Tony Blair's 'Media' Speech: The Commentators

Tony Blair's speech challenged the media over its standards in his valedictory lecture. Many of his charges about the absence of balance, attacks on motive and a pack mentality stand up, even if some are exaggerated and also applied well before his arrival in 10 Downing Street. Mr Blair's solutions did ot match his critique. What is required is a more self‐questioning media, being held to account on the internet and on specialist blogging sites. Vigorous criticism, requiring justification, is a more credible rout than tighter regulation. Tony Blair's speech on the changing pressures on the media is both interesting and convincing in its diagnosis (although generally reported in ways that did not reveal this). It is less convincing in suggestions for change: the fact that on‐line media will fall under Of‐com, and so under its minimal ‘content regulation’ will have little impact. Effective change could begin with other types of (self or other regulation). Some steps towards change might include minimal requirements for journalists and editors to accept elementary forms of accountability, such as disclosing conflicts of interest and payments made for ‘stories’. The scale of media coverage may be crucial in determining the allocation of aid, yet the attention the media pays to particular causes is arbitrary. Many serious disasters are not reported and as a consequence do not receive adequate aid, so that the victims of the crisis will lose out. Chronic long term problems, like famine, are ignored in favour of ‘sudden emergencies’. Reporting seeks sensation and simple stories which influences the way that aid agencies respond to the media. The complex background to a faraway disaster is often overlooked and not properly reported. Tony Blair's speech describing some of the news media as ‘feral beasts’ contained one paragraph which contained an insight into his views on new media. It was known that the outgoing Prime Minister was uncomfortable with some aspects of new technology but his remarks reveal a wider disappointment with how new media has failed to deliver changes which he had hoped for in political communications.This paper records Mr Blair's problems with new media and argues that by focusing on how the new technologies might provide a better way for politicians to by‐pass the traditional media he has missed the point of their wider benefits.     

支持还是反对军事冲突？日本与邻国争端中民意的调查实验分析

近年来,东亚成为了世界政治中最不稳定的地区之一。日本与其邻国之间的领土问题是导致东亚区域不稳定的核心因素,愈演愈烈的中日钓鱼岛争端使两国处在军事冲突的边缘。当日本与邻国发生领土争端时,日本民众是否以及在什么情况下会支持政府发动军事冲突？为此,作者在日本进行了以民众为对象的调查实验。对调查实验结果所做的统计分析表明,如果目标国是美国的盟国、日本对目标国的经济依赖程度较高,那么日本民众倾向于反对政府向该国发动军事冲突,而目标国在二战期间是否曾受到日本的侵略这一因素并没有产生显著影响。同时,日本的年轻民众表现出了更强的和平倾向。这些结论为中国的对日外交提供了有益的政策启示。对于中日钓鱼岛问题等领土争端,在政治和安全领域,中国外交应进行必要的改革和创新,重新思考和构建中国的国际安全战略。在经贸领域,可以继续加强与日本的经贸合作以增加日本的退出成本,并灵活运用经济手段以增加日本国内的舆论压力。此外,有必要开展针对日本年轻一代的公共外交,由此促进中日关系的长远发展。     

Is there such a thing as a Muslim vote?

This contribution explores to what extent there is such a thing as a distinct Muslim vote in flexible proportional list systems. We test in a new and reliable way whether the religious belonging and behavioural dimension of Muslim voters play a role in their decision-making process when casting preferential votes in a secular democracy. To achieve this, voter and candidate characteristics are modelled simultaneously in cross-classified multilevel analyses where the decision-making process of voters (the demand side) is studied while taking into account the list composition in terms of individual candidates (the supply side). We use data of an exit poll related to the local elections of 2018 in Belgium, especially at oversampled locations. The analyses show that voters who belong to Muslim faith are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates. Contrary, the behaviour dimension of Muslim voters – measured in mosque attendance - has no effect on voting primarily for Muslim candidates.     

Britain's Oddest Election?

Fringe political parties did well in the European Parliament elections in June 2005. The British National party won their first seats; altogether, four in ten British voters supported a party not represented in the House of Commons at Westminster. YouGov questioned more than 32,000 electors at the time of the election, in order to find out who voted for each party and why: the sample was big enough to enable robust analysis to be done on the BNP, UKIP and Green vote, as well as the supporters of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. YouGov's findings show that there was disillusionment with the traditional main parties, and fears for the future, that were felt by voters across the political spectrum, and not just the supporters of the fringe parties.     

Labeling candidates as underdogs in political communications: The moderation of candidate-related factors

Underdogs are individuals or groups who are at a disadvantage in competitive situations or predicted to fail in competition against rivals. In elections, candidates often label themselves as underdogs, regardless of their poll rankings, using the associated image of weakness to appeal to voters. This study examines the advertising effects related to labeling candidates as underdogs (versus frontrunners) in political communications, and the possible moderating effects of candidate-related factors, including media-based poll rankings, biological sex, and physical attractiveness. The results of two experiments show that a candidate's use of the underdog label generates better advertising effects when polls indicate the promoted candidate is close to or substantially behind the competitor, or when the promoted candidate is female and moderately physically attractive. However, using the frontrunner label generates better advertising effects when the promoted candidate is male, highly physically attractive, or substantially prevailing over the competitor in the polls.     

