The relative weight of character traits in political candidate evaluations: Warmth is more important than competence,leadership and integrity

Decades of research has found that voters’ electoral decisions to a significant degree are affected by character evaluations of candidates. Yet it remains unresolved which specific candidate traits voters find most important. In political science it is often argued that competence-related traits are most influential, whereas work in social psychology suggests that warmth-related traits are more influential. Here we test which character trait is the more influential in global candidate evaluations and vote choice using observational data from the ANES 1984–2008 and an original experiment conducted on a representative sample of English partisan respondents. Across the two studies we find that warmth is more influential than competence, leadership and integrity. Importantly, results hold across a wide range of alternative specifications and robustness analyses. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications of the results.     

Stepping in the same river twice: Stability amidst change in Eastern European party competition

Party competition in Eastern Europe faces a seeming paradox. On the one hand, research finds increased political volatility in these countries, while, on the other, some authors demonstrate inherent ideological stability in the region. This research note presents a new methodological approach to adjudicating between these two findings, and suggests that while political organisations come and go, the ideological structure of party competition in Eastern Europe is strikingly steady. By developing a number of different measures of the dimensional structure of party competition, the consistency of the measures across countries, as well as their relative stability within countries over time, is demonstrated. The findings speak to current developments in Eastern Europe, and have implications beyond the region. The conclusion that even volatile party systems can be underpinned by stable ideological oppositions points to two different types of party system structure: one related to parties as organisations, and the other related to parties as expressions of political divides.     

Foreign threat and political party change: Russia and changes in party manifestos

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reacted to Russian actions in terms of their emphasis on security issues. Based upon our analysis of the manifestoes from 331 parties in 36 countries we find that, generally, interstate threats have no significant effect on the military position adopted by political parties, although these effects vary by party type and by the type of threat. Russian based threats appear to be associated with the Far Left becoming more dovish (which is consistent with what would be expected by the literature) and the Far Right becoming significantly less hawkish.     

Ethno-racial identity (politics) by law: “Fraud” and “choice”

Following an introduction to the changes in how ethno-racial identity is conceptualized in the social sciences and humanities by the destabilization of categorical frameworks, the author looks at how law reacts to these discussions and paradigm shifts, and argues that legal and administrative approaches face severe linguistic and conceptual limitations by operating within a “choice” and “fraud” binary. The article then questions if the free choice of identity exists as a principle of international minority protection law, a legal field that arguably represents a global political and ethical consensus. The author makes two claims. First, according to the basic tenet of legal logic, a proper right to free choice of identity allowing people to opt out of racial, ethnic, or national (minority) communities would necessitate the freedom to opt in to the majority or to any chosen group. The second claim, however, is that international law would not actually construct an approach to opting in. Thus, the right to free choice of identity is not an autonomous, sui generis right under international law.     

Incumbency,internal processes and renomination in Indian parties

This paper analyses a critical aspect of the internal functioning of five major Indian political parties, namely the nomination of candidates for parliamentary elections, focusing on the pattern of renomination of former candidates and incumbents. The data are analysed against the literature on the structure and functioning of Indian parties, and interview material on the process of nomination in the 2009 and 2004 elections. From the perspective of a six-fold typology of centralisation of nomination processes drawn from the comparative literature, it is found that all the parties analysed are in either the second-most centralised, or even most centralised categories, and that for the three major national parties, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist Party of India (Marxist), past performance plays a role in nominations, the majority of incumbents being renominated in the post-1989 period.     

Lessons from “Around the world with Oprah”: Neoliberalism,race, and the (geo)politics of beauty

On 6 October 2004, viewers went “Around the world with Oprah” and received a rare glimpse inside the lives of 30-year-old women from 17 different countries. When Oprah turned her gaze (and that of middle-class American housewives) eastward, she highlighted South Korean women's penchart for plastic surgery. Oprah's “trip” to South Korea is emblematic of Western discourse surrounding South Korean Women's plastic surgery consumption, most of which focuses on cosmetic eyelid surgery or the sangapul procedure as it is called in South Korea. Given its widespread popularity, the sangapul procedure has come to signify South Korean women's acquiescence to not only patriarchal oppression but racial oppression as well. This essay goes beyond the psychologization of South Korean women in order to ask what such psychological musings obscure about the very political nature of beauty itself. Using “Around the world with Oprah” as a starting point, then, this essay examines beauty at the intersection of race, technology, and (geo)politics in order to show that, in an era of neoliberalism, plastic surgery is often rationalized as an investment in the self towards a more normal, if not better future. As this essay suggests, such a framing of plastic surgery is contingent on Oprah's production of neoliberal feminism based on liberal notions of choice. Given her global reach, these neoliberal feminist subjects are not produced equally, however, but are discursively constructed along a First World/Third World divide.     

专家证据的价值与我国司法鉴定制度的修改

随着科学技术的飞速发展,专家证据在诉讼中发挥着越来越重要的作用。在英美法系国家,专家证据制度在专家证人资格规定上的广泛性和选任上的自由性,使其在适用上具有灵活性和实用性的特点,其详细而完备的专家证据可采性规则,更是司法经验的积累与法官智慧的结晶。英美法系国家的专家证据制度和大陆法系的鉴定制度,在近些年的改革中呈现出共同的趋向,如启动程序的多样化、过错责任的严格化和庭审对抗的强化,这为完善我国司法鉴定制度、准确适用新刑诉法中有关专家辅助人的规定以及充分发挥专家证据的作用开启了新的思路。面对我国司法鉴定中依然相当混乱的鉴定主体问题,构建鉴定人、专家顾问和专家辅助人三位一体的司法鉴定主体格局,或许是一条比较合理可行的出路。     

中国共产党执政的社会基础拓展要素分析

拥有广泛而强大的社会基础是中国共产党完成执政使命的依靠力量,是党实现长期执政的重要前提。变动的社会背景下中国共产党要促进执政目标的达成,就必须努力赢得最广大民众的情感支撑和执政认同,持续不断地拓展和扩大社会基础。而其中的影响或制约要素包涵了多个层级和维度,它们共同交织在一起,纳入到现代政党政治运作的指标体系当中。深入分析和研究这些要素,对于中国共产党有效实现社会整合、重塑政治权威意义巨大。     

“三型”马克思主义执政党:开拓党的建设新境界

党的十八大报告中首次提出"建设学习型、服务型、创新型的马克思主义执政党",而且将这个党的建设总目标写入了新修改的党章。从党的建设总目标的历史探索轨迹和党的建设总布局的形成发展轨迹看,从对执政党建设的理论意义和现实意义看,要把中国共产党建设成为学习型、服务型、创新型的马克思主义执政党确实是一项全新的重大课题。"学习型、服务型、创新型"既是一个系统的价值整体,同时,在这个系统中,又必须凸显全心全意为人民服务的根本宗旨,紧紧围绕改进服务方式、提高服务质量来加强学习、开拓创新,惟其如此,才能真正体现马克思主义执政党作为实现、维护和发展人民群众利益的工具的本质。     

高职高专大学生价值选择的现状及其教育对策研究

根据价值观现状的调查显示,高职高专的大学生比本科生表现出更强的价值目标现实化、价值取向功利化化、对社会主义核心价值观漠视以及信仰危机的特点,面对这一现状,高职高专的大学生价值观教育,应该从社会、学校、家庭以及大学生个人等方面来寻求有效途径。