Public Segmentation and Government–Public Relationship Building: A Cluster Analysis of Publics in the United States and 19 European Countries

The purposes of this study are (a) to suggest a model of public segmentation and (b) to examine each segment's level of trust in government. By using individuals’ cognitive perceptions of government and participation in social organizations, as well as media use and demographic characteristics, as public segmentation criteria, a cluster analysis of international survey datasets of the United States and 19 European countries generated 3 public segments in each country. The largest cluster, named the underserved inactive majority, and representing a low level of income and education, low interest in politics, low trust in others, low citizenship standards, and minimal social participation, contrasted with the smallest cluster, named the satisfied active public. The identified segments differed in trust in governmental institutions, which is a key indicator of the quality of government–public relationships. Overall, the underserved inactive majority reported the lowest trust in governmental institutions, whereas citizen trust among the satisfied active public was the highest. This study highlights the theoretical and practical values of broad-based public segmentation in government public relations from the relationship-building perspective of public relations, rather than from a problem-solving perspective. Additionally, some targeted strategies for government communicators to enhance each segment's public trust in government are proposed based on the findings of this study.     

Inequality, Democratization, and De–Democratization

Reversions from democratic to undemocratic regimes have often occurred historically and continue to occur frequently. Both increases in categorical inequality across a regime's subject population and declines in the insulation of public politics from categorical inequality tend to de–democratize regimes. A general account of democratization and de–democratization yields a series of conjectures concerning the processes by which changes in categorical inequality threaten democracy.     

Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization

Unlike Artistotle's analysis, recent treatments of democratization identify pathways and propose necessary conditions but fall short of specifying cause-effect relations. Democratization does not follow a single path, and is unlikely to have universally applicable necessary or sufficient conditions. A political process analysis of democratization defines it as movement toward broad citizenship, equal citizenship, binding consultation of citizens, and protection of citizens from arbitrary state action. High levels of all four elements depend on a significant degree of state capacity. Democratization emerges from interacting changes in public politics, categorical inequality, and networks of trust, which in turn depend on specifiable mechanisms of change in social relations. When the shocks of conquest, confrontation, colonization, and revolution promote democratization, they do so by accelerating the same causal mechanisms. The next round of research and theory on democratization requires identification, verification, and connection of the relevant causal mechanisms.     

Citizens' Perceptions of Politics and Ethics in Public Administration: A Five-Year National Study of Their Relationship to Satisfaction with Services, Trust in Governance, and Voice Orientations

In recent decades organizational politics (OP) has become agrowing field of interest in managerial studies. To date, themajor scholarly effort has been dedicated to the explorationof intraorganizational politics based on employees' perceptions.However, one of the important aspects of this phenomenon isthe way in which it is viewed by the external organizationalenvironment—by customers, clients, and as far as governmentalagencies are concerned, by the general public as well. Thisarticle examines citizens' perceptions of organizational politicsand ethics in public administration systems. It focuses on therelationship between these perceptions and several key outcomesof modern bureaucracy such as satisfaction with services, trustin governmental institutions, and the resulting voice orientationsand actions by the public (i.e., political efficacy, politicalparticipation). The data for the study were gathered from ahalf decade's worth of national surveys in Israel. The resultspoint to meaningful direct and indirect relationships betweenorganizational politics and ethics in the public sector, satisfaction,trust, and voice orientation. The article ends with a discussionof the theoretical and practical implications of the findingsand suggestions for future studies.     

Communicating Global Activism

Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns; the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties; transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks; and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.     

“I'm going to do battle… I'm going to do some good”. Biographical trajectories,moral politics,and public engagement among highly religious young Catholics in Spain and Mexico

Public debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy-related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed “moral entrepreneurs.” Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.     

Social capital and public goods

Previous literature suggests positive relationships between social capital, pro-social behavior and subsequent economic development. We analyze the relationship between social networks and trust (two measures of social capital) and self-reported charitable contributions of time and/or money (pro-social behavior) using data collected from two ethnically distinct, low-income neighborhoods. We find that large social networks are positively related to charitable contributions, but that the effects of trust are less robust. We also find that social networks that are more geographically dispersed tend to be larger. Our results indicate that the social capital in a neighborhood is more important than ethnicity, ethnic diversity, or other demographic information in understanding public goods contributions.     

Muslim Mistrust: The Resilience of Negative Public Attitudes after Complimentary Information

Muslims have arguably been the most consistently demonized group in American politics of the past decade, factoring heavily in Republican presidential and congressional politics since 2002. Opinions about Muslims have split the American electorate, and we investigate why. Our explanation focuses on interlocking institutions—party, religion, and media—in encouraging beliefs about American Muslims that prove intransigent. Using data from three nationally representative surveys, including a survey embedded experiment, we examine the correlates of anti-Muslim beliefs. Our analysis finds that ceiling effects in the correlates of holding anti-Muslim attitudes and subject trust in Fox News Channel encourage a negative reaction to information that might repair public opinion about American Muslims.     

