Estimating the Conflict Dimensionality in the German Länder from Vote Advice Applications, 2014–2017

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Nyhuis ◽  
Pascal König
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
Inductive Approach ◽  
German Länder ◽  
The Common ◽  
Multiple Elections

AbstractBuilding on the spatial model of party competition, we investigate the structure of political conflict in German subnational politics. Little research has examined the conflict dimensionality at the Länder level. Moreover, the few studies which have done so predominantly rely on a deductive approach that pre-structures the conflict space using presumed conflict dimensions. In this paper, we put these dimensionality assumptions to the test with an inductive approach that capitalizes on parties’ preference expressions in vote advice applications. We circumvent the common concern that data from vote advice applications is too sparse for assessing political conflict structures by estimating a space that bridges multiple elections. Unlike previous research, we find that political conflict is defined by a comprehensive left-right dimension and a secondary dimension separating mainstream parties from fringe competitors. This anti-establishment dimension is characterized by diverging preferences over democratic institutions and policies considered consensual among the political mainstream.

Discourse and Disinformation on COVID-19 Vaccination in Spain and Brazil

2022 ◽  
pp. 279-306
Author(s):  
Claudio Luis de Camargo Penteado ◽  
Eva Campos-Domínguez ◽  
Patrícia Dias dos Santos ◽  
Denise Hideko Goya ◽  
Mario Mangas Núñez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Online Debate

This chapter addresses the creation of political conflict on Twitter in a comparative study between Brazil and Spain. Based on an analysis of the political debate on dealing with two countries' health crises, it analyses the most retweeted messages published during the first week of vaccination in Europe and the Americas. Firstly, it analysed the general characteristics of the online debate on the immunisation of COVID-19. Secondly, it carried out an analysis of information disorder in each country. Although governmental positions in both countries are opposed, the results allow establishing common patterns of polarized profiles in both countries that question the management of the pandemic. It can be seen how political polarization is shaped as a characteristic of disinformation in both countries. That reveals that, after the health crisis, there is a crisis of democratic institutions that impact public health actions, but specifically to combat COVID-19.

scholarly journals The Idea Of The Common Good

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Rafał Łatka
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ideological Bias ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
Reason Of State ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

The notions of common good and the reason of state were always present, usually in a joint way, in the teachings of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński. They came to the foreground, especially in the periods of post-war crises in Poland, moments of growing social tension. Despite the fact that the primate did not want to be a politician, because the main sphere of his activity was concern for the souls of Poles, he became a statesman, for whom the welfare of Poland and Poles was the primary task. This was largely due to the primate’s concern for the broadly understood common good – Poland as a subject of common concern for all members of society, regardless of their views. Most importantly, Cardinal Wyszyński was able to look at the political situation without ideological bias or obstinancy. If he believed that communists somehow work for the common good and care about the fate of society, he supported their activity (an example of this could be the fight against social pathologies – especially alcoholism).   

Spatial Models of Party Competition

1963 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ideological Dimension

The use of spatial ideas to interpret party competition is a universal phenomenon of modern politics. Such ideas are the common coin of political journalists and have extraordinary influence in the thought of political activists. Especially widespread is the conception of a liberal-conservative dimension on which parties maneuver for the support of a public that is itself distributed from left to right. This conception goes back at least to French revolutionary times and has recently gained new interest for an academic audience through its ingenious formalization by Downs and others. However, most spatial interpretations of party competition have a very poor fit with the evidence about how large-scale electorates and political leaders actually respond to politics. Indeed, the findings on this point are clear enough so that spatial ideas about party competition ought to be modified by empirical observation. I will review here evidence that the “space” in which American parties contend for electoral support is very unlike a single ideological dimension, and I will offer some suggestions toward revision of the prevailing spatial model.

