National Mood Research Articles

Fake News and Propaganda: Trump’s Democratic America and Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Germany

This paper features an analysis of President Trump’s two State of the Union addresses, which are analysed by means of various data mining techniques, including sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. We also apply Zipf and Mandelbrot’s power law to assess the degree to which they differ from common language patterns. To provide a contrast and some parallel context, analyses are also undertaken of President Obama’s last State of the Union address and Hitler’s 1933 Berlin Proclamation. The structure of these four political addresses is remarkably similar. The three US Presidential speeches are more positive emotionally than is Hitler’s relatively shorter address, which is characterised by a prevalence of negative emotions. Hitler’s speech deviates the most from common speech, but all three appear to target their audiences by use of non-complex speech. However, it should be said that the economic circumstances in contemporary America and Germany in the 1930s are vastly different.

Analyzing the Formation of the Elementary Co-teacher Policy process

이 연구의 목적은 초등 협력교사정책이 형성되기까지의 과정에 중점을 두고, 어떠한 과정으로 전개되어 갔는지를 분석하는 데에 있다. 초등 협력교사정책은 담임교사와 강사와의 한시적인 협력 수업과는 달리, 한 교실에서 2인의 정교사가 협업하여 학생들을 지도하거나 수업하는 정책을 말하며, 정책형성과정은 의제설정부터 정책 결정까지의 과정을 말한다. 이를 설명하기 위해 신문 기사의 ‘초등 협력교사제도’와 ‘1교실(수업) 2교사’ 관련 기사를 분석하였다. 정책형성과정의 전개과정은 Kingdon의 다중흐름모형(정치적 흐름, 정책문제의 흐름, 정책대안의 흐름)에 근거하여 분석하였으며, 연구결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 정치적 흐름 측면에서 각각의 개별 학습자에 맞춰 지도가 이루어져야 한다는 국가적인 분위기와 함께 2017 대선에서 문재인 대통령 후보 공약으로 나왔던 1교실 2교사라고도 불리는 교사협력정책이 정권 교체와 함께 정책화할 수 있는 토대가 마련되었다. 둘째, 문제의 흐름 측면에서 2017년 정권교체와 함께 초등교사 임용 급감이라는 임용절벽이라 불리웠던 위기 상황이 발생하기도 하여 초등협력교사는 임용절벽을 타개할 현실적 대안으로 떠오르기도 하였다. 셋째, 정책대안의 흐름 측면에서는 위의 정책에 대해 시도교육청 차원에서 선도적으로 시범 운영하는 학교들이 있다.The purpose of this study is to focus on the process of forming an elementary teacher policy and to analyse what progress has been made. Elementary co-teacher policy refers to the policy that two teachers co-directed or taught students in a classroom, unlike temporary cooperation classes with homeroom teachers and instructors, and the policy formation process refers to the process from agenda setting to policy decision making. To explain this, we analyzed articles about the superior cooperative teacher system in newspaper articles and two teachers in class 1. The process of policy formation was analyzed based on Kingdon s multi-flow model (political flow, problem flow, and policy flow), and the results of the study are as follows. First, in terms of political stream, the national mood that maps should be made for each individual learner, and the foundation for the policy of cooperation among teachers, also called the first classroom, two teachers, which came out as a major presidential candidate in the 2017 presidential election, was laid out. Second, in terms of the flow of problems, there was a crisis situation called the appointment barrier of appointment of primary teachers along with the change of government in 2017, which led to the emergence of primary and secondary teachers as a practical alternative to breaking the appointment barrier. Third, in terms of the stream of policy alternatives, there are schools that are piloted at the municipal and provincial education offices on the above policies.

Discordant dreams: the spirit of the times in contemporary South Africa

ABSTRACTIn a time of ferment in the national mood, the large body of literature on the rationale and emotions of specific subgroups in South Africa today invites a synthetic account of ideologies and zeitgeist considered together. It is argued that these phenomena are rooted in material processes and that combinations of these discourses are used by people. Patriarchy, neoliberalism, the ANC state, and Christianity are considered as ideology; the “colonial unconscious” is considered as a structuring principle of the fractured presentation of zeitgeist. This includes the ideological popular discourse of whiteness; a single broad social spirit of blackness, though within this are subclusters of survival, retraditionalization, religion, “insurgent yet dependent citizenship,” and loyal citizenship. The common spirit of democratic South Africa is outlined. Lastly, using Hamilton’s account of “public deliberation,” the extent and location of critical public debate is discussed, and linked to the issue of ressentiment. The implication of these forces for the future is finally considered.

