Elite Perceptions Research Articles

Donbas crisis key actors: narratives and perceptions in the interviews of Ukrainian elites

This article examines real events, their perceptions and narratives concerned with the key actors in the Donbas crisis – Ukraine, the EU/EU member states, Russia and the USA. Perceptions and narratives are traced in the texts of interviews with Ukrainian policy- and decision-makers from political, business, cultural, and civic cohorts (40 respondents). The elites were interviewed in the winter of 2016 within the framework of the Jean Monnet Network “Crisis, conflict and critical diplomacy: EU perceptions in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine” (C3EU), supported by Earsmus+ program of the European Commission. Informed by the strategic narrative theory [Miskimmon et al. 2013], the article undertakes a qualitative content analysis of the interview texts, explicating elite perceptions of the crisis in Donbas. The results spell the need for a more nuanced understanding of Ukraine’s perceptions of key actors in the ongoing conflict as well as the origin of these perceptions. Arguably, such understanding may benefit the EU’s critical diplomacy towards Ukraine and add a valuable insight to the constructive dialogue between Ukraine and the EU.

Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill

Perceptions of the policy leanings of government agencies are an important component of an agency’s political environment, and an agency’s political environment can greatly influence how agencies formulate and implement public policy. We use a recent survey of federal executives to measure the perceptions of the ideological leanings of twice as many agencies as previously possible. Our estimates compare reassuringly to extant measures based on both expert evaluations and aggregations of the opinions of those working within agencies. We also develop a novel measure of perceptions of workforce skill. Given the prominence of the concepts of agency ideology and skill in theories of executive branch politics, the estimates we generate provide important opportunities for understanding agencies’ political environments and their implications for policy making. The generation of these measures also illustrates an approach to measuring hard-to-observe characteristics that could usefully be adopted in other contexts.

Correction to: The EU as a norm promoter through trade. The perceptions of Vietnamese elites

The original version of this paper unfortunately contained mistake, the correct sentence should be.

Elite Political Ignorance: Law, Data, and the Representation of (Mis)Perceived Electorates

It is common to think of political elites—candidates, legislators, party officials, and campaign advisers—as specialists in learning the preferences of voters. But recent studies find that political elites believe public opinion within legislative districts to be more conservative than it actually is, and that extreme candidates are more electable than moderates (despite compelling evidence to the contrary). Campaign staffers overestimate their candidate’s electoral prospects. Moreover, natural and researcher-designed experiments show that informing legislators about constituency preferences changes roll-call votes, as legislators recalibrate to better represent public opinion in their districts. This Article introduces the problem of elite political ignorance to the legal- academic literature. We review political science findings on elite (mis)perceptions of voter preferences, and we explore the likely benefits and costs of reducing elite political ignorance. The immediate impacts would probably include better alignment between the roll-call votes of representatives and the policy preferences of their constituents; reduced political polarization; less racial discrimination by campaigns and representatives; and lower-cost enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. However, over time, a reduction in elite ignorance could also engender more severe and enduring partisan gerrymanders; greater political and demographic skew in the population of regular voters; more inequity in the provision of constituent services; and microtargeted campaigns that slowly erode democracy-sustaining norms and belief structures in the public. We argue that most of the benefits of reduced political ignorance could be realized without incurring such costs if elites acquired better information about the distribution of voter preferences within districts, without learning the preferences of identifiable individuals. To this end, we propose that states (1) reduce the amount of political information in the official voter file, (2) adopt rules that make it somewhat more cumbersome for social media companies to develop and market political profiles of their users, and (3) enact campaign-finance voucher programs subject to an unusual disclosure rule, under which the state would conceal voucher-donor identities from the recipient and the general public, while revealing geocoded voucher-contribution histories.

