Showing posts with label political. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political. Show all posts

Friday, July 28, 2017

Modernization And Political Actions In The Brazilian Amazon

Modernization And Political Actions In The Brazilian Amazon

This book offers an analysis of the territory of Barcarena, in the Brazilian Amazon. The author studies the land use and the implemented modernization policies that made it one of the richest cities of the state.

The political system uses this territory as a resource to provide for the needs of a small circle of social agents. A system of conservative political actions enforces the process of modernization of the Baracena territory. Innovations in the Barcarena territory, such as the implementation of the aluminium factory Albras/Alunorte and the territorial configuration or public administration, lead to modernization simulations and artificial devices. The intended effect however is more about appearing to be modern, than actual modernization. The territorial use of Barcarena is aimed to protect the interests and privileges of the elite.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Politics And Big Data: Nowcasting And Forecasting Elections With Social Media

Politics And Big Data: Nowcasting And Forecasting Elections With Social Media

by Andrea Ceron (Author), Luigi Curini (Author), Stefano Maria Iacus (Author) The importance of social media as a way to monitor an electoral campaign is well established. Day-by-day, hour-by-hour evaluation of the evolution of online ideas and opinion allows observers and scholars to monitor trends and momentum in public opinion well before traditional polls. However, there are difficulties in recording and analyzing often brief, unverified comments while the unequal age, gender, social and racial representation among social media users can produce inaccurate forecasts of final polls. Reviewing the different techniques employed using social media to nowcast and forecast elections, this book assesses its achievements and limitations while presenting a new technique of "sentiment analysis" to improve upon them. The authors carry out a meta-analysis of the existing literature to show the conditions under which social media-based electoral forecasts prove most accurate while new case studies from France, the United States and Italy demonstrate how much more accurate "sentiment analysis" can prove. "Finally a book on Big Data and Social Media that provides a road map to sentiment analysis and is also theoretically interesting. Ceron, Curini and Iacus’ extremely fast algorithm can be used not only for forecasting and nowcasting elections but, as important, to conduct basic research on electoral political behavior. This is speed that we can do research with!" - Ernesto Calvo, Professor and Associate Chair, University of Maryland, Government and Politics "Election studies have experienced three modern, more or less generational, scientific waves: voting behavior (from 1960), election forecasting (from 1980) and big data (from 2010). The book at hand, a pioneer effort, combines the last two waves, aiming to predict election outcomes in advance by utilizing the vast amount of data available via social media. While the task has much complexity, the distillations of these authors, systematic and clear, show considerable progress. They compare the performance of their Sentiment Analysis technique to more traditional methods of forecasting, mainly public opinion polls, and show how accuracy can be achieved. Their discussion of recent elections in France, Italy and the United States are especially provocative. This path-breaking text has be a "must-read" for any student of the election forecasting art." - Michael S. Lewis-Beck, F.Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Iowa "This incredibly timely manuscript manages to pull off that rare feat of being both accessible and sophisticated in discussing a cutting edge methodological technique. Sentiment analysis is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the new field of text as data, and the authors provide an invaluable road map to the research that has been accomplished to date while at the same time introducing – and making a compelling argument for – their contribution to this burgeoning field, complete with open software to implement their methods. The remainder of the book then skillfully applies these new tools to the challenges of predicting election outcomes and assessing public opinion, two topics sure to be of great interest to many now more than ever." - Joshua A Tucker, Professor of Politics and Affiliated Professor of Data Science and Russian and Slavic Studies, New York University, and Co-Director of the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) laboratory is Assistant Professor at Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, where he teaches Political and Administrative Systems, and Applied Multivariate Analysis for Social Scientists. His research focuses on intra-party politics, quantitative text analysis, media bias, and social media analysis. He has published a dozen of papers in international academic peer-reviewed journals like British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, New Media & Society, Electoral Studies, Social Science Computer Review, Journal of Language and Politics, and others. is Associate Professor of political science at Università degli studi di Milano, Italy, where he teaches Political Science, Applied Multivariate Analysis for Social Scientists, Game Theory, and Analysis of Political Institutions. His research focuses on party competition, spatial theory of voting, and social media analysis. He has published over 30 papers in international academic peer-reviewed journals like Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Public Choice, Party Politics, European Political Science Review and many others. is Professor of mathematical statistics and probability at Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Member of the R Core Team for the deveolpment of the R statistical software. His fields of interest include computational statistics, theoretical statistics, inference for stochastic processes, text mining and sentiment analysis, and causal inference. He has published over 50 papers in international academic peer-reviewed journals.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Political Scandal, Corruption, And Legitimacy In The Age Of Social Media

