Strategic politicians,partisan roll calls,and the Tea Party: Evaluating the 2010 midterm elections

The 2010 midterm elections were politically and historically significant in several respects. This article offers a concise narrative of the congressional elections beginning with a discussion of the factors influencing the outcome of the historic election. We briefly consider established research on congressional elections and analyze the degree to which these theories apply to the specific circumstances in 2010. Throughout the article, we compare the 2010 midterms to two other recent elections, 2006 and 2008. We also examine several idiosyncratic aspects of the 2010 elections, relative to the historic midterm elections of 1994 and 2006, as well as the effects of the stimulus and healthcare reform bills and the Tea Party movement. We find strong effects for member votes on the individual roll calls, but little evidence of Tea Party influence on electoral outcomes.     

Violence against Women in Politics: Female Politicians' Experience with Political Violence in Jamaica

This exploratory study describes the experiences of female politicians with political violence in Jamaica and the effect these encounters have had on them. The findings indicate that female politicians in Jamaica are affected by political violence before, during, and after an election, and even when they are in political office. Most of the violence experienced is of a gendered nature and can be defined as violence against women in politics. This study contributes to the growing body of scholarship on violence against women in politics by presenting and discussing findings from the Anglo Caribbean, an understudied region.     

Male and female politicians on Twitter: A machine learning approach

How does the language of male and female politicians differ when they communicate directly with the public on social media? Do citizens address them differently? We apply Lasso logistic regression models to identify the linguistic features that most differentiate the language used by or addressed to male and female Spanish politicians. Male politicians use more words related to politics, sports, ideology and infrastructure, while female politicians talk about gender and social affairs. The choice of emojis varies greatly across genders. In a novel analysis of tweets written by citizens, we find evidence of gender-specific insults, and note that mentions of physical appearance and infantilising words are disproportionately found in text addressed to female politicians. The results suggest that politicians conform to gender stereotypes online and reveal ways in which citizens treat politicians differently depending on their gender.     

Should the Media Be More or Less Powerful in Politics? Individual and Contextual Explanations for Politicians and Journalists

The normative question regarding whether the media should have more or less impact on politics, as viewed by politicians and journalists, is important assuming that norms about media influences can influence behaviors. The present study is the first that combines individual and structural factors that explain political actors’ and journalists’ normative views on the media’s influence on politics. Based on a conceptualization of political communication cultures, representative micro-level survey data from more than 600 political actors and journalists within 52 German cities were combined with macro-level indicators for the political and media competition in each city. Multilevel analyses show that interactions between the actors’ characteristics and their competitive working conditions help explain their normative evaluations of the media’s influence on politics. However, individual characteristics such as actors’ role conceptions influence normative views more so than media and political competition do.     

The “Servants” of Dehradun: A Changing Relationship between Municipal Councillors and Voters in India

The “typical” municipal councillor in India is usually portrayed in the literature as a political entrepreneur in a clientelistic relationship with voters, providing privileged access to the state in return for electoral support. This article arose out of a lack of familiarity with this portrait and the municipal councillors (known locally as Parshads) of Dehradun. Ethnographic research and the co-construction of in-depth profiles with women Parshads revealed key differences in the ways that they get things done, the types of work they do and the ways that voters make demands. The term naukrani, meaning servant, is proposed to capture these dimensions of their everyday work, and to draw attention to the way Parshads are positioned in relation to an increasingly assertive electorate. It is argued that this positioning of naukrani is revelatory of a particular democratic logic in Dehradun and emergent political subjectivities, particularly among the middle class. By examining naukrani as an imposed positioning, rather than a strategic political identity, the limitations of politicians’ self-authorship are suggested. A focus on women Parshads hints at the gendered nature of this positioning and the implicit masculine bias in conventional understandings of political actors’ role in urban governance.     

The Political Quarterly, 2009 Lecture: Doing Politics Differently

A discussion of how politics is done in Britain, and how it could be done differently. It explores the relationship between culture and structure in politics, and between strong government and effective accountability. The argument is that the concentration on structures can lead to a neglect of the importance of political culture. It suggests that there are three democratic levels, and that Britain does better on one than on the others; and identifies a range of democratic issues to be tackled. It concludes by suggesting that even without major instrumental changes there are cultural changes that would make a difference to how politics is done in Britain.     

Talk like a man,walk like a woman: an advanced political communication framework for female politicians

One of the most significant developments of the past decade in the political arena has been the integration of women into senior political positions. Previously, there was a common assumption that female politicians wishing to succeed had to adopt the male communication model, both verbally and non-verbally. This study aims to examine the communication patterns of women in the political sphere. Twenty-four speeches by 12 female politicians in senior political positions from five democratic Western countries were analysed. All speeches were delivered in the respective countries’ legislatures, between 2009 and 2012. This study presents a theoretical framework that maps gender accountability structures of verbal and non-verbal communication patterns. The findings delineate an advanced communication model that indicates that female politicians’ communication consists of a combination of feminine non-verbal communication patterns and masculine verbal communicative expressions. The study expands the theoretical and analytical research on female politicians and develops a gender-communication approach to political communication.     

Fewer politicians and smaller assemblies: how party elites rationalise reducing the number of seats in a legislature – lessons from Canada

Scholars are unable to rationalise the number of elected representatives in legislative assemblies. This study offers some insights into the political arithmetic by examining the rare event of reducing seats in a legislature. It is hypothesised that a policy of cutting electoral districts occurs during a search for cost efficiencies and a burst of populism. Interviews with party elites involved with seven seat reduction events in Canadian provinces establishes that the primary reason for the policy is its symbolic value. The message of fewer politicians sets an example for belt-tightening across government that will assist the executive branch with its austerity agenda. In these situations, the final number of members of a legislature matters little to a cabinet and most legislators compared with the broader symbolism of a smaller legislative branch.