Showing papers on "Politics published in 2013"

Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts

Abstract: Politics and political conflict often occur in the written and spoken word. Scholars have long recognized this, but the massive costs of analyzing even moderately sized collections of texts have hindered their use in political science research. Here lies the promise of automated text analysis: it substantially reduces the costs of analyzing large collections of text. We provide a guide to this exciting new area of research and show how, in many instances, the methods have already obtained part of their promise. But there are pitfalls to using automated methods—they are no substitute for careful thought and close reading and require extensive and problem-specific validation. We survey a wide range of new methods, provide guidance on how to validate the output of the models, and clarify misconceptions and errors in the literature. To conclude, we argue that for automated text methods to become a standard tool for political scientists, methodologists must contribute new methods and new methods of validation. Language is the medium for politics and political conflict. Candidates debate and state policy positions during a campaign. Once elected, representatives write and debate legislation. After laws are passed, bureaucrats solicit comments before they issue regulations. Nations regularly negotiate and then sign peace treaties, with language that signals the motivations and relative power of the countries involved. News reports document the day-to-day affairs of international relations that provide a detailed picture of conflict and cooperation. Individual candidates and political parties articulate their views through party platforms and manifestos. Terrorist groups even reveal their preferences and goals through recruiting materials, magazines, and public statements. These examples, and many others throughout political science, show that to understand what politics is about we need to know what political actors are saying and writing. Recognizing that language is central to the study of politics is not new. To the contrary, scholars of politics have long recognized that much of politics is expressed in words. But scholars have struggled when using texts to make inferences about politics. The primary problem is volume: there are simply too many political texts. Rarely are scholars able to manually read all the texts in even moderately sized corpora. And hiring coders to manually read all documents is still very expensive. The result is that

Ruling The Void: The Hollowing Of Western Democracy

Abstract: The argument that Western democracy is being hollowed out, as political participation declines and party allegiance weakens, is now widely cited. Yet the indicators can be uncertain and until now there hasn't been a comprehensive comparative study. "Ruling the Void" analyzes democratic trends over the last few decades, in Europe and America, and argues that there are two complementary processes at work. Popular disengagement, and the withdrawal of political elites from a representative role, are both contributing to the death of the political party - and with it the characteristic form of Western democracy. This landmark study will become a reference point for anyone interested in the future of representative democracy.

Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically

Abstract: Political conflict in our society is inevitable, and the results are often far from negative. How then should we deal with the intractable differences arising from complex modern culture? In Agonistics, Mouffe develops her philosophy, taking particular interest in international relations, strategies for radical politics and the politics of artistic practices. In a series of coruscating essays, she engages with cosmopolitanism, post-operaism, and theories of multiple modernities to argue in favor of a multipolar world with a real cultural and political pluralism.

The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction 1. An Ontology of Hybridity 2. All Media Systems Have Been Hybrid 3. The Contemporary Contexts of Hybridity 4. The Political Information Cycle 5. Power, Interdependence, and Hybridity in the Construction of Political News: Understanding WikiLeaks 6. Symphonic Consonance in Campaign Communication: Reinterpreting Obama for America 7. Systemic Hybridity in the Mediation of the American Presidential Campaign 8. Hybrid Norms in News and Journalism 9. Hybrid Norms in Activism, Parties, and Government Conclusion: Politics and Power in the Hybrid Media System List of Interviews Notes Bibliography Index

Political Ideologies of CEOs: The Influence of Executives’ Values on Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: This article examines the influence on organizational outcomes of CEOs’ political ideology, specifically political conservatism vs. liberalism. We propose that CEOs’ political ideologies will influ...

The Birth of Territory

Abstract: Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth's surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition? The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players - historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists - and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth's surface is divided, controlled, and administered.

War and Peace

Abstract: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives” [1]. MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky believes that the U.S. official doctrine of low-intensity warfare is almost identical to the official definition of terrorism [2]. Political commentator Bill Maher equates U.S. drone attacks with terrorist acts [3].

