Opposition Policy Influence through Agenda‐setting: The Environment in Denmark, 1993–2009

This article addresses the opportunities that the opposition has to influence policy – a topic that has been neglected in existing party policy research. The idea that is developed is applied to a remarkable environmental policy development during the Danish right‐wing government in the 2000s. Contrary to its position when it took office in 2001, the right‐wing government turned green and adopted a series of green policy initiatives. It is argued in this article that vehement and persistent criticism from the left‐wing opposition provides an explanation for this turn. Taking media coverage, public opinion, carbon dioxide emissions and the government's approval ratings into account, the empirical estimation based on unique quarterly data shows that opposition criticism had a systematic impact on the government's pro‐environmental policy development. The implications for party policy research are important. If the aim is to understand how parties matter to policy, the opposition should be taken more seriously.     

“Editorials at a Glance”: Cultural Policy,Gender, and Modernity in the World War I Bureau of Cartoons

Cultural policy during the Great War, rather than radiating from the central government, evolved from contemporary culture—propaganda, movies, and mass media. The state was a player, but quasi‐public organizations such as propaganda agencies, non‐state actors like the YMCA, and “public opinion” played important roles. The Committee on Public Information (CPI)—the government's propaganda committee—influenced Americans through books, advertisements, posters, and cartoons. This essay examines two of the CPI's efforts: the Bureau of Cartoons and the Division of Pictorial Publicity. In these materials, we can see the intersection of class‐based notions of gendered idealism and a developing media state's use of a sentimental culture of the Victorian middle‐class to represent and motivate the nation. With staff drawn primarily from advertising agencies and newspapers, the Committee's work shows how the formulation of cultural policy is the result of complex negotiated processes involving state interests, cultural liaisons, and ideological assumptions.     

Politics of childcare policy beyond the left–right scale: Post‐industrialisation,transformation of party systems and welfare state restructuring

Childcare policy has become an integral part of social and economic policy in post‐industrial democracies. This article explores how the transformation of party systems structures the politics of childcare policy. It reveals that political parties contend with each other over childcare and female employment policy on the social‐value dimension as well as the redistributive dimension. Assuming that different party policies have distinct impacts on public childcare policy, it is hypothesised in this article that a government's policy position – composed of the governing parties' policy positions – affects changes in public spending for childcare services. Through an analysis of the pooled time‐series and cross‐section data of 18 advanced industrialised countries from 1980 until 2005 using multivariate regression methods, it is revealed that a government's redistributive left–right policy position interacts with its social liberal–conservative policy position, and that a left–liberal government raises its budget for childcare services while a left–conservative government does not.     

The diffusion of mediated state public affairs information

• The strength of a democracy rests with having an informed public. The relatively recent advent of C‐Span at the national level and the state‐based equivalents such as CT‐N in Connecticut now provide the most thorough and unbiased coverage of public affairs information that has ever been disseminated in the U.S. The importance of these networks rests with the word of mouth influence that the smaller, demographically diverse, opinion leader audience for these stations have on the rest of society. A series of surveys of CT‐N viewers over three years provides a good picture of what their opinion leader audience looks like and how it is evolving. This information may be useful for other public affairs television networks.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.     

Mexican Democracy and Its Discontents

This article describes the first stage of a major research project on public opinion and democratic consolidation in Mexico. That project, the Mexico 2006 Panel Study, comprises approximately 7,000 in‐depth interviews with ordinary Mexicans over the course of the upcoming presidential campaign. Its purpose is two‐fold: (1) to assess the degree to which Mexican political attitudes are supportive of democratic governance, and (2) to understand the role played by voters, politicians, party leaders, and the mass media in shaping Mexico's political agenda. Ultimately, the project aims to assess how faithfully Mexico's new political system can be expected to respond to the desires and beliefs of ordinary citizens.     

From Policy to Practice: From Ideas to Results,From Results to Trust

Few areas of public administration have been more discouraging, over a longer period of time, than the struggle to build public trust in government's work. However, new research suggests that public administrators can build trust by improving the results they produce for citizens. Practical, practicable steps can produce big improvements: improving government's focus on citizens' needs; engaging employees; focusing on fairness; and, especially, concentrating on the delivery of public services at the “retail” level. Citizens, research shows, can discriminate among levels of government, the administration of different programs in different functional areas, and the work of individual administrators. That provides strong hope for improving trust, in an era when too often government appears too untrustworthy.     

