Frozen political liberalization in Jordan: The consequences for democracy

Prompted by serious economic difficulties, in 1989 the Jordanian government launched a series of political liberalization measures aimed at rejuvenating the country's parliament and party politics, and restoring freedom to the media. Despite much initial enthusiasm, the liberalization process has become frozen and there have been few substantive moves toward a meaningful transition to democracy. Two developments have combined to result in this democratization freeze. One is the reluctance of the state to give up many of its powers in relation to the forces of civil society. A second is the inability of professional associations and the emerging parliamentary opposition bloc to formulate and institute viable links within themselves and with other social actors in an attempt to pressure the monarchy for more political concessions. The hybrid, semi‐democratic, absolutist monarchy that has emerged in the process has enhanced its popular legitimacy by adopting certain democratic trappings, which, in the short run at least, appear detrimental to a more meaningful transition to democratic rule.     

Media Matter: How Newspapers and Television News Cover Campaigns and Influence Voters

The conventional wisdom in political communications research is that the media play a dominant role in defining the agenda of elections. In Bernard Cohen's words, the media do not tell us what to think, but they tell us what to think about. The present article challenges this conclusion. We present data on media coverage of the 1992 presidential election from the first nationally representative sample of American newspapers and compare these to the issue interests of the American public. We conclude that past claims that the media control the agenda-setting process have been overstated. Candidates messages are well represented in press coverage of the campaign, and coverage is even independent of a newspaper's editorial endorsement. We argue that agenda setting is a transaction process in which elites, the media, and the public converge to a common set of salient issues that define a campaign.     

Japanese diplomacy during the Cambodian peace process and Japan's post-Cold War role in Southeast Asia: the legacy of the Fukuda Doctrine, 1989–1993

Japan's role during the Cambodian peace process after 1989 is often considered a successful case of post-Second World War Japanese diplomacy. In contrast to claims in the existing literature that Japan began to consider and initiated its involvement in the settlement only beginning in the late 1980s, this article demonstrates that Tokyo's role built upon a diplomatic platform that the Japanese had constructed through peace efforts since the Cambodian conflict erupted in 1979. The policy framework, objectives and initiatives of Japan's Cambodia diplomacy during the peace process represented the culmination of a ten-year diplomatic endeavour. Ultimately, Japan's involvement in the Cambodian settlement, guided by its Southeast Asia strategy of promoting coexistence and cooperation between ASEAN and Indochina, legitimated and favoured Japan's attempts to expand its post-Cold War role in regional political and security affairs.     

Questioning the media and democracy relationship: the case of South Africa

This article addresses normative ideas around the role of journalism and the news media's links to the democratic process in South Africa and many other post-colonial societies in the Global South. In particular, the article addresses questions around the news media's role as the Fourth Estate and its claims to public representation, as well as the role that new media and social media in particular play in the media-politics nexus and in the strengthening of democracy (in its many guises). The article assesses the contextual factors that need to be considered in the analysis of media development and the roles and functions ascribed to the news media from within the context of the post-colony and young democracies in the Global South.     

The National Press and Voting Turnout: British General Elections of 1992 and 1997

Britain is a good place to test hypotheses about the impact of the mass media on political attitudes and behavior, and this article uses the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the impact of the national daily press on turnout in the general elections of 1992 and 1997. The evidence does not support the hypothesis that reading a newspaper regularly helps to mobilize people on election day, but it also does not support the claim that the daily press--even the notorious British tabloid press--helps to induces political apathy. On the other hand, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that those whose political attitudes and party identification are reinforced by the paper they read regularly are significantly more likely to vote than those whose attitudes and ID are cross pressured by the paper they read. As predicted, this newspaper effect is statistically significant but not large. The newspaper effect is larger in the close-fought election of 1992 than in the landslide Labour victory in 1997. And it is larger for the "Labour reinforced" than the "Conservative reinforced." The article concludes that the British national press has a statistically significant effect on political behavior in the form of turnout in British elections, especially when election results are close. This, in turn, suggests that the extent to which the Conservative press dominated daily circulation in Britain during 1945-1992, may have helped the Conservative party win elections.     

