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.

Explaining Political Knowledge: The Role of Procedural Quality in an Informed Citizenry

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Clark
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Factual Knowledge ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Informed Citizenry ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Knowledge Seeking

While much is known about the micro-level predictors of political knowledge, there have been relatively few efforts to study the potential macro-level causes of knowledge. Seeking to improve our understanding of country-based variation in knowledge, this article demonstrates that individuals have an easier time finding and interpreting information in political environments that provide the public with greater opportunities to engage, observe, and learn about the political process. To investigate that possibility, the article analyzes how the procedural quality of the political process affects political knowledge. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Worldwide Governance Indicators Project, survey analyses show that the transparency and responsiveness of a political system indeed influence the public’s information about political parties and, to a lesser extent, the amount of factual knowledge retained by survey respondents. In other words, the quality of democratic governance affects how much individuals know about the political process.

Het publiek in de tribune : vormen van politieke informatie

Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-470
Author(s):  
Guido Dierickx
Keyword(s):  
Social Problems ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Discriminating Power ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Rules Of The Game

This contribution should be seen as an attempt to retrieve information from restcategories, such as «does not know» and «no answer».  From these, and from other data as well, we constructed 10, mostly summating, indexes of political ignorance. Among them is an index of objective ignorance, that is about political events, persons and situations.  The others aim at more subjective dimensions. Does the respondent feel informed about the political process : about government and party performance, partisan congeniality, modalities of voting, local politics social problems, political issues ?There seems to be some evidence in favor of the following hypotheses.1. The indexes tend to compensate each other: respondents who score low on one index, do not necessarily score low on the next one.2. I t is difficult to ascertain the validity of an index of objective ignorance. Moreover it does by no means express all the (relevant) dimensions of political information.3. A mong indexes of subjective ignorance one should distinguish between «policy» and «political» information ; the latter seems to refer to a situation where strictly political rules of the game, a.o. those of political conflict, prevail.4. Of all indexes the «political issues» index showed the most discriminating power, as well as the most expected associations.

Electoral system as a motivation to reforming political system- The Iraqi model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamall Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
The Masses

The flaws and major flaws in the political systems represent one of the main motives that push the political elite towards making fundamental reforms, especially if those reforms have become necessary matters so that: Postponing them or achieving them affects the survival of the system and the political entity. Thus, repair is an internal cumulative process. It is cumulative based on the accumulated experience of the historical experience of the same political elite that decided to carry out reforms, and it is also an internal process because the decision to reform comes from the political elite that run the political process. There is no doubt that one means of political reform is to push the masses towards participation in political life. Changing the electoral system, through electoral laws issued by the legislative establishment, may be the beginning of political reform (or vice versa), taking into account the uncertainty of the political process, especially in societies that suffer from the decline of democratic values, represented by the processes of election from one cycle to another. Based on the foregoing, this paper seeks to analyze the relationship between the Electoral and political system, in particular, tracking and studying the Iraqi experience from the first parliamentary session until the issuance of the Election Law No. (9) for the year (2020).

Reconsidering social movements in Turkey: The case of the 1968-71 protest cycle

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 63-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emin Alper
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Balance ◽  
Social Protests ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
The Masses

AbstractThe years between 1968 and 1971 in Turkey were unprecedented in terms of rising social protests instigated by students, workers, peasants, teachers and white-collar workers. However, these social movements have received very limited scholarly attention, and the existing literature is marred by many flaws. The scarce literature has mainly provided an economic determinist framework for understanding the massive mobilizations of the period, by stressing the worsening economic conditions of the masses. However, these explanations cannot be verified by data. This article tries to provide an alternative, mainly political explanation for the protest cycle of 1968-71, relying on the “political process” model of social movement studies. It suggests that the change in the power balance of organized groups in politics, which was spearheaded by a prolonged elite conflict between the Kemalist bureaucracy and the political elite of the center-right, provided significant opportunities to under-represented groups to organize and raise their voices.

МОДЕЛИ ОНЛАЙН-МОБИЛИЗАЦИИ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ПРОТЕСТА СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИЙСКОЙ МОЛОДЕЖИ (РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ ЭМПИРИЧЕСКОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ)

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
О. В. Лагутин
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Online Environment ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Multidimensional Methods ◽  
The Masses

The paper considers the problem of empirical search for models of online mobilization of the youth protest movement in the modern Russian metropolis. In the political practice of many countries, young people have become one of the most important objects of influence of various political actors, both internal and external. Also, in Russian political protest, young people are traditionally the driving force. In the last decade, the online environment has become the most effective and operational communication field for the construction of the political process. The greatest political impact was achieved by the online organization of protest actions, the key element of the strategy of which was the mobilization of the masses. The objectives of the study are to use multidimensional methods of analysis to identify the features that influence the formation of online mobilization models, and to give a descriptive description of each of the models. To study the problem, an online survey of representatives of the younger generation in all megacities of the Russian Federation was conducted, during which latent factors of political action in the online environment, online mechanisms for attracting the attention of users of social networks to political problems that play the role of a protest trigger, and types of political participation were identified. With the help of classification methods, the obtained factors were obtained four models of online mobilization of the political prosthesis of the youth of modern Russia.

scholarly journals "Islam" as the national identity for the formation of Pakistan: the political thought of Muhammad Iqbal and Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carimo Mohomed
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
Political Symbol ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Masses ◽  
First Time ◽  
Communal Organizations

