Kenneth NMI Newton

• University of Southampton

In spite of the concern about the political influence of the new digital media, especially social media, a large amount of circumstantial evidence suggests that their impact on mass political attitudes and behaviour, which is the focus of this article, may be small. Online news is less widely trusted than the news consumed via the legacy media (TV,...

Now in its fourth edition, this textbook gives a clear and concise account of the government and politics of democratic states, comprehensively updated with recent developments. It provides an ideal guide for undergraduate students who want to understand how and why democratic systems differ between countries and how they are changing in the modern...

It is commonly said that the lockdowns and social distancing necessary to control coronavirus pandemics will only work if the general population trusts its government, believes the information it provides, and has confidence in its policies. This article traces the British government’s record in providing information about its policies and performa...

During recent years, empirical trust research has significantly advanced our understanding about the interdependencies of social and political trust. This progress can mostly be attributed to major improvements of measurement instruments in survey research. Research on the causes of both forms of trust have examined the top-down approach of trust b...

Political trust – of citizens in government, parliament or political parties – has been centre stage in political science for more than half a century, reflecting ongoing concerns about the legitimacy of representative democracy. This Handbook offers the first truly global perspective on political trust and integrates the conceptual, theoretical, m...

The new edition of this leading overview of comparative politics once again blends theory and evidence across democratic systems to provide unparalleled coverage. The student-friendly structure and clear, concise writing ensure that complex issues are clearly explained and students engage with the key theories. The third edition is updated througho...

This article provides an accessible overview of the growing research literature on the impact of public service and commercial broadcasting and highlights its main implications for policy discussions about the future of public service broadcasting in Western societies. It shows that the populations of countries with public service broad- and narrow...

Verursachen oder verschärfen die Massenmedien eine Krise der Demokratie? Die umfangreiche und mannigfaltige sogenannte Mediamalaise-Literatur geht davon aus, dass Medien in den westlichen Demokratien einen starken Einfluss auf Politik und Regierung ausüben und sie dadurch die Demokratie schwächen oder gar zerstören können. Medien – Presse, TV, Radi...

Nach der Theorie von Putnam (1993: 167) besteht Sozialkapital aus drei eng miteinander verbundenen Elementen. Als erstes sind da Normen der Zusammenarbeit, gegenseitige Rücksichtnahme und soziales Vertrauen. Damit lassen sich Reibungsflächen glätten und gesellschaftliche Solidarität verstärken, und es ermöglicht den Bürgern Kooperation, um gemeinsa...

The New British Politics is one of the most comprehensive and successful introductions to British politics ever published. Now available in a fully revised and updated fourth edition, this clear, lively and authoritative text has an emphasis on law and order and the historical context of British politics. Written by internationally-known specialist...

The impressive urban growth over the last decades has made it clear that cities, particularly large metropolitan areas are here to stay for the foreseeable future. However, they will remain a problem for government as their size makes them difficult and expensive to run. This article argues that large metropolises need large scale governments that...

Generalized trust has become a paramount topic throughout the social sciences, in its own right and as the key civic component of social capital. To date, cross-national research relies on the standard question: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Yet the ra...

Leading scholars from various disciplines con-sider trust in others as the core of social capital (Coleman 1990; Fukuyama 1995; Inglehart 1997; Putnam 1995; Uslaner 2002). Scholars usually distinguish between two forms of trust in others (Freitag and Traunmüller 2009; Glanville and Paxton 2007; Sztompka 1999; Welch et al. 2005): one involves a narr...

This article investigates the relationships between particular social trust, general social trust, and political trust and tests a variety of political, social-psychological, and social capital theories of them. This sort of research has not been carried out before because until the World Values Survey of 2005–07 there has been, to our knowledge, n...

This authoritative new introductory text covers the key concepts, theories and issues involved in the study of comparative politics. Focusing on democratic government, it covers all important topics in the field from constitutional design and institutions; through mass and elite politics, groups, parties, the media and governments; to policy making...

