Race to the Bottom, Essay Example

At its highest basic level, politic can be described as a struggle of “who gets what, how, and when.” Here, the struggle may be as uncertain as conflicting interest groups that fight over control of something. Political scientists conduct studies on these struggles to develop theories or principles regarding ways in which the world of politics operates. Even though political scientists are subject to disagreement and debate, most of them view politics as genuine science. Political scientists such as William Connolly have applied criteria developed by Walter Bryce Gallie to demonstrate that the concept of politics is essentially contested in nature. Connolly make references on different aspects linked to politics such as government’s use of power such as political censorship; this makes the concept easily contestable but internally complex (Connolly, p.12-13).

Typically, most political scientists follow simple models of scientific inquiry when developing theories. The pathway to designing persuasive theories lies on developing and testing hypotheses. A hypothesis is a statement which a researcher construct to test whether there is a relationship between two phenomena. In this vein, political scientist uses such as statements in examining phenomena influenced by political issues. For instance, a political scientist would conduct an investigation on whether the election of incumbent president is influenced by unemployment rate or economic growth or if the economic growth has increased by 10%, would incumbent president be elected. In such investigation, there will be dependent and independent variables to test the relationship. In the second example, the dependent variable would be the reelection of incumbent while rate of economic growth would be the independent variable – which has effect on the dependent variable. Political science occasionally produces immediate conclusive results. For instance, although reelection of President Bush in 2004 (when the economy was on recession) prove the hypothesis to be true, it conflicts with the reelection of other incumbents who failed to be reelected despite existence of better economic conditions during their term. In another example, President Obama was reelected when unemployment rate had dropped; conversely, President Franklin Roosevelt, was reelected despite the fact unemployment rate was 17%. To explain such variations, we would assume that other factors apart from unemployment rates or economic growth were not primarily responsible or did not influence reelection or defeat of incumbent president and this calls for a further research. Thus, it is evident that political scientists, use or adhere to scientific methods when building persuasive and precise theories.

Because political scientists develop and assess theoretical framework according to principles and standards of scientific methods, writings in this field produces rigor, logical consistency, and objectivity characterizing used methods. Unlike other fields such as classics, literature or art, political science use metaphorical or impressionistic language that appeal to reader’s moral beliefs, senses or emotions. Rather than persuading readers with elegance of their prose, political science persuade readers via a command of facts and abilities to relate these facts to theories which can bear test of empirical investigation – concision and clarity are at prime and to achieve them, political scholar use precise concepts and terms which are relevant to their investigation.

To provide an example of rigor and objectivity, we look at how political scientists would operationalize the concept of “political censorship.” Political censorship refers to the removal, editing or altering public communication, speech, discussions, or any other material in the sense that such content is inconvenient, harmful, sensitive, or even objective (Connolly, p.12-14).. To investigate on political censorship, scholars would begin by looking at the areas where suppression of information occurs in different media platforms, including the internet, television and radio stations, books, music, films, and speech. The legitimate purpose of censorship is to control and protect vulnerable groups in cases of unethical issues such as child pornography and ensuring national security. Contrary, states practice censorship to weaken media role in ensuring government accountability by preventing hate speech, restricting religious and political views that may lead to protests, thus threatening the stability of the regime. Censorship has taken the power of the people as the authorities tend to control the thoughts of their subjects through what they read, discuss and their habitats in such a manner that the society is enclosed in fictitious reality. Governments have a tendency of enforcing censorship by omitting critical information from various content, and in other cases, content creators or their contents are criminalized and removed from the media. Political censorship undermines democracy through prevention of free flow of information and reduced legal protection. Political science reveal that political censorship as most politicians tell the public the sweet truth instead of the reality about political actions. Political communication operates in a downward manner where information flows from the government to citizens and upwards from the citizens to the government (Connolly, p.18). More so, most countries recognize the significance of the freedom of expression as a crucial tool in the growth and safeguarding the democracy of their citizens. For instance, the first amendment of the United States constitution protects its citizens against censorship as it stipulates that the Congress cannot create laws which prohibit the freedom of free speech, press and the right of the citizens to assemble and air their grievances against the government. Therefore, the US citizens have the right to associate with whomever they wish, read, write, publish, and criticize the government on its policies, thus preventing the political intervention to suppress the content.

Over the past years, many countries have experienced political control of the television, radio, and newspapers to the extent that the subject media only provides little or edited information. Therefore, most people have turned to the internet and social media platforms, which acts as the highway of information. A study by Patterson Thomas revealed that most of the journalists and news editors had developed a partisan behavior where they judge and broadcast the news on a tone suggesting that the line on either the left or right sides of the political environment (Thomas, p.25).

Bibliography

Connelly, Steve. “Mapping sustainable development as a contested concept.” Local environment 12.3 (2007): 259-278.

MacKinnon, Rebecca. “Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship.” Human Rights Watch 18, no. 8 (2006): 1-141. Retrieved from: https://www.refworld.org/docid/45cb138f2.html  [Accessed 20 July 2019]

Patterson, Thomas E. “Political roles of the journalist.” The politics of news, the news of politics (1998): 17-32.

Powell, Thomas. “Social media activism and state censorship.” Social media, politics, and the state: Protests, revolutions, riots, crime, and policing in an age of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (2014): 189-206.

Tushnet, Mark. “New York Times v. Sullivan around the world.” Ala. L. Rev. 66 (2014): 337.