Suchergebnisse

McCoy, J.: One act in an unfinished drama. - S. 109-123 Kornblith, M.: Elections versus democracy. - S. 124-137

Describes election of President Hugo Chávez, focusing on the huge gap he must face between campaign promises, political problems, and economic realities.

Describes the Oct. 1996 elections, prospects for democracy in its aftermath, and issues relating to property and privatization.

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- PART I: Antecedents: The Foundations of the Punto Fijo Regime of Representative Democracy -- 1 The Normalization of Punto Fijo Democracy -- PART II: The Actors: Making Political Demands -- 2 Urban Poor and Political Order -- 3 The Military: From Marginalization to Center Stage -- 4 Entrepreneurs: Profits without Power? -- 5 Civil Society: Late Bloomers -- 6 Intellectuals: An Elite Divided -- 7 The United States and Venezuela: From a Special Relationship to Wary Neighbors -- 8 The Unraveling of Venezuela's Party System: From Party Rule to Personalistic Politics and Deinstitutionalization -- PART III: Policy Making and Its Consequences -- 9 Decentralization: Key to Understanding a Changing Nation -- 10 The Syndrome of Economic Decline and the Quest for Change -- 11 Public Opinion, Political Socialization, and Regime Stabilization -- PART IV: Conclusion -- 12 From Representative to Participatory Democracy? Regime Transformation in Venezuela -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Glossary -- References -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

Interest in populist voters has risen with the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe, and the longevity of populist leaders in countries like Italy, Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela. Yet, little attention has been given to what mechanisms may affect populist attitudes, leaving us without recommendations for media or politicians on how to mitigate populism's known negative effects. This study investigates one such mechanism—political rhetoric working through emotional states—to determine whether grievances centered on subjective perceptions of injustice and inequities in the system operate through negative emotions to increase populist attitudes, as is often assumed in the literature, and whether an antidote to those perceptions may be found in a sense of solidarity and mutual support. For our analysis, we conducted a nationally representative online survey experiment of 2,006 respondents in the United States in November 2018. Broadly, we find evidence that negative emotional states increase populist attitudes, but positive emotions do not have an impact. Likewise, political rhetoric reinforcing a sense of unfair advantage for some people further increases populist attitudes. Importantly, we find that reducing these negative emotions by emphasizing solidarity can reduce populist attitudes. These findings not only deepen our understanding of the triggers of populism, but also take the first step in building a tested toolbox of strategies to minimize its negative effects.

This article argues that a common pattern and set of dynamics characterizes severe political and societal polarization in different contexts around the world, with pernicious consequences for democracy. Moving beyond the conventional conceptualization of polarization as ideological distance between political parties and candidates, we offer a conceptualization of polarization highlighting its inherently relational nature and its instrumental political use. Polarization is a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of "Us" versus "Them." The politics and discourse of opposition and the social–psychological intergroup conflict dynamics produced by this alignment are a main source of the risks polarization generates for democracy, although we recognize that it can also produce opportunities for democracy. We argue that contemporary examples of polarization follow a frequent pattern whereby polarization is activated when major groups in society mobilize politically to achieve fundamental changes in structures, institutions, and power relations. Hence, newly constructed cleavages are appearing that underlie polarization and are not easily measured with the conventional Left–Right ideological scale. We identify three possible negative outcomes for democracy—"gridlock and careening," "democratic erosion or collapse under new elites and dominant groups," and "democratic erosion or collapse with old elites and dominant groups," and one possible positive outcome—"reformed democracy." Drawing on literature in psychology and political science, the article posits a set of causal mechanisms linking polarization to harm to democracy and illustrates the common patterns and pernicious consequences for democracy in four country cases: varying warning signs of democratic erosion in Hungary and the United States, and growing authoritarianism in Turkey and Venezuela.