Coming to Terms With the Village: Stalin’s Death and the Reassessment of Rural- Urban Relations in the Soviet Union

In August 1953, the Soviet writer Tikhon Semushkin was sent by Pravda to the countryside to report on the current state of the kolkhoz village. In this article, we use Semushkin’s unpublished travel diaries to study elite perceptions of the countryside and patterns of identity construction in the period of the interregnum between Stalin’s death and the confirmation of Nikita S. Khrushchev as head of the Communist Party. We analyse how in 1953 Soviet citizens reconsidered their place within Soviet society and how the writer acted as a chronicler and participant in this process. Semushkin’s notes prove that regardless of the revolutionary imperative of the Soviet project, the mental framework defining the rural population’s place within a broader social context and ideas about peasant backwardness survived through the political turning points of the early 20th century. However, while narrative conventions from the late Imperial period lived on in depictions of the countryside, the end of Stalinism also induced a gradual reassessment of rural-urban relations. In showing how Stalin’s death shattered established certainties of social belonging and patterns of thinking about the village, we argue that the interregnum was not only a political episode, but also a period of individual and collective searching for orientation at all levels of Soviet society.

Hubungan Bilateral Indonesia-Malaysia: Review Buku

This book examines the relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia. This book was decended from the dissertation at the University of Western Australia. The aim of this book was to understand Malaysian foreign policy towards Indonesia from the perspective of constructivism. The author argued that non-material elements are crucial in explaining the relationship between two countries. The author mentioned ideational factors such as culture, ethnic, elite perception, identity, leadership, nationalism, as well as religion.Keywords: Indonesia, Malaysia, foreign policy, constructivism

An Enlightened path towards conservatism: critical junctures and changing elite perceptions in early nineteenth-century Russia

This article explores the historical roots of Russian conservatism by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s Westernized, Enlightenment-minded nobility to a conservative segment of Russian society in the early nineteenth century. The events of 1789 and 1812 were critical junctures that made the Russian nobility painfully aware of their own deep level of Westernization. The article first describes the reverberations of the French Revolution among the Russian elite. It also discusses the internal and external scrutiny of Russia’s relations with France under Napoleon, which made Russian conservatism a contingency. It then describes the evolution between 1789 and 1812 of a corpus of conservative ideas ranging from traditionalism to ardent patriotism and xenophobia. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign against Russia overshadowed the generational gap and diverging political and literary preferences among the elite. The reaction to it illustrates the intrinsic duality of the Russian elite: culturally Westernized, yet politically conservative. Yet the influence of several Western defenders of the ancien régime on Russia’s conservatives shows that the essentially conservative Russian identity as propagated by Putin these days originally might have been more pan-European than purely Russian.

Diseño y validación del cuestionario de percepción de los estudiantes universitarios-deportistas de alto nivel sobre la carrera dual (ESTPORT)

Abstract The purpose of this paper was to design and validate a questionnaire about the perceptions of elite studentathletes at university relating to their dual career. In the initial creation of the instrument, constructs were defined and three dimensions were established: academic life, sporting life and sports tutor. After a process of ‘back translation’, experts (n = 8) agreed the construct to ensure content validity, the dimensions and the questionnaire questions. Statistical analysis of the items showed adequate comprehension to confirm content validity of participants (n = 30). In construct validity (n = 73), the results showed correct psychometric quality, internal consistency, reliability and adequacy of the structural model. The instrument had evidence of external validity, since the results were congruent with the main findings of the research. This questionnaire was found to be a valid and reliable assessment instrument, consisting of 84 questions (in Spanish and English language), that enables the perception of elite student-athletes to be known about their dual career whilst at university.

