The underrepresentation of women politicians in the media is a persistent feature in many contemporary democracies. Gender bias in election coverage makes it harder for women to reach positions of power in politics. Drawing on the special circumstances in Austria during the 2019 election campaign which saw the first female top candidate of a major party and a caretaker government containing equal numbers of men and women and which was led by the country’s first woman as chancellor, we examine (...) the effect of these developments on women politicians’ representation in campaign coverage. We draw on quantitative content analysis of Austrian newspaper articles (N = 16,125) during four national parliamentary election campaigns (2008, 2013, 2017 and 2019). We show that for women politicians the media ceiling is slowly lifting at best, but that positions of power provide the most promising ways to evade gendered media bias. (shrink)

Dynastic politicians, defined as those whose family members have also served in the same position in the past, occupy a sizable portion of offices in many parts of the world. We develop a model of how dynastic politicians with inherited political advantages affect electoral outcomes and policy choices. Our model predicts that, as compared with non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts, despite the (...) larger amount of distributive benefits they bring. We test the implications of the model using data from Japan between 1997 and 2007. (shrink)

Abstract In Politicians Don't Pander, Lawrence Jacobs and Robert Shapiro show that politicians follow public opinion much less slavishly than conventional wisdom suggests. However, the case studies they themselves rely on show that public opinion constrains policy makers more than they claim. Conversely, to the extent that political leaders are able to ignore the public's wishes, Jacobs and Shapiro do not adequately consider the possibility that this is due in large part to severe voter ignorance of public policy. (...) In urging greater obedience to the popular will, the authors also overlook the danger that increased adherence to the often internally contradictory wishes of the electorate may be impossible or undesirable. (shrink)

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. 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 did not produce a media priming effect at all. Antagonistic articles were simply not able to prime corruption-related memory traces. (shrink)

This paper addresses an action that, from a Deleuzian perspective, is capable of modifying the despairing current social situation in which we are immersed, through the creation of political Ideas. Even though Deleuze conceives social Ideas as vast civilizing structures, we propose to bring into the political domain the logic of other acts of creation, such as the artistic or the philosophical, where the monumental coexists with minor figures that are nonetheless capable of introducing novelty into the world. The politician (...) is the figure of those who are capable of having an Idea that allows to break the habits that perpetuate the current situation, and gives consistency to the intensive forms of life that continually create and dissolve themselves in the flow of becoming. Thus, macro- and micro-politics do not oppose each other, but offer in their immanence an alternative to social nihilism. (shrink)

Politics and religion are two concepts that have constantly intertwined throughout history and continue to do so at the start of the third millennium. Previous studies show that religion plays an important part in the political life and the concepts of state and church are connected. Although there are also certain discursive manners in which the Church adapts to political and socio-economical contexts, it is much more often that the connection between the two spheres of communication (political and religious) comes (...) from the part of politicians. The article deals with notions such as pseudo-events, media spectacle, political marketing and using religion as a tool for political positioning. The current research is based on an analytical descriptive method: the media content analysis. The focus of the analysis is on the highest rated daily print media and it covers the period from 2007 to 2010. It checks the prevalence of politicians in the media coverage of religious events on the most important religious holidays of the year: Easter, St Mary and Christmas. The most relevant results of the study show that the intertwining of politics and religion is often negatively reflected by the media. The results are a necessary addition to previous studies (Iancu and Balaban) that had only focused on a quantitative analysis of politicians' media coverage during religious festivities. (shrink)

This case note discusses the case of Baczkowski v. Poland in the European Court of Human Rights. The Court ruled that, where an elected mayor makes comments disapproving of homosexuality, and officials subsequently ban a Gay Pride march, then courts may be able to infer that the ban was discriminatory under Article 14 ECHR.

The complaint is a familiar one: unelected, politically unaccountable judges are using their powers of judicial review to subvert the democratic process by shaping public policy in accordance with their own personal moral/political views. It is tempting to dismiss this complaint as the grumbling of those, usually on the political right, who have been disaffected by court decisions with which they personally disagree. But this temptation must be resisted, since the critics of judicial review, such as Jeremy Waldron, raise important (...) issues about the role of judges in a democratic political system. In his recent book A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review, Wil Waluchow responds to the critics’ arguments. This Critical Notice outlines his response and assesses its adequacy. (shrink)

AIDS and the Politician’s Right to Privacy.

