Looking for Sex in All the Wrong Places: Press Coverage and the Electoral Fortunes of Gubernatorial Candidates

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler ◽  
Jennifer L. Lawless

Although female candidates have achieved parity on some dimensions, political institutions remain deeply gendered in how they structure the parameters of electoral competition. We rely on a new data set of gubernatorial races from the 1990s to address the theoretical and empirical challenges created by the interaction of gender, media content, and electoral institutions. Based on an analysis of 1,365 newspaper articles for 27 contests in which a woman held a major party nomination, we uncover evidence of continuing bias in media coverage. Yet significant coefficients on candidate sex tell only part of the story. Gendered contextual factors linked to the contest and state in which candidates compete, as well as the newspapers that cover their races, also affect women's experiences on the campaign trail. The major finding, however, is the presence of a powerful baseline effect favoring male candidates that is deeply embedded in U.S. politics. All else equal, women gubernatorial candidates suffer a substantial vote deficit that results from non-observable influences. The results support the emerging consensus among feminist theorists that greater focus on the political context is likely to produce bigger scholarly payoffs than is continued attention to observable differences between male and female candidates.

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 212-222
Author(s):  
M. V. Simonova

The author analyses the features of media coverage of the new coronavirus infection (Covid-19) in Russia based on the material published from March 1, 2020, to May 15, 2020, in the Spanish high-quality press – daily social-political newspapers El País, El Mundo, and ABC. These papers are most read and influential in the modern media space not only in Spain but in the international market, and in particular in Latin America. The main goal of the study is to show how the image of Russia in the international media space affects the presentation of the pandemic in Russia in Spanish mass media. The author also studies the “quality press” concept and analyses this through the prism of Russian and foreign approaches. The analysis of the publications (152 articles), selected using the keywords “Russia”, “Moscow”, “Putin”, “Covid-19”, showed that some newspapers, being of high-quality and most read, do not reflect the pandemic situation in Russia widely (El País), or represent the sanitary situation in Russia partly and in the context of the domestic politics focused on the figure of the President (El Mundo). Another newspaper ABC corresponds to all the requirements for the status of quality press and covers the current situation of the pandemic in Russia objectively; 75 materials published during the analysed period draw the readers’ attention to the situation with the pandemic and not on the political situation in Russia.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Arel-Bundock

Many large-N cross-national studies claim to show that political institutions and phenomena determine where foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. In this article, I argue that these studies tend to overemphasize statistical significance and often neglect to assess the explanatory or predictive power of their theories. To illustrate the problem, I estimate variations of a statistical model published in an influential article on “Political Risk, Institutions, and FDI.” I find that none of the political variables that the authors consider accounts for much of the variation in aggregate FDI inflows. To ensure that this underwhelming result is not driven by misspecification or measurement error, I leverage a large firm-level data set on the investment location decisions of thousands of multinational firms. Using nonparametric machine-learning techniques and out-of-sample tests, I show that gravity variables can help us develop very accurate expectations about firm behavior but that none of the 31 “political determinants” of FDI that I consider can do much to improve our expectations. These findings have important implications because they suggest that governments retain some room to move in the face of economic globalization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205316802091725 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. Daniel ◽  
Lukas Obholzer

This article draws upon the literature on comparative political institutions in order to re-examine the logic of Twitter usage during campaign periods, now that social media has become a standard tool that is used across the political spectrum. We test how electoral institutions and individual characteristics shaped Twitter activity during the 2019 European elections cycle and compare the nature of this usage with the previous 2014 campaign. Our findings allow for an evaluation of social media campaigning against the backdrop of its dynamic evolution, while also confirming its normalisation in the European elections’ revival of the Spitzenkandidat process. Rather than seeking to differentiate themselves from party-internal and external competitors or highlighting their own qualities, our findings suggest that Members of the European Parliament used Twitter in 2019 to emphasise the lead candidate that they have in common.


1999 ◽  
pp. 276-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Markoff

Writing on the eve of the democratic breakthrough of the late eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave vivid voice to a critique of the political institutions across the Channel that were admired by so many French reformers of the day. Commenting scornfully on British electoral practice, he observed in 1762 that:"The people of England regards itself as free, but it is gravely mistaken. It is free only during the election of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys merits losing them." Rousseau's contention about the limitations of electoral institutions was in no way superseded by the age of democratic revolution that followed. From the 1790s to the present, there have been recurrent complaints about the depth of popular involvement in political life, the reality of popular control over powerholders, and the possibility that the existence of some form of institutional channel for participation could blind publics to the inadequacy of that participation. Rousseau's critique has repeatedly reappeared in one form or another and has informed movements for a more genuine democratization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Nurul Khotimah

