Interculture Wiki

Padova-Poznan08 Group 2

Page history last edited by roby 1 yr ago

MEMBERS of GROUP 2: Roberta Fumani, Giovanna Sperotto, Caroline Witte

Our most common mistakes
Our definition of intercultural competence (ICC)
Political elections 2008: our sub-groups
Elections08: candidates by comparison
Glossary
Commenting the vidoes

7. Party funding: A) Italy

B) U.S.A.

8. Wiki-page: pros&cons and tips

9. Questions on immigration to the American peers

1. Our most common mistakes

punctuation
prepositions that follow verbs (e.g. depends on, surprised by )
defining articles
infinitive as a subject
ing-form as subject
vocabulary ( knowing the right use of the word )

2. Our definition of intercultural competence (ICC)

It is not easy to sum up in few lines a complex topic like this. As it is inter-disciplinary, many different studies dealing with problematic issues like culture, identity, communication, tradition, values… fall into its field.

Oversimplifying, intercultural competence can be define as the ability to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same cultural background. This ability is not innate but it can be developed only by interacting with people from different cultures, training and by individual effort: the purpose is to start seeing things from a different point of view, to become open-minded, flexible, curious, tolerant and willing to know and learn and, most of all, to understand that cultural differences are neither right nor wrong, neither good nor bad but they are simply “different”! When we meet people from other culture, we do not be afraid of differences but we should try to recognize, respect and appreciate them. To accept cultural differences means to put your own culture at the same position of other’s, to abandon the idea that your culture is superior or better than others’ (that is, ethnocentrism, not to be confused with a “genuine” national pride!!)

For a good intercultural communication, any form of cultural stereotyping is to be avoid because it blind us to real differences that exists between persons. To resist negative stereotyping, it is necessary to treat every person as an individual.

Reaching a cultural self-awareness, it is not easy in that we have to call into question all that we take for granted and to start thinking about our experience, tradition, values…relatively.

Intercultural competence means the ability to set aside temporarily your own perception of the world and assume an perspective. In other words, you have to try to put ourselves in other's shoes.

People’s different communication styles reflect deeper philosophies and worldviews which are at the basis of their culture. Understanding these deeper philosophies gives us a broader picture of what the world has to offers us.

3. Political elections 2008: our sub-groups

Right candidates: John S. McCain - Silvio Berlusconi (Giovanna Sperotto)

Left candidates: Barack Obama - Walter Veltroni (Roberta Fumani)

Hillary Clinton - Walter Veltroni (Caroline Witte)

4. Elections08: candidates by comparison

Comparison between Berlusconi and McCain: Both candidates are over 70 years old.

Their comunication strategy is similar in the sense that they are able to catch the audience's attention.

They use unpolite manners to address to journalists and opponents.

Berlusconi seems to be more convinced of his thoughts and ideas than McCain. As far as McCain is concerned........

Comparison between PD and the Democratic Party: All the candidates are relatively young (if compared with the right wing)

They do not really explain in which way they want to achieve thair goals and by which means

