Interpreting Nationalist Texts: a post-structuralist approach

This article critically appraises the narrative of nationalist resurgence in China in the 1990s that structures much of the secondary literature on Chinese politics since Tiananmen. Adopting a post-structuralist method, Chinese texts from the 1990s are treated as discursive rather than as expressions of a common consensus, emergent ideology or political movement. This makes it possible to bring out the disparate points of view concerning the desirability of nationalism for China and to understand the strategies that are being deployed by authors within the context of everyday Chinese politics. It also reveals the significance of the absence from both the primary and the secondary texts of any mention of the advocacy of nationalism by the political leadership. When this hidden discourse is taken into account, it becomes evident that many of the texts that have been taken as expressions of a nationalist revival are either not particularly interested in nationalism or are highly sceptical concerning its possibilities for solving the problems faced by the Chinese state. Particularly significant is the way in which many of the texts locate themselves in relation to the official discourse on nationalism by appropriating its themes in order to promote and legitimate a wide range of other discourses with which it can be bound up, ranging from democracy to authoritarianism.     

Book reviews

Transborder Data Flows (Proceedings of an OECD Conference) Edited by Hans‐Peter Gassmann North Holland (Elsevier Science Publishers) 1985, US$74.00

Plastic and Electronic Money: New Payment Systems and Their Implications Patrick Frazer Woodhead Faulkner Limited 1985 £35

A User's Guide To Computer Contracting: Forms, Techniques and Strategies Davis, Allen, Bowman and Armstrong Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1985, $75

Legal Protection of Computer Programs and Data C. Millard Sweet & Maxwell/Stevens 1985, £24

Piracy of Phonograms Gillian Davies ESC Publishing Ltd. 1986. 2nd edition. £17.95.

Biotechnology and Patent Protection—An International Review F. K. Beier, R. S. Crespi and J. Straus O.E.C.D. 1985, £5

Protecting Privacy in Two‐Way Electronic Services David H. Flaherty Mansell Publishing Company 1985, £23.50

High‐Tech Espionage Jay Tuck Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd 1980, £10.95     

School Belonging,Self-Esteem,and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents: An Examination of Sex,Sexual Attraction Status,and Urbanicity

Using data from Wave II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health; Bearman, P. S., Jones, J., and Udry, J. R. http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/design.html, 1997), we conducted multivariate analyses to examine three indicators of psychosocial adjustment (school belonging, self-esteem, depressive symptoms) and their associations with sexual attraction status, sex, and urbanicity. In general, sexual minority adolescents reported lower psychological adjustment than adolescents endorsing other-sex attractions only, with sexual minority females at particular risk. Further, differential patterns of risk for sexual minority youth emerged across rural, urban, and suburban communities. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for addressing the psychosocial needs of sexual minority adolescents.     

Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving 25,200 registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies.     

Party knowledge and candidate knowledge: constituency campaigning and voting and the 1997 British General Election

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the electoral impact of constituency campaigns in British General Elections. Much is now known about the electoral consequences of local campaigns on parties’ constituency vote shares. Yet more remains to be discovered about the impacts of these local campaigns on voters’ knowledge of parties and candidates. Analysis of data from the 1997 British General Election demonstrates that the local campaign is associated with improved voter knowledge of who is standing for each party in a constituency, which is, in its turn, associated with an increased chance of voting for the party in the election, other things being equal. Campaign efforts at different scales, from the national to the local, have different impacts on voters’ knowledge.     

Voter turnout at the British General Election of 1992: Rational choice,social standing or political efficacy?

Abstract. Analyses of turnout in British general elections fall broadly into two camps: those based on constituency–level data, and those based on survey data. The former stress the importance of local context, while the latter stress personal characteristics and viewpoints. Underlying both are a range of theories purporting to explain turnout. However, to date, there has been little systematic attempt to analyse turnout in the round. In this paper, we combine survey and constituency data to study the individual and contextual correlates of turnout at the British general election and 1992. Constituency level analyses seem to confirm the importance of local context, though it declined during the 1980s. However, and contrary to analyses which employ constituency data only, while individual electors' decisions on whether or not to turn out are influenced by their personal circumstances, they are not influenced by local context.