<p><em>The aim of this study is to describe media ideology and construct media independence in the 2019 political year. Ideology has a major influence on the determination of media content. It is as if the general election democracy party cannot be separated from the mass media, so that the reporting of events "attacking each other" by the candidate pair cannot be avoided in the general election contestation. The object of the study was Kompas.com reporting on time limitations during the 2019 presidential and vice presidential election campaign. The research method used was qualitative library research. Data collection techniques using documentation. The results showed that the challenge of media ideology in maintaining the independence of media coverage in the political year must use the principles of independence. They are the presence or absence of opinion, personalization, sensation, stereotype, linkage, and accuracy in reporting.</em></p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ирина Юдина ◽  
Irina Yudina

This work is an attempt to explain the political roots from which banking systems have evolved in different countries and how they have evolved at different times. For this purpose, materials and analysis tools from three different disciplines were used: economic history, political science and Economics. The main idea that is set out in this paper is the statement that the strength and weakness of the banking system is a consequence of the Great political game and that the rules of this game are written by the main political institutions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Young ◽  
Philip Davignon ◽  
Margaret B. Hansen ◽  
Mark A. Eggen

ABSTRACT Recent media coverage has focused on the supply of physicians in the United States, especially with the impact of a growing physician shortage and the Affordable Care Act. State medical boards and other entities maintain data on physician licensure and discipline, as well as some biographical data describing their physician populations. However, there are gaps of workforce information in these sources. The Federation of State Medical Boards' (FSMB) Census of Licensed Physicians and the AMA Masterfile, for example, offer valuable information, but they provide a limited picture of the physician workforce. Furthermore, they are unable to shed light on some of the nuances in physician availability, such as how much time physicians spend providing direct patient care. In response to these gaps, policymakers and regulators have in recent years discussed the creation of a physician minimum data set (MDS), which would be gathered periodically and would provide key physician workforce information. While proponents of an MDS believe it would provide benefits to a variety of stakeholders, an effort has not been attempted to determine whether state medical boards think it is important to collect physician workforce data and if they currently collect workforce information from licensed physicians. To learn more, the FSMB sent surveys to the executive directors at state medical boards to determine their perceptions of collecting workforce data and current practices regarding their collection of such data. The purpose of this article is to convey results from this effort. Survey findings indicate that the vast majority of boards view physician workforce information as valuable in the determination of health care needs within their state, and that various boards are already collecting some data elements. Analysis of the data confirms the potential benefits of a physician minimum data set (MDS) and why state medical boards are in a unique position to collect MDS information from physicians.


Author(s):  
M.L. LEBEDEVA

The purpose of writing this article is to highlight the features of organization of the regional policy in France on the basis of the theoretical understanding of the concepts of regional policy, model of regional policy and policy analogy. The research topic is the content of the French policy of organizing a regional political space. The object of the research is the power technologies of regional policy. The systemstructural method, which considers political relations as an integral system of interconnections of phenomena and events of the political process, makes it possible to determine the main essential content of this research topic. Institutional approach involves the study of political institutions and their content. An analysis of Russian and foreign sources suggests that the main issue posed in the article is relevant at the present stage of development. The study is made possible on the basis of existing research. A comprehensive study of the conceptual theoretical characteristics of the regional policy as such allowed the author to identify the model and features of the political toolkit for the organization of thecenterregions relations in modern French Republic.


Author(s):  
Tracey Raney

This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens’ political identifications in the European Union and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results of the paper show that in the EU and Canada identity formation is a process that involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. The paper makes the case that this phenomenon is characteristic of a rise of ‘civic’ identities in the EU and Canada. In the European Union, this overarching ‘civic’ identity is in its infancy compared to Canada, yet, both reveal a new form of political identification when compared to the historical and enduring forms of cultural identities firmly entrenched in Europe. The rise of civic identities in both the EU and Canada is attributed to the active role that citizens play in their own identity constructions as they base their identifications on rational assessments of how well political institutions function, and whether their memberships in the community will benefit them, rather than on emotional factors rooted in religion or race. In the absence of strongly held emotional identifications, in the EU and Canada political institutions play a passive role in identity construction by making the community appear more entitative to its citizens. These findings offer new theoretical scope to the concept of civic communities and the political identities that underpin them. The most important finding presented in the paper is that although civic communities and identities are manufactured by institutions and political elites (politicians and bureaucrats), they require thinking citizens, not feeling ones, to be sustained.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v2i4.179


Author(s):  
Shaun Bowler

This chapter analyzes to what extent variation in political institutions affects political support. The chapter observes that the existing research is not always clear on which institutions should produce what kind of effect, although a general expectation is that institutional arrangements improve political support when they give citizens an increased sense of connection to the political process. In general then, we should expect institutions that strengthen the quality of representation to strengthen political support. This general expectation is specified in six hypotheses that are tested using data from the ESS 2012. The chapter demonstrates that electoral systems that provide voters with more choice about candidates, multiparty governments, and “responsive” legislatures, correlate positively with political support. However, compared to other macro-level factors and individual characteristics, the effects of political institutions on political support are modest. The chapter concludes that the prospects for institutional reform to strengthen political support are limited.


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