Views Of Citizens Research Articles

The perceived effects of televised political satire among viewers and the communication directors of political parties: A European case

This study broaches the question of the impact of televised political satire as perceived by viewers. It offers a new perspective: the differing perceptions of citizens and the communication directors of political parties regarding its capacity for bringing about changes or contributing to the diffusion of information about political issues. The main research question is about whether there are differences between the views of citizens and those of the communication directors of political parties regarding the perceived effects of the satirical Spanish programme Polònia. As a result of data obtained by means of three cross-referenced methodological approaches (random surveys, focus groups and interviews), it is concluded that political communication directors consider that the satire is closer to real events than citizens do, and believe that it has a considerable persuasive effect. However, the citizens consulted in the sample deny that it could heighten their interest in politics or lead to a change of opinion.

A Two-Way Street on Iraq

To the extent voters respond at all to presidential policy positions, they may do so by changing their views on the policy or by changing their views of the president. Presidents need to account for both changes as they care both about citizen approval and citizen policy views. We explore this dynamic in response to the Iraq War using multiple statistical methods. We find consistent evidence that citizen views of President Bush influenced their support for the war even as citizen views of the war affected their approval of Bush. Net changes in aggregate public opinion were smaller than gross changes because of simultaneous movement in both directions on both the war and the president. Recognizing this two-way movement of opinion helps us to better understand the challenges facing presidents in leading public opinion.

Comparing Police and Public Perceptions of a Routine Traffic Encounter

Police perceptions of procedural justice are less well understood than citizen perceptions. Our paper compares the views of police officers and citizens of a routine Australian policing encounter, the Random Breath Test. We examine perceptions of two versions of their encounter: a business as usual and a more explicitly procedurally just interaction. Our results indicate that the procedurally just version affected the views of police officers, but not drivers, regarding the reasons for conducting Random Breath Tests. It also appears that police officers believe that the encounter has a greater impact on drivers’ views than the drivers report themselves. This study has important implications for policing as it demonstrates that incorporating procedural justice within police-citizen interactions affects police officers as well as the citizens. It also highlights the importance of using external (e.g., larger community) measures, in addition to internal measures (e.g., within police organization), when assessing the effectiveness of police organizations to ensure a more complete picture.

Visualizations of mosquito risk: A political ecology approach to understanding the territorialization of hazard control

Sophisticated geospatial modeling of environmental problems and hazards is far advanced in geography, decision science, and related fields. The political ecological application of these tools, especially in visualizing, debating, and contesting risk, is underdeveloped, however. By using visualizations of risk as an analytical tool to explore the views of citizens and county health officials, geospatial models can help to explore the schisms, connections, and associations among complex landscapes, diverse publics, and logics of governance. In this paper, we explore the case of West Nile virus in the Southwest United States, a site where county health departments, vector control districts, and urban residents practice varying methods of mosquito management. We created geospatial visualizations of mosquito microhabitat using a dynamic simulation model and remotely sensed imagery. These data, when differentially aggregated, produced divergent visualizations of mosquito risk spaces across the city of Tucson. Presenting maps to neighborhood residents and local health officials, we found they invited different understandings of spatialized areas of responsibility for mosquito management. Neighborhood focus groups expressed territorial notions of risk and responsibility that diverged widely from those of health officials. Visualizations were shown to both reflect and produce different mosquito narratives, showing how mapped models can help elicit political–ecological insight into the territorialization of mosquito control.

