When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change

1993 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Pierson
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political World ◽  
Mass Publics

As governmental activity has expanded, scholars have been increasingly inclined to suggest that the structure of public policies has an important influence on patterns of political change. Yet research on policy feedback is mostly anecdotal, and there has so far been little attempt to develop more general hypotheses about the conditions under which policies produce politics. Drawing on recent research, this article suggests that feedback occurs through two main mechanisms. Policies generate resources and incentives for political actors, and they provide those actors with information and cues that encourage particular interpretations of the political world. These mechanisms operate in a variety of ways, but have significant effects on government elites, interest groups, and mass publics. By investigating how policies influence different actors through these distinctive mechanisms, the article outlines a research agenda for moving from the current focus on illustrative case studies to the investigation of broader propositions about how and when policies are likely to be politically consequential.

Rethinking the ambition gap: gender and candidate emergence in comparative perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Piscopo ◽  
Meryl Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Ambition ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Candidate Emergence ◽  
Political World

The gender gap in political ambition is often presented as an immutable fact about the political world. This special issue interrogates this fact, drawing on case studies from across the globe. Taken together, the contributions move the research agenda away from explaining why (or whether) women have less ambition than men, and towards understanding the gendered dynamics of candidate emergence. These gendered dynamics include individual, institutional and contextual factors, thus shifting the emphasis away from gender gaps and towards gendered explanations. This analysis further underscores how exhorting women to ‘lean in’ to candidacy cannot solve the problem of men’s over-representation in politics.

Traversing the Mexican Odyssey: Reflections on Political Change and the Study of Mexican Politics

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-188
Author(s):  
Mark Eric Williams
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Political System ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Political Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
New Research ◽  
Mexican Politics

This essay explains how the peculiar properties of Mexico's political system helped shape the approach to the study of Mexican politics. It assesses some of the strengths and limitations of the scholarship this produced, examines the political changes that fueled Mexico's democratic transition, and assesses their implications both for Mexico's recent market reforms and the study of Mexican politics in general. It finds that the demise of single-party rule and fundamental changes in patterns of governance have opened new research avenues, and suggests an emerging research agenda in light of these developments. En este ensayo se explica la manera en que las propiedades peculiares del sistema políítico mexicano ayudaron a configurar el acercamiento al estudio de la políítica mexicana. Se valoran algunas de las ventajas y las desventajas en este enfoque, se examinan los cambios polííticos que influyeron en la transicióón democráática mééxicana y se analizan sus implicaciones en las reformas recientes del mercado y estudio de la políítica mexicana en general. El anáálisis concluye que, debido al cese de influencia del antiguo réégimen del partido oficial y a los cambios fundamentales en los modelos de gobierno, se han abierto nuevas ááreas de investigacióón, proponiendo un nuevo programa de investigacióón que tome en cuenta el giro de los nuevos acontecimientos.

Questione morale e crisi di regime. La prima Repubblica italiana alla prova degli scandali (1992-1994)

2009 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Jean Lpuis Briquet
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Before And After

- According to the standard thesis, the political crisis in Italy between 1992 and 1994 and the collapse of the Christian Democrat regime are related to the revelation of corruption of the political elite by the judiciary. However, judicial revelations and corruption scandals have regularly occurred in Italy, before and after this crisis, without provoking a drastic political change and the reject of the political system by the electorate. Considering this paradox, the article suggests an alternate account of the 1992-1994 events that underline the way in which the political competition had been affected by the scandals: the moral crusades against corruption had in this period a political impact because they had been relayed and supported by emerging political actors in order to challenge the established elites and to claim a leading role in reshaping the political system.

DICTION and the Study of American Politics

2014 ◽  
pp. 444-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher F. Karpowitz
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political World ◽  
Effective Analysis

A powerful tool for content analysis, DICTION allows scholars to illuminate the ideas, perspectives, and linguistic tendencies of a wide variety of political actors. At its best, a tool like DICTION allows scholars not just to describe the features of political language, but also to analyze the causes and the consequences those features in ways that advance our understanding political communication more broadly. Effective analysis involves helping academic audiences understand what the measures being used mean, how the results relate to broader theoretical constructs, and the extent to which findings reveal something important about the political world. This involves exploring both the causes and the consequences of linguistic choices, including by attending closely to how those texts are received by their intended audiences. In this chapter, the authors review ways in which DICTION has been used and might be used to better understand the role of political leadership, the meaning of democracy, and the effects of political language on the political behavior of ordinary citizens.

scholarly journals Partisan Disagreements Arising from Rationalization of Common Information

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. Lauderdale
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Experimental Demonstration ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Common Information ◽  
Political World

Why do opposing partisans sometimes disagree about the facts and processes that are relevant to understanding political issues? One explanation is that citizens may have a psychological tendency toward adopting beliefs about the political world that rationalize their partisan preferences. Previous quantitative evidence for rationalization playing a role in explaining partisan factual disagreement has come from cross-sectional covariation and from correction experiments. In this paper, I argue that these rationalizations can occur as side effects when citizens change their attitudes in response to partisan cues and substantively relevant facts about a political issue. Following this logic, I motivate and report the results of a survey experiment that provides US Republicans and Democrats with information that they will be inclined to rationalize in different ways, because they have different beliefs about which political actors they should agree with. The results are a novel experimental demonstration that partisan disagreements about the political world can arise from rationalization.

