Political Expertise Research Articles

The politics of tinkering: developing the PISA assessment of global competence

ABSTRACT The popularity of OECD’s PISA tests as benchmarks for shaping global and national education policies is premised on its reputation for developing technically robust surveys by engaging leading experts who are untouched by politics. Drawing on the Science and Technology Studies (STS) subfield of the sociology of measurement, we illustrate how the view of these surveys as a-political and purely technical achievements is a myth. Using detailed documentary analysis supported by interviews with PISA insiders, we describe the interplay between technical expertise and political expertise in the development of the 2018 surveys of global competence. This paper highlights the challenge for the PISA insider group who must negotiate how to maintain scientific authority whilst gaining political backing and trust. We refer to the key strategy of ‘tinkering’ that is required to keep various actors aligned to the project through stages of development and moments of uncertainty.

Wisdom, Political Expertise and the Unity of Virtues in Aristotle

Abstract ‘Unity of virtues’ (UV) in Aristotle is the claim that the ethical virtues are mutually entailing. But commentators typically focus on the fact that wisdom implies all the ethical virtues, without explaining how the ethical virtues themselves are mutually entailing. I argue that the so-called ‘Grand End’ view, understood as applying to both wisdom (φρόνησις) and political expertise (πολιτική), allows us to give an account of UV at the level of the ethical virtues. By discussing the ethical virtues individually, I show how all the ethical virtues can be seen as different aspects of the philosopher-statesman’s multifaceted character.

A Systemic Functional Linguistic Analysis of Mood Structures in News Coverage of Anies Baswedan’s Speech During Presidential Election Debates in The Jakarta Post and TEMPO.CO

The purpose of this study is to use Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics viewpoint to uncover the interpersonal meanings that are realized in five selected news articles from The Jakarta Post and TEMPO.CO. This study employed a qualitative method. The data source is two articles from The Jakarta Post and three articles from TEMPO.CO, all under the categories of the 2024 presidential election debate. The data were collected through textual analysis and close reading techniques. The results of this research are as follows: (1) The declarative mood is frequently used across all five articles with 97% for TJP and 99% for TC. The sentences are mostly realized by temporal deicticity, while modality appears in small percentages. (2) Both TJP and TC potray Anies Baswedan positively but with different emphases. TJP highlights Baswedan’s personal attributes and political background. TC emphasizes Baswedan’s political expertise and policy proposals. This distinction in focus reflects the different strategies employed by TJP and TC to shape public perception during the election period. TJP and TC employ similar tenor patterns where they position themselves as equals to their readers and conveying a positive tone in their interactions.

Die Bedeutung des Brexits für die Demokratie in Großbritannien

Abstract On the one hand, Brexit has repatriated key competences from the EU to the UK, broadening the scope for political decisions which respond to national democratic preferences. On the other hand, it has highlighted traditional weaknesses of the British democracy, further concentrating powers in the hands of the British government and strengthening the role of the Prime Minister as the head of an “elective dictatorship” subject to few checks and balances. We explore these developments in light of constitutional law, political expert opinions, and mass surveys, showing that British democracy remains strong but is challenged by heightened popular expectations and widespread demands for reform.

Political expertise, ecological rationality and party cues

Abstract Political scientists have proposed that party cues can be used to compensate for the public's well-documented lack of substantive political knowledge, but some critics have argued that applying party cues is more difficult than assumed. We argue that this debate has proven intractable in part because scholars have used ambiguous normative criteria to evaluate judgments. We use a unique task and clear normative criteria to evaluate the use of party cues in making political judgments among two samples: a sample of state legislators and an online sample of the public. We find that the public sample performs poorly when using cues to make judgments. State legislators make much more accurate judgments on average than even the most attentive segment of the public and are more likely to place less weight on irrelevant cues when making judgments, although there is evidence that both samples performed worse with the inclusion of non-diagnostic cues. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance of the results, which we interpret as showing that party cue use is more difficult than theorized, and discuss some practical implications of the findings.

Forensic Political Expertise: An Innovative Direction of Forensic Practice in the System of the Russian Ministry of Justice

The article discusses the prospects for applying the methodology of political science in the framework of forensic expertise. The authors justify the expediency of conduction of forensic political investigations in forensic expert institutions of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. They also establish the grounds for appointing forensic political examinations. The subject, objects, typical tasks are specified, and a list of sample questions is provided.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Female Vice-Presidential Candidate’s Acceptance Speech

This instrumental qualitative case study examined the acceptance speech of Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the first female vice presidential candidate of a major political party in Ghana. The study aimed to identify the discourse elements and cohesive devices used in the speech and to evaluate how she conveyed her political ideology and gender identity. Specifically, the research question was: which discourse elements and cohesive devices were employed, and how were political ideology and gender identity manifested in the speech? The data consisted of an eight-page speech delivered on July 28, 2020, in Accra, containing 3,972 words. Fairclough's (2015) Three-Dimensional textual analysis model was used for data analysis, which includes description, presentation and interpretation, and explanation of social reasons. Results showed that Professor Opoku-Agyemang used discourse elements and cohesive devices such as 'however,' 'also,' and 'second' to highlight her academic and political expertise and present herself as a qualified vice presidential candidate. She aimed to inspire women and encourage them to aspire to any position, including becoming the president of Ghana. The study's findings contribute to existing literature and can inform future research on female political representation, exposing the approaches of a marginalized group and their use of speeches to gain recognition within Ghana’s political space and beyond.