Внешнеполитические ориентации россиян на новом переломе

The authors’ research interests are focused at the analysis of the actual views of the Russians on the international reality and the place of Russia in it. The scholars pay special attention to the long-term dynamics of foreign policy orientations and views of citizens that have undergone serious transformation during the last few years under influence of the revaluation of Russia’s place in the world and the character of its relations with the states of near and far abroad as well as of the revaluation of the international status of the state in the 21st century, as changes in the domestic politics. In order to achieve this goal, the authors gradually solve several research tasks, studying – on the basis of extensive sociological data – the Russians’ core values in the sphere of the country’s foreign policy strategy, its relation to the Western states, cooperation and collaboration. The authors formulate an important idea: if some 10‑15 years ago, the category of the “West” was associated largely with the United States, nowadays, Europe as presented by NATO and the EU is perceived by Russians as an integrated with the U.S.A. symbiosis that is antagonistic to Russia. While backing the foreign policy course of the state leaders, the Russians, however, worry about the escalating tensions with the West. Most of them believe that Russia and the United States are coming back to the Cold War times. It was revealed that the level of mass confidence to the Europe, especially to the EU, is decreasing, that eventually leads to an increase of the number of Russians who doubt in ability of our state to be part of the European civilization and believe that modern Russia has a special vector of development. While speaking on the goals of the global policy of Russia, citizens tended to support the idea of Russia’s revival as a great power. But this idea is not associated with the revanchist sentiments or the nationalistic hysteria. The bulk of Russians consider that the status of the leading world power should be achieved by Russia not by means of an aggressive foreign policy, but by solving political, social, economic, and cultural problems, by guarantying of welfare and safety to its citizens. Evaluating the impact of the recent foreign policy developments on the mass Russian consciousness, the authors draw a conclusion that the myth of the “Russian imperialism,” triggered by events in the Crimea and South-Eastern Ukraine, is seriously excessive. Today, we are witnessing a dropping number of those Russians who believe that the goal of Russia’s revival as a superpower is realistic. Today, Russians tend to stick to a more realistic goal for Russia to join the most economically developed and politically influential world states. Post-reform generation of our citizens actually have no illusions about the real intentions of some Russia’s international partners in the world. At the same time, they are devoid of a “besieged fortress” syndrome. The vast majority of Russians support the idea of international cooperation, but only such a cooperation that has a positive impact on the well-being of the state. This attitude seems to remain dominant in the near future.

Do corruption measures have a perception problem? Assessing the relationship between experiences and perceptions of corruption among citizens and experts

How well do corruption perception measures reflect actual levels of public sector corruption? Leading cross-national corruption perception measures have come under much theoretical and empirical scrutiny in recent years, with serious implications for the validity and reliability of the data in this ever growing sub-field. Critics argue that perceptions – in particular those of outside experts – do not reflect actual corruption in that they are far too ‘noisy’ or simply biased by external factors such as economic performance. Moreover, a number of recent empirical studies, focused on developing areas, have put forth evidence that outside expert assessments of corruption correspond little, if at all, with the experiences and views of actual citizens, and that such a lack of correspondence demonstrates pessimism for existing perception measures. This study offers a systematic analysis of the empirical strength of corruption perception measures in a previously unexplored area in this debate – Europe. Using new survey data collected by the author based on 85,000 European respondents in 24 countries, this issue is analyzed directly, addressing several contemporary critiques of the data. First, perceptions of citizens with, and without, personal corruption experience are compared at both the national and sub-national level in Europe. Second, external factors are checked, which might bias the extent to which citizens perceive corruption relative to how much actual corruption exists in countries and regions. Finally, expert perception indicators and citizen perceptions and experiences are compared. In summary, strong counter-evidence is found to the prevailing pessimistic claims in the literature – the consistency between actual reported corruption, as well as citizen and expert perceptions of corruption, is remarkably high and such perceptions are swayed little by ‘outside noise’. I conclude that, although existing corruption measures certainly have their share of problems, concerns regarding the validity and bias of perceptions have, perhaps, been overstated.

Social identity and procedural justice in police encounters with the public: results from a randomised controlled trial

The role of social identity in shaping citizen views of police is central to the group-value model (GVM). The GVM suggests that the relationship between public perceptions of fair treatment and views of police legitimacy will be tempered by social identity. Our paper employs a randomised field trial of procedural justice dialogue – the Queensland Community Engagement Trial – to test the role of social identity in the GVM. Under randomised field trial conditions we find that social identity is connected to perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy, but that it does not moderate the effect of procedural justice on legitimacy. We discuss the implications of this finding, concluding that when police use procedurally just dialogue in encounters with the public, they can enhance perceptions of police, regardless of social identification.

Interpreting Community Accountability: Citizen Views of Responding to Domestic Violence (or Not)

In spite of common public condemnations of domestic violence, survey research suggests that citizens aware of actual abuse often believe they cannot or should not personally respond. Through in-depth interviews with 20 local citizens across the political spectrum, we sought to explore this dynamic more carefully by better understanding community interpretations of domestic violence and its appropriate response. This paper explores ten specific views identified in these interviews as potentially relevant to citizen action (or inaction) in response to known abuse. After examining subtle consequences of each belief, we explore broader implications for community mobilization and propose several ways of facilitating a more thoughtful and extensive deliberation about domestic violence among the general public.

