The Internet and Social Media Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe how the Internet and social media has changed other forms of media. Understand the impact of social media on politics. Detail how social media in particular has different effects on how we understand and interact with politics and political information. Narendra Modi , Barack Obama , Joko Widodo, Donald Trump , Queen Raina , and Hilary Clinton : What do these names make you think of? Hopefully politics! They also happen to be the most popular politicians on Instagram . Jana Garanko, “Top 10 Most Popular Politicians on Social Media,” The SEO, SEM, PPC and Content Marketing Blog , Semrush, February 21, 2020, https://www.semrush.com/blog/most-popular-politicians/. Why would politicians want to be on the same platform as dogs dressed up in tutus and one-pot cooking recipes? Because around the world, people spend close to two and a half hours a day on social media, and because never before has anyone been able to reach a global audience so quickly and so intimately. The Internet and social media have changed everything about people’s lives, from how they connect to how they understand politics. This section will discuss how the Internet has transformed traditional media and changed how the news is produced and shared, the impact of social media on politics, and how the effects of social media differ from those of traditional media. In most countries, people rely heavily on online news sources. (source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) In some ways, the table in says it all. While circulation and advertising revenue of print media have dropped considerably and viewership of television has also slowed, the share of people who go online for news and entertainment has grown steadily. The allure of Internet content and social media is easy to understand; the most popular platforms and much of the content are for the most part free, easy to use, highly visual in nature, and dynamic. When it comes to social media, the networked nature of the technology—being connected to multiple other networks of people—is also what makes it so powerful, as this characteristic is what allows users to share information and links quickly and often. Another way to understand this is through Metcalfe’s law, which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. The Internet and social media have become everything —a tool for information, a tool for entertainment, a way to communicate, and a way to become empowered. At the advent of the technology, many lauded the Internet’s transformative nature because it altered the traditional power structure of the media. In traditional print, radio, and television, the journalists, editors, and producers engaged in gatekeeping ; they choose what news or entertainment to publish or air based on their own tastes, professional norms, and their interpretation of audience expectations. Because social media allows users to rapidly share—and create their own—content, it has weakened the traditional gatekeeping model of mainstream media. This is possible because the Internet substantially lowers the barriers to entry , or the economic cost of a newcomer being part of the process. No longer do people need a professional cameraman, a million-dollar set, editors, high-tech editing equipment, a satellite, or a license to broadcast. All they need is a computer, iPad, or phone. This is not to say that traditional media has fallen away; the most trafficked sites online continue to be old-guard outlets such as the New York Times and CNN . At the same time, sites that started online (as opposed to those that moved online), such as Yahoo, BuzzFeed, Mashable, TechCrunch, and many others, stand side by side in popularity with the old guard. “Top Online News Sites,” University Library Subject & Course Guides, Washington and Lee University Library, Summer 2015, https://libguides.wlu.edu/c.php?g=357505&p=2412837. The fact that twice as many kids want to be YouTube stars as want to be astronauts Jessica Stillman, “New Survey Shows Twice as Many Kids Want to Be YouTubers as Astronauts. Here’s Why That’s Terrifying,” Inc. , August 8, 2019, https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-survey-shows-twice-as-many-kids-want-to-be-youtubers-than-astronauts-heres-why-thats-terrifying.html. is a sure sign of the power of the Internet and social networking platforms. Children and teens are not blind to TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio’s 100 million plus followers, Charli d’Amelio (@charlidamelio), TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@charlidamelio. and they envision endless possibilities for themselves. The Internet can feel empowering to individual users in ways that traditional media never could because the potential to become “famous” or viral on social media and the Internet only takes content—not millions of dollars backed by a movie studio or an anchor on a news network. But it also needs the help of an algorithm. The Young Turks: Building Hope The Young Turks is a popular YouTube news content channel that started in the living room of creator/host Cenk Uygur. Simply defined, algorithms are mathematical sets of rules. When applied to social media platforms and search engines, algorithms play a critical role in what people see when they search for a topic in a search engine or what comes across their social media feeds. Algorithms search, sort, and rank things based on predictions about what users should see, which means what comes up in one person’s search results and social media feed will be different from what comes up in other people’s results and feeds. This is accomplished by the use of cookies , or blocks of data that allow web browsers to track and save information about the sites people visit. By utilizing cookies, social media algorithms predict what users want to see in an attempt to keep them engaged online. Because what one person chooses will be different from what any other individual chooses, the content of their social media stream will look different from anyone else’s. This represents a monumental shift in how media is presented to users. In the 1970s and 1980s, when there were only four or five television stations to watch, all content was delivered to viewers at the same time, in the same fashion. The most watched television finale in the history of US television was the last episode of M*A*S*H , a comedy set during the Korean War. Jethro Nededog, “The 20 Most-Watched TV Show Finales of All Time, Ranked,” Business Insider , May 16, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/most-watched-tv-show-finales-of-all-time-2017-5. This meant that more than 105 million people watched the finale at the same time—something unimaginable to younger viewers today, who can stream almost anything, from sports to comedies to YouTube videos, on demand. This is due to another unique characteristic of online content, which is that it is asynchronous content , or content that can be shared among a network of people outside the constraints of time and space. For the vast majority of college students (and increasingly for their parents), using social media makes perfect sense—they were born into the technology and cannot remember life without it. Universities and colleges are ground zero for experimentation and political socialization , and increasingly, college students are using social media in ways that promote the creation of social capital and political participation. A study of university students in the United States, Australia, and Britain found that they are adept social media users and that they are aware of both its practical value and its limitations. The study notes that social media platforms are an increasingly significant sphere “for the political messaging, discussion, disruption and the presentation of the political self” among college students. Brian D. Loader et al., “Campus Politics, Student Societies and Social Media,” Sociological Review 63, no. 4 (November 2015): 837. But it is worth it to stop and ask why social media is so useful for politics in general. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, for generations, the formation of groups has relied on traditional institutional structures (think political parties or the Freemasons). The advent of social media has transformed group formation and even global cooperation. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (New York: Penguin, 2008). “Social media,” Shirky explains, “have become coordinating tools for nearly all of the world’s political movements, just as most of the world’s authoritarian governments (and, alarmingly, an increasing number of democratic ones) are trying to limit access to it.” Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change,” Foreign Affairs 90, no.1 (January/February 2011): 30. One can see the potential of social media as a valuable organizing tool for political movements in the case of the Arab Spring , during which social media users organized wide-scale protests first against the government of Tunisia, with additional pro-democracy movements spreading across much of the Middle East and North Africa. In Egypt, a Google executive named Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” to protest the murder of a 28-year-old Egyptian man at the hands of Egyptian police. The page, which had 300 users within two minutes of its creation, swelled to 250,000 users within three months. Jose Antonio Vargas, “Spring Awakening,” New York Times , February 17, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html. Ghonim was later imprisoned and interrogated for his Facebook activities criticizing the Egyptian government; upon release, he gave a televised speech that led to further protests, which in turn ultimately led to the resignation of Egyptian then president Hosni Mubarak . See Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). In China, social media has been a valuable tool of empowerment for political dissidents. Journalist Emily Parker writes that, via social media, “millions of wangmin , or netizens . . . are surrounded, at least virtually, by like-minded individuals. They learn the power of collective action. They become parts of networks that extend outside their country’s borders.” Emily Parker, Now I Know Who My Comrades Are : Voices from the Internet Underground , (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2014), 7. While authoritarian governments such as China’s “have long tried to control the spread of information, . . . ordinary citizens have long used creative ways to get around these controls.” Ibid., 6. Contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei , an early Twitter adopter, famously used the social media platform to alert people outside of China to the government’s corrupt activities. Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei has more than 367,000 followers on Twitter . (credit: “Ai Weiwei” by Alfred Weidinger/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) In this way, social media can create social cohesion, facilitate collaboration, and serve as an indispensable tool for activists. However, the technology has its drawbacks, particularly when it comes to politics. Online environments in which the same opinions are repeatedly voiced and promoted to the exclusion of opposing views, often referred to as echo chambers , are a recurring and real problem. For example, Twitter users are, to a great extent, exposed to opinions that agree with their own, and bipartisan users are not rewarded in terms of visibility on the platform. Kiran Garimella et al., “Political Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship,” in WWW ’18: Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference (Geneva: International World Wide Web Conference Committee, 2018), 913–922, https://doi.org/10.1145/3178876.3186139. Echo chambers are problematic in that they are linked to political polarization , or the divergence of political attitudes toward ideological extremes. Social media is particularly ripe for this problem because the technology allows users to silo themselves off more easily than traditional media does. However, as University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein notes, citizens within a democratic system require shared experiences, and when individuals can restrict themselves to hearing only voices they agree with—only “louder echoes of their own voices” Cass R. Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 13. —this will lead to political fragmentation and political polarization. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. A study of the 2011 Canadian election found evidence of political polarization on Twitter, Pablo Barberá, “Social Media, Echo Chambers, and Political Polarization,” in Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform , edited by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 34–55. while a 2014 study similarly concluded that Twitter led to more political polarization than it did cross-ideological discourse (though such discourse on Twitter did appear possible). Anatoliy Gruzd and Jeffrey Roy, “Investigating Political Polarization on Twitter: A Canadian Perspective,” Policy & Internet 6, no. 1 (March 2014): 28–45. Comparative research on the 2013 US and French presidential elections found polarization among Twitter users in both countries, though at a higher level in France. Alexander Hanna et al., “Partisan Alignments and Political Polarization Online: A Computational Approach to Understanding the French and US Presidential Elections,” in PLEAD ’13: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Politics, Elections and Data (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2013), 15–22, https://doi.org/10.1145/2508436.2508438. Research on Facebook usage during the 2014 Thai presidential election also supports the claim that users do not engage in cross-ideological discussion but instead sequester themselves in politically homogeneous social media pages. Max Grömping, “‘Echo Chambers’: Partisan Facebook Groups during the 2014 Thai Election,” Asia Pacific Media Educator 24, no. 1 (June 2014): 39–59, https://doi.org/10.1177/1326365X14539185. Political polarization results in lower levels of trust in institutions, higher levels of suspicion of “the other side,” and the inability to work toward compromise. Frank Newport, “The Impact of Increased Political Polarization,” Gallup, December 5, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/268982/impact-increased-political-polarization.aspx. Media concentration (covered in an earlier section of this chapter) can also contribute to political polarization because the media oligopolies have the resources to create a plethora of niche and partisan media. As University of Antwerp professor Peter Van Aelst writes, “The success of partisan news broadcasters, such as Fox News and MSNBC , and online platforms such as Breitbart and The Huffington Post , in the USA, also contributes to the view that there is a trend towards increasing polarization of media content.” Peter Van Aelst et al., “Political Communication in a High-Choice Media Environment: A Challenge for Democracy?,” Annals of the International Communication Association 41, no. 1 (2017): 12, https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2017.1288551. Research has found that exposure to partisan information makes people more inclined to support their own positions in an entrenched manner. David Schkade, Cass R. Sunstein, and Reid Hastie, “What Happened on Deliberation Day?,” California Law Review 95, no. 3 (June 2007): 915–940, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20439113. The Media and Personal Responsibility This display of the front pages of newspapers around the world provides “a snapshot view of what’s important to people around the planet.” (credit: “Newspapers” by Alper Çugun/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The media play a critical role in helping people understand the political world around them. For example, the media provide information about what governments are doing and inform voters about candidates running for office. What people often do not think about, however, is how individuals engage with and utilize the information that they receive from the media. Information is one of the most powerful tools available to the public, particularly when thinking about specific information related to government and politics. Do individuals use this information in an ethical manner? Do they think about what choices are available to them based on the information provided? Do they fully understand all of the actions and consequences of those actions based on the information provided? By studying how the media works as a political institution and with political institutions—and how people interact with the media and the information provided by the media—you can begin to understand your own personal responsibility vis-à-vis the media. In an era when social media can spread disinformation almost instantaneously or exacerbate political polarization, it is important to really consider and take into account how your actions concerning media utilization impact those around you. The loss of the traditional gatekeeper is one explanation for the existence of the echo chambers , polarization, and self-segregation that allow for an alarming increase in misinformation , or incorrect information that is spread regardless of intent to mislead. (Disinformation is misinformation that is explicitly intended to mislead.) As Senior Vice President and the Director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) James Andrew Lewis writes, “The effect of the internet on the mediation of content is especially pronounced, with a decentralized media displacing the editors and fact-checkers of the past. Social media amplifies the trend toward disintermediation.” James Andrew Lewis, “A Short Discussion of the Internet’s Effect on Politics,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 29, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/short-discussion-internets-effect-politics. In other words, when people got political information from the newspaper or television in the past, they knew that there were institutional checks in place, from editors to fact-checkers to the journalists themselves, to ensure its accuracy. Now, anyone with Internet access can be a journalist, and no one needs a news station to create news. In this way, the Internet has democratized news production and empowered previously ignored voices while simultaneously creating a minefield of misinformation. The networked nature of social media platforms makes it easy to pass along misinformation. Studies of Twitter have shown that falsehoods travel further and faster than the truth, thanks in part to the emotional responses they elicit and in part to the novelty of the falsehoods themselves. Perhaps more notably, studies found that it is the work not of bots (automated Internet applications that run repetitive tasks such as retweeting) but of people retweeting falsehoods that cause disinformation to spread so quickly. Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (March 2018): 1146–1151, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that only 12 people were responsible for 65 percent of the misinformation spread online about COVID-19 vaccines. Shannon Bond, “Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes on Social Media, Research Shows,” Untangling Disinformation, NPR, updated May 14, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes; The Disinformation Dozen: Why Platforms Must Act on Twelve Leading Online Anti-Vaxxers (Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2021), https://www.counterhate.com/disinformationdozen. In addition, the Internet and social media make it easier for foreign agents to spread disinformation online. In a report issued for the US State Department in 2019, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea were highlighted as the worst offenders, spending millions of dollars on state-backed activities designed to actively spread disinformation. Christina Nemr and William Gangware, Weapons of Mass Distraction: Foreign State-Sponsored Disinformation in the Digital Age (Park Advisors, March 2019), https://www.park-advisors.com/disinforeport. Herein lies the paradox of the intersection between social media and politics: the technology can be a revolutionary tool for creating and dispersing information and encouraging broader political participation, but it is this very participation and ease of information production and dissemination that leads to such high levels of misinformation. Media scholars such as Lianne Chin-Fook and Heather Simmonds are hopeful that new gatekeepers will evolve to allow for a healthier information environment on social media platforms in the future. Lianne Chin-Fook and Heather Simmonds, “Redefining Gatekeeping Theory for a Digital Generation,” McMaster Journal of Communication 8 (2011): 7–34, https://journals.mcmaster.ca/mjc/article/view/259. Social media is ubiquitous. The lowered barriers for entry allow anyone to be a producer of content and purveyor of information, and they also allow people to discuss and coordinate their actions around politics. Citizens in countries with limited political freedom have found the Internet and social media to be powerful and important tools that circumvent both authoritarian regimes and tightly controlled traditional media institutions. The Internet and social media are not without their problems, however. Algorithms play a large part in determining what people see, but individuals still have a significant amount of power to determine what information they seek out, which can create echo chambers and potentially result in political polarization. Misinformation also travels quickly on social media, hampering these platforms’ true utility as a reliable source of information. algorithms mathematical sets of rules that, when applied to the Internet or social media (for example), search, sort, and rank things based on predictions about what users should see asynchronous content content that can be shared among a network of people outside the constraints of time and space barriers to entry the economic cost to newcomers in a marketplace echo chambers online environments in which the same opinions are repeatedly voiced and promoted to the exclusion of opposing views misinformation incorrect information that is spread regardless of intent to mislead political polarization the divergence of political attitudes toward ideological extremes

Social Sciences


Declining Global Trust in the Media Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Detail levels of trust in the media in the US and around the world. Discuss why levels of trust in the media have steadily declined. Explain why we should care about levels of trust in the media. Explain what possible reforms can increase trust in the media. Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism. —Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Richard Kluger The beginning of this chapter discussed how the press safeguards people’s rights and keeps democracy healthy. Authoritarian regimes such as North Korea do not allow freedom of the press because they know that an informed citizenry is a powerful one. Despite the inherent importance of the media, levels of trust in the institution are precariously low both in the United States and globally. This section will examine levels of trust in the media and the causes of mistrust, then go on to examine possible reforms. Do People Trust the Media? In order for the media to fulfill its goals as a gatekeeper and purveyor of information, there needs to be trust in the institution. So why do some countries trust the media more than others? A study of 44 countries found that factors such as higher levels of political interest, interpersonal trust, and exposure to television news and newspapers are positively correlated with trust in media, while education and exposure to news on the Internet are negatively associated with levels of trust in the media. The same study showed that ownership also affects levels of trust: state ownership of television is positively associated with trust in media in democratic societies and negatively associated with trust in media in nondemocratic societies. Yariv Tsfati and Gal Ariely, “Individual and Contextual Correlates of Trust in Media across 44 Countries,” Communication Research 41, no. 6 (August 2014): 760–782, https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650213485972. Other reports have found that levels of democracy and media freedom are not necessarily correlated with trust in the media. Evaluations of the economy also have been suggested as a factor in people’s trust in the media. Tien-Tsung Lee, “Why They Don’t Trust the Media: An Examination of Factors Predicting Trust,” American Behavioral Scientist 54, no. 1 (September 2010): 8–21, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764210376308. A 2019 Gallup report on global trust in the media noted that the percentage of respondents who expressed at least some trust in journalists ranged from a low of 12 percent in Greece to a high of 93 percent in Uzbekistan. Zacc Ritter, “How Much Does