In spite of the great importance attached by social capital theory to the role of social trust in maintaining stable and effective democracy, research has produced rather weak and mixed support for the idea that the socially trusting individuals tend to be politically trusting, and the weight of evidence suggests either a weak or insignificant rela...

"Während viele Studien auf der Individualebene eine fragmentierte, mehrdimensionale und nicht-kumulative Struktur politischer Partizipation aufzeigen, kommt dieser Vergleich von 22 Nationen Europas auf der Makroebene zum Ergebnis, dass verschiedene Formen politischer und sozialer Beteiligung sowohl kumulativ als auch eindimensional sind. So können...

Este artículo analiza las relaciones entre tres variables fundamentales dentro de la literatura sobre capital social. En él se discuten la conceptualización y operacionalización empírica de cada una de ellas y se examinan sus relaciones mutuas y el papel de algunas variables básicas, como el asociacionismo, en sus orígenes. Los datos utilizados pro...

Este artículo analiza las relaciones entre tres variables fundamentales dentro de la literatura sobre capital social. En él se discuten la conceptualización y operacionalización empírica de cada una de ellas y se examinan sus relaciones mutuas y el papel de algunas variables básicas, como el asociacionismo, en sus orígenes. Los datos utilizados pro...

This article examines the relations among three crucial variables within the literature o social capital. It discusses the conceptualization of each of them and how to make them operational, and analyzes their mutual interactions and the role of other classical variables, such as voluntary associations, in their origins. The survey data come from t...

A fierce controversy has broken out recently in political and social science circles about the effect of socially mixed and multi-cultural populations on modern society. At the heart of the argument is an article by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discussing the impact of diversity and pluralism (eth-nic, religious, linguistic, national a...

The Oxford Handbook of Political Behaviour examines the role of the citizen in contemporary politics, based on articles from leading scholars of political behaviour research. What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new resp...

Arguments about the optimum size for units of local government often overlook the fact that small units have some considerable drawbacks while large ones have some advantages. By and large the discussion breaks down into two parts; those about size and functional effectiveness, and those about size and democracy. On the first count, it seems that l...

  The idea that the modern mass media have a strong and malign effect on many aspects of social and political life is widely and strongly held. Television is often said to undermine democratic government popular support for leaders and institutions. In spite of all that has been written about media malaise, however, both theory and evidence suggest...

This article assesses two main theories of the decline of political support that is found in many western democracies. The first is society centred and built on the concepts of social capital, trust and civil society. The second is politics centred and focuses on the performance of government and the economy. The two theories are not necessarily in...

Part 1. Introduction 1. Political Disaffection in Comparative Perspective Part 2. Concepts and Dimensions 2. Democracy, Disaffection and Institutions: Some Neo-Tocquevillean Speculations 3. The Multidimensionality of Political Support for New Democracies: Conceptual Redefinition and Empirical Refinement Part 3. Causes I: Institutional Disaffection...

This analysis of variations in the level of generalized social trust (defined here as the belief that others will not deliberately or knowingly do us harm, if they can avoid it, and will look after our interests, if this is possible) in 60 nations of the world shows that trust is an integral part of a tight syndrome of social, political and economi...

Two main theories are widely used to explain the widespread loss of political support in western democracies. One is largely society-centred and built around the concept of social capital and civil society, the other is predominantly politics-centred and focuses on the performance of government and the political system. Social capital and civil soc...

This authoritative new introductory text covers the key concepts, theories and issues involved in the study of comparative politics. Focusing on democratic government, it covers all important topics in the field from constitutional design and institutions; through mass and elite politics, groups, parties, the media and governments; to policy making...

Social trust is often said to be the essence of social capital. Trusting citizens are good citizens. Theorists argue that voluntary associations are crucial to the association between trust and social capital, on the one hand, and vibrant and stable democracy, on the other. Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of convincing evidence to support...

