Donald Trump,contempt, and the 2016 GOP Iowa Caucuses

ABSTRACT

Theories of discrete emotions distinguish contempt from other negative emotions, and recent evidence shows that contempt toward candidates played a major role in two US Senate races in 2014. Contempt felt by respondents was the most significant emotion predicting voting against three of the four major party candidates, and had effects independent of other emotions, such as anger, anxiety, and hope. In the present paper, the 2016 Republican Iowa Caucus provides the opportunity to examine contempt in a different context: an intra-party primary campaign, where candidates share the important characteristic of party affiliation. We find that while voters perceived all leading GOP candidates as expressing at least some contempt, Donald Trump was seen as expressing the most contempt by far. Voters also felt contempt for at least some candidates of their own party. When they did so, it predicts significantly lowered probabilities of voting for Cruz, Trump, and Rubio, and increased probabilities of voting for one or more of their opponents. Implications of these findings for theory and research on the role of contempt and other specific emotions in voting behavior are discussed.     

International Best Practice and the Constitution,Democracy and Rights Commission

The UK government has pledged to establish a Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission. This body will have a wide remit to recommend potentially sweeping constitutional change. This article draws on international experience and best practice to outline how the commission might best organise the process to produce proposals which are widely supported, fit for purpose, and durable. We argue that to achieve these goals the commission’s organisation should reflect three key principles: impartiality, expertise, and public participation. This would reflect international best practice and build on recent domestic developments. We argue that these principles can best be achieved if the commission works through a citizens’ assembly that combines members of the public with party politicians. This would be a new departure for the UK, but a necessary one given the scale of the government’s constitutional reform agenda, and its stated goal of restoring public trust in politics.     

Terrorism,gender, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election

The 2016 U.S. election provides the opportunity to assess how gender, party, and experience shape candidate evaluations when terrorist threat is elevated. The presidential contest featured the first woman major party nominee (Hillary Clinton), a major party nominee without political experience (Donald Trump), and terrorism was salient. We argue that security threats dampen public confidence in Democratic women running for office, yet an experience advantage could countervail against those tendencies. We test expectations using the 2016 ANES and two experimental studies. We first affirm that individuals worried about terrorism held lower evaluations of Clinton and higher evaluations of Trump. We then test an active manipulation of the salience of national security experience and find that it mitigates Clinton's disadvantage, but only in the absence of a counter-message. The results underscore the difficulty that Democratic women face in overcoming the negative influence of party and gender stereotypes when running for office in times of terrorist threat.     

宪法第五十三条中守法义务的证成

与宪法规定的其他义务相比,第五十三条中的守法义务是更为基本的义务,但是宪法学界鲜有对守法义务的论证。从法理学进路则可证成此守法义务:首先,任一正常的社会都有正当的社会目标,这确保了社会对法律的要求是正当的;其次,法律与社会之间有基于相互性的责任,当法律回应了既定社会的正当要求时,此社会的任一成员都有回应法律的义务;最后,社会成员不证自明的理性确保了回应的必然性。所以,正常社会中的任一理性公民都有宪法上的守法义务。     

解说系统与解说员研究

解说行业的历史源远流长。随着早期解说行业的个体实践发展,逐渐出现了大量行业理论研究成果,并产生了相对完善的行业体系——近代解说系统。景区中的解说系统可分为由解说员为引导的向导式解说和由标识牌等为引导的自导式解说两类[1],其中解说员在整个解说体系中占有至关重要的地位。     

The Scandinavian Welfare State: The Institutions of Growth, Governance, and Reform. Review Article

In a review of five recent works on Scandinavian politics and public policy, it is shown that the basis for talking about a Scandinavian model is unfounded. Politics and policies diverge from country to country and within each country from sector to sector as a result of institutional variation. This variation is embedded in institutional history which accounts for strong national path dependency in public policies. However, the institutional set-up at a given point in time also provides political actors with incentives for change. Two of the works reviewed take up this lead as they argue for institutional reform, in one case to protect the welfare state against political erosion, in the other case to facilitate renewed economic growth and improved living standards. The review concludes by arguing for the positive prospects for systematic comparative analysis of Scandinavian politics, providing a mixture of institutional and political similarities combined with theoretically relevant variation.     

Digital Privacy and Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

This article considers the impact of digital technologies on privacy and, specifically, the issues arising from metadata. It takes the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act as an exemplar and argues, by reference to European case law, that while data arising from new technologies undoubtedly fall within the scope of privacy protections, there are questions as to the level of protection awarded. Questions arise from how the nature and intensity of intrusion is understood against a backdrop of ‘dataveillance’, as well as the underlying issue of whether ex post controls—through oversight mechanisms—are sufficient to safeguard privacy.