Regions as Primary Political Communities: A Multi-Level Comparative Analysis of Turnout in Regional Elections

Despite the importance of regional democracy, comparative analyses of voter participation in regional elections are rare. We examine individual participation in regional elections in Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom and make three arguments: (i) standard models of turnout devised for national contests only partly explain regional turnout, with the personal characteristics of voters more important than contextual variables; (ii) territorial identity and the level of jurisdictional authority wielded by the regional legislature are important determinants of electors’ willingness to participate in regional elections; (iii) when we contrast subjective perception and objective/aggregate findings we see that regional legislative authority matters more than perceived salience, and individual regional identity matters more than the views of fellow citizens, but that these effects are largely conditional on age.

Dynamic Representation in the American States, 196002012

One of the most fundamental assumptions of democratic theory is that the views of citizens should influence government policy decisions. Previous studies have found a strong cross-sectional relationship between public opinion and state policy outputs. But the ultimate metric of responsiveness is the extent to which changes in popular preferences cause changes in public policies. In this paper, we reassess the quality of representation in the American states over the past half century using a large battery of historical evidence and new statistical techniques. We show that changes in the mass public’s policy views are associated with changes in state policy outputs. In addition, we evaluate the influence of institutions, such as direct democracy, term limits, and legislative professionalism. We find that term limits increase responsiveness, but legislative professionalism and direct democracy have no consistent impact on responsiveness. Our findings have large implications for both the study of representation and institutions in the American states.

Economists and Public Opinion: Expert Consensus and Economic Policy Judgments

How do citizens view economists, and how do they respond to consensus in the profession? We examine the responsiveness of the American public to information regarding the distribution of opinion among economists on five economic policy issues. We also examine the extent and role of citizens’ trust in economists. We find that trust is tepid and find correspondingly small-to-moderate changes in public opinion when citizens are given information about expert opinion. Indeed, we provide evidence that responsiveness is larger when the consensus is attributed to a generic sample of people than when it is attributed to economists. We also find heterogeneity in responsiveness across issues, such that opinion change is smaller on symbolic policy issues than technical ones. Further, on the former, but not the latter, we find that citizens use judgments of trust in economists in a motivated fashion, to reinforce prior opinions.

Perceptions of Corruption and the Dynamics of Women's Representation

A growing body of literature focuses on the attitudes produced by women's representation. One area of particular interest is the effect of women's representation on perceptions of corruption in government. Multiple scholars have found that citizens view women in government as more trustworthy and less corrupt. Others have suggested that the link between gender and corruption is spurious or dependent upon regime characteristics. Additionally, many studies of women's effect on corruption were published prior to the widespread adoption of gender quotas, when levels of women's representation were considerably lower. We argue that the relationship between women and perceptions of corruption can be better understood by applying an integrated model of representation, which explores the effects of formal, descriptive, and substantive representation on perceptions of corruption. Using a time-series analysis of 140 countries worldwide from 1998–2011, this study finds that women's descriptive and substantive representation are correlated with lower perceptions of corruption. However, gender quotas are correlated with higher perceptions of corruption among political elites.

Child Support and the Custodial Mother's Move or Remarriage

When a custodial mother marries a new partner, the income of the custodial household rises. The stepfather may earn much more than the father, or much less. He may or may not assume the social role of father, but his day to day contact and interaction with the child will often be more than the father’s. If the mother and stepfather move together with the child to a location distant from the father, he may be more likely to replace him in the child’s life. Whatever a stepfather’s legal obligations of support, economic realities ensure that his income will have an impact on the child’s financial well-being, and possibly a major impact. Yet the usual understanding is the law excludes the income of the mother’s new husband from consideration in setting the father’s child support obligation. Nor does it consider the impact of the remarriage, or any move, on the ability of the father to maintain a paternal relationship with the child. While these categorical exclusions are found in nearly every state’s formal rules, there are nonetheless examples of departures from them, some longstanding, that exist in particular circumstances, when the economic and social realities have overridden them. The increasing tension between the traditional rules and modern economic and social realities seems likely to present occasions to consider the rules’ reform. This paper asks whether the traditional rules are in fact consistent with the beliefs of citizens as to what the law should provide. It does so by presenting a random sample of several hundred citizens with a set of cases in which they are asked to decide the appropriate level of child support. We then infer their preferred rules by considering how their answers vary with changes in the custodial mother’s circumstances. Results in the cases are supplemented with Likert questions probing citizen views on statements of principle. The results show considerable support for taking remarriage into account in setting child support obligations, especially when the stepfather’s income is higher. While the mother’s relocation to a location distant from the father does not alone affect the support judgments of most respondents, the same move has a significant impact on respondents’ judgments when it is combined with either remarriage or an increase in the mother’s income. These effects are seen in both male and female respondents, although females are less responsive than males to remarriage without relocation. Our respondents appear to take both social and financial factors into account in these judgments, and overall prefer rules that are more nuanced than the categorical rules found in traditional child support law.

