Public contestation over agricultural pollution: a discourse network analysis on narrative strategies in the policy process

The overuse of fertilizers in agriculture and their entry into freshwater has many negative impacts on biodiversity and poses problems for drinking water resources in Germany. In response to exceeding levels of nitrate concentrations in groundwater in parts of the country, an intense public dispute evolved and a significant policy change in fertilizer regulation occurred in 2020. Based on the German case of agricultural water pollution, this study demonstrates in an innovative way how discourse network analysis is a fruitful method for the integrated study of actor coalitions and their use of narrative strategies in public debate. Theoretically, the study draws on the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explain how actor coalitions use narrative strategies to attempt to influence policymaking on water pollution by agricultural activities. The empirical analysis builds on newspaper articles and press releases disseminated between 2010 and 2020. The results demonstrate how two opposing actor coalitions with congruent policy beliefs formed in the struggle over fertilizer regulation. These not only diverged in their policy beliefs but also differed in their use of narrative strategies to try to expand or contain the policy issue. More precisely, the coalitions adapted their narratives over time in response to changes in the likelihood to win or lose. Furthermore, the results suggest the coalition in favor of stricter fertilizer regulation was more sophisticated in its effort to mobilize specific target groups. Overall, the article provides a valuable contribution to the literature on the NPF by combining research on coalition formation and policy narratives.

Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs

The presumed “gap” in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington (1957) described as “liberal society” and the “conservative military mind” lies at the core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’ core foreign policy orientations. This study presents the first empirically grounded evaluation of the public–military gap. We deployed a unique survey to directly compare the views of 470 active-duty US military officers against a representative sample of the American public. Our study included beliefs concerning the appropriate role of military force and of US engagement in global affairs, the likely direction of US national security in the coming decade, and the causes and costs of future military conflicts. While we confirm aspects of Huntington’s dichotomy, we also observe critical differences between the two groups that diverge from the traditional conceptualization of a “civil–military gap.”

Polarization Eh? Ideological Divergence and Partisan Sorting in the Canadian Mass Public

There has be increasing concern among commentators and scholars about a possible polarization of the Canadian public that resembles what we have seen in the United States. There are, however, multiple competing conceptual definitions and perspectives on polarization, and we do not yet have a full and complete picture on which dimensions Canadians have or have not polarized, nor on the magnitudes of any patterns. This paper uses the 1993-2019 cumulative file of the Canadian Election Study (CES) to measure trends in ideological divergence, ideological consistency, and partisan sorting in the Canadian mass public. It finds little evidence that Canadians are becoming more ideologically polarized. They are, however, becoming modestly more ideologically consistent and much more sorted – that is, partisanship, ideological identification, and policy beliefs are increasingly interconnected, particularly among those with high levels of political interest. This paper also provides some evidence as to the mechanism undergirding partisan sorting using the 2004-2008 CES panel. Partisan sorting appears to be driven by people switching their partisanship into closer alignment with their beliefs rather than vice versa. These findings call for additional research on the causes and consequences of partisan sorting in Canada and further efforts to situate these results in a comparative context.

Using policy network analysis to understand ideological convergence and change in educational subsystems

In recent years, education policy scholars have begun to utilize social network concepts and methods to describe contemporary policy changes across P-16 levels. While many insights have emerged from this growing literature base, we argue that a more formal network approach rooted in policy network analysis (PNA) is needed to fulfill its conceptual and analytical ambitions. Policy network analysis integrates concepts from social network analysis with theoretical assumptions developed in the field of political science. Toward this end, we first argue that a more rigorous treatment of policy beliefs is needed to analyze the impact of ideas on the policy agenda. Existing literature on the ideological dimensions of market-based reform movements tends to define them largely within the bounds of neo-liberalism and thus far has failed to systematically explain how policy beliefs emerge and converge in this context. Second, we contend that previous work has generally lacked theoretical grounding in formal policy network analysis (PNA). Although there are clear links between the concepts and findings in traditional PNA literature and educational research – particularly the use of networked governance as a concept for understanding the interconnectedness of educational reform networks – a more diligent application of PNA theory and methods would enable educational policy scholars to gain deeper insights into the explanatory processes of policy change. We pay particular attention to the usefulness of these approaches for examining two-mode network data and for modeling ideological policy change.

European populist radical right leaders’ foreign policy beliefs: An operational code analysis

Despite the significance of the subject, studies on the foreign policy preferences of European populist radical right leaders are scarce except for a handful of examples. Are European populist radical right leaders more hostile than other world leaders or comparatively friendly? Do they use cooperative or conflictual strategies to achieve their political goals? What are the leadership types associated with their strategic orientations in international relations? Using the operational code construct in this empirical study, we answer these questions and depict the foreign policy belief systems of seven European populist radical right leaders. We test whether they share a common pattern in their foreign policy beliefs and whether their foreign policy belief systems are significantly different from the norming group of average world leaders. The results indicate that European populist radical right leaders lack a common pattern in terms of their foreign policy belief systems. While the average scores of the analysed European populist radical right leaders suggest that they are more conflictual in their world views, results also show that they employ instrumental approaches relatively similar to the average group of world leaders. This article illuminates the microfoundations of strategic behaviour in international relations and arrives at conclusions about the role of European populist radical right leaders in mainstream International Relations discussions, such as idealism versus realism. In this sense, the cognitivist research school complements and advances structural accounts of international relations by analysing leadership in world affairs.

Stakeholder Participation and Advocacy Coalitions for Making Sustainable Fiji Mineral Royalty Policy

The Fiji government perceived mining as a means to accelerate economic growth because of its potential to generate great wealth for the Fijian economy. However, the environmental and social impacts associated with mining is of great concern. Mining activities have caused immense environmental degradations that affect livelihoods. One way to recompense these mining impacts is to provide a source of income to the landowners that can substitute the providence of natural resources that were damaged or completely taken away by mining activities. From the current revenue earned from mining, only land leases have been paid out to landowners and no royalty payments as yet, because there are no specific guidelines to determine the distributions. These have brought about the great need to determine the fair share of mineral royalties between the Fiji Government and the landowners in Fiji. This paper will therefore explicate the formation of coalitions based on similarities in policy beliefs, the various strategies undertaken to interact and network with each coalition in efforts to advocate core policy beliefs to obtain government’s attention for the formulation of Fiji’s Mineral Royalty Policy, based on the analytical lenses of Advocacy Coalition Framework and Issue Network Theory, at both the problem definition and agenda setting stages. Moreover, this paper also investigates the impacts of political instability in formulating Fiji’s first ever Mineral Royalty Policy.

Dehumanization, prejudice, and social policy beliefs concerning people with developmental disabilities

We investigated the nature of prejudice toward people with developmental disabilities, its potential roots in dehumanization, its implications for social policy beliefs affecting this target group, and strategies for reducing prejudice toward people with developmental disabilities. Studies 1 ( N = 196, MTurk) and 2 ( N = 296, undergraduates) tested whether prejudice took a hostile or ambivalent (both hostile and benevolent components) form. Consistent support for a hostile prejudice model was found. This model was comprised of beliefs that people with developmental disabilities may harm others, should be kept separate from others, and are dependent on others. Also, greater dehumanization was associated with greater prejudice, and prejudice mediated the effect of dehumanization on participants’ social policy beliefs. Study 3 ( N = 151, MTurk) provided construct validity for the newly developed multidimensional measure of prejudice. Study 4 ( N = 156, undergraduates) showed that presenting a person with developmental disabilities in either humanizing or individuating ways reduced dehumanization and prejudice and, in turn, increased the favorability of social policy beliefs.