Fake News and Propaganda: Trump's Democratic America and Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Germany

This paper features an analysis of President Trump's two State of the Union addresses, which are analysed by means of various data mining techniques including sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. In order to provide a contrast and some parallel context, analyses are also undertaken of President Obama's last State of the Union address and Hitler's 1933 Berlin Proclamation. The structure of these four political addresses is remarkably similar. The three US Presidential speeches are more positive emotionally than Hitler's relatively shorter address, which is characterized by a prevalence of negative emotions. However, it should be said that the economic circumstances in contemporary America and Germany in the 1930s are vastly different.

Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt

Reviewed by: Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds by Nancy A. Hewitt Chelsea Gibson (bio) Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds By Nancy A. Hewitt. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 440 pages, 11 halftones, 1 map, 6⅛” x 9¼.” $39.95 cloth, $29.99 e-book. Nancy A. Hewitt is a scholar who surely needs no introduction. Since her first book, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822–1872 (1984), she has fundamentally shaped our understanding of women’s activism in the nineteenth century and beyond. Hewitt has published articles and edited collections that have encouraged scholars to rethink the origins of the women’s rights movement, to link American activists with their global counterparts, and to critically examine the relationship between race, class, and gender in women’s activism. Her latest, and final, monograph, a masterfully researched biography of the Quaker activist Amy Kirby Post, is the culmination of more than four decades’ worth of historical inquiry; in fact, Hewitt first discovered Post as a graduate student. Hewitt argues that Post’s remarkable life, one that spanned the entire nineteenth century, “illuminates a more radical world of activism” in which Americans gathered together in sex- and race-integrated social movements to work for a more just society (3). Hewitt’s examination of Post immediately calls to mind Carol Faulker’s recent biography of Lucretia Mott, which set out with a similar goal—to rescue the story of a dynamic woman whose radicalism we have generally forgotten. While both women left behind frustratingly few personal sources, Mott at least was a national figure. Post, in contrast, preferred in most cases to work behind the scenes. While Post left only a few dozen outgoing letters, Hewitt evocatively reconstructs her “activist worlds” through family letters, the manuscript collections of Post’s coworkers, abolitionist and women’s rights pamphlets, Quaker meeting records, and articles in abolitionist journals like The North Star and The Liberator. She even cites the credit reports of her husband Isaac Post’s successful apothecary business. Hewitt notes in the introduction that she set out to write a book that would reflect Post’s lived experience. That is, rather than compartmentalize the social justice movements Post championed, Hewitt demonstrates how they “intersect[ed], converge[d], and continually reshape[d] one another” (9). The chronological structure of the book reinforces this goal. At times, it is difficult to keep track of her many social networks (the book includes a six-page list of historical characters), but Hewitt successfully illuminates “the ways that ordinary people advanced a radical vision of social change” (9). However she might have avoided the limelight, though, Hewitt’s biography reveals that Post was in almost every regard extraordinary. Raised as a Quaker, a religion where women did not pledge to “obey” their husbands in marriage, she sought friendships and [End Page 300] partnerships that respected women’s rights. Her marriage to Isaac Post was so egalitarian that Hewitt declares Post “barely” encountered the “concept of separate spheres” (8). Despite the reluctance among most Quakers in this period to engage in “worldly associations,” Post became involved early on in movements for Native American rights and the abolition of slavery, eventually forming significant personal relations with black leaders including Frederick Douglass, William Nell, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs. Hewitt notes that Post was “unusual, even among white abolitionists, in the deep connections she forged with black activists” (122). Her criticism of hierarchies in religion led her to eventually join the small, radical group of Quakers called the Progressive Friends; she and her husband Isaac also turned toward Spiritualism. She played a major role in the women’s rights movement, signing the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls before returning to her home in Rochester, New York, to organize a more radical Woman’s Rights Convention. By the mid-1850s, Hewitt argues that “social activism had become a form of worship” for the Posts (193). Their universalist vision continued to sustain Isaac and Amy until their deaths in 1872 and 1889, respectively, even as the national mood shifted in the wake of the Civil War toward a...

