A Mighty Power against the Cost of Living: Canadian Housewives Organize in the 1930s

2010 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Guard
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Domestic Roles

AbstractConsumer activists organizing in the 1930s against rising milk prices demonstrated the power of a strong grassroots movement to enlarge prevailing understandings of the political and to wring responses from an unwilling state. Their maternalism, combined with milk's emotional, social, and political meanings, attracted broad popular support and deflected criticism from the dairy industry, hostile public officials, and anticommunists. Their campaign for affordable milk became a synecdoche for broader demands that the state restrain business in the interests of consumers and protect ordinary people from the harsh injustices of the Depression. After winning immediate concessions, the Toronto Housewives Association failed to achieve their long-term goals, but their impact was nonetheless significant. Their campaign fueled and informed public debates about the political economy of food and government's responsibilities to protect citizens, pushing socialist policies onto the political agenda under the cover of maternalism. Participation in Housewives' campaigns transformed powerless victims into effective political actors. Housewife-activists challenged prevailing notions of normative feminine behavior, creating social space for ordinary women acting within their domestic roles to engage in direct political action.

Strategies of Justice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burke A. Hendrix
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Aboriginal Peoples ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Political Choices

Political theorists often imagine themselves as political architects, asking what an ideal set of laws or social structures might look like. Yet persistent injustices can endure for decades or even centuries despite such ideal theorizing. In circumstances of this kind, it is essential for political theorists to think carefully about the political choices normatively available to those who directly face persistent injustices and seek to change them. The book focuses on the claims of Aboriginal peoples to better treatment from the United States and Canada. The book investigates two intertwined issues: the kinds of moral permissions that those facing persistent injustice have when they act politically, and the kinds of transformations that political action may bring about in those who undertake it. The book argues for normative permissions to speak untruth to power; to circumvent or nullify existing law; to give primary attention to protecting one’s own community first; and to engage in political experimentation that reshapes future generations. The book argues that, when carefully used, these permissions may help political actors to avoid co-optation and self-delusion. At the same time, divisions of labor between those who grapple most closely with state institutions and those who keep their distance may be necessary to facilitate escape from persistent injustice over the long term.

Political Agenda Setting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
News Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
Political Decision Making

Political agenda setting is the part of agenda-setting research that refers to the influence of the media agenda on the agenda of political actors. More precisely, the central question of political agenda-setting research is whether political actors adopt the issue agenda of the news media in various aspects ranging from communicating about issues that are prominently discussed in the news media to prioritizing issues from the news media agenda in political decision making. Although such effects have been studied under different labels (agenda building, policy agenda setting) for several decades, research in this field has recently increased significantly based on a new theoretical model introducing the term political agenda setting. Studies based on that model usually find effects of media coverage on the attention political actors pay to various issues, but at the same time point to a number of contingent conditions. First, as found in research on public agenda setting, there is an influence of characteristics of news media (e.g., television news vs. print media) and issues (e.g., obtrusive vs. unobtrusive issues). Second, there is an influence of characteristics of the political context (e.g., government vs. oppositional parties) and characteristics of individual politicians (e.g., generalists vs. specialists). Third, the findings of studies on the political agenda-setting effect differ, depending on which aspects of the political agenda are under examination (e.g., social media messages vs. political decision making).

Strategies of Dominance

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries ◽  
Sara B. Hobolt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Real Risk ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
And Control

This chapter examines the strategies employed by dominant parties to secure their long-term electoral success and control of office. The first of the dominant-party strategies is that of distinctive convergence, whereby dominant parties take positions closer to the center ground in order to appeal to the tastes of a larger share of the electorate. Second, dominant parties seek to keep challengers at bay by controlling the political agenda and avoiding issues that may be disadvantageous to them. The final strategy concerns the emphasis of dominant parties on their competence. In combination, the strategies of distinctive convergence, issue avoidance, and competence have kept the old center-right and center-left parties in a dominant position in most of Western Europe for decades. Yet, these strategies are not without risk. As dominant parties converge to the center, there is a real risk that voters perceive them as too similar and feel they lack a genuine alternative.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The State ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Western Democracies

In addition to summarizing the book’s main themes as described, this Introduction places special emphasis on connecting the problem animating the book—the apparent incapacity of contemporary parties to mediate between citizens and the state—to current political developments in established Western democracies, showing that the issues the book addresses are not only of academic interest but also directly relevant to ongoing public debates about the state and health of representative democracy. Chief amongst the themes foregrounded here is the rise of so-called ‘populist’ parties on the left and right of the political spectrum, as well as the re-branding of established political actors as ‘movements’ (think, e.g. of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche). These phenomena are interpreted as part of a larger ‘revolt against intermediary bodies’—meaning first and foremost a rebellion against political parties. The Introduction suggests that this ‘revolt’ brings with it only a temporary shift in how representative politics looks, without actually reversing the disconnect between parties and voters or compelling established political parties to give up their privileges and de-colonize the institutions of the state. This argument sets the stage for the book’s core contention that more thought has to be put into finding ways to reconnect political parties with society.

