TRANSITION OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN PORTUGAL

The period of Portuguese authoritarian government, followingupon the heels of economic and social decline which the countrylived through after the installation of the republic in 1910,was bolstered politically, culturally, and economically by theexperience of the country during these 64 years. Economic andcultural changes after 1945, including development of the media,worker migrations, tourism, and the decolonialization movements,gave rise to attitudes and behavior of increasingly wide groupswho rejected authoritarianism and the monolithic political system.Various factors paved the way for the downfall of this regime,among them Oliveira Salazar's physical incapacity and his replacementby the more liberal but less prestigious Marcelo Caetano, theunease in public opinion caused by the sending of troops tothe colonies in Africa, and international and political andcultural pressures. Public opinion was in favor of the new politicalsystem, and, gradually consolidated its hold with the supportof the Western international community, and, in particular,the countries of the EEC. The political parties contributedto the development of the political attitudes of the Portuguesepopulation and ensured that the regime maintained itself withina liberal democratic framework.     

湖社和陈英士纪念堂

上海开埠以来,一直是个海纳百川的移民城市。各地来沪谋求发展的人士,为增强竞争实力,便于相互提携,纷纷成立旅沪同乡会。其中成立于1924年的湖州旅沪同乡会——湖社,是上海最有影响的同乡团体之一。1934年,湖社成立十周年纪念大会,蒋介石、林森等国民党要员送来匾额。     

A CHANGING POLITICAL AGENDA? THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN BRITAIN, 1974-87

The 1970s and 1980s have been a period of flux in Western partysystems, with two apparent indicators being the success of rightwingparties and the growth of New Politics issues within electorates.Two theories have been utilized to explain these changes. Thefirst is that they are caused by shifts in popular opinion,which are reflected in elite behavior, while the second arguesthat they are the result of political elites acting indepndentlyof mass opinion. In this paper, we test these two theories usingBritain between 1974 and 1987 as a case study. Using comparablequestions from four national surveys, we find that mass politicalattitudes have changed very little over the period, althoughthere is more change evident on economic than on noneconomicissues. No support is forthcoming for the propositions thatthe British electorate is becoming more conservative or thatNew Politics issues are becoming more important. Overall, itappears that the British party political elite has moved furtherapart than has the electorate. In short, political change inBritain in the 1970s and 1980s is more elite-influenced thanmass-influenced.     

THE CONTINGENCIES OF ORDINARY CITIZEN APPEARANCES IN POLITICAL TELEVISION NEWS

While few would deny the crucial role of citizens in democratic governance, there are still only a few studies that focus on ordinary citizens’ inclusion in political news coverage. First, we present a number of factors conditioning ordinary citizens’ appearances in the news. Second, based on the discussion of these factors, we formulate a number of research questions. After conducting an extensive content analysis covering almost 6000 actors appearing in political news coverage in the two major Danish broadcasters, DR1 and TV2, between 1994 and 2007, we find that ordinary citizens appear more often in reports on intrusive issues such as welfare, that they appear more often in news items positioned later in the news bulletins, that they, largely speaking, appear more often closer to election day, but that there are almost no differences between commercial and public service broadcasting. These findings are discussed in the light of past research on media source use and the ongoing changing foundations of political communication.     

THE RENAISSANCE OF A RUBRIC: POLITICAL CULTURE AS CONCEPT AND THEORY

In recent years, several prominent scholars have attempted toreinvigorate political-culture theory and defend it from thechallenge that rational-choice theory poses. Yet the primarythreat to the ‘renaissance’ of political-culturetheory comes not from rational-choice theory but from politicalculture's continued weakness as concept and theory. Even afterthe theoretical and empirical defenses provided in recent years,political culture remains poorly explicated along seven distinctdimensions: (1) how to define the concept; (2) how to disentanglesubcultures (for example an élite political culture)from a society's overall political culture; (3) how to integratethe many individual-level orientations of which the conceptis composed; (4) how to create a societal-level variable fromindividual-level components; (5) if the foregoing have beenresolved, how to measure the concept; (6) how to derive hypothesesabout individual political behavior from the subjective orientationsunder study; and (7) how political culture interacts with institutionsand other attributes of a polity to produce a propensity forcertain types of political outcomes. With these tasks left uncompleted,political culture remains no more than a rubric under whichdifferent authors focus on different individual orientations,employ different measures and different methods of aggregatingthe orientations, then test different propositions about thelinks between those individual orientations and politics.     

