From the Balconies to the Barricades,and Back? Trajectories of Participation in Contentious Politics

Scholars have long been interested in explaining why some individuals engage in civil society through acts of protest while others do not. However, what happens after individuals are involved? Using a nationally representative panel data set that follows Americans from 1965 until 1997, I show that almost half of participants either engage in ‘individual abeyance’, moving in and out of engagement over time, or disengage. I examine the role of socio-political orientations, resources, biography or life-course factors, and group affiliation in predicting patterns of civil society participation over time. Past work suggests that persistent activists differ from those who disengage due to the formers’ particular socio-political orientations. However, I show that there are no significant differences in these orientations between those who persist and those who do not. Instead, biographical changes and engagement in political groups are the most important factors predicting persistent participation over time.     

The Incidental Pundit: Who Talks Politics with Whom,and Why?

Informal discussion plays a crucial role in democracy, yet much of its value depends on diversity. We describe two models of political discussion. The purposive model holds that people typically select discussants who are knowledgeable and politically similar to them. The incidental model suggests that people talk politics for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, as by-products of nonpolitical social processes. To adjudicate between these accounts, we draw on a unique, multisite, panel data set of whole networks, with information about many social relationships, attitudes, and demographics. This evidence permits a stronger foundation for inferences than more common egocentric methods. We find that incidental processes shape discussion networks much more powerfully than purposive ones. Respondents tended to report discussants with whom they share other relationships and characteristics, rather than based on expertise or political similarity, suggesting that stimulating discussion outside of echo chambers may be easier than previously thought.     

The Curse of Knowledge? Education,Corruption, and Politics

Political Behavior - Education has consistently been found to be positively related to political participation, electoral turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes...     

‘Back Regions’ and ‘Dark Secrets’ in Singapore: The Politics of Censorship and Liberalisation

The political transition from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong to Lee Hsien Loong has generally been interpreted as a trajectory of gradual liberalisation in Singapore. This discourse of liberalisation is encouraged by a variety of factors such as policy changes over censorship regulations, a younger and more cosmopolitan polity, the government's global city ambition and desire to turn the city-state into a creative hub. Such factors, however, often obscure the contemporary policing dynamics of the People's Action Party (PAP) state. Using Erving Goffman's concepts of the ‘back’ and ‘front’ regions, this paper will demonstrate how the PAP state operates in different social spaces and how it engages in the different politics of these spaces. Using specific cases from the theatre community, this paper argues that the discourse of liberalisation has grown because the PAP state has, in recent times, exercised its censorship powers in the ‘back regions’ of theatre, away from the media and public. Finally, it will examine recent amendments to the Films Act and the Public Order Act which clamps down on acts of civil disobedience, and show that this is consistent with what Goffman calls ‘dark secrets’—that is, facts that are incompatible with an individual's or institution's public image.     

Responsive and Responsible? The Role of Parties in Twenty-First Century Politics

This article focuses on a particular aspect dear to theories of democracy in general and theories of representation in particular: the tension between responsiveness and responsibility affecting political parties in modern, liberal democracies. In doing so, it engages with Peter Mair’s intellectual passion for this topic, which he developed over the years and intensively worked on until his premature death in 2011. He argued that this tension became ever more apparent, putting the very functioning and legitimacy of democratic government under great pressure. This contribution goes back in time, to the very beginning of the modern state, and argues that already the nascent parties and party systems were affected by the tension between responsiveness and responsibility. It then offers a synopsis, organised in a series of ‘pictures’ or ‘frames’ of the historical parcours along which this tension has impacted on the development of political parties. The article also presents and summarises the collective effort undertaken by a number of scholars, coming together to honour Peter Mair’s work, to shed further theoretical and empirical light on this fundamental tension.     

The Push and Pull of Ministerial Resignations in Germany, 1969–2005

When and why are cabinet ministers forced out of office? We argue that ministerial resignations cannot be understood as mechanistic consequences of serious personal or departmental errors as the classical responsibility hypothesis implies. Rather, they follow a systematic political logic. Cabinet ministers have to resign whenever the prime minister perceives the political costs of a minister staying in office to be higher than the benefits of keeping the status quo. We test this argument with resignation events in Germany in the period 1969 to 2005. Based on detailed data collection, we find 111 resignation events, i.e. serious public discussions about a cabinet minister's future, 14 of which ended in resignation. These data are analysed employing statistical as well as Qualitative Comparative Analysis based on Boolean algebra to detect patterns of ministerial resignations.     

Who Sets Social Policy in Metropolis? Economic Positioning and Social Reform in Singapore*

Changes in social policy in Singapore reflect not only changing sociopolitical realities and popular attitudes, but also the island state's concerted effort to craft itself as a transnational hub, center for international business, and home-away-from-home for the skilled, moneyed cosmopolitans who drive the contemporary global political economy. Shifts in the de jure and de facto treatment of gays and lesbians provide a stark demonstration of these dynamics. This paper examines why the Singapore government has taken steps toward greater official tolerance of gays and lesbians, despite potential backlash and previous statements about Asian exceptionalism. It also considers how far the transnational environment and forces of globalization are likely to go in diminishing states' sovereignty in setting social policy—and how conversely empowering this diminution may be to certain (but not all) marginalized groups, who may find their appeals to transnational discourses, networks, and less culturally-relative identities increasingly validated as a result.     