The Political Economy of Regionalism

Abstract: The strength of the book lies not only in the breadth of material, but in the juxtaposition of different viewpoints and examples, al making connections between cultural, political, institutional and territorial contexts Town Planning Review Regional and Federal Studies 1997 "This book is necessary reading for students of globalization searching for ways to unpack this abstract concept" European Planning Studies - reviewed by Deron Ferguson - Uni of Washington "This collection represents a substantial resource for anyone interested in "the regional question" "anyone interested in regionalism will likely find several chapters of interest, or more, in this volume" Space and Polity, Vol 2, No 2 1998 - Reviewed by Donald McNeill - "there is undoubtedly a lot here of meritthe book should serve as a useful reference work for those seeking background on regional developments in various parts of the world" Urban Studies, Vol 35, No 2, 1998 "Certainly the volume provides ample evidence of the diversity of the regional question and of the responses to it, and there is much here to enlighten our understanding" Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Vol 91, No 1, 2000 "I would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity regionalism in a post cold war world contemporary political Europe and regionalism and international relations I would encourage the editors to continue their research on this important topic and I hope the publisher will continue its commitment to publishing cutting-edge geopolitical and political economy research" Royal Dutch Geographical Society "I would strongly recommend this volume for advanced classes and seminars on place, territory and identity: regionalism in a post cold war world: contemporary political Europe: and regionalism and international relations" "Cutting Edge

Models for democracy

Abstract: Democracy can be conceptualized in different ways. Tilly (2007: 7) distinguishes between no less than four ways to define democracy: constitutional, substantive, procedural, and process-oriented. These four ways to approach our subject essentially boil down to two, however: process-oriented (procedural, constitutional) vs. substantive. In his Gettysburg address, Lincoln famously spoke of ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’.1 His short phrase encapsulates the essence of the different theoretical perspectives of the democratic process. ‘Government of the people’ and ‘government by the people’ refer to process, ‘government for the people’ refers to substance. Scharpf (1970, 1999a: 6–20) makes the same point by distinguishing between input- and output-oriented democratic thought. From the input-oriented perspective, political decisions are legitimate because they reflect the ‘will of the people’. From the output-oriented perspective, they are legitimate because they effectively promote the common welfare of the people.

Personalized campaigns in party-centred politics

Abstract: Social media like Facebook and Twitter place the focus on the individual politician rather than the political party, thereby expanding the political arena for increased for personalized campaigning. The need to use social media to communicate a personal image as a politician and to post personalized messages online seems less obvious in a party-centred system such as the Norwegian. Within this framework, the personalized and dialogical aspects of social media may be contradicted by the political parties' structural communication strategies. The article uses data from interviews and status updates from two Norwegian election campaigns and asks for what purposes Norwegian politicians use social media as a tool for political communication. The findings show that politicians' report both marketing and dialogue with voters as motives for their social media use and their practices varied, too. Politicians' reported motive to use social media for marketing purposes was reflected in their actual use. The preferre...

Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War

Abstract: This book argues that political and economic inequalities following group lines generate grievances that in turn can motivate civil war. Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug offer a theoretical approach that highlights ethnonationalism and how the relationship between group identities and inequalities are fundamental for successful mobilization to resort to violence. Although previous research highlighted grievances as a key motivation for political violence, contemporary research on civil war has largely dismissed grievances as irrelevant, emphasizing instead the role of opportunities. This book shows that the alleged non-results for grievances in previous research stemmed primarily from atheoretical measures, typically based on individual data. The authors develop new indicators of political and economic exclusion at the group level, and show that these exert strong effects on the risk of civil war. They provide new analyses of the effects of transnational ethnic links and the duration of civil wars, and extended case discussions illustrating causal mechanisms.

Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First

Abstract: The goal of this article is to place the role that social media plays in collective action within a more general theoretical structure, using the events of the Arab Spring as a case study. The article presents two broad theoretical principles. The first is that one cannot understand the role of social media in collective action without first taking into account the political environment in which they operate. The second principle states that a significant increase in the use of the new media is much more likely to follow a significant amount of protest activity than to precede it. The study examines these two principles using political, media, and protest data from twenty Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority. The findings provide strong support for the validity of the claims.

Declarations of dependence: labour, personhood, and welfare in southern Africa

Abstract: Dependence on others has often figured, in liberal thought, as the opposite of freedom. But the political anthropology of southern Africa has long recognized relations of social dependence as the very foundation of polities and persons alike. Reflecting on a long regional history of dependence ‘as a mode of action’ allows a new perspective on certain contemporary practices that appear to what we may call ‘the emancipatory liberal mind’ simply as lamentable manifestations of a reactionary and retrograde yearning for paternalism and inequality. Instead, this article argues that such practices are an entirely contemporary response to the historically novel emergence of a social world where people, long understood (under both pre-capitalist and early capitalist social systems) as scarce and valuable, have instead become seen as lacking value, and in surplus. Implications are drawn for contemporary politics and policy, in a world where both labour and forms of social membership based upon it are of diminishing value, and where social assistance and the various cash transfers associated with it are of increasing significance.

Distributive Politics Around the World

Abstract: We inventory more than 150 studies of distributive politics in more than three dozen countries other than the United States. We organize existing studies under two theories: theories of democratic accountability and theories of government responsiveness. Studies that concern democratic accountability conceptualize distributive allocations as attempts by politicians to protect themselves electorally by targeting specific groups of voters. We identify four subsets: (a) studies of whether politicians target goods to core or swing voters; (b) studies of general political favoritism in targeting government goods; (c) studies of whether goods are disbursed according to the electoral cycle; and (d) studies of whether elected officials gain votes from the disbursement of government goods. We illustrate each with examples from the literature. We then discuss distributive politics as responsiveness to the median voter. This perspective entails a focus on the redistributive consequences of government policy and inve...

Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality?

Abstract: During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover, these new inequalities have primarily benefited the top 1 percent and even the top .01 percent. These groups seem sufficiently small that economic inequality could be held in check by political equality in the form of "one person, one vote." In this paper, we explore five possible reasons why the US political system has failed to counterbalance rising inequality. First, both Republicans and many Democrats have experienced an ideological shift toward acceptance of a form of free market capitalism that offers less support for government provision of transfers, lower marginal tax rates for those with high incomes, and deregulation of a number of industries. Second, immigration and low turnout of the poor have combined to make the distribution of voters more weighted to high incomes than is the distribution of households. Third, rising real income and wealth has made a larger fraction of the population less attracted to turning to government for social insurance. Fourth, the rich have been able to use their resources to influence electoral, legislative, and regulatory processes through campaign contributions, lobbying, and revolving door employment of politicians and bureaucrats. Fifth, the political process is distorted by institutions that reduce the accountability of elected officials to the majority and hampered by institutions that combine with political polarization to create policy gridlock.

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

Abstract: A bold rethinking of the most powerful political idea in the world—democracy—and the story of how radical democracy can yet transform America Democracy has been the American religion since before the Revolution—from New England town halls to the multicultural democracy of Atlantic pirate ships. But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most Americans feeling disengaged, voiceless, and disenfranchised, really be called democratic? And if the tools of our democracy are not working to solve the rising crises we face, how can we—average citizens—make change happen? David Graeber, one of the most influential scholars and activists of his generation, takes readers on a journey through the idea of democracy, provocatively reorienting our understanding of pivotal historical moments, and extracts their lessons for today—from the birth of Athenian democracy and the founding of the United States of America to the global revolutions of the twentieth century and the rise of a new generation of activists. Underlying it all is a bracing argument that in the face of increasingly concentrated wealth and power in this country, a reenergized, reconceived democracy—one based on consensus, equality, and broad participation—can yet provide us with the just, free, and fair society we want. The Democracy Project tells the story of the resilience of the democratic spirit and the adaptability of the democratic idea. It offers a fresh take on vital history and an impassioned argument that radical democracy is, more than ever, our best hope.