An analysis of the Chinese Football Reform of 2015: why then and not earlier?

ABSTRACT In March 2015, the Chinese government issued the Overall Plan for Chinese Football Reform and Development, which aimed to develop football in China from the grassroots level to the elite level. The salient element of the plan was to separate the Chinese Football Association (CFA) from direct government control. Considering the previous failed attempts to reform the CFA, this paper asks the question ‘why the reform occurred in 2015 and not earlier?’ and aims to: 1) identify the potential sources of the policy change through the lens of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) and 2) examine the timing and conditions under which the Chinese government initiated the football reform. Public policy documents and media reports from 1993 to 2017 were collected and analysed; 17 interviews were conducted with key policy actors within the CFA and professional football clubs in varying tiers of Chinese football leagues. The findings suggest that the failure of previous policy attempts at improving Chinese football (policy stream), match-fixing scandals and the continuing under-performance of the national men’s team (problem stream), the increasingly critical national mood towards football and the turnover of Presidency (political stream) combined in the mid-2010s opened a ‘policy window’ which facilitated this significant change. This research is the first paper to apply the MSF theory to explain the Chinese football reform that occurred in 2015. It extends the application of MSF to a different political and cultural environment and has implications for the policy-making in China.

The transformation of school-based sex education policy in the context of AIDS in Ireland

While AIDS was neither the initial nor the sole factor, it had a profound impact on the development of school-based sex education policy and practice in 1980s Ireland. Attempts to introduce a national programme of sex education on foot of increasing rates of crisis pregnancy pre-date the AIDS era, but these efforts had been vociferously opposed by conservative Catholic interests. The fear generated by AIDS prompted a shift in what political theorist, John Kingdon terms, the 'national mood' that⁠ coupled with the singular determination of then Minister for Education, Mary O’Rourke, who faced down intense opposition from conservative groups and the Catholic Bishops, created the conditions needed to introduce the AIDS Education Resource – a forerunner to the Relationships and Sexuality Education programme – in post-primary schools throughout Ireland in October 1990.

Панідеологія в геополітиці Російської імперії у першій половині ХІХ століття

National movement and further development of national benchmarks of the European peoples at the beginning of the revolution of 1848–1849 are one of the most socio-political contextualized pages in the past of the Slavik peoples in Europe. The research is considered to be topical since the process of formation of national ideology in the 19th century, that occured in the Slavs environment, took place in terms of distribution of the national principle and state formation in the majority of the European countries. The purpose of the research is to enlighten the course, laws and specifi cs of formation of the national paradigm at the beginning of the revolution of 1848–1849. The object of the study is the national movement of the Slavs, the subject of scientifi c analysis is the national ideology developing under the infl uence of both internal and external factors.To achieve the main goal of the research the author has considered it to be necessary to solve a number of the following tasks: to scientifically, logically, argumentatively and coherently lay out specifics of the process of Slavic national ideology formation and reveal its main features. It should be emphasized that by the beginning of the revolution the national patriotic mood was not limited merely by the demand of the cultural reforms, it gradually transformed into the context of new political and socio-economic ideas. At the same time, in the meaning of national paradigm of the Slavic National Movement the idea of its moderation or passive opposition actualized drastically. In general national paradigm was a certain mixture of political ideas, in which political freedom – democracy, social and personal guarantees – took a somewhat secondary place, the struggle for the national justice with its moral and cultural principles, became dominant.On the eve of the 1848 revolution western Slavs were involved in the process of modernizing their national ideology. Al though this process was an all-European phenomen on and large ethnic units were under going self-determination, the spiritual renaissance of the western Slavs had specifi c regional and ethnic characteristics, thus att racting the political att ention of the governments of great empires – the Austrian and the Russian. For Russia, the biggest Slavonic country, the idea of the general Slavonic ethnic unity as well as the Pan-Slavistic ideology were not only of scientifi c character, but also served as a factor of geopolitical interest

Post-sixties Narratives in Contemporary American Cultural Criticism

ABSTRACTAs a special type of criticism, post-sixties narratives represent a very important part of contemporary American cultural criticism. These narratives shape the American collective memory and the national mood – the structure of feeling of American society. Russell Jacoby’s post-sixties narrative, from-bohemia-to-academia, is a case in point. It posits Bohemia and Academia as two contrasting historical tropes, spatial tropes as well as political tropes, to represent contemporary American intellectual life. Such a “Bohemian narrative” offers the “against the grain” narrative tension in Jacoby’s post-sixties narrative. Examination of various post-sixties narratives may help us obtain a new perspective on contemporary American cultural criticism and, at the same time, deepen our understanding of contemporary American culture.

Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

State of the Union Addresses (SOUA) by two recent US Presidents, President Obama (2016) and President Trump (2018), and a series of recent of tweets by President Trump, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. President Trump's 2018 SOUA and his sample tweets are identified as being more positive in sentiment than President Obama's 2016 SOUA. This is confirmed by bootstrapped t tests and non-parametric sign tests on components of the respective sentiment scores. The issue of whether overly positive pronouncements amount to self-promotion, rather than intrinsic merit or sentiment, is a topic for future research.

Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

State of the Union Addresses (SOUA) by two recent US Presidents, President Obama (2016) and President Trump (2018), and a series of recent of tweets by President Trump, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. President Trump's 2018 SOUA and his sample tweets are identified as being more positive in sentiment than President Obama's 2016 SOUA. This is confirmed by bootstrapped t tests and non-parametric sign tests on components of the respective sentiment scores. The issue of whether overly positive pronouncements amount to self-promotion, rather than intrinsic merit or sentiment, is a topic for future research.

Fake News and Indifference to Truth: Dissecting Tweets and State of the Union Addresses by Presidents Obama and Trump

State of the Union Addresses (SOUA) by two recent US Presidents, President Obama (2016) and President Trump (2018), and a series of recent of tweets by President Trump, are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they di_er, and their potential implications for the national mood and state of the economy. President Trump's 2018 SOUA and his sample tweets are identi_ed as being more positive in sentiment than President Obama's 2016 SOUA. This is con_rmed by bootstrapped t tests and non-parametric sign tests on components of the respective sentiment scores. The issue of whether overly positive pronouncements amount to self-promotion, rather than intrinsic merit or sentiment, is a topic for future research.

Roadmap Connecting Researchers and Practitioners to Relevance for Postsecondary Policy Interests

Those interested in positioning research to be used by policymakers or funded by foundations often wonder how best to do so. Foundation and policy interests can intersect, as philanthropy and policy both aim to provide solutions to big societal problems. This article explores themes from federal financial aid policy, in particular, suggesting that relevance can come from attention to the national mood, aligning solutions with identified problems, and condensing ideas for more immediate connection.

From the Editorial Board: Refugees and Inclusive School Practices in the Face of Intolerance

From the Editorial Board:Refugees and Inclusive School Practices in the Face of Intolerance Torrie K. Edwards Schools are important places for social and emotional healing for young people who have undergone severe trauma (McBrien, 2005). One such group of young people are refugee students. With approximately 60,000 child refugees entering American public schools this year and poor guidance from the district, state, or federal level, there are considerable concerns for student refugee health and well-being (Amario, 2016; Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, 2017). How can our schools provide social and emotional healing for young refugees, many of whom have suffered severe trauma? Unfortunately, the current American political environment is especially unwelcoming to refugees. Conservative leadership's calls for "extreme vetting" and "revised screening measures" (FoxNews, 2017), reinforces narratives of terror and fear and fuels the pervasive misunderstanding of the rigorous, seven-step and years-long screening process refugees must undergo to be granted asylum in the United States (Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, 2017). Similarly, President Trump's proposed travel ban that targets Muslim-majority Arab countries (CNN Politics, 2017) and his continued assault on undocumented people living in the United States (Shear, 2017), indicate his hostility toward immigrants and refugees, as well as people from historically marginalized and underserved communities (Baer, 2016; Covert, 2016; Semuels, 2016). As schools operate within the larger political context, the national mood is of interest to scholars of education who seek to understand the experiences of refugee students and their teachers. How might educators and education researchers disrupt the negative rhetoric and threat surrounding refugees to create safe, warm school communities for students who have faced severe trauma? Recent research has studied how teachers' and counselors' practices can assist refugee students in acclimating to a new environment through inclusive education (McBrien, 2005; Taylor & Sidhu, 2011) which assists refugee students in adjusting to their new homes by developing language and communication skills, provides psychological services for addressing past trauma, and encourages welcoming and supportive behaviors from the whole school community. At its core, inclusive education is democratic education, as all students are equally important members of the school community, and later contributors to an American democracy. This orientation of care is grounded not in individual development and importance, but in the relational successes of groups of people (Noddings, 2002). Inclusive education aims to foster connections across difference, creating networks of care in schools. Specifically, practitioners can foster classrooms enriched by student voice and characterized by care and tolerance; they can create a place where students can share their stories, experiences, and realities to resist the singular misrepresentation of refugees (Allman, 2016). [End Page 223] Regrettably, the democratic and caring tendencies characteristic of inclusive practices are antithetical to much of our current political discourse that presents refugees as a single group of people who come from uncivilized and dangerous cultures, and therefore cannot adapt to Western or American values. Instead inclusive education practices acknowledge the humanity of refugees as well as their unique and diverse attributes, and nurture a supportive school community to help these young people overcome the trauma of flight and the prejudice they encounter from pockets of American society. For these practices to work, there must be widespread adoption of them; that is, teachers, districts, state policymakers, and federal policymakers must share this vision of inclusive education, and each advocate for refugee students in the ways they are empowered to by their positions. There are numerous examples of successful teacher and district level collaborations designed to support refugee students. For example, The Highline School District in Washington mandates a three-part professional development session for staff on how to best serve refugee students, including learning about the resettlement process and hearing first-hand experiences from refugee students and parents (Rozier, 2017). Within this model, teachers encourage students to share these stories in their classrooms, lending them agency in a space in which they might otherwise feel uncomfortable. Teachers can also use these stories to help update curriculum, either or both adapting teaching methods or content. Seattle Public Schools is another district that has seen success in its use of inclusive education practices. This district has received federal grant...

Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union by Daniel W. Crofts

Reviewed by: Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Unionby Daniel W. Crofts Joan Waugh Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union. By Daniel W. Crofts. Civil War America. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. [xii], 356. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-2731-1.) Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Unionadds to Daniel W. Crofts's previous work examining the troubled time immediately preceding the Civil War with an intriguing account of the role played by the "other" thirteenth amendment that was proposed and debated during the winter and spring of 1860–1861. Largely neglected by historians, this thirteenth amendment was designed to preserve the Union by forbidding any future amendments to abolish slavery in the states where it presently existed. The proposed amendment passed both the House and the Senate, President James Buchanan signed it, Abraham Lincoln as presidentelect endorsed it, and six states ratified it. "The framers of the constitutional amendment," Crofts notes, "hoped to counter the hysteria in the white South and to contain, and ultimately reverse, the secession movement" (p. 239). This was a chance for peace not war, and Crofts infuses the crisis with a bracing dose of historical contingency, reminding today's readers that in 1861 the majority of white Americans, including Lincoln, had no intention of destroying the slave system or bringing about emancipation. The book unfolds in four parts. The first describes the antebellum debates among abolitionists and antislavery northern politicians as they struggled to reconcile the constitutional protection of slavery with moral, ethical, and economic objections to the institution. The largest number accepted moral suasion as the preferred weapon to kill slavery, and by the 1840s the political antislavery movement brought forth a muscular opposition, with its leaders denouncing slavery but proposing to "denationalize" it by making it a state [End Page 692]issue, in the hopes of denying its spread to the territories (p. 13). The rise of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party added to the toxic sectionalism of the times, but as Crofts points out, "the root issue [was] … the security of the slave system in the states where it existed," and not "the future of slavery in the territories where it did not yet exist" (p. 24). The presidential election of 1860 brought a moderate Republican to office but did nothing to stop the secession of seven Deep South states. Many Washington, D.C., insiders from the North and upper South were caught unprepared by the act and too late realized their profound miscalculation of the national mood. Was there any chance to save the United States from its self-inflicted termination? The answer was yes. The second, third, and fourth parts provide a riveting portrayal of the rise, fall, and fizzle of the "other thirteenth amendment." Northern leaders and a surprising number of upper South Unionists attempted to arrest and reverse secession by forging some kind of a compromise. The proposed thirteenth amendment emerged as a constitutionally conservative compromise with the best prospect to persuade white southerners that their property rights would be respected in perpetuity. With impressive research, Crofts deftly interweaves biographies of a diverse group of minor and major players, including Lincoln and William Henry Seward, with a sharp analysis of the complicated negotiations that ensued. Adding to the apt quotations from newspapers and other primary sources, Crofts draws on a rich vein of correspondence from vexed constituents reminding their elected officials not to abandon principles for political expediency. The attack on Fort Sumter, however, ended all hopes for a peaceable solution. Two epilogues and a bibliographical postscript underline Crofts'slively historiographical intervention animating the entire volume. This thirteenth amendment's forgotten story serves to make his argument that too many historians are picking and choosing selected evidence corresponding with twenty-first-century values, thus distorting the past. The Civil War's current portrayal as a progressive march toward emancipation and freedom, Crofts observes, fits a pleasing narrative celebrating a triumphal abolitionism that simply did not exist. While Lincoln...

