Gergana Dimova
University of Oxford, Department of Politics and International Relations, Department Member
- University of Cambridge, Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Post-DocUniversity Of Winchester, Global Politics, Faculty Memberadd
- Blame Avoidance, Political Scandals, Political Corruption, New Models Of Democracy, Accountability, Media and Democracy, and 34 moreComparative Politics, Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Regime Change, Concept Analysis, Measurement, Comparative Politics, Democratisation, Depoliticization, Ranciere, Pierre Rosanvallon, Depoliticisation, Democratic Theory, Democracy, Democratization, Agenda Setting, Social Movements (Political Science), Governance, Crisis of Representative Democracy, Politicization, Political communication, Political Theory, Social Accountability, Anti-Corruption, Corruption, Intelligence, Russia, Political Risk Analysis in Energy Resource Investments, Political Risk Analysis, Risk Management, Business Intelligence, Democracy (Comparative and Theory), International Studies and Politics, Memory Studies, Communism, Samuel Moyn, Post-Soviet Studies, Claude Lefort, and Identity politicsedit
- Research profile: https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/associates/gergana-dimova.htmledit
- Peter Halledit
In his latest opus, The New Despotism, John Keane continues to challenge existing wisdom in the field of democratic theory and comparative polit ical studies. One of the key insights of the book is that there is nothing inherently... more
In his latest opus, The New Despotism, John Keane continues to challenge existing wisdom in the field of democratic theory and comparative polit ical studies. One of the key insights of the book is that there is nothing inherently democratic about democratic innovations and procedures, and thus they can be used to prop up despotisms, rather than usher in democracy. While this insight comports with existing misgivings about elections, the book stands out in the way it explains the sustainability of using the democratic procedures in the new despotisms. For democratic procedures to further the aims of the new despotisms, the condition of "voluntary servitude" needs to be met. "Voluntary servitude" means that people willingly give in to political slavery, and become accom plices in maintaining the illusion that democratic procedures are imple mented (215-222). Keane's achievement is that he creates an analytical ecosystem of interlinked assumptions, observations, conditions, and other logical connectors, which make his model of the new despotism so robust. One of the reasons why Keane's model is so convincing is that it is empirically and methodologically innovative. Empirically, it provides a large volume of empirical material, which political science and demo cratic theory have not traditionally conceived as the object of their in quiry. Information about the infrastructure of Abu Dhabi, the public
Research Interests:
CALL FOR PAPERS ‘The Changing Politics of Blame Games and Claiming Credit’ The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (BJPIR) has published a call for special issues with a deadline of 1 September 2020 for publication... more
CALL FOR PAPERS
‘The Changing Politics of Blame Games and Claiming Credit’
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (BJPIR) has published a call for special issues with a deadline of 1 September 2020 for publication in 2021. Matthew Flinders (University of Sheffield), R. A. W. Rhodes (University of Southampton) and Gergana Dimova (University of Winchester) are planning to apply for a special edition slot that will be themed around the topic of ‘blames games and claiming credit’. As part of this process, the prospective editors are now keen to accept ‘expressions of interest’ in the form of abstracts from potential contributors to this special issue. An outline abstract for this collection and further details are provided below.
From coping with the Coronavirus crisis thorough to debates concerning historical injustices and embedded social inequalities, not to mention Brexit and the UK’s future role and position in the world, a number of contemporary socio-political issues have all in their own ways focused attention on both blame games and claiming credit. The manner in which these issues have involved temporal dimensions, multi-levelled relationships and strong emotional allegiances creates both challenges and opportunities for the social and political sciences in terms of mapping, interrogating and understanding the attribution of blame or statements of success in complex and fast-moving environments. It is exactly this context that this special edition focuses on developing the analytical traction and theoretical leverage of existing approaches to understanding ‘the politics of blame games and claiming credit’. A flexible and pluralistic approach is taken in terms of defining this intellectual terrain and contributions are particularly welcome that draw upon insights from a variety of disciplines, that utilise a range of methods and which draw upon empirical material from beyond the UK.
