Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification

Recently, Lewis-Beck et al. (The American Voter Revisited, 2008b) re-created The American Voter using contemporary data. Although these scholars ultimately conclude that voters today behave in ways that are consistent with the account of voting behavior presented in The American Voter, their work nonetheless highlights the importance and value of re-examining past ideas. Given that Lewis-Beck et al. have re-tested the findings of The American Voter, it is both timely and worthwhile to re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification, which is often seen as a critique of the theory of party identification presented in The American Voter, using newly available panel data. In this paper, I re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification using data from the 2000–2002–2004 NES panel study. In addition to applying Fiorina’s approach to party identification to new data, as a more robust test of Fiorina’s theory, I develop a model of party identification where changes in party identification are modeled as a function of the actual changes in retrospective political evaluations. Overall, my findings are broadly consistent with the findings from Fiorina’s original model of party identification; however, my analysis suggests that the distribution of opinions in the electorate and elite signals may be important to changes in party identification.     

The Fourth Indo-China War

Against the background of twentieth-century military conflict in Asia, the article concentrates on China’s contemporary relationships with outlying states, regions and provinces. Employing a version of Thomas Malthus’s political economy, we argue that population wars are an important, if often disguised, future of modern foreign relations. Through an examination of a various examples but specifically Tibet, Vietnam and Uyghurs in Xinjiang province, the article considers the current prospects of sinicization by demographic means. We conclude by describing ‘red capitalism’ in Asia as a combination of authoritarian states plus economicv success within the framework of a tributary Han civilization.     

Who Governs in God’s City?

After clearing away some misconceptions about the power of the religious right in Colorado Springs, this article will examine three areas, education, medical marijuana, and gay rights, where the city’s religious conservatives have tried to influence public policy. With each area their efforts have only been partially successful. While the reasons for this uneven success are often particular to each policy dispute, taken together these issues point to discernible changes in the political behavior and ambitions of the city’s religious conservatives. Most importantly, religious conservatives have become far less confrontational and have turned away, to a significant degree, from direct political action and are focusing much more on community outreach programs. The paper will conclude by discussing some of the reasons for those changes and how they might have national implications for religious and social conservatives.     

Independent Candidates in China’s Local People’s Congress Elections

In the Chinese political system, according to the constitution, the people’s congresses at the primary level are the only institution which the voters can directly elect. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightly controls the “direct elections” and takes every measure in the elections to prevent grassroots power from entering even the primary-level people’s congresses. In recent years, grassroots power has kept struggling for its legal rights in the “direct elections” held in a few localities. The conflicts between the grassroots power and the authoritarian party in the “direct elections” have become an interesting political phenomenon, a subject deserves close observation and research. This paper studies the background of the independent candidates, their motivations and behaviour in elections. The paper also examines the party’s control in the elections and thus exposes the true nature of China’s people’s congress “direct” elections. The paper argues that independent candidates can have little impacts on China’s political structure at the current stage because of the party’s tight control, but their political participation has the most democratic value, compared with the “reforms” instigated and carried out by the CCP.     

In the Eye of the Beholder? Motivated Reasoning in Disputed Elections

This study uses an experimental design to simulate the ballot counting process during a hand-recount after a disputed election. Applying psychological theories of motivated reasoning to the political process, we find that ballot counters’ party identification conditionally influences their ballot counting decisions. Party identification’s effect on motivated reasoning is greater when ballot counters are given ambiguous, versus specific, instructions for determining voter intent. This study’s findings have major implications for ballot counting procedures throughout the United States and for the use of motivated reasoning in the political science literature.     

The Tragicomedy of Celebrity

Celebrity has an age-old appeal. In the Western tradition this appeal and its characteristic motifs can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Celebrity populates the public stage with a range of larger-than-life actors who play out the human drama—for the edification and the entertainment of the audience. There is comic burlesque and there is tragedy. This article considers the example of the Tiger Woods scandal.     

The Dilemmas of China’s Political Science in the Context of the Rise of China

The rise of China has changed the global balance of power, which could also have an impact on the international development of political science scholarship. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the impact of China’s rise on the development of political science within China. This article examines how the rise of China has posed serious challenges to political studies in China. It addresses critical issues concerning the contemporary features and strategic direction of the discipline. It first analyzes three different meanings of what constitutes China’s political studies and discusses three different intellectual production models. It then highlights the dilemmas that political science faces in China, and exposes problems of and obstacles to its development, such as an unwarranted sense of pride, the bureaucratization of the scholarly community, and, critically, the absence of democracy and academic freedom. The paper examines and engages several ongoing debates on China’s political studies. In responding to the debate over whether it is desirable for Chinese political studies to move towards scientification, this paper presents four arguments for a balance between science and the humanities and outlines four strategies for achieving this balance. It also examines the debate on the localization of Chinese political studies and the doctrine of China’s uniqueness; and points out that the rise of China requires Chinese political studies to be cosmopolitan, global and universal, but the current regime is interested in reproducing the discourse of China’s uniqueness to maintain its political legitimacy.     