the World Trust Journalists?,” Gallup, December 27, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/272999/world-trust-journalists.aspx. Most people around the globe trust people they know personally over people they know through online exchanges, and there appears to be a healthy skepticism of online news and content in general. Some question whether increased political polarization has contributed to lower levels of trust in the media. Given the apparent causal relationship between political polarization and online echo chambers, perhaps the relationship between trust in the media and political polarization is more analogous to the well-worn question about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Wilfred Laurier University professor Anne Wilson , PhD candidate Victoria Parker, and University of Toronto professor Matthew Feinberg describe this as a polarization feedback loop , in which increasing polarization among political elites and the media “selectively amplif[ies] the worst the other side has to offer” and ultimately feeds into mistrust of the media and polarization of the electorate. Anne E. Wilson, Victoria A. Parker, and Matthew Feinberg, “Polarization in the Contemporary Political and Media Landscape,” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 34 (August 2020): 226, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.07.005. The schism is particularly apparent in the United States, where political partisanship is evident not only across many policy issues but also when it comes to trust in the media. Republicans’ trust in the media decreased significantly between 2000 and 2020. (souce: Gallup; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) When looking at a more detailed breakdown of who doesn’t trust the media, the polling website FiveThirtyEight notes that Republicans in the United States have built on their long-held belief that the media has a liberal bias to incorporate an “anti-media” stance into their overall ideology. Meredith Conroy, “Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ Is Now Part of the GOP Identity,” FiveThirtyEight, ABC News, April 5, 2021, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-being-anti-media-is-now-part-of-the-gop-identity/. In 2018, nine in 10 Republicans said they had “personally . . . lost trust in the news media in recent years.” Indicators of News Media Trust: A Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey (Washington, DC: Gallup, 2018), 1, https://knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust/. As people’s choices in media content have increased, it is not surprising that both Republicans and Democrats have sought out news sources that reinforce their political beliefs, and the Internet has made this especially easy. Additionally, conservatives are more likely to surround themselves with like-minded views online, while liberals are more likely to block friends who do not agree with them on social media. Amy Mitchell et al., Political Polarization & Media Habits: From Fox News to Facebook, How Liberals and Conservatives Keep Up with Politics (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, October 2014), https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/. This self-imposed exposure to partisan media ultimately reduces people’s overall trust in the mainstream press, regardless of party. See Meredith Conroy. Why Should We Care about Trust in the Media, and How Can We Increase It? An informed citizenry is a precondition for democracy, and in order for citizens to act collectively and cast votes in their best interests, people should be able to rely on the media as a source of unbiased information. Without a foundation of trust in the media, people will find their information elsewhere. While one cannot assume that all voters will make an effort to make educated choices, the ability to develop informed decisions makes trust in the media a crucial first step. As former United States congressman Lee H. Hamilton writes, “The truth is that for our democracy to work, it needs not just an engaged citizenry, but an informed one.” Lee H. Hamilton, “We Need an Informed Citizenry,” Journal of Civic Literacy 2, no. 1 (2015): 2, https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/civiclit/article/view/19685. The public’s habits and their trust have moved in lockstep with one another, and as people have walled themselves off from news they do not believe in, their trust in institutional media has fallen, as has their ability to remain informed. The decline of trust in both governmental and media institutions has real consequences. The erosion of trust in public institutions damages the credibility of those institutions, further undermining their effectiveness and perpetuating a vicious circle. Mohamed A. El-Erian, “Why Retaining Trust in Institutions Matters,” World Economic Forum, October 9, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/why-retaining-trust-in-institutions-matters. What can be done to restore trust in the media as an institution? Organizations in the United States and around the world have proposed numerous strategies for supporting media institutions and promoting trust. The Knight Foundation points out that a majority of respondents in a 2020 survey believed that it is possible to raise levels of trust in the media, and in pursuit of that goal, the foundation makes two substantial suggestions for the media: official corrections (that is, admitting to errors and publicly correcting them) and increased representation. John Sands, “Public Confidence in the Media Is Sliding, but Newsrooms Can Win It Back,” Knight Foundation, September 15, 2020, https://knightfoundation.org/articles/public-confidence-in-the-media-is-sliding-but-newsrooms-can-win-it-back/. Respondents indicated that when the media issues official corrections, this increases rather than decreases trust, suggesting that transparency is key to raising trust levels. With regard to representation, readers appear to want more representation in newsrooms, with journalists who look like them and more closely reflect their communities. NPR ’s public editor suggests that the lack of trust also stems from content quality. “Cable networks . . . prioritized talking heads Typically, guests who discuss issues on television or the radio who do not engage in journalistic practices that result in unbiased or fact-based reporting over reporting. Print media . . . conflated opinion, analysis, and straight reporting.” Elizabeth Jensen, “Looking to the Future: Restoring Public Trust in the Media,” NPR Public Editor, NPR, May 15, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2017/05/15/528158488/looking-to-the-future-restoring-public-trust-in-the-media. In response to this, the Trust Project , which partners with 200 news outlets across 12 countries, works with media organizations to incorporate what it calls “the 8 Trust Indicators” Best practices, journalistic expertise, type of work, citations and references, methods, local sourcing, diverse voices, and actionable feedback in order to facilitate improved news quality and increase reader trust. The Trust Project, accessed November 2, 2021, https://thetrustproject.org. Addressing the issue of media concentration may also encourage higher-quality content and promote a closer relationship with readers and viewers, thus contributing to engendering trust. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) , the world’s largest intergovernmental organization dedicated to security, elections, human rights, and press freedom (among other concerns), makes a number of recommendations for improving both content quality and people’s trust in the media. The OSCE advises European governments to tackle the problem of media concentration by reducing certain taxes for newspaper companies; develop guidelines for editorial independence from corporate owners; strengthen intellectual property and bargaining rights for journalists; and provide “sufficient” salaries for journalists. Further, the OSCE encourages nations to monitor these recommendations. Johannes von Dohnanyi and Christian Möller, The Impact of Media Concentration on Professional Journalism (Vienna: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 2003), https://www.osce.org/fom/13870. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could reverse rules that loosened restrictions on mergers, though as some point out, this would not necessarily prevent smaller media outlets from dying off. One novel suggestion is to require a transaction fee for each merger, with the proceeds going to fund local journalism, especially because it appears that trust is fostered when readers feel that the media outlets they use are tied to their communities. Steven Waldman, “How to Fix the Media Ownership Debate,” Columbia Journalism Review , December 20, 2012, https://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/how_to_fix_the_media_ownership.php. Help Stop the Spread of Misinformation To combat misinformation online, organizations such as First Draft work globally with journalists to root out misinformation and provide reporters with resources and information to create the most informed content possible and build trust with audiences. “About,” First Draft, accessed November 2, 2021, https://firstdraftnews.org/about/. The website hosts a free library of training content, including online courses, tool kits, and resources designed to help both journalists and the public build expertise and stay ahead of misinformation. Everyone has the ability to stop misinformation, and by educating yourself on how to stay alert to the spread of false news, you help promote a healthier media. Maintaining trust in the media is important because people need to rely on the media in order to make informed decisions as citizens. Without the media, citizens fall prey to misinformation or no information, and falling levels of trust signify a troubled relationship. One reason for this falling trust is increasing political polarization. Polarization leads to lower levels of trust, which lead to worse polarization. What can governments and the media do to address this phenomenon? Recommendations from nongovernmental organizations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe include official corrections and increased representation in the media, measures to address media concentration, and tax incentives for smaller media companies. Suggested Readings Gans, Herbert. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time . New York: Vintage Books, 1980. Graber, Doris A. Mass Media and American Politics . 6th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2002. Iyengar, Shanto. Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide . 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016. Patterson, Thomas E. Out of Order . New York: Knopf, 1993. Sunstein, Cass R. #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) the world’s largest intergovernmental organization dedicated to security, elections, human rights, and press freedom polarization feedback loop the theory that rising polarization among political elites and the media amplifies the worst of both sides, ultimately feeding into mistrust of the media and polarization of the electorate

Social Sciences


Introduction The New Zealand government distributed pamphlets and hung posters to disseminate information about adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic. New Zealand’s lockdown was among the strictest that governments imposed during the pandemic. (credit: New Zealand Government/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) Political power is organized in the form of governing regimes , or governments. Underlying institutional patterns have emerged among the wide variety of these regimes across different regions of the world and in different periods of time. These different approaches to governance are evident in the ways various regimes seek to address common challenges and achieve desired goals. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, for example, some countries swiftly enacted lockdowns, mask mandates, and other policies aimed at reigning in the spread of the virus, while other countries took more of a wait-and-see approach that prioritized individual freedoms. When you draw distinctions among varying types of regimes and detect trends in contemporary governments, you can come to our own conclusions regarding which regime is best for addressing these kinds of challenges. To these ends, this chapter will look at governing regimes both conceptually and in reference to a range of concrete examples drawn from governments around the world.

