Socio-Philosophical Analysis of Mass Media as a Factor in the Formation of Public Opinion

Computer and telecommunication technologies have led to the development of modern mass media and have made significant competition with the print edition (newspapers, magazines, and books), the dominance of telecracy, etc. The media have gone a significant path of development from a channel of information and entertainment to a political institution, significantly increasing their capabilities as an in- strument of influencing public consciousness. The study?s main purpose is to conduct a socio-philoso- phical analysis of mass media as a factor in the formation of public consciousness. In this article, the pro- cess of cognition of mass media and socio-philosophical analysis of its impact on society were used: gen- eral scientific methods; logical methods of theoretical analysis; technical analysis, clarification.

The Origin and Evolution of Chinese Lineages

I aim to understand variation in an important and historically novel socio-political institution, the Chinese lineage. There is extensive geographic variation in the historical prominence and relevance of lineages. Using ethnographic and historical-economic evidence, I construct a theory explaining lineages as risk-pooling institutions, which provide lineage members with access to land. More so, variation in regional demand for risk-pooling and/or access to land likely stems from well-studied rice-wheat agroeconomicdifferences. I test this hypothesis by examining whether lineage activity is associated with landholding size, precipitation predictability, and historically documented precipitation disasters and find support for my hypothesis.

Courting Constitutionalism

Over the last decade, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has emerged as a powerful and overtly political institution. While the strong form of judicial review adopted by the Supreme Court has fostered the perception of a sudden and ahistorical judicialisation of politics, the judiciary's prominent role in adjudicating issues of governance and statecraft was long in the making. This book presents a deeply contextualised account of law in Pakistan and situates the judicial review jurisprudence of the superior courts in the context of historical developments in constitutional politics, evolution of state structures and broader social transformations. This book highlights that the bedrock of judicial review has remained in administrative law; it is through the consistent development of the 'Writ jurisdiction' and the judicial review of administrative action that Pakistan's superior courts have progressively carved an expansive institutional role and aggrandised themselves to the status of the regulator of the state.

PLATO'S THEORY OF INCARCERATION

In addition to its many famous innovations in popular government, the Athenian democracy seems to have also experimented with another, more ambivalent political institution familiar to modern societies—penal incarceration. In recent years, there has been renewed debate over the precise role of imprisonment in Athens, as an increasing number of voices, including Marcus Folch in this volume, make the case that imprisonment was an important point of contact between criminal punishment and democratic politics and society in Athens.

Tamizdat as a Literary Practice and Political Institution

The article seeks to define tamizdat as a literary practice and political institution of the late Soviet era. Comprising manuscripts rejected, censored, or never submitted for publication at home but smuggled through various channels out of the country and printed elsewhere, with or without their authors’ knowledge or consent, tamizdat contributed to the formation of the twentieth-century Russian literary canon. Tamizdat thus mediated the relationships of authors in Russia with the Soviet literary establishment on the one hand and with the underground on the other, while the very prospect of having their works published abroad, let alone the consequences of such a transgression, affected these authors’ choices and ideological positions in regard to both fields. The article argues, along these lines, that tamizdat was as emblematic of the literary scene after Stalin as its more familiar and better researched domestic counterparts, samizdat and gosizdat, whereby the traditional notion of late Soviet culture as a binary opposition between the official and underground fields is reinvented, instead, as a transnationally dynamic three-dimensional model.

Whither the Daang Matuwid?: Overconfidence in Benigno S. Aquino III’s Perception of Survival (2010–2016)

The study of political decision-making cannot exclude the actors involved in the process. Neither can it disregard the interplay between decision-makers and political institution where they operate. This article aims to explain how perception of survival affects decision-making by focusing on leaders, specifically by analysing Benigno S. Aquino III’s leadership (2010–2016). Built on political psychology, I will show that motivation to maintain power may bias leaders’ reasoning leading to suboptimal decision. Accountability can help leaders mitigate bias, or de-bias, by stimulating their use of cognitive complexity. But the same effort may backfire and make leaders resort to heuristics instead. Where leaders end up in the cognitive spectrum depends on the types of audiences to whom they feel accountable: core (the ruling elites and loyal voters) and external (the opposition and its supporters) audiences. Preoccupation with core audiences can make leaders downplay the opposition challenge. Furthermore, leaders’ perceived understanding of their support base may be erroneous. The result is overconfidence in their perception of survival. I argue that President Aquino’s misperception of survival was rooted in his belief that (1) Filipinos would like to have his legacy continued and that (2) his popularity would help his successor Manuel Araneta Roxas II win the 2016 presidential race. This overconfidence turned out to be detrimental. Roxas’s electoral loss to Rodrigo Duterte put an end to the Daang Matuwid, President Aquino’s good governance platform.

