Political Communication and Affective Polarization in the 2014 Midterm Elections for the US Senate: The Cases of Iowa, North Carolina, and Georgia

2016 ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freddie J. Jennings ◽  
Rocío Galarza ◽  
Benjamin R. Warner
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Senate

Tweeting is Leading

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelise Russell
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Political Constraints ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
Reputation Building

Social media is changing the business of representation and lawmaker reputation building, and this book uses the US Senate to illustrate the constituent-driven nature of political communication. I offer a critical analysis of senators’ communication on Twitter, the forces that shape it, and the agendas that result. Senators strategically communicate a political image that reflects their unique political persona. They have to decide what they want to be known for, crafting communications that prioritize legislation, constituent service, and party politics in ways that meet the interests of their constituencies and foster promising electoral returns. Senators’ communicated, public priorities—what is termed in this book as the rhetorical agenda—offer a necessary tool for understanding how senators link their carefully crafted public image with potential voters. The rhetorical agenda uses more than 180,000 lawmaker tweets to challenge what we know about representation, removing the institutional and political constraints on congressional communication and giving lawmakers a messaging platform where individual discretion is high, the relative costs are low, and someone is always watching.

Secrecy, State-Private Networks and Operational Effectiveness in Cold War Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-560
Author(s):  
ERIC PULLIN
Keyword(s):  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Operational Effectiveness ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Time ◽  
To Come ◽  
Us Senate

Secrecy has unintended consequences. The release on 9 December 2014 of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the torture of terrorism detainees focused public attention on the secret activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Regrettably, lost amidst debate over justifying or condemning state-sponsored torture is a more basic concern, the issue of state secrecy, which underlies the discussion of how governments promote national ends. Only two days after the issuance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, the US House of Representatives adjourned without taking action on the Freedom of Information Act reform bill – despite receiving unanimous approval in both houses. This bill would not have required complete openness, but it would have eliminated many of the arbitrary mechanisms that enable the CIA and other governmental agencies to suppress requests for information. Although the House Republican leadership failed to put the act on the legislative calendar, the Obama administration's Department of Justice also deserves opprobrium for surreptitiously opposing the act behind the scenes. The US government's disregard for establishing reasonable rules of transparency virtually guarantees that the CIA will continue to suppress its records, and thus public scrutiny of its unchecked activities, for a very long time to come.

Unequal Voting

2019 ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
James Lindley Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Electoral College ◽  
Small Populations ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Voting Power ◽  
Political Inequality ◽  
The Us ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Us Senate

This chapter assesses how the inequalities in voting power involved in the US Senate and in the Electoral College used to elect the president violate the requirements of political equality. The Senate comprises two senators from each state. States with large populations get the same number of votes in the Senate as do states with small populations. Because the states vary considerably in population, there are large inequalities in how many citizens are represented by a senate delegation. This unequal representation of individuals in the Senate constitutes objectionable political inequality. The Senate is thus unjustifiably undemocratic. This conclusion has implications for the election of the US president, as the Electoral College process for such election tracks what the chapter argues is the malapportionment of the Senate. This inequality, too, is objectionable, and it should be eliminated. The reasons for a more egalitarian election of the president are all the more urgent given that the inequalities in the Senate are much more constitutionally entrenched, and thus likely to remain. The election of the president should mitigate that inequality rather than exaggerate it.

Life in the Middle

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neilan S. Chaturvedi
Keyword(s):  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Legislative Power ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Congressional Record ◽  
The Us ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
Two Sides

For almost thirty years, political scientists have believed that the US Senate would be less affected by partisan polarization due to the existence of a handful of moderate senators who would act as power brokers between the two sides, yet year after year we see partisan gridlock. Life in the Middle argues that the belief in the powerful, pivotal moderate neglects their electoral circumstances and overestimates their legislative power. Indeed, not all senators are elected under equal circumstances where the modern centrist has to balance between two conflicting constituencies like Susan Collins in Maine, or represents a state where the opposition outnumbers their base like Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Using data compiled from the Congressional Record, the book examines the legislative behavior of moderates and finds that they seldom amend legislation to their preferences, rarely speak on the record, and often lose on final votes. Using unique interview data with nineteen legislative directors and six retired centrist senators, it also finds that the behind-the-scenes conversations mirror the on-stage behavior where centrists are not influential or viewed as pivotal by party leaders. Furthermore, moderates reported less satisfaction with legislative outcomes than their peers. Life in the Middle suggests that lawmaking needs to be re-evaluated as being much more variable and less reliant on the work of moderates and more on party leaders. Indeed, the mainstream concerns about polarization and its negative effects of increased gridlock and ideological legislation may be true.

United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-126
Author(s):  
Christian Freudlsperger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Openness ◽  
Type System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
High Propensity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
Rule Systems

The first of the three case studies looks at the United States. It finds that while the states’ opportunities for individual exit have remained unconstrained in the non-coercive field of procurement in which federal pre-emption is not an option, no serious attempts have been made to systematically increase their voice. This is due, firstly, to the mechanics of the US senate-type system of multilevel representation and, secondly, to the lack of an institutionalized procedure of vertical collaboration in a policy environment characterized by ‘coercive federalism’. Persisting barriers in the internal market and a widespread politicization of international procurement liberalization as a threat to state sovereignty have further contributed to constituent units’ high propensity to seek exit from international constraints. Ultimately, the US case highlights the limits of self-rule systems in organizing trade openness across multiple levels of government. Endowing the states with little voice in polity-wide policy-making, the US model shows a marked tendency to breed resistance to internationally driven adaptational pressures among constituent units. As self-rule systems are built on a delineation of central and subcentral spheres of competence, they generally tend to lack the institutional means and ideational underpinnings to effectively organize collaborative power-sharing by establishing patterns of shared rule.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document