Social Sciences


Contemporary Government Regimes: Power, Legitimacy, and Authority Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the nature of governing regimes. Define power, authority, and legitimacy. Explain the relationships among power, authority, and legitimacy. Discuss political history and contemporary political and legal developments surrounding governing regimes. A government can be defined as a set of organizations, with their associated rules and procedures, that has the authority to exercise the widest scope of power —the ability to impose its will on others to secure desired outcomes—over a defined area. Government authority includes the power to have the final say over when the use of force is acceptable, and governments seek to exercise their authority with legitimacy. This is a complex definition, so this section unpacks its elements one by one. A government both claims the right and has the ability to exercise power over all people in a defined geographic area. The leadership of a church or a mosque, for example, can refuse to offer religious services to certain individuals or can excommunicate them. However, such organizations have no right to apply force to impose their will on non-congregants. In contrast, governments reserve for themselves the broadest scope of rightful power within their area of control and can, in principle, impose their will on vast areas of the lives of all people within the territories over which they rule. During the COVID-19 pandemic, only governments both claimed and exercised the right to close businesses and to forbid religious institutions to hold services. The pandemic also highlights another feature of governments: almost all governments seek to have and to exercise power in order to create at least minimal levels of peace, order, and collective stability and safety. China’s armed police force imposes government-sanctioned order. (credit: “China Armed Police Force” by Michael Mooney/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) As German social scientist Max Weber maintained, almost all governments seek to have and to enforce the right to have the final say over when violence is acceptable within their territory. Governments often assert what Weber called a monopoly on the right to use violence , reserving for themselves either the right to use violence or the right to approve its use by others. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2009). The word monopoly might be misleading. In most countries, citizens have a right to use violence in self-defense; most governments do not maintain that they alone can exercise the acceptable use of violence. Where the government recognizes the right to use violence in self-defense, it will seek to reserve for itself the right to decide when, in its judgment, that use is acceptable. Imagine a landlord confronting a tenant who has not paid their rent. The landlord cannot violently seize the renter and forcibly evict them from the apartment; only the police—an agency of the state—can acceptably do that. Nevertheless, the law of many countries recognizes a right of self-defense by means of physical violence. In many US states, for example, if a person enters your house unlawfully with a weapon and you suspect they constitute a threat to you or your family, you have a broad right to use force against that intruder in self-defense (a principle that forms the core of the “ castle doctrine ”). In addition, private security guards can sometimes use force to protect private property. The government retains the right to determine, via its court system, whether these uses of force meet the criteria for being judged acceptable. Because the government sets these criteria, it can be said to have the final say on when the use of force is permissible. Authority Authority is the permission, conferred by the laws of a governing regime, to exercise power. Governments most often seek to authorize their power in the form of some decree or set of decrees—most often in the form of a legal constitution that sets out the scope of the government’s powers and the process by which laws will be made and enforced. The enactment of codes of criminal law, the creation of police forces, and the establishment of procedures surrounding criminal justice are clear examples of the development of authorized power. To some degree, the constitution of every government authorizes the government to impose a prohibition, applicable in principle to all people in its territory, on certain behaviors. Individuals engaging in those behaviors are subject to coercive enforcement by the state’s police force, which adheres to defined lines of authority and the rules police departments must follow. Governmental regulations are another type of authorized government power. The laws that structure a regime usually give the government the authority to regulate individual and group behaviors. For example, Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution authorizes the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. When large commercial airlines fly individuals across state lines for a fee, they engage in interstate commerce. The federal government therefore has the authority to regulate airline safety requirements and flight patterns. Pursuant to this authority, the federal government has established an agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), to issue these regulations, which are ultimately backed by the state’s coercive enforcement power. Weber argued that those who structure regimes are likely to choose, on the basis of the regime’s own best interests, to create authority that is clearly spelled out in a regime’s constitutional law. Weber, Essays in Sociology . When lines of authority in the government are clear, especially in the context of the state’s criminal law, the people living in a regime are less fearful of the state. This helps the state secure the people’s support. When the scope of the government’s authority is clear, people can understand how their government is structured and functions and are therefore less likely to be surprised by governmental actions. This can be especially important for the economy. To follow the example above, if laws regulating the private ownership of commercial airlines are constantly open to unexpected change, some people may be wary of working in the industry or investing their money in these companies’ stock. Predictable governmental action can encourage these investments. With increased economic activity, the government can tax the productive output, amassing resources to help it achieve whatever its goals might be. In addition, clearly defined structures of authority in the form of stable bureaucratic institutions allow a government to exercise power more efficiently and cost-effectively, once again enabling it to amass more resources to serve its objectives. Individual government officials may have an incentive to break these rules. Former president Richard Nixon, for electoral reasons, among others, broke the law and so acted without authority. His illegal actions were discovered, and he resigned before being impeached and removed from office by Congress. See Frank O. Bowmann III, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump , Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Donald Trump also faced allegations that he was driven by considerations of electoral advantage to break federal laws, and he was impeached (but not removed from office) twice on that basis. For a recent survey of the range of allegations of unlawful behavior during Trump’s presidency designed to enhance his reelection prospects, see a 2021 report by Henry Kerner of the Office of the Special Counsel, who asserts there was a “concerted willful effort to violate the law by the most senior officers in the White House” during Trump’s presidency. US Office of Special Counsel, Investigation of Political Activities by Senior Trump Administration Officials during the 2020 Presidential Election , November 9, 2021, https://osc.gov/Documents/Hatch%20Act/Reports/Investigation%20of%20Political%20Activities%20by%20Senior%20Trump%20Administration%20Officials%20During%20the%202020%20Presidential%20Election.pdf. The Trump administration denied any legal wrongdoing in these matters. Andrea Shalal, “Federal Watchdog Probing Trump Campaign’s Use of White House – Lawmaker,” Reuters , November 25, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-trump-investigation-idINKBN27M0EF. The use of physical force to directly restrain behavior is just one of the ways governments exercise power. Governments also tax. In a sense, the taxing authority of government is a necessary corollary of its authority to impose behavior-restricting rules: almost all governments must derive revenue through taxes in order to finance the maintenance of their laws and to ensure peace and public order. However, that authority also allows governments to exercise power to achieve a wide variety of ends, funding everything from foreign wars to a social safety net or a set of social programs. Taxation is another way governments regulate people’s behavior: if you don’t pay your taxes, the government is authorized to punish you—a principle true across the world, even if the levels of enforcement for not paying taxes vary across regimes. The authority to tax illustrates another aspect of governmental power: the use of authority to shape society by creating incentives for particular kinds of behavior. In the United States, the federal tax code enables taxpayers to deduct large charitable donations from their taxable income as a way to encourage individuals to give to charities. Additionally, homeowners can deduct the interest they pay on their home mortgage, thereby reducing their annual federal tax obligation. This use of government power is meant to encourage people to own homes rather than rent. In the United States, at least, the federal government has encouraged homeownership due to a belief that homeownership helps people build closer ties with and involvement in local communities and thus increases civic participation, and that owning a home correlates with greater levels of long-term savings, which can provide individuals greater financial security in their retirement. Mark P. Keightley, “Why Subsidize Homeownership? A Review of Rationales,” Congressional Research Service , September 6, 2019, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF11305.pdf; Laurie S. Goodman and Christopher Meyer, “Homeownership and the American Dream,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 32, no. 1 (2018): 31–58; Kim R. Manturuk, Mark Lindblad, and Roberto G. Quercia, A Place Called Home: The Social Dimensions of Homeownership (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), xii–xvii. (For some people, their house is their largest asset, which can help to finance their retirement.) Conversely, governments can impose “sin taxes”—that is, taxes on products like alcohol and cigarettes, discouraging their use. Some lawmakers have proposed levying higher taxes on bullets to discourage gun violence, and some areas have taxed sugary soft drinks to discourage their consumption as a way to improve public health. Ulrik Boesen, “Sugar Taxes Back on the Menu,” Tax Foundation, February 18, 