“It's the Central Government's Fault”: Elected Regional Officials' Use of Blame‐Shifting Rhetoric

This article investigates regional officials' use of blame‐shifting rhetoric in times of heated public criticism of unpopular regional policy decisions. Based on a content coding of nearly 500 political accounts from elected regional officials it is shown that “it's the central government's fault” is the most frequently used excuse when regional officials publicly defend unpopular decisions to cut public health care. The article finds that this excuse is used more by regional leaders (mayors and chairmen of regional boards) than by other elected officials and that partisan competition affects how often this excuse is used.     

The four Ps of corporate political activity: a framework for environmental analysis and corporate action

• In this paper, I propose a new integrated framework which may be used to conduct a thorough analysis of a firm's political environment. The four steps of the methodology include the problem (how a political problem emerges and can be shaped by actors), the procedure (the public decision‐making procedure), the policies (relevant public policies currently implemented) and the players (including policy‐makers as well as participants in the political debate). Together, they form what I call the ‘Four Ps of corporate political activity’.
• This framework can serve not only for environmental analysis and monitoring, but also to improve the effectiveness of a firm's attempts in the field of political influence, through actions such as arena selection, issue framing, the use of procedural opportunities, proactive negotiation of a compromise or gate‐keeping the political arena.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Top‐Down Self‐Organization: State Logics,Substitutional Delegation,and Private Governance in Russia

This study investigates the counterintuitive emergence of self‐regulation in the Russian construction sector. Despite its proclivity for centralizing political authority, the government acted as the catalyst for the delegation of regulatory powers to private industry groups. The article argues that a factor little considered in extant literature—namely, a weak and corrupt bureaucracy—is key to explaining why the normally control‐oriented executive branch began to promote private governance despite industry's preference for continued state regulation. The article's signal contribution is to theoretically explain and empirically demonstrate how a government's prior inability to establish intrastate control over an ineffective and bribable public bureaucracy creates incentives for political authorities to search for alternative means for policy implementation outside of existing state agencies. These findings are important for understanding the impetus and logic behind particular regulatory shifts in countries where the state apparatus is both deficient and corrupt.     

Public affairs perceptions and practices: a ten‐year (1993–2003) comparison

• The past ten years have been marked by significant changes in technology, politics and economics. These changes have affected the social and regulatory environments in which public affairs (PA) officers operate. This paper describes how PA officers at 74 large US corporations perceive these environmental changes and how PA activities have changed from ten years ago.
• The data reported in this paper were collected first in 1993, then again in 2003. The results show a rather even split between respondents: half (39) believe that their political/regulatory environment is simpler today than was the case ten years ago, half (33) believe that it has become more complicated; half (35) believe there is less social interest in their operations and half (32) believe there is more. The paper then examines the changes in PA activities and performance over the past ten years
• Overall, PA officers are more pleased with their performance (at least in managing social issues and achieving social objectives) than they were in 1993.

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

English Question or Union Question? Neither has Easy Answers

While devolution has provided a stronger political voice for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since the late 1990s, it is only in the past few years that English public opinion appears to have become exercised by the lack of similar arrangements for England. The renewed debates over the character of the Union after the Scottish independence referendum reveal a desire for ‘fair treatment’ of England within a Union conceived as a partnership of equals. At the same time, numerous proposals have been made for devolution of power within England, reflecting long‐held concerns about the territorial hegemony of London. Solutions to the former issue include English votes for English laws and an English Parliament. Solutions to the latter include city‐regions, strengthened local government, the first of these appears to be the government's preferred route, in the light of the recent ‘Greater Manchester Agreement’. However, none of these ‘solutions’ can count on being implemented.     

The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care: How President Obama Polarized Public Opinion by Racial Attitudes and Race

This study argues that President Obama's strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race. Consistent with that hypothesis, racial attitudes had a significantly larger impact on health care opinions in fall 2009 than they had in cross‐sectional surveys from the past two decades and in panel data collected before Obama became the face of the policy. Moreover, the experiments embedded in one of those reinterview surveys found health care policies were significantly more racialized when attributed to President Obama than they were when these same proposals were framed as President Clinton's 1993 reform efforts. Dozens of media polls from 1993 to 1994 and from 2009 to 2010 are also pooled together to show that with African Americans overwhelmingly supportive of Obama's legislative proposals, the racial divide in health care opinions was 20 percentage points greater in 2009–10 than it was over President Clinton's plan back in 1993–94.     

The Coalition Programme: A New Vision for Britain or Politics as Usual?

The Coalition programme includes restructuring public provision through reforms and cuts which will take public spending in the Britain below that in the US. This article explores whether the Coalition agenda is best understood as a new approach to Britain's deep‐seated economic short‐comings or simply as the normal politics of gaining and retaining power. It analyses the current government's programme, identifies the common features across the range of policies and discusses how they are likely to develop as they encounter set‐backs.     