The BJPIR is a top-ranked peer-reviewed international journal and prospective papers will therefore be assessed through a rigorous selection process that involves several stages. The first stage involves the submission of an abstract that outlines the main argument and focus of your proposed article in no more than 250 words. This should be sent to blame@sheffield.ac.uk with a full list of authors and their institutional affiliations by Friday 31 July 2020. The editors will then undertake a review process and select no more than twenty submissions to be taken forward to the second stage which involves inclusion in the final submission to the BJPIR’s editorial advisory board by 1 September. If our application for a special issue is successful we will know by the end of September and prospective contributions will proceed to the third stage. This revolves around the submission of a full manuscript (max 8,000 words) that abides to the journal’s style guide by an agreed date in mid/late 2021. It must be underlined that an invitation to submit a full manuscript is not a guarantee of acceptance and all contributions will be expected to progress through a standard double-blind peer review process. The editors’ decisions about individual manuscripts will be final but it is expected that the final volume will include up to 14 articles. It is expected that an on-line workshop will be held in April 2021 to review and discuss potential papers.
Proposals that emphasise innovation in terms of theory, methods or approach are particularly encouraged. The aim of this special issue is that it become a defining reference point within the social and political sciences for anyone interested in (inter alia) notions of blame, scrutiny, accountability, scapegoating, policy-making, and innovations in democracy. Our approach to blame games and claiming credit includes (but is not limited to): domestic and international drivers; economic, cultural and cognitive dimensions; as well as their manifestations viewed through the prism of environmental, gendered, psychological, philosophical, historical and ethnographic approaches.
Potential article abstracts should be sent to blame@sheffield.ac.uk by 17.00 on Friday 31 July 2020.
Questions to Prof. Matt Flinders via m.flinders@sheffield.ac.uk
‘The Changing Politics of Blame Games and Claiming Credit’
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (BJPIR) has published a call for special issues with a deadline of 1 September 2020 for publication in 2021. Matthew Flinders (University of Sheffield), R. A. W. Rhodes (University of Southampton) and Gergana Dimova (University of Winchester) are planning to apply for a special edition slot that will be themed around the topic of ‘blames games and claiming credit’. As part of this process, the prospective editors are now keen to accept ‘expressions of interest’ in the form of abstracts from potential contributors to this special issue. An outline abstract for this collection and further details are provided below.
From coping with the Coronavirus crisis thorough to debates concerning historical injustices and embedded social inequalities, not to mention Brexit and the UK’s future role and position in the world, a number of contemporary socio-political issues have all in their own ways focused attention on both blame games and claiming credit. The manner in which these issues have involved temporal dimensions, multi-levelled relationships and strong emotional allegiances creates both challenges and opportunities for the social and political sciences in terms of mapping, interrogating and understanding the attribution of blame or statements of success in complex and fast-moving environments. It is exactly this context that this special edition focuses on developing the analytical traction and theoretical leverage of existing approaches to understanding ‘the politics of blame games and claiming credit’. A flexible and pluralistic approach is taken in terms of defining this intellectual terrain and contributions are particularly welcome that draw upon insights from a variety of disciplines, that utilise a range of methods and which draw upon empirical material from beyond the UK.
The BJPIR is a top-ranked peer-reviewed international journal and prospective papers will therefore be assessed through a rigorous selection process that involves several stages. The first stage involves the submission of an abstract that outlines the main argument and focus of your proposed article in no more than 250 words. This should be sent to blame@sheffield.ac.uk with a full list of authors and their institutional affiliations by Friday 31 July 2020. The editors will then undertake a review process and select no more than twenty submissions to be taken forward to the second stage which involves inclusion in the final submission to the BJPIR’s editorial advisory board by 1 September. If our application for a special issue is successful we will know by the end of September and prospective contributions will proceed to the third stage. This revolves around the submission of a full manuscript (max 8,000 words) that abides to the journal’s style guide by an agreed date in mid/late 2021. It must be underlined that an invitation to submit a full manuscript is not a guarantee of acceptance and all contributions will be expected to progress through a standard double-blind peer review process. The editors’ decisions about individual manuscripts will be final but it is expected that the final volume will include up to 14 articles. It is expected that an on-line workshop will be held in April 2021 to review and discuss potential papers.
