scholarly journals SEARCH ME: Public opinion on crime and justice in central Johannesburg

Author(s):  
Ted Leggett

A poll of inner-city residents indicates that many are willing to permit substantial curtailment of civil rights if necessary to make the area safe. Over 80% of those polled said they would be open to the idea of police searching their homes once a month if this would reduce crime. A third of respondents favoured execution for drug dealers, and 70% of those who had experienced a police Crackdown operation in their area thought it had helped the situation. This is an expression of the desperation of a community where 88% of the people do not feel safe walking the streets at night.

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 266-273
Author(s):  
Ivan S. Palitai

The article is devoted to the modern Russian party system. In the first part of the article, the author shows the historical features of the parties formation in Russia and analyzes the reasons for the low turnout in the elections to the State Duma in 2016. According to the author the institutional reasons consist in the fact that the majority of modern political parties show less and less ability to produce new ideas, and the search for meanings is conducted on the basis of the existing, previously proposed sets of options. Parties reduce the topic of self-identification in party rhetoric, narrowing it down to “branded” ideas or focusing on the image of the leader. In addition, the author shows the decrease in the overall political activity of citizens after the 2011 elections, and points out that the legislation amendments led to the reduction of the election campaigns duration and changes in the voting system itself. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the psychological aspects of the party system. The author presents the results of the investigation of images of the parties as well as the results of the population opinion polls, held by the centers of public opinion study. On the basis of this data, the author concludes that according to the public opinion the modern party system is ineffective, and the parties don’t have real political weight, which leads to the decrease of the interest in their activities and confidence in them. The author supposes that all this may be the consequence of the people’s fatigue from the same persons in politics, but at the same time the electorate’s desire to see new participants in political processes is formulated rather vaguely, since, according to the people, this might not bring any positive changes.


Author(s):  
Jim Tomlinson

This introduction outlines how the idea of a national economy subject to governmental management was constructed in Britain out of the dissolution of the unmanaged economy of the pre-1914 era. It argues that a key turning point came in 1931 with the departure from the gold standard and the introduction of protection. But, it is argued, it was only from the 1940s that national economic management was combined with ‘managing the people’, through major efforts to shape public opinion on the economy. This chapter also summarizes the development of the major kinds of economic statistics which underpinned both facets of economic management.


2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Beckers

Abstract Vox pops, interviews with ordinary people on the street, are one of the most common ways to represent public opinion in television news. Research found that they influence audience judgments more than static base-rate information such as poll results. However, little research has compared vox pops with vivified base-rate information. Most research studying vox pops assumed they are included in the news because of their apparent attractiveness and trustworthiness to audiences. Using a television news experiment comparing statistical base-rate information vivified by an expert with vox pop statements, this study shows that news items containing vox pop statements are perceived as being less attractive and trustworthy than items containing the expert statement. No difference is found between the two types of public opinion information in their influence on perceived public opinion, but vox pops do influence audiences’ personal opinion more strongly.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-48
Author(s):  
S.А. Kuemzhieva ◽  
◽  
V.V. Goncharov ◽  
D.D. Oblogin ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the study of the need to develop and implement on the territory of the Krasnodar Territory a project of a standard electronic platform for monitoring public opinion on health issues in the municipality. The authors substantiate the position that the powers delegated by the people to the public authorities need constant control by the public. Without public control, there is a risk of appropriation of power, usurpation of power by individual state authorities and their officials. The mechanism of feedback between the authorities and the people, one of the elements of which is the monitoring of public opinion, plays an important role in the implementation of the constitutional principle of democracy. At the same time, it is important to monitor public opinion on local issues at the municipal level, since these issues affect the vast majority of the country's population. A significant segment of local issues is somehow related to the organization and functioning of health care institutions and the provision of medical services to the population. In this regard, it seems necessary to develop and implement in the territory of the Krasnodar Territory a project of a standard electronic platform for monitoring public opinion on health issues in the municipality. The article analyzes the goals and objectives of this project, examines the main problems associated with its formation and implementation, justifies the main stages of project preparation, as well as a list of measures to improve regional legislation that will contribute to the implementation of this project. The paper uses a number of methods of scientific research, in particular: the methods of induction; deduction; classification; statistical; sociological; comparative-legal; historical; formal-logical.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Panca Wardhana ◽  
Ainur Rochmaniah

The purpose of this study was to determine public opinion towards corporate social responsibility Candi Baru sugar factory. This research used descriptive quantitative method, from a population of 367 householders, while a sample of 79 respondents. The sampling technique used proportional sampling techniques and random sampling. Collecting data used literature study, questionnaires and interviews. Analyzing data used descriptive statistics. The result study stated that, Candi Baru sugar factory has conducted two types of corporate social responsibility, namely corporate social marketing and corporate philanthropy. Public opinion towards corporate social responsibility Candi Baru sugar factory has been well overall, but there were still negative opinion of the people. It caused by multiple factors, the distribution of the assistance provided was uneven, the shape and the amount of assistance provided is considered incompatible with pollution and losses caused by the activity of production companies, as well as their distrust of the objectivity of the company in selecting the target activity.


1983 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.W.J. Bartrip

The question of the degree of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain has interested generations of scholars since the beginning of the present century. Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an “age of laissez-faire” which gave way to an “age of collectivism,” or did an “age of mercantalism” merge into one of state regulation during which process, even in the early and mid-Victorian period, the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens? These are two of the questions over which there has been extended debate.The term laissez-faire has been employed in a variety of ways by different writers, by no means all of whom have troubled to define their understanding of the expression. Recently Professor Perkin has argued that during the nineteenth century two distinct meanings were attributed to it (and seven to the related, though antithetical, concept, collectivism!). For the purposes of this paper the term is taken to mean the philosophy, policy and, above all, the practice of minimal government interference in the economy.The most influential case for an “age of laissez-faire” was presented by Dicey in Law and Public Opinion. In this Dicey identified three overlapping legislative phases: Quiescence (1800-1830), Individualism (1825-1870), and Collectivism (1865-1900). The first consisted of an absence of legislation, the second of “constant” parliamentary activity to abolish restraints on individual freedom and the third of state intervention “for the purpose of conferring benefit upon the mass of the people” at the expense of some loss of individual freedom.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Mimasha Pandit

A new image was engendered in twentieth-century Bengal. The image clarified the direction of public opinion, whether it sanctified the actions of the colonizers or that of the colonized. In the process, those who chose to side with the colonized developed a close bond with the others who became a part of the camaraderie. The resultant image, envisioned by the people, did not come to them naturally; it was produced in their mind. The word of the age, printed and performed, helped produce this vision using the context as an index of reference. Words were transmitted and circulated among large number of people, who came to know, discuss and debate it. Despite the strict vigilance of the Raj that censured objectionable words, it nevertheless reached the public. Words found expression in ephemeral media that made the words disseminated untraceable. One such medium was the placard. This article analyses the placards circulated and posted, during the early twentieth century, and delves deep into the process of demonstration and persuasion adopted by the placards to invoke an image of nation among the Bengalis.


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