„Vertrauen ist der Anfang von allem“, behauptet die Deutsche Bank in ihrer Werbung. Die Frage lässt sich auch umdrehen. Was ist eigentlich der Anfang von Vertrauen? Oder allgemeiner: Was sind die Determinanten von Vertrauen? Warum vertraut ein Teil der Bevölkerung seinen Mitbürgern, während ein anderer Teil — in den meisten Ländern übrigens der wei...

This article identifies six main theories of the determinants of social trust, and tests them against survey data from seven societies, 1999-2001. Three of the six theories of trust fare rather poorly and three do better. First and foremost, social trust tends to be high among citizens who believe that there are few severe social conflicts and wher...

Britain is a good place to test hypotheses about the impact of the mass media on political attitudes and behavior, and this article uses the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the impact of the national daily press on turnout in the general elections of 1992 and 1997. The evidence does not support the hypothesis that reading a newspaper...

This article conveys the general findings of the multi-national, multi-volume Beliefs in Government research project, perhaps the most exhaustive analysis of mass beliefs and attitudes conducted in the west. In spite of considerable socio–economic change in recent decades, the study provides evidence of political stability, continuity and adaptabil...

Book reviewed: W. Lance Bennett and Robert M. Entman (eds), Mediated Democracy: Communications in the Future of Democracy Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies

The importance of trust has long been emphasised by social and political theorists from Locke and Tocqueville to Putnam and civil society theorists. However, individual survey data casts substantial doubt on this powerful tradition of thought. There is little evidence of (1) an overlap between social and political trust, (2) a syndrome of trust and...

The difficulty with resolving the classic problem of whether newspapers influence voting patterns is self-selection: readers select a paper to fit their politics, and newspapers select particular types of readers. One way round this chicken-and-egg problem is to compare the voting behaviour of individuals whose politics are reinforced by their pape...

A pioneering textbook which explains the dynamics of politics across Europe in the post-Cold war era. Comparing democratisation, transition to a market economy and increasing economic and political integration in the countries of central and eastern Europe with experiences in Scandinavia, and southern and western Europe, the book provides a wealth...

According to some, the modern mass media have a malign effect on modern democracy, tending to induce political apathy, alienation, cynicism and a loss of social capital – in a word, ‘mediamalaise’. Some theorists argue that this is the result of media content, others that it is the consequence of the form of the media, especially television. Accord...

This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was pub...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This book is the third in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, and examines the effects of the post‐war arrival of the welfare state in the countries of Western Europe. The welfare state inaugurated a vast expansion in the role of government, which led to fears that the increased expectations of citizens would lead to government overload and to ‘ung...

This book is the third in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, and examines the effects of the post‐war arrival of the welfare state in the countries of Western Europe. The welfare state inaugurated a vast expansion in the role of government, which led to fears that the increased expectations of citizens would lead to government overload and to ‘ung...

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisi...

This chapter focuses on the extent to which perceptions of economic self-interest affect levels of public support for European Community integration, both at the macro-level and the micro-level. The macro-level analysis examines the impact of variables such as net budgetary transfers between the EC and individual member states, each country's posit...

Social capital is in danger of going the way of political culture—a potentially powerful concept that is given many different meanings by many different people for many different purposes. This article starts by picking out three different aspects or dimensions of the concept—norms (especially trust), networks, and consequences. It then considers t...

Once upon a time, and a good time it was too, there was a faraway country ruled by a wise economist-king called Tiebout who realized that the way to happiness was to organize local public services in market-analogous manner. He did this by dividing local government in Tieboutiana into many competing units, each with its own package of public goods...

Bibliogr. s. 255-257

The Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle called the press the ‘Fourth Estate of the Realm’. By this he meant that it acted as a sort of watchdog of the constitution and, as such, formed a vital part of democratic government. Most modern writers would agree that the mass media should play a central role in sustaining and developing democracy: the media s...