Political Judgment Research Articles

Operation standards for exclusive bus lane on expressway using simulation and traffic big data

<abstract> <p>Korea operates exclusive bus lanes (XBLs) on many of its expressways. As XBLs convert one lane of regular-use traffic into bus-only traffic, they have a large impact on traffic flow, so careful judgment is required to determine if the operation is effective. However, XBLs have been operated based on only political judgment due to the lack of standards for the operation of expressway XBLs. Therefore, we sought to establish standards for the operation of expressway XBLs using the micro-traffic simulation program VISSIM and the multi-criteria value function methodology. Various scenarios were established based on traffic volume changes of passenger vehicles and bus traffic of four- and five-lane expressway networks. Through an expert survey, the average speed and speed-deviation values, which are the criteria for evaluating operational efficiency and safety, were determined. Also, value points were converted using average speed and speed deviation extracted from the simulation. In addition, quantitative operation standards were established using the converted value scores. Using the results of this study, we established standards for the operation of the XBLs and presented guidelines for related agencies such as police, bus groups, and corporations. The National Police have prepared guidelines for the operation of the XBLs. Citing the results of this study, the new guidelines were implemented in February 2021, and sections of some XBLs have been abolished. Through this study, quantitative standards for the operation of XBLs, one of the management lane techniques necessary for sustainable highway operation, were prepared and applied to actual highways. By properly applying the newly applied guidelines according to quantitative standards, there will be effects of reducing traffic congestion, improving travel time, and enhancing environmental characteristics such as exhaust gas emission. It is also expected to have a positive effect on safety.</p> </abstract>

Public health in historical perspective

It is commonplace to consider the time of the Industrial Revolution as the time of the beginning of the first measures concerning the current concept of Public Health, understood both from the point of view of hygiene measures in the cities to which large quantities of workers from the agricultural world, as well as from the adoption of measures for the prevention, diagnosis and cure of diseases. Before that time, there remains the testimony of authors such as Michel Foucault, who in his study of the History of Madness in the Classical Era described the spaces of exclusion outside the walls of towns or cities, whether leprosy or madness to mention just a few examples, true incarnations of evil, who were feared and isolated outside the community. Our aforementioned author remembers how until the end of the Middle Ages, when Hansen’s disease or Leprosy was eradicated in Europe, there were thousands of leper colonies throughout Christendom. In this article we will therefore go back to the times of the last decades of the 17th century in which a new relationship began to be articulated between the concepts of life and power, through the emergence of a new rationality anchored in the Reason of State, and mercantilism. As a dominant doctrine in different European countries understood as a zero-sum economic game, giving rise to the birth of what is called Biopolitics.1 In this way, life, which becomes the criterion and end of the exercise of power, is the object of a political value judgment, a process that will last until the 20th century with the establishment of the Welfare State, and the measures that were adopted in 1942 according to the guidelines given by Lord Beveridge.

Political Judgment, Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ , and the Egyptian ʿUlamāʾ's : Response to the Arab Spring (2011–2013)

Abstract: Most academic accounts of the Arab Spring (ca. 2011–2013) politics of the 'ulamā' (Muslim religious scholars) explain their political stances in terms of the political ideals purportedly held by individual scholars. This article challenges this scholarly consensus through a detailed examination of the Arab Spring politics of three influential Egyptian 'ulamā' . Specifically, it demonstrates that Yusuf al-Qaraḍāwī (1926–2022), Aḥmad al-Ṭayyib (b. 1946), and 'Alī Gomaa's (b. 1952) political stances do not consistently follow any single political ideal attributed to them. Contrary to the literature, I show that al-Qaraḍāwī and al-Ṭayyib, despite their disagreements on the political situation in Egypt, took similar stances on all uprisings after the Egyptian uprising, including support for the Syrian, Libyan, and Yemeni uprisings, and their opposition to similar developments in Bahrain. I argue that their divergence regarding Egypt and their supposed inconsistency on Bahrain is primarily a result of their assessments of contemporaneous political situations and their contingent moral dilemmas. These two cases highlight an important aspect of the Islamic legal tradition that is influential in political moral deliberation: the legal maxims on balancing harms and benefits. To apply these legal maxims in concrete situations, contemporary 'ulamā' often rely on the concept of fiqh al-wāqiʿ (Islamic jurisprudence of reality), according to which contextual sociopolitical knowledge is considered as important as textual religious knowledge. Fiqh al-wāqiʿ however remains critically underdetermined, and, as this article argues, offers meager methodological tools for empirical understanding.

