Participation, Education, and Political Competence: Evidence From a Sample of Italian Socialists

1966 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Average Education ◽  
Political Modernization ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels

Participation is one of the crises of political modernization. Along with the political awakening of masses of people has come the necessity of absorbing them meaningfully into the political system. The almost universally low levels of formal education and political competence contribute to the difficulties of mobilization. The most advanced polities are still seeking ways of making democratic participation effective; modernizing polities find the task even more formidable. This article examines the relationships among participation, education, and political competence in a sample of members of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).Although Italy is an advanced polity, in average education and industrialization it lags behind the world leaders in Europe and North America; and in some respects patterns of participation likewise reflect a transitional stage. The PSI is probably the only democratic Socialist party of the classic Marxian type left in Western Europe. It is devoted to the democratic mobilization of the industrial and agricultural masses. But it also contains a substantial middle-class element, and thus provides an opportunity to study the relationship between participation and political competence for persons of different levels of formal education.There can be little doubt that differences in formal education have political consequences. The evidence is compelling that persons of high education participate more, are more knowledgeable, feel more efficacious, and exhibit greater sensitivity to the ideological dimensions of politics. Evidence from a sample of members of the PSI reinforces and refines these findings.

The People: Ethnoracial Configurations, Old and New

2020 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Leila Brännström
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure

In recent years the Sweden Democrats have championed a clarification of the identity of the ‘the people’ in the Instrument of government. The reference, they argue, should be to the ethnic group of Swedes. This chapter will take this ambition to fix the subject of popular sovereignty as the point of departure for discussing some of the ways in which the contemporary anti-foreigner political forces of Northern and Western Europe imagine ‘the people’ and identify their allies and enemies within and beyond state borders. To set the stage for this exploration the chapter will start by looking at Carl Schmitt’s ideas about political friendship, and more specifically the way he imagines the relationship between ‘us’ in a political and constitutional sense and ‘the people’ in national and ethnoracial terms. The choice to begin with Schmitt is not arbitrary. His thoughts about the nature of the political association have found their way into the discourse of many radical right-wing parties of Western and Northern Europe.

Could Populism Be Good for Constitutional Democracy?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Bugaric
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Single Form ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Scene

Populism is Janus-faced. There is not a single form of populism but rather a variety of different forms, each with profoundly different political consequences. Despite the current hegemony of authoritarian populism, a much different sort of populism is also possible: democratic and antiestablishment populism, which combines elements of liberal and democratic convictions. When we examine the relationship between populism and constitutional democracy, populism should not be considered in isolation from its host ideology. Examples of democratic, liberal, socially inclusive forms of populism quite clearly show that authoritarianism and anti-pluralism are not necessarily the key elements of populism. However, the paucity of democratic populism also suggests that we have to look at factors other than ideology to understand why nativist and authoritarian populism currently dominates the political scene. Without understanding the political economy of the populist revolt, it is difficult to understand the true roots of populism and, consequently, to devise an appropriate democratic alternative to authoritarian populism. The ascendancy of right-wing nationalist populism today is a symptom of the failure of progressive politics.

A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom About the Informed Public: National Political Information in Ghana

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred M. Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Major Interest ◽  
Informed Citizenry ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Different Levels

This study examines the extent, impact and implications of political information in Ghana using survey data. A major interest is to identify and examine variables which influence level of information and to look at the consequences for the political process of different levels of political information. I examine conventional wisdom concerning the ignorance of the masses about national politics and call into question some common assumptions. Many of the differences usually assumed between developed and underdeveloped nations are found either not to exist or to be smaller than hypothesized. The data suggest that in some areas of national political information the masses in non-modernized societies are more politically aware than their counterparts in modernized societies. It is also suggested that there is no necessary link between education (literacy) and political information and that there are a number of functional equivalents to formal education. In the last section of the study several propositions about the informed citizenry are discussed.

The Borders of Corruption

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca R. Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Legal Order ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. has been in a state of exception now for many years, and there appears to be no end in sight. There exists an entire generation who has know life under only this form of government, one that, as Giorgio Agamben explains, takes “a position at the limit between politics and law…an ambiguous, uncertain, borderline fringe, at the intersection of the legal and the political.” In the name of security, the characteristic limiting of constitutional rights, the sanctioning of torture, and the proliferating of NSA surveillance are fast becoming the norm. Recently, much has been written concerning the bio-political consequences of an endless state of exception in which the executive power trumps the judiciary, and a new legal order emerges. This chapter will consider the relationship between corruption and the permanent state of exception.

scholarly journals The Spanish Plurinational Labyrinth. Practical Reasons for Criticising the Nationalist Bias of Others While Ignoring One’s Own Nationalist Position

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Carmelo Moreno
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
National Question ◽  
Political Cost ◽  
Suitable Concept ◽  
The Relationship