Perception of political influence within the general population of the United Kingdom

AbstractWhen reflecting upon politics, people express judgements about the political influence exerted by different institutions. However, the nature of these judgements remains to be studied by scholars. The paper explores this with a focus on the United Kingdom. Online, participants recruited from the general population judged the political influence of a variety of institutions such as parties, media and economic powers. Political institutions (e.g., the Conservative Party) were attributed the highest influence, followed by economic powers (e.g., banks), the media (e.g., BBC) and by marginal groups (e.g., laypeople without political expertise). Variability in judgement was explained by two factors: one capturing a tension between marginal groups and economic powers and the second between the media and political institutions. Ideology modulated the latter factor, with participants opposing tradition in politics attributing higher influence to political institutions over the media. These observations shed light on an important, yet poorly known, aspect of political thinking, namely, the perception of political influence.

Eurasia in Russian and Chinese Political Expertise: A Comparative Analysis

Since Russia and China are both leading states on the Eurasian continent, the dynamism of their relations to a large extent dominates the dynamics of geopolitical processes in the region. The growing and escalating stand-off with the West in both countries, notably due to the recent developments in Ukraine, appears likely to further the rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing on many issues of strategic interaction. The relevant question in that context is whether the Russian and Chinese perceptions of Eurasia, of Eurasian regionalism, are truly compatible. In the past few years, Russia has made considerable attempts to foster its vision of an external international order on the continent, including the popularisation and substantiation of Eurasia as a concept with regard to its geopolitical surroundings. One of the main consumers of these ideas was supposed to be China. Have Russian endeavours accomplished their goals? In seeking to provide an appropriate response to this question, the authors have focused on an analysis of both states’ expert and academic discourse on Eurasia and Eurasian regionalism. This article conceptualises Eurasia as a social construct, an element of foreign policy discourse that is intended to be mirrored in academic and expert discourse. A comparative analysis of Russian and Chinese discourses should ascertain – albeit at least in part – the extent to which Beijing has embraced Moscow’s ideas on the development of Eurasian regionalism and the proximity of Russian and Chinese approaches to the international order of the continent or a particular part of it.

Can People Use Party Cues to Assess Policymaker Positions? Ecological Rationality and Political Heuristics

Scholars disagree about the ability of people to use heuristics to make political judgments, with some arguing that heuristics are easy-to-use pieces of information and others arguing that applying heuristics may require some degree of political expertise. We argue that these debates have been somewhat intractable because most prior work has not considered the ecological rationality of political judgments—that is, the potential for cues to yield accurate judgments about a clearly defined reference class. In this paper, we present the results of two studies exploring whether people use party labels to make judgments about a random sample of U.S. Representatives’ voting behaviors. We find that respondents consistently performed worse in guessing U.S. Representatives’ votes than if they had correctly used a simple partisan heuristic. There is also some evidence that people performed worse with the presence of more nonparty cues. Attention to politics had a positive relationship with accuracy in both studies, although the relationship was modest. The results suggest that party cues may be more difficult to apply than some research has suggested.

From opposition to government: the evolution of the right-wing discourse of "Brothers of Italy"

The article traces the main stages of evolution of the discourse of the Italian far-right party Brothers of Italy, which triumphantly performed in the last parliamentary elections and, together with allies, formed the most right-wing cabinet of ministers in Italy in the last 75 years. Since the goal was to examine the entire period of the party's existence, the material for critical discourse analysis is limited to election programs and program speeches of G. Meloni. Special attention is paid to the initial phase of political identity search and formation of the party's ideological platform. The results of the analysis show that, contrary to a common misconception, Brothers of Italy did not initially take radical positions, trying to appeal to the whole spectrum of right-wing centrist voters. The study can be useful in the context of studying the phenomenon of right-wing populism and national conservatism, as well as in conducting political expertise.

