"Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism" examines the effect the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States had on one of America's most important ally, Japan, as it struggles to define a post-Cold War role for itself in international security affairs. This study looks at Japanese mass opinion, the role of the Japanese media, both print and visual, in framing discourse on security, the response of political parties to public opinion, the position of Japanese intellectuals in the debate on the war on terrorism, civil society, and public opinion in Okinawa.

A Choice Highly Recommended Title-January 2017 This book is an interpretive analysis of political campaigns in America: instead of focusing on how campaigns are designed and run, it investigates the role campaigns play in our American politics, and the close symbiosis between campaigns and those politics. The text examines how campaigns are an important manifestation of how we "do" politics in this country. Hallmarks of this text include: showing how campaigns can undermine our democracy and asking how democratic they-and by extension, our politics--really are; demonstrating that the ability of the media to accurately, fairly, and deeply report on campaigns has been severely compromised, both because of the growing "distance" between campaigns and media outlets and because of the structure of "Big Media" corporate ownership and its tight relationship to "Big Money." It asks important questions about the media including: How do the media, reporters in particular, cover campaigns? What pressures and forces shape what and how they present campaigns? What is the impact of the ever-increasing chasm separating campaigns and the media? How does the close tie between corporate mainstream media and Super PAC money affect campaign coverage? How does the ability of campaigns and media to segment voters into ever-smaller slices influence how campaigns are covered? tracking the continuing growth of unregulated, private, unaccountable "dark money" in campaigns as a threat to our democratic elections and politics. Democracy rests fundamentally on transparency and accountability - sunlight - and our campaign laws and norms now allow and encourage exactly the opposite, largely because of decisions by the United States Supreme Court.

In this incisive and razor-sharp analysis of one of the most important issues facing us today, leading Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt draw on their combined expertise of over 40 years to examine how dictators come to power, and how they help to foster a poisonous culture of polarisation, fear and suspicion that persists even after their time in power is over.

Using contemporary examples including the Capitol riots and voter suppression in the US, as well as global examples from history including post-1945 Germany and Brazil and Chile during the '60s and '70s, the authors dissect conservative resistance to pluralism and modern threats to multiracial democracy (including the unwillingness of political parties to adapt to modern times, and a growing disregard for constitutional norms and free and fair elections) while imploring readers to stand up in its defence.

Focusing on the forthcoming American election as an essential case study, Saving Democracy offers us imperative tools for implementing urgent democratic reform, brilliantly illuminating how we can respond to the political battles ahead.

This book examines how critical approaches to security developed in Europe can be used to investigate a Chinese security issue - the case of the Falungong. The past few decades have produced a rich field of theoretical approaches to 'security' in Europe. In this book, the security-specific notions of securitization, the politics of insecurity, and emancipation are used as analytical approaches to investigate the anti-Falungong campaign in the People's Republic of China. This campaign, launched in 1999, was the largest security-related propaganda campaign since 1989 and was directed against a group of qigong-practitioners who were presented as a grave threat to society. The campaign had major impacts as new security legislation was established and human rights organizations reported severe mistreatment of practitioners. This book approaches one empirical case with three approaches in order to transcend the tendency to pit one approach against another. It shows how they highlight different aspects in investigation, and how they can be combined to gain more comprehensive insights, and thereby invigorate renewed debate in the field. Furthermore, this is used as a vehicle to discuss more general philosophical issues of theory, development, and theory development and will assist students to comprehend the effects research framework selection has on a piece of research. Such discussions are necessary in order to apply the frameworks in investigations that go beyond the socio-political context they were originally developed in. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, Chinese politics, research methods and IR in general.

A Choice Highly Recommended Title-January 2017 This book is an interpretive analysis of political campaigns in America: instead of focusing on how campaigns are designed and run, it investigates the role campaigns play in our American politics, and the close symbiosis between campaigns and those politics. The text examines how campaigns are an important manifestation of how we "do" politics in this country. Hallmarks of this text include: showing how campaigns can undermine our democracy and asking how democratic they-and by extension, our politics--really are; demonstrating that the ability of the media to accurately, fairly, and deeply report on campaigns has been severely compromised, both because of the growing "distance" between campaigns and media outlets and because of the structure of "Big Media" corporate ownership and its tight relationship to "Big Money." It asks important questions about the media including: How do the media, reporters in particular, cover campaigns? What pressures and forces shape what and how they present campaigns? What is the impact of the ever-increasing chasm separating campaigns and the media? How does the close tie between corporate mainstream media and Super PAC money affect campaign coverage? How does the ability of campaigns and media to segment voters into ever-smaller slices influence how campaigns are covered? tracking the continuing growth of unregulated, private, unaccountable "dark money" in campaigns as a threat to our democratic elections and politics. Democracy rests fundamentally on transparency and accountability - sunlight - and our campaign laws and norms now allow and encourage exactly the opposite, largely because of decisions by the United States Supreme Court.

