Blogging and political information: truth or truthiness?

Does the blogosphere generate truth, or what Stephen Colbert calls ‘truthiness,’ facts or concepts one only wishes or believes were true? Bloggers and the mainstream media face the same difficulties if they wish to rely on the blogosphere as a generator of truth. First, both bloggers and media converge on a small number of key blogs as sources of information. But the proprietors of these elite blogs are likely to resist information that doesn’t conform to their existing attitudes and beliefs, precisely because they are already highly aware of politics. Second, blogs and blog readers are likely to separate themselves into smaller networks according to their particular tastes. However, under some circumstances the blogosphere may still approximate a parallel processing statistical estimator of the truth with ‘nice’ properties. The key to this outcome is that judgments are independent, and that problems of polarization are mitigated.     

Marketing political soap: a political marketing view of selling candidates like soap,of electioneering as a ritual,and of electoral military analogies

This paper examines three common political expressions and ideas from a marketing perspective. First, the origins of the ‘selling candidates like soap’ expression are traced and it is argued that, rather than being ‘sold’ like a product, candidates are instead ‘marketed’ like a service provider such as a real estate agent. Traditional campaign rituals have a legitimate marketing function if electors, and not just political actors, are meaningfully incorporated and military analogies in elections have increasing relevance given the classic military strategy used by commercial marketers. Together, these examples suggest that the application of marketing to politics may require the rethinking of ingrained electoral jargon and concepts. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Evolution,consciousness, and political thinking

Evolutionary theory is utilized to sketch the outline of a performance-based perspective of political thinking. It is argued that human consciousness evolved as an emergent and interactive mechanism for enabling the individual to cope strategically with environmental exigencies. Within the context of this evolutionary perspective, consciousness at the individual level is shown to develop in patterned yet flexible and individually variable ways as a result of the interaction of biological and environmental variables including, among the latter, those elements of the social environment like ideas, values, and intentions, as well as institutional patterns of conflict, affiliation, and authority, which are themselves products of coping strategies. Political thinking, it is suggested, is a strategic coping enterprise involving equilibration between the individual's own strivings and social demands for conformity in collective affairs.     

Campaigns,political mobility,and communication

We study the interdependence between campaign contributions, the candidates’ positions, and electoral outcomes. In our model, a candidate who moves away from his firmly established position towards a more risky one generates costs for the voters. Campaign contributions allow the candidates to reduce these mobility costs. We show that if donations were prohibited, then a unique equilibrium regarding the position choices of candidates would exist. With unrestricted financing of political campaigns, two equilibria emerge, depending on whether a majority of interest groups runs to support the leftist or rightist candidate. Interest groups may finance candidates whose position is far away from their own ideal point. The equilibria generate a variety of new features of campaign games, and may help identify the objective functions of candidates empirically.     

Designing truth: Facilitating perpetrator testimony at truth commissions

Truth commissions aim to promote transparency, accountability, and reconciliation by compiling detailed narratives of political violence. To achieve this end, both victims and perpetrators of abuses must testify. Yet, little is known about how commissions can be designed to facilitate perpetrator testimony. This article develops a theory of perpetrator participation in truth commissions, with a focus on institutional design. The article then evaluates the effectiveness of four design features—amnesties, subpoena powers, dual-party agreements, and spiritual frameworks—in facilitating perpetrator testimony in the truth commissions in Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Timor-Leste. The analysis indicates that the theoretical constructs developed are present, functional, and influential for perpetrator participation in the three commissions. And, while no individual design feature is essential, the case studies reveal that perpetrator participation may not be forthcoming without a robust dual-party agreement and/or a resonant spiritual framework. This underscores the importance of normative foundations for perpetrators’ engagement with commissions. Crucially, though advantageous features may be present, the criteria required for them to function may not be met, resulting in no effect or a negative effect on participation.     

Control,consent and political legitimacy

In this essay, I evaluate Philip Pettit’s theory of republican political legitimacy and maintain that it fails to provide a more satisfactory account of legitimacy than consent-based theories. I advance two interrelated theses. First, I argue that in so far as Pettit successfully narrows the scope that his theory of political legitimacy has to address, his arguments could be adapted to support consent-based theories. Second, I argue that Pettit’s theory fails to satisfy the high standards it sets for itself and is thus unsuccessful. My critique focuses on Pettit’s notions of historical, political and normative necessity, before evaluating whether his requirement of equally individualised popular control of government should be endorsed.     