Proposals that emphasise innovation in terms of theory, methods or approach are particularly encouraged. The aim of this special issue is that it become a defining reference point within the social and political sciences for anyone interested in (inter alia) notions of blame, scrutiny, accountability, scapegoating, policy-making, and innovations in democracy. Our approach to blame games and claiming credit includes (but is not limited to): domestic and international drivers; economic, cultural and cognitive dimensions; as well as their manifestations viewed through the prism of environmental, gendered, psychological, philosophical, historical and ethnographic approaches.
Potential article abstracts should be sent to blame@sheffield.ac.uk by 17.00 on Friday 31 July 2020.
Questions to Prof. Matt Flinders via m.flinders@sheffield.ac.uk
Research Interests: Crisis communication and management, Crisis Management, Crisis Communication, Moral Blame, Media and Maipulation, Internal Communications and Social Media, Internal Crisis Communications, and 5 moreSituational Crisis Communication Theory, Blame Avoidance, Risk and crisis management, Praise and Blame, and Path of Blame
JSPPS special section on legal and political aspects of Moscow's grab of Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula.
Research Interests: Russian Studies, International Relations, International Law, Ukrainian Studies, Russian Foreign Policy, and 15 moreBlack Sea region, Russia, Ukrainian Foreign Policy, Ukraine, Foreign Policy of Ukraine, Russian-Ukrainian Relations, Crimea, Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe, International and Russian law, IR In Post soviet Space, Russia Crimean Annexation, Russia-Ukraine Relations, Annexation of Crimea, Annexation, and War between Russia and Ukraine
Overall, the book is an insightful and very well-researched contribution to understanding democratic promises and challenges on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dimova's nuanced perspective on democracy as finding... more
Overall, the book is an insightful and very well-researched contribution to understanding democratic promises and challenges on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dimova's nuanced perspective on democracy as finding itself between crisis and transformation provides both a warning – given the conclusion that democracy through accountability is an unpredictable process on which politicians often manage to capitalize, and reason for optimism that the supply of accountability forums is not just an outcome but an opportunity. The book can thus claim to develop a separate research field that forges an integrated middle ground between models of crisis and transformation of democracy.
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Currently there are more than 150 models of the crisis of democracy and no overarching analytical framework to compare and contrast them. This presents a problem as there are no agreed upon criteria to judge the analytical advantages of... more
Currently there are more than 150 models of the crisis of democracy and no overarching analytical framework to compare and contrast them. This presents a problem as there are no agreed upon criteria to judge the analytical advantages of these models. This book chapter provides a supply and demand framework to address this problem and review the models. The supply-based theories interpret the crisis as the government’s failure to deliver economic growth, the failure of the state to come up with proper welfare policies or the failure of representative institutions to gain public trust. The demand-based models of the crisis of democracy suggest that the crisis arises because the public has unrealistically high expectations of the government or for exactly the opposite reasons, namely that people are apathetic and do not demand enough from the incumbents. This is chapter 10 from the book "Democracy beyond Elections: Government Accountability in the Media Age."
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The essay analyzes the 2017 anticorruption protests in Romania by implementing and complementing the scholarship on political opportunity structures and civil mobilization. It argues that corruption allegations and corruption... more
The essay analyzes the 2017 anticorruption protests in Romania by implementing and complementing the scholarship on political opportunity structures and civil mobilization. It argues that corruption allegations and corruption investigations are inherently open to politicization and shrouded in uncertainty, which substantially raises the cost of understanding the corruption milieu. This uncertainty arises because (1) it is hard to establish whether the corruption act has occurred; (2) there is no agreement how to ensure the independence of the prosecutor; (3) there is lack of clarity concerning who can strip alleged officials of immunity, and (4) it is unclear how information collected by the secret service should be utilized. Three elements of the political opportunity structure shaped the cost-benefit calculus of potential protesters in Romania in 2017 and served as "virtual markers" of certainty. The dual executive standoff between the president and the government raised the benefits of protesting, while the communist cleavage and the outspoken personalities of Presidents Basescu and Iohannis served as virtual markers of certainty that decreased the cost of figuring out the complex corruption narrative and spurred the protests.