From uninformed to informed choices: Voters,pre-election polls and updating

Pre-election opinion poll results for U.S. presidential contests have large variation in the early parts of the primary campaigns, yet pre-election opinion polls later in the campaign are typically within several percentage points of the actual outcome of the contest in November. This paper argues this trend demonstrates that voters are beginning to poll “correctly” – that is, to ascertain their most-preferred candidate. This convergence process is consistent with boundedly rational voters making decisions with low information. We examine the process by which voters can use opinion polls to guide their candidate choice. We undertake a series of laboratory experiments where uninformed voters choose between two candidates after participating in a series of pre-election polls. We demonstrate that voters update their beliefs about candidate locations using information contained in the opinion polls. We compare two behavioral models for the updating process and find significant evidence to support a boundedly rational Bayesian updating assumption. This assumption about the updating process is key to many theoretical results which argue that voters have the potential to aggregate information via a coordination signal and for their beliefs to converge to the true state of the world. This finding also indicates that uninformed voters are able to use pre-election polls to help them make correct decisions.     

Reviews

The recent discourse on ‘new antisemitism’ and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sometime gives the impression that Europe is fundamentally and irredeemably antisemitic. Klug maintains that, while there is a persistent vein of antisemitism in the culture, and while there is evidence of an increase in anti-Jewish attacks since 2000, this perception of Europe is exaggerated. He argues that it is part of a mindset that tends to overstate hostility towards Israel and Jews, or to assume that this hostility is antisemitic, or both. Often this goes along with a tendency to connect antisemitism, via anti-Zionism, with anti-Americanism. Klug believes that notion of a mindset, Klug turns to the question of definition, examining the view that antisemitism is indefinitely mutable. Invoking recent work on the subject, he suggests that at the core of antisemitism is the stock figure of the ‘Jew’. This gives us a criterion with which to judge whether or not a given text—including an attack on Israel or Zionism—is antisemitic. On the basis of the analysis so far, Klug critiques the view that hostility to Israel in general is a new twist on an old antisemitic theme. In this connection, he discussed a 2003 Eurobarometer opinion poll in which 59 per cent of respondents said that Israel is a ‘threat to peace in the world’. Some see this as proof that Europe is antisemitic; Klug rejects this interpretation and traces it back to the mindset he has describing. He argues that people in the grip of this mindset tend to take a one-sided view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This can lead to ‘antisemitism in reverse’: projecting the figure of the antisemite on to someone who does not fit the bill. Klug concludes that the prospects for the European debate on antisemitism are poor unless it can be disentangled from partisan Middle East politics.     

“一国两制”在台湾存在发展空间的探讨——对1991-2008年台湾社会“一国两制”民调的解读

如果仅是阅读两岸官方的文书与代表性谈话,就来定论“一国两制”在台湾存续的问题,可能会产生误判.一个模式是否适用,影响最大的因素不是当局,反而是民意.如何检验“一国两制”价值的标准,本文特从台湾历年来对是否接受“一国两制”的民调结果,进行数字与问卷内容的深入分析,希望了解：1.从民调数字分析“一国两制”对台湾的适用性;2.剖析怎样从民调数字观察“一国两制”是否在台湾存在有发展的空间.     

两岸和谐关系演进下的台湾民意走向

大陆对台政策自中共十八大之后,持续并稳定。两岸关系也朝向和平发展。理论上来说,这应该是两岸关系的“机遇期”。意外的是,2008年国民党赢得政权后,在台湾“国族认同”与“统独争议”的议题上,民调数字却显示“台湾人”与“主张独立”的比例,比民进党执政八年的任一时期都来得高。难道两岸关系的改善无助于台湾内部走向于分离的转变？作者设法去解读这个怪异现象时发现：冈为民调中有问券设计的吊谛．与解读角序的不同．球让结果耕有所不同．     

Party systems in Latin America: institutionalization,decay, and collapse,edited by Scott Mainwaring

Although coming of age under a totalitarian regime drastically reduces the chances of acquiring democratic values or supporting democracy, factors other than the formal nature of the political regime shape political values as well. The informal structure of the political regime, which consists of rules developed in political practice and economic and human development, may shape individual values and attitudes and produce different attitudes towards democracy in different totalitarian regimes. This article focuses on the effect of early socialization on the support for democracy among citizens who have been ruled under two different non-democratic regimes. We compare the dynamics in Spain and Romania during the post-totalitarian period with the aim of identifying how coming of age operated in these two different totalitarian regimes and how each type of non-democratic regime affected the legitimacy of the new democratic rule. Using survey data from various sources (Standard Eurobarometer, Central and Eastern Eurobarometer and Candidate Countries Eurobarometer) that allow both longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons, we decompose the social change in support for democracy over the post-totalitarian period in both countries using cross-classified fixed effects models. The analyses demonstrate the different effects of socialization on support for democracy in these two different totalitarian contexts.