'I've Seen Changes'

Abstract

This article examines the political efficacy and effectiveness of American Indian and Hispanic women leaders in New Mexico. Using qualitative data from personal interviews with 50 grassroots activists and public officials involved in state, local, and/or tribal politics, I address the following research questions: Do American Indian and Hispanic grassroots activists and public officials perceive themselves as politically efficacious? How do their perceptions of efficacy differ? How effective are these activists and officials at influencing public policy and politics in New Mexico? The findings indicate that there are greater similarities among grassroots activists and public officials, as well as among Native and Hispanic women leaders, than might be expected from readings of classic political science literature. More importantly, while the majority of the leaders feel personally efficacious, there is substantial evidence of their impact both at the organizational level and in the larger political arena of state, local, and tribal politics.     

Trump and the legacy of a menacing past

The inability to learn from the past takes on a new meaning as a growing number of authoritarian regimes emerge across the globe. This essay argues that central to understanding the rise of a fascist politics in the United States is the necessity to address the power of language and the intersection of the social media and the public spectacle as central elements in the rise of a formative culture that produces the ideologies and agents necessary for an American-style fascism. In this project, education is central to politics, which demands understanding and critically interrogating, in particular, the role of the conservative media in suppressing history, normalizing a discourse of racial hatred, and advancing the most poisonous elements of neoliberalism. The essay calls for a comprehensive notion of politics and education that draws from history, imagines a present that does not imitate the future, and employs a language of critique and hope in the service of building a new broad-based political formation. If fascism begins with language so does the possibility of a radical social imaginary in which to envision a democratic socialist order that both challenges the menacing momentum of a fascist politics and the savagery of neoliberal capitalism.     

In regulation we trust

The role of trust has been argued to play an increasingly important role in modern, complex, and ambivalent risk societies. Trust within organizational research is anticipated to have a general strategic impact on aspects such as organizational performance, communication and knowledge exchange, and learning from accidents. Trust is also an important aspect related to regulation of risk. Diverse regulatory regimes, their contexts and risks influence regulators use of trust and distrust in regulatory practice. The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between risk regulation and trust across diverse risk regulation regimes. By drawing from studies of risk regulation, risk perception, and trust the purpose is to discuss how regulation and trust are linked and used in practice to control risk across system levels in socio-technical systems in high risk industries. This paper provides new knowledge on 1) how functional and dysfunctional trust and distrust are grounded in the empirical realities of high risk industries, 2) how different perspectives on trust and distrust act together and bring new knowledge on how society control risk.     

One of a Kind,or All of One Kind? Groups of Political Participants and Their Distinctive Outlook on Society

Political participation can take shape in many types of participation, between which the overlap is low. However, the similarities and differences between various types of participants are surprisingly understudied. In this article, I propose to differentiate between four types of participants: institutional political participants, non-institutional political participants, civic participants, and political consumers. These types differ from each other on two dimensions: whether they are political or publicly oriented and whether they are formally or informally organized. Building on the matching hypothesis, I argue that we should differentiate those four types of participants by their outlook on society (societal pessimism, political trust, and social trust). Using data from the European Social Survey 2006, including participants from 19 countries, logistic regressions show that institutional political participants trust politics rather than people, non-institutional political participants are societal pessimists who trust other people, civic participants are societal optimists who trust other people, and political consumers are pessimists who do not trust politics.     

Public‐Service Provision in Clientelist Political Settlements: Lessons from Ghana's Urban Water Sector

The politics of public‐service delivery continues to be neglected under the supposedly more context‐sensitive post‐Washington Consensus. Using interviews and documentary evidence from Ghana, this article provides an account of the networks of political interference and informal practices in Ghana's public water utility. It argues that, in order to understand why private‐sector participation succeeds or fails and why similar arrangements have different outcomes across developing countries, we need to examine the effects of the informal institutional context, particularly the country‐specific political settlement in which public‐service provision operates.     

The White City: Race and Urban Politics

Urban regime analysis and growth machine theory offer critical tools to study power and inequality in cities. However, the field of urban politics has moved away from critically addressing race. I discuss these theories' potential contributions before suggesting scholars “bring race back” to urban politics in several key areas: studying “White urban regimes” in addition to Black urban regimes; examining how Whiteness factors into growth (and anti‐growth) coalitions; exploring how racial discourse shapes urban regimes; and accounting for the relationship between suburbs and “fringe cities” and the city, including suburban regimes.     

