Opening the gates: Plurality regulation and the public interest

This article sets out the emergent challenges and opportunities for developing effective and ‘future proof’ policy for regulating media plurality. This analysis is carried out against the backdrop of UK authorities’ 2018 public interest test of the proposed merger between 21st Century Fox and Sky, and the latest data on the UK media ownership landscape. That merger review established important precedents for plurality reform, particularly in its acknowledgement that digital intermediaries are not an inherently pluralizing force and that regulatory intervention is needed to prevent concentrations of agenda power, especially at the level of wholesale newsgathering. The article goes on to critically examine the existing regulatory approach to considerations of whether media mergers are in the public interest, especially in the light of mounting evidence of intensifying consolidation within and across news platforms. This article argues that effective plurality reform must start with new legislation that sets out indicative thresholds and detailed guidance on the meaning of plurality sufficiency. This will enable a proper assessment of plurality outside merger activity and could serve as the basis for periodic reviews, enabling regulators to respond effectively to the challenge of new technologies and dynamic market conditions. We also address problems in the plurality measurement framework developed by Ofcom, namely, the inclusion of digital intermediaries as news ‘sources’ in data collection and analysis. In light of findings from the Fox/Sky merger review, a more effective approach would be to reallocate consumption attributed to major intermediaries based on analysis of the actual news sources consumed via those platforms. Far from privileging intermediaries, this approach will provide a more robust basis on which to bring them into the fold of plurality regulation, namely, through the development of plurality standards for algorithm governance. Such an approach also reflects a new reality in which the interplay of gatekeeping and agenda power between traditional media and intermediaries is not a zero-sum game, amidst growing evidence that major intermediaries are serving to consolidate rather than diversify the news offer in favour of incumbent and mostly legacy publishers.

Deliberative Systems

The deliberative systems approach focuses on “deliberative” as an adjectival quality of democratic systems, whether small-scale or large, rather than on “deliberation” as a noun. But how systems come to merit that adjective rather than any other is still an open question. This chapter addresses that by way of four subsidiary questions, which result in claims that deliberation is just one of several communicative modes in a democracy; that practices and systems need to be seen in light of power relations, especially agenda power; that systems are often better seen as processes, not venues, dynamic things occupied by purposive agents and not just formal, static relationships between institutions; and that the deliberative quality of a system might be best thought of in summative rather than additive terms. The chapter is, above all, a call to repoliticize deliberative scholarship.

How I Acquired Charisma

This chapter discusses the notion of charisma in mathematics. The word charisma colloquially means a kind of personal magnetism, often mixed with glamour. As in other academic disciplines, charisma brings power in the conventional sense: power to organize one's time, power to set the research agenda, power to attract talented students and to place them in prominent positions, as well as material perks, including the generous salary that helps distinguish a “great job” from a “good job.” Departmental rankings are broadly charisma based, so that a professor at one of the top U.S. mathematics departments will be perceived as charismatic.

Minority governments and legislative reliability

When are minority cabinets effective? We study the extent to which minority cabinets demonstrate legislative reliability, that is, introduce to parliament the bills they have announced in their legislative agendas. We test hypotheses drawn from two theories of minority government effectiveness: the positional agenda power theory which emphasizes the central location of the minority cabinet in the policy space and the ideological proximity theory which stresses the importance of the ideological closeness of opposition parties to the government. In an analysis of over 1600 bills announced by Danish and Swedish minority cabinets in 19 legislative agendas published between 1998 and 2012, we find more support, overall, for the ideological proximity than for the positional agenda power model.

Þingstörf á Alþingi 1991-2015. Kyrrstaða í breyttu umhverfi

This article examines selected aspects of Althingi’s operations over the last 24 years in light of theories on parliamentary affairs, the effect of the Internet on society and changes in Althingi’s internal and external environment. It shows that political struggles are stuck in a definite rut which undermines time management and the government’s agenda power. All main characteristics and measurable quantities of its work altered little. There are also indications that the quality of legislation is deficient. The opposition’s tactics have been to carve a negotiating position for cases with filibuster utilizing the parliament’s low level of organisation of case processing. This seems a cheap and irrelevant solution for an otherwise important matter. Modern demands have become outspoken, calling for careful methods, efficiency and discussion that is objective, concise and comprehensible.

Competitive Policy Development

We present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies, yet agree on certain common objectives. Policy developers can appeal to a decision maker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals. These investments are specific to a given proposal, which means that policy developers can potentially obtain informal agenda power. Competition undermines this agenda power, forcing policy developers to craft policies that are better for the decision maker. This beneficial effect is strongest if policy developers have divergent ideological preferences, because their intense desire to affect policy motivates them to develop higher quality proposals. (JEL D72, D73, D78, E61)