Deforming American Political Thought offers an alternative to the dominant American historical imagination, treating issues that range from the nature of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian nation to the persistence of racial inequality. Presenting multifaceted arguments that transcend the myopic scope of traditional political discourses, Michael J. Shapiro summons disparate disciplines and genres - architecture, crime stories, novels, films, and jazz/blues music (among others) to provide approaches to the comprehension of diverse facets of American political thought from the founding to the present. The book's various investigations disclose that there have always been dissenting voices, articulated in diverse genres of expression that cast doubt on the moral purpose and exceptionalism of the American mind. This highly anticipated updated second edition features a preface focusing on aesthetic theory and the contributions of artistic genres for political analysis, and a completely new chapter on critical thinking about the US western and urban encounters afforded by the two HBO series, Deadwood and The Wire respectively.

Despite the enthusiasm surrounding the Colour Revolutions and the Arab Spring, the world's share of democracies has stagnated over the past 15 years. The steady rise of China, Russia, and Iran has also led to warnings of a resurgence of "authoritarian great powers", especially in light of the financial crisis centred in the USA and Western Europe. On the positive side, however, democracy remains remarkably popular as an ideal. In the Global barometer's most recent survey, two out of three respondents say democracy is their most favoured political system, including a majority in 49 of the 55 countries. Yet there is evidence, much expanded upon in this edited collection, that commitments to liberal democracy in practice are not as strong. Nominally pro-democratic citizens frequently favour limitations on electoral accountability and individual rights in the service of improved governance or economic growth. Further, there are rising concerns that many citizens, especially across the developing world, are turning away from democracy out of frustration with democratic performance. In contrast to many transitional regimes, the more established democracies appear to be losing support among their highly educated citizens. The contributions in this edited collection compare how democracy is understood and experienced in transitioning regimes and established democracies. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.

Unlike many studies of social attitudes, which are based on large scale quantitative surveys, or which focus on the attitude of elites, this book considers the views of ordinary people, and is based on in-depth, qualitative interviews. This approach results in rich, nuanced data, and is especially helpful for highlighting ambivalent attitudes, where respondents may hold positive and negative views on a particular topic, views which are liable to change. The book examines attitudes on a range of subjects of current importance, including views on nationalism and internationalism, housing preferences, and educational ambitions. Throughout, the book explores how far attitudes are influenced by traditional Chinese values or by the neo-liberal outlook fostered by recent reforms, and concludes that materialism and individualism have increased.

At the airport we line up, remove our shoes, empty our pockets, and hold still for three seconds in the body scanner. Deemed safe, we put ourselves back together and are free to buy the beverage we were prohibited from taking through security. In The Transparent Traveler Rachel Hall explains how the familiar routines of airport security choreograph passenger behavior to create submissive and docile travelers. The cultural performance of contemporary security practices mobilizes what Hall calls the "aesthetics of transparency." To appear transparent, a passenger must perform innocence and display a willingness to open their body to routine inspection and analysis. Those who cannot-whether because of race, immigration and citizenship status, disability, age, or religion-are deemed opaque, presumed to be a threat, and subject to search and detention. Analyzing everything from airport architecture, photography, and computer-generated imagery to full-body scanners and TSA behavior detection techniques, Hall theorizes the transparent traveler as the embodiment of a cultural ideal of submission to surveillance.

Over the past twenty years, presidential candidates have developed an entertainment talk show strategy in which they routinely chat with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman, and Jon Stewart. In fact, between 1992 and 2012, there have been more than 200 candidate interviews on daytime and late night talk shows with nearly every presidential candidate-from long shot primary contender to major party nominee-hitting the talk show circuit at some point during the campaign. This book explores the development of the entertainment talk show strategy and assesses its impact on presidential campaigns. The chapters mix detailed narrative with extensive empirical data on audiences, content, viewer reaction, and press coverage to explain why candidates have embraced this strategy and the conditions under which these interviews are most likely to meet their expectations. The book also explores how these interviews can enhance campaigns by connecting a critical segment of the voting population with candidates who provide useful political information in a casual setting. Talk Show Campaigns shows that this is more than a gimmick-it's a key part of how candidates communicate with voters, which reveals a lot about how campaigns have changed over the past two decades.