2021, https://taxfoundation.org/sugar-taxes/. Governments can use taxes to try to influence behavior. The average state tax on a pack of cigarettes in the United States in December 2021 was $1.91. (source: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Beyond taxation, governmental leaders can use their office to influence public opinion. Governmental authorities are often authorized to use the government’s assets to promote their policies: the president of the United States, for example, is authorized to use Air Force One (the presidential jet) to travel the country in order to promote policy proposals. (Presidents are not, however, allowed to use Air Force One for free to conduct political fundraising.) Additionally, members of the United States Congress are authorized to send letters to constituents, free of charge, describing or defending the policies they support. Tools like these allow governments to exercise the power of influence and persuasion. The chief executive is usually the governmental official who takes the greatest advantage of this form of power. In the United States, presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt became famous for skillfully using the “ bully pulpit ,” that is, the power of the president to shape the opinions of the population and, through this, potentially to influence members of other branches of the government, especially elected legislators. Presidents and prime ministers often give speeches or issue proclamations to exert this power. President Barack Obama, for example, following a long tradition in American politics, spoke often of what “we as Americans” value as a way to persuade the populace to support the policy agenda of his administration. Take the following example from one of Obama’s speeches. In the speech, he defended his administration’s decision to change the priorities of federal immigration officials to less rigorously enforce laws requiring the deportation of undocumented individuals when those individuals entered the country as children—the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. Arguing that children brought to the country by their parents should not have to live in fear of deportation, Obama remarked: “My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal—that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.” (emphasis added) Eyder Peralta, “Obama Goes It Alone, Shielding up to 5 Million Immigrants from Deportation,” NPR , November 20, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365519963/obama-will-announce-relief-for-up-to-5-million-immigrants. By using rhetoric that attempts to define the national ethos, governments can seek to exercise power by shaping the population’s sense of itself and its place in history. Legitimacy Most governments establish authority not only to exercise power, but also in the pursuit of legitimacy. Legitimacy can be seen from two different vantage points. Following Weber, the term is often used to mean the widespread belief that the government has the right to exercise its power. In this sense—which can be called broad legitimacy —the concept describes a government trait. Legitimacy can also be seen from the perspective of individuals or groups who make determinations about whether their government is or is not legitimate—that is, rightfully exercising power, or what can be called judgments about legitimacy . In either sense, legitimacy is measured in perceptions of the rightfulness of government actions—the sense that those actions are morally appropriate and consistent with basic justice and social welfare. It is quite possible for a small group or a small set of groups to conclude that their government is illegitimate and so does not have the right to exercise authorized power even as the vast majority think that government is rightfully exercising authorized power. In this case, since the dissenting group is small and the great majority see their government as legitimate, the state can be deemed broadly legitimate. Broad legitimacy, therefore, is defined not as unanimous agreement by the people that a government’s authority is rightfully exercised, but simply as a broad sentiment that it is. Finding Legitimacy: What Does Legitimacy Mean to You? In this Center for Public Impact video, people from around the world talk about what government legitimacy means to them. Legitimacy is a vague concept. Citizens’ judgments about legitimacy entail the often-difficult determinations of what is or is not rightful and thus consistent with morality, justice, and social welfare. Judging rightfulness can be a challenging task, as can the determination of whether a regime truly possesses broad legitimacy. Though you cannot always say for certain that a government truly has broad legitimacy, broad illegitimacy is often easy to detect. Indications of governments that do not have broad legitimacy can take many forms, including sustained protests, very low levels of trust in the regime as captured by polling data, and widespread calls for revising or abandoning the constitution. The most effective governments, Weber argued, not only have laws that clearly authorize power but also have some substantial measure of broad legitimacy. Broadly legitimate governments can exercise power without the threat of popular rebellion, and the state can more readily rely on people to follow the law. These conditions can spare the government the cost of large standing police forces or militaries, and those resources in turn can be allocated in other areas. Unsurprisingly, most governments seek to legitimize their rule. In the United States, many debates over rival understandings of law and public policy are not debates over legitimacy. For example, many groups in the United States disagree over certain tax policies; some want to increase taxes to pay for greater services, while others want to lower taxes to encourage economic growth. Yet those who oppose a particular tax law rarely refer to it as illegitimate since the law is recognized as coming from a process that has widespread popular support—that is, from the lawmaking process authorized in the US Constitution. Therefore, tax laws that many disfavor are usually not seen as illegitimate, but simply as unpopular or unwise and thus in need of change. However, in the United States today, more and more debates surrounding law, public policy, and election results are expressed in terms of judgments of their legitimacy or illegitimacy. A true loss of legitimacy, either in the eyes of a small group or in the eyes of the broad populace, occurs only when a law is determined to be so wrong or harmful that it is not right for the government to enact it. In many cases in the United States today, allegations of illegitimacy contend not that a law or electoral result lacks legitimacy because the substance of the law or election outcome is so egregious that it is not a rightful thing for the government to do or to permit, but because they claim the US Constitution does not authorize the law or the process that resulted in a particular outcome. Consider the 2020 election and debates involving the administration of President Joe Biden . Many supporters of Donald Trump hold that President Biden is an illegitimate president, Christina Bobb of the far right One America Network, for example, asserts that “we can all now see that Joe Biden is not a legitimate president.” “OAN Host: Joe Biden Is Not a Legitimate President and We Do Not Have a Legitimate Executive Branch in Power Right Now,” Media Matters for America , April 26, 2021, https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-joe-biden-not-legitimate-president-and-we-do-not-have-legitimate-exec. but they contend not so much that he is so unacceptable that his holding the office of president is inconsistent with morality, justice, and social welfare, but that the governmental officials in charge of running the 2020 presidential election process acted inappropriately or even, some contend, engaged in criminal ballot tampering. For these reasons, to them Biden’s current presidency is unrightful because they see the process by which he was elected as unauthorized. Bobb, for example, goes on to say that Biden and his supporters “devised an evil [and illegal] scheme to steal our election.” Media Matters , “Joe Biden Is Not a Legitimate President.” Numerous post-election audits have found the allegations to be without merit. “Far Too Little Vote Fraud to Tip Election to Trump, AP Finds,” US News & World Report , December 14, 2021, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/pennsylvania/articles/2021-12-14/far-too-little-vote-fraud-to-tip-election-to-trump-ap-finds. In an April 2021 poll, about three-quarters of Republicans, a quarter of Democrats, and half of Independents indicated that they believe the 2020 election was affected by cheating. “Election Integrity: 62% Don’t Think Voter ID Laws Discriminate,” Rasmussen Reports, April 13, 2021, https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2021/election_integrity_62_don_t_think_voter_id_laws_discriminate. These debates are complicated, and it is difficult to pinpoint the origin, rationale, and true motivation behind these judgments that the election results, for example, are illegitimate. What can be said is that there seem to be not only deeply rooted disagreements in the United States over what policies are best, but also deep disagreements about whether a variety of laws or governmental actions are in fact authorized by the Constitution—a development arising because of deepening disagreements among citizens about what the Constitution and the rules it contains actually mean. In 2012, protestors held signs expressing their belief that Pennsylvania’s voter ID law, which would have required people to have and present specific types of identification in order to vote, was unconstitutional. The law was eventually struck down; however, the state legislature continues to work on measures aimed at creating stricter voting and election laws. (credit: “PA voter ID is unconstitutional” by Rick Smith/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Some public allegations that a law or electoral outcome is illegitimate in the sense that it is unauthorized may be mere covers for the genuine view that the laws or the electoral results are themselves unrightful, even if they were authorized. Those making such claims may not wish to be seen as protesting authorized governmental activity since to do so could make them appear lawless or even revolutionary. The Legitimate Exercise of Power In some cases, the constitutional law of a governing regime authorizes the suspension of established laws and regulations, allowing the government to act without defined limits on the scope of its authorized actions. A common way this can occur is in regimes that authorize the government to declare states of emergency that suspend the government’s adherence to the ordinary scope of authorized power. There are strong reasons for states to resist invoking a condition of emergency. Clear lines of government authority, especially in the context of the state’s criminal law, tend to make people less fearful of the state, allowing the state more easily to call upon the people for support and thus enhancing the state’s legitimacy. Nevertheless, many regimes have the authority to declare emergencies—often in response to threats to public safety, such as terrorism—and to act in only vaguely specified ways during these periods. 