A dynamic analysis of partisan voting: The issue salience effect of unemployment in South Korea

This paper examines the electoral effects of the salience of unemployment issue. While increasing employment volatility has spawned exciting research, evidence of how unemployment affects vote choice is inconclusive. I refine partisan voting theory by focusing on issue salience of unemployment and the dynamics of voter choice. Voters are more likely to make a transition to support left parties when they identify unemployment as the most important and salient issue. The study also examines voter heterogeneity in the link between issue salience and the propensity for transition to the left. The effect of issue salience of unemployment is more pronounced among lower income groups than their counterparts. Analysis of a transition model using the 1997 and 2002 Korean presidential election surveys finds evidence supporting my arguments.     

美国新政权与六方会谈前景探析

美国大选,执政八年的共和党政府结束了其历史使命,民主党奥巴马新政府建立.根据其上台前后的言行来看,美国奥巴马新政权的基本政策主要在于重振经济、结束伊战以及坚持反恐.在外交政策上,美国新政权将改变其前任布什政府初期的单边主义武力政策,更多地采取多边或双边的协调与合作政策.在朝鲜核问题以及六方会谈机制方面,虽然美国和朝鲜同为当事国,以及中国在其中也发挥了非常重要的作用,但是美国仍然握有相当的主动权.美国新政权的基本政策同样会延续布什政府后期利用六方会谈框架与朝鲜接触和谈判的政策,甚至会采取一些更积极的政策,因为奥巴马政权要解决其面临的内外难题,需要其盟国的协助,也需要中国等国家的协助,对朝鲜这样的国家也希望能够在国际压力下促使其和平地放弃核开发.当然,半岛无核化及防止核扩散仍然是美国的根本利益,要求朝鲜放弃核开发的目标不会有丝毫的改变,甚至从原则上来说美国新政权仍然没有承诺放弃使用武力.此外,美国新政权或者还仍然存在同中国和朝鲜之间在意识形态上的对立,但是,除非发生预料不到的突发事件,美国在朝核问题上使用武力的可能性极小,在意识形态上的某些不同也不会影响奥巴马政权务实灵活的现实主义政策.总之,美国新政权的基本政策有利于朝核问题的缓和,同样也有利于六方会谈持续发挥作用.虽然美国新政权有可能同朝鲜之间有更多的双边直接接触和谈判,但是不可能脱离六方会谈的框架,即或者两国的双边谈判在六方会谈框架范围内加以实现,或者彼此都需要六方会谈框架作为自己外交回旋的余地.作为美国新政权,虽然为了能够使朝核问题有所突破而有可能更加重视双边谈判,但考虑到同中俄的战略性关系以及同其盟国日韩的伙伴关系,也不可能弃六方会谈框架而不顾.     

Do parties respond? How electoral context influences party responsiveness

How responsive are political parties to the issue priorities of voters? While there are numerous studies that examine policy position congruence between parties and voters or government responsiveness, we know little about the extent to which parties adjust their policy priorities to the issue concerns of voters. Following saliency and issue ownership theory, we argue that political parties listen to their voters by emphasizing policy issues in their election manifestos that have been prioritized by citizens. However, in line with second-order election theory, we expect that issue responsiveness varies with the electoral context. To test our theoretical expectations, we generated a novel dataset that combines data on issue attention of political parties from the Comparative Manifesto and the Euromanifesto projects with data on policy priorities of voters from the European Election Studies, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various national election studies. We empirically test our theoretical claims based on a comprehensive analysis of 104 parties from 17 countries competing in 84 national and European elections from 1986 to 2011. Our findings have important implications for political representation in Europe.     

Assessing the Democratic Debate: How the News Media Frame Elite Policy Discourse

This article examines the way in which the news media frame public policy issues and the extent to which other political players (e.g., interest groups, politicians) influence this issue framing process. Our analysis focuses on the issue of gun control, comparing the rhetoric generated by interest groups and public officials on the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban with actual network news coverage of this legislation from 1988 to 1996. Results indicate that both sets of political players employed several interpretative issue frames and worked hard to put their preferred themes on the agenda. However, at times, the media intervened in the framing process, especially as the debate matured. Specifically, the news media (a) structured the overall tone of the gun control debate, (b) adopted a distribution of framing perspectives different from that of politicians and interest groups, and (c) packaged policy discourse more often than not in terms of the "culture of violence" theme. These findings point toward previously ignored media effects and attest to the potential role the media play in shaping public policy debates.     

海权问题与冷战后的中美关系:矛盾的认知与艰难的选择

中美国内对海权问题与中美关系的认知都存在着两种相对立的观点,在美国表现为中国海权的发展是否会导致中美矛盾的加剧乃至冲突并威胁美国的东亚安全,美国是否需要对中国加以阻遏;在中国表现为中国应该选择对美国的海洋霸权进行挑战还是承认现状并规避与美国的冲突。中国在处理中美关系中的海权问题时,力求规避与美国的海权冲突;进一步加强中美海上军事安全磋商机制,增加相互之间的了解和在安全上的相互信任;谨慎有序地推动海上力量的发展。     

从新时期六次党代会报告看中共对台政策的演变及经验

新时期六次党代会报告对台湾问题的阐述集中反映了各个时期中共对台政策的凝结和创新。通过对六次党代会报告的具体考察发现,三十年来中共在对台政策上实现了"一个中国"原则由传统表述向新内涵阐释,由突出"和平统一"的目的性到突出"两岸关系和平发展主题"的过程性,以及由"两个寄希望于"到构建"命运共同体"的三次重要转变。坚持原则性与灵活性相结合,实事求是制定各项政策;坚持目的性与过程性相结合,重视目的性,突出过程性;坚持务虚性与务实性相结合,重视务虚性,突出务实性是新时期对台政策的重要经验。     

Success and failure in electoral competition: Selective issue emphasis under incomplete issue ownership

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own – a strategy known as ‘selective emphasis’. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating ‘your’ themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be electorally beneficial and may even become counter-productive. It describes the conditions under which ‘selective emphasis’ becomes counter-productive, and applies the argument to recent discussions regarding the strategies of mainstream parties confronting the extreme right.     

Testing proximity versus directional voting using experiments

A long-running debate about how voters use issues to evaluate candidates pits the proximity theory of voting against directional theory. Using surveys, both sides of the debate have found support for their preferred theory, but disagreement remains because of differing ways of analyzing the data. Lewis and King (2000) point out that these researchers make assumptions that bias results in favor of their theory. To avoid these difficulties, our approach creates fictitious candidates with controlled positions, presents these candidates to randomly-assigned subjects, and examines the relationship between subjects’ evaluations of these candidates and their ideological beliefs as a neutral test of proximity and directional theory. Our results provide reasonably strong support for proximity theory but little for directional theory.     

阿尔及利亚卡比尔人问题探析

阿尔及利亚的卡比尔人问题,是围绕卡比尔人作为少数族群的语言与文化权利而产生的一系列政治、社会和文化问题。这一问题的产生既有历史原因,也有现实因素。法国殖民者对阿拉伯人和柏柏尔人的区分为卡比尔人问题的产生埋下伏笔。阿尔及利亚独立后,卡比利亚地区经济结构的调整和内部市场的发展促成该地区成为一个社会、经济和文化的共同体。在此背景下,政府的阿拉伯化政策引发了卡比尔人的文化、政治运动。卡比尔人问题在不同的历史时期有不同的表现形式,近年来出现了跨国化、地方化的趋势。卡比尔人问题长期悬而未决一定程度上不利于阿尔及利亚的统一和稳定。