Setting the tabloid agenda: What two Afrikaans-language tabloids offer their readers

Abstract

South African tabloids generally thrive while mainstream newspapers struggle to compete with the current front-runners, Afrikaans-language tabloid Son and the English-language Daily Sun. However, not all South African tabloids are success stories: the Afrikaans-language tabloid Sondag has struggled since its inception, in particular prior to Ingo Capraro's takeover in 2009. This article consequently aims to establish why Kaapse Son and Sondag, two Afrikaans-language tabloids from the same media stable, have been received so differently. Why has Son hit the mark so impressively and why has Sondag been unable to succeed in terms of circulation and readership? In an attempt to answer these questions, this article explores the content and presentation of these two tabloids in the period just before Capraro took over the editorship in an attempt to save the newspaper from its dwindling circulation, i.e. the period in which Willem Pretorius was editor of Sondag. This comparative content analysis of the newspapers is conducted against a background of the nature of tabloid newspapers in South Africa, and within the framework of the agenda-setting theory. The background is explored by means of a literature review and conversations with editors from both newspapers. The analysis shows that Son has a strong community focus and provides its audience with relevant and up-to-date information they can apply to their everyday lives. In comparison, Sondag (under Pretorius’ editorship) resembled a supermarket tabloid, with a focus on celebrities. It is suggested that, in order to survive, an Afrikaans-language tabloid should provide local, community-focused stories that pertain to the everyday lives of its readers.     

Restaging the 1989 revolution: the Romanian New Wave

Almost 20 years after the 1989 Romanian revolution, the subject is experiencing a powerful comeback in a number of cinematic reflections that are at the forefront of the so-called Romanian New Wave, including Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest, Radu Muntean's The paper will be blue and Catalin Mitulescu's How I spent the end of the world. This article seeks to establish some of the contributions that the New Wave is making to the reconstruction of the 1989 revolutionary moment, but also, and more importantly, to the renegotiation of Romania's present role in the local and global imaginary. The article offers a particular reading of these films as inspired by Walter Benjamin's writings on history and film, a reading that seeks to understand the careful temporal and spatial renegotiation of the revolutionary moment of December 1989, the key role that the technology of film has played throughout the course of the Romanian revolution and its aftermath, as well as the critical importance that the revolutionary moment continues to have for the way in which Romania imagines itself and is seen from abroad.     

Unfinished business: the Catholic Church,communism, and democratization

Although history has shown us that the church plays a role in the political liberalization of non-democratic countries, the nature of the church's role and how it participates in politics has yet to be fully revealed. By revisiting the Polish Church's historic role in the collapse of communism, I argue that we have overestimated the church's effect on political liberalization in that case, which has led us to neglect or be prematurely disappointed in its role in the remaining communist countries such as in Cuba. Drawing from the Polish case, I conclude that the church's moral, self-limiting, and transnational character needs to be recognized and incorporated into a general theory of democratization. It is this aspect of the church that has helped it to remain active within remaining communist societies, and provide the moral support that is an integral part of political liberalization processes.     

Rand Daily Mail: die dood in perspektief

SUMMARY

The closure of the Rand Daily Mail on April 30, 1985 focused the attention of South Africans on the state of the South African press. This (mainly white) press is examined in the article. It is found that if one uses Merill & Lowenstein's EPS curve of stages of media development in South Africa, the white press is already in the Modern phase, with saturated mass publications, decreasing readership of the mass press and an increasing commitment to specialization and diversification. The black publications are in the Transitional phase, moving from the Elite phase to the Popular phase, with a great potential for mass publications due mainly to increasing literacy and rising levels of income. Readership among Blacks has increased by some 250 per cent between 1962 and 1977. Conclusions drawn from these findings seem to indicate that the Rand Daily Mail had not taken adequate account of the realities of the media market and had positioned itself in a no-man's-land between a sophisticated white market and a developing black one. It had proved itself second best against both its main white and black rivals, namely Citizen and Sowetan. It is recommended that, due to the press's economic difficulties and the need for a diversity of views in a reforming constitutional system on the road to greater democracy, government subsidization of the press be considered seriously as an option for the future.     

