Liberal Democrat Councillors: Community Politics, Local Campaigning and the Role of the Political Party

Liberal Democrats have long displayed the success of community politics since its adoption at the Liberal Party Assembly in 1970. Community politics, however, brings with it not only electoral success but an expectation amongst voters that Liberal Democrat councillors will act in certain ways as local representatives. The article presents the results of national research conducted amongst councillors of the three main parties, and compares the attitudes of Liberal Democrat councillors to aspects of local democracy with those of their Labour and Conservative counterparts. It identifies two types of Liberal Democrat councillor and uses these to explain the attitudinal differences and similarities found with Labour and Conservative councillors.     

Hurdles and Pathways to Regulatory Innovation in Digital Political Campaigning

Targeted online ads, algorithmic analytics tools, clickbait-y social media campaigns, big data voter databases—digital technologies have become a cornerstone of contemporary political campaigns in the United Kingdom. Candidates, party campaigners, and a multitude of other registered campaigners embrace digital campaigning for democratic engagement, mobilising voters and electioneering. Yet, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it has become clear that these technologies are vulnerable to abuse and deception. Pressing issues surrounding privacy, transparency, and human rights persist, and systems of electoral law have become ill-equipped to enforce good behaviour and compliance with the law. Drawing from empirical evidence ahead of the 2019 UK general election, this article examines systemic obstacles to regulatory innovation. The inquiry provides an analysis of key policy challenges affecting elections and democracy, and develops an analytical framework pathways to regulatory innovation in the digital domain across three dimensions: (1) Institutional structures; (2) organisational processes; and (3) regulatory functions. The article puts forward practical policy recommendations to promote regulatory innovation that is tech-savvy, evidence-based and future-proof.     

Spin (and Pitch) Doctors: Campaign Strategies in Televised Political Debates

Political campaigns frequently set low expectations (using a low pitch) in televised political debates to make the later claim that their candidates have done better than expected. The limited credibility of campaign aides, coupled with the fact that perception often confirms expectations, makes this strategy psychologically problematic. In Study 1, when no post-debate information was provided, lowering expectations for a candidate led to lower ratings of performance. In Study 2, when positive feedback (a post-debate spin) was provided after a low pitch, participants did rate performance positively, but only when the spin was supplied by a credible media source. The same strategy when used by campaign strategists adversely impacted candidates, leading to lower ratings of debate performance and network coverage.     

Romania's Total War: How Political Marketing Strategies Work in a Democratization Process

Political marketing needs to consider specific factors when dealing with a democratization process such in the Romanian and Eastern European case. The emergence of democratic institutions and practices creates an amalgamated and diverse context for political marketing strategies. Different historical stages of communication, marketing, and elections practice have produced after 1989 a landscape where it is easy to confuse political marketing orientations of political parties. An investigation is carried on how political organizations have addressed marketing instruments and how the need to survive and achieve power has altered the meaning of what we call political marketing exchange.     

Self-Referencing and Political Candidate Brands: A Congruency Perspective

Although political and marketing analysts commonly describe political candidates as brands, the conceptualization of political candidates as brands within academic research and popular culture is uncommon. This paper presents empirical evidence in support of viewing candidates as such. Using data from a nationwide study that measures the self concept of Mexican voters and their perceived images of the presidential candidates in Mexico's 2006 election, the paper demonstrates that voters see themselves and each candidate as a distinct brand. Furthermore, this view of a voter's self-brand influences his or her perception of a political candidate's brand image. The academic and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

西方政治文明对我们的启示

政治文明是人们改造社会过程中所获得的积极的政治成果。中西方政治文明体系不存在优劣高低之分 ,应该相互学习和借鉴。在丰富和发展我们的社会主义政治文明的过程中 ,主要应向西方学习宪政、法治、民主和分权的精神与体制。     

国外关于经济增长的政治学研究综述

本文运用文献分析法,从政策选择与政治条件两个维度来梳理国外关于经济增长的政治学理论,并在各维度内对已有文献的观点进行分类归纳。结合文献梳理的成果,笔者提出关于经济增长的政治学研究范式的一些思考。     

