THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE IMAGE OF NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV ON THE PAGES OF “THE NEW YORK TIMES” (1989-2001)

The purpose of the research. In accordance with the problem-chronological approach, the article systematized the materials of “The New York Times” newspaper about Nursultan Nazarbayev in the period during 1989-2001. Despite the membership of the Communist Party from 1962-1991, the condemnation of the collapse of the USSR, the promotion of the idea of new economic and political integration in the post-Soviet space, the President of Kazakhstan was portrayed on the pages of “The New York Times” as a progressive independent pro-American politician. Nevertheless, by the end of the second half of the 1990-s there were dramatic changes in the current image, the Kazakh leader began to associate with an autocrat and a corrupt official. This work is aimed at finding the reasons for the transformation of the image of the Kazakh politician. Results. The study concluded that the reason for the transformation of the image of the President of Kazakhstan was the deterioration of relations with official Washington. The favorable image of Nursultan Nazarbayev in “The New York Times” was an indicator not only of the benevolent attitude of newspaper journalists, but also of US loyalty. During the period of partnership with the White House, the image of politician Nursultan Nazarbayev remained pleasant for readers of the New York newspaper. In the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Washington was favorable to Nursultan Nazarbayev, since the president’s policy satisfied the United States: defending independence, switching to a market economy, renouncing nuclear weapons, and access to Kazakh oil. During this period, the negative features of the Kazakh leader were not displayed or smoothed out on the pages of the New York newspaper, while the strengths were intentionally emphasized. After the current American goals in the Central Asian republic were achieved, interest in the figure of Nursultan Nazarbayev began to fade. Over time, scandals related to Nursultan Nazarbayev began to be fully covered by journalists of “The New York Times”, changing the image of the president to an authoritarian and corrupt politician.

Signaling with Reform: How the Threat of Corruption Prevents Informed Policymaking

Lobbying is a potential source of corruption but is also a valuable source of information for policymakers. We analyze a game-theoretic model that shows how the threat of corruption affects the incentives of non-corrupt politicians to enlist the help of lobbyists to make more informed decisions. Politicians face a dilemma because voters cannot always tell whether a politician allows access to lobbyists in order to solicit corruption or to seek information. Thus, a non-corrupt politician may deny access to lobbyists to signal that she is non-corrupt even though doing so impedes her ability to make good policy. This signaling may decrease the welfare of the voters depending on the value of the lost policy information relative to the value of screening out corrupt politicians.

So Gross and Yet so Far Away

People morally evaluate norm violations that occur at various distances from the self (e.g., a corrupt politician vs. a cheating spouse). Yet, distance is rarely studied as a moderator of moral judgment processes. We focus on the influence of disgust on moral judgments, as evidence here has remained inconclusive. Based on feelings as information theory and the notion that disgust evolved as a pathogen avoidance mechanism, we argue that disgust influences moral judgment of psychologically distant (vs. near) norm violations. Studies 1 and 3 show that trait disgust sensitivity (but not trait anger and fear) more strongly predicts moral judgment of distant than near violations. Studies 2 and 4 show that incidental disgust affects moral judgment of distant (vs. near) violations and that the moderating role of distance is mediated by involvement of others (vs. the self) in the evaluator’s conceptualization of the violation.

Corrupt politicians? Media priming effects on overtly expressed stereotypes toward politicians

The present study investigates whether or not reading about corrupt politicians influences peoples’ subsequent judgments toward political actors’ supposed corruptness. We expected this media stereotype priming effect to be dependent on pre-existing implicit stereotypes. It was hypothesized that only those participants would show a media priming effect who already have a strong automatic association between ‘politicians’ and ‘corrupt’ in memory prior to reading a further facilitative article (“politicians are corrupt”). Conversely, people who do not have a comparable biased cognitive association should not. Data from an experiment support this hypothesis: We found pre-existing implicit stereotypes to moderate the media priming effect on explicit stereotypes, but only when the newspaper article covered the “corrupt politician” media stereotype with sufficient salience. Furthermore, the experiment showed that antagonistic media primes (“politicians are honest”) did not produce a media priming effect at all. Antagonistic articles were simply not able to prime corruption-related memory traces.

Filling naval roles

N.A.M. Rodger, The Insatiable Earl: A Eife of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich 1718-1792 . HarperCollins Publishers, London, 1993. Pp. xviii + 425, 19 illustrations, £20. ISBN 0 00 215784 5 ‘Corrupt politician remembered as the inventor of sandwiches , to eat at the gaming-table.’ 1 — this is how the subject of the book under review, John Montagu, fourth Earl' of Sandwich, is dismissed in one of the reference books on your reviewer’s desk. Great- great-grandson of the Commonwealth admiral given an earldom by Charles II, Sandwich was appointed a member of the Board of Admiralty under the Duke of Bedford in 1744 at the early age of 26 and held the post of First Lord from 1748 to 1751. He was One of the Secretaries of State under George Grenville from 1763 to 1765, taking a leading part in the prosecuttion of John Wilkes for the North Briton episode, and returned to the Admiralty as First Lord in 1771, serving in Lord North’s administration for eleven years through the greater part of the War of American Independence.