Political Agenda Setting and the Mass Media

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefaan Walgrave ◽  
Peter Van Aelst
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Individual

Recently, the number of studies examining whether media coverage has an effect on the political agenda has been growing strongly. Most studies found that preceding media coverage does exert an effect on the subsequent attention for issues by political actors. These effects are contingent, though, they depend on the type of issue and the type of political actor one is dealing with. Most extant work has drawn on aggregate time-series designs, and the field is as good as fully non-comparative. To further develop our knowledge about how and why the mass media exert influence on the political agenda, three ways forward are suggested. First, we need better theory about why political actors would adopt media issues and start devoting attention to them. The core of such a theory should be the notion of the applicability of information encapsulated in the media coverage to the goals and the task at hand of the political actors. Media information has a number of features that make it very attractive for political actors to use—it is often negative, for instance. Second, we plead for a disaggregation of the level of analysis from the institutional level (e.g., parliament) or the collective actor level (e.g., party) to the individual level (e.g., members of parliament). Since individuals process media information, and since the goals and tasks of individuals that trigger the applicability mechanism are diverse, the best way to move forward is to tackle the agenda setting puzzle at the individual level. This implies surveying individual elites or, even better, implementing experimental designs to individual elite actors. Third, the field is in dire need of comparative work comparing how political actors respond to media coverage across countries or political systems.

scholarly journals The Changes of Forms of Public Contestation in PostDemocracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-143
Author(s):  
Roman V. Savenkov
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Funding ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Basic Institution ◽  
The Cost

The paper discusses the main trends in changing forms of political contestation of citizens in contemporary competitive and non-competitive political regimes. Social transformations led to the destruction of traditional social groups capable of joint political action. Along with social changes in the political sphere, the nature of the basic institution of political contestation - political parties - has changed, acting as political opposition. Contemporary political party reduces the scale of citizen involvement in political action, increasing the cost of political advertising, thereby becoming dependent on influential economic interest groups and state funding. The weakening of the political pressure of society through institutionalized channels led to the disappointment of the democratic system as a whole. Citizens in the contemporary world increasingly prefer noninstitutionalized and illegitimate forms of political action. However, observations of dispute practices in North Africa, the Middle East, Spain, the United States, France, and Russia in the 2010s demonstrate that the dominant position of institutional channels of influence on political and public decisions has been maintained. New opportunities of the Internet for organizing collective actions of citizens have not led to the formation of a new identity of dissatisfied people and the consolidation of effective online deliberation practices.

scholarly journals “Governance” em Tempo de Pandemia: Um Enquadramento Filosófico

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Orlando Coutinho ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
The Way

The way in which an unknown virus has moved from a local to a global case, taking on a pandemic outline, has caused significant changes in the lives of all human beings. Firstly, for that reason, it is unknown, then because behind the ignorance comes mistrust and fear. Nowadays, these ingredients are - in the political-social space - substance for the biggest factors of action and decision of the actors of the power. Have we been in a war context, as some have said? Was confinement, global and so prolonged, really necessary? Was decreeing a state of emergency essential? Were the exception measures proportional? And are they reversible? This article aims, in the way of the ideas of several authors that thinking about the political philosophical role of health contexts, of exception state, and of political control of the State, in face of public health issues and not only, understand the “state of the art” in the way of governing western democracies, in the firstly, but flying over other geographies and systems as the virus has assumed global contours. And, by means of the concrete measures, politically adopted, by the different political actors, what real impacts they had on the life and the institutions working, and on the psychology of the persons individually or socially considered.

scholarly journals Populism in the Early Parliamentary Election for Members in the Croatian Parliament in 2016

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-63
Author(s):  
Ivor Altaras Penda ◽  
Marin Zekaj
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Political Careers ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Republic

AbstractBased on the previously published researches of the phenomenon of populism and its presence in the Republic of Croatia, and using methodological contents analyis matrix, which has been developed by B. Šalaj and M. Grbeša Zenzerović, this paper deals with the research of the presence of populism in the early Parliamentary election held in 2016. The researches of the phenomenon of populism have been intensified on both local and global level, and populism, as a concept, is becoming increasingly present in social and political discourse. However, everyone and everything is then easily classified as populistic. In the context of the Republic of Croatia, which has been through numerous state orders throughout its political history, this paper is going to examine if there was populism, as an aspect of political action, in the 2016 elections, and it is going to potentially identify the political actors, who have been using populistic features in their political careers. Furthermore, it is going to examine which kind of populism it is.

scholarly journals Japan’s Diplomatic Proactive Stance towards Indochina and the Cambodian Problem (1970)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Oliviero Frattolillo
Keyword(s):  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Foreign Politics

Abstract This article assesses the Japanese diplomatic contribution through the prism of the Indochinese political situation in the early 1970s. The traditional literature depicts Japan’s non-existent proactivism in postwar foreign politics, based on its alleged unconditional dependence on Washington’s political agenda. However, throughout the 1970s there were occasions in which the country showed how it was independently engaged at a diplomatic level. This has often been overlooked by the literature produced in the field, but it is an irrefutable conclusion from the historical evidence and the analysis of the archival sources. Japan’s diplomatic commitment in solving the problem of peace in Cambodia, its double effort as a diplomatic intermediary between the political actors involved in the Indochinese issue and, at the same time, through the ODA policy, may offer the missing elements for a no longer univocal interpretation of its postwar diplomatic history—which is the aim of this essay.

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