Clinton and Obama's language is more direct and incisive than Veltroni's

They try to put themselves on the levels with the voters

In their speeches they use recognizable slogans and refrains

5. Glossary

Caucus: "A meeting [...] of people whose goal is political or organizational change. In American presidential politics, the word has come to mean a gathering of each party’s local political activists during the presidential nomination process. [...] Local party activists, working at the precinct level, select delegates to county meetings, who in turn select delegates to state meetings. [...] The purpose of the caucus system is to indicate, through delegate choice, which presidential candidate is preferred by each state party’s members. Its effect is to democratize presidential nominations, since candidate preferences are essentially determined at the precinct level, at the beginning of the process". (University of Tampere).
Delegate: "An official representative selected by members of his or her party to a national or state political convention". (Political Lexicon)
Superdelegate: "A term used to refer to a class of delegates to the Democratic Party's national presidential nominating convention. Superdelegates are not elected through the normal primary and caucus process. They are designated by party rules and include high elected officials (members of Congress and governors), party committee members and some former office holders. Unlike delegates awarded through primaries and caucuses, superdelegates are not required to stay pledged to a specific candidate. In 2008, the Democratic Party has designated 796 superdelegates. An estimated 4,049 total delegates will vote at the national convention, including superdelegates. A candidate needs a total of 2,025 delegate votes to win the party's nomination". (Washingtonpost.com)
Convention: "A meeting, at state or national level, of "delegates" from a political party. These delegates vote for the person they want their party to nominate for political office. The nominated candidate will then compete in the general election with the candidates of other parties, and against any independent candidates, not endorsed by a political party. In modern U.S. presidential politics, "convention" usually refers to the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties, held every four years, during the Summer before the general election (which is held in November). These conventions, which include delegates from all states of the Union, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories, formally nominate the presidential candidate". (About politics)
Primary: "A state-level election in which voters choose a candidate affiliated with a political party to run against a candidate who is affiliated with another political party in a later, general election. A primary may be either "open" -- allowing any registered voter in a state to vote for a candidate to represent a political party, or "closed" -- allowing only registered voters who belong to a particular political party to vote for a candidate from that party". (USINFO.STATE.GOV).

6. Commenting the videos

"Meno male che Silvio c'è" & "I'm PD" videos: - a trasversal political platform;

- desire to involve every professional categories, from the teachers to carpenters, from students to ice cream men, etc.;

- typical karaoke layout (imagines with subtitles);

- images convey traditional values typical in the 60s, such as family, education, honest work, etc.;

- they are all white and young, as to say immigrant votes don't cope.

"Obama girl" video: - parody of cartoons, music videoclip, heroes, etc.;

(for lyrics, click here) - it seems to be more spontaneous, not ordered by the party leader;

- naked and pin-up girls, like those of American TV-series;

- seems to be more credible, because it shows a real young politician through the use of young forms of communication.

7. Party funding

Behind a political campaign there’s obviously a group of people who works on it and organize it in every detail. This is the so called political campaign staff whose aim is to work hard in order to win an election. These groups can be private organizations, but also simple groups of unpaid volunteers, which are divided into many different departments, focusing on various issues, like the building of events or the promotion of the campaign through the media, ensuring that the campaign always has the money it needs to operate effectively.

A very important issue in politics is represented by party funding, especially in campaigns when many expenditures are required.

As it is a very complex issue, this short paragraph wants to be only an overview with no claim to be exhaustive.

Basically, there are three type of financing: private, public and a combination of the two.

A) ITALY

· Party finance in Italy was totally unregulated until 1974 when the discovery of extensive corruption produced the first act concerning political party funding, approved by a vote of the Parliament in May 1974 (law n° 195)

With this law, a combination of public financing and private financing (for campaigns and ordinary activities of the parties) was officially admitted (M. Siclari).

This law established that: all parties receiving more than 2% of valid votes in general elections were entitled to annual state subsidies and contributions to general, local and European campaigns; contributions to parties from public sector companies were banned; private contributions had no limits in size (only those exceeding an amount of money set by law has to be declared); sanctions against illegal funding and against violations of the rules on the publicity of annual party balance sheets were introduced (M. P. Ferretti).

- On April 18^th, 1993 with a Referendum promoted by Radical Party, 90.3% of voters abrogated that part of the law concerning annual public funding for political activities.

With law 515/1993 campaign subsidies were replaced by campaign reimbursement parcelled out according to the percentage of the voters that each party obtained. As a result, state contributions to party finance were drastically reduced, and the need for private contributions increased (M. P. Ferretti).

- Law 2/1997, which gave voters the opportunity to give a voluntary contribution of 4‰ of their own taxes to political parties, was a complete failure and so, was abolished with law 157/1999 which reintroduced public financing to parties in proportion to their electoral results under the label “electoral reimbursement” (Global Integrity Report).

