The mobilization of political discontent

Although political discontent has risen substantially among Americans since the mid-sixties, there is considerable disagreement about the implications of this trend for individual political behavior and system performance. This paper develops a conceptual and theoretical framework within which this question can be examined. Two dimensions of political discontent, low diffuse support and external inefficacy, are hypothesized as motivations for political action when certain other conditions are met. In addition, because each of these orientations should be associated with different styles of political behavior, the mobilizing potential of political discontent may be greater than previous studies have indicated.     

Developing and Testing a Theoretical Framework for Computer‐Mediated Transparency of Local Governments

This article contributes to the emerging literature on transparency by developing and empirically testing a theoretical framework that explains the determinants of local government Web site transparency. It aims to answer the following central question: What institutional factors determine the different dimensions of government transparency? The framework distinguishes three dimensions of transparency—decision making transparency, policy information transparency, and policy outcome transparency—and hypothesizes three explanations for each: organizational capacity, political influence, and group influence on government. Results indicate that each dimension of transparency is associated with different factors. Decision‐making transparency is associated with political influence; when left‐wing parties are strong in the local council, local government tends to be more transparent. Policy information transparency is associated with media attention and external group pressure, and policy outcome transparency is associated with both external group pressure and the organizational capacity. The authors discuss the implications for policy and administration.     

Institutional Agonism: Axel Honneth’s Radical Democracy*

Axel Honneth may be criticised for reducing political philosophy to moral psychology. In what follows, I argue that if his theory of recognition is reframed as one of democracy, quite another picture will appear. To do this, I systematically reconstruct Honneth’s stance as a multidimensional version of radical democracy. The question I discuss is the manner in which this framework combines the three dimensions of democratic deliberation, culture, and conflict. I then discuss Honneth’s picture from both a deliberative and agonistic viewpoint. How one understands the way in which he combines the abovementioned dimensions is dependent upon which one of these two approaches one may choose. I claim that when taken together, these three dimensions form the grounding of a radical-democratic understanding of a struggle for recognition, which I term institutional agonism.     

Do ideological and political motives really matter in? the?public choice of local services management? Evidence from urban water services in Spain

This paper studies the influence of ideology and political motives on the choice of management for urban water services. Our contribution is two-fold. Firstly, we use a considerably more detailed set of variables to represent ideological and political motives than previous research. Secondly, the variables that explain local politicians’ decisions are observed at the time decision-making occurs, rather than at a later date. Beyond pragmatic reasons, we find that ideological and political motives also matter when explaining decisions regarding the management of water services. Furthermore, considering the time dimension of decision-making noticeably improves the explanatory power of our model.     

Individual campaign contributions in a Downsian model: expressive and instrumental motives

We investigate in a Downsian framework the possibility of and rationale for individual campaign contributions under various combinations of voters’ and candidates’ objective functions. We first show in a simple voting model that expressive motives might give rise to contributions and separated positions, while instrumental motives will not. We then show in a probabilistic voting model that both motives could lead to giving and policy divergence. However, when this is the case, positions are more separated, contributions are greater, and society’s welfare is higher when motives are expressive than when motives are instrumental.     

The Role of Elite Accounts in Mitigating the Negative Effects of Repositioning

Repositioning by political elites plays a key role in a variety of political phenomena, including legislative policymaking and campaigning. While previous studies suggest that repositioning will lead to negative evaluations, these studies have not explored the role of elite communications in structuring mass responses. We argue that this omission is problematic because elite explanations for their actions may limit the costs associated with ‘flip-flopping’ by persuading some citizens to update their attitudes so that they agree with the elite’s new stance and also by molding beliefs about the motives of the elite when repositioning. We present evidence supportive of this argument obtained from two large experiments conducted on samples of American adults. Ultimately, we show that elites offering a satisfactory justification for their change can avoid most, if not all, of the evaluative costs that would otherwise occur. This study thus has important implications not just for this particular element of elite behavior, but also related questions concerning governmental accountability and representation.     

Political cycles and economic performance in OECD countries: empirical evidence from 1951–2006

This paper examines whether electoral motives and government ideology influence short-term economic performance. I employ data on annual GDP growth in 21 OECD countries over the 1951–2006 period and provide a battery of empirical tests. In countries with two-party systems GDP growth is boosted before elections and, under leftwing governments, in the first two years of a legislative period. These findings indicate that political cycles are more prevalent in two-party systems because voters can clearly punish or reward political parties for governmental performance. My findings imply that we need more elaborate theories of how government ideology and electoral motives influence short-term economic performance.     