PRE-ELECTION POLITICAL POLLING AND THE NON-RESPONSE BIAS ISSUE

Non-response bias is of great concern in pre-election politicaltelephone polls, where the number of callbacks is far less thanin most academic and government studies. The fewer number ofcallbacks raises the issue of whether there might be a greaternon-response bias problem in such surveys. Given the publicimportance of political polls, there is a need to know somethingabout this. The general problem faced in trying to assess thisissue is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to obtaininformation on non-respondents. There is an additional problemwith political polling in that there are few public studiesabout non-response in such polling. This study assesses non-responsebias for five pre-election political polls which used four callbackseach. The study is unique in that information is available forall respondents and non-respondents. The initial list of individualsto be called was taken from a computerized voter registrationlist which contains the age and sex of each registrant. Thenon-response bias associated with not-at-homes, bad numbers,and refusals is assessed. The results indicate that bad numbersand not-at-homes have different bias effects from refusals,but they offset each other to some degree in a situation oflimited callbacks. More callbacks may reduce bias associatedwith not-at-homes, but not the bias associated with bad numbersand refusals. We usually do not know how biased nonresponseis, but it is seldom a good assumption that nonresponse is unbiased(Flower, 1984, p. 51–2     

MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL OUTSPOKENNESS IN HONG KONG: LINKING THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT AND THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE

This study analyzes the impact of perceptions of the opinionsof others on political outspokenness in Hong Kong. Two relatedtheories, the third-person effect and the spiral of silence,are tested in the context of public opinion regarding the Sino-Britishdispute over Hong Kong's political future. To estimate the potentialinfluence of perceived public opinion on political outspokennessduring this political crisis, a representative telephone surveyof 660 respondents in Hong Kong was conducted in November 1993. As hypothesized by the third-person effect, perceptions of theinfluence of media reports about the Sino-British dispute onothers were found to be consistently greater than perceptionsof influence on self. Similar to previous findings, respondentswith a higher level of education were more likely to believethat the mass media influence others more than themselves. Thestudy also found empirical support for the spiral of silencehypothesis. Politically unconcerned respondents were less willingto voice their political opinions publicly when they perceivedthe majority opinion not to be on their side. Findings alsoindicate that the third-person effect indirectly influencesthe spiral of silence process through its impact on perceptionsof public opinion.     

BOOK VIEWS

No abstract available for this article.     

PERCEIVING PUBLIC OPINION OF POLITICAL FIGURES: EXAMINING THE LINK BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE OPINION

While previous research has demonstrated that representationsof opinion distributions can impact individual-level judgements,the perceptual processes that yield estimates of that opinionare not yet fully explored. This study focuses exclusively onthe association between personal opinion and perceived publicopinion, examining its magnitude across several political figuresand within multivariate models of opinion perception. Moreover,the association between affective intensity toward a politicalfigure and perceived discrepancy with public opinion is alsoinvestigated. Overall, findings highlight a strong relationshipbetween personal and perceived public sentiment. While occasionallysignificant, the effects of group attachments are relativelymodest. Additionally, findings suggest that as affective orientationtoward political figures advances from neutrality to highlyfavorable or unfavorable, perceived discrepancies with publicsentiment rise considerably. Implications and future researchconsiderations are discussed in some detail.     

THE POLITICAL,ECONOMIC, AND TECHNOLOGICAL ROOTS OF SOME LEGAL ISSUES IN LIBRARY NETWORKING

No abstract available for this article.     

POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE, ATTRIBUTION, AND INFERRED INTEREST IN POLITICS: THE OPERATION OF BUFFER ITEMS

Bishop (1987) observed that being unable to answer a politicalknowledge question decreased self-reported interest in publicaffairs. This effect was unaffected by the introduction of upto 101 unrelated buffer items. In contrast, a single bufferitem that provided respondents with an external explanationfor their lack of knowledge greatly reduced the context effectin the present study. Implications for the operation of bufferitems are discussed.     

小平同志在上海民间

小平同志离开我们已有十多年了，十多年来，上海人一直怀念他。许多上海人聊天时说起邓小平，都觉得他还活在我们中间。这感觉是那么恍惚，又是那么真切。