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.

Changing ‘practical consciousness’ of Shanghai’s middle class under covid lockdowns: a residential community’s defiance and mobilization

ABSTRACT During the spring 2022 lockdowns in Shanghai, strict implementation of the Zero Covid policy compelled every person residing in Shanghai to confront the agents of the state and the authority behind them to develop a certain kind of practical consciousness and political sentiment – a political judgment of the dynamic reality in everyday life. During the 2-month lockdown, one witnessed both a surprising level of general compliance, as well as sporadic but widespread civil protests. Through an anthropological case study based on observations collected in the author’s own resident community, this article is an attempt to document the experiences of the residents in Shanghai under the lockdowns while examining their practice of self-governance and collective defiance. In addition, focusing on those who are considered to be ‘middle class’, it also examines how they relied on their professionalism to organize themselves in a state of high anxiety, and to make decisions and take action in a precarious and dynamic situation. It analyzes how they demonstrated a kind of ‘practical consciousness’ that initiated change and fragmentation in the collective will through the process of collective action such as negotiation, conflict, and resolution with those representing the power of the authorities. Ultimately, the political sentiments of the Chinese middle class are analyzed in terms of how they might organize their demands of everyday life into political demands and identify their own power through future collective action.

What makes people trust or distrust politicians? Insights from open-ended survey questions

High political trust is often interpreted as a sign of good democratic health, and widespread distrust as a sign of democratic ill health. However, there is little knowledge about the basis on which people make assessments about whether to trust or distrust political actors. This article develops and applies a typology for political trust judgement. Through a content analysis of 1,105 open-ended survey questions about political trust and distrust, the study finds that people tend to assess (dis)trust of politicians based on whether they see the politicians as predictable, intrinsically committed, competent and responsive. Moreover, the study finds that citizens use different judgement bases to describe trust and distrust, suggesting that the two concepts are not pure negations of each other. While predictability is the most frequently reported basis for trusting politicians, a lack of intrinsic commitment is the most frequently reported basis for distrusting politicians. This article discusses the reasons for and implications of the apparently different bases for weighing judgements on trust and distrust.

Overview of Nepalese Politics from a Managerialism Perspective

This study examines how managerial practices affect political decision-making and policy execution in Nepal from a managerial perspective. The research aims at the main characteristics of Nepal's political system and how effectively management strategies work to encourage good governance. The study argues that in order to foster effective leadership, boost accountability, and shape the country's future, Nepali political leaders can gain from using managerial principles including servant leadership, effective delegation, teamwork, openness, communication, and transparency. Through a literature analysis, the study identifies and evaluates significant programs and strategies employed to solve political concerns in Nepal. The study employs a qualitative research design that includes a thorough examination of secondary sources such as academic articles, government reports, international agencies and NGO reports. This article explores management strategies that support effective governance in Nepal. It looks at how managerial practices influence political judgments and the implementation of policies The researcher further recommends continuing to implement managerialism tactics like PBB and PPPs and accommodating practices like RBM & e-governance to boost managerialism in the political system. One of the study's drawbacks is its limited focus on management viewpoints.

Legitimation Crisis: Notes on Benjamin Buchloh’s Method

Abstract This article seeks to determine the basis for judgments on works of art in the writings of the art historian and critic Benjamin Buchloh. I argue that Buchloh’s judgments are not Kantian aesthetic judgments, nor are they consequentialist moral or political judgments as to the positive or negative effects of artworks. Rather, Buchloh’s judgments are based upon an implicit principle of ‘legitimacy’ or ‘credibility’ that is distinct from the mere possibility of specific artistic practices. I identify several factors that, for Buchloh, are involved in determining the legitimacy of any work of art. In the process I highlight apparent contradictions that result from Buchloh’s rhetoric, specifically his tendency to conflate constitutive conditions of possibility with normative value judgments. For Buchloh, it is only through a successful negotiation of these factors that an artwork succeeds in constituting itself as a meaningful ‘enunciation’ within the structuring system of artistic practice at a given moment.

Governing Emerging Solar Geoengineering: A Role for Risk-Risk Evaluation?

Abstract: In the face of rapid global heating, ideas of solar geoengineering are receiving increased attention. Yet the governance of such risky emerging technologies is poorly explored. Here I examine how the risks involved in solar geoengineering might be assessed in the context of climate risks in two different models of risk management: the technocratic, and the securitized. I show that neither model alone provides a sufficient foundation for a meaningful ‘risk-risk’ assessment, and suggest a need for better defined, yet broad scope, symmetric assessments using worst-case as well as idealised scenarios, taking into account risks in research and development as well as deployment, and considering the social distribution of risks. I conclude that effective anticipatory and ethical risk assessment may usefully supplement, but cannot replace democratic political judgements on responses to climate change.

Features of political psychology in a digital society: Managing and defining disinformation

Public opinion management is reflected in a balanced approach to the information policy of the country, where the rationalistic outlook of the community promotes the social, economic, and political development of the state values. The formation of an individual’s political consciousness is subject to the influence of the information space in which they live, and this poses the relevance of investigating the issue of managing and defining disinformation at the stage of rapid digitalisation of society. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to determine the specifics of the development of patterns of political behaviour and consciousness of an individual in the process of forming a public stance in the context of socio-psychological, informational, and political determinants. The basis of the theoretical and methodological approach in this study was a combination of qualitative methods of systematic analysis of the specifics of psychological factors shaping political views and community behaviour, as well as content analysis of countering disinformation at the current stage of development of society. Furthermore, several surveys were conducted regarding the views and perceptions of the population on information in the media space in the country. The article also presents data that reflect the issue of the psychological phenomenon of society, in particular political judgments, moods, needs and motives of people, which are the result of social and political relations and are realised in a certain political behaviour and actions of both an individual and society as a whole. This article discusses the issues of combating disinformation in the digital space of the state and ways to improve the information literacy of the population. The results of the research are of practical value for educational, social, and psychological organisations that have a direct impact on the formation of legal behaviour and a conscious attitude to information processes in the digital space.

The Political Privacy Dilemma: Private Lives and Public Office

ABSTRACTShould political leaders have a right to privacy? Incursions by new and traditional media into the private lives of political leaders are commonplace. Are such incursions ethically justifiable? Prima facie, the question of ‘political privacy’ seems to involve a conflict between a politician's self‐interest in retaining a protected private realm and citizens' public interest in having access to information about their representative's private life. Indeed, this is the structure that the debate has typically assumed. I challenge this orthodox view by demonstrating that there is a public interest in political privacy grounded in the relationship between privacy and political judgement. I argue that the political privacy debate should be recast to recognise this conflict between two different strands of the public interest. This conflict presents a dilemma for democratic theory: in providing voters with private information relevant to the evaluation of political leaders' suitability for office and performance within it, we threaten to undermine the conditions necessary to attract candidates of judgement and for political leaders to judge well once in office.

Populism: A Berlinian Critique

How would Isaiah Berlin assess the current wave of authoritarian populism? The question is worth asking both for the light it casts on populism and for what it tells us about Berlin. In several respects, his view of populism is ambivalent: he is surprisingly sympathetic to the Russian populists of the nineteenth century, sharing their concern for genuine democracy and their reservations about elite leadership; he is especially troubled by the possibility of rule by scientific experts, although he does not reject elite judgement entirely; and his assessment of successful political judgement is not as clearly opposed to the kind of charismatic leadership favoured by many populists (for example, the leadership of Donald Trump) as one might expect. It is only in his treatment of individual liberty and value pluralism that Berlin provides anti-populists with more emphatic arguments, especially when his value pluralism is developed as “liberal pluralism.” Overall, the application of Berlin’s ideas to populism highlights some of his familiar themes but also shows how his work can be extended in interesting ways. In particular, his sympathy with the Russian populists suggests that he is more of a democrat than is often assumed, and the application to populism of his famous thesis about the dangers of positive liberty can be extended to negative liberty too.

Learning from corporate governance: First conceptualization of a liability for political decision‐making

AbstractThe institution of liability serves to mitigate the lack of care in almost all areas, whether private or business. However, we have not yet found such an institution in political decision‐making. Surprisingly, the literature has not discussed a specific institution that subjects political actors who fail to exercise due diligence in their decision‐making regarding personal liability. Hence, this paper aims to fill this gap and derive the necessity of internalizing the negative effects resulting from the imperfections of the market for political services in general and the democratic process, particularly by a liability rule. To design the new institution, we draw on the findings of corporate governance, combining economic thinking in incentives and legal knowledge expressed in the law of the corporation. In this respect, this paper is the first to make a concrete proposal for political liability accompanied by a political judgment rule. However, it is important to emphasize that the aim is not to punish a wrong decision but to provide strong incentives to prevent it ex ante. Political liability must be understood as a process‐oriented institution that considers uncertainty and decision‐making complexities. By proposing and analyzing this new institution, this work contributes to a broader discussion of incentive structures in the political process of modern democracies and shows how the political sphere can learn from the corporate world.

Conspiracy believers perceive an ideological match with their party

ABSTRACT Research demonstrates conspiracy endorsement arises from a strong motivation to preserve beliefs. This same motive is implicated in political projection—the degree to which political judgments about groups are anchored on the self. This paper is the first to test the hypothesis that conspiracy endorsement regulates the magnitude of in-group projection. Empirical evidence from the 2012, 2016 American National Election Surveys is presented. Across the ideological spectrum, Democrats and Republicans that endorsed party concordant conspiracies were more likely than party members that did not to perceive strong similarity between their own ideology and the ideology of their party. Whether liberal, moderate, or conservative, conspiracy believers do not consider their ideological preferences as unique. Rather they perceive their ideological preferences as widely shared by in-group party members.

Ambiguous Sovereignty: Political Judgment and the Limits of Law in Kant’s Doctrine of Right

Kantian legalism is now the dominant scholarly interpretation of Kant and an important approach to legal and political philosophy in its own right. One notable feature is its construal of the relationship between law and politics decisively in law’s favour: Law subordinates politics. Political judgment is constrained by and only permissibly exercised through law. This paper opposes this subordination through a close analysis of an ambiguity in Kant’s conception of sovereignty. Understanding this ambiguity requires seeing that, for Kant, law cannot subordinate the sovereign’s political judgment because it is a condition which makes a legal system possible. Kant was not an exacting legalist, but a practical reasoner struggling with the pressures politics imposes on finite beings. Through discussion of a leading contemporary approach, and close engagement with its historical source, the paper raises new considerations about the relevance of political judgment in the relationship of law and politics.

Political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics: on the issue of intra- and interdisciplinary synthesis

Objective: to show the ontological potential of interdisciplinarity and paradigmatic pluralism in economic research by the example of the Chinese-specific socialism model and its description in Western socio-political discourse.Methods: qualitative methods (discourse analysis, comparative analysis, generalization).Results: the work shows the features of the discourse in modern economic theory regarding the problems of intra- and interdisciplinary synthesis. The economic mainstream, claiming the accuracy of its method of creating scientific knowledge, can and does become the basis of political knowledge and ideological judgments. Describing certain aspects of reality, the mainstream normalizes them, and sometimes elevates them to the rank of a rule. Based on the analysis of the Chinese model of economic reforms, the article shows that in Western socio-political and scientific discourses regarding this model, both at the stage of their beginning and now, there are erroneous ideas and expectations about the purpose, content and results of the reform process. The root cause of this false perception is, assumingly, the disciplinary isolation of economics, as economics is considered to be a universal extrapolitical and extra-cultural constant. To confirm this thesis, the main stages of the transformation of the ideology of building the Chinese economic model, its transition from an anti-market and anticapitalist position to a Chinese-specific socialism model are considered. It is shown that among the trajectories of China’s future development, Western economists and politicians saw only the two main ones: creeping liberalization and limiting the influence of the state in the Chinese economy, accompanied by democratization of the political sphere, on the one hand, and reaching the limits of economic growth possible for countries with authoritarian institutions, on the other. However, the collective action factor ignored by researchers has formed a stable growth economy, not accompanied by political liberalization.Scientific novelty: consists in comprehending the discourses about the Chinese economy as a result of the challenge posed by the Chinese reforms to mainstream political economy.Practical significance: the provisions and conclusions of the research can be further used to study the influence of economic theory on socio-political discourses and political decisions.