COVID-19 and the Paradox of Scientific Advice

The scientific advisory committee is a neglected political institution whose importance became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. What I call “the paradox of scientific advice” consists in that the two basic expectations from scientific advisory committees—neutrality and usefulness—are inherently in tension. To be useful, advisers must help governments set and attain their goals. Judgments about values and ends are necessary for useful advice, as are subjective judgments in the face of uncertainty and disagreement. This puts the committee in a double bind: if it tries to be more useful, it compromises the neutrality that is the source of its authority and legitimacy; if it tries to remain neutral, it sacrifices usefulness. I argue that this dilemma cannot be solved within the committee but that broader democratic scrutiny could mitigate its force. Advisory committees, in turn, should be structured to facilitate this scrutiny.

The Epistemic Pathologies of Elections and the Epistemic Promise of Lottocracy

There are many ways of evaluating legal and political institutions. This chapter introduces a new way to evaluate legal and political institutions: in terms of their sensibility. I define sensibility as the ability to appreciate and to respond to the world as it is, with two distinct components: (1) appreciating (or understanding or knowing) the world as it is, and (2) responding to the world in light of this appreciation. The first of these concerns the epistemic capacities of institutions. The second of these concerns the agential capacities of institutions. Having introduced the idea of sensibility, the chapter then focuses on a comparison of two different institutional arrangements—(1) electoral representative systems and (2) lottocratic systems of government, as introduced in this chapter—in terms of their epistemic quality or expected epistemic quality. I begin by drawing attention to several concerns about the sensibility of electoral representative institutions, focusing particularly on epistemic pathologies of those institutions. The second part of the chapter discusses an alternative kind of political institution, which I call a lottocratic political institution, and argues that we might well expect these institutions to be more sensible alternatives, at least under some conditions, on epistemic grounds. The negative contribution of the chapter, then, is to raise a series of challenges to the sensibility of electoral representative institutions. The positive contribution of the chapter is to suggest a direction for future institutional thinking, empirical study, and experimentation.

EXCHANGE RATE RESPONSE TO OIL PRICE AND POLITICAL SHOCKS: WHAT CAN NIGERIA DO?

This study determines how political institution (factor) and oil prices play a significant role in exchange rate instabilities in Nigeria between and . Employing a VECM model with time series and structural analysis, the study decomposes the oil prices into positive and negative shocks. The findings show a symmetric impact from positive and negative oil shocks while political/institutional factor, on the contrary, indicates an asymmetric impact on exchange rates. The study, therefore, recommends that strong political institution that promotes good governance, accountability and transparency should be put in place. This will untimely reduce the cost of importation that prevents the country from reaping the benefits of positive oil price shocks. While this study employs one of the unique approaches to the study of exchange rates worldwide, it also provides insights to how institutional/political factor contribute to exchange rate instability in Nigeria.

Conclusion

Departing from Alexis de Tocqueville’s discussion of American religion as a political institution that strengthens the moral tie as political ties are relaxed, the conclusion briefly restates the major arguments of the book: (1) that the authors discussed treated the issue of religion in a republic by using ideas and tropes drawn from New England anti-Jacobin sentiment during and after the French Revolution; (2) that this led them simultaneously to oppose and to reinforce secularity as it appeared in various forms: Enlightenment reason, pluralistic belief, and the technocratic utility of state church establishment; and (3) that their writings thus engage with enduring questions regarding whether and how morality and virtue should be fostered in a diverse republic for the common good, avoiding pitfalls of narrow-minded bigotry or neoliberal elevation of private individual interest. The conclusion also considers how these arguments and the book as a whole responds to two trends in literary scholarship: the study of women writers rooted in feminist recovery and the turn away from historicist critique seen in recent work by Rita Felski and others.