Citizen Desires, Policy Outcomes, and Community Control

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68810/2/10.1177_107808747200800107.pd

Legitimacy gaps, taxpayer conflict, and the politics of austerity in the UK

Following the 2008 financial crisis, fiscal deficit reduction has become the name of the game for many Western states. This article uses focus group data to explore the legitimation of austerity in the United Kingdom. It is argued that fiscal consolidation speaks to real concerns citizens have over unfair redistribution to supposed ‘undeserving’ groups. The undeserving rich and poor are stigmatised during times of austerity since they are assumed to take more than they give from the public purse—leaving taxpayers, the assumption goes, to pick up the bill. By speaking to this legitimacy gap between prudent normative expectations and the lived experiences of state profligacy, fiscal consolidation can appear to speak to the interests of ‘the taxpayer’—a group conceptualised as a sense of group position that arises from collective sense-making rather than a pre-given constituency

How group identification helps to overcome the dilemma of collective action

According to the basic assumption underlying this article, people are more likely to participate in protest the more they feel that a group they identify with is treated unjustly. Depersonalization and the politicization of group identification are discussed as two processes that mediate the relationship between group identification and protest participation. Empirical evidence from three studies is discussed. In a study among people older than 55, participation in unions for the elderly appears to be correlated strongly with identification with the elderly. In a study of participation in peaceful protest among South African citizens, indicators of identification appeared to be correlated with protest participation, and finally, Dutch farmers were more likely to participate in farmers' protest the more they identified with other farmers. Results from the latter, longitudinal study suggest a recursive relationship between identity and protest participation: Group identification fosters protest participation and protest participation reinforces group identification

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium

Net neutrality discourses: comparing advocacy and regulatory arguments in the United States and the United Kingdom

Telecommunications policy issues rarely make news, much less mobilize thousands of people. Yet this has been occurring in the United States around efforts to introduce "Net neutrality" regulation. A similar grassroots mobilization has not developed in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. We develop a comparative analysis of U.S. and UK Net neutrality debates with an eye toward identifying the arguments for and against regulation, how those arguments differ between the countries, and what the implications of those differences are for the Internet. Drawing on mass media, advocacy, and regulatory discourses, we find that local regulatory precedents as well as cultural factors contribute to both agenda setting and framing of Net neutrality. The differences between national discourses provide a way to understand both the structural differences between regulatory cultures and the substantive differences between policy interpretations, both of which must be reconciled for the Internet to continue to thrive as a global medium