Democratisation, External Exposure and State Food Distribution in The Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with a 'failed' state, requires regular financial assistance from international funds and remains exposed to external economic pressures. State food distribution in the country, however, adheres to traditional statist policies and institutions that disappeared elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1980s and 1990s. Relevant literature arguably does not anticipate this outcome. This article proposes that political institutions associated with Dominican democratisation since the late 1970s, particularly strong presidentialism, a stable, non-ideological party system and high voter turnout at elections, provide incentives for a status quo, clientelistic policy in this strategic area of social policy.     

Scaling Policy Preferences from Coded Political Texts

Scholars estimating policy positions from political texts typically code words or sentences and then build left‐right policy scales based on the relative frequencies of text units coded into different categories. Here we reexamine such scales and propose a theoretically and linguistically superior alternative based on the logarithm of odds‐ratios. We contrast this scale with the current approach of the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), showing that our proposed logit scale avoids widely acknowledged flaws in previous approaches. We validate the new scale using independent expert surveys. Using existing CMP data, we show how to estimate more distinct policy dimensions, for more years, than has been possible before, and make this dataset publicly available. Finally, we draw some conclusions about the future design of coding schemes for political texts.     

May the weak force be with you: The power of the mass media in modern politics

Abstract.  The idea that the modern mass media have a strong and malign effect on many aspects of social and political life is widely and strongly held. Television is often said to undermine democratic government popular support for leaders and institutions. In spite of all that has been written about media malaise, however, both theory and evidence suggests that the media are a comparatively weak force whose effects can be deflected, diluted and diffused by stronger forces. These include bedrocks political values associated with class, religion, age, gender and education, as well as social networks and discussions, distrust of the mass media, and personal knowledge and experience. Equally, the variables that mediate the media may also magnify its effects so that what appears to be a large media effect is, in fact, the result of an interaction between the media and other forces. This article lays out the argument of the media malaise literature that covers government and politics, then outlines the social forces that mediate the media, and finally provides some evidence to illustrate the argument that the media are generally a weak force in society.     

Soviet ideological discourse and Perestroika

Abstract. The role played by Soviet ideology during the perestroika reforms has not been fully analyzed because ideology has not been seen as a structural force influencing Soviet political life. This paper charts the effect that this neglect of ideology has had on some explanations of perestroika and seeks to redress the balance. Various ways of dealing with ideology during perestroika are examined and an alternative approach to Soviet ideology (viewing it as a discourse) is developed. This approach to Soviet ideology shows that it was a vital, but unstable, element of the Communist Party's power. The approach is then applied to the Gorbachev reforms to show how ideology played a crucial part in breaking up the power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 onwards.     

Why the 1980s Measures of Racially Polarized Voting Are Inadequate for the 1990s

In this paper, we attempt to clarify some of the confusion that surrounds the measurement of racially polarized voting. This clarification is necessary because the determination of whether or not racially polarized voting exists is often a critical component of the evidence presented in Voting Rights Act (Section 2) litigation. We first show that the correlation coefficient should never be used to measure voting polarization by relating the statistic to the individual behavior that it is supposed to be describing. We then compare the estimates of polarized voting that are provided by other commonly used measures with individual behavior in order to show that the Voting Rights disputes of the 1990s will require different and more carefully specified measures than are currently in use.