Building Green: Local Political Leadership Addressing Climate Change

Municipal agreements have been instrumental in communicating commitment to addressing climate change at the local level. However, what is the practical implication of this potentially symbolic decision? This study examines the power of mayoral participation in climate change agreements in driving the proliferation of sustainable or “green” building in a city as a mechanism to reach its climate change goals. In addition, mayors can localize what is otherwise a public good by framing green buildings as having other tangible impacts on a community. We analyze the impact of political leadership on green building projects in 591 cities in 50 U.S. states, controlling for a variety of city‐ and state‐level variables. Hierarchical models indicate that mayoral leadership in climate change policy fosters green building, while state‐level predictors are not as important as city policy in creating green buildings. Our research concludes that local governments can be a very effective venue in addressing broad climate change goals.     

Central Decisions,Decentralized Solutions: Comparing the Implications of Central Cutback Policy for the Agency Level in Estonia and Latvia

Abstract

The paper investigates the implications of governmental cutback strategies related to the recent fiscal crisis at agency level in Estonia and Latvia. For this purpose, the article applies a comparative case study approach, through a purposeful selection of five agencies – three in Estonia and two in Latvia – to map the maximum possible variation of before-and-after effects of the crisis on organizational responses and individual-level coping. The selected agencies represent a range of regulatory and social policy domains directly and severely affected by the crisis through budget cuts and increased demand for services, and therefore most affected by the crisis. The study demonstrates that the budget cuts imposed by the cabinets of both countries and widely praised internationally actually left agency-level actors in an extremely difficult situation. Centrally imposed across-the-board cuts resulted in diverse public service gaps, leading to a range of hardships for the citizens, and therefore turning out to be neither equal nor fair for the target groups. The study concludes that centrally decided cutbacks shifted the burden to street-level bureaucrats, who in turn took on the role of key policy actors by ensuring the delivery of public services during the fiscal crisis.     

Beyond the Limits of Nature: A Social-ecological Perspective on Degrowth as a Political Ideology

This article offers a critical analysis of the ideological position of degrowth from the perspective of social ecology. It agrees with Giorgios Kallis' call to abolish the growth imperative that capitalism embodies today, but it also presents a critique of the conceptual underpinnings of this notion. More precisely, I argue that degrowth as an ideological platform reproduces a binary conception of society and nature, an oppositional mentality which is a key concept to hierarchical epistemology. Degrowth as a political agenda is thus prone to appropriation to authoritarian ends. In order to temper this tendency and help degrowth as a tool of analysis reach its liberatory potential, I advocate its consideration alongside a social-ecological position.     

论和谐社会视角下我国政治伦理的价值取向

在现代和谐社会视域下,我国政治伦理应定位于政治公共领域,服务于政治公共领域。我国现代政治伦理的价值取向,应定位于个人权利与公共利益的统一。     

Where you lead we will follow: a longitudinal study of strategic political communication in election campaigning

The ways in which election campaigns are planned, organized, and conducted have changed considerably during recent decades, and political parties constantly employ new ideas and practices in order to communicate as strategically and effectively as possible. The concept of strategic political communication refers to an organization's purposeful management of information and communication to achieve certain political goals. In this article, we focus on the role of the individual political party in developing election campaigning. The empirical material covers the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Swedish national election campaigns and illustrates how political parties lead and follow each other in the development of strategic political communication. By exploring party agency, this article contributes to the understanding of how ideas and practices of strategic political communication emerge and develop over time in election campaigning.     

Campaigning in an unprecedented election: issue competition in the French 2017 presidential election

Abstract

The 2017 French presidential elections featured an eventful campaign, produced astonishing results, and presented important signs of party system change. This paper analyses the main lines of divide of the demand and the supply side of electoral competition. It analyses the structure of citizens’ preferences, as well as the candidates’ strategic issue opportunities, relying on issue yield theory. To that end, it combines data from an original individual-level survey with information about the candidates’ Twitter messages. It is found that the traditional model of two-dimensional political space, characterised by an economic (left–right) and socio-cultural (integration–demarcation) dimension is largely challenged. On the supply-side, the analysis offers additional evidence for the central role played by the integration–demarcation divide, while showing that the traditional left–right conflict has not fully disappeared.     

