Do public attitudes concerning the European Union affect the speed with which member states transpose European directives? It is posited in this article that member state governments do respond to public attitudes regarding the EU when transposing European directives. Specifically, it is hypothesized that member state governments slow transposition of directives when aggregate public Euroskepticism is greater. This expectation is tested using extended Cox proportional hazard modeling and data derived from the EU's legislative archives, the official journals of EU member states, and the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that member state governments do slow transposition in response to higher aggregate public Euroskepticism. These findings have important implications for the study of European policy implementation, as well as for our understanding of political responsiveness in the EU.
This study examines those factors that influence the issuance of reasoned opinions within the European Union's 'Early Warning System'. It is posited that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism results in the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This expectation is tested using data derived from the European Parliament, the Commission's platform for European Union Interparliamentary Exchange, and longitudinal data from the Eurobarometer survey series. It is found that greater aggregate public Euroskepticism is associated with the issuance of more reasoned opinions. This study has important implications for our understandings of policy processes, political responsiveness, and democratic governance in the European Union and its member states.
Over the last twenty-five years, Afrocentric thinkers have made notable contributions to the ongoing task of challenging Eurocentrism. In the course of so doing, however, some measure of over-reach has occurred. In particular, Afrocentrists have coupled their general critiques of Eurocentrism with specific rejections of its putatively constituent elements, one of which is materialism. Among other things, this rejection of materialism has led Afrocentrists to refrain from interrogating capitalism, downplay the structural dimensions of racial oppression and elevate the ontological status of culture to the point where it is posited as the dominant source of pressing problems affecting people of African descent in the US. Such an outlook undermines the potential of Afrocentricity to be a force for radical social change.
"In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, millions gathered across Canada and the United States to protest violence and racism in policing sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In the days and weeks following, the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick showed that police violence is also a Canadian reality. Although BIPOC communities and activists had been calling for action for years, these events sparked unprecedented public outrage and drew crowds in the thousands across Canada calling for the defunding of Canada's police. Many authoritative reports have identified big problems in Canada's law enforcement system and have concluded that police are more likely to create or escalate violent situations than promote safety and security. Why? How has an institution tasked with keeping citizens safe become so dangerous to so many Canadians? John Sewell has been studying the problems facing Canadian policing since the 1980s. In Crisis in Canada's Policing, he shines light on the origins of police culture, synthesizes dozens of reports that reveal the failures of the police system in Canada and offers solutions that put power back into the hands of community leaders while reining in and reforming police organizations."--
"The fact that racism has adverse effects on Blacks and other minorities is obvious. But what is not so obvious are the hidden impacts of racism on all members of society, including white people. Joseph Mensah and Christopher J. Williams argue that ethics of altruism and social justice are inadequate to curb racism because they neglect the impact of racism on whites. Just like a boomerang, acts of hatred and racism against people of colour and even unsolicited and sometimes unconscious exertions of white privilege ultimately come back to harm almost everyone in society. Timely and incredibly important, Boomerang Ethics is a much-needed resource in the fight against racism because it does not gloss over the self-interests of members of the privileged, who ultimately have the power to help alleviate racism."--
AbstractWhen mainstream parties accommodate radical-right parties, do citizens grow more concerned about immigration? Based on a rich literature, we argue that challenger parties' ability to affect mainstream party positions, particularly on immigration, is associated with greater public salience of immigration and voter positivity towards challengers exists. We use Comparative Manifesto Project and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data in order to show that challenger issue entrepreneurship, and mainstream accommodation are associated with greater public concern for challenger issues. These factors do not result in greater public positivity towards challengers. Our findings thus support the argument that a mainstream party accommodative strategy might not be as beneficial for them as often expected by pundit and political scientists alike. This has implications for understanding the effect of indirect party strategies on public attitudes, since mainstream accommodation changes public concern regarding issues, which may bolster challengers' positions, including radical-right parties.
AbstractBackgroundResearch regarding party behavior has often be understood through one of two models, (1) the Downsian proximity model, which supposes parties will change positions in order to be most competitive, and (2) the issue salience model, which understands parties to emphasize issues on which it is more competitive.ObjectivesThis study produces a theoretical framework explaining why parties, specifically in a two‐party system, emphasize one issue dimension over others. We argue that voter distributions differ across issue dimensions and take one of four general forms: (1) unimodal symmetrical, (2) bimodal symmetrical, (3) unimodal asymmetrical, and (4) bimodal asymmetrical. These distributions determine the nature of an issue dimension as approximating valence or positional. Combined with a party's issue ownership or positional advantage, this determines whether a party emphasizes an issue. An issue owner is expected to emphasize unimodal symmetrical issues, parties with positional advantage are expected to emphasize bimodal asymmetrical issues, and no party should emphasize a bimodal symmetrical issue. The decision to emphasize a unimodal asymmetrical issue is dependent upon whether the issue owner and the party with positional advantage are the same and the long‐versus short‐term electoral strategy of a party.MethodsData to test this theoretical approach do not yet exist. This theoretical framework is designed to apply to a two‐party system. In order to properly test the above expectations, we would need data regarding the distribution of voters along different issue dimensions, as well as the emphases placed on issues by parties. These data must be specific to a two‐party system.ConclusionThis theory attempted to build a synthesized theory of party behavior based on the Downsian proximity model and the issue salience model. This theory helps explain what issues parties will seek to contest, and which issues become politicized. However, this framework can be extended to explain many questions regarding polarization, party behavior, electoral strategy and political contestation.
As several commentators and researchers have noted since late spring 2020, COVID-19 has laid bare the connections between entrenched structurally generated inequalities on one hand, and on the other hand relatively high degrees of susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 on the part of economically marginalized population segments. Far from running along the tracks of race neutrality, studies have demonstrated that the pandemic is affecting Black people more than Whites in the U.S.A. and U.K., where reliable racially-disaggregated data are available. While the situation in Canada seems to follow the same pattern, race-specific data on COVID-19 are hard to come by. At present, there is no federal mandate to collect race-based data on COVID-19, though, in Ontario, at the municipal level, the City of Toronto has been releasing such data. This paper examines the entanglements of race, immigration status and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada with particular emphasis on Black immigrants and non-immigrants in Toronto, using multiple forms of data pertaining to income, housing, immigration, employment and COVID-19 infections and deaths. Our findings show that the pandemic has had a disproportionate negative impact on Black people and other racialized people in Toronto and, indeed, Canada.
ObjectiveDemocratic governance requires that policy outcomes and public demand for policy be linked. While studies have shown empirical support for such a relationship in various policy domains, empirical evidence also indicates that the public is relatively unaware of policy outputs. This raises a puzzle: Why do policy outputs influence public attitudes if the public knows little about them?MethodsThis study seeks to address this paradox by examining the conditioning role of media coverage. We rely on data derived from the Policy Agendas Project in the United States, allowing us to analyze the relationship between policy outcomes, public preferences, and newspaper content across a long span of time (1972–2007).ResultsOur results indicate that public policy preferences respond to policy outputs, and that this relationship is strengthened by greater media attention to a policy area. Importantly, our findings also indicate that without media attention to a policy area, there is no direct effect of policy outputs on public demand for policy.ConclusionsMedia coverage appears to be a key factor for public responsiveness to occur. In the absence of policy coverage by the media, public responsiveness to policy outputs is greatly reduced.