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The dissertation seeks to establish the determinants of accountable governments in democratic countries. Its central query is: when the media reveals government misconduct, how do the legislature, the courts, and the public... more
The dissertation seeks to establish the
determinants of accountable governments in
democratic countries. Its central query is: when the
media reveals government misconduct, how do the
legislature, the courts, and the public investigate and
sanction the executive? The study compares and
explores the interaction among three main
mechanisms for holding the executive accountable -
judicial, legislative, and public. It aims to surmount
the current subdivision of accountability which
inquires whether governments are responsible to one
specific body in particular versus whether they are
overall accountable. To overcome this theoretical
impediment, I design a new method to gauge all
revealed instances of government misconduct, defined
here as “political scandals.”
determinants of accountable governments in
democratic countries. Its central query is: when the
media reveals government misconduct, how do the
legislature, the courts, and the public investigate and
sanction the executive? The study compares and
explores the interaction among three main
mechanisms for holding the executive accountable -
judicial, legislative, and public. It aims to surmount
the current subdivision of accountability which
inquires whether governments are responsible to one
specific body in particular versus whether they are
overall accountable. To overcome this theoretical
impediment, I design a new method to gauge all
revealed instances of government misconduct, defined
here as “political scandals.”
Research Interests:
Political scandals have become so common that people accepted them as an integral part of contemporary political life. It is precisely this predominance that makes scandals an important object of academic inquiry. This paper analyzes... more
Political scandals have become so common that people accepted them as an integral part of contemporary political life. It is precisely this predominance that makes scandals an important object of academic inquiry. This paper analyzes systematically and critically the phenomenon of a contemporary media scandal dealing with political accusations of high-ranking government officials. The study raises the questions under what conditions do these parties decide to voice publicly their discontent with the incumbents?
The article points out that media critics always consider not only the benefits of publicly accusing an incumbent, but also the costs. This discussion addresses the exclusive preoccupation of the literature with the costs of making an accusation. It is generally considered that scandals occur whenever the media can profit financially from sensationalism and the politicians can gain symbolic capital by besmirching their opponents. I suggest that several institutional as well as random factors, such as the laws for classified information and any concomitant scandals, affect the decision to make a public charge at an incumbent. The review of the existing literature on the emergence of scandals is tested against some evidence from scandals in Germany, Bulgaria and Russia in the period between 1992 and 2005.
The article points out that media critics always consider not only the benefits of publicly accusing an incumbent, but also the costs. This discussion addresses the exclusive preoccupation of the literature with the costs of making an accusation. It is generally considered that scandals occur whenever the media can profit financially from sensationalism and the politicians can gain symbolic capital by besmirching their opponents. I suggest that several institutional as well as random factors, such as the laws for classified information and any concomitant scandals, affect the decision to make a public charge at an incumbent. The review of the existing literature on the emergence of scandals is tested against some evidence from scandals in Germany, Bulgaria and Russia in the period between 1992 and 2005.
Research Interests:
The existing literature on the media's role in criticizing the government is somewhat slim. While it pays ample attention to the process where the media mediate information to the public (Davis 2002, Thompson 2000), it is unclear who they... more
The existing literature on the media's role in criticizing the government is somewhat slim. While it pays ample attention to the process where the media mediate information to the public (Davis 2002, Thompson 2000), it is unclear who they mediate it from. This article is focused on media claims making critical remarks about the government. Public criticism is an important topic of research because it sets the range of disputable issues. It may affect the shaping of the government agenda. It warns the government of potential social tensions. In the best case scenario, public criticism enhances democracy as it gives voice to those disgruntled parts of the population, who cannot voice their dissatisfaction with the government through official channels of accountability. Public criticism should eventual increase electoral responsibility. It can swing public opinion and affect the chances of reelection of the government. Finally, media criticism of the government enhances transparency and enables the flow of information. This in turn allows citizens to make more informed choices. Given the importance of public criticism of the government, it is surprising how little attention the topic has received. The broad contents of media coverage have been widely analyzed, but specific criticisms of the establishment have not. In this paper, I analyze five models attributing various degrees of journalistic involvement in initiating criticism at the government- indexing theory, the Fourth Estate ideal, the social responsibility theory, the propaganda model and political parallelism. The paper advances a symbolic power model, which emphasizes the importance of the media as an arena for gaining political capital and public support. It tests the model on an original database containing about 6000 articles of accusations in Bulgaria, Germany and Russia in the period between 1995 and 2005.