45 Years Ago, a State of Emergency Was Declared in India In 1975, during a time of social and political unrest, India’s national government declared a nationwide state of emergency, allowing the government to suspend civil liberties. States generally see the establishment of public security as critical to their continued broad legitimacy: a state that cannot protect its people is likely to lose the widespread sentiment that it has the right to rule. Yet many states realize the potential negative consequences of unpredictable or unrestrained state action. For this reason, many regimes authorize the declaration of states of emergency , but only for limited periods of time. In France, for example, the president can declare a state of emergency for no more than 12 days, after which any extension must be approved by a majority vote of the legislature. France, La Constitution du 4 octobre 1958 , Const. Art. 16, https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/en/constitution-of-4-october-1958; Loi n° 55-385 du 3 avril 1955 relative à l’état d’urgence, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000000695350/. This power was enacted in response to terrorist attacks in 2015 and was renewed periodically until 2017. The state of emergency allowed, for example, certain otherwise unauthorized police procedures, such as searching for evidence without a warrant issued by a judge. Loi n° 55-385 du 3 avril 1955 relative à l’état d’urgence, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000000695350/. France’s law authorizing emergency declarations dates to the 1950s, and that it is fully authorized by the French Constitution and widely approved France, La Constitution du 4 octobre 1958 , Const. Art. 16, https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/en/constitution-of-4-october-1958. illustrates that in some circumstances governing regimes can legitimately exercise sweeping and unstructured governmental powers. In 2020, France also declared a state of emergency to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Where there is broad public support, regimes may periodically and legitimately reauthorize states of emergency. Take, for example, the State of Israel. Israeli law authorizes two different forms of declarations of emergency, one that can be issued only by the legislature and one that can be issued by the government’s executive officials without the need for the legislature’s approval. The first form, which allows the government “to alter any law temporarily,” Basic Law Art. 139(c); The Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, Law and Emergencies: A Comparative Overview , January 2016, https://minervaextremelaw.haifa.ac.il/images/Emergency_Laws_and_Regulations_-in_Israel-_19-_Jan2016.pdf. can remain in effect for up to one year and can be renewed indefinitely. This allows governmental officials to use sweeping powers restricted only by the vague statement that emergency enactments may not “allow infringement upon human dignity.” Basic Law Art. 139(c); Minerva Center, Law and Emergencies . In addition, The Basic Laws of Israel allow the Israeli government—independent of a declaration of emergency by the legislature—to declare a condition of emergency. Law and Administration Ordinance Art. 9(a), 1 Laws of the State of Israel [Laws St. Isr.] 7 (1948) (enacted May 19, 1948); Minerva Center, Law and Emergencies . These decrees can remain in effect for three months but can also be renewed indefinitely. Minerva Center, Law and Emergencies . Pursuant to this authority, the government in 1948 issued an Emergency Defense Regulation that authorized the “establishing [of] military tribunals to try civilians without granting the right of appeal, allowing sweeping searches and seizures, prohibiting publication of books and newspapers, demolishing houses, detaining individuals administratively for an indefinite period, sealing off particular territories, and imposing curfew.” “Defense (Emergency) Regulations,” The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, https://www.btselem.org/legal_documents/emergency_regulations. This regulation has been renewed every year since 1948; today it applies mostly to the West Bank. “Declaring a State of Emergency,” The Knesset, https://m.knesset.gov.il/en/about/lexicon/pages/declaringstateemergency.aspx; Ahaz Ben Ari and Meir Elran, “States of Emergency: Legal Aspects and Implications for the Corona Crisis in Israel,” INSS Insight , no. 1292, April 5, 2020, https://www.inss.org.il/publication/coronavirus-and-law-2/; “Knesset Extends State of Emergency in Israel by Another Year,” Knesset News, August 3, 2021, https://main.knesset.gov.il/EN/News/PressReleases/Pages/press3821t.aspx; “Defense (Emergency) Regulations,” Israeli Information Center. Both forms of emergency decrees have broad support in Israel, Myriam Feinberg, “States of Emergency in France and Israel—Terrorism, ‘Permanent Emergencies,’ and Democracy,” Z Politikwiss 28 (2018): 495–506. indicating the popular sentiment that the Israeli government has the right to invoke such sweeping and unrestricted protocols because of the widely held belief among Israelis that the country faces serious and ongoing threats. Even when such declarations are authorized and have initial broad support, the extensive use of emergency decrees risks undermining the regime’s legitimacy. In the early 1970s, then-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos tested the limits of using emergency declarations to claim sweeping powers. In General Order No. 1, issued on September 22, 1972, Marcos declared: “I, Ferdinand E. Marcos, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, do hereby proclaim that I shall govern the nation and direct the operation of the entire Government, including all its agencies and instrumentalities.” “The Makings of a ‘Constitutional Dictator,’” Martial Law Museum, https://martiallawmuseum.ph/magaral/the-makings-of-a-constitutional-dictator/. As one scholar relates, Marcos “took great pains to ensure that his actions would align with the dictates of the law.” “Constitutional Dictator,” Martial Law Museum. The Philippine Constitution at the time allowed the president, in his role as Commander in Chief, to declare an emergency and to use emergency powers. “Declaration of Martial Law,” Official Gazette , https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/featured/declaration-of-martial-law/ To ensure he could remain in office beyond the two four-year terms allotted to each president by the constitution, Marcos called for a constitutional convention, which was ratified by the population and which changed the position of president into that of a prime minister who could serve as long as the parliament approved. After an additional constitutional change in 1981 that made the office of president once again directly elected by voters, Marcos successfully ran for president, pledging to continue to exercise sweeping unrestricted powers. “Philippine Constitutions,” Official Gazette , https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/; “1973 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines,” Official Gazette , https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/1973-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines-2/; Encyclopaedia Britannica Online , “Philippines: Martial Law,” https://www.britannica.com/place/Philippines/Martial-law. Marcos has thus been called a “constitutional dictator,” “Constitutional Dictator,” Martial Law Museum (emphasis in original). one who came to rule with unrestrained power through a popular constitution and as a leader who himself enjoyed wide popularity. Martial Law in the Philippines In 1972, the president of the Phillippines, Ferdinand Marcos, declared martial law. This video clip describes what led up to the proclamation and the extreme conditions in place in the Phillippines under martial law. At least, that is, at first. Over time, Marcos’s support deteriorated as people tired of his often chaotic and increasingly cruel dictatorship. By 1986, his People Power Revolution saw the electorate turn on him, and the United States pressured him to respect the electoral outcome and leave office. “A History of the Philippine Political Protest,” Official Gazette , https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/edsa/the-ph-protest/; Encyclopaedia Britannica , “Philippines: Martial Law.” A regime that assumes long-lasting, sweeping, and only vaguely defined authority as the Philippines did under Marcos can become a police state (sometimes called a security state )—that is, a state that uses its police or military force to exercise unrestrained power. When states do not operate within clearly defined legal rules, political scientists say that the government in those states has little respect for the rule of law . Governments may also exercise unauthorized but legitimate forms of power. Although the absence of authority can be grounds for judging an exercise of power to be illegitimate, this is not always the case. Examples of unauthorized but legitimate government activities tend to fall at two ends of the spectrum of public importance: governmental actions that are generally considered rather insignificant and actions that are deemed to be of tremendous importance, especially in grave moments of crisis. On one end of the spectrum, as a result of the federal National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, the legal age to purchase or publicly consume alcohol anywhere in the United States is 21. However, this law allows states to make exceptions to the age requirement for individuals under 21 who possess or consume alcohol in the presence of responsible parents. Not all states have created exceptions in their alcohol laws, and the possession of alcohol by anyone under the age of 21 is always technically illegal. National Institutes of Health, “Underage Drinking: Possession/Consumption/Internal Possession,” Alcohol Policy Information System, https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/apis-policy-topics/possessionconsumptioninternal-possession-of-alcohol/42/about-this-policy. But in a number of these states there is such widespread sentiment that possession is acceptable in the presence of responsible adults that there is wide agreement that the state can exercise the unauthorized power to choose not to enforce the law under these conditions. On the other end of the spectrum, during perceived moments of grave emergency, such as a dire terrorist threat, there may be broad agreement that the government may, legitimately exercise the unauthorized use of power. Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele notes that since 9/11 a number of world governments have made “quick responses [to terrorism] that violate the constitutional order followed by a progressive normalization.” Kim Lane Scheppele, “Law in a Time of Emergency: States of Exception and the Temptations of 9/11,” Journal of Constitutional Law 6, no. 5 (2004): 1–75, 3. These actions might be limited in number, and the broader population may be unaware of their details and scope. Nevertheless, it is arguable that the population is aware that its government is taking unauthorized action in response to terrorist threats and that it supports the government’s right to do so. President George W. Bush speaks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. (credit: “911: President George W. Bush Delivers Remarks on Terrorist Attacks from Barksdale Air Force Base, 09/11/2001” by The US National Archives/Flickr, Public Domain) The Illegitimate Exercise of Power and the Challenge of Revolutionary Change Some regimes, though they have established lines of authority, may come to be broadly illegitimate over time. Throughout history, there are many examples of times when the sense that a regime was no longer legitimate led the people to revolt, either by sustained, widespread peaceful protests—such as in the Velvet Revolution in November of 1989 that led to the dissolution of the communist regime of Czechoslovakia—or by internal violent regime change—that is, the use of revolutionary violence. Revolutions intent on removing a constitution almost always seek to replace one constitution with another. Is there a standard of justice that transcends the constitutional law of a particular regime, a standard that can guide a people as they seek to free themselves from one constitution and replace it with another? Historically, in the Western political context, the standard of basic morality, justice, and social welfare has been the set of natural rights guaranteed by the natural law. More recently, the standard is referred to most often as fundamental human rights. (See also Chapter 2: Political Behavior Is Human Behavior and Chapter 3: Political Ideology .) The meaning of these concepts—natural law, natural rights, and human rights—is often contested, and this disagreement complicates any efforts to establish new constitutions to replace illegitimate regimes. Successful revolutionary change faces numerous challenges, including the fact that people might agree that a regime is not worthy of support, but their reasons for that opinion may differ. Joseph Ellis has recently argued that not much more than a general notion that America should be independent of the British Empire united the American revolutionaries, who disagreed over why independence was necessary and what an independent America should look like. Joseph Ellis, The Cause: The American Revolution ad Its Discontents, 1773–1783 (New York: Liveright, 2021). Protestors march peacefully down a street in Prague during the Velvet Revolution in 1989. (credit: “Street photo from the ‘Velvet revolution’ in Prague 1989” by Josef Šrámek ml./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) In the 1930s and 1940s in India, Mahatma Gandhi employed civil disobedience to protest British imperil rule. One way a group can seek to change a law or even an entire governing system is to engage in civil disobedience , the nonviolent refusal to comply with authorized exercises of power. In the 1960s, civil rights groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used civil disobedience to protest racial discrimination. Although both started out as small protest movements, they grew into movements capable of undermining the broad legitimacy of the governing regimes they opposed. Methods of Developing Legitimacy Widespread support for the right of the government to rule can come from a variety of sources. Max Weber argued that broad legitimacy develops in three primary ways. Weber, Essays in Sociology. The first of these is what he calls traditional legitimacy , where the governing regime embraces traditional cultural myths and accepted folkways. The United Arab Emirates can be considered an example of a regime with traditional legitimacy. Located in the far eastern section of the Arabian Peninsula, the seven small states that make up the UAE are joined together in a loose confederation, with each ruled by a monarch or emir. This system aligns with long-standing traditional practices of tribal chieftains associating together in a loose alliance to meet common objectives. The second way legitimacy can accrue, according to Weber, is through charismatic legitimacy , when forceful leaders have personal characteristics that captivate the people. There are many examples of charismatic legitimacy throughout political history. Ruhollah Khomeini , a senior Shi‘a cleric who died in 1989, held remarkable appeal in Iran in the 1970s. Seen by many Iranians as a stern man of God, he was widely thought to be unaffected by the wealth, power, and corruption that so many Iranians saw as typifying the regime of the shah (or king) of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi . Khomeini was revered for his mysticism and his love of poetry. His personal magnetism played a large role in mobilizing Iranians to topple Pahlavi’s government and to replace it with the contemporary constitution of Iran, which establishes a Shi‘a theocracy , Encyclopaedia Britannica Online , “Ruhollah Khomeini,” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruhollah-Khomeini; Ghulam-Rida A’wani, The Wine of Love, Mystical Poetry of Imam Khomeini (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Wine_of_Love_Mystical_Poetry_of_Imam/a9pZCAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Ayatollah+Khomeini+mystical+poetry&printsec=frontcover. a system of government in which religious leaders have authorized governmental power and possess either direct control over the government or enough authorized power to control the government’s policies. Vanessa Martin, Creating the Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003). Charismatic Che Guevara: Cuban Revolutionary Revolutionary Che Guevara is revered in Cuba as an anti-establishment hero. Weber’s third type of legitimacy is what he calls rational-legal legitimacy . This type of legitimacy develops as a result of the clarity and even-handedness with which a regime relates to the people. Take the example of Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), who as the prime minister of Prussia forged a united German state. This new regime gained legitimacy not only because of the shared German culture of the formerly independent German states, but also because of the efficiency of its state bureaucracy, which established a uniform system of law administered by trained public servants. Based on Weber’s analysis, a regime can secure legitimacy if the following are true: Based on rational reflection, the people come to believe one of the following statements: The regime solidifies and advances the material interests of a large percentage of the population. The regime advances deeply held moral and/or religious principles or advances strongly valued cultural traditions. The regime both supports religious, moral, or cultural values and advances the people’s economic interests. Based on an emotional sentiment, the people feel a strong emotional connection with the state. Based on a habitual respect for the government, the people unreflectively support the regime. Legitimacy can be thought of as emerging from the agency of the people, who give their support to the regime either as a result of rational reflection, emotional attachment, or the acceptance of customary ways of relating to political power. However, one should not think of the agency of the people, by which they confer legitimacy on the regime, as something that is necessarily wholly independent of the actions of the regime itself. It is possible for a regime to shape the way people relate to it. Regimes employ different tactics toward that end, including government-controlled education, state control of the media and arts and entertainment sectors, and associating the regime, at least in the people’s perceptions, with the cultural or religious views predominant among the governed. As such, although some regimes may well enjoy broad legitimacy by the free choice of their citizenry, the possibility also exists that regimes gain legitimacy through what economist Edward Herman and philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky call (in a different context) “ manufactured consent ”—that is, the shaping of the people’s response to the regime by state programs and activities designed to instill support for the regime, programs that might begin early in the citizens’ lives or that might affect citizens in subtle ways. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufactured Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002). Herman and Chomsky focus on the work of media elites to shape the population’s sentiments, but the term can be broadened to refer to the state’s attempt to do the same. Examples of this can include widespread and rather blatant government propaganda , usually defined as misleading statements and depictions meant to persuade by means other than rational engagement, or subtle control over the content of what is taught in schools. The contemporary government of the Eastern European nation of Belarus provides an especially vivid example of a regime seeking to manufacture consent through a coordinated effort to control access to information. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Belarus was a part of the Soviet state. After it established independence from the defunct Soviet Union, Belarus adopted a constitution that—on paper at least—requires free and fair elections for major government positions and affirms freedom of the press. Upon taking office as president after his victory in the 1994 election, the current Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko promised to allow broad civil liberties. “Monopolizing the Media and Information Flows,” Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1997/belarus/Belarus-05.htm. Yet, over the past 25 years, Lukashenko has exerted tremendous control over the media, including the internet. Paval Usau, “Ideology of Belarusian State Propaganda Mechanisms,” in Belarusian Society, 2007: Hopes, Illusions, Perspectives , ed. Marta Pejda (Madison, WI: East European Democratic Centre of the University of Wisconsin, 2007), 40–45; “Freedom on the Net 2021: Belarus,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/belarus/freedom-net/2021. Media content in Belarus is heavily restricted such that opposition voices are almost never depicted positively, “Belarus: More Media Censorship and Control with New Amendments of the Media Law,” European Federation of Journalists, https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2018/06/24/belarus-more-media-censorship-and-control-with-new-amendments-of-the-media-law/. and the regime has used its control over the media to promote Belarusian independence and Belarusian nationalism. Artyom Shraibman, The House That Lukashenko Built: The Foundation, Evolution, and Future of the Belarusian Regime (Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 2018), https://carnegieendowment.org/files/CP328_Shraibman_Belarus_FINAL.pdf. It is in this context that Lukashenko has continued to be reelected. The support he receives can be seen as being, to a large degree, a function of his government’s control over the formation of public opinion. To this extent, Lukashenko has followed the tradition of communist nations such as the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, which have a long history of controlling their