In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) devised for the first time the creation of a separate state for the Indian Muslims, for whom, according to him, the main formative force through History had been Islam. Although predicated upon secular ideologies, the Pakistan movement was able to mobilize the masses only by appealing to Islam. Nationalism became dependent on Islam and, as a result, politicized the faith. A number of Muslim religious and communal organizations pointed to the importance of promoting Muslim nationalism, political consciousness and communal interests. As the creation of Pakistan became more and more likely, Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979) increased his attacks on the Muslim League, objecting to the idea of Muslim nationalism because it would exclude Islam from India. The increasingly communal character of the Indian politics of the time, and the appeal made to religious symbols in the formulation of new political alliances and programmes by various Muslim groups as well as Muslim League leaders, created a climate in which Mawdudi's theological discourse found understanding and relevance. This paper, using especially the political thought of Muhammad Iqbal and Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi, analyses how Islam was used to justify a separate state for the Indian Muslims, and the impacts on and challengesto the political process and its evolution, at the same time that it concludes that "Islam", as a political symbol, can have many forms according to the ideas previously held by those who use it.

Silicon Valley Firms in American Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-66
Author(s):  
Darren R. Halpin ◽  
Anthony J. Nownes
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Corporate Leaders ◽  
Corporate Elite ◽  
Corporate Elites ◽  
Politically Active

Chapter 2 examines the firm-level form of corporate elite political engagement. It asks: Just how active are Silicon Valley companies in American (mostly national) politics? And what issues do they work on? The answers to these questions provide a context for founder and CEO activities (explored in later chapters). To be sure, these are important questions in and of themselves. But we ask them primarily to gather information that will allow us to address other questions about the behavior of Silicon Valley corporate elites. Among these questions are: Do politically active leaders come from politically active companies? Do Silicon Valley corporate leaders act like their companies—for example, do they address the same issues? Are corporate leaders simply extensions of the companies they run, or are they “free agents” who inject their own, personal views into the political process? Or are they a mixture of both of these? Chapter 2 presents data that help address these questions and others.

scholarly journals Central Asian States in the International Rankings of Democracy Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Elena G. Garbuzarova
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
The Masses

Since gaining independence, Central Asian states declared their commitment to democratization and development of a market economy, building their political systems based on the uncontested Western liberal-democratic model. Leaving behind the Soviet legacy, the political elites of Central Asian states strive to build an effective strategy for national and state development and to form effective democratic institutions. However, after several decades, the political regimes in the countries of the region have become more authoritarian than democratic. In the process of democratic transition, the countries face serious threats in the form of political instability and socio-economic problems. The renaissance of traditional national features made them an integral element of the political life of the sovereign states. The development of democracy in the states of the region is influenced by informal institutions - tribal relations, regionalism and the clan structure of society. In fact, the introduction of the basic elements of democracy into the political process of Central Asian states is formal or declarative, and the participation of the masses in politics is limited. Using various methods and criteria, international democracy development ratings assess the level of democratic development in transition states. Western countries set their own norms and rules for the democratization of transition countries based on the ratings of political transformation. As a result, international ratings are used as a tool for achieving the interests of Western countries that seek to reformat the political regimes of non-democratic countries, regardless of their socio-cultural characteristics. Each Central Asian state has its own features and dynamics/statics of democratic transit, but they are all united by the personification of power and loyalty to the autocrat rather than to the political institutions. The author attempts to trace the current state of the political systems of Central Asian states, highlighting the positive and negative trends in their democratization.

scholarly journals Nigerian Elite and the Culture of Primitive Accumulation

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Stanley Edebiri Egharevba ◽  
Friday Osaru Ovenseri-Ogbomo
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Primitive Accumulation ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Masses

Nigeria is endowed with vast human and material resources to engender development but it still continues to luxuriate within the confines of a top speed in reverse to oblivion. As its relics, neocolonialism has given birth to industrialization, urbanization and militarization of the political process which generally has created “sudden billionaires” on one end of the ladder (elected or appointed public officials) and extremely poor masses (unemployed graduates and depressed masses) at the other end of the ladder. This paper basically exposes the developmental retrogressive outlooks of the masses due to primitive capitalist accumulation by the few elites who have piloted the affairs of the nation.

scholarly journals Coronavirus and Politics: Demands and Values in the Age of the Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-121
Author(s):  
D. A. Parenkov ◽  
K. E. Petrov
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Mortality Salience ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Masses

The article discusses the political eff ects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the framework of Terror Management Theory. Growing fears caused by the pandemic provoke mortality salience across the globe. Political and psychological eff ects of mortality salience are manifested in the strengthening of conservative orientations and support for status quo. Awareness of mortality provides support to power structures, incumbent political leaders, strengthening patriotic attitudes and rejection of external groups. The pandemic strengthens the eff ect of rallying around the fl ag and results in an increase in the ratings of ruling political leaders. The growing support for political leaders confi rms the orientation towards maintaining the status quo and conservative attitudes. In a pandemic, patriotic feeling, the demand for order, the growth of distrust of fellow citizens, and the rejection of freedoms in favor of security come to the fore. In the context of mortality salience orientation to support specifi c types of political leadership is intensifying. It seems that in the near future, electorally successful types of leaders will include two major types. Firstly, politicians inclined to charismatic control of the trust of their supporters based on a confi dent and uncompromising orientation to their own ego, most often on the basis of previously gained fame. Secondly, those politicians who are capable of expressing simple human closeness to ordinary people and are focused on creating and maintaining social ties with a constituency. Charismatic leadership is oriented towards personal decision-making at leader’s own peril and risk. The second type is associated with horizontal dialogue with citizens. and creating the maximum numberof personal connections. In the current situation, the role of personal qualities of leaders will only grow, both as objects of attitudes and aspirations on the part of the masses, and as subjects of the political process, making political decisions that are crucial for society.

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