The relationship between information and the nation-state is typically portrayed as a face-off involving repressive state power and democratic flows: Twitter and the Arab Spring, Google in China, WikiLeaks and the U.S. State Department. Less attention has been paid to those scenarios where states have regarded information and its diffusion as productive of modernity and globalization. It is the central argument of this book that the contemporary nation-state, especially in the global South, is far from hostile to the current informational milieu and in fact makes crucial use of it in order to develop adequate modes of governance, communication and sociality in a networked world. This book focuses on India - an emerging country that has recently witnessed a "software miracle" - to highlight the critical role informatics has historically played in the national imagination and to demonstrate how the state, private capital and civic society have drawn upon and engaged the precepts and protocols of the information age to fashion an "info-nation."

Over the past few decades, psychologists have discovered that human reasoning is defective in surprising ways. We are beset by numerous biases and heuristics, which lead us to reason poorly about things that matter to us. And while there are illuminating evolutionary explanations for how these biases and heuristics may have benefited our species in its phylogeny, psychologists are unanimous that these cognitive dispositions largely corrupt rather than aid our belief-forming practices. In Winning Votes by Abusing Reason: Political Rhetoric and Responsible Belief, Jamie Watson argues that political rhetoric, rather than helping us overcome these defects, exacerbates them. And standard attempts to address this problem, such as deliberative democracy and paternalism, tend to either exclude citizens from important decisions or give them the illusion of reasoning well, perpetuating poor and irresponsible political beliefs. This book concludes that, rather than attempt more political solutions, the most promising approach to forming and preserving responsible political beliefs is to adopt individual principles of epistemic caution. The author brings together insights from political philosophy, social epistemology, behavioral psychology, and agnotology to suggest how we might protect our belief-forming behavior from the corrosive effects of political rhetoric. Recommended for scholars of philosophy, rhetoric, political science, and communications.

Originally published in 1994, this important book traces the rise of film propaganda in the 20th Century, discussing specifically how film can be used to manipulate public perception and opinions. Two distinct areas are covered: war propaganda, including feature and documentary films regarding warfare; and civilian propaganda, including films that address a variety of political subjects. Although the focus is American film and American politics, this book offers insights for all those interested in the affect of film on the minds of citizens of any country or state.

The news media have significant influence on the formation of public opinion. Called the agenda-setting role of the media, this influence occurs at three levels. Focusing public attention on a select few issues or other topics at any moment is level one. Emphasizing specific attributes of those issues or topics is level two. The Power of Information Networks: The Third Level of Agenda Setting introduces the newest perspective on this influence. While levels one and two are concerned with the salience of discrete individual elements, the third level offers a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective to explain media effects in this evolving media landscape: the ability of the news media to determine how the public associates the various elements in these media messages to create an integrated picture of public affairs. This is the first book to detail the theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and international empirical evidence for this new perspective. Cutting-edge communication analytics such as network analysis, Big Data and data visualization techniques are used to examine these third-level effects. Diverse applications of the theory are documented in political communication, public relations, health communication, and social media research. The Power of Information Networks will interest scholars, students and practitioners concerned with the media and their social and cultural effects.

The news media have significant influence on the formation of public opinion. Called the agenda-setting role of the media, this influence occurs at three levels. Focusing public attention on a select few issues or other topics at any moment is level one. Emphasizing specific attributes of those issues or topics is level two. The Power of Information Networks: The Third Level of Agenda Setting introduces the newest perspective on this influence. While levels one and two are concerned with the salience of discrete individual elements, the third level offers a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective to explain media effects in this evolving media landscape: the ability of the news media to determine how the public associates the various elements in these media messages to create an integrated picture of public affairs. This is the first book to detail the theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and international empirical evidence for this new perspective. Cutting-edge communication analytics such as network analysis, Big Data and data visualization techniques are used to examine these third-level effects. Diverse applications of the theory are documented in political communication, public relations, health communication, and social media research. The Power of Information Networks will interest scholars, students and practitioners concerned with the media and their social and cultural effects.