学科视野中的历史政治学:以历史社会学、政治史、比较政治学为参照

历史政治学是中国学者提出的研究政治学之全新范式,但当然不是从零开始,而有众多可资利用之知识资源,本文探讨其与历史政治学之关系。历史政治学与历史社会学均致力于带回历史、带回国家,并共享众多方法;但后者有西方中心论偏见,奉行价值无涉原则,止于理解或解释;历史政治学则破除西方中心论,公正对待中国等非西方国家、文明丰富的政治实践,且有明确价值追求,致力于从历史中探究善治之道。历史政治学呼吁历史学再度重视政治史,并使之有政治学想象力。历史政治学可为比较政治学带入大历史视野,以矫正其以西式政治制度为标准的偏失。     

Measuring Political Brands: An Art and a Science of Mapping the Mind

The field of political brands has developed a host of approaches and explored a variety of cases over the last years. However, less attention has been devoted to brand measurement—specifically efforts to construct a measure that attempts to explain the relationship between voters and parties. Against this backdrop, this article discusses how to measure a political brand by first selecting one part of the diverse brand concept for further investigation. Next, the two existing brand measures in the literature are evaluated, and the article proposes an alternative measure that underlines a stronger connection to the immense political science literature on voters and parties. Then, the three measures are compared by empirically investigating which measure is best at explaining voters' party sympathy. Here, it is demonstrated that the alternative measure seems to be the most valid and reliable construct when it comes to explaining voters' sympathy for a particular party. Finally, the proposed alternative measure is further validated in a representative sample (N = 2251), establishing a preliminary correlation between party brand and voter sympathy.     

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.     

Collective Political Action as Civic Voluntarism: Analysing Ethnic Associations as Political Participants by Translating Individual-level Theory to the Organizational Level

This article presents and empirically evaluates an analytical experiment in which we seek to translate individual-level explanations of differences in political participation to an organizational level. Utilizing the Civic Voluntarism Model, we analyse the consequences of voluntary associations’ politically valuable ‘resources’, ‘motivation’, and ‘recruitment networks’. Using data from a survey of ethnic associations in Stockholm, Sweden, results suggest that the overall logic of how associational-level political participation is encouraged resembles corresponding mechanisms on the individual level. We conclude that both our theoretical argument and empirical findings merit further analyses of civil society actors’ political participation with the approach taken in this study.     

浅谈多元化思潮下的大学生思想政治教育

社会思潮多元化是当前大学生思想政治教育必须面对的外在环境。本文以多元化社会思潮对大学生思想影响为切入点,探讨了多元化思潮下大学生思想政治教育的应对思路。文章指出,大学生不仅仅是社会思潮被动的接受者,作为社会成员,他们也是社会思潮的传播者和创造者,思想政治教育改革要根据不同角色,采取相应的举措,确保多元化思潮下的大学生思想政治教育目标的实现。     

选举民主、政治合法性与地方治理——乡镇基层民主发展的若干命题初论

本文从中国农村基层民主发展的内在逻辑出发对基层民主发展的若干问题进行了分析,认为选举式民主是不是中国农村政治发展的方向,将取决于两个内生性变量,即:村民的民主欲求和各地面临问题的性质。文章就选举民主能否增加基层地方政权的合法性进行了分析,指出选举民主只是增强地方政府合法性的途径之一。在民主和政府治理的关系上,作者认为选举民主未必能够提高基层政府的治理水平。目前中国农村基层政改并不存在一种成功模式适合所有地方,因此,不应该以政策或法律的形式强制推行某一种模式,而应该在给定方向和原则的前提下倡导和鼓励各地自主创新,探索适合本地方的政改模式。