Political Scandal, Corruption, And Legitimacy In The Age Of Social Media

The way in which social media is utilized has changed over the years, making it a growing forum for political discussion. Due to this, analyzing relationships between social media and politics can lead to an increased awareness of current political affairs.

Political Scandal, Corruption, and Legitimacy in the Age of Social Media is an essential research source for the latest information on national and international political propaganda and opinions spread by technological forums. Featuring expansive coverage on a number of relevant topics and perspectives, such as environmental justice, alternative ideology, and information and communication technologies (ICTs), this publication is ideally designed for researchers, students, and professionals seeking current research on the connection between social media and politics and its impact on modern society.

The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion In The Social Media Age

The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion In The Social Media Age

From hashtag activism to the flood of political memes on social media, the landscape of political communication is being transformed by the grassroots circulation of opinion on digital platforms and beyond. By exploring how everyday people assist in the promotion of political media messages to persuade their peers and shape the public mind, Joel Penney offers a new framework for understanding the phenomenon of viral political communication: the citizen marketer. Like the citizen consumer, the citizen marketer is guided by the logics of marketing practice, but, rather than being passive, actively circulates persuasive media to advance political interests. Such practices include using protest symbols in social media profile pictures, strategically tweeting links to news articles to raise awareness about select issues, sharing politically-charged internet memes and viral videos, and displaying mass-produced T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers that promote a favored electoral candidate or cause. Citizens view their participation in such activities not only in terms of how it may shape or influence outcomes, but as a statement of their own identity. As the book argues, these practices signal an important shift in how political participation is conceptualized and performed in advanced capitalist democratic societies, as they casually inject political ideas into the everyday spaces and places of popular culture.

While marketing is considered a dirty word in certain critical circles – particularly among segments of the left that have identified neoliberal market logics and consumer capitalist structures as a major focus of political struggle – some of these very critics have determined that the most effective way to push back against the forces of neoliberal capitalism is to co-opt its own marketing and advertising techniques to spread counter-hegemonic ideas to the public. Accordingly, this book argues that the citizen marketer approach to political action is much broader than any one ideological constituency or bloc. Rather, it is a means of promoting a wide range of political ideas, including those that are broadly critical of elite uses of marketing in consumer capitalist societies. The book includes an extensive historical treatment of citizen-level political promotion in modern democratic societies, connecting contemporary digital practices to both the 19th century tradition of mass political spectacle as well as more informal, culturally-situated forms of political expression that emerge from postwar countercultures. By investigating the logics and motivations behind the citizen marketer approach, as well as how it has developed in response to key social, cultural, and technological changes, Penney charts the evolution of activism in an age of mediatized politics, promotional culture, and viral circulation.

The Transformation Of American Liberalism

The Transformation Of American Liberalism

With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the US government ushered in a new era of social welfare policies, to counteract the devastation of The Great Depression. While political philosophers generally view the welfare state to be built on values of equality and human dignity, America's politicians, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, argued on different grounds. From the beginning, Roosevelt based his defense of the welfare state on the individualist, or Lockean premises inherent in America's political culture. As a result, he not only encouraged the United States' commitment to individualism, but also contributed to distinctively harsh American stigmatization of welfare recipients.

