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This paper considers grassroots globalization networks, which comprise a diversity of social movements working in association to engage in multi-scalar political action. Drawing upon David Harvey's notion of militant particularism (regarding the problems of effecting politics between different geographical scales), and recent research on networks and their relationship to places, the paper analyses People's Global Action, an international network of social movements opposing neoliberal globalization. From an analysis of the process geographies of People's Global Action, the paper proposes the notion of convergence space as a conceptual tool by which to understand and critique grassroots globalization networks. The paper argues that contested social relations emerge in such convergence spaces and considers the implications of these for theorizing such networks, and for political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With youth, in particular, there are perceptions of declining political interest; at the same time the world where normative democratic ideals were formed is rapidly changing. Globalization results in unclear boundaries between nation states. Consequentially corporations gain power, and advances in online technology make global communication all the more possible. Within such a context, the notion of political consumerism emerges and individual consumption is tied to the concept of citizenship. Young people's interest in non-traditional citizenship along with their strong online presence offers an opportunity to examine how organizations use the internet to address the young citizen-consumer. This paper presents results from a number of in-depth interviews with Web producers of UK-based youth organizations, and provides a look at how these organizations view political consumption in terms of their theoretical outlook and its application to their online presence. It concludes that issue-based campaigns see political consumerism as a new way forward for citizenship while others (those more tied to government) use it as a stepping stone to getting youth involved in more traditional arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a conference paper by Craig H. Grau of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, delivered at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 1981, in which he discussed the topic "The Neglected World of State Legislative Elections." It states that in this paper, the degree of competition was gauged for each winning state legislator in 42 states for two general elections, particularly 1976 and 1978.

I consider the design of policy-making institutions to aggregate preferences and information. A pervasive incentive problem hinders the creation of desirable deliberative institutions; participants that expect to have minority interests have an incentive to misrepresent their information. Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, diversity of preferences or information sources amplifies this incentive problem. It is only when all types of participants expect to have the majority interests or no individual's private information can be decisive that full aggregation is possible. The addition of external incentives enables efficient aggregation of preferences and information. The external incentives need only depend on agent actions and, interestingly, the magnitude of these external incentives can be vanishingly small for large groups. These external incentives can be created by augmenting deliberation with concerns about ex-poste monitoring or ex-interum perceptions of competence, the opportunity to trade in information markets, or the opportunity to join clubs with network externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in politics rises with participation in voluntary associations, even when these associations are quite apolitical. Theory suggests that members of such groups get politicized through acquaintance diversity, network size, association activity, holding office, helping with administrative work, or discussing politics with fellow members. This paper pioneers a suitable strategy for testing these mechanisms and applies this strategy to an organization irrelevant to politics. Only political discussion mobilizes political participation. If people have friends who talk politics in the association, they do so more themselves. The effect is strongest for peripheral members. Intense involvement in a very apolitical organization is at best irrelevant to political participation and may even divert people from political activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comprehensive and systematic study of collective action organizations (AOs) requires a new methodological approach that takes into account the rise of online sources as well as the new ways in which people interact and participate in politics. This article aims to present and situate in the related literature such an approach, which was recently created and applied in two European Commission funded research projects, LIVEWHAT and TransSOL, across nine and eight countries respectively. Moving beyond recent studies using online sources, our research used a hubs website based approach to study alternative action organizations (AAOs) in the LIVEWHAT project and transnational solidarity AOs in the TransSOL project. The hubs and subhubs websites that aggregate data on AOs in multiple regions were scraped to identify national samples that offer advanced coverage of the repertoire of AO activities, as defined by the teams. These nodal websites were used as sources, similar to the way in which newspapers are treated in protest event analysis. The article situates and compares the new action organization analysis approach against its foundational protest event, protest case, and political claims analyses, as well as other approaches offering data on online activism. It outlines its main features and the related data construction process, while showcasing its application in the two European Commission cross-national projects. Finally, its merits and limitations are discussed, including a reference to how it can be used as a foundation for a mixed-methods approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on Muslim participation in the governance of Leicester in the East Midlands of England, this article contests prevalent assumptions about the contemporary politics of multiculturalism. Specifically, it questions two narratives on the subject: first, a descriptive narrative about multiculturalism being in retreat; and second, a normative narrative about multiculturalism undermining national culture. Using interview, ethnographic and archival research, the article