Did the Nationalist Government Manipulate the Chinese Bond Market? A Quantitative Perspective on Short-Term Price Fluctuations of Domestic Government Bonds, 1932–1934

Based on a newly constructed set of data, this paper offers a quantitative perspective on the Nationalist Government’s relations with China’s domestic bond markets during the period 1932–34. For all the recent revisionist scholarship on the achievements of Nationalist state-building, the perception of the Nationalist elite as corrupt is still widely accepted. In order to demonstrate the empirical potential of quantitative financial history, this paper tests one particular assertion: that members of the Nationalist elite manipulated the issue price of domestic government bonds in order to enrich themselves and their associates. We test this by calculating two price data correlations: that of a first sample of government bonds, all of them issued before 1932, and that of a second sample of government bonds, which includes bonds issued during the period under review. The price fluctuations of the first sample are correlated with each other to a much higher degree than those of the second sample. This indicates that the prices of bonds in the first sample were reacting similarly to the same range of influences, while the bonds issued during the period under review and included in the second sample were displaying individual price fluctuations. One possible explanation for this is that members of the Nationalist elite enriched themselves or their associates by issuing domestic government bonds at artificially low prices. In sum, the article illustrates both the potential and the limitations of quantitative history: it allows us to test and dismiss a precisely formulated hypothesis about Nationalist corruption, but it is only one possible way in which statistical analysis can be applied and does not cover the whole Did the Nationalist Government Manipulate the Chinese Bond Market? realm of state practices.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE INVENTION OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION IN BRITAIN, 1963–1967

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the myth of ‘the sexual revolution’, increasingly accepted in Britain's national media between 1963 and 1967, played a central role in causing the real transformation of British sexual culture that occurred from the late 1960s. It also argues that Christian agency played an important role in the framing and the legitimation of this myth. Until 1963, British debates about sexual morality had been dominated by Christian arguments. In 1963 and 1964, the existence of a rapid, widespread, inexorable, secular, and antinomian transformation of sexual mores was prominently proclaimed by Christian commentators, who thought it an inevitable consequence of ‘secularization’, whereas secular commentators usually objected that this narrative was insufficiently evidenced. After its initial discussion in the mainstream media in 1965, the ‘sexual revolution’ narrative was increasingly articulated without explicit reference to Christianity, but it usually retained theologically inspired structural features inherited from earlier religious discussions. In the late 1960s, elite perceptions of inexorable sexual liberalization decisively legitimated rapid decensorship, wider access to the pill, and the reimagination of ‘normal’ sexual behaviour, thereby importantly shaping real popular change. In this way, Christian clergymen made a significant, early, unwitting, and hitherto unacknowledged contribution to Britain's sexual revolution.

Hacking the electorate: how campaigns perceive voters

1. Introduction, 2. The perceived voter model 3. The policy roots of elite perceptions 4. Campaign perceptions quantified 5. The perceived partisan 6. The public code of racialized electioneering 7. Persuadable voters in the eyes of the persuaders 8. Voters perceived in social networks and consumer files 9. Conclusion 10. Appendices.

Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France by Cathy McClive

Reviewed by: Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France by Cathy McClive Claire Cage Cathy McClive. Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015. xi + 267 pp. $124.95 (978-0-7546-6603-5). The Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert declared, “Women’s menses are one of the most curious and difficult phenomena of the human body.”1 Cathy McClive’s excellent study explores the complex meanings of this “most curious” phenomenon in early modern France. Her book challenges existing scholarship that emphasizes the negative associations with menstruation and misogynistic elements of the early modern discourse on menstruation—“the myth of menstrual misogyny.” McClive does so by masterfully bringing to light diverse interpretations of menstruation and its role in reproduction and health in early modern France. Her work focuses on elite perceptions of menstruation through the careful examination of theological, medical, legal, and personal sources. It first turns its attention to early modern French translations of the Bible, specifically the passages in Leviticus prohibiting sex during menstruation. In this complex and nuanced chapter, McClive argues that neither Catholic nor Protestant translations of Leviticus promoted the view of menstruating women as physically unclean but instead expressed concerns about the ritual or spiritual impurity of not only menses but also semen. In her analysis of medical theorists’ responses to religious prohibitions on sex during menstruation, McClive stresses the uncertain connection between procreation and menstruation. While some early modern medical texts such as Aristotle’s Masterpiece, the popular sex manual first published in seventeenth-century London, identified sex during menstruation as a cause of monstrous births, McClive argues that learned French texts did not link menstruation to monstrosity but did consider the possibility of adverse health consequences for a fetus conceived during a woman’s menses. French medical authorities questioned when was the optimal timing of sex during the menstrual cycle for healthy conception and what was an appropriate quantity of menses, which was understood to provide nourishment for the fetus during pregnancy. [End Page 329] Physicians and jurists shared a preoccupation with issues of menstrual regularity and irregularity that shaped various civil and criminal cases. One of the most remarkable cases was the famous trial involving Catherine Cadière, who accused her Jesuit confessor Jean-Baptiste Girard of seduction, “spiritual incest,” bewitchment, and abortion. Cadière in turn was accused of faking the stigmata with her menses. McClive offers a new perspective on the cause célèbre by analyzing how Cadière’s menstrual calendars were used in legal contests over the questions of whether she had indeed been pregnant and whether she could have used her menses to fake the stigmata. McClive scrutinizes other medicolegal affairs involving declarations of pregnancy required of unmarried or widowed women to avoid possible charges of infanticide, medical reports in assault cases where women claimed to have a pregnancy endangered by the attack, and cases of contested legitimacy, particularly for a six-month or eleventh-month pregnancy. Her analysis reveals that the cessation of menstruation was not considered certain proof of pregnancy. Some women could menstruate or bleed heavily through pregnancy, while others could be pregnant without ever having menstruated. The signs of pregnancy, the duration of an individual pregnancy, and the possible minimum and maximum lengths of gestation were all uncertain and contested. In her final chapter, on accounts of menstruating men and bleeding hermaphrodites, McClive suggests that male periodic bleeding, such as nosebleeds and bleeding hemorrhoids, was connected to “vicarious menstruation,” or regular periodic bleeding from a nonvaginal orifice, in early modern French humoral medicine. McClive challenges the widely held view that menstruation became seen as an exclusively female phenomenon by the late eighteenth century. Although McClive traces certain shifts in medical understandings of menstruation over the course of the early modern period, her account is one of continuity. Presumably more significant changes, including a more essentialist association between menstruation and the female body, emerged during the nineteenth century, and the link between ovulation and menstruation was established. Without further studies, it is unclear whether understandings of menstruation varied and shifted at different points across Europe and across the...

The evolution of rule of law in Cambodia

ABSTRACTCambodian leaders have confounded the efforts of the international community to promote rule of law. Over the past decade the Cambodian government has introduced a series of legal reforms and overseen an increase in the use of legal proceedings including defamation lawsuits against opposition politicians and members of civil society. These reforms and practices, as well as the role of the judiciary in relation to each, may be better understood through elite perceptions of the rule of law in Cambodia. Comprehending the rule of law as it is understood by the ruling elites offers better insight into the trajectory of legal development and the obstacles to Western ideals for legal reform. This article situates Cambodia within the context of illiberal democracy and examines how a thin rule of law has evolved, focusing on defamation law as a legal and political strategy of control. While the international community has pressed Cambodia to carry out liberal legal reforms for some time, the article will outline the obstacles facing reformers and the competing desires of Cambodian leaders embedded in the patronage based political order.

Neoclassical Realism and South Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Policy

This article develops a neoclassical realist model of decisionmaking that starts with the realist foundation of power, then layers on additional variables at both the domestic and individual levels. Based on a psychological conception of power, and differentiating the state, the regime, and the government, the model integrates prior neoclassical studies that emphasize elite perceptions, state structure, and strategic culture. As an illustrative example, the model is applied to South Korea’s current policymaking regarding potential acquisition of nuclear arms. While South Korea is assessed to have sufficient power to pursue nuclear weapons, the lack of military utility coupled with likely harm to economic and reputational interests suggest continued rejection of such a policy.