Government intervention often gives rise to contests and the government can influence their outcome by choosing their type. We consider a contest with two interest groups: one that is governed by a central planner and one that is not. Rent dissipation is compared under two well-known contest success functions: the generalized logit and the all-pay auction. We also consider the case in which the government can limit the size of the non-governed interest group in order to determine the scope of (...) rent dissipation, with the goal of either increasing the rent obtained by the government or reducing the wasted resources invested in the contest. (shrink)

The Nicholas Wolterstorff-Robert Audi debate surrounding the role of religious reasons in public debate remains unresolved in the United States. Alternatively, but relatedly, when politicians and Archbishops in the UK mention God the media react with force. This article seeks a more balanced reaction to the faith of politicians and Archbishops and a solution to the Wolterstorff-Audi debate. First, this article teases out the extent to which John Macmurray's philosophy of community is or is not evident in New (...) Labour politics; secondly, it expounds Macmurray's alternative ‘communitarianism’ by examining his account of church-state relations; thirdly, it introduces the philosophical notion of supervenience to provide a proper account of the relation between religious reasons and secular reasons in public debate and, finally, it provides an example of a ‘community’ that satisfies the essential criteria of Macmurray's definition. Thus, in addition to revealing the contemporary relevance of Macmurray's work and the misunderstandings surrounding the notion of community, this article engages with an ongoing international conversation on the ethics of religious voices in public places and proposes a solution to the Wolterstorff-Audi debate. (shrink)

Stendhal.--Tocqueville.--Proudhon.--Sainte-Beuve.--Taine.--Renan.

An evolutionary perspective can be applied to the analysis of cultural phenomena to describe how inheritance mechanisms can account for the development of cultural traits in a given environment. This paper aims to describe the psychosocial functioning of the political system from this perspective, focusing on the role of politicians as cultural selectors. As they are in charge of legislation, politicians have a key role in steering the evolution of cultural norms. In particular they play a leading part (...) in determining access to traditional forms of participation, such as parties. We interviewed a panel of political experts to explore the selective mechanisms shaping the Italian political system. The results show that co-option is the main method of selecting new members for parties, with the aim of keeping power within well-established structures. The specific features of the Italian political environment explain its decreasing ability to attract young activists. (shrink)

Author applies four models of professional ethics of politicians (Aristotle’s virtuous citizen, Machiavelli’s prince, Erasmus’ man of values and Weber’s responsible politician) to politics and politicians in Slovakia since the first half of the 20th century to the present. According to author, there is possible to identify Milan Hodža with Weber’s model, Alexander Dubek with Aristotle’s one, Vladimír Meiar and Robert Fico are identified with Machiavelli’s model and Iveta Radiová with Erasmus’ model of professional ethics of politician in (...) Slovakia. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that, in Aristotle’s thought, the political commitment of authentically wise men is ultimately motivated by an intellectual rather than by a merely practical interest. Through analysis of Eudemian Ethics A 4. 1216 a 23-7 and Q 3. 1248 b 8-37 I shall contend that the socalled “true politician” is to be identified with a kalos kai agathos man, i.e. with an individual who – rather than being driven by mere desire for the promotion of (...) the common good – acts in the ultimate analysis out of a deep concern for the inherent worth of moral virtue. I shall propose that, while acting “for the sake of the fine”, the true politician aims not only to reach an appreciation of moral virtue independent of the possible benefits this can bring about, but also to maximize contemplative activity within the political sphere. After a preliminary introduction to the issue of true statesmanship, I try to understand in what respect the good differs from the fine, and I shall offer an account of the relationships between the two notions at issue by reference to their occurrences in the Eudemian Ethics and in the Metaphysics. I will suggest that the fine, if predicated of the practical good, expresses its intelligibility and liability to contemplation. In the second part I concentrate on the issue of kalokagathia and enquire into to kalon from the point of view of the lawgiver’s intentions and motives of virtuous action. (shrink)

In the age of the digital generation, written public data is ubiquitous and acts as an outlet for today's society. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn have profoundly changed how we communicate and interact. They have enabled the establishment of and participation in digital communities as well as the representation, documentation and exploration of social behaviours, and had a disruptive effect on how we use the Internet. Such digital communications present scholars with a novel way to detect, observe, analyse (...) and understand online communities over time. This article presents the formalization of a Social Observatory: a low latency method for the observation and measurement of social indicators within an online community. Our framework facilitates interdisciplinary research methodologies via tools for data acquisition and analysis in inductive and deductive settings. By focusing our Social Observatory on the public Facebook profiles of 187 federal German politicians we illustrate how we can analyse and measure sentiment, public opinion, and information discourse in advance of the federal elections. To this extent, we analysed 54,665 posts and 231,147 comments, creating a composite index of overall public sentiment and the underlying conceptual discussion themes. Our case study demonstrates the observation of communities at various resolutions: “zooming” in on specific subsets or communities as a whole. The results of the case study illustrate the ability to observe published sentiment and public dialogue as well as the difficulties associated with established methods within the field of sentiment analysis within short informal text. (shrink)