In The Transformation of American Liberalism, George Klosko explores how American political leaders have justified social welfare programs since the 1930s, ultimately showing how their arguments have contributed to notably ungenerous programs. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Individualist values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America's leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and American culture's individualist assumptions. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in American political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

State, Institutions And Democracy: Contributions Of Political Economy

State, Institutions And Democracy: Contributions Of Political Economy

This book presents a set of original and innovative contributions on state, institutions and democracy in the field of political economy. Modern political economy has implied the interaction between politics and economics to understand political, electoral and public issues in different nations, and in this volume a group of leading political economists and political scientists from Europe, America and Asia provides theoretical advances, modelling and case studies on main topics in political economy.

The analysis of the role and performance of politics and democracy in diverse nations implies the study of the organization of the state, lobbying, political participation, public policies, electoral politics, public administration and the provision of public services. This book provides advances in the research frontier of these topics and combines historical evidence, institutional analysis, mathematical models and empirical analysis in an interdisciplinary approach. Political and social scientists, economists and those interested in the performance of states, democracy and elections can find new research results in this volume.

Alter-globalization In Southern Europe: Anatomy Of A Social Movement

Alter-globalization In Southern Europe: Anatomy Of A Social Movement

Considering the rise of global political instability and subsequent importance of new social movements, this cutting edge book examines the relationship between the alter-globalization movement and political power in Italy, Spain, and Greece. It argues that not only is the movement anti-political, but that it operates within an apolitical social milieu, as a ritualized holding pattern for middle class youths that find themselves uncomfortably placed between a receding state structure on the one hand, and a rising informal economy on the other. Its ritual liminality allows adherents to act revolutionary while assuring that their middle class privileges remain intact. The author considers the social ramifications of the movement at a time when Europe finds itself at a political and economic crossroads, and offers specific and timely case studies from the three southern European countries.

Political Communication And European Parliamentary Elections In Times Of Crisis: Perspectives From Central

Political Communication And European Parliamentary Elections In Times Of Crisis: Perspectives From Central

This book tackles the 2014 European Parliamentary election as an event, phenomenon and process from an interdisciplinary but coherent perspective. This edited volume includes research by prestigious academics from the former communist countries in question, all of which have only recently become EU members. The contributors consider whether there is a crisis of Euroscepticism, or, for that matter, extremism of any kind in each country discussed. In doing so, the volume seeks to analyse the future of the European Union itself. It will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in elections and voting behaviour, comparative European politics, and political communication.

The New Turkey And Its Discontents

The New Turkey And Its Discontents

The Turkey of today little resembles that of recent decades. Its economy has expanded hugely, new political elites have emerged, and the once powerful Kemalist military is no longer a potent and dominant political player. Meanwhile, new prosperity has had many unexpected social and political repercussions, pre-eminent among which is the advent of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which first came to power in 2002 by downplaying its Islamist leanings and marketing itself as a center-right party.

After several terms in office, and amid unprecedented popularity, the conduct of the AKP and its leading cadres has faced growing criticism. Turkey has yet to solve its Kurdish question, and its foreign policy is increasingly under threat as it balances relations with Iran, Israel, Iraq and Russia, to name only a few of its more demanding interlocutors. Widespread domestic protests gripped the country in 2013. The government is now perceived by many to be corrupt, unaccountable, intimidating of the press and intolerant of alternative political views and criticism. Has this once promising democracy descended into a tyranny of the majority led by a charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Is Turkey more polarized now than ever in its recent history? These are among the questions posed in this timely primer on a rising economic power.

Social Inequality, Economic Decline, And Plutocracy: An American Crisis (critical Political Theory And Radical Practice)

Social Inequality, Economic Decline, And Plutocracy: An American Crisis (critical Political Theory And Radical Practice)

This book aims to further an understanding of present day America by exploring counter-hegemony to the rule of capital and offering guidelines for strategizing change proceeding from the dialectic of What Is and What Ought to Be. The author analyzes neoliberal global order and its political expressions through discussions of the dominance of finance capital in the late twentieth century, the triumph of ideology, the closing of avenues to reform, the problem of the captive state, and a sociological analysis of rule by “divide and conquer.” The book concludes with a look at the history of movement politics in culture, arts, economics, and politics. It resounds with a hope that challenges to hegemony can use many paths to change, of which the electoral path is but one of many fronts, in the long-term struggle for radical reform.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding The Allure Of Trump

Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding The Allure Of Trump

The 2016 election has inspired millions of U.S. citizens—and struck panic in the hearts of millions more. This book explains the allure of Trump, examines how Trump's success ties into the hopes and fears of many Americans, and calls into question the limitations of our democratic system.

