What voters want from their parties: Testing the promise-keeping assumption

How should party governments make representative democracy? Much of the democracy representation literature assumes that voters prefer parties to fulfill the promises of their election campaigns, with higher preference for promise-keeping placed on the party a voter supports. That voters agree with these assumptions, however, remains largely unclear and this is the main hypothesis of this article. Within the context of Australia, this article investigates voter preferences regarding three ideal party representative styles: promise-keeping, focus on public opinion, and seeking the common good. Furthermore, it tests whether voters prefer their party – over other parties – to keep their promises. Based on novel and innovative survey data, this study finds that, generally, voters care least about parties keeping their promises and their preferences are unaffected by their party support. These results, if confirmed in other contexts, not only challenge the primacy of promise-keeping, but also the assumed ubiquitous party effect.     

What consideration sets can teach us about electoral competition: A two-hurdle model

Consideration set models (CSMs) offer a novel way to study electoral behavior. Until now, they have been mostly studied at the micro-level of the voter's decision process. By contrast, we focus on the implications of CSMs for understanding the phenomenon of party competition. We propose a two hurdle model whereby parties compete for both consideration and selection, pursuant the consideration and choice stages of the CSM. We operationalize these hurdles in terms of a party's inclusivity—is it being considered?—and exclusivity—is it considered on its own?—and formally derive lower- and upper-bounds for the electoral fortunes of the party. We also show how consideration set data can be used to sketch the competition landscape in an election and to characterize the system-wide competitiveness of a political system. We illustrate our concepts and ideas using data from the 2010 Dutch and 2014 Swedish parliamentary elections.     

美国等西方国家对华“分化”策略的新变化及对策思考

基于政治制度和意识形态的冲突、地缘政治的竞争和战略的不信任,以美国为首的西方国家对华实施西化分化的战略图谋一刻也没有松懈。近年来,中国的快速发展迫使美国调整了对华实施分化战略的策略;同时,由于中国正处于社会转型、改革深化的关键时期,社会矛盾的增多、社会冲突的加剧为美西方的分化活动提供了诸多契机和借口。面对美国等西方国家的分化活动出现的新形式与新特点,为了维护国家的政治安全,中国不仅要在策略方面进行应对,还需要在战略层面提出适应国家整体发展的顶层设计,更为重要的是在软实力上构建一套让全世界都信服且能与西方相抗衡的价值体系。     

走出精英主义,坚持批判精神——日常生活审美化十年谈

日常生活的审美化以及审美活动日常生活化是对传统精英主义美学的强有力冲击,深刻地导致了文学艺术及整个文化领域的生产、传播、消费方式的变化.倡导拓展文艺学的对象与范围、调整文艺学的研究范式以及对于日常生活中的审美活动的关注和跨学科研究方法的运用,绝不意味着对日常生活审美化这一现象的价值认同.针对中国的消费主义和日常生活审美...     

弗朗西斯·培根的政治哲学:唯物主义与自然主义之间

作为近代哲学发端式的人物,弗朗西斯·培根的哲学背负着太多后世强加的标签。在特殊的历史情势下,培根并没有试图主动地成为一般意义上的唯物主义者,而是不自觉地将唯物主义作为方法和策略,以便发展和实践其自然主义哲学。这种不自觉的唯物主义和自然主义,最终构成了保守主义的英国启蒙政治的最初底色。系统批判一般的形而上学或建构一种科学主义的理论体系只是后世学者的想象,培根的真实意图则是确立与科学相匹配的自然主义哲学及其方法。培根试图以真正的归纳法引导和重塑经验主义,进而确立经验上升至知识的科学、合法的路径。培根不自觉地拓展科学的规范性外延,将把握自然界与人类社会之客观规律作为力量和公共福祉的源泉。培根将不断取得财富和科学技术进步的国家视为其自然主义的现实效用,但是又最终将现存政治制度的完整保存与自发变革作为这种自然主义的终极限度。     

China's Politics and Bilateral Trade Linkages

Abstract

China's position in the world economy during the past half-century provides vital information for investigating the relation between politics and trade. Although there is a substantial number of studies in this area, the current study extends the literature in at least three ways: (1) it is one of the first studies that investigates the problem of a potential sample selection bias—as a result of the fact that countries taken up in the analysis are not randomly sampled from all countries in the world; (2) it considers third-country effects that follow from the fact that China's relation with any two countries is affected by the relation between these countries themselves; and (3) it tests the impact of five political arrangements simultaneously, which is more comprehensive than any former study. By using data as to 78 of China's trade partners over the 1950–2002 period, this study provides empirical evidence for the hypotheses that the establishment of diplomatic relations, cooperation, visits of heads of states and political system similarity are associated with greater trade flows. The hypothesis that member countries of a Preferential Trading Agreement have had smaller trade flows with China, which is no member of any of these Preferential Trading Agreements, is not supported by the results.     

试析当代西方绿色政治理论的形成与影响

当代西方社会政治运动中出现了一种新兴思想流派——绿色政治理论。它随着环保运动的深入发展和绿党在西方政坛的崛起,对西方社会产生了越来越广泛的影响。它是在科学技术高度发展、地球生态环境急剧恶化、资本主义社会危机日益严重和世界和平运动深入开展的形势下产生的。这一理论对人类传统的价值理念、西方社会政治生活和政坛产生了巨大的冲击,对我国社会主义现代化建设也具有重要的借鉴意义     

Don't call me a populist! The meaning of populism for western European parties and politicians

In recent years a common understanding of the core elements of populist communication has been achieved in academia. Yet, we know less about how the term populism is used by political parties themselves, despite widespread assumptions about the use of populism as a battle term to disqualify competitors. Based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Twitter content from mainstream and populist actors in six western European countries, this study finds that populism is indeed used by mainstream parties in a pejorative way in order to label political competitors. Yet, not only populist but also mainstream competitors are labeled populist by the center parties linking a variety of different negative meanings to the term, which are often of a less demonizing nature not questioning the legitimacy of others. Populists in Italy and France refer to the term in a positive way, while Spanish and German populists rather reject the label.     

Political Finance Regimes in Southeast Asia: Introduction

ABSTRACT

The three articles in this themed collection investigate the interplay between political finance regimes and the quality of democracy in Southeast Asia. Andreas Ufen's piece on political finance in Malaysia and Singapore argues that the semi-authoritarian regimes in both states have blocked the reform of campaign and party funding regulations in order to keep their opposition in check. The article on Indonesia, authored by Marcus Mietzner, showcases the country's dysfunctional political finance system as a major hurdle toward further democratization. In their contribution on Thailand, Napisa Waitoolkiat and Paul Chambers show that weak political finance regulations have contributed significantly to the shallowness of Thai parties. Overall, the collection demonstrates that without meaningful political finance reforms, Southeast Asia's democratic stagnation is likely to persist for many years to come.