How do politicians engage with and offer to assist their constituents: the people who vote them into power? We address the question by analysing a corpus of 80 interactions recorded at the office of a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and comprising telephone calls between constituents and the MP’s clerical ‘caseworkers’ as well as face-to-face encounters with MPs in their fortnightly ‘surgeries’. The data were transcribed, and then analysed using conversation analysis, focusing on the design and placement (...) of offers of assistance. We identified three types of offers within a longer ‘offering’ sequence: ‘proposal offers’, which typically appear first in any offering sequence, in which politicians and caseworkers make proposals to help their constituents using formats that request permission to do so, or check that the constituent does indeed want help ; ‘announcement offers’, which appear second, and indicate that something has been decided and confirm the intention to act and ‘request offers’, which appear third, and take for form ‘let me do X’. Request offers indicate that the offer is available but cannot be completed until the current conversation is closed; they also appear in environments in which the constituent reissues their problems and appears dissatisfied with the offers so far. The article contributes to what we know about making offers in institutional settings, as well as shedding the first empirical light on the workings of the constituency office: the site of engagement between everyday members of the public and their elected representatives. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper deals with the process of Confucius' failure to real politics in the process of touring many countries leaving behind his home nation Lu, and the dream of a great society as a political ideal. Confucius traveled to various countries and tried to spread his political ideals to the governors at that time, but he eventually returned to failure. However, even though the wall of real politics is high, Confucius dreamed of the ideology of Dae-dong as a political ideology, (...) not as a politician. Dae-dong society was not only an equitable republic that treats all people fairly as a public society, but also a welfare state in the modern sense that serves all widowers, widows, orphans and disabled men. Considering the period when Confucius lived, it was an epoch-making idea. Although Confucius' political ideology has become a politician who failed to face real politics, his ideology has surpassed any modern political theories or state theories. Therefore, I argue that Confucius is an excellent political idealist who conceived his political theory beyond the realm of real-politics. (shrink)

Introduction. The conditions of comfortable communication in society have served as the basis for a person’s desire for self-expression, which makes up the necessary impression about him, i.e., to an image-representation, which has received the definition of image. The purpose of the image is to enter the practical sphere in order to achieve status in society. The aesthetic and psychological basis of the image expresses visual manifestations of the spiritual health of the individual, brings unconscious images to a conscious level. (...) Mastering the mechanism of effective impact of appearance is relevant, because it is necessary for everyone, especially political leaders. Methods. To carry out the analysis, the following methods are used: comparative-historical, comprehending the formation of an image in the historical process; historical-aesthetic, giving an idea of the image in retrospect; psychological, determining the psychological and emotional patterns of the image; associative, allowing to understand the perception of the politician by the public at an unconscious level; semiotic, referring to the iconic system of costume as part of the image. From a sociological point of view, the needs of society for a certain type of politician are revealed. The purpose of the article is to study the features of building an image and the role of its aesthetic aspect in the overall assessment of the image of a leader, using the example of the images of V. V. Putin, V. F. Zhirinovsky, V. I. Matvienko, to analyze the possibility of strengthening a positive image constructed consciously and purposefully. Scientific novelty of the research. As a result of analyzing the image of the leaders of the past and present, the fundamental difference between the artistic image of vestigial fashion and the unique design of the public image has been revealed. The definition of the essence of the image of a politician is formulated. The assessment of using military and secular costumes in creating the image of the head of the country is given. Results. Studies of the image of politicians show that the most successful leader is the one with natural charisma that needs appropriate visual design. The visual image has a symbolism that can act as a means of legitimizing political power. The necessity of further study of the sign-symbolic system of appearance is revealed. Conclusions. The image of the head of the country, created by aesthetic means, embodies an image that is understandable to his voters, capable of causing positive emotions of others on an uncon- scious level, raising the authority of its owner and trust in him. In a broad sense, the image gives an idea of an entire epoch and a change in civilizational paradigms. (shrink)

