Public support for electoral reform: The role of electoral system experience

What affects public support for electoral reform? How does experience with different electoral systems affect people's willingness to support electoral reform? Given the salience of changes to election rules even when they are passed via the legislature and the increasing use of referenda as alternative mechanisms for change, these questions are critical to understanding when electoral reform will occur. I argue that experience (specifically, with an electoral system similar to that under consideration) affects public opinion by reducing uncertainty about the likely effects of reform and thus affects support for reform (although the direction of the effect depends on partisan bias). Moreover, I argue that experience is most important in the absence of strong party cues. I leverage subnational electoral system variation in the United Kingdom and find that experience does affect support for reform — negative experiences decrease support for reform. The results have implications for the possibility of electoral reform in the UK and beyond.     

Drug Policies and Drug Prevalence: The Role of Demand and Supply

Changes in drug policy within countries and variations in drug policy across countries do not show clear cut relationships with drug prevalence levels. Neither liberal nor repressive policies promote or reduce drug use. Though policy might affect supply, factors associated with demand seem to exert a greater impact. Socio-economic conditions and attitudes of the populations towards drugs and related areas might be more important than policy in determining the prevalence level of cannabis and the turnover rate to hard drug use.     

"媒体审判"、"舆论审判"检讨

任何人都不能做自己的"法官".任何法官都只能对纷争本身做出裁判,而司法是否公正,理应接受民众的评判--"媒体审判"、"舆论审判".法官判案是以法庭审理查明的"事实"为依据,以法律为准绳,而不是以媒体报道的"事实"为依据,以"舆论"为准绳."媒体审判"、"舆论审判"误导司法之说无从谈起.控制"媒体审判"、"舆论审判"的想法是危险的,实践是徒劳的.     

Economic openness, policy uncertainty, and the dynamics of government support

Does globalization affect popular support for national governments? This article contends that exposure to the world economy obscures mass–elite linkages in developed democracies. Market interdependence, I argue, sends a signal to citizens that the policymaking environment has become more complex. As a consequence, publics are less certain of how to evaluate policymaker performance when exposure to the world economy increases. Informed by research on the role of uncertainty in public evaluations, I test this proposition by modeling the volatility of aggregate government popularity as a function of economic openness in four advanced industrial democracies. Results show that globalization increases the volatility—and, hence, the uncertainty—of public assessments of government performance. The implications for the political economy of advanced capitalist democracies and for models of collective public opinion are discussed.     

Locating the Issue Public: The Multi-Dimensional Nature of Engagement with Health Care Reform

This research examines in detail the structure of the issue public for health care reform, drawing from extensive, nationally representative survey data tapping general attentiveness to news and public affairs, specific interests in health care issues, and motivations (e.g., personal health and financial conditions) to follow health care reform issues. We furthermore adopt a multi-dimensional approach to defining the contours of the issue public for health care policy, separately studying its cognitive, affective, and behavioral underpinnings. Results indicate only weak interconnections across these dimensions—measured through health care knowledge, holding strong opinions on health care issues, and participation in health-related political activities, respectively—and somewhat different structural and motivational patterns underlying each. Theoretical, conceptual and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella are Professors in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where Clarissa David, Brian Goldthorpe, and Marci McCoy Roth are doctoral students. Gathering of the data reported here was supported by grants to Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella from The National Science Foundation (Grant EIA-0306801) and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Views expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect opinions of the sponsoring agencies.     

努力推动军队政治理论研究繁荣发展

加强军队政治理论研究,是军队思想政治建设的基础性工程,对于牢固确立党的创新理论在军队建设中的指导地位、推动军队建设又快又好地发展具有重要意义。中央军委批转、总政治部制订的《关于进一步加强军队政治理论研究的意见》,是新形势下促进军队政治理论研究繁荣发展的重要举措。加强军队政治理论研究,要落实《意见》精神,坚持以马克思主义为指导,坚持把科学发展观作为加强国防和军队建设的重要指导方针,突出对重大理论和现实问题的研究;要进一步加强和改进组织领导,充分发挥部队、机关和院校各方面力量的作用,促进军队政治理论研究多出成果、多出人才。     

影像中的女性身份再塑造及女性电影大众化--论近期几部女性电影的两个转向

本文以20世纪90年代后期以及21世纪初的几部女性电影作品为研究文本,试图论述这几部女性电影的两个转向:其一是近期女性电影从性是生成的到性是流动的观念的转变及由此带来的新的身份定位倾向。其二是论述近期女性电影以小众姿态获取大众性所表现出的从先锋到媚俗的转向,从而说明这几部女性电影的相关特点。     

Party Polarization and Party Structuring of Policy Attitudes: A Comparison of Three NES Panel Studies

The conventional wisdom in the partisan change literature predicts that increasing party conflict on one issue agenda leads to a decline in party conflict on another agenda—a process called conflict displacement. We have argued that recent party politics in the United States has experienced conflict extension, with the Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate growing more polarized on cultural, racial, and social welfare issues, rather than conflict displacement. Here, we suggest that the failure of the literature to account for conflict extension results from incomplete assumptions about individual-level partisan change. The partisan change literature typically considers only issue-based change in party identification, which necessarily leads to the aggregate prediction of conflict displacement. This ignores the possibility of party-based change in issue attitudes. If party-based issue conversion does occur, the aggregate result can be conflict extension rather than conflict displacement. Our analysis uses data from the three-wave panel studies conducted by the National Election Studies in 1956, 1958, and 1960; in 1972, 1974, and 1976; and in 1992, 1994, and 1996 to assess our alternative account of individual-level partisan change. We show that when Democratic and Republican elites are polarized on an issue, and party identifiers are aware of those differences, some individuals respond by adjusting their party ties to conform to their issue positions, but others respond by adjusting their issue positions to conform to their party identification.     

Racial attitudes and belief in redeemability: Most Whites believe justice-involved Black people can change

Public belief in redeemability reduces punitiveness and increases support for policy measures such as rehabilitation, expungement, and housing and employment opportunities. Although racial attitudes are known to influence a wide range of criminal justice policy opinions, their effects on beliefs about redeemability and condemnation have not been fully explored. Using data from a 2019 YouGov survey of a national sample of White U.S. adults (N = 766), the current study estimates the effects of three distinct racial attitudes—racial resentment, racial sympathy, and White nationalism—on three measures of belief in redeemability: 1) a race-neutral measure, 2) a measure of belief in redeemability of Black offenders, and 3) a measure of condemnation of Black offenders. The results indicate that belief in redeemability is high—for offenders in general and for Black offenders. These findings are supported by a second 2022 YouGov survey of White U.S. adults (N = 1,505). Racial sympathy and White nationalism have significant effects across all three outcomes, with the positive effect of White nationalism on condemnation of Black offenders being the largest across the three models. These findings suggest that although most Whites agree that formerly incarcerated people are redeemable, racial attitudes influence these beliefs, especially for Black offenders.     

美国言论自由之民意基础实证考察

实证考察表明,美国绝大多数公民在理论上崇尚言论自由,但在实践中却并非如此。美国之所以成为世界上言论自由保障程度最高的国家,这既与美国的自由主义政治、文化、法律传统相关联,又与美国司法界、学术界对言论自由价值的日益重视以及新闻媒体的身体力行密不可分。针对现实生活中存在的某些充满道德与法律争议的言论,多数美国公民的否定性态度与司法、学术和新闻传媒领域的主流群体所秉持的宽容与开放的立场,形成了评判美国言论自由事业的两个关键性支点和衡平力量。在美国宪政框架内,美国特色之言论自由事业的快车将驶向何方,值得中外学界不断关注与研究。