Ambivalence About Equality in the United States or, Did Tocqueville Get it Wrong and Why Does that Matter?

Alexis de Tocqueville believed that “democratic peoples’... passion for equality is ardent, insatiable, eternal, and invincible.” This article examines whether and under what conditions residents of the United States demonstrate such a commitment to equality. I show that at many points in history, Americans have indeed chosen to move toward greater justice and less oppression; however, there are clear limits to their passion for equality. White Americans endorse less social, political, and economic equality than do African Americans, but even the latter often resist equality for groups that they perceive to be threats, or for behaviors that threaten strong social or moral norms. The article discusses implications for political activists of these patterns of support for and resistance to greater equality, and suggests strategies for overcoming oppression and promoting justice.     

新闻从业者的媒介角色认知--兼论舆论监督的记者主体作用

调查表明,在上海这个国内经济活动最为活跃、舆论监督却乏善可陈的城市,"以天下为己任"的道德传统,依然是今天的新闻从业者个人价值体系中的重要底色。对于大多数新闻从业者来说,选择从事新闻工作,更多地是出于对大众传播媒介所能够担负起重要的社会道义责任的向往,同时也出于自身的兴趣爱好。至于对名利的追逐,显然并不是选择新闻业的首要因素。这一点,正是记者作为正在走向专业化的个体,在新闻媒介实行舆论监督当中发挥作用的重要思想基础。     

A problem with empirical studies of party policy shifts: Alternative measures of party shifts are uncorrelated

Many recent cross-national studies analyse the causes and electoral consequences of party policy shifts, using party position measures derived from election manifestos, expert surveys or voter surveys. However few studies validate their findings by analysing multiple measures of party policy shifts. In this article, data on European parties’ position shifts on both European integration and left-right ideology is analysed, showing that this is problematic because, while alternative measures of party policy positions correlate strongly in cross-sectional analyses, alternative measures of parties’ policy shifts are essentially uncorrelated in longitudinal analyses. Suggestions are offered on how to address this problem.     

Family Formation in the Baltic Countries: A Transformation in the Legacy of state socialism

This article examines the transformation of nuptiality patterns in the Baltic countries since the late 1960s, in the context of long-term trends. The aim of the study is to compare the entry into first conjugal union in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and analyze the position of the Baltic countries in a broader European perspective. The analyses employ microdata from national surveys conducted in the framework of the European Family and Fertility Surveys program. Our main results on the timing and mode of union formation show that in Estonia and Latvia the shift from direct marriage to cohabitation started well before the fall of the state socialist regime, and followed a trajectory close to Scandinavian countries. In Lithuania, on the other hand, the change in the pattern of union formation has been much slower. The article discusses the factors underlying the observed similarities and dissimilarities in union formation.     

The Church,Ethnonationalism, and the State

Although the process of the acquisition of independence by countries and large ethnic groups in the post-Soviet region and the Eastern Bloc as a whole is complete, over the next few decades Churches are hardly likely to become propagandists of peace and tolerance.     

The rise and fall of spin: changes of fashion in the presentation of UK politics

Spin is the current dominant form of political presentation in the UK. Politics and presentation are inseparable and before the 1980s, political presenters were less aggressive towards and more respectful of journalists as watchdogs of politics. Labour introduced spin as a defensive response to editorial hostility but since New Labour came to terms with Thatcherism, spin has been used for the offensive promotion of policy. Changes in journalism, particularly a blurring treatment of fact and opinion, were an incubatory environment for spin. Moreover, the term became part of lay language and its vocabulary is deployed as a scrutiny of politicians via ridicule and satire. Conceptually, ‘spin’ can be characterised as an exchange or contest between information and publicity, with contingencies influencing where any presentation lies on that continuum. Wherever it falls, spin demeans elected politicians and tends to reduce their status to celebrities. That reduction is a cost too high for privileging presentation over policy and ought to be reversed. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

United we stand: Constituency homogeneity and comparative party polarization

We argue that party polarization is a function of parties' distances, their internal homogeneity, and their relative sizes. While existing measures in political science incorporate the first and last feature, party homogeneity is typically neglected. Since virtually all polarization measures in one way or another incorporate distance, we suggest a simple way to adjust distance measures for party homogeneity. We then examine levels and trends of polarization in nine OECD countries using a newly collected data-set which includes left–right party positions based on both expert and mass surveys.     