Following the evolution towards media-saturated societies, this article presents practice theory as an alternative framework for mediatization studies. We discuss how it can help us grasp the diversity of social and cultural changes related to the highly integrated media. This is demonstrated by studying politicians' personalization, not as a product of media logic but by looking at politicians' media-related practices and media's anchoring of practices. Our in-depth interviews with Flemish politicians show that their practices are in many (...) ways organized by the media, but through this mediatization at the same time aim to retain control over them. It is also shown that politicians' practices are not only directly influenced by media, but also by other politicians' media-related practices. Together, these findings draw a complex picture of the mediatization and personalization process. (shrink)

We provide evidence on the effects of criminal/corrupt politicians on firm performance and investments in their constituencies. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we focus on close parliamentary elections in India to establish a causal link between election of criminal-politicians and firms’ stock-market performance and investment decisions. Election of criminal-politicians leads to lower election-period and project-announcement stock-market returns for private-sector firms with economic ties to the district. There is a significant decline in total investment and employment by private-sector (...) firms in criminal-politician districts. Interestingly, decline in private-sector investment is largely offset by a roughly equivalent increase in investment by state-owned firms. (shrink)

This article examines the development of pneumatic medicine as practised by Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Beddoes and Joseph Priestley, and the support for their experimental trials by other Dissenting doctors and industrialists including Boulton, Watt and Wedgwood. The article examines their belief that if one could create the conditions under which `good air' could be manufactured — where the work of Dissenting chemists and doctors was embraced rather than condemned, supported rather than attacked — then conditions, political and medical, under which (...) a healthy country will flourish will prevail. Contra the claim made by Roy Porter that doctors, such as Erasmus Darwin, were `profoundly troubled by what they saw as the counterproductive impact on health produced by the spread of progressive ideas, refined culture, and modern, commercial, urban values', I believe that it was precisely those progressive values that led Dissenting doctors and pneumatic chemists to believe that by applying the same principles that led to the phenomenal industrial and commercial success of their friends like Boulton, Watt and Wedgwood, they could improve population health by attempting to reform simultaneously politics and therapeutics. (shrink)

Luke Bretherton wishes to encourage informal political activity, and asserts a contrast between two complementary and alternative ways of doing politics, formal and informal. But the tendency in his descriptions is to replace formal with informal politics, which is then in danger of being left without responsibility to the structures of political society.

In 2015, the Israeli newspaperYedioth Ahronothbegan a campaign against Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, who is considered a prominent critic of Israeli policy in Palestine. The campaign included various aspects of media bias on both the gender and the ethnopolitical levels and thus raised the question of a possible relationship between these two types of biases. Studies in relation to political communication and gender have traditionally focused on the media coverage of domestic male and female politicians. The present study (...) attempts to examine the gender media coverage of prominent international political actors. It performs a mixed content analysis of 529 news items from three Israeli online newspapers, reports, and articles, which cover world-renowned public figures (among them, Wallström). Each news item is coded into three gender-coverage frames. Additionally, a critical reading of the journalistic texts is conducted. The findings reveal that the combination of the two types of biases, the gender and the political, escalates the media sensation and stereotyping. (shrink)

Politicians invoke grand ideas: social justice, liberty, equality,community. But what do these ideas really mean? How can politicians across the political spectrum appeal to the same values? _Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians _answers these important questions. Accessible and lively, the book is an ideal student text, but it also brings the insights of the world's leading political philosophers to a wide general audience. Using plenty of examples, it equips readers to think for themselves (...) about the ideas that shape political life. Democracy works best when both politicians and voters move beyond rhetoric to think clearly and carefully about the political principles that should govern their society. But clear thinking is difficult in an age when established orthodoxies have fallen by the wayside. Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern politics. In so doing, it makes a valuable contribution to the democratic process. (shrink)

This article is about the manifestations of similarities between two seemingly distinct groups of Nigerians: cybercriminals and politicians. Which linguistic strategies do Twitter users use to express their opinions on cybercriminals and politicians? The study undertakes a qualitative analysis of ‘engaged’ tweets of an elite law enforcement agency in West Africa. We analyzed and coded over 100,000 ‘engaged’ tweets based on a component of mechanisms of moral disengagement (i.e., advantageous comparison), a linguistic device. The results reveal how respondents (...) defend the actions of online fraudsters (“the deviant group”) by strategically comparing them to the wrongful acts of corrupt politicians (“the respectable group”). Similarly, the results show how respondents positioned this linguistic strategy to compare “the powerless group” (online fraudsters) and “the powerful group” (politicians) in society. Indeed, tweet responses suggest that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) generally looks downwards for culprits (i.e., online fraudsters) while ignoring fraudulent politicians. We conclude that the process by which some actions are interpreted as a crime compared to others is a moral enterprise. (shrink)