Bureaucratic Posture: On the Need for a Composite Theory of Bureaucratic Behavior

This article examines the underlying assumptions and main findings of four streams of research on bureaucratic postures. It explores the utility of each school of thought for understanding how perspectives on bureaucratic postures are associated with the advancement of the public interest and bureaucratic performance. A main conclusion is that, although limited in scope of application, each stream has merit. Nonetheless, the existing research is too narrow: The field needs to consider a more complex model of bureaucratic behavior that draws from these four fields to offer a framework that is widely applicable to the range of motives for work found in the public bureaucracy and the variety of behaviors that individuals exhibit. Some attributes that may characterize such a model are sketched out.     

Understanding the Magic of Credibility for Political Leaders: A Case of India and Narendra Modi

The field of political marketing has majorly benefited from the use of social media platforms. This has been true both for eastern and western contexts. The primary areas in political marketing that have majorly benefited from the social media usage have been the political leader and the evaluations of the leader by the voters. In the Indian context too, the use of social media techniques has been hailed as the Holy Grail of political marketing. This estimation is quite apposite. Nevertheless, what must not be forgotten is that the complexities of the bonding between political leaders and voters are not only premised primarily on the efficacy of social media techniques but also include other key dimensions. Thus, this article focuses on the importance of credibility as a key dimension. This dimension is inevitable to make social media techniques as effective as they are in political marketing. To substantiate this, we have comprehensively engaged with the fields such as traits of political leaders, crisis management and collaboration. These deliberations have been contextualized to the case of Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. Further, these deliberations culminate in an effective framework. Academicians and practitioners of political marketing can extensively utilize this framework.     

COMPLAINTS AGAINST POLICE IN NEW SOUTH WALES: ADMINISTRATIVE AND POLITICAL DIMENSIONS

Abstract: The issue of public complaints against police in New South Wales has assumed the dimensions of a substantial administrative and political debate. Attempts at administrative reform within a framework of political compromise have resulted in recent times in continuing conflict between police representatives and, principally, the Ombudsman. Present trends appear to favour increased external control of the complaint investigation process — the core of conflict. This article describes the development of the New South Wales Police Department's complaint procedures from their origin to the present, placing emphasis on administrative and political dimensions. Relevant complaints and disciplinary data are examined but, due to limited availability, little can be concluded therefrom. So far, at least, there is nothing to suggest that changes in complaints procedures reduce police employee malpractice or even that public opinion of police generally improves as a result. However, several more years will need to pass before firm conclusions can be advanced on such matters. The issue of complaints against police in NSW poses a lasting administrative and political dilemma. The issue deserves the close attention of concerned public administrators and politicians alike because the form of resolution eventually arrived at will be crucial to the growth of police professionalism.     

Dimension manipulation and choice strategy in US-China relations: a spatial game-theoretical analysis

Political and economic relations between the United States and China are viewed as two games in a two-dimensional evaluation space of decision making: a deadlock game along the political dimension and a prisoners’ dilemma game along the economic dimension. Based on a spatial game framework, this study shows that dimension manipulations and different choice strategies across these two evaluation dimensions will result in different game equilibria. Specifically,dimension combination anduniform strategy would keep U.S.-China relations in the status quo, anddimension differentiation ordiverse strategy would benefit both sides. Two policy suggestions are derived from this analysis. First, both sides should de-link political and economic dimensions and separately evaluate political and economic relations along these two distinct dimensions. Second, both sides should follow diverse strategy if political and economic relations have to be simultaneously evaluated in the two-dimensional policy making space.     

Civic Decline? Trends in Political Involvement and Participation in Norway, 1965–2001

Electoral turnout in Norway has been declining over a long period for local elections and, at the four most recent Storting elections, turnout has been at a lower level than in the preceding 25 years. This article investigates whether the fall in turnout generalises to other forms of political participation and political involvement. Data from the Norwegian Election Studies 1965–2001 and the Norwegian Values Studies 1982–1996 are analysed. In contrast to the decline of turnout, the authors find that the broader political activity of citizens has increased. The rise in political involvement and activism is quite widespread, covering dimensions like political interest, political discussion and political action. The increase includes forms of participation where political parties play a strong role and in direct action where parties are supposed to be less important. Education is strongly associated with most forms of civic participation and the rise in educational levels normally leads to an increase in participation rates. Data show that women are now as active as men in most dimensions of participation. In Norway, turnout at elections displays one pattern over time, while other indicators of political participation and involvement show different trajectories. There is no general civic decline. Using political involvement and participation as a criterion for judging the state of democracy, and taking into account the whole set of indicators studied in this article, one may reasonably conclude that Norwegian civic democracy is in better health than if one focused only on the fall in electoral turnout.     