Disentangling the factors behind shifting voting intentions: The bandwagon effect reflects heuristic processing, while the underdog effect reflects fairness concerns

In today’s elections, abundantly available polls inform voters what parties lead and what parties trail. This allows voters to accurately predict the likely outcomes of elections before the final results are in. Voters may react to these ex-ante election outcomes by shifting their votes either toward leading parties, often termed the “bandwagon effect” or toward trailing parties, often termed the “underdog effect”. The published literature presents different perspectives on the strength of both effects and the underlying psychological processes. Three preregistered studies (total N = 1,424) test the psychological causes of both effects. Exploratory Study 1 relates differences in interpersonal, moral, strategic, and epistemic psychological factors to shifts in voting intentions before the 2019 Polish parliamentary elections. Results suggest that the bandwagon effect reflects a lack of political expertise, whereas the underdog effect reflects fairness concerns. To provide experimental evidence, Studies 2a and 2b manipulate these two factors in a simulated election design. The results confirm that low expertise increases the bandwagon effect and that fairness concerns increase the underdog effect.

Sociological approach to the territorialization of night-time atmospheres

This article presents a case study conducted in the metropolis of Brest, France in 2022, designed to support public policy decision-making by integrating the knowledge and needs of citizens during the different stages of a night-time urban planning project, around the notion of synchronization of the city’s rhythms. It presents three innovations: (1) Actors: coordination of public and private actors, common vocabulary, cartographic representations of assets, introduction of participatory approaches, activation of citizen knowledge in political expertise. (2) Sociology: participative modalities, objectification of citizens’ knowledge, definition of their decision-making perimeter, (3) Public lighting policies: territorial and social strategy of light sobriety, regularization and empowerment of the network of actors. The conclusion of this article will focus on the limits, added values and development axes of nocturnal urban sociology as a support for decision-making in public lighting management and renovation strategies, and will open up the mobilization of the rhythms and temporalities to be mobilized in order to restore balanced nocturnal ambiences between lighting, which is essential, and darkness, which is vital.

Trade politics at the checkout lane: ethnocentrism and consumer preferences

AbstractAs international trade flourishes, Americans can choose from an increasing number of foreign products even at their local grocery stores, allowing consumers to directly experience the consequences of globalized trade in a simple and intuitive way that does not require much political expertise. Yet, most prior scholarship on political consumerism assumes that consumers are aware of the political and economic implications of their choices at the checkout lane. We move away from this assumption, focusing instead on more fundamental psychological predispositions such as ethnocentrism that may guide daily consumer choices. Using a discrete choice conjoint experiment, we show that Americans, on average, exhibit ethnocentric consumer preferences, with demand for products falling as they are produced in more culturally and ethnically distant places. Additionally, we show that this effect is more pronounced among those with higher levels of ethnocentrism. Our results provide evidence for a “naïve” form of political consumerism.

Corporations and Health: The Need to Combine Forces to Improve Population Health.

The recent concerns raised about commercial determinants of health (CDoH) are not new. Numerous organizations around the world are working on these issues. These groups have emerged in response to specific issues and contexts and bring with them a diversity of interests, worldviews and strategies for change. In creating the 'Governance, Ethics and Conflicts of Interest in Public Health' network in 2018, our hope was to broaden our engagement with other actors advocating for change and strengthen our collective efforts. For academics, this requires moving further beyond the collective comfort zone of peer-reviewed publications, working with the media and those with political expertise, and learning from and supporting other stakeholders with a common vision.

Electoral accountability and political competence

Much research contends that candidate competence brings technical or political skill, such that selecting against such attributes seems irrational. However, if special interest coalitions are sufficiently strong, a majority may expect that political expertise will be used to select policies that generate rents for narrow constituencies at the expense of its own welfare. I develop a model in which a majority prefers to elect the less competent politician in order to undermine the incumbent’s ability to pursue the special interest agenda and derive the implications for accountability in this setting. The results demonstrate that the majority’s attempts to reassert control over policy through its retention decisions impede social welfare maximizing reform and distort aggregate welfare by either encouraging ([Formula: see text]) inefficient policy selection or ([Formula: see text]) inefficient candidate selection. Even if politicians choose policies that maximize social welfare doing so may only worsen aggregate welfare by providing voters with more information about candidate competence, which enables the majority to better select inept politicians.

Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence Casa Grande Project, 1916–1928 by David H. DeJong

