Suchergebnisse

In the name of health security, individual freedoms were constrained in an unprecedented way in many countries, democratic or authoritarian, all over the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the constraints have not been consistent across countries, which motivates this paper to examine the relevance of value preferences towards freedom or security in the society for COVID-19 policies. Based on data for 40 democratic and authoritarian countries, the analyses show that the variation in the stringency of COVID-19 policies can be explained by value preferences of the population only in autocracies. In democracies, however, we do not find such a relationship. Governments in democratic political systems, we argue, are responsive to their constitutions and face prosecution by the judiciary if they violate the law or provisions of the constitution, limiting their capacity to implement strong COVID-19 policies. Nevertheless, their COVID-19 policies restricted citizens' freedoms and liberties, which means that these policies were rather not responsive to citizens' preferences for freedom, democratic rights and liberties. By highlighting how autocracies respond to their citizens' value preferences for security, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how autocracies might gain legitimacy in times of crises.

Der Sammelband Emotionen und Politik vereint innovative und thematisch weitreichende Forschung zu relevanten Fragen rund um angemessene und unangemessene Emotionspolitik, die gerade in diesen politisch turbulenten Zeiten von größter Bedeutung sind. Die AutorInnen präsentieren starke Plädoyers für eine Beschäftigung mit Emotionen beziehungsweise Emotionalisierung im politischen Raum. ; The comprehensive anthology Emotionen und Politik combines innovative and extensive research on questions regarding the appropriate and inappropriate politics of emotions, which are even more relevant in these politically turbulent times. The authors make a strong plea for engaging with emotions, and with emotionalization, in the political realm.

This paper explores the complex relationship between media and political systems in the context of the International News Flow, regarding the interdisciplinary research area between media study and International Relations. The focus is on International News Flow interactions and effects upon democratic political systems. The aim is to fill the gap concerning international relations in comparative media analysis literature. Despite using Hallin and Mancini's framework (2004, 2012), the present research does not only apply their typology to test its validity, but it also applies the main International Relations theoretical frameworks that deepen the relationship between media and political systems to shed light on the degree of superimposition between structure-based and content-based frameworks of media systems. The case study is the 2016 failed military coup in Turkey. In particular, in terms of coverage and analysis, the study considers how the newspapers of four countries (Italy, France, Germany and England), which represent the three democracy models of Hallini and Mancini – Mediterranean, Liberal, Corporative plus one that cuts across different models – framed the failed coup attempt in the days following the beginning of the crisis.

While people in democracies can vote their government out when they are discontent with its policies, those in dictatorships cannot do so. They can only attempt to expel the dictator via mass protests or revolutions. Based on a general cause-and-effect mechanism, the author analyzes whether such mass protests are more likely when the economic situation is poor and vote outs are more likely under bad economic conditions. The empirical analysis provides evidence of economic voting in the European democracies. On the other hand, the results for the Arab World show that economic revolutionizing does not occur there. For this reason, the economics of the Arab Spring are analyzed in greater detail. It can be concluded that bad policy is punished in democracies only. Therefore, by using positive analysis, the investigation demonstrates the malfunctioning of the political market in dictatorships. ; In diesem Aufsatz wird der Zusammenhang von Abwahl- bzw. Revolutionswahrscheinlichkeit und der ökonomischen Performance untersucht. Basierend auf einem allgemeinen Ursache-Wirkungs-Mechanismus werden die Thesen abgeleitet, dass eine schlechte ökonomische Performance zwar die Abwahlwahrscheinlichkeit erhöht, nicht jedoch die Revolutionswahrscheinlichkeit, da das Zustandekommen einer Revolution davon abhängt, ob das Kollektivgutproblem gelöst werden kann. Die empirische Analyse der europäischen Demokratien zeigt, dass eine schlechte ökonomische Performance vor einem Wahltermin häufiger mit einer Abwahl als mit einer Wiederwahl einhergeht. Die Untersuchung für Revolutionen und Aufstände in der arabischen Welt dagegen zeigt, dass dort kein solcher Zusammen-hang besteht, weshalb eine genauere Betrachtung der potentiellen ökonomischen Ursachen des arabischen Frühlings erfolgt. Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass die ökonomische Performance auch ein Maß für die Qualität der Regierungsarbeit ist, liefert die Analyse ein weiteres, nicht normatives Argument für die Überlegenheit von demokratischen Systemen gegenüber nicht-demokratischen, da schlechte Regierungsführung in letzeren nicht unmittelbar bestraft wird.