Progress,Perceptions and Peace in the Sino-Indian Relationship

The Chinese and Indian government are eager to intensify bilateral ties. This paper evaluates whether this enthusiasm has positively affected perceptions of the two societies in general, political actors and experts. A review of opinion polls, publications and official documents learned that this is not the case. Mutual perceptions are marked with ambivalence and distrust.

A scientific approach to measure public political participation in Pakistan

Public political participation is an exhaustive subject in the democratic system that is contributing as a tilled land since the birth of democracy. It has a wide range of frequency, but voting is one of the easiest among all forms of public participation. Despite the easiness of voting, Pakistan ranks 164th in terms of voter turnout among 169 countries of the world. The voter turnout of the second largest Muslim democracy and the fifth largest among all the democratic states was recorded as 45.3% in the 2013 general election, which was less than India’s (59.4%) and even Bangladesh’s (58.2%). More than half of the population in Pakistan does not think it is its duty to cast its vote. The present study is an effort to investigate public political participation through six independent variables: democratic political party, party mobilization, security, accessibility, leadership image and moderating factor citizen distrust, and a useful sample size of 1884 was collected across the country. SPSS version 24.0 was used to measure the data. The results show significant and positive relations among the dependent and independent variables, while citizen distrust negatively moderates the dependent and independent variables of the study.     

Affective images of the public political mind: Semantic differential reference frames for an experience of the 1988 presidential campaign

This project seeks theoretical and methodological advances in the study of political advertising effects during election campaigns. On the theoretical side, we hypothesize that racial cues embedded in standard political advertising appeals, involving taxation and government spending, boost opinion constraint by priming global political ideology. On the methodological side, we replicate a lab experiment in face-toface interviews with a probability sample of a large metropolitan area. Results suggest that subtle race cues do increase issue constraint for "racialized" issues such as welfare, affirmative action, crime policy, and the overall size of government. Constraint of opinions about issues less relevant to race, such as abortion, spending on public schools, universal health care, and raising the minimum wage, does not increase as a result of exposure to racial cues. Global ideology is powerfully primed by implicit racial cues embedded in typical political appeals. Finally, though demographic differences in the samples moderate some effects, the general pattern is highly consistent across the two research settings. Implications for strategic communication during campaigns, group centrism in American elections, and the benefits of methodological pluralism in the study of media effects are discussed.     

Safeguarding the Future of Democracy

Abstract

The tenets of democracy appear to be facing a crisis in modern western societies, as trust in public figures and institutions—including politicians and government—declines and distrust of them increases. This decline is particularly visible in the cynical attitudes and non-voting behaviour of British young people. This paper presents a more contemporary conceptualisation of trust and distrust, from which four segments of young voters and non-voters emerge. A mix of calculative, predictive and identification trust-building strategies are applied to these four segments to reinforce their trust and reduce their distrust, thereby reconnecting them with parliamentary politics. This paper concludes with an agenda for further research.     

不信任文化中的非人格化管理——匿名评审、年龄界限与一刀切现象的综合分析

匿名评审、年龄界限和一刀切三种现象看似毫不相关,但是其内涵却存在着一种共性,即凭借一种貌似客观的技术、数字和理性规则来实行管理,希望以此来克服管理过程中个人主观因素和其他不确定因素的影响.这种管理模式可以称之为非人格化管理,它产生于不信任文化的背景之上,相信技术而不相信个人的能动判断.这种管理模式落后于民主化和人性化的社会进程,必须用一种信任管理模式来替代它,重构和谐、创造、能动的管理关系.信任管理以人为中心,强调负责任的个人对公共政策的主动执行;信任管理是充分授权的管理,并不是完全依赖技术的控制力来实现集权化从上到下的管制;信任管理也是开放的管理机制,吸收环境中的支持力和压力要素,与环境展开积极的互动.信任管理是和谐社会的管理机制.