Power and International Relations

Power and International Relations

Judicial Institutionalization and Business Elite Trust in the Post-Communist Courts

The existing survey research in post-communist societies focuses disproportionately on the mass citizenry and largely ignores questions about elite support for judicial institutions. This study examines business elite’s confidence in the post-communist legal systems and assesses the effects of judicial institutionalization on their perceptions. It argues that as post-communist constitutional courts develop, their institutionalization helps generate positive elite perceptions of the country’s legal system. This study tests hypotheses regarding business elite confidence in the legal system with the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey data. The results show that the level of constitutional court institutionalization is an important determinant of business elite’s perceptions of the legal system. During the 1999-2005 period, businesspersons in countries with highly institutionalized constitutional courts are on average 23.5% more likely to express high level of confidence in their legal systems relative to businesspersons in countries where constitutional courts are weakly institutionalized.

Uncertain times, contested resources: Discursive practices and lived realities in African urban environments

Amid the diversity of African urbanism, most cities retain strong vestiges of inherited urban planning systems largely inappropriate to prevailing local conditions. Even where largely ignored in practice, they can be suddenly redeployed in the interests of elite projects—either specific construction sites and inappropriate new ‘international’ or ‘world class’ enclaves, or broader repressive political agendas. Such episodes, but also less dramatic daily practices, highlight the gulfs between elite perceptions and priorities and the needs of often impoverished ‘ordinary’ citizens whose grip on urban environmental resources and services is frequently precarious, but essential. The implications of environmental/climate changes, which are becoming increasingly real in many urban areas, are also examined in this light. Drawing on both political economy and post-structural/postcolonial approaches in search of hybridised theoretical progress, the paper explores how elite preoccupations and interests confront the diverse and often culturally rich lived realities of the urban majorities and their respective contingent senses of identity and belonging. The former remain framed by discourses of modernity expressed in terms of segregated land uses, aesthetics and ‘order’, whereas the latter generally relate to more mundane instrumentalities of shelter, basic services and survival/livelihood strategies in complex social realities, sometimes giving rise to syncretic or novel alternative cultures.

The EU as a norm promoter through trade. The perceptions of Vietnamese elites

This paper investigates how the external images of the European Union (EU) shape its identity vis-à-vis the USA and focuses on how Vietnamese elites perceive EU-sponsored norms in the context of the ongoing bilateral trade negotiations. The EU emerges as an actor able to export regulatory standards, improve the status of its trade partner within multilateral forums and, at the same time, respect the local ownership of the development process. At the same time, it is criticized for the lack of coherence in its foreign policy, its internal divisions and intrusiveness in Vietnamese domestic politics. Moreover, differences emerge in the way government and non-governmental actors portray the EU, further challenging its univocal representation as a political leader. These perceptions have implications concerning the EU’s ability to export its constitutive principles and values to Vietnam. More broadly, this case study provides insights into the prospects of a future interregional trade agreement with the ASEAN and carries out a critical assessment of the identity and role of the EU as a normative power.

The Requirements of Nuclear Stability in South Asia

While recent history arguably demonstrates a high level of nuclear stability in South Asia, this article argues that this stability has historically been a function of India's relative weakness. It argues that, as India becomes stronger, attention must be paid to the technical and political requirements of nuclear stability: the reliability of weapons and command and control and the political conditions that underpin stable relations between nuclear-armed states. It concludes by recommending the United States aim to modify the perceptions of regional elites about their various intentions and decision-making processes and the role of the United States as crisis manager.

Public and Elite Perceptions of Supranational Courts: The European Perspective

This article investigates the perceptions of legal insiders (i.e., those working professionally with law) and legal outsiders (i.e., those affected by law) of European supranational courts in general, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in particular. Drawing on largescale qualitative and quantitative data collected in Norway, UK, Poland, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the article shows that support for such courts is widespread across Europe—though less so in the UK than elsewhere. Support is predominantly ‘informed’ by practical considerations of usefulness rather than by ideology. Our data suggest that national legal cultures are highly responsive to ECtHR case law as a legal transfer. This, in turn, has implications for the debate on the legitimacy of the ECtHR and, thus, also for its future.