Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-08-22DOI: 10.1177/00323217231191399
Chengli Wang, Jiangnan Zhu, Dong Zhang
{"title":"The Paradox of Information Control Under Authoritarianism: Explaining Trust in Competing Messages in China","authors":"Chengli Wang, Jiangnan Zhu, Dong Zhang","doi":"10.1177/00323217231191399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231191399","url":null,"abstract":"To steer public opinion, autocracies prioritize state media reports of political news while marginalizing commercial and foreign media. Can this dominance guarantee people’s trust in state media news? We contend that rumors, circulated via informal channels and resistant to state information control, present a formidable challenge to public trust in state media news. Our two survey experiments in China pitted news of varying information quality (e.g. informative/detailed reports vs cursory mentions of events) from state media sources against rumors, showing that state media news can retain high levels of trustworthiness only if its information quality is high; however, low-quality state media news resulting from information control diminishes its trustworthiness and prompts people to believe rumors. Low-quality rumors have more negative effects than high-quality rumors on news trustworthiness and citizens’ satisfaction with government policies. Thus, information control can paradoxically erode trust in state media, which often represent the government in autocracies.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44710613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.1177/00323217211040210
Nicola Mulkeen
{"title":"Intergenerational Exploitation","authors":"Nicola Mulkeen","doi":"10.1177/00323217211040210","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211040210","url":null,"abstract":"Earlier generations can jeopardise the opportunities, resources and well-being of their successors. Indeed, there is a growing unease with earlier generations leaving large-scale public debts to be paid by younger generations, and many worry that our policies and institutions are being shaped to advantage the interests of older generations at the expense of the young. While much theoretical (and empirical) literature now exists on the many ways in which earlier generations can unjustly jeopardise the well-being of their successors, very little has appeared on how the former’s decisions can generate specifically exploitative relationships. This is all the more surprising, in light of the fact that very large theoretical literatures exist on both intergenerational justice and exploitation. The aim of the article is to bring these two literatures into long overdue contact with one another and analyse an under-researched and yet fundamental problem – intergenerational exploitation. The article answers two questions. (1) What exactly is intergenerational exploitation? (2) What makes this type of exploitation wrong?","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"756 - 775"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44740755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-26DOI: 10.1177/00323217231187212
N. G. Sumaktoyo, M. Kilavuz
{"title":"Education and Voter Response to Principled Trade-Offs in Muslim Democracies","authors":"N. G. Sumaktoyo, M. Kilavuz","doi":"10.1177/00323217231187212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231187212","url":null,"abstract":"We contribute to the policy trade-offs literature by focusing on a principled trade-off that juxtaposes a widely desired objective with a moral belief and by examining how education conditions voters’ responses to this trade-off. Through survey experiments in Indonesia and Tunisia, we examine how voters respond to a liberal initiative to relax alcohol restrictions to raise revenue for social security and a conservative initiative to tighten alcohol restrictions even if it decreases social security revenue. We find that voters opposed the liberal initiative and that more educated voters supported the conservative initiative more than their less educated counterparts. These findings highlight the powerful constraints of moral beliefs even in the context of a trade-off with a common good and support the socialization perspective of education that portrays education as an institution that socializes individuals in the society’s dominant values—whether liberal or conservative—as opposed to simply a force for liberalization.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48583500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-24DOI: 10.1177/00323217221130169
Kevin Vallier
{"title":"The Justice Argument Against Catholic Integralism","authors":"Kevin Vallier","doi":"10.1177/00323217221130169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221130169","url":null,"abstract":"Catholic integralism claims that governments must secure the earthly and heavenly common good. God authorizes two powers to do so. The state governs in matters temporal, the Catholic Church in matters spiritual. Since the church has the nobler end of salvation, it may direct the state to help enforce church law. The integralist adopts two seemingly conflicting norms of justice: (a) coercion into the faith is always unjust, but (b) coercion to keep the faith is just. But if religious coercion is wrong at the start of the Christian life, why is it permitted after that? The integralist answer is baptism. Baptism serves as a normative transformer: it transforms religious coercion from unjust to just. My thesis is that baptism fails as a normative transformer. I critique Thomas Aquinas’ approach to this question and then adapt gratitude, associative, and natural duty theories of political obligation to repair his argument. These strategies fail.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49178726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-14DOI: 10.1177/00323217231185211
M. Oudenampsen
{"title":"Neoliberal Populism: The Case of Pim Fortuyn","authors":"M. Oudenampsen","doi":"10.1177/00323217231185211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231185211","url":null,"abstract":"After Trump and Brexit, a dominant narrative emerged that portrayed the rise of right-wing populism as a backlash to neoliberalism. While it is true that right-wing populism emerged during the heydays of neoliberal globalization in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between the two is more complex than often assumed. In a series of countries, right-wing populism emerged with, rather than against neoliberalism. The particular combination of “neoliberal populism,” however, is still underexplored. Studying this political discourse can help us understand the role of neoliberal ideology in the rise of right-wing populism. As a contribution to this end, this article offers an in-depth analysis of the ideological evolution of the Dutch neoliberal populist Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002). It places the development of his ideas against the backdrop of the Dutch neoliberal turn and shows how his populist establishment critique emerged out of a neoliberal critique of the Dutch corporatist welfare state.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46286134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1177/00323217231185706
James Weinberg