• Examines Donald Trump's ascendancy and elective allure from the perspectives of social, political, and evolutionary psychology as well as neuroscience and biopsychology

• Challenges readers to reconsider the process of electoral politics and political voting in the United States

• Considers how voting behavior and political choices are often based on emotions rather than on a rational, carefully considered decision-making process

China's Political System

China's Political System

The Chinese government is one of the most important actors in international affairs today. To thoroughly understand how the People’s Republic of China has grown in power requires a careful analysis of its political system. To what extent can China’s economic achievements be attributed to the country’s political system and its policies? What are the effects of economic modernization and global economic integration on the Chinese polity? Is the Chinese political system capable of adapting to changing economic, technological, social, and international conditions? Exploring these central questions, this definitive book provides readers with a comprehensive assessment of the preconditions, prospects, and risks associated with China’s political development.

Democratisation In The 21st Century : Reviving Transitology

Democratisation In The 21st Century : Reviving Transitology

The 2010’s was a critical period in the continuing, established trend of the spread of democracy worldwide: from the Arab Spring countries of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen to the unfolding turmoil of Myanmar and Ukraine, by way of the upheavals in Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ivory Coast, social mobilisation against autocratic, corrupt, or military regimes has precipitated political transitions that are characteristic of "democratisation." This book examines the state of democratisation theory and practice that reopens and revives the democratic transition debate, exploring the factors that lead to the demise of autocracy, the pathways and processes of change, and the choice for an eventual consolidation of democracy. For all its insights and shortcomings, the framework of transitology – a body of literature that has comparatively and through case-study analysis, examined common patterns, sequences, crises and outcomes of transitional periods – has been largely eschewed. The essays, written by international democratisation specialists, tackle the series of questions raised by a body of literature that remains highly useful to understand contemporary political turbulence and transformation, considering numerous crucial issues. This work will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of governance, democratisation, comparative politics, international relations, political science and more broadly, history.

Energy Relations In The Euro-mediterranean: A Political Economy Perspective

Energy Relations In The Euro-mediterranean: A Political Economy Perspective

This book investigates the current status and future prospects of energy relationships in the Euro-Mediterranean region. By adopting a political economy perspective, this book provides insight into regional cooperation in the fields of natural gas and renewable energy. The author posits that regional energy relations have yet to be examined through a comprehensive analytical framework in order to realistically assess the potential role of energy in acting as a catalyst for greater economic and political cooperation in the region. To do so, the author provides a detailed analysis of the region’s energy relations and pertinent case studies. Chapters illustrate the political and economic drivers underpinning the region’s energy dynamics, providing the reader with a wide-ranging overview of the Euro-Mediterranean energy relations of today and tomorrow.

Election Posters Around The Globe: Political Campaigning In The Public Space

Election Posters Around The Globe: Political Campaigning In The Public Space

This book examines the history and role of election posters as one of the most crucial forms of political communication, especially in electoral campaigns, in a number of countries around the globe. The contributing authors present comparative research on electoral posters from countries from all five continents, summarizing international similarities and national differences. The book also discusses theoretical aspects and different methodological approaches that are used for studying the design, content and reception of election posters as a means of political communication.

Not A Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, And Utterly Mangle Science

Not A Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, And Utterly Mangle Science

An eye-opening tour of the political tricks that subvert scientific progress.

The Butter-Up and Undercut. The Certain Uncertainty. The Straight-Up Fabrication. Dave Levitan dismantles all of these deceptive arguments, and many more, in this probing and hilarious examination of the ways our elected officials attack scientific findings that conflict with their political agendas. The next time you hear a politician say, "Well, I’m not a scientist, but…," you’ll be ready.