Justice,nature and political economy

Clearly the globalization of finance has provided opportunities for OFCs to emerge. From a sociological perspective it is argued, however, that closer analysis demands respect for their diversity and even idiosyncrasy. Analytical concepts are offered to situate this diversity and to develop a more reflexive understanding of the processes through which the system of OFCs continues to develop. We arrive at a distinctive approach for theorizing OFCs under conditions of globalization.     

Lobbying, corruption and political influence

The paper explores the determinants of generalized trust across countries. The findings suggest that only few variables can be considered significant. Social polarization in the form of income inequality and ethnic diversity reduces trust, Protestantism and having a monarchy increases trust while post-communist societies are less trusting than other. The findings also provide support for the use of a standard indicator as a stable measure of generalized trust and emphasize the importance of taking endogeneity seriously.     

Laffer paradox, Leviathan, and political contest

This paper considers a political contest model wherein self-interested politicians seek rents from the public budget, while general voters make political efforts to protest against politicians’ rent seeking directly (for example, through voting in referendums such as the passage of Proposition?13) or indirectly (for example, through donating money to organized groups such as the National Taxpayer Union). We show that the political contest may ironically lead to the Laffer paradox; that is, rent-seeking politicians may intend to set the tax rate higher than the revenue-maximizing rate. For taming Leviathans, political protests may not be as effective as competition among governments.     

Race,associational involvement,and political participation

Previous research on racial differences in group affiliation and activism examines the role of organizational involvement both as a form of social participation and as an independent predictor of political participation. This study is based on data from a national sample of the 1987 adult population that replicated the basic measures of social and political participation from Verba and Nie’s classic study. We separate our respondents into homogeneous racial groups and specify organizational participation by type of association to determine which group joins what organization and the relevance of such patterns for involvement in the polity. Although our findings only provide mixed support for the claim advanced by other scholars that Blacks’ social activity exceeds or equals that of Whites once controls for sociodemographic status are taken into consideration, these results provide clear evidence that Black and White organizations differ in their capacity to motivate their members for political activity.     

Popularity,polarization, and political budget cycles

A vast literature has established that governments may abuse policy instruments in order to enhance their popularity and thus their probability of reelection, resulting in political budget cycles. Yet do popular governments have the same incentives to boost their popularity through pre-electoral expansions as unpopular governments? The existing empirical evidence, which to this date is entirely country-specific, produces mixed messages. Some studies find a simple linear relationship between popularity and the magnitude of political budget cycles and some find a non-linear relationship, peaking at the point where the race for office is tight. This article presents a simple theoretical model, which suggests that party polarization may be the key mediator reconciling these alternative findings.     

Speaking the truth

Suspicion regarding the notion of truth is a characteristic feature of much contemporary thought. Often this suspicion is based in a view that takes truth to be a notion associated with a discredited view of knowledge or with an oppressive and exclusionary politics. That the very possibility of knowledge, and so of our access to the truth, can be put in question and that truth itself always operates within a political dimension are not, of course, claims that can be denied. Nor can it be denied that knowledge, truth and power are closely tied together. But these considerations should prompt us to a reappraisal of the notion of truth that sees it as more, not less, significant. This paper is an attempt to begin such a reappraisal and to attend, not merely to the truth. Speaking the truth is not something the successful achievement of which can, in every case, be guaranteed in advance; yet neither is it something that we can abandon or ignore.     

Analysing political ideas and political action

Abstract

This paper examines the relevance of Boltanski and Thévenot's newly translated book, On justification, to the analysis of political ideas and political action. While situating the work of the authors within its initial intellectual context, namely the ‘economics of conventions’, it shows that one of the key contributions of the ‘sociology of justification’ lies in the answers it brings to two fundamental, as yet unresolved, questions in political science and political sociology: first, how is it possible to identify those ideas which are politically relevant? Second, how is it possible to capture the dynamics of public ideas? After outlining the sources of the quandaries faced within political science and political sociology as regards these two questions, the conceptual framework of Boltanski and Thévenot is presented and explained, and research perspectives suggested. This article argues that On justification provides a highly engaging, stimulating and empirically useful contribution to current debates in social and political theory around the dynamics of political arguments and ideas.