The Homologous Evolution of Political Communication and Civic Engagement: Good News,Bad News,and No News

We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test these expectations using two waves of data coded from the official Web sites of the U.S. House of Representatives, for the years 2006 and 2007. We observe that incumbents show considerable path dependence in their Web site technology adoptions, while the sites of the freshmen who won election in 2006 are largely independent of the Web designs of their corresponding predecessors. This independence does not mean, however, that freshmen are fully exploiting communication technology. Instead, the Web design practices of freshmen appear to be governed by the distribution of existing practices among incumbents, a process we label “distributional path dependence.” This surprising null finding suggests that members have Web-based communication practices that are governed by informal norms socially constructed among congressional offices and that the institution is slow to adapt to emerging communication technologies.     

From Contest to Content: The Impact of Public Journalism on New Zealand Election Campaign Coverage

Supporters of public journalism hope to reengage citizens with politics and overcome the shortcomings of contemporary political journalism. However, there has been little systematic study of how public journalism differs from mainstream journalism. During the 1996 general election campaign in New Zealand, the first under proportional representation, three newspapers, conscious of the challenges imposed by electoral changes, experimented with public journalism coverage. This presented an opportunity to study how coverage as a whole differed from coverage of the previous elections and what specific changes were the result of public journalism initiatives. The researchers analyzed 1,938 stories from a 12-day sample of the New Zealand general election campaign coverage in 1993 and 1996. A total of seven metropolitan and provincial papers were included. The results showed public journalism articles covered proportionally more policy issues and concentrated less on personality than conventional campaign stories. Public journalism stories also were less negative and more neutral in tone and were more inclined to be ''soft'' news, reflecting a tendency to cover issues rather than events. Public journalism articles also were less likely than conventional coverage to cover the campaign from a ''horse race'' angle. The findings provide support for the utility of public journalism in campaign reporting.     

Presidential debates as focal points for campaign arguments

Abstract

This critical analysis of the 1988 Bush‐Dukakis presidential campaign is based on the premise that political debates can provide a framework for examining the arguments and issues within a political campaign that help shape potential voters’ perceptions about each candidate's character and fitness for office. The arguments presented within the debates are examined to determine the dominant themes each candidate developed as a way of describing himself and his opponent. Analysis of news reports of subsequent campaign speeches and polling information suggests which themes were accepted by the majority of voters.     

News,Talk, Opinion,Participation: The Part Played by Conversation in Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy can be defined as a political system based on citizens' free discussion of public issues. While most scholars have discussed deliberative democracy normatively, this study attempts to test the validity of a model of deliberative democracy through examining the interrelationships among its four components: newsmedia use, political conversation, opinion formation, and political participation. Sufficient empirical evidence was found to support the hypotheses that (a) news-media use is closely associated with the frequency of political conversation in daily life both at general and issue-specific levels; (b) willingness to argue with those who have different opinions is influenced by majority perceptions and by news-media use and political talk; (c) news-media use and political conversation have positive effects on certain measures of the quality of opinions (argument quality, consideredness, and opinionation) and perhaps on opinion consistency; and (d) news-media use and political conversation are closely associated also with participatory activities, but more so with "campaigning" than "complaining."     

Elections and political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article examines attempts to use electoral politics to promote substantive political change in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 1990 elections have been a key part of virtually all negotiated agreements to end civil wars. The utility of democracy for building peace is often asserted but rarely backed with long-term commitment and resources on the ground. Bosnia since 1996 is a rare exception. There, international actors sought not only to establish a democratic political system but to use electoral democracy as a tool with which to transform the nature of politics in Bosnia in short order. This article focuses on efforts to shape the development of political parties and the party system, assesses the degree to which it has succeeded and examines the broader implications of Bosnia's experience for other state-building efforts of its kind.     

Political culture in Turkey: Connections among attitudes toward democracy,the military and Islam

Against the background of Turkey's continuing but unconsolidated democratic transition, this article examines the nature and determinants of attitudes toward democracy held by ordinary Turkish citizens. Using data from the World Values Survey conducted in Turkey in 1997, it seeks to contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with the relationship between political culture and democratization. Although this relationship has not been fully explicated, the authors share the view of those scholars who believe that the existence of democratic attitudes and values among a country's population is no less important than are democratic institutions and procedures for advancing and eventually consolidating a democratic transition. Accordingly, the study seeks to shed light on the following interrelated questions: To what extent does the Turkish population hold attitudes supportive of democracy? What are the most important determinants of popular support for democracy? What factors account for any observed variance in relevant political attitudes? What is the relationship between attitudes toward the military and attitudes toward democracy and governance? What is the relationship between personal religious attachments and attitudes toward democracy and governance?     

Democratisation in Indonesia: From Transition to Consolidation

Abstract

Despite many pessimistic expectations, the democratisation process in Indonesia has been progressing steadily over the past decade. The Indonesian political elite has crafted and stabilised a political transition mainly characterised by frequent, free and fair elections, peaceful rotations of power, effective elected officials and separation of powers, inclusive suffrage, freedom of expression, independence of the media and associational autonomy. In other words, within one decade, Indonesia has developed the main attributes of a democratic country, according to most theories of procedural democracy. However, the extent to which Indonesian democracy has been consolidated and institutionalised is another issue, which requires close examination and assessment. Does the Indonesian democracy fulfil or approximate the criteria stipulated by theorists of democratic consolidation? This article investigates the extent to which Indonesia has managed to advance its democratic transition and evaluates the prospects and challenges of democratic consolidation. In general, the article asserts that despite the persistence of a number of shortcomings, the steady progress of the Indonesian democratisation process and the consistent commitment of the principal political actors to the democratic rules of the game will likely lead to more institutionalised, policy-driven party politics and a gradual democratic consolidation in the foreseeable future.     

The Political Economy of Familial Relations: The Japanese State and Families in a Changing Political Economy

This article explores the ongoing negotiation over the boundaries between the world of political economy and families by analysing the reactions and responses of the Japanese government and feminists to changes in the political economy as well as popular patterns of family forming since the 1990s. This negotiation has occurred through the transition in the political economy brought about by globalisation and neo-liberal political reforms, and the re-calibration of family and gender roles has emerged as its primary ground. As a result, Japanese women are being required to make a hasty leap from the Fordist model of family life to a more self-steering idea of the individual. This ineluctably re-calibrates the bio-political arrangement into a more advanced mechanism, while discussion of the ‘ethics of care’ has been left relatively absent. Taking up these issues, this article discusses the implications of a changing political economy on Japanese families.     

Facilitative Mayors in Complex Environments: Why Political Will Matters

Under certain circumstances the style of leadership of mayors can be the result of their context perceptions and their sense of political autonomy and efficacy. This assessment indicates that the political action of the mayor discloses a particular style of leadership that derives from his/her political will. This article suggests an analysis of political will that intends to explain why local leaders adopt facilitative styles of leadership. In this formulation, the leadership facilitative style is a consequence of the political will to act accordingly, and this is explained by three main determinants: the leaders’ awareness of their complex and networked context, their independent sense of autonomy and their belief about their own political efficacy. Results from case studies, with extensive interviews with mayors, conducted in Portuguese municipalities, will be presented to reinforce and explore these hypotheses and to discuss the feasibility of this framework.