The politicization of immigration in Italy. Who frames the issue, when and how

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ornella Urso
Keyword(s):  
Political Conflict ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Old Left ◽  
Immigration Issue

AbstractItaly is one of the most representative ‘new immigration countries.’ Between the 1980s and the 1990s, it became a major country of destination for immigrants coming from Asia, Middle East, and North Africa. As a result, since the mid-90s, immigration has gained salience within the Italian political debate. Building on the existing literature on agenda-setting and framing studies, this article studies the evolution of the immigration issue in Italy over the last two decades. It focuses on the framing and, more specifically, the position political actors tend to adopt when debating on immigration. In particular, the main research questions are: to what extent is the framing of immigration associated with the traditional left vs. right spectrum? Do incumbent political parties tend to adopt a different position toward immigration than opposition parties? This article analyses party competition dynamics over the immigration issue in Italy from 1995 to 2011. The author carried out a political-claim analysis of articles from two Italian national daily newspapers. Findings show that immigration is more a positional issue than a valence one. Political actors’ positions towards migration appear to be anchored to the old left vs. right dimension of the political conflict. This demonstrates that parties’ engagement within the political conflict goes beyond electoral campaigns. Finally, being in government seems to play a crucial role in ‘softening’ the way party actors frame immigration, in terms of both the arguments used and the pro- or anti-immigration positions adopted.

What is a Complex? Freudian Resistances

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Morgan Wortham
Keyword(s):  
Value Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War

This chapter evaluates the question of the ‘complex’ in a range of scientific, political and psychoanalytic contexts, asking not only where lines of connection and demarcation occur among specific distributions of meaning, value, theory and practice; but also probing the psychoanalytic corpus, notably Freud’s writings on the notion of a ‘complex’, in order to reframe various implications of the idea that this term tends to resist its own utilisation as both an object and form of analysis. This section establishes connections between three sets of theoretical questions: the common practice of describing modernity and its wake in terms of a drive towards increasing complexity; the meaning and cultural legacy of phrases such as ‘military-industrial complex’ and sundry derivations in the political sphere; and the intricacies and ambiguities subtending the term ‘complex’ within psychoanalytic theory. As a concept that Freud both utilised and repudiated, the provocative power of the term ‘complex’ is linked to the way it thwarts various attempts at systemization (providing nonetheless an apparatus of sorts through which contemporary science, Slavoj Žižek, Noam Chomsky, Freud, Eisenhower, and post-war politics can be articulated to one another).

“There is such a situation that Comrade Svoboda is under pressure”. The Soviet leadership and the settlement of relations with Czechoslovakia. May 1969

2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.

Something Gleaming

Theoria ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (165) ◽  
pp. 92-117
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Leebaw
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Way

What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.

Relating regional crises and political cohesion from an ASEAN and EU-ASEAN perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-105
Author(s):  
Naila Maier-Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
International Community ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Asian Region ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Common ◽  
Regional Grouping

In December 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) celebrated the official establishment of the ASEAN Community. Having emerged in 1967 as a regional grouping of developing countries with minimal shared interests—beyond the common concern of economic growth and national resilience, ASEAN now has established regional structures which have been vital in enhancing development and dialogue on a broad range of issues across the Southeast Asian region. Over the years, the institutional development at the regional level has been accompanied by various efforts to promote regional unity and identity. The more recent years have also displayed that the international community has been supporting these efforts for ASEAN unity and identity by showing greater recognition of ASEAN as an international actor in its own right, for example, through the establishment of numerous country delegations to ASEAN.

Speaking for Islam

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
Abdoulaye Sounaye
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
The State ◽  
Institutional Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religion And State ◽  
Islamic Values ◽  
French Model

Unexpectedly, one of the marking features of democratization in Niger has been the rise of a variety of Islamic discourses. They focus on the separation between religion and the state and, more precisely, the way it is manifested through the French model of laïcité, which democratization has adopted in Niger. For many Muslim actors, laïcité amounts to a marginalization of Islamic values and a negation of Islam. This article present three voices: the Collaborators, the Moderates, and the Despisers. Each represents a trend that seeks to influence the state’s political and ideological makeup. Although the ulama in general remain critical vis-à-vis the state’s political and institutional transformation, not all of them reject the principle of the separation between religion and state. The Collaborators suggest cooperation between the religious authority and the political one, the Moderates insist on the necessity for governance to accommodate the people’s will and visions, and the Despisers reject the underpinning liberalism that voids religious authority and demand a total re-Islamization. I argue that what is at stake here is less the separation between state and religion than the modality of this separation and its impact on religious authority. The targets, tones, and justifications of the discourses I explore are evidence of the limitations of a democratization project grounded in laïcité. Thus in place of a secular democratization, they propose a conservative democracy based on Islam and its demands for the realization of the common good.

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