Ritual Deception: A Window to the Hidden Determinants of Human Politics

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O. Beahrs
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Actual Content ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
Sociobiological Theory ◽  
Deceptive Behaviors

Political leaders of all persuasions are known to make public statements of affiliative allegiance with more form than substance, and to disavow political motivations obvious to the public. Such “ritual deceptions” are better understood in the same light as social etiquette—as partly deceptive behaviors that help to bond individuals with conflicting interests. Those who are more open and honest are often punished, more for breaking unspoken rules and taboos than for the actual content revealed. The functions of ritual deception are explicated by sociobiological theory, and the process, by understanding hypnotic transactions. Political deceptions require the active collaboration of subjects, achieved through the same skills used by experienced hypnotists. Deceptive transactions are more likely to occur in internally traumatized societies, and occur along a continuum from ritual deception to overt disinformation. Examples are taken from recent American history. That the content of ritual deception is so close to full awareness suggests its value as a focal point, both for studying the hidden determinants within human politics, and for policy intervention when appropriate.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Public Life ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Many

The Conclusion ties together the book’s main arguments about Crispus Attucks’s place in American history and memory. We do not know enough about his experiences, associations, or motives before or during the Boston Massacre to conclude with certainty that Attucks should be considered a hero and patriot. But his presence in that mob on March 5, 1770, embodies the diversity of colonial America and the active participation of workers and people of color in the public life of the Revolutionary era. The strong likelihood that Attucks was a former slave who claimed his own freedom and carved out a life for himself in the colonial Atlantic world adds to his story’s historical significance. The lived realities of Crispus Attucks and the many other men and women like him must be a part of Americans’ understanding of the nation’s founding generations.

Is political engagement by constitutional monarchs compatible with democracy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 205789112199169
Author(s):  
Kana Inata
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Involvement ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Public Approval ◽  
Do So

Constitutional monarchies have proved to be resilient, and some have made substantive political interventions even though their positions are mostly hereditary, without granted constitutional channels to do so. This article examines how constitutional monarchs can influence political affairs and what impact royal intervention can have on politics. I argue that constitutional monarchs affect politics indirectly by influencing the preferences of the public who have de jure power to influence political leaders. The analyses herein show that constitutional monarchs do not indiscriminately intervene in politics, but their decisions to intervene reflect the public’s preferences. First, constitutional monarchs with little public approval become self-restraining and do not attempt to assert their political preferences. Second, they are more likely to intervene in politics when the public is less satisfied about the incumbent government. These findings are illustrated with historical narratives regarding the political involvement of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in the 2000s.

Patents for Critical Pharmaceuticals: The AZT Case

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 145-180
Author(s):  
Evan Ackiron
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Incentive System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Incentive Programs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Monopoly Pricing ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
Necessary Evil ◽  
Near Future

Patents and other statutory types of market protections are used in the United States to promote scientific research and innovation. This incentive is especially important in research intensive fields such as the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, these same protections often result in higher monopoly pricing once a successful product is brought to market. Usually this consequence is viewed as the necessary evil of an incentive system that encourages costly research and development by promising large rewards to the successful inventor. However, in the case of the AIDS drug Zidovudine (AZT), the high prices charged by the pharmaceutical company owning the drug have led to public outcry and a re-examination of government incentive systems.This Note traces the evolution of these incentive programs — the patent system, and, to a lesser extent, the orphan drug program — and details the conflicting interests involved in their development. It then demonstrates how the AZT problem brings the interest of providing inventors with incentives for risky innovative efforts into a sharp collision with the ultimate goal of such systems: ensuring that the public has access to the resulting products at a reasonable price. Finally, the Note describes how Congress and the courts have attempted to resolve these problems in the past, and how they might best try to solve the AZT problem in the near future.

scholarly journals Council Press Offices as Sources of Political Information: Between Journalism for Accountability and Propaganda

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Vanessa Rodríguez-Breijo ◽  
Núria Simelio ◽  
Pedro Molina-Rodríguez-Navas
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Selection Of

This study uses a qualitative approach to examine what political and technical leaders of municipalities understand transparency and public information to mean, and what role they believe the different subjects involved (government, opposition, and the public) should have. The websites of 605 Spanish councils with more than 100,000 inhabitants were analysed and three focus groups were held with political and technical leaders from a selection of sample councils. The results show that the technical and political leaders of the councils do not have a clear awareness of their function of management accountability or of the need to apply journalistic criteria to the information they publish, defending with nuances the use of propaganda criteria to focus on the actions of the local government, its information, the lack of space dedicated to public debate and the opposition’s actions. In relation to accountability and citizen participation, they have a negative view of citizens, who they describe as being disengaged. However, they emphasize that internally it is essential to continue improving in terms of the culture of transparency and the public information they provide citizens.