Taiwan’s power reconfiguration and its impact on cross-strait relations

This paper explores Taiwan’s power reconfiguration resulted from the 2000 presidential election and its implication for the perplexed cross-Strait Strait relations. It looks back at Taiwan’s party transformations on the part of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) over the past decade, discusses several important factors directly related to the victory of the DPP, and analyzes Taipei’s post-election political arrangements and conciliatory gestures toward Beijing. The paper concludes that given the political disparity between mainland China and Taiwan as well as the transitory nature of Taipei’s new government, Beijing will continue its “wait and see” policy toward Taipei, hence the chance for political dialogue between the two sides is slim in the foreseeable future. He served as President of the Association of Chinese Political Studies from 1998 to 1999. He writes on Chinese politics and cross-Taiwan Strait relations. Most recently, he co-edited Transition toward the Post-Deng China (forthcoming in 2001) and Prospects for Cross-Taiwan Strait Developments (2000). He received a Ph.D. in political science from Pennsylvania State University (1997). Gang Lin is Program Associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program. This article reflects the author’s personal viewpoints only.     

The Relevance of Hannah Arendt’s Reflections on Evil: Globalization and Rightlessness

The centenary of Hannah Arendt’s birth in 2006 has provided the catalyst for a body of literature grappling with the legacy of her thought, especially the question of its enduring political relevance. Yet this literature largely excludes from consideration a significant aspect of Arendt’s legacy, namely, her account of evil and its devastating political reality. This article contends that the neglect of Arendt’s understanding of the dynamic reality of evil unnecessarily delimits the opportunities her legacy affords to diagnose forms of evil today. In particular, I propose that Arendt’s notion of evil and her unique insight into its dynamic reality remain very much pertinent in light of a globalizing world where the conditions of extreme deprivation and exclusion have become thoroughly bound up with the structurally unequal conditions of the global political economy. The persistent global poverty knowingly reproduced in and through policies and practices of economic globalization effectively renders vast numbers of people superfluous and “rightless,” resulting in a distinctive form of political evil. I conclude that more attention should be paid to the deeper pertinence of Arendt’s concepts of evil, human superfluousness, and rightlessness for contemporary political life.     

Chinese considerations of "economic security"

This paper is a preliminary study of Chinese considerations of China’s “economic security”, a notion that gained currency in China-based Chinese scholars’ research on China’s international relations in the 1990s. Among other things, such considerations reflect Chinese scholars’ acceptance of Western Realist/Nationalist convictions about the international political economy. The paper also finds that Chinese concerns about what the international political-economic environment holds for China’s approach to national greatness through economic growth by continuing to interact with the rest of the world, while not unfounded, are more ideology-driven than fact-based. This tendency contrasts sharply with Japanese notions of “economic security,” which have greatly influenced industrial restructuring in Japan and Japan’s international economic/security policies Japan since the term came into being in the 1970s.     

The Political Ecology of Opinion in Big-Donor Neighborhoods

Major campaign donors are highly concentrated geographically. A relative handful of neighborhoods accounts for the bulk of all money contributed to political campaigns. Public opinion in these elite neighborhoods is very different from that in the country as a whole and in low-donor areas. On a number of prominent political issues, the prevailing viewpoint in high-donor neighborhoods can be characterized as cosmopolitan and libertarian, rather than populist or moralistic. Merging Federal Election Commission contribution data with three recent large-scale national surveys, we find that these opinion differences are not solely the result of big-donor areas’ high concentration of wealthy and educated individuals. Instead, these neighborhoods have a distinctive political ecology that likely reinforces and intensifies biases in opinion. Given that these locales are the origin for the lion’s share of campaign donations, they may steer the national political agenda in unrepresentative directions.     

Elite politics and the fourth generation of chinese leadership

The personnel reshuffle at the 16^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is widely regarded as the first smooth and peaceful transition of power in the Party’s history. Some China observers have even argued that China’s political succession has been institutionalized. While this paper recognizes that the Congress may provide the most obvious manifestation of the institutionalization of political succession, this does not necessarily mean that the informal nature of politics is no longer important. Instead, the paper contends that Chinese political succession continues to be dictated by the rule of man although institutionalization may have conditioned such a process. Jiang Zemin has succeeded in securing a legacy for himself with his “Three Represents” theory and in putting his own men in key positions of the Party and government. All these present challenges to Hu Jintao, Jiang’s successor. Although not new to politics, Hu would have to tread cautiously if he is to succeed in consolidating power. The authors are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the paper.     