Mutual and Self Perceptions of Opposing Advocacy Coalitions: Devil Shift and Angel Shift in a German Policy Subsystem

In political conflicts, actors tend to assume that opponents behave maliciously. This phenomena is part of the “devil shift,” which was introduced in advocacy coalition framework research. We present a multivariate analysis of the perceptions of motives and actions of opposing coalitions in a political conflict and thereby analyze a major dimension of the “devil shift” and of its antonym “angel shift.” The conflict concerning the German infrastructure project Stuttgart 21 serves as a case study. We show that the radicalness of policy‐specific beliefs is the most important predictor for the intensity of mutual misperception in the researched conflict. The results further point to a more systematic inclusion of an actor's deep normative core beliefs in future analyses of distorted perception. Another central finding relates to the importance of the personal environment: actors in the subsystem share the same policy core beliefs with the majority of people in their personal environment.     

Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation

Education plays an important role in the political, social and economic divisions that have recently characterised Western Europe. Despite the many analyses of education and its political consequences, however, previous research has not investigated whether government policy caters more to the preferences of the higher educated than to the preferences of the lower educated. We address this question using an original dataset of public opinion and government policy in the Netherlands. This data reveals that policy representation is starkly unequal. The association between support for policy change and actual change is much stronger for highly educated citizens than for low and middle educated citizens, and only the highly educated appear to have any independent influence on policy. This inequality extends to the economic and cultural dimensions of political competition. Our findings have major implications for the educational divide in Western Europe, as they reflect both a consequence and cause of this divide.     

Political and Economic Policy Planning on a National Level—Exorcism and Laws of Gravity

Within political and social processes the actors' intentions arc played out against institutional 'laws of gravity'. With this in mind, the article focuses on the planning regime associated with the Scandinavian political model. At present the model seems to be challenged by a series of obstacles, raising the question of the political mechanism's ability to adapt. One hypothesis—called the 'Decay' scenario—is described in detail, thereby presenting: (1) a framework for political analysis on a national level; (2) some indicators on how the 'Decay' story may turn out; and (3) a group of sub-theories supporting the hypothesis; in rivalry with its counterpart, a future success story of the Scandinavian model.     

Combatting terror in Europe: Euro-Israeli counterterrorism intelligence cooperation in the Club de Berne (1971–1972)

How do intelligence agencies cooperate to counter terrorism and to what extent can it be (ab)used for political purposes? This article focuses on the Club de Berne, an intelligence liaison forum that was founded in 1969 by nine Western European countries and which was also linked to the United States and Israel. This article explores the mechanisms of counterterrorism intelligence-sharing in the early 1970s and examines the motives for cooperation within this framework. On the basis of large-scale recently declassified intelligence records, the article uncovers new aspects in the history of European security cooperation with Israel and the United States, and hopes to lay the groundwork for broader theoretical reflections about counterterrorism intelligence cooperation.     

Social constraints in the political arena: A theoretical inquiry into their form and manner

In the past three different paradigms or, more loosely, frames of reference, have been used by students of politics to interpret various dimensions of mass political participation. Each of these, which are referred to as the political socialization, the group interests and beliefs, and the political party/organization paradigms, has received empirical support for its scheme of interpretation; yet recent political events also suggest that these frames of reference may be inadequate, and may need to be complemented, if not replaced, by other schemes. The present paper outlines one such scheme, drawing upon recent writings on social networks and social influences on political participation. It relies on the metaphor of a political arena, and proposes two simple propositions to account both for conventional and unconventional participation in this arena.An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Annual Meetings of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, New York, NY, August 1976.     

The Displaying of Yard Signs as a Form of Political Participation

Despite the ubiquity of yard signs, little is known about how and why individuals display them. Using two original studies of the 2008 presidential race, along with American National Election Study data, we address three points pertaining to this understudied form of political participation. First, what are the correlates of the individuals and households that display signs? Second, what motivates such displays, and to what extent do those motives reflect expressive and communicative desires? Finally, how do individuals obtain signs, and do individuals—rather than parties or candidates—play a role in spreading signs throughout neighborhoods? Our findings suggest that the dissemination of yard signs is not merely a top–down process driven by campaign professionals, but a genuine participatory act that is fueled by individual initiative and social networking.     

The World Wide Web and the U.S. Political News Market

We propose a framework for understanding how the Internet has affected the U.S. political news market. The framework is driven by the lower cost of production for online news and consumers' tendency to seek out media that conform to their own beliefs. The framework predicts that consumers of Internet news sources should hold more extreme political views and be interested in more diverse political issues than those who solely consume mainstream television news. We test these predictions using two large datasets with questions about news exposure and political views. Generally speaking, we find that consumers of generally left‐of‐center (right‐of‐center) cable news sources who combine their cable news viewing with online sources are more liberal (conservative) than those who do not. We also find that those who use online news content are more likely than those who consume only television news content to be interested in niche political issues.