William Howard Taft,the 1908 Election,and the Future of the American Presidency

Although the first presidential election where both major party candidates (William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan) hit the campaign trail, the election of 1908 is a neglected election. When scholars do address it, they typically focus on retiring incumbent president Theodore Roosevelt and his role therein. This article turns the focus away from Roosevelt, and also Bryan, and places it firmly on Taft, a reluctant candidate. Taft's role in 1908 is important because his very reluctance to embrace the changing expectations of the presidency helps to highlight the tensions between the old and new ways of campaigning and, more broadly, the traditional and modern presidencies.

The article first addresses Taft's decision to abandon his “front-porch” campaign. Taft's initial inclination toward a front-porch campaign reveals well his more traditional approach to the election and to the presidency in general, just as his decision to abandon this plan and “stump” for votes reflects his submission to developing trends and expectations. Second, the article examines the changing role of technology, this election being the first to feature phonograph recordings of the candidates, which would then be sold—and played—across the country. Third, the tours and speeches of Taft in the 1908 general election take center stage. The spectacle of these tours offers further evidence of the changing contours of American politics and presidential leadership, especially in elevating the personalities of the candidates. Finally, the 1908 election is examined from the standpoint of American political development and presidential history.     

Risk and the Sacred: Environment,Media and Public Opinion in Bali

This exploration of controversies over environmental regulation in the Indonesian province of Bali traces the relationship between the media, environmental attitudes and Balinese identity, focusing on the religious dimension of that identity and the ways in which this has become bound up with conceptions of environmental imbalance and a popular critique of capitalist development on the island. The fusion of cultural and environmental metaphors of ‘erosion’ and ‘preservation’ in public discourse is striking in the Balinese case, since sites of great spiritual significance are also attractive to investors for their aesthetic appeal and heritage value (Verschuuren et al. 2010). From the earliest emergence of environmental conflict on the island, the emotive power of cultural identity became intimately connected with environmental politics. This article traces several of the pervasive and interconnected dichotomies ‐ sacred and profane, cultural value and economic interest, environmental preservation and use (exploitation), certainty and uncertainty (risk) ‐ that characterise debates surrounding environmental regulation and development on the island.     

Public Opinion and Policy Representation: On Conceptualization,Measurement, and Interpretation

The congruence between public preferences and public policy is of special importance in representative democracies. We want to know whether the public is getting the policies it wants and, if not, whose preferences are being represented. To directly evaluate congruence, scholars need to measure what the public wants in a particular policy area and then correctly match it to policy in that area. This is difficult to do. Not surprisingly, while much scholarship examines the congruence of positions, little research examines actual policy congruence. Even the work that there is on the subject offers limited information. In this paper, I assess what we can infer about congruence from the different scholarly traditions in the study of representation. I also consider prospects for research on the match between public preference inputs and public policy outputs, particularly when we cannot assess it directly.     

Reappraising Walter Bagehot's Liberalism: Discussion,Public Opinion,and the Meaning of Parliamentary Government

Summary

This article offers a novel and comprehensive account of Walter Bagehot's political thought. It ties together an interpretation of Bagehot's liberal commitment to norms of discussion and deliberation, with an analysis of Bagehot's extensive arguments about the institutions of representative government. We show how Bagehot's opposition to American-style presidentialism, to parliamentary democracy, and to proportional representation were profoundly shaped by his conceptions of government by discussion, and the rule of public opinion. Bagehot's criticisms of English parliamentarianism, both of its pre-1832 and post-1832 varieties were also motivated by those principles, as was his own proposal for parliamentary reform. By examining the whole range of Bagehot's writings on representative government (not merely his preference for parliamentarianism over presidentialism) and by connecting his institutional recommendations to his liberal principles, we are also able to better clarify Bagehot's position in Victorian political thought. The article concludes with a discussion of the debate leading up to the Second Reform Act, in which we elucidate Bagehot's disagreements with other prominent exponents of liberalism including John Stuart Mill, the “university liberals,” and Robert Lowe.     

传教士·公正舆论·教案——由义和团时期的卫礼贤所想到的

卫礼贤是 1 9世纪 90年代由德国新教传教组织———同善会派往中国的传教士 ,他在义和团时期表现出与西方众多传教士绝然不同的理念和行动 ;他对义和团缘起必然性及其斗争正义性的公允理解和支持在当时德国的舆论界并不是孤立的 ;由此引出对中国近代史上长达 1 0 0多年反教会斗争最本质原因的新思考     

The Odd Compartmentalization: Public Opinion,Aggregate Data,and Policy Analysis*

This article examines some of the assumptions that underlie the use of aggregate data for policy analysis, In particular, it explores the consequences of the assumption of antagonistic attitudes between “haves” and “have nots” on social welfare policies. Use of public opinion data demonstrates the low salience of regressiveness of taxation and thereby calls into question the validity of a common indice in aggregate analysis. The use of this and related examples is intended to demonstrate the value of supplementing aggregate data analysis of public policy with direct evidence about public attitudes toward those policies.     

British Conservative Opinion and the Problem of Germany after the First World War

This work examines British conservative attitudes towards the Weimar Republic through the lens of several specific issues from the armistice up to the Ruhr Crisis of 1923. The author argues that a curious feature of British conservative opinion following the First World War was the consistent hostility British conservatives demonstrated towards the new German democratic state. To be sure, Great Britain had just fought a long and costly war against Germany, and there had been little time for the passions generated by the war to cool. Still, from the early days of the political changes in October and November of 1918, the German government was firmly committed to democratic principles. This was a development that the British nation claimed to favour, but the war left many British conservatives ill disposed to consider that the ‘inner change’ in Germany might be genuine or that a stable German democracy was possible. During its formative years, the Weimar Republic faced enormous challenges that would have tested any nation. Yet, even as political and economic conditions within Germany undermined prospects for democracy to succeed in that country, many British conservatives declined to take these developments seriously. Indeed, the attitudes of British conservatives substantially added to the difficulties the German government faced in dealing with the problems of the post-war world.     

朝野纠葛:北京政府时期的舆论与外交--以关税特别会议为个案的考察

关于北京政府时期的外交,尽管学术界近来已开始有了较为客观的评价,不过对于其背后因素的考察还有待深入。实际上,在北京政府时期,由于特殊的时代背景,各种社会舆论被全面动员起来,以汹涌澎湃之势冲击着外交这一特殊的政治领域,从而形成了近代史上国民外交的黄金时期。于是,由于中央政府统治的虚弱,在其决策者进行外交运作时,就处处受到来自舆论界的影响,这是一个极为明显的历史特色,通过对当时舆论的考察,就会更深层次地探究北京政府外交的两难境地。笔者在考察时,主要以关税特别会议为个案,以上海舆论为核心,以《申报》、《东方杂志》等报刊为第一手资料。