“Crashing America’s Back Gate”: Illegal Europeans, Policing, and Welfare in Industrial Detroit, 1921-1939

Between 1921 and 1939, the border separating Detroit, Michigan, from Windsor, Canada, represented a key site for undocumented immigration on America’s northern border, and the migrants in question were European. This essay examines industrial urban America in the wake of 1921 and 1924 Immigration Acts to reveal the effects of restriction and policing on America’s emerging welfare state. It finds that in Detroit, after federal policies gave nativism the force of the law, local smuggling, policing, and enforcement practices branded foreign-born Europeans as illegal regardless of their legal status. During the New Deal Era, when the federal government built America’s welfare system, the stakes for belonging to the nation-state became higher than ever. In this moment of transition, local actors drew on rhetoric connecting foreigners to crime and dependence to urge federal policymakers to tie welfare benefits to citizenship. These local initiatives in Detroit and across the nation prompted the federal government to purge non-citizens from the Works Progress Administration, the new welfare program most associated with dependence and relief. Ultimately, this essay argues that a shift in national mood about foreignness in urban America took hold of the United States in the 1920s and shaped federal welfare policy by the 1930s.

Austerity Futures: Debt, Temporality and (Hopeful) Pessimism as an Austerity Mood

This article examines the relationships between austerity, debt and mood through a focus on temporality and the future. Its starting point is a poll, conducted in Britain in 2011, which showed an increase of pessimism about the future and led to suggestions that ‘a new pessimism’ had become the ‘national mood’. Exploring this survey and other related examples, I ask whether and how pessimism about the future might be considered a mood characteristic of austerity in the UK, consider some of the implications of the future being imagined not as better but as diminished and, drawing on Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism, propose a notion of hopeful pessimism. I explore the politics of pessimism about the future, focusing especially on the affects and emotions that some women and young people might feel. In these senses, I aim to turn around the focus of this special issue to inquire not so much about the future of austerity as about the kinds of futures that are imagined in the new age of austerity, and the affective experiences of such imaginations.

The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song by Ben Yagoda (review)

AMERICAN AND POPULAR MUSIC The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the American Song. By Ben Yagoda. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015. [310 p. ISBN 9781594488498. $27.95.] Illustrations, bibliography, index.It's not uncommon to hear statements to the effect that the American constitutes towering achievement in the history of this country, equal or greater than any of our other cultural or artistic endeavors, observes Ben Yagoda in the opening of The B-Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the American Song (p. 10). Acknowledging that others have already made the arguments for this supposition, Yagoda lays out different goal with his latest book: to explain how the second quarter of the twentieth century produced an unusual wealth of popular music, commonly known as standards or the American Songbook. He looks at the factors that led to its emergence, decline, and ultimate resurrection. Although he has particular focus on the songwriters, he also examines the business, cultural, and technological aspects that affect this body of work and its reception. He carves out well-rounded understanding of the topic.Yagoda is careful to define his terms. He gives numerous examples of how the phrase Great American Songbook has been used by others, starting with Carmen McRae's 1972 album title (p. 2). He identifies the most prominent and the lesserknown songwriters, both composers and lyricists, remarking that many of the first wave were born within seventeen-year span and were typically middle-class Jewish New Yorkers, and a striking number attended Columbia University (p. 14). He addresses the geographic sources of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood both literally and metaphorically, and he describes their milieu in great detail.The narrative starts in 1885 when music publishing became profitable industry. As middle-class families gathered in the parlor, the simplicity of the songs of that era was marketing virtue, the repertoire accessible to the amateur pianist, the lyrics easy to memorize. Sheet music sales reached their peak at more than two billion copies in 1917; the biggest titles commonly sold five million copies. Yagoda names the entrepreneurs who entered the field at the turn of the century, who frequently had experience in sales rather than music and who were drawn by the low barriers to entry. The new job title of song plugger sprang from the publishers' marketing methods, and hack writers latched onto lyrical trends.The move to recordings by professional musicians and to radio airplay enabled shift to music with more musical and lyrical sophistication, and friendly rivalry among the coterie of composers and lyricists pushed them towards greater artistic achievement. Publisher Max Dreyfus of T. B. Harms was benefactor to up-andcoming songwriters, granting early opportunities to those who would become the biggest names. Changes in copyright laws made songwriting viable career for the most talented, and soon Broadway and Hollywood competed with Tin Pan Alley for the best work and workers. With the sister strains of jazz, sweet and hot, bands became the country's principal popular music delivery system, propelling music sales for jukeboxes and individuals (p. 69). Radio broadcasts broadened the bands' exposure. The big bands interpreted the works of songwriters or played them straight. Duke Ellington as composer and bandleader added to the repertoire.Economics eventually favored vocalists over bands-Frank Sinatra being the prime beneficiary. But changing tastes also played role in the bands' decline. The national mood was sentimental and somber during World War II. At the same time, movie tastes changed, with studios cutting back on musicals that had been springboard for new popular tunes. On Broadway, new breed of musicals featured more developed plots and characters, resulting in songs that were specific to their stage situations and that had little relevance outside the shows. …