Spin: from tactic to tabloid

• Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury.
• Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics.
• The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin‐doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub‐editors.
• By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Confidence and Caretakers: Some Less‐Obvious Implications of the Fixed‐Term Parliaments Act

This article explores the 2011 Fixed‐term Parliaments Act's less‐obvious implications. First, it discusses why Theresa May found calling the 2017 election so straightforward, and notes what this implies for how FTPA works. Second, it looks at executive–legislative relations. FTPA removed the government's ability to designate controversial parliamentary votes as matters of confidence, and introduced a fourteen‐day cushion between a no‐confidence vote and Parliament's dissolution. In the process, it shifted the balance of power from ministers to backbenchers, to an extent potentially greater than most observers recognise. Third, it considers the more outlandish possibilities raised by FTPA's imposition of a fourteen‐day waiting period after a government's defeat on a no‐confidence motion before a new election can be called. It is possible, for example, for rebel MPs from the governing party to use the no‐confidence procedure to force concessions from the cabinet. Finally, it assesses FTPA's long‐term survival prospects, and what repeal would involve.     

Unequal Voices: ‘Strategic’ Consultation in South Australia

In 2006, the South Australian government undertook the largest consultation ever to take place in the state. Over 1600 South Australians were involved with the consultation on the revision of South Australia's Strategic Plan (SASP). This ‘big‐picture’ consultation was a significant attempt to connect with, and gain feedback from, the South Australian ‘community’ on the Rann government's vision for the state. This article is the first formal evaluation of the 2006 consultation on the SASP. To critically evaluate the consultation process, this article uses Pratchett's framework which examines participative processes through the two principles of responsiveness and representativeness. The article concludes that the state government's rhetoric about the success of the consultation obscures a number of deficiencies and tensions that underpinned the consultation process. This critique of the South Australian consultation provides some key insights for the current trend for strategic planning at the state level in Australia.     

Pictures at an exhibition revisited: reflections on a typology of images used in the construction of corporate social responsibility and sustainability in non‐financial corporate reporting

• Strategic corporate and public affairs communication about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major component of corporate efforts to interact with their stakeholders and society at large. Non‐financial reporting, and CSR reporting in particular, is now seen as an essential corporate communication process by most members of a company's stakeholder community. This growth in CSR reporting has been driven by the need to increase corporate transparency and accountability concerning social and environmental issues. Arguably, the European Union is the most progressive region in adopting CSR reporting. Almost all of Europe's top 100 companies report on social and environmental performance, whilst figures for the USA and the rest of the world are much lower. The latest Accountability Rating concludes that ‘Europe leads, America lags’ after measuring companies' social and environmental impacts.
• The authors argue that visual communication is as important as words and numbers in creating meaning and assess UK and German Companies' non‐financial performance. Utilizing a range of research methods including content analysis and semiotic interpretation the authors propose a typology of images used in non‐financial reporting. This typology and associated conceptual development can used to more accurately define and interpret CSR and sustainability.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hailing Hitler with the Red Hand: The Link in Northern Ireland 1937–40

Loughlin's article assesses the activities of The Link, a British pro-Nazi organization promoting Anglo-German conciliation in Northern Ireland in the years leading up to the Second World War. It situates the Ulster branch of the movement within the context of the domestic politics of the region, the British state, Anglo-Irish relations and wider European developments. As a field of activity for The Link, Northern Ireland posed unique and complex problems. The regional branch's prospects for development were complicated, for instance, by how, for nationalists, the aggression of Nazi domestic and foreign policies was reflected in the Northern Ireland government's domestic policies, and also in the way in which Nazi policy towards religion alienated the region’s Catholic and Protestant communities. Loughlin also illustrates how the government's approach towards the local Jewish community and Jewish refugees—in a region largely without the levels of antisemitism found in both British and southern Irish public opinion—was informed by a combination of sympathy and local political considerations. Perhaps most uniquely, he illuminates the singularity of the Ulster branch within The Link organization, especially the attitude of its chairman, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, who regarded Northern Ireland as an obstacle to the establishment of an effective Anglo-Irish defence policy and wished to see the region united with Eire.     

Lingering environmental pessimism and the role of government in Hong Kong

Based on data from two opinion surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008, this study shows that Hong Kong people have been consistently highly aware of the seriousness of different environmental problems and relatively pessimistic about the future resolution of these problems. Such pessimism is arguably related to their lack of confidence in the government's enforcement of environmental protection. Through an analysis of the environmental policy‐making and enforcement agency and three selected enforcement cases, the study further finds that the people's lack of confidence can be traced to the government's failure to bring about a comprehensive, integrated, far‐sighted environmental strategy with sophisticated institutional support and detailed enforcement mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.