Chlöe Swarbrick’s Auckland Central Victory

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Huw Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Winning Coalition ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Theory Of Change ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand

In the 2020 election, Chlöe Swarbrick won the Green party’s second-ever electorate seat, in Auckland Central. A high-profile candidate, an experienced campaign team, some favourable conditions, and mass engagement enabled Swarbrick to build a winning coalition. For socialists, who are returning to electoral politics throughout liberal democracies, the skills required to win electoral campaigns are key. With an emphasis on ‘building a community, not an army’, the Swarbrick campaign offers useful lessons in how to build and sustain political engagement. With a more explicitly socialist political agenda and a stronger organising theory of change, election campaigns could provide a spark for a left political movement in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Political Engagement as Instrumental Good

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Berger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Democracy In America

This chapter examines Alexis de Tocqueville's defense of political engagement as instrumental good. Tocqueville's insights on attention and energy and their importance for sustainable self-government comprise one of his more original—and overlooked—contributions to political theory. Tocqueville actually distinguishes between political and social engagement, explains why political attention and energy will probably founder in most liberal democracies, and proposes a number of avenues for resisting those tendencies. The chapter analyzes Tocqueville's views on political engagement and the obstacles it faces when citizens are free to invest their time and resources as they like. Drawing mostly from his book Democracy in America, the discussion focuses on his arguments regarding citizens' energies, individual and collective energy, the “doctrine of self-interest well understood,” political attention, township administration, and political and civil associations.

scholarly journals Blue Endorsements Matter: How the Fraternal Order of Police Contributed to Donald Trump’s Victory

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-250
Author(s):  
Michael Zoorob
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Group Behavior ◽  
Organizational Networks ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Public Sector Union ◽  
Mitt Romney ◽  
Public Sector Unionism

ABSTRACTConventional accounts of Donald Trump’s unexpected electoral victory stress idiosyncratic events and media celebrity because most observers assume this unusual candidate won without much organized support. However, considerable evidence suggests that the support of conservative organizational networks, including police unions such as the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), propelled Trump to victory. The FOP is both a public-sector union and a conservative, mass-membership fraternal association that was courted by the Trump campaign at a time of politically charged debates about policing. Four years before, the FOP had refused to endorse Republican candidate Mitt Romney because he opposed public-sector unionism, which provided fruitful and rare variation in interest-group behavior across electoral cycles. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that FOP lodge density contributed to a significant swing in vote share from Romney to Trump. Moreover, survey evidence indicates that police officers reported increased political engagement in 2016 versus 2012. Belying the notion that Trump lacked a “ground game,” this research suggests that he tapped into existing organizational networks, showing their enduring importance in electoral politics.

scholarly journals Gender Justice and the English Citizenship Curriculum: A Consideration of Post– September 11 National Imperatives and Issues of “Britishness”

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Keddie
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Common ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post September 11 ◽  
Transformative Approach

Although much contention has surrounded the introduction of the English citizenship curriculum, its political agenda clearly reflects a transformative approach to issues of justice and equity. In light of this agenda, this article supports feminist work in further problematizing the curriculum's silence around relations of gender and citizenship. It extends this work by exploring the implications of such silence within the context of the contemporary post–September 11 climate, where discourses around security and militarism have amplified social/gender inequities worldwide while further reducing the spaces available for active social and political engagement toward the “common good.” In the U.K. context, these trends are considered in light of the recent high-profile political debate around the issue of Britishness. Here, concern is expressed about how superficial engagement with this debate may be mobilized in exclusionary ways that do little to militate against the masculinist framings of the citizenship curriculum. Conversely, critical engagement in debates around British national identity are also presented as being potentially generative in terms of their capacity to strengthen the discourse of ideal citizenship in the United Kingdom in ways that foster a more critical and gender-just approach to citizenship education.

Unequal Political Engagement and the Possible Risks to Democracy

Theoria ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (156) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Christine Hobden
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Political Decision Making

Citizens increasingly engage with political issues in new ways by addressing politicians via social media, campaigning at international forums, or boycotting corporate entities. These forms of engagement move beyond more regulated electoral politics and are rightly celebrated for the ways they increase representation and provide new channels of accountability. Yet, despite these virtues, political engagement beyond voting inevitably tends to entrench and amplify inequality in citizen influence on political decision-making. The tendency toward inequality undermines relational equality between citizens and muddies the channels of political accountability and responsibility. This article unpacks the ostensible tension and argues that it reveals to us another strength in views which hold the state to be citizens’ collective project and provides argumentative resources to motivate democracies to give due attention to ensuring that democratic participatory channels remain fit for purpose in an ever-changing society.