The western economic and financial crisis began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and led the European Union countries into recession. After this, governments started to implement austerity measures, such as cuts in public spending, including public subsidies and jobs, and rising prices. In this context, Europe started to experience a wave of protest movements. Individuals started to use the manifold interactive digital media environment to both fight against the austerity measures and find alternative ways of claiming their democratic rights. Inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York (USA), the Occupy LSX encampment in Central London (UK), The Outraged (Los Indignados)/ 15M encampment in Central Madrid (Spain), the Syntagma Square's Outraged movement in Athens (Greece) and the March 12th Movement in Lisbon (Portugal), although short-lived, epitomize an emerging alternative politics and participation via the media. This wave has promoted a debate on how the realm of politics is changing, as citizens broaden their ideas of what political issues and participation mean. Beyond the Internet examines the technological dimension of the recent wave of protest movements in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland. Offering an opportunity to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics between society, politics and technology, this volume questions the essentialist attributes of the Internet that fuel the techno-centric discourse. The contributors illustrate how all these protest movements were active in the social media and garnered high levels of media attention and public visibility, in spite of their failure to achieve their political goals. As intra-elite dissent was pivotal in understanding the Arab uprisings, the coalition of national ruling elites with European institutions in terms of austerity strategy is essential in understanding the limits of media/technology power and, therefore, the dissociation between communication and representative power.

A historian's view of the relationship between American history and the American film industry, this book is a witty and perceptive account of Hollywood and its films in the years from the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe to the end of the war in Korea, It describes how film makers and their industry were shaped by and responded to the strong political and social stimuli of wartime America. The author examines the recurring question of whether the movies were a reflection of the society in which they were produced, or whether by virtue of their undeniable propaganda power the films shaped that society. Combining evidence from literary, visual and oral sources, he covers a wide range of movies, emphasising in particular Casablanca, Mrs Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and Since You Went Away. In addition to placing the films in a social and political context, the author shows that Hollywood is a perfect example of the bone-headed way in which people behave when they are dealing with large amounts of money and power. Enjoyably nostalgic, this book will appeal to film enthusiasts as well as those interested in war and its effect on society.

While frustration with various aspects of American democracy abound in the United States, there is little agreement over-or even understanding of-what kinds of changes would make the system more effective and increase political participation. Matthew J. Streb sheds much-needed light on all the major concerns of the electoral process in the thoroughly revised third edition of this timely book on improving American electoral democracy. This critical examination of the rules and institutional arrangements that shape the American electoral process analyzes the major debates that embroil scholars and reformers on subjects ranging from the number of elections we hold and the use of nonpartisan elections, to the presidential nominating process and campaign finance laws. Ultimately, Streb argues for a less burdensome democracy, a democracy in which citizens can participate more easily in transparent, competitive elections. This book is designed to get students of elections and American political institutions to think critically about what it means to be democratic, and how democratic the United States really is. Part of the Controversies in Electoral Democracy and Representation series, edited by Matthew J. Streb.

A deaf-mute woman waiting for her brother to pick her up in front of shop window is arrested by two members of the Saudi "morality police" (mutawas) on suspicion of prostitution. They report their allegation to the governor of Riyadh, who accepts it without question and passes sentence. The next Friday she is stoned to death in public. A German woman married to a Saudi man makes the mistake of taking a taxi downtown without a male escort. For her "crime" she is arrested, raped, and thrown into prison. Later her German-Saudi baby son is taken away and she is deported to Cyprus without passport and money. A Syrian truck driver is accused of stealing the truck he is driving. As a consequence, both of his hands are amputated. Are these incredible but true incidents merely aberrations, the result of a few power-crazed officials acting outrageously outside the reach of a generally law-abiding society? Unfortunately, they are all too common in the theocratic police state that is contemporary Saudi Arabia. As the author vividly recounts in this shocking expose, in the wealthy Saudi oil kingdom there is no such thing as secular law or modern courts. Instead, Saudi princes create the laws, based on Sharia, Islamic law derived from the Koran and Hadith, and the muttawas act as judges, enforcers, and executioners. The author lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for many years. A fluent speaker of Arabic, he was told about the many appalling incidents reported in this book by victims and their friends and relatives. He cross-checked all the accounts here given through multiple interviews. Amazingly, in some cases, the actual victimizers themselves openly, often with condescending and smug contempt, corroborated the events. This revealing portrait of intolerance and social oppression presents an image that foreign reporters never see in the carefully controlled Saudi kingdom.