The structure of guanxi: Resolving problems of network assurance

Two widespread assumptions concerning networks, including guanxi networks, are that they function in terms of trust relations and that their structure is dyadic. This article subjects both assumptions to critical assessment and proposes alternative formulations. When the distinctions between trust and trustworthiness and between trust and assurance are made, then broader understandings of guanxi relationships emerge. The article shows that the assurance mechanism of guanxi is public exposure of transgressions against network norms, leading to the transgressor’s loss of face (mianzi). The necessity of third-party intervention of this type, typically but not exclusively through gossip, indicates the triadic rather than dyadic structure of guanxi relationships when sanction of reputation is included in the conceptualization of guanxi. Changes in guanxi during economic transition in China, from strong-to weaker-tie associations, require careful consideration of the changing nature of the mechanisms of face-loss.     

Exploring the role of network diversity and resources in relationship to generalized trust in Norway

Several studies suggest a positive relationship between social capital and generalized trust. Employing a network understanding of social capital (Lin, 2001), this study questions which aspects of social networks may be linked with generalized trust. It investigates whether the diversity of social networks and the socio-economic status of one’s contacts are linked with generalized trust in the Norwegian, egalitarian context. The analyses examine these patterns in relationship to both kin and non-kin contacts. The study employs data from the first Norwegian survey that includes the position generator (PG). The empirical analyses show that extensive social networks are indeed linked to higher levels of generalized trust, but that this relationship is limited to non-kin contacts. Concerning the link between network resources and generalized trust, there is evidence of a more general association with generalized trust that holds when considering both kin and non-kin contacts. These results are a first step in developing a more nuanced discussion of the mechanisms associated with generalized trust and highlight the importance of employing measures that account for the homophily of networks when investigating their relationship to trust.     

The role of Landcare group networks in rural Australia: exploring the contribution of social capital

In this paper, the authors report their qualitative research examining the origins, modus operandi and outcomes of two networks. The concept of social capital explains, at least in part, the apparent success of these networks. The two networks attracted substantial funding, created opportunities for participation and shared learning, carried out extensive on-ground works, improved communication structures, adopted more professional management practices and increased the knowledge of members. The key elements of social capital that were important in achieving these outcomes were trust, norms, expectations of reciprocity and linkages. Empowerment acted as a bridge that linked social capital with other factors contributing to network outcomes. The success of these Landcare networks suggests that top-down government stimulus can be a catalyst for bottom-up community development.     

The origins and consequences of public trust in government: a time series analysis

The study of citizens' trust in the national government has been primarily individual-level, cross-sectional analysis. In the current research, we develop a quarterly time series measure of trust in the U.S. national government from 1980 to 1997 and conduct the first multivariate time series examination of public trust in government. We find that negative perceptions of the economy, scandals associated with Congress, and increasing public concern about crime each lead to declining public trust in government. Declining trust in government in turn leads to less positive evaluations of Congress and reduced support for government action to address a range of domestic policy concerns. These results provide new evidence of the influence of public concern about crime and the centrality of Congress in understanding public evaluations of the national government and new evidence of how declining levels of trust in government may influence elections and domestic policy making.     

Reputation in Rupture: Broken Alliances and Relational Politics in the Roosevelt-Taft Split

Under what circumstances do close allies sacrifice their unity? By what process do bonds break? Although it might be argued that political ruptures are determined by incommensurable ideas (policies, philosophies) or by contentious personalities (temperament, character), we argue that neither explanation is sociologically sufficient. Extending the theories of interpersonal ruptures of Diane Vaughan and Robert Emerson to political domains, we take a relational approach to politics by emphasizing the centrality of the availability of reputational information, networks of supporters, and public displays of antagonism in response to affronts within systems of institutional power. Our approach to public ruptures draws on a detailed case study: the broken alliance between presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, a dramatic instance of changing master-protégé relationship. The transition from close interpersonal alliance to public distaste typically involves four stages that expand a relational breach to an irreparable rupture: (1) personal grievance, (2) substantive disagreement, (3) public awareness, and (4) network activity. While every detailed case has limits, we note comparable instances and contend that this model applies broadly to broken partnerships in politics or other public domains.     

Governing transnational social problems: public health politics on the US–Mexico border

Governance research suggests that transnational networks are the key to developing and implementing cooperative public policy across borders. I examine this claim through analysing how the US–Mexico Border Health Commission, a policy instrument designed to enhance transnational public health cooperation, developed from idea to law in Mexico and the United States. Despite a long‐standing transnational network, the policy process took over ten years and was contentious, politicized by domestic policymaking in the United States. I show how transnational networked governance intersects with domestic politics and find that the structure of overlap between the two are places where actors promoting state and transnational interests struggle with each other to define public problems in an attempt to shape policy outcomes.