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The author explores how incumbents form their preferences when regime types change. The author juxtaposes the perceptions of the Hungarian and the Soviet Communist Party hard-liners during the transition from Communism in 1989–91.... more
The author explores how incumbents form their preferences when regime types
change. The author juxtaposes the perceptions of the Hungarian and the Soviet Communist
Party hard-liners during the transition from Communism in 1989–91. During this time,
the memory of a historical uprising reduced the incumbents’ misperceptions about their
popular legitimacy via two mechanisms. First, historical memory functioned as a “public
tolerance indicator” because it brought the opposition together and demonstrated the true
distribution of political support. Second, the memory of a past uprising served as a “conservative
reformer” when it opened up internal party debate about the legitimacy of the
regime. The author’s argument contributes to the scarce literature on actors’ preferences
formation under conditions of transitional uncertainty. It also provides a useful analytical
bridge between actor-oriented and system-centered approaches to democratization.
change. The author juxtaposes the perceptions of the Hungarian and the Soviet Communist
Party hard-liners during the transition from Communism in 1989–91. During this time,
the memory of a historical uprising reduced the incumbents’ misperceptions about their
popular legitimacy via two mechanisms. First, historical memory functioned as a “public
tolerance indicator” because it brought the opposition together and demonstrated the true
distribution of political support. Second, the memory of a past uprising served as a “conservative
reformer” when it opened up internal party debate about the legitimacy of the
regime. The author’s argument contributes to the scarce literature on actors’ preferences
formation under conditions of transitional uncertainty. It also provides a useful analytical
bridge between actor-oriented and system-centered approaches to democratization.
Research Interests:
The results of a YouGov-Cambridge survey show that the electorate votes for politicians for very different reasons than it thinks it does.
Research Interests:
In The Loop's 🦋 Science of Democracy series, Jean-Paul Gagnon has started an intra-disciplinary debate between democratic theory and comparative politics. The reasons to overcome this disciplinary clash are better than the reasons to... more
In The Loop's 🦋 Science of Democracy series, Jean-Paul Gagnon has started an intra-disciplinary debate between democratic theory and comparative politics. The reasons to overcome this disciplinary clash are better than the reasons to embrace it, writes Gergana Dimova.
Research Interests:
Bulgaria’s orientation toward Russia, and the renewed awareness of this shift, has become a major political issue in its presidential elections. While neither of the leading candidates has directly disputed Bulgaria’s membership in NATO... more
Bulgaria’s orientation toward Russia, and the renewed awareness of this shift, has become a major political issue in its presidential elections. While neither of the leading candidates has directly disputed Bulgaria’s membership in NATO and the European Union (EU), they have both argued that the EU should lift the sanctions imposed on Russia for annexing Crimea in March of 2014.
Research Interests:
Elections are not the sine qua non for democracy. The voicing of discontent with the incumbents is no longer exclusively confined to retrospective electoral accountability. Instead, protests on the street, resorting to legal action and... more
Elections are not the sine qua non for democracy. The voicing of discontent with the incumbents is no longer exclusively confined to retrospective electoral accountability. Instead, protests on the street, resorting to legal action and using independent counsellors’ or audit investigations are just a few of the myriad ways indicating the burgeoning anxiety about elections.
Research Interests:
Main inquiry: is the importance of popular language, personification and provocation for populism overestimated?
In his latest opus, The New Despotism, John Keane continues to challenge existing wisdom in the field of democratic theory and comparative political studies. One of the key insights of the book is that there is nothing inherently... more
In his latest opus, The New Despotism, John Keane continues to challenge existing wisdom in the field of democratic theory and comparative political studies. One of the key insights of the book is that there is nothing inherently democratic about democratic innovations and procedures, and thus they can be used to prop up despotisms, rather than usher in democracy. While this insight comports with existing misgivings about elections, the book stands out in the way it explains the sustainability of using the democratic procedures in the new despotisms. For democratic procedures to further the aims of the new despotisms, the condition of “voluntary servitude” needs to be met. “Voluntary servitude” means that people willingly give in to political slavery, and become accomplices in maintaining the illusion that democratic procedures are implemented (215–222). Keane’s achievement is that he creates an analytical ecosystem of interlinked assumptions, observations, conditions, and other log...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The chapter analyses the strategies that the movement Protest Network in Bulgaria used to successfully politicise the issue of the cabinet appointment of the media mogul Delyan Peevski. The theoretical odds were against the success of... more
The chapter analyses the strategies that the movement Protest Network in Bulgaria used to successfully politicise the issue of the cabinet appointment of the media mogul Delyan Peevski. The theoretical odds were against the success of such politicisation because claims surrounding his appointment were not considered “explosive enough” to inspire outrage and because movements contesting this issue were not regarded as representative enough to be taken seriously by the incumbents. The chapter argues that Protest Network turned the odds around by politicising both the public and the issue. It politicised the public by (1) reaching out to potential protesters to make the movement more representative and (2) creating unity among existing protesters to make the movement more coherent. Protest Network politicised the issue of Peevski’s appointment by employing four strategies: (1) branding the appointment under the “Who?” model, so the movement’s demands were easier to identify; (2) taggin...
