Checking the Fact-Checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency

Which types of political ads are most likely to draw criticism from fact-checkers? Are fact-checkers consistent in their evaluations of political ads? Examining general election television ads from the 2008 U.S. presidential race, and based upon the evaluations of FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker, this study demonstrates it was the attack ads from candidates that were most likely to draw scrutiny from the fact-checkers. Most importantly, a high level of agreement between the fact-checkers indicates their success at selecting political claims that can be consistently evaluated. While political advertisers are increasingly using evidence to support their claims, what may be more critical in drawing evaluations from fact-checkers is the verifiability of a claim. The implications of consistent fact-checking on the public, political actors, journalism and democracy are discussed. With the revelation that fact-checking can be consistently practiced, localized efforts at fact-checking need encouragement, particularly as political TV ads increasingly drown out other potential sources of information for the public and increasingly are used in downballot races, local initiatives, referendums and judicial races.     

State environmental regulators: perspectives about trust with their regulatory counterparts

Although numerous studies explore the regulatory enforcement styles of regulators and the regulated community's compliance motivations, existing research does not provide adequate insight into regulatory interactions themselves. We use data from a nationwide survey of more than 1200 state environmental regulators to empirically assess the role of trust in regulatory interactions. We find statistical support of trust in these regulatory interactions and find that trust appears to be a function of cooperative behavior, information sharing, respect, perceptions of motivations, and proactive assistance seeking. These findings could support the increasing calls for a fundamental restructuring of environmental regulation in favor of a next‐generation approach to environmental policy that calls for more collaborative working relationships between regulators and their regulatory counterparts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating political party positioning over time: a proposed methodology

In this article, we propose a methodology in order to measure political positioning and constituent perception. Political leaders should be able to effectively define the distinctive characteristics of their political brand and to subsequently utilize the most appropriate mechanisms of communication to promote an accurate perception of political image in the market. The specific aim of this research is to explore interrelations between a political party's positioning in two different periods in order to discover possible discrepancies and changes over time. The official blog of a political party, containing both official communication and the people's feedback, represents a perfect place in which to observe the concepts and the values on which both the political brand identity and image are founded. Leximancer, a content analysis tool, was utilized to analyze communications between a political party leader and his or her constituents. Illustrating the methodology, the blog of Beppe Grillo, founder of the Movimento 5 Stelle is analyzed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The uneven and combined development of class forces: migration as combined development

One of the more interesting and potentially powerful developments within Marxist approaches to the field of international relations has been the recent revival of Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development (UCD). However, it appears that there have been very few attempts within this literature to specify in concrete terms what is meant by mechanisms of ‘combination’. Failing this, UCD runs the risk of falling into triviality. To this end, this article suggests that migration has historically functioned as a crucial element of combined development, contributing to the uneven incorporation of non-capitalist societies into the remit of a developing world capitalist market. As illustration, I take settler-colonial development and the Great Atlantic Migrations as my focal point, drawing out a comparative study of Argentine and Canadian wheat production in the late nineteenth century. In positing these migrations as mechanisms of combined development I suggest that such were the means by which both European capitalism developed extensively and intensively and New World societies were subjected to the ‘pressures of backwardness’, compelled to transform their own social relations of production.     

Contrasting attitudinal bases to Euroscepticism amongst the French electorate

This article examines the different attitudinal bases which potentially contribute to Euroscepticism amongst the electorates of Extreme Left-wing and Right-wing parties in France, and in particular of the Communist Party and the Front National. Controlling for other explanations of anti-European sentiment, Left–Right economic and ethnocentric attitudes are found to be strong predictors of pro-, anti- and indifferent stances on the European issue. Moreover, despite the existence of an important electoral pool on the Extreme Right, which possesses both Left-wing economic and Right-wing ethnocentric attitudinal bases to its Eurosceptic position, the nature of the economic issues on which these voters hold a Left-wing position reveals a perspective in many ways more compatible with the Extreme Right than with any Left-wing conceptualisation of economic policy. Electorally, this divergence in mass ideological demand would seem to rule out any future long-term partisan realignment around the European issue.     

The roadmap to net-zero emission: Do geopolitical risk and energy transition matter?

Global crises have heightened policy uncertainties and efforts to address global climate change. Limited evidence exists in the literature on geopolitical risk's direct and indirect roles in addressing global emissions. In this study, we examine whether geopolitical risk could impede or facilitate efforts to attain a net-zero emissions target through energy transition using panel data for 42 countries from 1990 to 2020. Various econometric techniques were applied in this study to present robust findings and reliable conclusions. Estimates from the Driscoll-Kraay, Lewbel two-stage least squares and method of moment regression techniques consistently showed that countries' geopolitical risk directly increases emissions (total greenhouse gas, carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide). At the same time, energy transition, measured with renewable energy consumption, mitigates these emissions. In addition, evidence from the partial linear functional-coefficient model technique indicates that renewable energy consumption consistently mitigates emissions when geopolitical is minimal (at a minimum and mean level). However, the role of renewable energy consumption in reducing emissions becomes weaker when geopolitical risk is heightened—thus, when geopolitical risk reaches its maximum level. We recommend that efforts to sustain renewable energy transition and maintain geopolitical stability are vital for achieving net-zero emissions and climate change mitigation.