- Law 156/2002 has granted political parties hundreds million Euros per year as reimbursement for campaigns expenditures. The contribution is calculated as 1€ per voter, in each year of the legislation. Now all parties with over 1 per cent of votes are entitled to claim reimbursement. “There are limitations on expenditures for elections, but not general limitations. In fact, most of the parties have serious deficit . Both the donor and the beneficiary have the duty to send a joint declaration to the President of the Deputy Chamber when the donation is over 50.000 Euros. There are no limits to donations, and this poses a threat because rich actors can finance and influence political parties” (Global Integrity Report).

- With law 51/2006, passed during the second Berlusconi’s Government, electoral reimbursement is disbursed even if the Government goes to the country in advanced just as it is happening in this historical moment. This means that State has to pay for 300 million Euros to parties for the unfinished Legislature plus the reimbursement for the elections 2008.

Unfortunatly, when poltical issues concern Italy, it is necessary to distinguish between the legal structures and what actually happens in the country, that is the

actual informal rules. During about the last forty years, curraption scandals "confirm Italy's as one of the western most currapted policies" (M. P. Ferretti).

So far, Italian poltics has been too expensive and has caused grave economic and political problems to the Nation.

B) U.S.A.

The campaign finance in the U.S. develops in federal, state and local levels. Political parties are funded by contributions from their memberships and by individuals and organizations which share the same political ideas or who want to benefit from their activities. The primary source are individuals and political action committees, who are supposed to contribute in a limited way. Here we are speaking of the so called “hard money”, in comparison with the other way to contribute that is “soft money”, as the contribution 527 groups, that don’t contribute directly to candidate campaign, can donate without any sort of limit. Coorporations and trade unions are prohibited from contributing directly. Political action committees (PACs) are the best-known organizations that support ,economically speaking, candidates and political parties, though others such as 527 groups also have an important impact.

Public financing is available for Democratic or Republican candidates for President of the United States during the election campaigns during both the primaries and the general election.

Throughout the American political history we can find many attempts to regulate campaign finance by legislation. The big ones post-Watergate scandal are:

- Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971, that is the first successful attempt to regulate and enforce campaign finance. It proposes a system of regulation and enforcement in order to disclose sources of campaign contributions and campaign expenditure. Legal limits on contributions were introduced and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was created to restrict the influence of wealthy individuals by limiting individual donations to $1000 and donations by Political Action Committees (PACs) to $5000. These specific election donations are known as ‘Hard money’.

- The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold bill", because of the name of its chiefs, is the most recent major federal law on campaign finance. It revises some of the legal limits of expenditure set in 1974, doubling from 1000 dollars to 2000 dollars per election cycle, and prohibited unregulated contributions (called "soft money") to national parties commitees.

Nowadays the campaign finance situation is still in change. There are several proposals waiting for being accepted, such as voting with dollars, that is all voters would be given a $50 funded voucher (Patriot dollars) to donate to federal political campaigns.

REFERENCE

^ Global Integrity Report, Italy: Integrity Indicators Scorecard

^ M. P. Ferretti, Country Reports on Political Corruption and Party Financing – Italy

^ M. Siclari, Case study 3: Controlling political party funding in Italy

^ Il voto anticipato regala 300 milioni alle casse dei partiti, in La Repubblica, February 1st, 2008

8. Wiki-page: pros&cons and tips

Pros&cons of the wiki-page

cons: You can't work on it if somebody else is edting the page at the same time.

It might be helpful that everyone can change the content of the page but also frustrating if you worked hard to get all the information and then it just disappears.

pros: Everyone can have a look at the information.

You can edit the page at any time you want so it is always up-to-date.

You have easy access to the link provided to get more information.

It is written in a simple language so it is not complicated to understand ( as some books might be ).

Tips for wiki- newcomers

You should be aware of where you take the information from, e.g., if it is a source you can trust or not.
You should be aware of plagiarism ( could be dangerous in the web.).
You should make a good summary and selection of all the information you found.
It is nice to use different colours and pictures to get the readers attention.
You should put the sources at the bottom.
If you make a quotation put it in inverted commas.

9. Questions on immigration to the American peers

Do immigrants in the US have the right to vote ?
After how many years can immigrants actively take part to the political life of the country?
What do immigrants have to do to obtain a major medical insurance?
Are there cultural mediators in school to help children with their integration in the American culture?