The 2001 British Election Study Internet Poll

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the findings of the Internet component of the 2001 BES and compares them with those of the other BES pre-election surveys. Part 1 outlines the rationale that underpins the introduction of Internet polling as a supplement to more traditional methods of assessing mass public opinion. Part 2 describes the marginal distributions on the key dependent variable-the projected vote shares of the main political parties-of the three pre-election polls that were conducted using BES questionnaires. Intriguingly, the (unweighted) Internet-based poll provided a better guess of the actual vote shares in the subsequent election than either of the two conventional polls. Part 3 provides a more detailed comparison of the profiles of the face-to-face and Internet-based polls. It shows how the Internet poll, compared with the face-to-face poll, was skewed demographically towards the professional classes and politically towards the Conservative Party. Part 4 explores the extent to which the use of the Internet poll might result in spurious causal inferences being drawn about the sources of voting preferences in the 2001 UK election. A simple, direct-effects causal model is estimated using both the face-to-face probability sample data and the Internet survey data. The results suggest that, although the raw probability and Internet samples differ significantly, the relationships among the key variables do not differ significantly across the two samples. We conclude that Internet polling has an important part to play in gauging and analysing public opinion in future UK elections.     

Press Secretaries,Journalists, and Editors: Shaping Local Congressional News Coverage

The news media plays a key role in American democracy, often serving as the primary means by which voters learn about their elected representatives. However, the news media varies in its coverage of representatives, presenting voters with more frequent and favorable information about some House members than others, which may in turn influence voters' decisions at the polls. Although many scholars have examined the determinants of congressional news coverage, few have focused on the role of the actors who perhaps exert the most direct effect on such coverage: congressional press secretaries, journalists, and editors. In this study, I explore the influence of these actors on the tone and frequency of local congressional news coverage. I rely on data from two sources: (a) a content analysis of newspaper coverage of 100 representatives during the month prior to the 2006 election and (b) in-depth interviews with 51 congressional press secretaries and 22 journalists. These sets of data illustrate the important roles of both newspaper staff and congressional press secretaries in shaping the coverage House members receive. I conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for U.S. representatives and their constituents.     

African research and development surveys: Highlights from the South African success story

ABSTRACT

Science and technology have a major role to play in current and future developments on the African continent as a whole. With the vast array of developmental challenges, current thinking needs to be expanded, so that technologies provide increased and enhanced solutions, such that African scientists produce an African response to the very many shared challenges affecting Africa – both as individual nations and as regards African people collectively. Key to developing an integrated science and technology network, within and across nations, is firstly to understand the extent of research and development (R&D) currently undertaken within individual territories and on the continent as a whole. In light of this, the article examines the value and importance of national surveys of research and experimental development undertaken in Africa. Within the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), many member states now have dedicated departments overseeing state science and technology (S&T) development initiatives. South Africa has the most developed science and technology system on the continent. In recent years, other SADC countries like Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia have initiated projects to measure R&D activities within their territories. Despite this, further North, R&D measurement on the continent is uncommon, both as a result and as a cause of underdevelopment.

The article explores the limited data from selected African R&D surveys in an attempt to understand measurement issues that exist and to detail the value and importance of mapping S&T systems and their applications to developmental issues in Africa. In countries like Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, where S&T systems exist, effective means of measurement need to be established, so that the power of these systems can be harnessed, shared and exploited to benefit the African people. To this end, the African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (ASTII) initiative was set up at a meeting in Addis Ababa with the aim of delivering a survey of these countries’ R&D output and potential. This is eagerly awaited by the African S&T community.

At the forefront of African R&D measurement is the South African national R&D survey, administered by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). Being an established survey, the South African team is often called upon by other African nations to support the setting up of surveys. The HSRC also trains visiting African scientists in the delivery of accurate and reliable R&D survey data. This article will, for the first time, present detailed results of the most recent South African national R&D survey (2008/2009), together with a trend analysis of historic South African R&D surveys.