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Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the German government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. It establishes that the German parliament is the main forum for investigating the... more
Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the German government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. It establishes that the German parliament is the main forum for investigating the government but its ability to sanction the incumbents is eclipsed by the EU, the prosecutor and internal ministerial investigations. The findings reveal an interesting trend: while the role of parliament as a venue for imposing accountability may have diminished, the role of political parties as main players in the accountability processes has been preserved but it has metamorphosed and moved beyond parliament. Parties continue to be an important factor for sanctioning the government through party meetings outside of the legislature, through the popularity of the opposition party and others. These empirical trends could serve as a novel basis for appraising democracy through the lens of government accountability.
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Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the Bulgarian government’s accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The empirical findings depict a trend of judicialisation of accountability in... more
Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the Bulgarian government’s accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The empirical findings depict a trend of judicialisation of accountability in Bulgaria, which means that when the government is criticised in the media, the prosecutor and the courts are likely to be involved in sanctioning and investigating the implicated incumbents. These findings contribute to the vibrant theoretical debate as to whether judicialisation enhances democracy and whether it benefits the elites or the public in terms of accessibility, legitimacy, contestability, uncertainty, aggregation of demands and intimidation. Specifically, the chapter argues that the judicialisation of accountability in Bulgaria has had a two-sided effect on democracy. On the negative side, prosecutorial investigations of media allegations have been used by the elites to threaten opponents, legitimise threats and gain time. On the positiv...
Research Interests:
overstates the triumph of the U.S. mass consumption model in postwar Europe. Powerful counterevidence can be drawn from within de Grazia’s own narrative. Her chapter on postwar supermarketing (one of the most interesting chapters in the... more
overstates the triumph of the U.S. mass consumption model in postwar Europe. Powerful counterevidence can be drawn from within de Grazia’s own narrative. Her chapter on postwar supermarketing (one of the most interesting chapters in the book) can hardly be said to demonstrate “how big-time merchandisers leapfrogged over local grocers,” at least in the key case of Italy. Not only did the U.S. model of “Supermarkets Italiani” have to be substantially modiaed to succeed under local conditions, but by 1971, as de Grazia herself reports, Italians still spent only 2 percent of their food budgets in supermarkets, compared to 14 percent for the French, 32 percent for West Germans, and 70 percent for Americans. The persistence of these differentiated consumption patterns, observable in other aelds such as clothing, shoes, jewelry, furniture, lighting, and ceramic tiles, in turn supported the growth and technological modernization of specialized production in these sectors, which still accoun...
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The current political emphasis on ‘the experts’ is partly a depoliticisation and blame deflection strategy to render them, instead of the politicians, as the public face of the coronavirus crisis, write Matthew Flinders and Gergana Dimova.
Research Interests:
While the current literature pays ample attention to the process where the media mediate information to the public, it is unclear who they mediate it from. I review five major theories about the role of the media in criticizing the... more
While the current literature pays ample attention to the process where the media mediate information to the public, it is unclear who they mediate it from. I review five major theories about the role of the media in criticizing the government- the indexing theory, the Fourth Estate ideal, the social responsibility theory, the propaganda model and political parallelism. The paper advances a symbolic power model, which emphasizes the importance of the media as an arena for gaining political capital and public support. It argues that the political opposition is the main driving engine behind media criticisms of the government. It tests this finding on an original database of 6,000 articles in major newspapers in Bulgaria, Russia and Germany in the period between 1995 and 2005.