High-Profile Female Executive Candidates and the Political Engagement of Women

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Carreras
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Executive Leaders ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Executive Politics ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Mass Level

The number of salient female executive leaders has dramatically increased over the last two decades. In many countries, executive politics is no longer an exclusive male domain. Using data from the four waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems surveys and from several waves of the AmericasBarometer surveys, I investigate whether the presence of salient female executive candidates in high-profile national elections influences women’s political engagement in the electoral process. The analysis reveals that the presence of viable female candidates has no immediate impact on women’s political engagement at the mass level.

scholarly journals Locke and Hate Speech Law

Locke Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 173-196
Author(s):  
J. K. Numao
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Hate speech is a high profile issue in many liberal democracies today. While commentaries by constitutional experts and jurists abound in the press, and by legal and political philosophers in academia, it is remarkable that there is far less contribution from students of history of political thought and intellectual history, especially of the early modern era, considering how largely the theme of religious toleration and intolerance featured in this period. Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech, and more specifically Chapter 8 entitled ‘Toleration and Calumny’, helps to break this silence, making a case for how Enlightenment toleration theories from Locke to Voltaire might connect and enrich our discussions about hate speech today.

Awakening the New “Sleeping Giant”?: Asian American Political Engagement

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ong ◽  
Melany Dela Cruz-Viesca ◽  
Don Nakanishi
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
Television News ◽  
Relative Size ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Community Survey ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
News Networks

The 2008 election was a milestone in the emergence of Asian Americans as a factor in American politics, with national television news networks openly discussing and analyzing California’s Asian American voters. Most mainstream analysis, however, had very little in-depth understanding of the population. This essay provides some insights into the absolute and relative size of the Asian American population, along with key demographic characteristics, their participation in electoral politics, some of the barriers the encounter, and future prospects. The brief is based on analyzing the most recently available data, the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS) and the 2006 November Current Population Survey (CPS). This analysis builds on a previous analytical brief which examined the emergence of Asian Americans as California politics’ new “sleeping giant,” a term that was applied to Hispanics in the 1980s and 1990s because of their rapid growing numbers.

The History of the Transformation of Internet Activism in Belarus (on the Example of Political Protests of 2020—2021)

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6 (104)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Sergey Kozlov
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Autonomous Systems ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Online Technologies ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Internet Activism ◽  
Protest Activity

The article examines the problem of political participation in the digital environment on the example of protest activity observing in Belarus. It is shown that modern Internet technologies make it easy to combine new forms of civic activism with offline practices through social media and Telegram channels. It is argued that social networks and Internet activism in general indirectly form the political agenda and are significant factors in the creation of public reflection on political processes. New forms of civil interaction have appeared in digital reality, which were impossible without online technologies, and before the surge of protest activity in the post-Soviet space were considered insignificant quasi-political participation of the minority. Whole communicative autonomous systems created in social networks and messenger applications allow political activity bypassing traditional rules and frameworks, which, according to the author, is nothing more than a qualitative transformation and complication of political participation, both structurally and in scale. The Belarusian format of the protest showed that in the current conditions the success of a political campaign may not be due to clear coordination and competent management emanating from the core of protest. Analyzing political cases, it is concluded that modern protest practices, decentralized formed in the network, in an offline manifestation are very mobile and do not require significant expenditure of forces and resources. In conclusion, the author concludes that political participation in Belarus, conditioned by Internet resources and advanced technologies, from 2020 to 2021 acquired the features of a conventional active opposition political movement, although historically, political absenteeism prevailed in the country's civil society. Thus, the events in Belarus under consideration are unique and are a sign of more global modern transformations of politics.

Evolving Political Discourse on Poverty Alleviation in Sri Lanka

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 171-181
Author(s):  
Upul Abeyrathne
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Government

There is a voluminous literature on poverty alleviation efforts of Sri Lanka. The present engagement with discourse on evolving political discourse on poverty alleviation touches a different aspect, i.e. instrumental utility of policy in keeping and maintaining the status quo. The study is based on examination of the content of public policies depending on the major strand of thought associated in different eras since colonial presence in Sri Lanka. It helps to identify the continuities and discontinuities of policy discourse. The discussion on the evolution of public policy on poverty alleviation revealed that issues of the poor has occupied a priority in the political agenda of the government whenever a political movement is active in politicizing the poor. However, the very objective of such policies were not aimed at empowering the poor but keeping them subordinated. The study concludes that poverty remains unresolved due to poverty of politics.

Taiwan’s Wealth Gap and the Evolution of Electoral Politics after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

Asian Survey ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 825-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenqing Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Wealth Gap ◽  
The Impact

Taiwan’s economic downturn and wealth gap, under the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis, spurred livelihood/redistributive questions to become electoral issues. This paper explores the linkage between the wealth gap and electoral campaigns, and points to a new political economy trend in today’s Taiwan: class mobilization has become the new driver of party politics, with identity mobilization played down.

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