The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (221 page)

Originating in an office of the Roman Catholic Church charged with propagation of the faith (
de propaganda fidei
), the word entered common usage in the second quarter of the twentieth century to describe attempts by totalitarian regimes to achieve comprehensive subordination of knowledge to state policy. Based in the desire of fascists, Nazis, and Bolsheviks to develop legitimacy and social control by overcoming the broadly based cultural hegemony of antecedent regimes, propaganda soon came to be directed toward the populations of other states, provoking reactions from the industrialized democracies. As war approached in the late 1930s Britain established its own Ministry, not of Propaganda but of Information, its very title an exercise in rhetoric. This employed print, radio, film, and the spoken word to put the best gloss on state policy and the fortunes of British arms (white propaganda) while also running down and misrepresenting the Axis powers (black propaganda). Still important in international relations during the Cold War through radio stations such as Voice of America, propaganda both at home and abroad was frequently crude and ineffective, especially in communist states lacking the technical skills of advertising, marketing, and communications developed within the private sectors of a consumerist Western culture with largely unrestricted media. It has, however, been brought to a fine art in the advanced industrial economies in recent years, where the presentation of state policy and legislation has often received as much attention as its content and drafting.
CJ 

 
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1
A legal relation between a person and a ‘thing’;
2
the object of a legal relation with a person. The person may be a natural person or an artificial person. Property may be private, common, or public. The ‘thing’ may be quite concrete, for example, a computer, or abstract, for example the copyright in a computer's software. It may also be animate, when property in animals or in other persons is accepted. The legal relation of private property is often contrasted with that of contract, because the person who has private property usually has claims or
rights
against all other persons, whereas a contractor acquires rights only against other contractors. For example, since the computer I am using is my own, I have the right to exclude all other persons from using it, but I have special rights against its supplier as a result of the contract of sale when I bought it.
An important element in the political theory of property is the justification of any favoured property system, be it private, common, or public. This requires examination of the sorts of titles to ‘things’ which are legitimate, an investigation of the ways in which titles may be acquired, transferred, and extinguished. In particular, the explanation of the legitimate transfer of private property (for example, through sale or gift) does nothing to explain how anyone became entitled to property in the first place. In some theories (like Locke's and Nozick's ) this question is investigated by placing individuals in a
state of nature
where property is absent, except the property persons are taken to have in themselves ( see
self-ownership
). In others it is explored by trying to see the consequences for property systems of promoting particular values, like
utility
or
liberty
.
Property is a centrally important institution because it is the consequence of, and has implications for, the economic, legal, and political systems of a society. This is true both of the sorts of property a society recognizes, and of the distribution of that property. Property is therefore at the heart of discussions about
power
and
justice
. In the first case, there are questions about the connection between power and resources. In the second, there are problems not only of intragenerational justice but also of intergenerational and international justice to be addressed. Once the question ‘Why should anyone have any sort of property?’ is asked, the particular location of individuals in time and within particular legal jurisdictions may look arbitrary. This is especially important for natural rights theories, since the rights any individual can enjoy should, on that basis, be universal. Because of the dynamics of property systems, it has proved very difficult to design property institutions which genuinely embody natural rights. This is true of both individualistic private property theories and radical, communal property theories. Natural rights theories tend to see all rights as property rights, whereas alternative accounts try to specify the particular features of property. Many writers see property as the result of positive legal systems, arguing that in the absence of the law's coercion ‘property’ could not exist. Because positive law is a human artifice this approach recognizes that the institution is a consequence of decision which is in need of justification.
AR 

 
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Any scheme which seeks to ensure that each faction, group, or party in the electing population is represented in the elected assembly or committee in proportion to its size. For individual schemes of PR,
see
additional member system; party list; and single transferable vote. For a scheme which is often incorrectly described as PR, see
alternative vote
.
The concept of proportionality is surprisingly elusive (which is one reason for the proliferation of PR schemes); the consequences of PR are disputed; so therefore are arguments about its desirability.
Duverger's law
posits an association between
first-past-the-post
and two-party systems and once between PR and multiparty systems. The second association is weaker than the first. However, most argument on the merits of PR assumes that it is true. Opponents of PR then say that PR leads to instability and irresponsible government; its supporters argue that the alternatives are unfair. Thus there is usually no meeting of minds.
Constructive argument about the desirability of PR in any one case ought to concentrate on whether the second part of Duverger's law is (likely to be) true for the case in question, on whether any tendency to multi-partism would exist independently of PR, and on whether the electoral scheme is intended to elect a representative body or to take decisions. If the latter, those writing voting rules should seek a majoritarian rather than a proportional rule.

 
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The doctrine or practice of restricting international trade to favour home producers, by tariffs, quotas, or (most frequently in modern times) by non-tariff barriers such as requiring all Japanese video-recorders imported to France to be cleared through a small customs shed in Poitiers.

 
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