Democracy and representation

2019 ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Claude Lefort
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Claude Lefort ◽  
Mass Publics ◽  
Sciences Sociales

This chapter presents the first English translation of an essay that was originally presented in 1989 by Claude Lefort at the Colloquium on Latin America, sponsored by the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), organized by Daniel Pécault. In this essay, Lefort affirms his important thesis regarding the disembodiment of power in representative democracy and begins to elaborate institutional conditions for its modern practice. He emphasizes that representation must be supported by independent political organizing by social movements and dissenting groups within institutions such as labor unions, schools, and hospitals. He also emphasizes the importance of participation, understood distinctively neither as voting nor as taking to the streets but as a feature of political judgment that he terms a “capacity to understand the political game,” a feature that he considers to be lacking where there exist great divides between elite political actors as mass publics.

scholarly journals Ethno-territorial Protest Movements and the Politics of Accommodation in Centralized and Decentralized Political Systems

1969 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Lammert
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Economic Modernization ◽  
Centralization And Decentralization

The main purpose of the paper is to explain the divergent paths of development of ethno-territorial protest movements in modern democratic political systems. By focusing on the interaction between these movements and the state, the different systems of accommodation between the relevant regional and central elites will be analyzed. The study concentrates on the case studies of Québec (Canada) and Corsica (France). The paper is divided into three parts. The first part describes the traditional systems of accommodation in France and Canada. The second part is focused on the process of socio-economic modernization in the 1950s and 1960s in those countries that threatened the established patterns of elite accommodation. The third part deals with the consequences for the established patterns of elite-accommodation and new concepts of territorial management that the central states tried to establish. By looking at the different degrees of centralization and decentralization in the mentioned political systems, the question of access to the political system by new social and political actors will be discussed in detail.

scholarly journals An Index of Mediatisation: Comparing Interest Groups’ Political Communication Behaviour

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Florian Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Behaviour ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Logic ◽  
Two Indices ◽  
Political Logic

This article investigates the political communication behaviour of interest groups. First, by proposing indices to capture the degree to which mass media have become central for political communication (media logic of communication), and the degree to which conventional strategies aimed at politicians directly govern groups’ communication behaviour (political logic of communication). Based on these two indices, the article then proposes an overall index of mediatisation. Second, the article tests three hypotheses regarding the use of the media logic, the political logic, and the mediatisation of interest groups, and finds that group type, resources, and the level of competition all play a role for how strongly interest groups are mediatized. Thus, this article contributes to the scarce empirical research on mediatisation by a) proposing a way to operationalise this concept which can be adjusted using a different set of variables, but can also be applied for different political actors, and b) by showing the usefulness of the constructed indices in an empirical example for Swiss and German interest groups.

Media, Democracy, and Political Change in Developing Countries

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Lynete Lusike Mukhongo ◽  
Juliet Wambui Macharia
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Journalists

The introductory chapter undertakes a detailed discussion of the political influence of media in developing countries. Communication scholars and researchers often discuss what the media needs to do in the process of driving political change, however, this is often done without a real consideration of the challenges facing the media and political journalists in developing countries. There is therefore need to lay emphasis on drawing reference from experiences as narrated by the media, researchers and political interest groups based in developing countries. This book seeks to document research carried out by communication researchers, scholars and media practitioners based in various developing countries. The authors draw from their varied experiences in developing countries to undertake interesting discussions on how the media operates in the developing world, and the subsequent challenges facing the media and political journalists.

The ‘real’ and ‘dirty’ politics of the Northern Ireland peace process: a constructivist realist critique of idealism and conservative realism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Real ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Skills ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

The chapter argues that Idealist and Realist paradigms cannot explain the Northern Ireland peace process. Idealism underestimated communal antagonisms and failed to appreciate the difficult role played by politicians in achieving an elite compromise. Realists underestimated the possibilities of political change because they have a static, essentialist view of identity which underestimates the role of political elites. Constructivism provides a more flexible framework for analysing the ‘real’ politics by which the peace process was advanced. A Constructivist framework and theatrical metaphor are provide a more complex and nuanced understanding of politics. This approach takes into account the constraints and opportunities facing political actors and the consequent morality of the ‘political skills’ or deception and manipulation that were used to drive the peace process forward.

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