Theses on Urbanization

Abstract: In the early 1970s, a young Marxist sociologist named Manuel Castells, then living in exile in Paris, began his soontobe-classic intervention, The Urban Question, by declaring his “astonishment” that debates on “urban problems” were becoming “an essential element in the policies of governments, in the concerns of the mass media and, consequently, in the everyday life of a large section of the population” (1977 [1972]: 1). For Castells, this astonishment was born of his orthodox Marxist assumption that the concern with urban questions was ideological. The real motor of social change, he believed, lay elsewhere, in workingclass action and antiimperialist mobilization. On this basis, Castells proceeded to deconstruct what he viewed as the prevalent “urban ideology” under postwar managerial capitalism: his theory took seriously the social construction of the urban phenomenon in academic and political discourse, but ultimately derived such representations from purportedly more foundational processes associated with capitalism and the state’s role in the reproduction of labor power. Four decades after Castells’s classic intervention, it is easy to confront early twentyfirstcentury discourse on urban questions with a similar sense of astonishment — not because it masks the operations of capitalism but because it has become one of the dominant metanarratives through which our current planetary situation is interpreted, both in academic circles and in the public sphere. Today advanced interdisciplinary education in urban social science, planning, and design

Age and the effects of news media attention and social media use on political interest and participation : Do social media function as leveller?

Abstract: This article investigates how media use differs across age groups- and whether this matters for people's inclination to participate politically. More specifically, the study investigates the impact ...

Politics in the Age of Austerity

Abstract: Contributors vii 1 Introduction: Politics in the Age of Austerity 1 Armin Schafer and Wolfgang Streeck 2 Public Finance and the Decline of State Capacity in Democratic Capitalism 26 Wolfgang Streeck and Daniel Mertens 3 Tax Competition and Fiscal Democracy 59 Philipp Genschel and Peter Schwarz 4 Governing as an Engineering Problem: The Political Economy of Swedish Success 84 Sven Steinmo 5 Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Disabling of Democratic Accountability 108 Fritz W. Scharpf 6 Smaghi versus the Parties: Representative Government and Institutional Constraints 143 Peter Mair 7 Liberalization, Inequality and Democracy s Discontent 169 Armin Schafer 8 Participatory Inequality in the Austerity State: A Supply-Side Approach 196 Claus Offe 9 From Markets versus States to Corporations versus Civil Society? 219 Colin Crouch 10 The Normalization of the Right in Post-Security Europe 239 Mabel Berezin 11 The Crisis in Context: Democratic Capitalism and its Contradictions 262 Wolfgang Streeck Notes 287 Index 303

Political consumerism : global responsibility in action

Abstract: 1. Reconfiguring political responsibility 2. Reconfiguring political participation 3. Who are political consumers? 4. Mapping political consumerism in Western democracies 5. The organizational setting for political consumerism 6. Discursive political consumerism 7. Does political consumerism matter? Effectiveness and limits of political consumer action repertoires 8. Political consumerism's scope and challenges.

Mapping the Ideological Marketplace

Abstract: I develop a method to measure the ideology of candidates and contributors using campaign finance data. Combined with a data set of over 100 million contribution records from state and federal elections, the method estimates ideal points for an expansive range of political actors. The common pool of contributors who give across institutions and levels of politics makes it possible to recover a unified set of ideological measures for members of Congress, the President and executive branch, state legislators, governors and other state officials, as well as the interest groups and individuals that make political donations. Since candidates fundraise regardless of incumbency status, the method estimates ideal points for both incumbents and non-incumbents. After establishing measure validity and addressing issues concerning strategic behavior, I present results for a variety of political actors and discuss several promising avenues of research made possible by the new measures.