Contradictions between economic liberalization and democratization: The case of South Korea

This article examines the relationships between economic liberalization and democratization in South Korea. The two processes are often correlated, but in Korea liberalization has been problematic for democratization. Domestic liberalization initially expanded space for labour organizations, but after they appeared to become too active, the process was so managed as to block political activity. This also resulted from pressures brought on by international liberalization, which made competitive wage costs increasingly important and raised the prospect of disinvestment by Korean and foreign firms. Liberalization has not reduced the power of business (the chaebol). Deregulation and privatization have encouraged a transfer of public economic power to the private sector. The increased political role of business is not necessarily beneficial, and the chaebol's economic power represents a threat to democratization in a variety of ways. In previous decades state power rested on economic controls; and the main impetus for democratization has come from the expansion of civil society through economic development, rather than from economic liberalization. State intervention in the economy may continue to be required to protect the position of certain civil society groups and to control business power, but domestic and international liberalization have challenged both of these functions and may increasingly curtail them in the future. Thus, close examination of the specifics of liberalization in South Korea show no automatic positive correlation can be made between economic and political reform without risking either reductionism or reification.     

The US Congress and the politics of Afghanistan: an analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees during George W Bush's second term

This article considers the role of United States Congress in the Afghanistan conflict—and notably that of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees—from 2005 to 2009. Both of these committees had some legal oversight of the Afghan War, especially with regard to funding. During the first half of this period the Republicans had a majority while in the second half the Democrats took control. This led to differences in approach and method, which are here examined. Certainly, congressional committees operate generally in the open, which gives them a unique influence in framing issues in the press and thus before the public. Furthermore, five key members of the Obama administration belonged to these committees, attended their hearings and had much of their opinion shaped by their activities. An in-depth analysis of them during Bush's second term can provide us with valuable insights into the Obama administration's later policy decisions.     

My Country,My Country,directed by Laura Poitras,produced by Jocelyn Glatzer and Laura Poitras Iraq in Fragments,directed by James Longley,produced by John Sinno and James Longley

A new form of “entertaining news,” accessed by most through television, has become a privileged domain of politics for the first time in countries “beyond the West” in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. What are the political consequences of this development: What is the relationship between media and politics in these regions? We answer these questions through a case study of India, the world's largest democracy, where two decades of media expansion and liberalization have yielded the largest number of commercial television news outlets in the world. We show why prevailing theories of media privatization and commercialization cannot account for the distinctive architecture of media systems in places like India. In this article, we first provide an overview of the historical and contemporary dynamics of media liberalization in India and the challenges that this poses to existing models and typologies of the media-politics relationship. We then present a new typology of media systems and a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between television news and democratic politics in India, and by extension in the global South. In the concluding section, we reflect on the broader comparative insights of the essay and discuss directions for future research. We believe that our alternative comparative framework captures more meaningfully the diversity and complexity of emerging media systems and their relationships to democratic practice in these regions.     

Can oil-reliant countries democratize? An assessment of the role of civil society in Algeria

A cursory look around the world shows that few oil-reliant countries can be categorized as democracies, particularly those in the Middle East. In fact, many studies have suggested that oil wealth hinders democratization. The recent “Arab Spring” and subsequent political instability in oil-producing states such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria gives rise to questions regarding the prospects for democracy in these types of countries. This article provides an analysis of the possible role that civil society may play in democratization in oil-reliant states by looking at the case of Algeria. I argue that the seemingly meaningless and artificial acts of “liberalization” initiated by the Algerian government in the late 1980s, which initially allowed civic associations to form, have provided an opening for some civic associations to organize and oppose the government. This process of liberalization, regardless of how empty it may have seemed at first, has “opened floodgates” that now cannot be closed. Thus, the recent protests in Algeria, and continued opposition to the government, can be seen as directly facilitated by the government's prior liberalization and opening of the system to civic associations.     

Modern Mass Media and Traditional Communication in Afghanistan

This article explores the bipolar structure of communication in Afghanistan, where the latest technological advancements in media coexist with a complex system of traditional communication. After 22 years of civil war and the destruction of most modern media facilities, Afghanistan's traditional channels of communication have become even more significant. This article examines the history of the press in Afghan politics and society and asks what roles modern and traditional communication systems and values may play in the future.     