The politics of scarcity: Social welfare and health care cutbacks in Finland, 1991–1995

This article analyses cutbacks in Finnish social and health care programmes. Eight hypotheses were formulated and then tested with empirical cutback data from 1991–95. The analysis showed that strictly administrative programmes and those focused on marginal groups were more likely to be cut more than other programs. These results partially endorse to the ‘vote‐maximising politician’ and the ‘blame‐avoidance’ hypotheses. Political decision‐makers try to distribute the cuts so that harm to the vast majority of voters is minimised. In addition to this, it seems to be easier for politicians to pass the blame for unpleasant cuts to others. The empirical analysis did not corroborate the ‘bureaucratic politics’ theory according to which bureaucrats are in such an important position in the budgetary process that they can protect themselves from cuts. The analysis showed that the administration was hit by cuts significantly harder than other programmes, nor was the impact of powerful interest groups significant in the analysis.     

Who Engages in the Coproduction of Local Public Services and Why? The Case of Atlanta,Georgia

With the resurgent interest in coproduction, questions arise around who joins with government in coproducing services and why. This article reports an exploratory study of these questions using data from Atlanta, Georgia. To guide the research, the article first proposes a set of hypotheses on involvement in coproduction based on theories of political participation, where psychological motivations and social factors dominate, and citizen‐initiated contacting, where perceived needs for public services are usually primary. The hypotheses are tested using survey data on the engagement of 797 neighborhood organization participants in various forms of local coproduction in Atlanta. The findings provide some support for both theories along with evidence for significant idiosyncratic variations suggested by neither theory. A concluding section considers implications of the findings for future research and for public management.     

Who moves? Elite and mass-level depolarization in Britain, 1987–2001

Over the past two decades the British Labour and Conservative parties have depolarized on economic and social welfare policy, at both the elite and mass levels. We ask the question: Does mass-level depolarization in Britain extend throughout the electorate, or is it confined primarily to the stratum of affluent, educated, and politically engaged citizens? We report longitudinal analyses of British Election Study respondents' policy beliefs and partisan loyalties over the period 1987–2001, and find that depolarization extends across all subgroups in the electorate, as do perceptions of elite depolarization. These effects are (moderately) more pronounced among the electoral subgroups of highly educated, affluent, and politically informed citizens. The findings have important implications for elite representation of voters' policy preferences, and for differences in representation patterns between Britain and the United States.     

Politics,economics and party popularity in Britain, 1979–83

Analysts of party popularity frequently have emphasized macroeconomic conditions at the expense of political events. The wisdom of doing so is challenged by time-series analyses of British party popularity between the 1979 and 1983 elections. Some of the significant political interventions modeled were part of ‘usual’ politics, that is, by-elections, intraparty disputes, and public reactions to party leaders, whereas others were ‘unusual’, that is, engagement and victory in a foreign war, and the emergence of a new party. Analyses also show that inflation and unemployment had significant effects, but, taken together, they were not in accord with the dominant ‘reward-punishment’ model of party support. Rather, they conformed to an ‘issue-priority’ model which postulates that the impact of macroeconomic conditions depends upon how the electorate perceives the priorities of competing parties. Future expectations as well as evaluations of past performance govern the political economy of party popularity.     

Nicholas R. Lardy,The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The Changing Relationship Between Housing and Inequality, 1980–2010

Inequality in both income and wealth has grown rapidly in the United States since the 1970s. Over the same period, homeownership rates increased in step with expansionist government policies and the development of subprime and other exotic loan products, and housing affordability challenges emerged as the most prevalent housing problem for owners and renters alike. The subprime lending and foreclosure crises of the 2000s stretched households financially, threatening the traditional economic benefits of homeownership, bringing into stark relief the ways in which housing and inequality mutually influence one another, and implicating homeownership, housing affordability, and subprime lending in the widening gap between the rich and the poor. This article examines the changing roles of homeownership, housing affordability, and subprime lending in contemporary U.S. inequality by, first, describing trends in county inequality and housing characteristics and, second, modeling inequality as a function of the previous decade's housing characteristics over the period of 1980–2010. We build upon past models of county inequality by more explicitly considering causal order, place characteristics, and state and regional fixed effects. The results confirm that homeownership, affordability, and subprime lending not only reflect existing inequalities but also perpetuate those inequalities over time. Homeownership promotes equality, affordability problems undermine it, and subprime lending has the potential to ameliorate inequality in certain contexts, but these effects shift significantly over time, particularly as a result of widespread foreclosures and economic recession. Our analysis establishes the importance of housing in explaining contemporary inequality, highlights how place characteristics and causal ordering may improve county inequality models, and provides a foundation for future studies examining inequality in light of the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis.