scholarly journals Who Supports Expanding Surveillance? Exploring Public Opinion of Chinese Social Credit Systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuncheng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Social Credit ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Party Members ◽  
High Support

In recent decades, debates on surveillance in society have been mounting, yet they largely concentrated on ethical discussions and lack sociological examination. Drawing on innovative national survey data as well as fieldwork observations and interviews, this study analyzes public opinion about social credit systems (SCSs), an emerging infrastructure that expands the depth and breadth of surveillance in China. Overall, I find high support for the expanding surveillance and punishment. Political trust in the state is positively associated with higher support for SCSs. Counterintuitively, political elites do not wholly embrace the expanding surveillance and punishment. For example, Chinese Communist Party members are less likely to support SCSs compared to the general public. Higher socioeconomic status is consistently correlated with higher support, while different media consumption showed limited correlations. This study enriches our understanding of the heterogeneity of the state, public, and surveillance and their dynamic relationship in the authoritarian regime.

Party Standstill in an Era of Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
External Environment ◽  
The State ◽  
Extreme Right ◽  
Significant Modification ◽  
Interest Management ◽  
The Face ◽  
Short Run

Chapter 5 discusses the premises of the emergence of the cartel party with the parties’ resilience to any significant modification in the face of the cultural, societal, and political changes of the 1970s–1980s. Parties kept and even increased their hold on institutions and society. They adopted an entropic strategy to counteract challenges coming from a changing external environment. A new gulf with public opinion opened up, since parties demonstrated greater ease with state-centred activities for interest-management through collusive practices in the para-governmental sector, rather than with new social and political options. The emergence of two sets of alternatives, the greens and the populist extreme right, did not produce, in the short run, any impact on intra-party life. The chapter argues that the roots of cartelization reside mainly in the necessitated interpenetration with the state, rather than on inter-party collusion. This move has caught parties in a legitimacy trap.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Horder
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Jury Trial ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Adequate Coverage

The criminal law has the resources to address corruption in politics, if prosecutors are willing to use it, and if courts are willing to interpret it so that it provides adequate coverage of wrongdoing, particularly wrongdoing in the form of personal corruption engaged in by Members of Parliament. There needs to be a greater willingness to expose the worst corrupt wrongdoers in high office to the risk of judgment at the bar of public opinion, in the form of jury trial. The offence of misconduct in office provides the most appropriate means of doing this. This is not just because it is likely to provide the most appropriate label, but because the offence highlights the constitutionally fundamental bond of trust between the citizen and the state that is broken when officials indulge in corruption.

Subaltern Migrations and the State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Zehmisch
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
The State ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Subaltern Agency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Reports

This chapter considers the history of Andaman migration from the institutionalization of a penal colony in 1858 to the present. It unpicks the dynamic relationship between the state and the population by investigating genealogies of power and knowledge. Apart from elaborating on subaltern domination, the chapter also reconstructs subaltern agency in historical processes by re-reading scholarly literature, administrative publications, and media reports as well as by interpreting fieldwork data and oral history accounts. The first part of the chapter defines migration and shows how it applies to the Andamans. The second part concentrates on colonial policies of subaltern population transfer to the islands and on the effects of social engineering processes. The third part analyses the institutionalization of the postcolonial regime in the islands and elaborates on the various types of migration since Indian Independence. The final section considers contemporary political negotiations of migration in the islands.

Public Opinion in Israel: The Sociodemographic Nexus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Hermann
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
Deep Disagreements ◽  
Political Right ◽  
The Impact

In Israel, as in many other countries, the impact of public opinion on national policymaking has increased dramatically over the last few decades. In fact, public opinion has practically developed into one of the prime political inputs in Israel. This chapter argues that this increased impact, which could have contributed to improving the Israeli democracy, is in fact often undermined by the increasing overlapping of the main cleavages within Israel: between the political Right and Left, between Jews and Arabs, and between religious and secular Israelis. This extreme overlapping has severely eroded the national consensus and accelerated the emergence of deep disagreements in public opinion over strategic issues, such as the nature of the state (Jewish? Democratic?), the main challenges facing the nation (including the best way of dealing with the protracted Israeli–Palestinian conflict), and the desired collective future.

scholarly journals Student governments in Chinese higher education: reflection on college students’ and student cadres’ political trust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Huang ◽  
Panpan Yao ◽  
Fan Li ◽  
Xiaowei Liao
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Power Distribution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Chinese Higher Education ◽  
Student Government ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

AbstractThis paper documents the structure and operations of student governments in contemporary Chinese higher education and their effect on college students’ political trust and party membership. We first investigate the structure and power distribution within student governments in Chinese universities, specifically focusing on the autonomy of student governments and the degree to which they represent students. Second, using a large sample of college students, we examine how participating in student government affects their political trust and party membership. Our results show that student government in Chinese higher education possesses a complex, hierarchical matrix structure with two main parallel systems—the student union and the Chinese Communist Party system. We found that power distribution within student governments is rather uneven, and student organisations that are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party have an unequal share of power. In addition, we found that students’ cadre experience is highly appreciated in student cadre elections, and being a student cadre significantly affects their political trust and party membership during college.

Regaining Control? The Political Impact of Policy Responses to Refugee Crises

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Omer Solodoch
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Sampling Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Immigration And Asylum ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
The Impact

Abstract In response to the political turmoil surrounding the recent refugee crisis, destination countries swiftly implemented new immigration and asylum policies. Are such countercrisis policies effective in mitigating political instability by reducing anti-immigrant backlash and support for radical-right parties? The present study exploits two surveys that were coincidentally fielded during significant policy changes, sampling respondents right before and immediately after the change. I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the short-term causal effect of the policy change on public opinion within a narrow window of the sampling period. The findings show that both Swedish border controls and the EU–Turkey agreement significantly reduced public opposition to immigration in Sweden and Germany, respectively. In Germany, support for the AfD party also decreased following the new policy. Public opinion time trends suggest that the policy effects were short lived in Sweden but durable in Germany. These effects are similar across different levels of proximity to the border and are accompanied by increasing political trust and a sense of government control over the situation. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of border controls on international public opinion, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of policy responses to global refugee crises.

Trust in Government and the American Public’s Responsiveness to Rising Inequality

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 790-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
State Level ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
Combine Data ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
The Relationship

The United States has become increasingly unequal. Income inequality has risen dramatically since the 1970s, yet public opinion toward redistribution has remained largely unchanged. This is puzzling, given Americans’ professed concern regarding, and knowledge of, rising inequality. I argue that trust in government can help to reconcile this. I combine data on state-level income inequality with survey data from the Cumulative American National Election Studies (CANES) from 1984 to 2016. I find that trust in government conditions the relationship between inequality and redistribution, with higher inequality prompting demand for government redistribution, but only among politically trustful individuals. This holds among conservatives and non-conservatives and among the affluent and non-affluent. These findings underscore the relevance of political trust in shaping attitudes toward inequality and economic redistribution and contribute to our understanding of why American public opinion has not turned in favor of redistribution during an era of rising income inequality.

Constructing Public Opinion and Manipulating Symbols: China's Press Cover-age of the Student Movement in 1989

1995 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guo-Qiang Zhang ◽  
Sidney Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
The Press ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Military

This content analysis of Chinese newspapers before and after the Tiananmen Square protest examines the symbolic representation of the Student Movement of 1989 in China. The study reveals that top leaders manipulated symbols given to the media and that these symbols rigorously highlighted the dominant ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and isolated the movement participants. Officials attempted to legitimize the military suppression of the movement. The press construction of public opinion echoed the hegemonic process created and maintained by the party structure.

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