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Political Behaviour (political + behaviour)
Selected AbstractsIf things can only get worse: Anticipation of enlargement in European Union legislative politicsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010DIRK LEUFFEN Anticipation is a central feature of political behaviour. It has an impact on actors' choices and can change the timing of decisions. This article analyses anticipation in legislative politics. After delineating different objects as well as consequences of anticipation theoretically, a set of hypotheses about anticipatory behaviour in EU decision-making is derived. In particular, it is asked whether the EU Council anticipates the arrival of new Member States and how this affects legislative output. The theory is tested by estimating count models using a dataset that contains information on all binding EU legislation from 1976 to 2007. Covering five enlargement rounds, evidence is presented for anticipatory behaviour in EU legislative politics. [source] Why the democratic nation-state is still legitimate: A study of media discoursesEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2009ACHIM HURRELMANN Focusing on media discourses, this article maps the communicative reproduction of legitimacy in Great Britain, the United States, Germany and Switzerland. It argues that political communication constitutes a distinctive dimension of legitimation that should be studied alongside public opinion and political behaviour. Research on legitimation discourses can help us understand why the legitimacy of established democracies remains stable in spite of the challenges of globalisation: Delegitimating communication tends to focus on relatively marginal political institutions, while the core regime principles of the democratic nation-state, which are deeply entrenched in the political cultures of Western countries, serve as anchors of legitimacy. These democratic principles also shape the normative benchmarks used to evaluate legitimacy, thus preventing a ,de-democratisation' of legitimation discourses. Finally, the short-lived nature of media interest as well as ritualistic legitimation practices shield the democratic nation-state from many potentially serious threats to its legitimacy. [source] Rational Irrationality and Simulation in Environmental Politics: The Example of Climate ChangeGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2009Mathew Humphrey Do western publics make ,demands' for environmental policy that they have no desire to see enacted? The thesis that they do has been put forward recently by advocates of the ,post-ecologist' paradigm such as Ingolfur Blühdorn. Taking the example of climate change, this article assesses survey results that provide indicative evidence that such ,simulative' demands may exist. I suggest that such demands are, however, best explained through conceptual tools available from game-theoretic and rational-actor models of political behaviour, in particular rational ignorance and rational irrationality, rather than with the societal-level accounts preferred by Blühdorn and others. [source] Strategic decision-making: Process perspectivesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 1 2006Said Elbanna This paper reviews the strategic decision-making process literature with respect to the synoptic formalism/political incrementalism debate. Procedural rationality is chosen as a representative of the synoptic formalism perspective; and both intuitive synthesis and political behaviour are employed as representatives of the political-incrementalism perspective. In this paper, the author discusses the theoretical underpinnings of these three process dimensions, as well as the key research efforts gathered together under each perspective. In conducting this review, a number of areas have been identified which could profitably be examined further, and a number of implications for managers will be highlighted and discussed. [source] National identity in Northern Ireland: stability or change?NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 4 2007JOHN COAKLEY ABSTRACT. This article addresses a set of fundamental, long-term factors associated with the Northern Ireland conflict: the pattern of underlying values and attitudes, especially those related to identity, that have helped to shape the nature of intercommunal competition. Using all generally available public opinion data, the article explores in particular the nature of national identity and of related forms of belonging for political behaviour. It notes the mutually reinforcing character of political loyalties within the Protestant community (where national identity, communal affiliation, constitutional preference and party support tend to coincide in a ,Protestant-unionist' package) and the failure of this to be matched within the Catholic community (where the components of the ,Catholic-nationalist' package are less closely interrelated). It concludes by speculating about the implications of these value configurations for political development, suggesting that they are unlikely to contribute to any fundamental political change in Northern Ireland in the short or medium term. [source] The Logic of Transnational Action: The Good Corporation and the Global CompactPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2007Lynn Bennie This article examines corporate participation in the UN Global Compact programme. Using data on the world's 2,000 largest companies, we address the question of why companies voluntarily assume the programme's responsibilities and promote the rights of ,global citizenship'. Our analytic approach is to view transnational corporate political behaviour as a result of firm-level decisions shaped by country-level variation in political audience effects. Drawing on earlier research on more conventional forms of corporate political activity, we expect factors influential in the standard model of firm political activity to determine participation in the Global Compact. In addition, we argue that this highly visible, less instrumental dimension of a firm's political behaviour is driven by efforts to build a good environmental and human rights reputation with its audience of external actors. The importance of environmental and human rights concerns depends on the substance of the firm's business activities, the availability of investment and ,exit' options, and the home audience's bias towards the UN and human and environmental rights. We find support for political factors as well as firm and industry-level characteristics influencing the decision to participate in the Global Compact. [source] Politics And Gastropolitics: Gender And The Power Of Food In Two African Pastoralist SocietiesTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2 2002Jon Holtzman Male-centred aspects of political behaviour have generally remained the explanatory and interpretive focuses in analyses of the social organization of African pastoralists. While recent work on African pastoralists has shed increasing light on the lives of women, I argue that key assumptions underlying anthropological models of male dominance in these societies have been insufficiently challenged. Drawing on recent approaches in gender and social organization that highlight the mutual constitution of domestic and political domains, I examine comparative material from two well-known pastoralist societies: the Samburu of northern Kenya and the Nuer of southern Sudan. In doing so, I suggest strong linkages between male-dominated ,political spheres' and areas of domestic life in which the role of women is more significant , particularly processes of domestic food distribution. In re-examining central facets of Samburu politics , which are best known through Paul Spencer's seminal analysis of the gerontocratic aspects of Samburu political life , I suggest that the status and identities of Samburu men are in fundamental ways defined through their relationship to women as providers of food within Samburu households. Comparative material from the Nuer suggests, additionally, the strategic use of food by women in influencing male ,political spheres'. In comparing these cases, I suggest a more general model through which domestic processes of food allocation as realms of female-centred social action may be seen to play a central role in the forms and processes of pastoral ,political' life. [source] Institutions, Inequality and Social Norms: Explaining Variations in ParticipationBRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2007Michael Lister This article seeks to explain why electoral participation varies over time and space. It develops a hypothesis that one factor is the nature of social citizenship rights, which relates to welfare state provision. The article argues that institutions shape and influence social norms and, in so doing, affect individual behaviour. Rights which are more universal in nature encourage norms of solidarity and participation in ways that more residual systems do not. Therefore, where welfare states are more universalist in nature, we should see higher levels of participation. I use inequality rates as a measure of welfare state outputs to investigate this and find a significant negative relationship between inequality and electoral turnout. This suggests that the nature of welfare state institutions has an effect upon individuals' political behaviour. [source] El Alto, Ciudad Rebelde: Organisational Bases for RevoltBULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 2 2006Sian Lazar The events of October 2003 reveal something about how Bolivian democracy works under ,normal' circumstances because they built upon well-established patterns of political behaviour whereby corporate groupings have become used to direct negotiations with the government. It was the breakdown of these patterns that forced the resignation of the President in 2003. I detail here the collective identities that provide the foundations for mobilisational power in Bolivia and examine the organisation behind the uprising in El Alto and its roots in quotidian experiences of collective mobilisation. I conclude with a consideration of the relationship between social mobilisation, democracy and politics in contemporary Bolivia. [source] | ||||||||||