When it comes to elections, campaigns matter. And despite the ever-increasing role of volunteers and amateurs, modern American political campaigns are a professional affair. Understanding how they are run and how campaign strategies are set requires an in-depth analysis of what political consultants do, from opposition research to public opinion polling and from directing media strategies to mobilzing voters--with fundraising a priority at all stages. At all levels of the electoral arena, modern, sophisticated campaigns cannot hope to be effective without the guiding disciplines of professional consultants. This thoroughly updated edition of Dennis W. Johnson's classic text, originally titled No Place for Amateurs, highlights the growing importance of social media, targeting and analytics, Super PACs and dark money in a post-Citizens United world.

The Jehovah's Witnesses endured intense persecution under the Nazi regime, from 1933 to 1945. Unlike the Jews and others persecuted and killed by virtue of their birth, Jehovah's Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs. The vast majority refused and throughout their struggle, continued to meet, preach, and distribute literature. In the face of torture, maltreatment in concentration camps, and sometimes execution, this unique group won the respect of many contemporaries. Up until now, little has been known of their particular persecution.

A guiding principle in creating Political Marketing has been to examine the ways in which culture, politics, and society interrelate in the field of political marketing. In the course of the book, the editors and contributors consider 'culture' as a distinctive concept with transformative capacities that need further and deeper development in the engineering of the political marketing process. This may be introduced and, consequently, lead to broad formulation of a 'campaign culture'. Indeed, understanding and adapting a broader 'campaign culture', political marketing models may be seen as sets of pathways of key resources resulting viability in human assets, forms of influence, class stratification, alternative flows of information or networking and intercultural knowledge - sharing activity. This book consists of 18 chapters which deal with aspects of political marketing and 'campaign culture.' Theoretical chapters are found first, followed by two chapters that deal with theoretical issues which became a subject of research. Next presented are the articles that study aspects of electoral behavior, followed by the papers that analyze aspects of nationalism & national identity. Finally, the book concludes with three case studies on various issues in political marketing.

Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)-socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies have overlooked, while "economic voting" is insignificant in most elections once long-term partisan attitudes are taken into consideration. Its examination of electoral turnout finds that the strongest predictor is participation by other family members, demonstrating the importance of intermediation. Another chapter surveys cross-national variations in patterns of intermediation, and examines the impact of general social processes (such as socioeconomic and technological modernization), country-specific factors, and individual-level attitudinal factors as determinants of those patterns. Complementing its cross-national comparative analysis is a detailed longitudinal case study of one country over 25 years. Finally, it examines the extent of support for democracy as well as significant cross-national differences in how democracy is understood by citizens. Written in a clear and accessible style, Voting in Old and New Democracies significantly advances our understanding of citizen attitudes and behavior in election settings.

This book examines the history of the legal discourse around political falsehood and its future in the wake of the 2012 US Supreme Court decision in US v. Alvarez through communication law, political philosophy, and communication theory perspectives. As US v. Alvarez confirmed First Amendment protection for lies, Robert N. Spicer addresses how the ramifications of that decision function by looking at statutory and judicial handling of First Amendment protection for political deception. Illustrating how commercial speech is regulated but political speech is not, Spicer evaluates the role of deception in politics and its consequences for democracy in a contemporary political environment where political personalities, partisan media, and dark money donors bend the truth and abuse the virtue of free expression.

The Conservative Party is one of the most successful political parties in the western world. Its success has been built on its large grass roots membership. And yet that memberhip appears to be increasingly disaffected and in decline.;This book is the first in depth study of this crucial section of the Conservative Party. Drawing on new and revealing survey data, it paints a fascinating picture of the social make-up and political views of a grass roots membership who dislike Jacques Delors more than the European Community, and The Sun newspaper most of all. The book challenges the stereotypical view of the Conservative activist as an eccentric and politically irrelevant Thatcher-loving extremist. Instead, the authors argue that the grass roots membership are the unsung heroes of political life; helping to keep the party system working and democracy intact at a time when it is under considerable strain.;The authors claim that to some extent the party is the author of its own problems, and point out the likely dire consequences for its future success if the current decline continues. They conclude by outlining the ways in which the leadership might revitalize its most important polit