Indicators for economic vulnerability to drought in South Africa

This article identifies and estimates economic drought vulnerability indicators among communal farmers in South Africa, using an economic vulnerability index based on a household survey of 121 communal farmers. The results show that lack of resources, unemployment, price sensitivity, market access, the level of farm debt, output, on- and off-farm diversification, management, and financial safety nets were the main economic vulnerability variables. Farm debt and financial safety provide the bulk of the vulnerability index. The study’s findings suggest that government should reconsider priorities in the implementation of appropriate policy measures in response to drought.     

Party politics,elections and (mis-)trust in Japan

Abstract

Trust matters profoundly for many dimensions of political life. In this article we focus on political trust: how the trust or mistrust citizens have toward the political process, politicians and government affects politics. Prior research has shown that political trust influences such crucial dimensions of politics as the basic legitimacy of government, political participation, voting behavior, compliance with government, and reform orientation. In this article, we seek to answer three major questions. First, is political trust declining in Japan? Second, we are interested in exploring the determinants of trust and distrust in politics: why do people lose trust in politics? What kinds of voters lose political trust? Third, we explore the consequences: what happens when people lose trust in government and politics.     

Effects of Economic and Symbolic Threat Appeals in Right-Wing Populist Advertising on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes: The Impact of Textual and Visual Appeals

Right-wing populist parties portray immigrants as economic or symbolic threats in their political advertisements by constructing a moral divide between the “good” ordinary people and “bad” immigrants. Yet, it remains unclear how these different threat appeals contribute to the formation of anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens and what role visual elements play in producing these effects. A survey-experiment with a quota sample of 471 participants reveals that, overall, symbolic threat appeals exert stronger effects on anti-immigrant attitudes than economic ones. When presented via text alone, only symbolic—not economic—threat appeals increased anti-immigrant attitudes via the activation of heuristic processing such as the reliance on negative stereotypes or feelings of anxiety, in particular among lower-educated citizens. When visuals were present, both types of threat appeals enhanced anti-immigrant attitudes among citizens across all education levels based on heuristic processing. Additionally, high image-text congruency induced cognitive argument approval resulting in higher anti-immigrant attitudes.     

How Measurement Error in Content Analysis and Self-Reported Media Use Leads to Minimal Media Effect Findings in Linkage Analyses: A Simulation Study

In the debate on minimal media effects and their causes, methodological concerns about measurement are rarely discussed. We argue that even in state-of-the-art media-effects studies that combine measures of media messages and media use (i.e., linkage analyses), measurement error in both the media content analysis and the media use self-reports will typically lead to severely downward-biased effect estimates. We demonstrate this phenomenon using a large Monte Carlo simulation with varying parameters of the content analysis and the survey study. Results show that measurement error in the content analysis and media use variables does indeed lead to smaller effect estimates, especially when the media messages of interest are relatively rare. We discuss these findings as well as possible remedies and implications for future research.     

Internal borderlands: architectures of force and state expansion in India’s central ‘frontier’

India’s Maoist insurgency, a conflict in the geographic heartland of the country, is often portrayed as symptomatic of the underdevelopment and weak governance of the region. Rhetorically, the state has pursued a counter-insurgency strategy premised on a tandem of ‘security’ and development, while emphasising the conflict zone’s rootedness in the nation. This discourse ignores that historically the state has treated the region as a hostile ‘borderland’. This paper argues that the Indian state’s counter-insurgency is structured around a set of strategies of absorption. Drawing on James C. Scott’s examination of Zomia, as well as Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the state and space, this paper examines processes of militarised state expansion. Focusing on the construction of roads, government-controlled resettlement camps, forward operating bases and militarised schools, this paper conceptualises these particular state spaces as ‘architectures of force’: material manifestations of a larger project of highly militarised and acutely violent state-building.     

Reverse coattail effects in undemocratic elections: an analysis of Russian locomotives

This article argues that the effectiveness of the tactics ruling parties use to control the electoral arena may depend on the electoral experience of its subordinates. To substantiate this point, the work examines Russia’s “locomotives” – the practice of placing regional governors on the list of the ruling party, United Russia, during national legislative elections. It argues that electoral payoffs also came from select regions without locomotives. Given the move to appointed governors, list exclusion likely indicated gubernatorial vulnerability. As a result, governors left off United Russia’s list may have responded by seeking to demonstrate their electoral utility, and those with longer tenures were more likely to succeed in these efforts. An analysis of the 2007 Duma elections shows that United Russia’s vote share was higher in regions where long-serving governors were left off the list. Since Russia’s appointment system dramatically changed the gubernatorial corps between 2007 and 2011, the article also considers changes in the effects of list placement over time. It finds that the relationship between list exclusion and higher vote shares for United Russia disappears as governors with electoral experience were removed from office.     

Hooking Workers and Hooking Votes: Enganche,Suffrage, and Labor Market Dualism in Latin America

Labor market dualism—the segmentation of workers between formal, legally protected employment and informal, unprotected status—has long drawn attention from scholars and policymakers in Latin America. This article argues that lasting patterns of economic and political segmentation of workers arose earlier in the region's history than has previously been understood, well before the classic “incorporation” period. Late‐nineteenth‐century practices for the recruitment and retention of workers shaped Latin America's first sets of labor laws, most notably those governing union organization and individual worker job stability. Subsequently, these first laws served as important templates for development, constraining and conditioning the labor codes adopted under mass‐based politics. Using historical data drawn from Chile, Peru, and Argentina, this article shows how differing recruitment practices and variation in the extension of effective suffrage rights and electoral participation shaped early legal labor market segmentation and inequality in Latin America.     

The Challenges to Cooperation Posed by the Nexus of Terrorism and Organized Crime: Comparing the Situations Between the Andean and the Sahel Regions

The recent conflict in the Sahel area is another case where the nexus of terrorism and organized crime causes challenges to the international community. Comparing the situation with that of the Andean region brings forth the challenges faced when dealing with this type of conflict: the states’ weak presence in the remote regions, the insurgents’ ability to offer income and “security” to the people, immediate threat to international investments, unresolved political/regional issues, the marriage of convenience of insurgents/terrorists and organized crime, internal divisions of the insurgent groups and also ideologies surviving or suffering after the elimination of their leaders.