people’s access to information while advancing throughout society the state’s preferred political messages. The exercise of manufactured consent may not always be so overt in other countries, but it may be just as effective. This propaganda poster from the Mao era shows adoring Chinese citizens proudly waving their copies of Mao’s so-called Little Red Book, which he had widely distributed throughout China and which was required in all Chinese schools. The book contains sayings and speeches by Mao. The text of the poster reads: “The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you.” (credit: “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong [...] ‘Talk at a meeting with Chinese students and trainees in Moscow’” by Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Failed and Fragile States When a state’s ability to exercise control such that it can provide minimal conditions of law, order, and social stability deteriorates to a precariously low level, it is called a fragile state . Fragile states still assert the authority to rule but have serious difficulties actually ruling. The erosion of a state’s legitimacy can lead to state fragility. A fragile state can also occur when a broadly legitimate state has its capacity to provide order depleted as a result of an external force, such as an invading army. Lothar Brock, Hans-Hendrik Holm, Georg Sorenon, and Michael Stohl, Fragile States (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012). If a fragile state loses the capacity to provide minimal conditions of law, order, and social stability entirely, it becomes a failed state . A failed state can emerge either when a state has collapsed so thoroughly that it lacks any governmental power altogether or when a shadow government has emerged—that is, an organization not authorized or desired by the government asserting rule over an area that effectively displaces and serves the same function as the official government. In this situation, internal violent regime change can occur, for if the shadow government becomes strong enough, it can mobilize sufficient power to dislodge entirely the existing regime and install itself as the authorized governmental entity. It may in the process have developed broad legitimacy, or it may simply have sufficient military power to take over the government, possessing the power of government and imposing laws that authorize its rule but not enjoying the wide support of the populace. A fragile government is one that is at serious risk of failing in either of these two ways or of experiencing violent regime change. In the early 2020s, a shadow government formed in large sections of Afghanistan , and the forces of that shadow government carried out violent regime change. From 1996 until 2001, the Taliban , an extremist Sunni Islamic movement, ruled the Afghan government. In 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Al Qaeda, a coalition of Western nations invaded Afghanistan. Due to concerns that the Afghan government had allowed the Al Qaeda terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden to operate within the country’s borders, this coalition removed the Taliban from government. The coalition replaced the Taliban government with a governing regime that had considerable elements of representative democracy. In early 2021, a shadow government led by members of the Taliban resurfaced in areas of Afghanistan. In some of these areas, the Taliban enjoyed wide popularity. Writing in January of 2021, the reporter Mujib Mashal described one such area, the city of Alingar: “Alingar is . . . an example of how the Taliban have figured out local arrangements to act like a shadow government in areas where they have established control. The insurgents collect taxes . . . and have committees overseeing basic services to the public, including health, education and running local bazaars.” Mujib Mashal, “How the Taliban Outlasted a Superpower: Tenacity and Carnage,” The New York Times , January 15, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/world/asia/taliban-afghanistan-war.html. In August 2021, the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, fell to Taliban forces, and the more democratic regime collapsed. The Taliban has since consolidated its power, issued laws authorizing its regime, and sought to secure legitimacy among the broad Afghan population. Whether Afghanistan’s restored Taliban regime will endure remains an open question. The current regime of Afghanistan represents a clear example of a fragile state. Fragile states either have a tenuous ability to keep the peace, administer court and educational systems, provide minimal sanitary and health services, and achieve stated goals such as conducting elections, or they are at risk of harboring within them rival organizations that can achieve these goals. Somalia is another example of a fragile state. Ignacio Fuente Cobo, Somalia: Picturing a Fragile State. The Existential Crisis of the Somali State (II) (Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies, 2015), https://www.ieee.es/en/Galerias/fichero/docs_analisis/2015/DIEEEA06-2015_Somalia_RadiografiaEstadoFragil_xIIx_IFC_ENGLISH.pdf. In more than 30 years of civil war, the regime governing Somalia has at times been at risk of failing to provide even a minimal level of security and stability. The condition in the country has stabilized somewhat from its low point in the early 1990s, when the risk of famine was so acute that the United States deployed military troops in Somalia to protect United Nations workers providing humanitarian relief in the country (a deployment that became controversial in the United States due to significant US military casualties). Kenneth R. Rutherford, Humanitarianism under Fire: The US and U.N. Intervention in Somalia (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2008). Somalia, however, still shows signs of fragility. Although the Somali government scheduled national elections to take place in the summer of 2021—the first to be held in decades—these elections have been indefinitely postponed in the face of continuing instability in the region. “Somalia Postpones Long-Delayed Election,” France 24, July 25, 2021, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210725-somalia-postpones-long-delayed-election. UN troops from Pakistan board a United States Air Force plane bound for Somalia in 1992. (credit: “UN troops from Pakistan board USAF C-130 bound for Mogadishu, Somalia” by TSGT Marv Lynchard/Department of Defense/National Archives, Public Domain) A government can be defined as a set of organizations, with their associated rules and procedures, that has the authority to exercise the widest scope of power—the ability to impose its will on others to secure desired outcomes—over a defined area. Governments usually assert that they possess the final say on when the use of force is acceptable within the area over which they rule. Governments have an incentive to structure their exercises of power in the form of clearly authorized rules found in statutes, constitutions, or both, and most governments seek to legitimate their rule—that is, they seek to have their rule seen as rightful. Following Weber, many political scientists distinguish between broad legitimacy, or the fact of a state being seen as legitimate by a wide percentage of the population, and judgments about a government’s legitimacy made by individuals or groups. Governments sometimes suspend the authorized rules to respond to crises and sometimes do not enforce authorized rules; in both cases, it is possible that doing so can be seen as legitimate. Weber identified three major ways by which regimes can develop legitimacy: by ruling in accordance with tradition; by ruling through charismatic magnetism; or by ruling through rational laws. Governments can also attempt to manufacture popular support though the use of blatant or subtle forms of political propaganda. If either a government’s clearly authorized exercises of power or its exercise of vaguely defined emergency powers comes to be seen as illegitimate, the government can be exposed to civil disobedience or revolution. authority the permission, conferred by the laws of a governing regime, to exercise power broad legitimacy the trait a government has of being seen by the broad population subject to its authority as rightfully exercising its power bully pulpit the potential power of the president to influence legislators and the broad population charismatic legitimacy the accumulation of legitimacy through forceful leaders whose personal characteristics captivate the people civil disobedience the nonviolent refusal to follow authorized exercises of governmental power with the purpose of demanding political change failed state a condition where a state has collapsed so thoroughly that the area it once ruled experiences the absence or near absence of governmental power altogether or becomes an empty shell ruled by an unauthorized group fragile state a condition where the capacity of a state to exercise control over an area such that it can provide minimal conditions of law, order, and social stability deteriorates to a precariously low level governing regime a set of organizations, and their associated rules and procedures, that has the authority to exercise the widest scope of power—including the power to have the final say over when the use of force is acceptable—over a defined area, and which seeks to exercise its authority with legitimacy judgments about legitimacy the perspective of individual citizens or groups of citizens who make determinations about whether their government is or is not legitimate manufactured consent support for a regime that results from state programs and activities designed to indoctrinate the people and instill that support monopoly on the right to use violence a government claim to the right to use violence or to approve its use by others police state a state that uses its police or military force to exercise unrestrained power (see also: security state) power the ability to impose one’s will on others to secure desired outcomes propaganda misleading statements and depictions meant to persuade by means other than rational engagement rational-legal legitimacy a type of legitimacy that develops as a result of the clarity and even-handedness with which a regime relates to the people rightfulness the property a constitution, law, policy, or electoral outcome has of being morally appropriate and consistent with basic justice and social welfare rule of law a condition where states operate within clearly defined legal rules security state a state that uses its police or military force to exercise unrestrained power (see also: police state) shadow government an organization, not authorized or desired by the government asserting rule over an area, that effectively displaces and serves the same function as the official government theocracy a system of government in which religious leaders have authorized governmental power and possess either direct control over the government or enough authorized governmental power to be able to control the government’s policies traditional legitimacy a form of legitimacy that accrues when the governing regime embraces traditional cultural myths and accepted folkways

Social Sciences