A re-examination of the effects of the economy, government spending, and incumbent ideology on national policy mood

Previous explanations of the causes of shifts in policy mood have been primarily economic. When the economy expands aggregate policy preferences move left, but when the economy contracts aggregate policy preferences move right. In this paper, we seek to improve our understanding of the causes of national policy mood shift in two ways. First, we focus on government spending and its impact on policy mood. Previously scholars used it as a control variable in their models and pretty much assumed that intrusive spending will move policy mood to the right, while lack of it will move policy mood to the left. We investigate if different types of the spending have different effects on the policy mood of a nation. Second, we seek a better understanding of the impact of national economic conditions on policy mood by looking at more countries, using various data and more sophisticated methodology. A panel data analysis of two different measures of the policy mood, one based on party manifestos (24 countries and 33 years) and the other based on voter surveys (17 countries and 29 years), reveals that: (i) there is ample evidence that economic conditions have a direct impact on the policy mood of citizens; (ii) the national policy mood is generally negatively related to the current government ideology; (iii) an expanding economy pushes policy mood to the left when the incumbent’s ideology is moderate to rightist; (iv) failure to control inflation causes aggregate policy preferences to shift to the right only under a moderate to left-leaning government; (v) failure to control unemployment causes national policy preferences to shift to the right only under a moderate to right-leaning government; (vi) increasing social spending pushes policy mood further to the left only under a moderate to left-leaning government; and (vii) increasing military spending pushes policy mood to the left only under a moderate to left-leaning government.

The Multiple Streams Framework and the problem broker

AbstractJohn Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) constitutes a powerful tool for understanding the policy process, and more specifically, agenda‐setting, through three separate streams: problems, policies and politics. This article argues that the MSF would benefit from further development of the problem stream. It introduces a clearer conception of agency into the problem stream by suggesting the inclusion of the problem broker. The problem broker is a role in which actors frame conditions as public problems and work to make policy makers accept these frames. The problem broker makes use of knowledge, values and emotions in the framing of problems. The use of these three elements is seen as a prerequisite for successful problem brokering – that is, for establishing a frame in the policy sphere. Other important factors are: persistence, access to policy makers, credibility and willingness. Problem brokers also need to know who to talk to, how and when in order to make an impact. The context, in terms of, for example, audience and national mood, is also crucial. The inclusion of the problem broker into the MSF strengthens the analytical separation between streams. According to Kingdon, policies can be developed independently from problems. The MSF, therefore, enables a study of policy generation. The inclusion of the problem broker, in the same sense, makes it possible to investigate problem framing as a separate process and enables a study of actors that frame problems without making policy suggestions. The MSF is, in its current form, not able to capture what these actors do. The main argument of this article is that it is crucial to study these actors as problem framing affects the work of policy entrepreneurs and, thereby, agenda‐setting and decision making.