Research Interests:
The book presents a model of democracy viewed through the lens of government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. This approach contributes a novel perspective to evaluating democracy. Set in an analytical framework of... more
The book presents a model of democracy viewed through the lens of government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. This approach contributes a novel perspective to evaluating democracy. Set in an analytical framework of supply and demand, it challenges, revises and refines existing assumptions, approaches and measurements of democratic progress and regress. It suggests that we should measure supply not only in terms of economic growth or representation, but also in terms of the various opportunities that accountability forums provide. This vision, which I call the “accountability turn”, challenges existing notions of increasing supply through the representative or the deliberative turns. The model also suggests that public demand should not be perceived as too low or too high but that the very constellation of demand has changed and it is expressed differently. Third, the model propounds that demand and supply interact at multiple levels rather than supply falling sh...
Research Interests:
It is difficult to assess whether an accountability process following media allegations is democratic or not. Existing methods assess accountability by using crude proxies, such as democracy and elections. A more refined approach measures... more
It is difficult to assess whether an accountability process following media allegations is democratic or not. Existing methods assess accountability by using crude proxies, such as democracy and elections. A more refined approach measures accountability in terms of investigations, explanations and sanctions. The chapter develops this latter line of research further by contributing an original database and a novel methodology. The book assesses accountability through a multidimensional measure, which encompasses the sanctioning power of various accountability forums, information about the type of accuser, the type of the accusation, the type of explanations that the government gives, the type of investigations and the type of sanctions. The accountability pyramid is the main methodological innovation that the book advances. The accountability pyramid measures how many sanctions various investigations produce, and visualises the relative sanctioning capacity of various investigative b...
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Seen through the analytical framework of supply and demand, all models of the transformation of democracy agree that supply is expandable and that public demand is active. However, they have very different explanations as to why this is... more
Seen through the analytical framework of supply and demand, all models of the transformation of democracy agree that supply is expandable and that public demand is active. However, they have very different explanations as to why this is the case. It is a point of contention whether the expansion of supply is caused by the representative, agonistic, cultural, deliberative, participatory or some other “turn”. Another line of argument inquires whether people demand more because the public is fragmented or homogenised.
This chapter suggests that the debate about public demand for government accountability is misguided. Currently, it is too focused on inquiring whether the public expects too little or too much accountability from the government. Instead,... more
This chapter suggests that the debate about public demand for government accountability is misguided. Currently, it is too focused on inquiring whether the public expects too little or too much accountability from the government. Instead, public demand for accountability should be explored through the lens of public fragmentation. The chapter summarises the diverse scholarship on public fragmentation. It suggests that the public is fragmented because of party de-alignment, modernisation, marketisation and the mutually opposing forces of globalisation and decentralisation. The main implication is that the notion of the diversity of the public challenges the principle of the aggregation of preferences.
Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the Russian government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The chapter finds that the Russian president steers the accountability process,... more
Using the methodological framework set out in Chapter 5, this chapter assesses the Russian government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. The chapter finds that the Russian president steers the accountability process, whenever government officials are criticised in the media. The empirical findings unravel the concrete ways in which the president interferes with post-scandals accountability, such as the president making decisions whether to sanction alleged incumbents on the basis of the president’s approval ratings and the president having a disproportionately big influence in producing sanctions in comparison with investigations conducted by the legislature and the courts. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the process of presidentialisation goes hand in hand with the process of personalisation of accusations, personalisation of sanctions and the personalisation of the prosecutorial office. The results constitute good indicators for gauging the tipping point wh...
The dissertation seeks to establish the determinants of accountable governments in democratic countries. Its central query is: when the media reveals government misconduct, how do the legislature, the courts, and the public investigate... more
The dissertation seeks to establish the determinants of accountable governments in democratic countries. Its central query is: when the media reveals government misconduct, how do the legislature, the courts, and the public investigate and sanction the executive? The study compares and explores the interaction among three main mechanisms for holding the executive accountable judicial, legislative, and public. It aims to surmount the current subdivision of accountability which inquires whether governments are responsible to one specific body in particular versus whether they are overall accountable. To overcome this theoretical impediment, I design a new method to gauge all revealed instances of government misconduct, defined here as “political scandals.” “It seems incontrovertible that political scandals have now acquired a prominent and important place in political life and there are no signs that their political significance is likely to diminish.” Robert Williams, 1998 “The acade...