6 photographs, figures

Debates, Rhetoric And Political Action: Practices Of Textual Interpretation And Analysis (rhetoric, Politics And Society)

Debates, Rhetoric And Political Action: Practices Of Textual Interpretation And Analysis (rhetoric, Politics And Society)

This book explicates how debates and documents can be understood, interpreted and analysed as political action. It offers the reader both a theoretical introduction and practical guidance. The authors deploy the perspective that debates are to be understood as political activity, and documents can be regarded as frozen debates. The first chapter discusses what is to be understood as politics and political. The second chapter explains the concept of debate as an exchange of arguments in speaking pro and contra. The third chapter presents concrete approaches, research practices and experiences that help analysing debates and documents as politics. The fourth chapter consists of a number of case studies that demonstrate how researchers can proceed in analysing parliamentary debates, documents, laws, and media articles. This book will be of use to all students and scholars interested in analysing texts and documents, as well as in political rhetoric and parliamentary debates.

Foucault And The Modern International: Silences And Legacies For The Study Of World Politics

Foucault And The Modern International: Silences And Legacies For The Study Of World Politics

This book addresses the possibilities of analyzing the modern international through the thought of Michel Foucault. The broad range of authors brought together in this volume question four of the most self-evident characteristics of our contemporary world-'international', 'neoliberal', 'biopolitical' and 'global'- and thus fill significant gaps in both international and Foucault studies. The chapters discuss what a Foucauldian perspective does or does not offer for understanding international phenomena while also questioning many appropriations of Foucault's work. This transdisciplinary volume will serve as a reference for both scholars and students of international relations, international political sociology, international political economy, political theory/philosophy and critical theory more generally.

Shattered: Why Hillary Clinton Lost The Presidential Election

Shattered: Why Hillary Clinton Lost The Presidential Election

ShatteredRead Shattered on your PC, Mac, smart phone, table, ipad or Kindle device.So, how did a man who made his fortune via business deal and celebrity appearances beat out someone who was, on many occasions, said to have been the most qualified presidential candidate the country had ever seen? In order to breakdown that question, one has to consider all of the factors that played in her nomination: her win over Bernie Sanders and the controversy that surrounded it, the issue with her emails and why this issue was not only important but completely dissected by the public, and one has to go back so far as to take a look at her political career and some of the decisions she made along the way. No one is perfect, but everything plays into a one-track mindset that would eventually grate the nation the wrong way. The nominee platforms for president would become so skewed that many would lose hope, swaying their votes in favor of the bombastic personality simply to spite Hillary. But, to what end? Why would over half of an entire nation elect a man with no political career over a woman whose entire career was political? What made Donald Trump so palatable to the majority of Americans? Why in the world was Hillary Clinton deemed more of an animal than a rich white man with no political experience whose basic “locker room talk” surrounded around the topic of forcing himself onto women and them “allowing” it because he was rich. The answer is clearer than one might suspect and not at all laid where one might try to look. The answers within this book with rile up the deadest of hearts and anger the most passive of individuals. But, it is a modern reality the world is now currently facing, and in order to never repeat the past, people have to understand what happened. It is imperative that we understand what truly happened.Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn…Hillary the PoliticianHillary and her DownfallsHillary the Secretary of StateThe Race against BernieDonald TrumpMuch, much more!Download your copy today!

Crisis, Agency, And Law In Us Civil-military Relations

Crisis, Agency, And Law In Us Civil-military Relations

This book develops a responsible and practical method for evaluating the success, failure, or “crisis” of American civil-military relations among its political and uniformed elite. The author’s premise is that currently there is no objectively fair way for the public at large or the strategic-level elites to assess whether the critical and often obscured relationships between Generals, Admirals, and Statesmen function as they ought to under the US constitutional system. By treating these relationships―in form and practice―as part of a wider principal (civilian)-agency (military) dynamic, the book tracks the “duties”―care, competence, diligence, confidentiality, scope of responsibility―and perceived shortcomings in the interactions between US civilian political authorities and their military advisors in both peacetime and in war.

The Colt 1911 Pistol (Osprey Weapon 9)

Download The Colt 1911 Pistol (Osprey Weapon 9) First used in combat during the Punitive Expedition into Me...