shows how a programme of multicultural politics has been implemented in Leicester that, while shifting, has remained firmly in place across national political and policy changes. It also demonstrates how this model of multicultural practice has emphasized civic communitarianism and utilized British national traditions. Using the above methods, the article questions the terms of political debate about multiculturalism, and considers how ‘convivial’ and ‘communitarian’ theoretical approaches to multiculturalism can renew and refashion multicultural political practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Compassionate conservatism is usually dismissed on the American political left as an empty slogan intended to mystify the real roots and aspirations of conservative politics. However, conservative Christian organizations and churches now conduct well-coordinated compassion campaigns on contested social issues such as sexual and reproductive rights. Through compassion campaigns, the Christian right also disseminates particular forms of political pedagogy regarding sexuality and compassion for followers who are subject to the movement's influence. Here, I turn to Hannah Arendt to analyze the politics of compassion at work in the ex-gay movement and in antiabortion projects such as Silent No More. This article presents evidence for a turn to compassionate pedagogies on the Christian right, analyzes these projects, and suggests ways that Arendt's political thought can inform our readings of conservative Christian compassionate discourse and political practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 2 decades, some anti-immigrant parties have managed to gain substantial electoral support in various European countries, most notably, Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) and Flanders (Vlaams Blok). However, in other countries, the success of such parties either has been insignificant or did not last. The most popular models of support for anti-immigrant parties focus primarily on the demand side of the electoral process. The authors develop a model to explain differences in aggregate-level support for these parties, which also takes into account the supply side. This model builds upon an explanation provided by Kitschelt. The model is tested empirically for 13 European anti-immigrant parties in the period from 1989 to 1999, altogether yielding 25 party-year combinations. The authors test the sociostructural model and their alternative model at the level of political parties. The sociostructural model explains 3% of the variance in success, whereas the authors' model explains 83%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We take as our starting point the insights of Downs (1957) into two-party competition. A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter. Later scholars have built on Downsian ideas to see what happens vis-á-vis party differentiation when we modify key assumptions found in the basic Downsian spatial model. Recent work allows us to turn what is taken to be the Downsian view on its head: Although there are pressures in two-party competition for the two parties to converge, in general we should expect nonconvergence. Moreover, contra the negative portrait offered by Green & Shapiro (1994) of the limited or nonexistent value of research on party competition models in the Downsian tradition, we argue that, when viewed as a whole, neo-Downsian models--especially those of the past decade--do allow us to reconcile theory and data in terms of a multi-componented theory of party competition with testable implications for comparative statics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey data from 390 respondents was analyzed to determine the relative effects of organizational involvement, socioeconomic status, and political attitudes on political participation. Two theoretical perspectives were investigated: mobilization theory and selection theory. Both the mobilization and selection perspectives were supported by the data; however, organizational involvement was shown to explain more of the variance in political participation than did social status and political attitudes. The mobilization perspective was further examined to determine if it worked equally well in all types of organizations. We found that the relationship between organizational involvement and political participation was stronger for "instrumental" than for "expressive" groups and for organizations characterized by high, as compared to low, levels of political discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number and putative importance of political action committees have grown, so too has scholarly attention to this new breed of political organization. Yet this attention has been uneven. Although much is now known about the aggregate spending patterns of PACs, much less is known about their internal lives. The present study attempts to open the PAC black box to empirical inquiry. Drawing on interviews with the managers of 70 Washington-based political action committees, we suggest how theoretical perspectives about formal voluntary associations may be usefully applied in explaining the behavior of PACs. After examining the relationships among several variables - organizational goals, constituency relations and decision making, strategy, and interorganizational relations - we show how these forces affect the behavior of corporate, trade/membership, labor, and nonconnected PACS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines competing claims about the size and significance of shifts in party identification, concluding that the evidence supports neither Burnham's "disaggregation" hypothesis nor those who contend that the time is ripe for a new party of the "liberal left." On the contrary, his analysis suggests that file Republican party is the most likely beneficiary of such changes as are occurring among the electorate, and that in fact an increase in Independents portends a brighter future for a Republican southern strategy than for a left-oriented new party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the main sources of strength of the two major political parties? In what areas of the country are the battle-lines most sharply drawn? What trends in sectional voting have occurred since the beginning of the New Deal? What are the possibilities of fundamental partisan realignment in the near future? An experienced observer of politics and government discusses these and other vital questions. Arthur N. Holcombe is Professor of Government at Harvard University, and author of such authoritative books as The Middle Classes in American Politics and Political Parties of Today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]