This chapter introduces the notion of the accountability turn. The accountability turn signifies the growing importance and change of the supply of accountability forums, such as courts, the prosecutor, international bodies and... more
This chapter introduces the notion of the accountability turn. The accountability turn signifies the growing importance and change of the supply of accountability forums, such as courts, the prosecutor, international bodies and arm’s-length organisations. The accountability turn promotes the idea that we need to think more intensely about how costly and how specialised different forums are. That is so because various forums entail different financial, reputational and other costs. Furthermore, different forums resolve the trade-off between democratic legitimacy versus specialised knowledge differently. The accountability turn has been spurred by the implosion of the electoral paradigm and the explosion of the accountability revolution. The accountability turn challenges existing concepts of the representative, participatory, deliberative, aesthetic and other turns.
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This chapter argues that the changes associated with the Media Age cannot fully explain democratic accountability for media allegations. It sums up the disparate body of literature on the media and accountability to demonstrate that the... more
This chapter argues that the changes associated with the Media Age cannot fully explain democratic accountability for media allegations. It sums up the disparate body of literature on the media and accountability to demonstrate that the effects of the media on accountability can be both positive and negative. By flagging the double-sided nature of the media's impact, the analysis seeks to show that the effects of the Media Age on democratic accountability cannot be disassociated from the state of supply of and demand for accountability that are discussed in chapters three and four.
Research Interests: Media Studies, New Media, Digital Media, Political Science, Social Media, and 11 moreMedia and Democracy, Mass media, Media accountability, Media Research, New Media and Democracy, public sphere internet democracy new media communication discourse democracy Habermas, Democratic potential of new media, The impacts of new media on new democracies, Upcoming book on mediatization and democracy, Mass Media and Political Accountability, and Government Media
Although in both Hungary and Poland, the transition to democracy resulted in high levels of democratization, the institutional outcomes of transition were different. This article compares the transition modes of Hungary and Poland and... more
Although in both Hungary and Poland, the transition to democracy resulted in high levels of democratization, the institutional outcomes of transition were different. This article compares the transition modes of Hungary and Poland and examines the factors which led to different electoral systems. The article concludes that the different transition paths and institutional outcomes were influenced by a combination of two factors: the initial conditions of transition (level of communist’ legitimacy, level of social mobilization, relationship of opposition and incumbents) and the strategic behavior of elites involved in the transformation process.
There are currently dozens of conceptions in democratic theory of what constitutes democratic progress and even more concepts of the crisis of democracy. This plethora of ideas is both good news and bad news. The boom in theorizing means... more
There are currently dozens of conceptions in democratic theory of what constitutes democratic progress and even more concepts of the crisis of democracy. This plethora of ideas is both good news and bad news. The boom in theorizing means that specializations have allowed political scientists to fine-tune their in-depth analysis in order to capture smaller and more specific movements of democratic progress and regress. But the multiplicity of models of the crisis and transformation of democracy also spells some bad news, which is far less often acknowledged and far less understood. This article seeks to shed light on the dangers of not comparing and integrating various models of democracy and to extrapolate the benefits of using the comparative method to do so.
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... Thierry Vedel CEVIPOF-CNRS (.fr); Michael Wieviorka Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (.fr); Espen Ytreberg University of Oslo ... Vicente Riccio Fundação Getúlio Vargas (.br); Rogério Santos UCP (.pt); Ramón Salaverría... more
... Thierry Vedel CEVIPOF-CNRS (.fr); Michael Wieviorka Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (.fr); Espen Ytreberg University of Oslo ... Vicente Riccio Fundação Getúlio Vargas (.br); Rogério Santos UCP (.pt); Ramón Salaverría University of Navarra (.es); Bartolomeo Sapio ...
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The book “The New Regulatory Space” delivers a masterfully well-reasoned defense of regulation. The regulatory space is analyzed with regard to four systems of authority–the market, democratic politics, the law, and social norms.
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chief co-organizer of the CEELBAS conference
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chief co-organizer with CEELBAS and Centre for the Study of Democracy in Bulgaria
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interview on the Bulgarian National Radio