Squeezed Out? The Liberal Democrats and the 2019 General Election

The 2019 general election was a crushing disappointment for the Liberal Democrats, as Jo Swinson lost her East Dunbartonshire seat to the SNP and the party’s anti-Brexit stance failed to deliver gains from the Conservatives. Although the Liberal Democrats’ poor performance can partly be blamed on a misfiring campaign strategy, it also reflected the structural difficulties which the party faces in an increasingly polarised political environment. The polarisation of public opinion along multiple axes over the last decade—over austerity, Brexit, and attitudes to Jeremy Corbyn—has fractured the broad coalition of support which the Liberal Democrats assembled during the 1990s and 2000s. Analysis of the 2019 results suggest that the party has made some progress towards developing a new core vote, particularly among suburban Remainers in south east England, but it is not clear whether this will be large or robust enough to have a significant impact on the future of British politics.     

Hard‐Core Toughie: Donald Trump’s Negotiations for the United States Presidency

This paper examines the negotiation tactics employed by Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Drawing on data from multiple sources (interviews, debates, articles, books), our analysis begins with a brief overview of Trump’s personality and philosophy, which offers a basis for understanding his general negotiating approach. We then highlight six competitive tactics and four principles of persuasion that Trump employs, with specific examples of how he used them during the campaign with his primary negotiating counterparts – the other candidates, the Republican Party, the press corps, and the American electorate. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of his negotiating approach and preferred tactics in dealing with domestic and international issues as president of the United States.     

Is Any Publicity Good Publicity? Media Coverage,Party Institutions,and Authoritarian Power-Sharing

Existing literature identifies nonofficial media as a tool for rulers to gather information from below. We argue that such media also help identify threats among elites. Motivated by profit, partially free media tend to cover politicians who challenge implicit norms of the regime. These political elites are perceived as threats to the power-sharing status quo, which leads peers to sanction them. We test this argument with evidence from the Chinese Communist Party’s intraparty elections of alternate Central Committee members in 2012 and 2007. With Bayesian rank likelihood models, we find that candidates who appeared more frequently in various partially free media received fewer votes from the Party Congress delegates, and this pattern is robust after accounting for a series of alternative explanations. Detailed case studies also show that low-ranked candidates have more partially free media coverage because they broke party norms.     

Liberal internationalism meets third worldism: the politics of international election observation in the DRC’s post-war elections

In this article, we draw on the contradictions in, and the geopolitics of, international election observation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2006 and 2011 elections to identify and analyse the emergence of a neo-third world behaviour among African states intended to counter the excesses of Western liberal democracy promotion on the continent. We argue that the decision by African states to quickly endorse the 2011 elections and close ranks around Joseph Kabila’s government, amidst mounting international criticisms of the electoral process, should be understood in the context of a new form of third worldism that is emerging in the global South in response to the unrestrained exercise of US power.     

A pivotal role? The AFL–CIO and the 2008 presidential election

This article explores the role that organized labor played in the landmark presidential election of 2008. In particular, it explores the work of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO), which ran its biggest ever election campaign in 2008, spending upwards of $250 million. While there is a vibrant emerging literature on the election, particularly from political scientists and former reporters, labor’s role in the story has been largely overlooked. Drawing on new parts of the AFL–CIO’s papers, as well as interviews with key staffers and federation leaders, this article highlights the important – and overlooked – role that labor played in putting Barack Obama into the White House. Especially important were its extensive efforts to educate – and pressure – white members, many of whom had backed other candidates during the Democratic primaries, to support Obama. Indeed, the Washington Post asserted that union members played a ‘pivotal role’ in Obama’s victory, especially in terms of delivering the white vote. It was a conclusion largely supported by exit polls, which showed that white union members were much more likely to support Obama than whites who were not in unions. The article highlights that despite the decline in union density – by this time only about 12% of American workers belonged to unions, compared to 35% in the 1950s – the labor movement retained considerable political influence, chiefly because of reforms carried out by AFL–CIO President John J. Sweeney. While Obama was unable to fulfill many of the expectations generated by his campaign, the story of labor and the 2008 election is an important one in its own right, showing that contemporary labor could still be a powerful and constructive force.     

Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure

Today, people have ample opportunity to engage in selective exposure, the selection of information matching their beliefs. Whether this is occurring, however, is a matter of debate. While some worry that people increasingly are seeking out likeminded views, others propose that newer media provide an increased opportunity for exposure to diverse views. In returning to the concept of selective exposure, this article argues that certain topics, such as politics, are more likely to inspire selective exposure and that research should investigate habitual media exposure patterns, as opposed to single exposure decisions. This study investigates whether different media types (newspapers, political talk radio, cable news, and Internet) are more likely to inspire selective exposure. Using data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, evidence supports the idea that people’s political beliefs are related to their media exposure—a pattern that persists across media types. Over-time analyses suggest that people’s political beliefs motivate their media use patterns and that cable news audiences became increasingly politically divided over the course of the 2004 election.

Schism on the Left: the Motivations and Impact of Ralph Nader's Candidacy

In the United States there is noticeably less controversy over the third party candidacy of Ralph Nader in this year's election than there has been in the previous two. Nader was blamed by many on the left for the Democratic Party's loss of the 2000 election. He has further provoked the ire of the Democrats by claiming that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. This article will focus on addressing several of the emergent questions from the Nader candidacies, namely: is there a difference between the two parties in the United States? Did Ralph Nader cost the Democrats the election in 2000? Are citizens better off voting for the ideal candidate or settling for the best candidate who has a chance of victory?     

促进党内关系全面和谐的重要着力点

党的十六届六中全会强调,构建社会主义和谐社会,关键在党。并强调,要以党内和谐促进社会和谐,这说明党内和谐是社会和谐的前提。而要促进党内和谐,至关重要的是要从保持政令畅通、落实勤政为民、增强党务公开、保障党内选举和提升党内监督几个重要方面着力。     

心理契约破裂减少了工会参与吗 ? —— 工会主席任命方式的调节作用

在员工与企业间出现心理契约破裂时，员工通常会借助工会力量维护自身权益。本研究以 16 家 企业的 199 名员工为样本，以工会主席任命方式作为调节变量，探究了员工与企业间心理契约破裂和员工工会 参与之间的关系。研究发现：心理契约破裂显著负向影响员工工会参与；工会主席的任命方式在心理契约破裂 与员工工会参与之间起调节作用。即工会主席由企业直接任命的企业中，心理契约破裂显著负向影响员工工会 参与；在工会主席由员工投票直选的企业中，心理契约破裂与员工工会参与之间没有显著关系。本研究通过验 证不同工会主席任命方式下员工与企业间心理契约与员工工会参与之间的关系，证明了工会主席直选对工会维 权职能履行的保障作用。这对构建和谐劳资关系提供了指导。     

Vote choices of left-authoritarians: Misperceived congruence and issue salience

Often lacking parties with a corresponding profile, citizens with economically left and culturally authoritarian, or nationalist, policy orientations face a trade-off between congruence on economic and on cultural issues. How such left-authoritarian voters resolve this trade-off depends on which issues are more salient to them, previous research argues. We extend this line of research by considering the role of (mis-)perceived party positions. Using a survey in the context of the 2017 German election, we show how perceived congruence and issue importance interactively shape the left-authoritarian vote. Our findings indicate that many left-authoritarians vote for a party simply because they misperceive it to hold a congruent left-authoritarian position. In this case, issue importance matters little. Yet when voters are aware that parties match their position on only one dimension, vote choices are shaped by whether they care most about the economy or immigration. We discuss several implications.