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

Why is Turnout So Low in Switzerland? Comparing the Attitudes of Swiss and German Citizens Towards Electoral Democracy

TOWARD MEANINGFUL CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION IN LEGISLATIVE REFORM

Civic engagement, with its focus on involving citizens and civil society organizations in thedevelopment of policy and legislation to address matters of public concern, is one vehicle topromote active citizenship and more responsive legislation. In this respect governmentsconsciously seek the views of citizens and social groups and have a genuine interest inachieving outcomes that incorporate their perspectives. Examples of civic engagement are:participation in elections, public policy/legislative processes, public consultations, advocacy,and participation in local community-level decision-making structures.

The biofuels quadrilemma, public perceptions and policy

“ The ideological or political views of citizens as related to biofuel policy may play an influential role concerning how information about biofuel production and development is framed. ”

Representative Bureaucracy in Policing: Does It Increase Perceived Legitimacy?

Drawing on the theory of representative bureaucracy, specifically the theory of symbolic representation, we examine whether or not gender representativeness in a police department’s domestic violence unit influences how citizens judge the agency’s performance, trustworthiness, and fairness. To examine this question, we use an online survey experiment in which we vary the representation of female police officers in a hypothetical domestic violence unit as well as the agency’s performance. Results suggest that gender representation does indeed influence the perceived job performance, trustworthiness, and fairness of the agency, as does the agency’s performance. Thus, this study suggests that the symbolic representativeness of the police does causally influence how citizens view and judge a law enforcement agency, and thus in turn perhaps their willingness to cooperate in the coproduction of public safety outcomes.

Improving the Quality of Service to the Urban Environment for Sustainable Development

According to the role of parks in the urban environment and quality of services important in urban areas, subject to satisfactory service and quality Satisfaction of citizens with such important matters that should be considered in the planning, implementation and management and maintenance of parks .The purpose of this study, using quality function deployment (QFD) methodology and analytic hierarchy process(AHP) for improve the quality of service to the urban parks is received from views of citizens. The quality function deployment methodology is to make the logical relationship between municipalities and citizens. Hence, this method can be used to reduce the gap between them. In this study, Using QFD to improve services of parks and green space organization in the 6th district of Tehran urban parks, collecting data on citizens’ demands and using experts opinions, requirements relating to any of the demands of citizens were identified and preferred indicators is made using AHP techniques. In the end, the priority ranking indicators based on the weights have been obtained. The results show QFD is a very effective tool that enables parks and green space organization to identify demands of the citizens and to perform engineering and technical requirements.

Prison officers in Poland: A profession in historical perspective

This study concentrates on the changing nature of the prison officer profession in Poland as the country developed from a Stalinist satellite to a liberal democracy and member of the European Union. Drawing on a range of archival materials, the study also aims to demonstrate how a social institution is shaped by political forces. The analysis supports two theses. Firstly, because for two generations the prison system was deployed ‘against the people’, it is unsurprising that Polish citizens view prison officers in a negative light. Secondly, if prison staff wants to be recognised as professionals devoted to a decent and worthy task, they are likely need to deploy imaginative public relations.

Brief Amicus of North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus in Dickson v. Rucho, 11-CVS-16940

This amicus brief is offered on appeal of a state trial court's decision to uphold district maps drawn by the Republican majority in North Carolina's General Assembly in 2011. The underlying complaint in the lawsuit alleges that the state's plan violates the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause's color blindness principles and ignores the state's constitutional directive that district lines keep county lines intact except when necessary. Under a gross misinterpretation of the Voting Rights Act, the challenged plan replaces a series of majority-white districts in which black-preferred candidates have successfully been elected with racial gerrymanders -- majority-black districts with bizarre shapes that are inexplicable without predominant attention to race. This amicus brief makes three arguments to show the error in the decision below: (1) the state's map drawers completely ignored existing federal voting rights law, by turning the doctrine on its head, (2) the evidentiary record of elections in North Carolina amply shows that legally significant racial polarization is the exception and not the norm, belying any basis for imposing a statewide race maximization plan, and (3) the strategy of maximizing black majority districts without need and contrary to the announced views of black citizens, illustrates an illegal intent to target black voters for the purpose of minimizing their political efficacy.