{"title":"Building Trust in Political Office: Testing the Efficacy of Political Contact and Authentic Communication","authors":"James Weinberg","doi":"10.1177/00323217231185706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231185706","url":null,"abstract":"While a large literature interrogates the causes and consequences of declining political trust in democracies, considerably less work has considered the everyday leadership strategies that might arrest this trend. I tackle this gap as I ask: what can politicians do to build trust? Going beyond the performance perspective current in political science, I suggest that all politicians can build trust by (1) increasing occasions for political contact and (2) utilising authentic political communication. These arguments are developed out of interviews with national politicians in five democracies (N = 51) and tested empirically with observational and experimental survey data gathered from a longitudinal sample of the UK public (N = 705). Attesting to academic work on the contact hypothesis and ‘authentic trust’, as well as the testimony of politicians themselves, these analyses suggest that both strategies carry appraisive potential. These findings contribute conceptually and practically to our understanding of both trust and leadership in politics.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41836270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-24DOI: 10.1177/00323217231178105
Emma van der Goot, S. Kruikemeier, R. Vliegenthart, J. de Ridder
{"title":"The Online Battlefield: How Conflict Frames in Political Advertisements Affect Political Participation in a Multiparty Context","authors":"Emma van der Goot, S. Kruikemeier, R. Vliegenthart, J. de Ridder","doi":"10.1177/00323217231178105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231178105","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how politicians’ conflict framing strategies in online campaign advertisements affect citizens’ political participation in a multi-party context. We rely on a unique combination of innovative research methods to do so, including a four-wave panel survey, a content analysis of Facebook browser-tracking data and a mobile experience sampling survey with data donations. All data were collected during the 2021 Dutch general elections. We find that conflict framing can discourage citizens from engaging in low-effort forms of political participation, such as discussing politics, signing a petition and visiting political websites. The results show that conflict frames can demobilize citizens because they lower enthusiasm and are perceived as less informative. Our study provides insights into the potential unintended consequences of using conflict framing as a campaign strategy in a multi-party setting.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65249538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1177/00323217231182024
Chikako Endo
{"title":"Structural Change Through ‘Collective Action as Democratic Practice’: Linking Grassroots Democracy With Social Justice","authors":"Chikako Endo","doi":"10.1177/00323217231182024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231182024","url":null,"abstract":"Iris Marion Young argued that tackling structural injustices that arise from complex interactions requires collective, political action. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what kind of collective action leads to social justice and how. This article aims to fill this gap by developing the idea of ‘collective action as democratic practice’ that emphasises crafting democratic institutions from the bottom-up to re-orient structural processes in ways that resist oppression and domination. This departs from Young’s own account of collective action as engaging in communicative action to pressure powerful agents. It also departs from previous attempts to conceptualise structural change through the cumulative, rather than collective, actions of individuals changing their behaviours independently of one another. I argue that my approach is a more promising way to theorise collective action from a structural perspective. This approach has wider implications for understanding the outward-looking political potential of self-organised projects by citizens.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41935910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-21DOI: 10.1177/00323217231178979
James Adams, L. Bernardi, L. Ezrow, Zeynep Somer-Topcu
{"title":"Why Parties Gain Votes When the Public Perceives Them Shifting to the Right","authors":"James Adams, L. Bernardi, L. Ezrow, Zeynep Somer-Topcu","doi":"10.1177/00323217231178979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231178979","url":null,"abstract":"We combine two dominant approaches to studying how issues influence elections: one that emphasizes parties’ issue positions, and the other parties’ issue ownership. Research from the latter approach shows that voters ascribe greater economic competence to right-wing parties. Based on this finding, we argue that parties enhance their economic issue ownership when voters perceive them shifting to the right. In the following step, we show that perceived rightward shifts of parties also lead to subsequent increases in electoral support. We analyze economic ownership survey data and election outcomes in 15 democracies over the period 1986–2015 that supports the expectations that parties’ perceived rightward shifts result in increases in economic ownership and subsequent vote shares. We also show that the right-shift vote gains are strongest during recessions when voters prioritize parties’ economic competence.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48175309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Political StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-21DOI: 10.1177/00323217231178997
Nathalie Berny, Viviane Gravey
{"title":"Campaigning or Not in the 2016 Referendum? UK Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations and European Union Membership","authors":"Nathalie Berny, Viviane Gravey","doi":"10.1177/00323217231178997","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231178997","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental non-governmental organisations stood out during the 2016 European Union referendum campaign. Despite clear reputational and regulatory risks, they participated in this fraught political debate in sharp contrast to other civil society sectors. This challenges common assumptions that material concerns, and ultimately survival, prevail in campaigning choices. We argue that campaigning choices reflect commitments to values that underpin these organisations’ raison d’être. Drawing on a pragmatist view of organisations, we analyse how external (media, regulatory) and internal (competence, governance processes) pressures shaped the campaigning choices of nine UK environmental organisations. We find that most environmental non-governmental organisations chose to engage, some even officially registering for Remain. Those active at the European Union level were most likely to engage – but also most open to criticism. Overall, environmental non-governmental organisations struggled to adapt their usual expertise-based, elite-focused campaigning style to the referendum which raises questions for civil society’s ability to speak for Europe, and contribute to controversial democratic debates, beyond the United Kingdom.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49637996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}