The Agenda-Setting Impact of Major Presidential TV Addresses

New media dramatically increase citizens' access to information and decrease governments' ability to control the flow of communication. Although human rights nongovernmental organizations have advocated that access to independent news media will improve government respect for human rights, recent empirical studies have shown this is not always the case. We posit that media independence and the presence or absence of democratic characteristics, in particular political competition, have substantial effects on government repression because these factors determine the degree to which the government is vulnerable to public pressures. The model developed here includes three equations that encompass the impact of interaction between and among the news media, citizens, and government. The first equation specifies the influences on the news media's decision whether or not to perform a “watchdog” role regarding government repression. The second equation represents public reaction to the news media's coverage of government repression (i.e., protest). Here access to news media via traditional and new media is an important factor. The third equation represents government repression. Solutions to the system of equations are derived for four scenarios (a) Democracy and media independence are both present, (b) democracy is present but media independence is absent, (c) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is present, and (d) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is absent. We then consider interesting properties of the anticipated behavior from the government, media, and general public through case illustrations for the Netherlands and Myanmar/Burma.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: two additional case illustrations (Tanzania and Brazil).]     

Privacy,the news media,and the courts

Abstract

This article is concerned with the conflict between the news media's position that the public has a ‘'right to know'’ under the free press provision of the First Amendment and the right to privacy under the tort law. The constitutional issue is raised whenever the media print or broadcast accurate, but often embarrassing, facts about a person, or whenever personal information is publicized which an individual prefers not to share with the general public.

In unwanted publicity and public disclosure cases, the courts have accorded greater weight to the defendant defenses of consent, news‐worthiness, and media privilege than to the plaintiff's invasion of privacy claim. To remedy this inequity, a two‐tier judicial model is proposed that would have courts balance the two competing interests in such a manner as to enhance individual privacy without diminishing the informational function of the news media.     

'His Finest Hour?' George Bush and the Diplomacy of German Unification

This article examines the diplomatic record of the Bush administration with particular reference to its role in German unification. Based upon memoir material and new sources made available since 1989, it argues that the administration in general - and George Bush in particular - played an indispensable role during these critical years. First, Bush's unequivocal support for unification drove the process forward and reinforced Germany's commitment to NATO. By reassuring countries like France, the US also managed to compel reluctant Europeans to accept unification. Finally, by working closely with Gorbachev and Shevarnadze, Washington was also able to persuade the USSR to accept what many had once thought quite unacceptable to the Russians: a united Germany within NATO. Given the part that the President played in all this, the authors suggest that the generally accepted view of Bush as a politician without purpose or plan has to be questioned. The 'statesman without a vision' who emerges from this reading of events is seen as having been a more forceful and effective diplomatic leader than some of his critics have been prepared to concede.     

Economic Planning as an Integrative Mechanism in India: Changes and Challenges After Economic Liberalization

Besides its principal purpose to plan for economic development, India's Planning Commission has also served as an influential integrative mechanism for the economy and nation, both spatially and socially. Despite economic liberalization, the state found the commission to be an eminently useful public policy instrument and has continued to retain it. The commission has proven to be a flexible and adaptable organization, receptive to new ideas. Since liberalization, its approach to planning has changed (a) from comprehensive planning to indicative planning; (b) from planning for state hegemony to adapting to private sector expansion; (c) from planning for a producer state to planning for a quasi-welfare state; and (d) from centralization to coordination in planning. Challenges abound, however. The commission's key role in economic integration both over the short and long run, particularly as a link between the center and states, nonetheless makes it worthy of strengthening, not weakening.     

Domestic Opposition and the Timing of Democratic Transitions after War

A substantial literature urges delaying elections and liberalization in postwar societies. There is little work, however, on when and how international missions that intend to delay elections and the transfer of sovereignty, such as those in Kosovo and Iraq, are able to do so. To fill this gap, I propose a theory that identifies conditions under which two forms of domestic opposition—elite objections and mass demonstrations—can at times force the international community to adopt an earlier transition plan. Following the predictions of the theory, I show that international occupations in Kosovo and Iraq were only able to implement their preferred transition plans when conditions were unfavorable for domestic opposition: when the absence of centralized authority within key groups makes an elite boycott unlikely, and when international policy does not threaten a major group's nationalist goals, making the emergence of widespread mass demonstrations doubtful. The implication for policy is that attempting to delay elections and liberalization is only advisable when domestic opposition is unlikely to be effective.