marketing Online

Abstract

The new communication system of interconnected computer networks is altering the nature of political communication in many innovative and significant ways. In Greece, the development of the Internet as a mass communication medium has a history of no more than five years, and it is far from being a fully fledged medium of political communication. With the exception of relatively few cases, the use of the Internet has been shown to increase during the pre-election campaign periods. This paper presents the results of a research project, which explores the personal Web sites of the Greek parliamentarians in an off-campaign period. The research was conducted through the systematic observation, examination, and analysis of a sample of personal Web pages owned by cross-party elected members of the Greek Parliament.     

Book reviews

Anthony Giddens, THE CONSEQUENCES OF MODERNITY (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1990). Anthony Giddens, MODERNITY AND SELF‐IDENTITY: SELF AND SOCIETY IN THE LATE MODERN AGE (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991)

Robert B. Westbrook, JOHN DEWEY AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)

David Harvey, THE CONDITION OF POSTMODERNITY: AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF CULTURAL CHANGE (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)

Robin Blackburn, ed., AFTER THE FALL: THE FAILURE OF COMMUNISM AND THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM (London and New York: Verso, 1991)

Andrew Hacker, TWO NATIONS: BLACK AND WHITE, SEPARATE, HOSTILE, UNEQUAL. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992)

Ridgeway, James, BLOOD IN THE FACE: THE KU KLUX KLAN, ARYAN NATIONS, NAZI SKINHEADS AND THE RISE OF A NEW WHITE CULTURE (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 1991)

Gene H. Bell‐Villada, THE CARLOS CHADWICK MYSTERY: A NOVEL OF COLLEGE LIFE AND POLITICAL TERROR. (Albuquerque, NM: Amador Publishers, 1990)     

The Role of Policy Labs in Policy Experiment and Knowledge Transfer: A Comparison across the UK,Denmark, and Singapore

Abstract

Policy labs have been increasingly used to generate scientific evidence and political momentum to boost policy experiments, but our understanding of the conditions for knowledge creation and transfer through policy experiments in the labs is scarce. This paper compares the UK’s Cabinet Office’s Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), Denmark’s the Danish MindLab, and Singapore’s the Human Experience Lab (THE Lab) to identify their similarities and differences in fostering policy experiment and knowledge transfer. It is found that BIT as the “Nudge Unit” is keen on bringing in rigorous scientific evidence to advocate effective albeit controversial policies, critical to its survival and influence in an adversarial political circumstance. MindLab takes more initiative to co-create and run projects together with agencies and organizations. THE Lab is dedicated to gleaning ethnographic insights from various stakeholders to support design thinking in policy implementation. These discernable differences can be attributed to their different political regimes and policy environments, which suggest workable avenues for policy labs in other countries.     

An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital

Daniel P. Liston, CAPITALIST SCHOOLS: EXPLANATION AND ETHICS IN RADICAL STUDIES OF SCHOOLING (New York: Routledge, 1988), and Henry A. Giroux, SCHOOLING AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PUBLIC LIFE: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN THE MODERN AGE (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

Ernest L. Boyer, COLLEGE: THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA (New York: Harper &; Row, 1987; first paperback edition 1988).

Elzbieta Ettinger, ROSA LUXEMBURG: A LIFE (Boston: Beacon, 1986).

Stanley Aronowitz, SCIENCE AS POWER: DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY IN MODERN SCIENCE (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

Shoshana Zuboff, IN THE AGE OF THE SMART MACHINE: THE FUTURE OF WORK AND POWER (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988)

Carol Gould, RE‐THINKING DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND SOCIAL COOPERATION IN POLITICS, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Seyla Benhabib, CRITIQUE, NORM, AND UTOPIA: A STUDY OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL THEORY (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)

Burton Zwiebach, THE COMMON LIFE: AMBIGUITY, AGREEMENT, AND THE STRUCTURE OF MORALS (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)     

Political Marketing and Professionalized Campaigning

Abstract

During the last decade a number of scholars have argued that political campaigning has become professionalized, and that political marketing has become the new dominant campaign paradigm. However, the conceptual relationship between political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning is unclear. Furthermore, the distinction between political marketing, market orientation, and marketing techniques is often blurred. At the same time, most of the literature is dominated by either an American or British perspective. This makes it unclear as to whether these concepts should be viewed as general concepts, or as concepts relevant primarily for countries that share some specific set of political institutions.

In this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to analyze (1) the conceptual relationship between political marketing, market orientation, marketing techniques, and professionalization of political campaigning, and (2) whether contemporary concepts of political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning are equally applicable to all modern democracies regardless of, for example, political system and other country-specific factors. It also outlines a theory of strategic party goals for multiple arenas.