The Struggle for Recognition: Diplomatic Competition Between China and Taiwan in Oceania

The PRC and Taiwan are competing to gain diplomatic recognition from Pacific Islands states, a number of which recognise Taiwan and serve as a barrier to its international isolation. Since much of Oceania is in Australia’s sphere of influence, this struggle has often involved Canberra. This paper focuses on the intensifying conflict–with conclusions about the local political economic situations of the countries in Oceania that are most likely to switch recognition, the dilemmas that the issue poses for Australia and its alliance with the US, and the game theory of these auctions of diplomatic recognition. The rental of recognition is analysed as a “sovereignty business” in which some Pacific Islands states engage—similar to the offshore financial centres which are prevalent in the region. Anthony van Fossen is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences in the School of Arts, Media and Culture and member of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He has written extensively about the Pacific Islands, particularly in relation to its offshore financial centres and ‘sovereignty businesses’. His most recent book is South Pacific Futures: Oceania Toward 2050 (Brisbane: Foundation for Development Cooperation, 2005), the first comprehensive survey of expert views of the future of the region.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Technical expertise and risk conflict: An institutional study of the British compulsory seat belt debate

Controversy and public conflict seem to be inevitable features of contemporary risk debates. In the face of such disputes, one common response has been to characterise disagreement as a disparity between expert analyses of ‘actual’ risk, and emotional ‘perceptions’ of hazard. This paper uses the example of the British policy debate over compulsory seat belt wear in order to argue that these characterisations are inaccurate and obstructive. Instead, an ‘institutional’ perspective on such issues is advocated - this perspective considers the effect of political and organisational factors in shaping the direction of public debate. The analysis here focuses particularly on expert disagreement over the likely effectiveness of seat belt laws - the debate over ‘risk compensation’ is reviewed both before and after the introduction of seat belt laws as an ‘experimental’ measure.     

Max weber and China’s transition under the new leadership

Some scholars have applied Max Weber’s three ideal types of authority (traditional charismatic and rational-legal) and general transition theory to China. This paper argues that the application of these Weberian concepts is faulty. Weber’s understanding of rationality is specific, a narrow reference to modern Western capitalist rationalization of action. When Weber’s account is forced upon the issues of Chinese political leadership, it simplifies the complexity of historical phenomena, and falls prey to the difficulties of universalism and dualism. Chinese political ideas and practices have developed in a distinctive cultural tradition and may not be able to be fully understood in Western terms and categories. This paper proposes an alternative tongbian interpretation of Chinese politics. His research interests focus on comparative Western and Chinese political philosophy. He has published a number of articles in English and Chinese. He has taught American Politics, International Relations, Western Political Philosophy and Theory, and team-taught ASIAN Nations: China. He is currently teaching Advanced Chinese Language at the Japan American Institute of Management Science (JAIMS) and is a Liaison of Exchange Programs with China at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.     

Two Cheers for Capitalism?

According to a popular view that I call “two cheers for capitalism,” capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous and mixed. This paper empirically investigates that view. I find that it’s wrong. Citizens in countries that became more capitalist over the last quarter century became wealthier, healthier, more educated, and politically freer. Citizens in countries that became significantly less capitalist over this period endured stagnating income, shortening life spans, smaller gains in education, and increasingly oppressive political regimes. The data unequivocally evidence capitalism’s superiority for development. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism is well deserved and three cheers are in order instead of two.     

Leadership change, legitimacy, and party transition in China

Using Max Weber’s theory of legitimacy and transition, this article suggests that the biggest challenge for China’s new leadership is to transform the Communist Party into an institutionalized ruling party. After analyzing the scenarios of democratization, legitimation, decay, or repression, resulting from the interactions between public contention and the ruling elite, this article argues that the CCP has accomplished the transition from a revolutionary to a reformist party but is now somewhere between claiming to “govern for the people” and “hanging on to power.” To become an institutionalized ruling party, the CCP needs to curtail official corruption and control its membership growth. There are, however, some serious political and personal limitations that China’s new leaders will have to overcome. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1988 and 1992 respectively. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, research fellow at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria, and a visiting senior fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. His research interests include Chinese political institutions and leadership changes, theories of international relations, Taiwan-Strait relations, and U.S.-China relations. He is the author ofParty vs. State in Post-1949 China: The Institutional Dilemma (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The author wishes to thank John Watt, Joshua Forrest and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the draft version of this article.     

René Girard and Philip Rieff on the Mystique of Transgression

An examination of the parallels and the contradictions between Rieff’s and Girard’s assessments of the political meaning of transgressive “anti-culture” for an understanding of modernity and violence.     

State versus market: Taiwan’s trade, investment and aid policies in mainland China and southeast Asia in the post-Deng period

For many years Beijing has sought to isolate Taiwan from the world community, threatening to sever relations with any country that tries to establish or strengthen relations with Taiwan. As a result, economic diplomacy has become a tool in conducting Taiwan’s international affairs. Political and economic considerations are thus intermingled in Taiwan’s pursuit of its foreign economic policy. This paper does not intend to go into a traditional debate on the conflict between the state (politics) and the market (economics) in conducting a country’s foreign economic relations. Rather, it attempts to coordinate the merits of both state and market and assumes that an understanding of their interaction is useful in examining Taiwan’s foreign economic relations in the post-Deng period. The empirical study of this paper will focus on mainland China and the Southeast Asian countries. Southeast Asia is a region where no country maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It is difficult indeed for Taiwan to develop official political ties with Southeast Asian countries because of their geographical proximity to mainland China, which tends to make them subject to pressure from Beijing. Thus, whenever Taipei conducts its economic communications (such as in foreign trade, foreign direct investment and foreign economic assistance) with mainland China and those Southeast Asian countries, political and economic factors are always taken into account by decision-makers.