Suchergebnisse

Many wonder what it takes to be a leader. Is it a natural or learned set of skills? This book examines the personalities of a selected group of political leaders, analyzes the forces that formed their nature-most notably their leadership tendencies-and then demonstrates how character has shaped important political decisions made during their regime. The authors profile 20 different leaders from across five continents, deriving shared personality traits and defining specific leadership styles based on characteristics and circumstances. The work begins by introducing the field of political p

Biographical analysis has been a traditional device by which historians and social scientists have sought to relate changes in social structure to political developments. All too often, the richness of personal detail has been hung on a "great man" theory of history, without regard to the key leadership groups involved.

This paper examines the impact of income inequality on political participation in Asia. Both conventional conflict theory and relative power theory suggest that inequality affects political participation, but they predict opposite directions. In this paper, I argue that the effects of inequality on participation depend on the type of political action: radical or institutional. To substantiate this claim, I analyze four Asian Barometer Survey waves from 2001 to 2014. Using nested models, I find that the effect of income inequality is conditional: it is positively associated with violent activities; has no significant correlation with less radical forms of protest; and is negatively associated with institutional actions, namely voting and persuading others to vote. While the effect does not depend on income level, regime type matters for certain activities. Political capacity, the perception of powerlessness, and trust in government are other potential factors in the relationship.

AbstractThis paper raises the question of the possible impact of online communication on political organizations in a very fundamental way. It follows the assumption that it is necessary to first clarify the relationship between political organizations and their communication before researching the possible impacts of online communication. Therefore, this paper discusses decisions, communication, and intermediation as the essence of any political organization. It presents a heuristic framework that differentiates the interrelation of organizations and communication in five perspectives: organizations as constituted by communication, as communicators, as structures or spheres wherein communication takes place, as topics of communication, and as indicators of change in communication. Each perspective is rooted in organizational sociology and may be applied to questions of political organizations and their online communication. Therefore, the distinction of these perspectives enriches the debate and serves as a useful tool to sort the arguments and research questions.

Motivations for migrating within the European Union have mainly been attributed to economic, career and lifestyle choices. This article suggests that political dissatisfaction is also an important motivator of recent intra-European migration. In our analysis of in-depth interviews with Romanian migrants in Spain and with Spanish migrants in Norway, we found a common emphasis on the political dimensions of their decision to migrate. In the interviews, the economic component of migration was often related to bad governance and negative perceptions of the state. The similarities of Spanish and Romanian migration narratives are especially striking because Spain and Romania represent substantially different migratory, political and economic contexts. However, migration is more obviously intertwined with conventional acts of political protest in the Spanish case. We suggest that differences in democratic contexts are pivotal in people's reactions to and framing of their deep dissatisfaction with domestic politics, as found in many European countries today.

This paper studies the relationship between the "big five" personality traits and political ideology in a large US representative sample (N=14,672). In line with research in political psychology, "openness to experience" is found to predict liberal ideology and "conscientiousness" predicts conservative ideology. The availability of family clusters in the data is leveraged to show that these results are robust to a sibling fixed-effects specification. The way that personality might interact with environmental influences in the development of ideology is also explored. A variety of childhood experiences are studied that may have a differential effect on political ideology based on a respondent's personality profile. Childhood trauma is found to interact with "openness" in predicting ideology and this complex relationship is investigated using mediation analysis. These findings provide new evidence for the idea that differences in political ideology are deeply intertwined with variation in the nature and nurture of individual personalities.

This article analyzes how political actors maneuvered and counter-maneuvered in South Korea in 2002, developing political strategy and exploiting national issues in order to position themselves for the presidential election of December 19, which dominated Korean politics throughout the year. Since public opinion polling conducted regularly by major news media had to a great extent shaped important decisions of all aspirants for daekwon (big power), the analysis focuses on explaining how the popularity of Lee Hoi-chang, Roh Moo-hyun, and Chung Mong-jun fluctuated, and how Roh finally won the presidential election.

Models of electoral competition tend to focus on competition between parties, but there are more significant alliances among incumbents of different parties than between incumbents and non-incumbents of the same party. The coalition of incumbents uses barriers to entry to place challengers at a competitive disadvantage, which frees incumbents from having to strictly follow the desires of the voters. This enhances the benefits of holding office. Models of political competition that leave out the competition between incumbents and non-incumbents overlook the most significant dimension of political competition.

In few areas of the world are the role and contribution of the intellectual elite more significant than in Latin America. Its membership has historically been in the forefront of major political and social movements, and there has been somewhat less of the distaste for politics and public responsibility than is often found elsewhere. Leading intellectuals are widely respected and nationally prominent, enjoying a degree of prestige that is scarcely exceeded in any other region. The pensador—sometimes likened to the eighteenth-century philosophe— has been intimately involved in major political movements from colonial times to the present.

Data from the Oct 1974 British Election Study are used to examine the level & nature of political ideology among British political activists (N = 395 out of 2,354 voters), the effects of SE characteristics on these attitudes, & the impact of the attitudes on political behavior. Questionnaire results reveal that the activist group closely resembles the nonactivist population. Activists are somewhat more ideological in their thinking than nonactivists, but the differences are quite small. Demographic attributes affect the policy attitudes of the elite slightly more than the nonactivists, but again differences are small. The influence of issue attitudes on voting is about the same for activists & nonactivists. These results stand in contrast to studies showing large elite-mass policy differences in the US & other work documenting ideological orientations in higher levels of the Labour Party. 4 Tables. Modified HA

The Russian Federation provides a valuable laboratory to study the impact of political forces on the process of structural reform. We examine changes in the industrial structure of employment across Russian regions & assess the importance of legacy factors, political factors, & success factors in explaining this process. We discuss the problems introduced by federalism in the transition process. We find that initial conditions such as natural resource potential, climate, & industrial specialization explain more of the variation in industrial restructuring than political variables. Tables, Figures, References. [Copyright 2006 Elsevier B.V.]