Nonparticipation as Self-Censorship: Publicly Observable Political Activity in a Polarized Opinion Climate

In a polarized opinion climate, people may refrain from participating in publicly observable political activities that make them vulnerable to scrutiny and criticism by others who hold opinions that differ from their own. We took a dispositional approach to testing this claim by determining whether people who are relatively more influenced by the climate of opinion when choosing whether or not to voice an opinion, measured with the Willingness to Self-Censor scale [Hayes et al. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 17 (2005) 298], are also relatively less likely to engage in public political activities. In a poll of residents of the United States, we found that even after controlling for interest in politics, political ideology, ideological extremity, political efficacy, attention to political news, dispositional shyness, frequency of political discussion, and demographics, dispositional self-censors reported having engaged in relatively fewer public political activities over the prior 2 years compared to those less willing to censor their own opinion expression. These results are consistent with our interpretation of political participation as a social process that is governed in part by the social psychological implications of participation to the person. At a larger theoretical level, our findings connect the literature on opinion perceptions and opinion expression with research on political participation.

日本“政治大国”走向与自主防卫

进入20世纪80年代以后,作为经济强国的日本已经不再满足于“经济大国政治小国”的地位,历届内阁开始要求与经济大国地位相适应的政治大国地位。日本政府在寻求实现政治大国目标的过程中,主要选择了以军事领域作为突破口,以成为军事大国带动政治大国目标的实现。具体体现在强化日美同盟、建立和完善有事法制、保持自主、高效的自卫力量与积极参与联合国维和行动四个方面。     

浅谈保持共产党员的先进性以德治国与思想政治工作

保持共产党员的先进性,以德治国是党中央新一代领导集体对我党"两手抓,两手都要硬"战略思想的运用和发展,是对建设有中国特色社会主义规律认识的升华,对加强思想政治工作,建设有中国特色的社会主义政治和文化有着极其重要的意义.     

Toward a political economy of post-Fordist punishment

This article suggests some new lines of research in the field of the political economy of punishment and some possible new directions for a critical approach to contemporary social control strategies. The starting point is the transition from a Fordist economy to what can be defined as a post-Fordist system of production. I outline some tendencies in the actual capitalist dynamic (concerning the labour market, the production process, the relations between the workforce and capitalist power and between work and social citizenship), suggesting that a renewed political economy of social control has to deal with them. Two tendencies are assumed to be structural. On the one hand, the tendency of the capitalist system to make the production (and extraction) of surplus-value more and more independent of the effective working time (a tendency toward the reduction of human labour in the productive process). On the other hand, the tendency towards the massive introduction of new technologies: a tendency whose main consequences seem to be the intellectualisation of human labour and the decline of the classic distinction between manual and intellectual labour. I assume that these tendencies give rise to a new productive subject (the multitude), whose characters exceed the actual organisation of work and deepen the contradictions intrinsic to post-Fordist societies. Hence, an analysis of some new social control strategies follows, where I consider actuarialism as a technology for the control of these contradictions

In Principle <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> in Practice: Learning Political Tolerance in Eastern and Western Europe

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans’ limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.

Media Priming in a Multi-Party Context: A Controlled Naturalistic Study in Political Communication

This study investigates media priming effects in the context of a Summit meeting of European Union (EU) leaders. It differs in four ways from most previous non-experimental priming studies: (1) it provides survey data accompanied by a content analysis of the news, (2) it compares priming effects on evaluations of a number of political leaders, who differed in their visibility in the news, (3) it involves an issue with low salience, and (4) it studies priming effects in the context of a European Parliamentary democracy. The study involves a two-wave panel study (before and after the Summit) on a representative sample of 817 Dutch adults, and a content analysis of the newspaper and television news in the 8 weeks leading up to the Summit meeting. The study shows that media priming effects occur only for the politicians who appeared visible in the news in connection with the issue. The media priming effects were not significantly moderated by political attentiveness or by political knowledge. We also explore the aggregate level consequences of priming for the popularity of leaders, and demonstrate that, as a result of media priming, two politicians became more popular, despite having received a bad press.

后现代合作取向治疗的出场——政治辅导员职业角色冲突化解的新高度路径

政治辅导员制度在当下的中国高校的普遍化实行,造就了中国特色社会主义大学的良好政治定向.但是在这一崇高、深远意义的政治导向的背后,政治辅导员却遭遇到地位的低下、角色冲突、身份的认同的消解.中国现代大学制度的建立一个主要的前提就是政治辅导员身份认同、价值排序的良性运演,这种迫切问题亟需引起教育界、理论界的重视.后现代合作精神取向治疗的出场,为其问题的破解提供的新的路径方式.     

The alternative incumbency effect: Electing women legislators in Indonesia

Between the 1999 and 2009 elections the proportion of national female legislators in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority democracy, more than doubled. While this substantial increase may partly be explained by the recent imposition of a gender quota and placement mandate that have forced parties to increase the number of female candidates, quotas cannot fully explain the strong performance of women in the 2009 elections. First, many parties placed women higher on their lists than the laws required; second, voters appeared to over vote for women in some districts. Although incumbency's typical effect is to inhibit female electoral success by advantaging traditional (male) competitors, I argue that women benefited largely from an alternative effect: female incumbency can improve female candidate placement and electability by demonstrating female capacity and capability. Female newcomers benefited strongly from the presence of female incumbents in their own and bordering districts, thus suggesting a positive diffusion effect of female incumbency.     

The dark side of disagreement? Revisiting the effect of disagreement on political participation

Thriving democracy requires an open exchange of disagreeing viewpoints. Yet disagreement may have a dark side. Recent research claims that people who experience disagreement in their informal political discussions are less likely to vote. This paper adds to a growing group of challenges to the notion of a ‘dark side’. It addresses the conventional wisdom from both a theoretical and practical viewpoint. I argue that disagreement in itself should not depress participation. Only those atypical respondents who encounter entirely disagreeing viewpoints are less likely to vote than those who encounter completely agreeing perspectives. People with mixed networks are equally likely to vote as those who face complete agreement. This paper tests the alternative theory against the conventional wisdom by returning to the dataset that first found evidence of the ‘dark side’. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the alternative theory. As a result, this study helps to mitigate concerns about the negative effects of disagreement and supports a network-centric approach to political science.     

基于协商政治的中国参政党参政方式研究

文章阐述协商政治理论的内涵、特征和发展趋势,论述了我国政治协商理论的形成发展,参政党参政方式的演进过程,提出协商政治视角下发展和完善中国参政党参政方式应从以下路径入手:参政党政治协商职能需要在制度上进一步规范化;参政党民主监督职能需要进一步提升;参政党参政议政能力需要不断提高。