Politics in a Cold Climate: The Conservative Decline in Scotland

An important feature over the last 30 years has been the increasing shortfall in the Conservative vote in Scotland compared with England. The Conservative Party, despite social structural disadvantages in terms of housing tenure and social class, did unusually well until the mid-1950s, particularly among Unionists and Protestants. After considering the historical and religious factors explaining earlier Conservative political strength, it is argued that two factors help to explain the changing politics of the state in Scotland: the establishment of Scotland as a separate unit of economic management in popular perception and the greater dependence on direct state involvement. The Scottish economic dimension has made Scotland an ideological category largely incompatible with Conservative English/British national rhetoric as employed by Mrs Thatcher.     

Valence Politics in Scotland: Towards an Explanation of the 2007 Election

In this article we use evidence from the Scottish Election Study 2007 to build an explanation for the narrow SNP victory in the Holyrood election. The theoretical focus is on valence models of voting, which are increasingly important in Scotland following dealignment and ideological convergence in the party system, and as Scottish governments flex their executive muscle. Exploring the valence battleground reveals mixed but overall negative evaluations of Labour's performance in government, and suggests advantages for the SNP on issue competence, leadership and party image. Modelling party choice at the individual level shows that key valence variables – performance evaluations, economic competence and party image – have strong and significant effects, unlike hitherto prominent factors like religion, class and national identity. Constitutional preferences are important too, but their effects suggest a further valence link: the SNP's strong showing among voters seeking further devolution but opposed to independence is due in large part to its credentials as a battler for Scottish interests. In contrast, Labour's stand against 'more powers' may have tarnished its own reputation on that score. We conclude that the SNP edged home by persuading enough voters that it had a positive agenda for governing Scotland within the current constitutional arrangements, and that it could deliver on that agenda.     

Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign Communication,Network Interaction,and Political Participation on Twitter

The methods by which politicians and policy makers communicate with the public are constantly adapting to the ever-changing media environment. As part of this changing landscape, this study considers the case of Twitter. Specifically, the authors conduct a survey of political Twitter users, in order to understand their use of the medium and their political behaviors within it. Results indicate that political Twitter users are more interested in and engaged in politics in general and less trusting of the mainstream media. Moreover, the study investigates the extent to which followers of a campaign may affect its overall influence in the Twitterverse.     

A Party of a Different Color? Race,Campaign Communication,and Party Politics

Although studies have examined the contents of party images and the impact of those images on candidate evaluations, we do not have an understanding of the conditions that lead to party image change. In this article, I examine the impact of racialized campaigns on perceptions of individuals' party images. Moreover, I explore the factors that mediate the campaigns' effects. I argue that the success of a strategy's ability to alter party images depends on the strength of the individuals' extant party images. Using the 2000 Republican National Convention as a case study, I find that party images are indeed malleable. Further, I find that race, party identification, and education mediate party image change.     

Islam’s democracy paradox: Muslims claim to like democracy, so why do they have so little?

In this brush-clearing paper, we demonstrate that there is a deficit both of democracy and of freedom in Muslim-majority countries by comparison with the rest of the world. We further demonstrate that these deficits are not fully explained by poverty or by oil but seem to have something to do with Islam itself. We further demonstrate that the democracy and freedom deficits are larger in the Islamic heartland than elsewhere in Muslim-majority countries. We show that the democracy deficit is not driven by demands for autocracy in Muslim-majority countries, and indeed, that individual Muslims value democracy more than non-Muslims. We suggest that the lack of religious freedom in Muslim-majority countries (the supreme power concept) may be a significant variable in explaining the democracy deficit.     

Toward a Better Understanding of Politics: Linking Costs, Cultures, and Institutional Rules to Budgets

Books reviewed:
Aman Khan, Cost and Optimization in Government
Ronald F. King, Budgeting Entitlements: The Politics of Food Stamps
Steven G. Koven, Public Budgeting in the United States: The Cultural and Ideological Setting     

Through a Glass Darkly: Afrocentrism,War, and World Politics

While the two dominant Eurocentric paradigms of world politics, realism and idealism, place greater emphasis on power and regime type, respectively, in their analyses of war, a recently promulgated Afrocentric paradigm of world politics suggests that cultural characteristics of states are significantly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. Drawing on these competing perspectives, I conduct a data analysis of the relationship between cultural homogeneity and interstate conflict in order to determine the extent to which Afrocentric theses on international conflict are borne out empirically. I find that cultural factors are significant correlates of interstate war as Afrocentrists suggest, although realist and idealist factors are more strongly associated with the likelihood of interstate war. In addition, the findings suggest that multiculturalism—especially ethnic diversity—is a more auspicious path for interstate peace.     

Personnel Management: Politics, Administration, and a Passion for Anonymity

Personnel management is vitally important to the maintenance and preservation of the administrative state and its democratic institutions. This reaction critically examines the personnel recommendations made by Floyd W. Reeves and Paul T. David in their study Personnel Administration in the Federal Service. It questions the degree to which there is a coherent set of political and constitutional expectations marking the progress of personnel policy that might enable us to forecast the future, both theoretically and practically. The authors highlight how and why the field should pay greater attention to the political ends that our personnel theories serve.     

From a Small to a Large Minority: Women in Scandinavian Politics

'It takes a critical mass of women, e.g. 30 percent, to make a difference in polities' This statement is common today, even among women politicians themselves. However, the theory of the importance of the relative size of the minority has not been sufficiently developed in political science. Based on the experience of women in Scandinavian politics (today being a minority of about 30 percent), the article discusses six areas for which an increase in the proportion of the minority might lead to changes in for instance the political culture, the political discourse or the reaction to women as politicians. The article suggests that the concept of a critical mass is replaced by one of critical acts , which would seem to be more relevant when studying human beings.     

Correction to: Filippo Boni,Sino-Pakistani Relations: Politics,Military and Regional Dynamics

Journal of Chinese Political Science - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-020-09722-3     

Politics,entertainment and business: a multisided model of media

We offer a model of media as a multisided platform, providing entertainment and news to viewers, commercial opportunities to advertisers, and political influence to politicians, thanks to the presence of influenceable voters among the media audience. We characterize a political economic equilibrium, determining simultaneously media choices and politicians’ electoral positions. We show that as the value of political influence increases, the media transitions from catering to commercial advertisers to selling political influence, resulting in policy choices that hurt influenceable voters.     

Afrikaner Nationalism, Electioneering and the Politics of a Volkstaat

The liberation of South Africa from the shackles of apartheid signifies the end of the last out-post of white domination in South Africa, and opened a new chapter on the search for a common South Africanism. The process of nation-building is haunted by relics of nationalist trends, one of which is Afrikaner nationalism. This article deals with certain aspects of Afrikaner nationalism which have continued into the post-apartheid era. It uses the division among Afrikaner nationalists to show the link between conservative Afrikaner nationalism, electioneering and the pursuit for a volkstaat (white homeland).