Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Peace referendums can be exploited by political actors who may gain politically from opposing a peace process. This article explores how political opposition affects peace negotiations, particularly when a referendum is used to ratify an agreement, through the study of the Colombian peace negotiations between the government of President Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It finds that the exclusive character of the negotiations, coupled with their confidentiality, contributed to the political opposition's capacity to influence public opinion against the peace process and to reject the peace agreement in the 2016 referendum. This qualitative study is based on the content analysis of reports, memoirs and interviews with key negotiation delegates, journalists and representatives of the referendum campaigns. It argues that political inclusion in peace negotiations can help prevent referendum spoiling, while public information and education during the negotiations can reduce the impact of disinformation and manipulation campaigns.

Why do parties and candidates decide to go negative? Research usually starts from the assumption that this decision is strategic, and within this framework two elements stand out: the prospect of electoral failure increases the use of negative campaigning, and so does time pressure (little reaming time to convince voters before election day). In this article, we contribute to this framework by testing two new expectations: (i) political actors are more likely to go negative when they face unfavourable competitive standings and voting day is near; and (ii) they are less likely to go negative when they faced a substantive degradation in their competitive standing over the course of the campaign. We test these expectations on a rich database of newspaper ads about national referenda in Switzerland and provide preliminary empirical evidence consistent with those expectations. The results have important implications for existing research on the strategic underpinnings of campaigning and political communication.

Why do parties and candidates decide to go negative? Research usually starts from the assumption that this decision is strategic, and within this framework two elements stand out: the prospect of electoral failure increases the use of negative campaigning, and so does time pressure (little reaming time to convince voters before election day). In this article, we contribute to this framework by testing two new expectations: (i) political actors are more likely to go negative when they face unfavourable competitive standings and voting day is near; and (ii) they are less likely to go negative when they faced a substantive degradation in their competitive standing over the course of the campaign. We test these expectations on a rich database of newspaper ads about national referenda in Switzerland and provide preliminary empirical evidence consistent with those expectations. The results have important implications for existing research on the strategic underpinnings of campaigning and political communication.

Abstract
This article analyses the communication campaigns organized to increase support for European Union (EU) membership, during referendums held between March and September 2003 in Central Europe. The focus is on the official campaigns, organized and sponsored by the Hungarian, Polish and Estonian governments. The first part of the paper reviews the special characteristics of referendums and information campaigns, followed by the challenges communication planners faced, during planning and implementing the campaigns. The common features and themes of the national campaigns, as well as the differences, are identified and analysed. The article concludes with some important lessons and recommendations to be used by future referendum campaign planners and implementers.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract: The mass media are assigned an important role in political campaigns on popular votes. This article asks how the press communicates political issues to citizens during referendum campaigns, and whether some minimal criteria for successful public deliberation are met. The press coverage of all 24 ballot votes on welfare state issues from 1995 to 2004 in Switzerland is examined, distinguishing seven criteria to judge how news coverage compares to idealized notions of the media's role in the democratic process: coverage intensity, time for public deliberation, balance in media coverage, source independence and inclusiveness, substantive coverage, and spatial homogeneity. The results of our quantitative analysis suggest that the press does fulfil these normative requirements to a reasonable extent and that fears about biased or deceitful media treatment of ballot issues are not well‐founded. However, some potential for optimizing the coverage of referendum campaigns by the Swiss press does exist.

Abstract Academics are often accused of being secluded in their "ivory towers", focused on research and teaching but uninterested in, or unable to engage with, the public debate. If this is actually the case, under what conditions and at what particular moment is this likely to change? Following on three relevant dimensions—the visibility of political scientists, their partisanship and their impact in the public sphere—and combining press analysis with original survey data, this article has two main aims: first, to assess Italian political scientists' (IPSs) social relevance in a period of huge political and institutional conflict such as the constitutional referendum held in December 2016; second, to explore the potential factors leading IPSs to be more or less present in the public debate. For the former, we focus on the public visibility of IPSs during the referendum campaign, as well as on the content of their public interventions, both concerning their neutral/partisan stance and their attitudes towards the constitutional reform. For the latter, we empirically test a few personal and institutional factors that are likely to influence individuals' participation in the referendum debate.

AbstractAcademics are often accused of being secluded in their "ivory towers", focused on research and teaching but uninterested in, or unable to engage with, the public debate. If this is actually the case, under what conditions and at what particular moment is this likely to change? Following on three relevant dimensions—the visibility of political scientists, their partisanship and their impact in the public sphere—and combining press analysis with original survey data, this article has two main aims: first, to assess Italian political scientists' (IPSs) social relevance in a period of huge political and institutional conflict such as the constitutional referendum held in December 2016; second, to explore the potential factors leading IPSs to be more or less present in the public debate. For the former, we focus on the public visibility of IPSs during the referendum campaign, as well as on the content of their public interventions, both concerning their neutral/partisan stance and their attitudes towards the constitutional reform. For the latter, we empirically test a few personal and institutional factors that are likely to influence individuals' participation in the referendum debate.

Academics are often accused of being secluded in their "ivory towers", focused on research and teaching but uninterested in, or unable to engage with, the public debate. If this is actually the case, under what conditions and at what particular moment is this likely to change? Following on three relevant dimensions—the visibility of political scientists, their partisanship and their impact in the public sphere—and combining press analysis with original survey data, this article has two main aims: first, to assess Italian political scientists' (IPSs) social relevance in a period of huge political and institutional conflict such as the constitutional referendum held in December 2016; second, to explore the potential factors leading IPSs to be more or less present in the public debate. For the former, we focus on the public visibility of IPSs during the referendum campaign, as well as on the content of their public interventions, both concerning their neutral/partisan stance and their attitudes towards the constitutional reform. For the latter, we empirically test a few personal and institutional factors that are likely to influence individuals' participation in the referendum debate.

The use of negative political communication is a predominant characteristic of modern politics. However, literature doesn't provide an answer to the following question: what explains fluctuations in the use of negative messages within political organisations during a given political campaign? The present paper examines this question in the context of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Data consists of all tweets distributed by the official Twitter account of both campaign organisations (@YesScotlandand@UK_Together) between June 16, 2014 and September 17, 2014. Results are obtained by a non-parametric local regression and by time-series regression analyses. Our model demonstrates that having an advance in the polls had a statistically significant influence on the tweet sentiment of at least one organisation during the referendum campaign: Better Together's messages were more negative when it was ahead in the polls. Meanwhile, Yes Scotland's messages were more negative after each of the leaders' debates.