The Conditional Association Between Populism, Ideological Extremity, and Affective Polarization

Abstract In recent years there has been an increasing interest in whether populism is related to opinion extremity. Yet, research on the topic offers little direct evidence on whether and under which conditions populist ideas at the individual level are related to policy extremity and inter-party dislike. This article aims to fill this gap by focusing on the reasons populist individuals hold more or less extreme opinions. Using data from the 2016 American National Electoral Study, I find that populist attitudes are a strong correlate of both ideological extremity and affective polarization, yet this association is conditional on respondent’s party affiliation. Populism is related to higher levels of ideological extremity among Democrats and stronger negative leader evaluations among Republicans. This finding indicates that the relationship between populism and citizens’ political judgements varies depending on the ability of populist leaders to make certain dimensions of the competition salient (i.e., ideological or affective) and exploit pre-existing ideological and partisan rivalries (i.e., party identity).

Russian embassies in emergency situations (as exemplified by the 1992 anti-government mutiny in Angola)

The article focuses on a captivating period in the history of Russia-Angola relations when UNITA, a military and political group headed by Jonas Savimbi, mounted a military mutiny in Luanda, the country’s capital, and other major cities to seize power by force in anticipation of its defeat in the 1992 general election. It is during these troubled days that the government troops from the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) demonstrated their courage, military excellence and political judgement. The same applied to the special forces and the country’s political leadership who had all benefi ted from many years of training by Soviet and later Russian military instructors and political mentors. The article presents the views of its authors who were directly involved in these events, finding themselves at the centre of the standoff between UNITA and the ruling MPLA-Labour Party. All the agencies and services in the Embassy coordinated their actions on the Embassy premises, as well as across various parts of the city. By doing so, they succeeded in providing the Ambassador with updates from various sources, enabling the mission to report the developments in the country to Moscow in real time. The article stresses the need to ensure that staff members at Russian missions abroad are ready to face challenging and non-standard circumstances that may occur during government coups or in other extraordinary situations in a given country.

The question of truth: how facts, space and time shape conversations in IR

Truth is as regularly invoked in International Relations (IR) as it is contested. Due to increased plurality, truth is no longer taken for granted, with some suggesting that relativism is on its way. At the same time, despite uncertainty as to the meaning of truth, research and factual verification persists, as findings remain hotly debated in IR, sometimes leading to entrenched, almost irreconcilable debates among scholars. This essay suggests that one way in which to bridge truth claims in the face of potential, albeit unwarranted, relativism is to distinguish between meaningful and factual truth. Factual truth is about assessing whether (raw) data qualifies as data at all, while meaningful truth – upon which most debates in IR are based – grounds our interpretation; it reveals reality’s various facets according to specific spatial and temporal concepts. Viewing conversations in IR as concerned with meaningful as opposed to factual truth allows scholars to lay relativism to rest. The essay also claims that conversations that confuse meaningfulness for factual verification – as in the debates between liberal institutionalists and structural realists in the 1990s – lead to scholarly entrenchment with no resolution in sight. Distinct temporal and spatial assumptions are often incompatible. As a result, such meaningful conversations are less about factual verifiability than about containing reification and enlarging the perspectives with which to exercise political judgement.

Political ideology shapes risk and benefit judgments of COVID-19 vaccines.

In April 2021, the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was paused to investigate whether it had caused serious blood clots to a small number of women (six out of 6.8 million Americans who had been administered that vaccine). As these events were unfolding, we surveyed a sample of Americans (N = 625) to assess their reactions to this news, whether they supported the pausing of the vaccine, and potential psychological factors underlying their decision. In addition, we employed automated text analyses as a supporting method to more classical quantitative measures. Results showed that political ideology influenced the support for the pausing of the vaccine; liberals were more likely to oppose it than conservatives. In addition, the effect of political ideology was mediated by the difference between perceived benefit and risk and the language style used to produce reasons in support (or against) the decision to pause the vaccine. Liberals perceived the benefit of vaccines higher than the risk, used a more analytic language style when stating their reasons, and had a more positive attitude toward the vaccine. We discuss the implications of our findings considering vaccine hesitancy and risk perception during the COVID-19 pandemic.