In Search of Political Influence: Strategic Choices and Media Coverage of Political Parties, Interest Groups and Social Movements in Western European Countries

Outside lobbying is a key strategy for social movements, interest groups and political parties for mobilising public opinion through the media in order to pressure policymakers and influence the policymaking process. Relying on semi-structured interviews and newspaper content analysis in six Western European countries, this article examines the use of four outside lobbying strategies – media-related activities, informing (about) the public, mobilisation and protest – and the amount of media coverage they attract. While some strategies are systematically less pursued than others, we find variation in their relative share across institutional contexts and actor types. Given that most of these differences are not accurately mirrored in the media, we conclude that media coverage is only loosely connected to outside lobbying behaviour, and that the media respond differently to a given strategy when used by different actors. Thus, the ability of different outside lobbying strategies to generate media coverage critically depends on who makes use of them.

Practice Movements: The Politics of Non-sovereign Power

Practice movements, that is, forms of unorganized collective action, are a central site of politics. Their defining moments are that their goals are expressed in practices rather than in words, and that these “pre-ideological” practices aim at access to or redistribution of goods, whether material or symbolic, rather than at representation. They are transgression rather than resistance in that they transgress restrictions inherent in the material organization of space, property relations, status orders, and normative regulations, be they laws, morals, or customs. Practice movements are above all about access and participation rather than about autonomy, and thus have an ambiguous relation to the transformation of the status quo. Their politics are transformative and they can produce temporary or lasting changes in the material grounds or in the regulation of the everyday life of those who pursue them, and potentially of the normativity and the organization of the wider social order.

Handbook of Swiss Politics

Approaching Switzerland as a “laboratory” for democracy, this Handbook contributes to a refined understanding of the res publica. Over the years, the Handbook of Swiss Politics has established itself as a classic work. This new and extended second edition of the Handbook comprises 32 chapters, all by leading Swiss political scientists. The contributors write about fundamentals, institutions, interest groups, political parties, new social movements, the cantons and municipalities, elections, popular votes, policy processes and public policies. They address several important issues in the current international debates, such as the internationalization of domestic politics, multi-level governance, and the role of metropolitan agglomerations. Nine new chapters enrich this second, completely updated version. The section on public policies has been significantly extended, and covers a dozen of policy domains. Grounded on the latest scientific knowledge, this volume also serves as an indispensable reference for a non-academic audience of decision-makers, diplomats, senior officials and journalists.

Catching Reality or Bowing Disciplines: How to Move the Study of Citizenship

In his contribution, Joppke justifies his selection of foundational scholars by linking each to what he sees as the three key facets of citizenship: status, rights and identity. Maarten Vink explicitly links his research agenda to the first, status, and outlines why it is so important. In identifying three facets of citizenship, Joppke acknowledges that some academics would include political participation, but he ultimately decides against it. But here we can, and should, broaden citizenship studies by bringing in insights from the behavioral politics tradition in domestic politics - when and why people engage in political acts - and from the social movements literature in sociology. I believe that the American debate on immigration reform, admittedly stalled, would not have advanced as far as it has without the social movement activism of DREAMers - unauthorized young people pushing for a path to citizenship - and the belief that Barack Obama won re-election in part because of the Latino vote. Importantly, one type of political activism demands formal citizenship, the other does not. As many contributors note, the “national models” approach has had a significant impact on citizenship studies. Whether one views such models through a cultural, institutional or historical lens, this tends to be a top-down, macro-level framework. What about immigrants’ agency? In Canada, although the ruling Conservative government is shifting citizenship discourse to a more traditional language - as Winter points out - it has not reduced immigration, ended dual citizenship, or eliminated multiculturalism, all goals of the Reform Party that the current prime minister once helped build. “Lock-in” effects (or policy feedback loops) based on high immigrant naturalization and the coming of age of a second-generation with citizenship also d emands study, in North America and elsewhere. Much of the research thus far suggests that political decisions over citizenship status and rights do not seem linked to immigrants’ political activism. State-centered decision-making may have characterized policy in the early post-World War II period in Europe (and East Asia?), but does it continue to hold today? Majority publics and immigrant-origin residents are increasingly politicized around citizenship and immigration. Does immigrant agency extend citizenship status, rights and identity to those born outside the polity? Is electoral power key, or is protest necessary? How is citizenship practiced, and contested, irrespective of formal status? These are important and understudied empirical questions, ones that demand theoretical creativity - across sub-fields and disciplines - in conceptualizing and understanding citizenship in contemporary times.