Keys to the City: How Economics, Institutions, Social Interaction, and Politics Shape Development

Abstract: Why do some cities grow economically while others decline? Why do some show sustained economic performance while others cycle up and down? In Keys to the City, Michael Storper, one of the world's leading economic geographers, looks at why we should consider economic development issues within a regional context--at the level of the city-region--and why urban economies develop unequally. Storper identifies four contexts that shape urban economic development: economic, institutional, innovational, interactional, and political. The book explores how these contexts operate and how they interact, leading to developmental success in some regions and failure in others. Demonstrating that the global economy is increasingly driven by its major cities, the keys to the city are the keys to global development. In his conclusion, Storper specifies eight rules of economic development targeted at policymakers. Keys to the City explains why economists, sociologists, and political scientists should take geography seriously.

White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making

Abstract: Eight of the last twelve presidents were millionaires when they took office. The figure is above fifty percent among current Supreme Court justices, all nine of whom graduated from either Harvard or Yale. Millionaires also control Congress, where a background in business or law is the norm and the average member of the House or Senate has spent less than two percent of his or her adult life in a working-class job. Why is it that most politicians in America are so much better off than the people who elect them - and does the social class divide between citizens and their representatives matter? With White-Collar Government, Nicholas Carnes answers this question with a resounding - and disturbing - yes. Legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds, he shows, have a profound impact not only on how they view the issues but also on the choices they make in office. Scant representation from among the working class almost guarantees that the policymaking process will be skewed toward outcomes that favor the upper class. It matters that the wealthiest Americans set the tax rates for the wealthy, that white-collar professionals choose the minimum wage for blue-collar workers, and that people who have always had health insurance decide whether to help those without. And while there is no one cause for this crisis of representation, Carnes shows that the problem does not stem from a lack of qualified candidates from among the working class. The solution, he argues, must involve a variety of changes, from the equalization of campaign funding to a shift in the types of candidates the parties support. If we want a government for the people, we have to start working toward a government that is truly by the people. White-Collar Government challenges long-held notions about the causes of political inequality in the United States and speaks to enduring questions about representation and political accountability.

TRAVELING TECHNOLOGIES: Infrastructure, Ethical Regimes, and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa

Abstract: In this article, I explore the politics of infrastructure in South Africa by focusing on the “travels” of a small technical device. Since the end of apartheid, prepaid meters have been widely deployed in South Africa's townships to curb the nonpayment of service charges. Yet many residents have bypassed their meters, enabling them to illicitly access electricity or water. I track the micro-political battle between residents tinkering with the technology and engineers trying to secure it, arguing that infrastructure itself becomes a political terrain for the negotiation of central ethical and political questions concerning civic virtue and the shape of citizenship. To investigate this techno-political terrain, I trace a genealogy of the meter from Victorian Britain, when it was invented as a tool of working-class “moral improvement,” to the late-apartheid period, when it was re-assembled as a device of counterinsurgency against the anti-apartheid “rent boycotts.” In each moment, I suggest, the meter was harnessed to distinct ethical regimes and political projects. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork with engineers in contemporary South Africa, I explore the semiotic-material work required to make the device functional in the post-apartheid moment. Tracing the travels of a small technical device across time and space, I argue, opens up conceptual space to rethink the relationship between ethics, politics, and technics.

A comparative analysis of the relation between political trust and forms of political participation in europe

Abstract: In the literature, two competing claims can be found on the relationship between political trust and political participation. While some authors argue that trust is a prerequisite for any form of participation to occur, others claim that distrust can be a motivating factor for participation in non-institutionalised forms of participation. The social movement literature suggests that political trust will only have these behavioural consequences if it is associated with sufficiently high levels of political efficacy. In this article, we rely on the results of the 2006 European Social Survey for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between political trust and participation in 25 countries. The multilevel regression shows that while political trust is positively associated with institutionalised participation, it is negatively associated with non-institutionalised participation. Moreover, the effect of political trust on institutionalised participation is dependent on self-confidence about one's ...