scholarly journals The General, His Fandom, and a Participatory Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Angelina Ilieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Military Medical Academy ◽  
Medical Academy ◽  
The Media ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Military

In February 2020, the Bulgarian government established the National Operational Headquarters for Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Bulgaria. General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, a military doctor, professor at the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, was appointed as its chairman. This paper presents a case study on the public image of Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, its readings and interpretations by the audience, and the specific fan culture that emerged around his media persona during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria. Placed in the spotlight of the media at the very beginning of the crisis, Mutafchiyski became extremely popular as the public figure most strongly associated with the fight against the spread of the disease in the country. Around his media persona, shaped in the public imagination as a wartime leader, a fan culture has grown with all its characteristic features and dimensions: fans and anti-fans, affirmative and transformative fandom. As a fictional character, Mutafchiyski has appeared in numerous forms of vernacular creativity: poems, songs, material objects, jokes, fake news, conspiracy theories, and memes. In this way, the General has become the main character of Bulgarian pandemic folklore and the focal point of a participatory pandemic.

scholarly journals AUTORITA’ AND AUTOREVOLEZZA: EXPLAINING CONTESTATIONS BETWEEN POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE AGE OF THE NEW MEDIA

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Walter C. Ihejirika
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Connection ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

In many African countries, since the nineties, there is a subtle contest going on between religious and political leaders. At the heart of this contest is what Rosalind Hackett described as the redefinition of the categories of power and status, which cease to be primarily tied to material wealth or political connection, but rather to spiritual authority and revelation. This is a struggle for the hegemonic control of the society in the Gramscian sense of the term. While political leaders may use the coercive arms of the state – military might as well as their control of the financial resources of the state to impose their authority, religious leaders on the other hand assume the posture of moral icons, personalities endowed with superior knowledge based on divine revelation. As these contestations are played out in the public sphere, the way the leaders are able to portray themselves to their public will determine their followership. This explains the importance of mediation in the process of politico-religious contestations. In the eyes of the public, political leaders have the physical or raw power - the Italian concept of autorita; while the religious leaders have the moral power - autorevolezza. This paper uses these concepts as metaphors to present a general explanation of how the contestation between religious and political leaders plays out in the public sphere of the new media

Building an Infrastructure to Support the Use of Government Administrative Data for Program Performance and Social Science Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 675 (1) ◽  
pp. 240-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Lane
Keyword(s):  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Data Infrastructure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intellectual Engagement

This article provides an overview of the elements necessary to build a sustainable research data infrastructure. I argue that it needs the financial and intellectual engagement of a community of practice. Most attention has been paid to researchers and policy-makers, but a third group—government programmatic agencies—must be a focal point since they act as both data producers and as policy implementers. I also discuss possible business models that are both consistent with serving the needs of multiple stakeholders and that are not completely dependent on the largesse of the public purse.

The Importance of Planning and Politics

Suburb ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Royce Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Plan ◽  
Silver Spring ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
Traditional Land Use

This book concludes with a discussion of Montgomery County's contribution to understanding planning politics. Montgomery's experience highlights the complementary roles and reasoning processes of planners and politicians as they sought to act in the public interest. One of the most valuable lessons planners and political leaders can take from Montgomery's cases is the importance of persistence in land use policy. This is evident in the General Plan, the Agricultural Reserve, and Silver Spring. Furthermore, Montgomery shows that planning matters even if planning politics is hard. This conclusion argues that planning for the next half-century will require a fusion of traditional land use planning with a broader capacity for rethinking Montgomery's role in the metropolitan, state, national, and world political economies. It ends by speculating on the county's future.

Conditions Determining the Success of Public E-Procurement

2012 ◽  
pp. 185-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirmala Dorasamy
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Customer Value ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
Procurement System

The dynamic global environment has necessitated governments to adopt a systems approach of integrating suppliers, customers, and information linkages in an endeavor to create and sustain value for public services. The evolution of the concept “the customer is king” has placed the customer foremost in public management thinking. As a result, optimizing customer value in the public domain has become a focal point in managing procurement. The large quantity of public resources used for service delivery points to the importance of efficiency and effectiveness in expenditures as well as accountability. E-Procurement systems provide mechanisms for controlling, simplifying, and automating goods and services from different suppliers. While benefits like stricter control over spending authorization, easier transaction processing and elimination of redundant stock are achieved through automated procurement processes; the viability and success of e-procurement for the public sector is determined by various conditions. The conditions for successful implementation of an e-procurement system are explored as every government activity involves the spending of public monies on goods and services. Any failings in e-procurement practices can create possibilities for large-scale losses through incompetence, waste, and fraud, which directly impact the public.

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