Reviewed by: Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence Casa Grande Project, 1916–1928 by David H. DeJong Charles Porter Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence Casa Grande Project, 1916–1928. By David H. DeJong. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021. Pp. 336. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, index.) For generations, before White settlers arrived along the Gila River, Pima Indian growers successfully used the water to create a thriving and sustainable agricultural community. David H. DeJong's Diverting the Gila: The Pima Indians and the Florence Casa Grande Project, 1916–1928, tells the sad story of the Pimas' struggle to keep their irrigation community alive after the arrival of new White American settlers. Upstream diversions by immigrants to the Gila River valleys from the Civil War to 1890 depleted the river's flow to downstream Pima fields resulting in the collapse of the tribal community. The Pimas were experts in sustainably using the limited water resources of the Gila River to allow life to flourish in arid southern Arizona. Not only did the Pimas create the physical infrastructure to divert and use the water for irrigation, but they also created a system allowing fair, transparent, and equitable sharing of water, the essence of the life of their entire community. Across North America, settlers from the United States used complex government processes to cheat Native peoples out of their traditional lands, including their rights to use water. The simple way to control any society is to take away their water. The general surface water policy west of the Mississippi River under the American form of government holds that first in time equals first in right: whoever can prove the earliest use of surface water beneficially becomes first in line to use that water. There is no dispute that Pima communities were first to put the water of the Gila to beneficial use. Yet, as usual, the Americans found ways to exercise their [End Page 510] legal and political expertise to justify the diminution of the prior water rights of the Pimas. Just as other Native peoples experienced across the West, the Pimas had little chance to prevail in a legal system that they did not understand or in many cases had no desire to understand. When it comes to land and water acquisition by Anglo Americans, it seems that unethical behavior is exercised as a matter of course and sanctioned by legal action. Due to political maneuvering in the most despicable manner by Anglo Americans, the Pimas' water allocations were reduced by two-thirds, eliminating 60 percent of the growing capacity of their fields. Yet the Pima courageously adapted their growing practices by eliminating their least productive lands, planting less water-intensive crops, and stubbornly remaining committed to farming even though their economy was devastated in favor of upper Gila Valley White growers. The intense drought being experienced in the West today is putting existing water policies under extreme duress. Diverting the Gila should be read by any water policymaker seeking fairness in water rights for all people or trying to find a way through the current water crisis while treating everyone fairly. The book explains the consequences of water policies manipulated to favor the powerful. Further, DeJong uses his excellent academic training, tempered with real-world irrigation system experience, to provide readers with the historical facts of the consequences of unfair water policies. The Pimas were first in time to use the water. The Pimas put the Gila River water to beneficial use. Why then did they have to endure the devastation of their agricultural economy by newcomers? DeJong illuminates their struggle, a struggle that is as much about respect for dignity as it is about irrigation systems. Charles Porter St. Edwards University Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

تہذیبوں کے تصادم کا نظریہ فکرِاسلامی کی روشنی میں

The quintessence of the theory of "The Clash of Civilizations" presented by American political expert Samuel P. Huntington in his book ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’ is that the cause of wars and disputes in the world, after the end of the cold war between the United States and Russia, will not be various ideologies but the main reasons behind discord and strife will be cultural and religious identities of people. Far-sighted persons know that before Huntington many western thinkers have also expressed similar views. Western concept of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ is such a reality that existed centuries before P. Huntington’s book and is there even today. The early signs of this civilizational clash are present in the establishment of European colonization and in the history of crusades. Professor Huntington explains that the clash between Islam and western civilization has become inevitable. Clearly stating the hidden agenda of establishing global western supremacy, he has expressed his apprehension that Islam can upset the current global power balance. Therefore, he has proposed to the western leadership that it should adopt such exploitative strategies against other civilizations so that it only can remain the dominant civilization in the world. It is for this reason that the west is continuously following an aggressive policy against other civilizations. Being mindful of the Islamic way of thinking, a research-based analytical review of this concept of civilizational clash has been taken in this paper. In the light of Islamic teachings and Muslim thought, it has been made clear that Islam rejects the concept of the clash of civilizations rather it teaches civilizational coexistence and holding dialogue. This is the concept through which peace and security can prevail in the world.
 
 Keywords: Clash of Civilizations, Huntington, Islamic Thoughts, Western Supremacy, Peaceful Coexistence.
 
 * اسسٹنٹ پروفیسر، شعبہ اسلامیات، آزاد جموں و کشمیر یونی ورسٹی، مظفر آباد

La biographie en histoire des idées politiques, un outil sous-estimé ? Le cas exemplaire de Machiavel

"Writing a biography of Machiavelli, especially an “intellectual” one, orientated towards the history of philosophical thought, is a challenge due to the extent of the documentation available, collected over the centuries. Nevertheless, any analysis of the origins of the Florentine author’s thought using his letters as local government officer, before he was dismissed and wrote the great texts for which he is famous, takes us back to a larger philosophical problem. Indeed, Machiavelli is a precursor of the modern political expert. Such experts are characterized by their classic academic knowledge drawn as much from Antiquity and from Scholasticism as from the everyday political action in which they got literally caught up. From there came the idea of a new way of writing about politics. Machiavelli is the first one to do so, writing in order to give practical, concrete advice to follow in the real world. We define this new way of regarding Machiavelli’s political writing as a “programme”, which his biography helps us to understand more completely. Keywords: Machiavelli, Intellectual Biography, Doctrine, Political Thought "

SAGO has a politics problem, and WHO is ignoring it

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) has recently been established to “define and guide studies into the origins [of Novel Pathogens]”...