To analyse the Spanish national question requires considering the relationship between the idea of the nation and the phenomenon of nationalism on one side, and the question of political plurality on the other. The approval of the Constitutional text 40 years ago was achieved thanks to a delicate semantic balancing act concerning the concept of nation, whose interpretation remains open. Academic studies of public opinion, such as the famous Linz-Moreno Question—also known as Moreno Question—that measures the possible mixture of Spanish subjective national identity, are equally the object of wide controversy. The extent to which political plurinationality is a suitable concept for defining the country is not clear because, amongst other reasons, the political consequences that might derive from adopting the concept are unknown. This article sets out the thesis that Spain is a plurinational labyrinth since there is neither consensus nor are there discursive strategies that might help in forming an image of the country in national terms. The paradox of this labyrinth is that, since the approval of the Constitution in 1978, the political actors have accepted that nationality in Spain is insoluble without taking the plurinational idea into account. But, at the same time, it is not easy to assume such plurinationality in practical terms because the political cost to those actors that openly defend national plurality is very high. For this reason, political discourses in Spain on the national question offer a highly ambiguous scenario, where the actors seek windows of opportunity and are reluctant to take risks in order to solve this puzzle situation. The aim of this paper is to analyse which indicators are most efficient for testing how the different actors position themselves facing the phenomenon of the Spanish plurinational labyrinth. The clearest examples are what we refer to here as the concepts of (i) intersubjective national identity and (ii) plurinational governments.

scholarly journals L'Europe, l'évaluation technologique et la régulation fractale mondiale

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus-Gerd Giesen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Social Consensus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Regulation Mechanisms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supranational Level ◽  
Different Levels

The study attempts to make a theoretically informed analysis of technology assessment (TA) as part of postfordist global governance. It focuses first on the FAST programme of the EC, designed to regulate the relationship between producers of new technologies (industry, states) and civil society. The author shows that this regulation, based on the expertise of the social sciences, is largely asymmetrical in favour of the former and an attempt to engineer social consensus at the supranational level. The focus shifts then downwards to the numerous national and regional TA institutions in Western Europe which are all parts of a FAST dominated transnational network, as well as upwards to various related global TA activities (OECD, Lisbon Group, etc.). These different levels of analysis demonstrate that TA is politically constructed as a polycentric, non-hierarchical web of interrelated regulation mechanisms. As such, it is argued, it steadily permeates and recombines existing political structures and levels in order to meet as quickly as possible precise demands of legitimization and accumulation, and should therefore be called a « fractal » regulation.

scholarly journals Creativity and uncertainty tolerance as a resource for the psychological well-being of an individual

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (34) ◽  
pp. 585-603
Author(s):  
Yaroslava Z. Vasylkevych ◽  
Polina O. Shalnieva ◽  
Serhii M. Ryk ◽  
Halyna Ya. Zhyrska ◽  
Oksana M. Kikinezhdi
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Psychological Techniques ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels

The objective of the work was to establish the features of creativity and uncertainty tolerance in people with different levels of psychological well-being. An empirical study of the level of manifestation of psychological well-being of the studied group and the relationship between the components of creativity and tolerance for uncertainty was conducted. The study was conducted using a set of psychological techniques aimed at determining the level of psychological well-being, uncertainty tolerance, creativity and their components. Qualitative methods of data processing are used. The study found that people with high levels of psychological well-being have close relationships between the indicators of the components of psychological well-being, creativity and uncertainty tolerance. Instead, these relationships are significantly fewer among people with low levels of psychological well-being.

Responses to 'The piety of Afrikaans women'

1995 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Women's Spirituality ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe book The piety of Afrikaans women is placed in the context of the methodological discussion on religion feminism, that is religion feminism as it was discussed in Western Europe in the early 1990s. It is argued that in South Africa the book was not read against this background but as an onslaught on Afrikanerdom and as a liberal effort to alienate metaphysics from spirituality. Three reactions for and against the contents of the book are discussed. The first refers to local nationalism, the second to the political agenda of women's spirituality and the third to the relationship between spirituality and historical criticism.

Religion and Support for Democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-633
Author(s):  
Marko Valenta ◽  
Zan Strabac
Keyword(s):  
Negative Influence ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between religiosity and support for democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Using data from the last World Values Survey, we examine levels of religiosity among Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats, and their support for democracy. The influence of religiosity on support for democracy is also explored. The results indicate that religiosity has a negative influence on support for democracy, and it is particularly true for individuals who do not support the separation of the religious from the political sphere and who exhibit lower support for democracy. The article also examines different levels of religiosity among the three groups, controlling for a wide range of variables. We conclude that there is basically no difference in support for democracy between Croats and Bosniaks, while Serbs exhibit somewhat lesser support for democracy than members of the other two ethnic groups. Serbs also seem to be somewhat less religious than Bosniaks and Croats. Opposition to separation of the religious from the political sphere is a major source of lack of support for democracy among Croats and Bosniaks, but not among Serbs.

Authoritarianism and Support for Populist Radical Right Parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-144
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Immigration Attitudes ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between authoritarianism and the likelihood of voting for populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Radical right parties share an ideology based around nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. This ideology appeals to high authoritarians because it promises tough measures to preserve social cohesion, so high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties. This prediction is tested using national election study data from a range of West European countries. The results show that high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties, but even more so if they have weaker attachments to the political mainstream. The final set of analyses examines whether economic anxieties or anti-immigration attitudes moderate this relationship. While economic anxieties matter little to radical right party support, high authoritarians who oppose immigration are more likely to vote for a radical right party. These findings build on existing research by providing a stronger explanation of previous findings linking anti-immigration attitudes or cultural anxieties to radical right party support.

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