Incidences of the public agenda on citizens political attitudes through the theory of forgotten effects
(*)Mauricio Ortigosa Hernández
(*)School of Business and Economics
Anáhuac University Mexico
Huixquilucan, State of
Mexico, Mexico
mauricio.ortigosa@anahuac.mx
Reception date: 01/30/2020 - Revision
date: 04/20/2020 - Approval Date: 06/11/2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36995/j.visiondefuturo.2021.25.01.001.en
ABSTRACT
This study contributes
to the field
of political marketing through the use of instruments based on theTheory of Forgotten Effects. According to this
theory, when individuals attribute value to the
incidences or connections between two sets of entities,
with one set acting as the cause and the other as effect,
intervening elements sometimes remain hidden, thus resulting
in forgotten effects.
To demonstrate the above, a group
of citizens from the western Mexico City Metropolitan Area including the townships of
Huixquilucan de Degollado and Naucalpan de Juárez in the
State of Mexico were asked
to determine the incidences between two sets of entities:
on the one
hand, issues from Mexico’s public
agenda, and, on the other, the political
attitudes of citizens. The interviews were collected shortly before the 2018 campaign for the presidency
and other popularly elected offices began.
The results show that the citizens
did not identify
several elements that are interpolated as forgotten effects between the two
entities mentioned above, such as corruption, the economy, and trust in government leaders, among others.
KEY
WORDS: Forgotten
effects; Uncertainty; Political marketing; Political attitudes; Public agenda.
INTRODUCTION
The advance of Mexico’s young
democracy has been gradual.
Reforms made to the electoral system since the
1970s have allowed the subject of
elections to occupy spaces of
interest for public opinion (B.M.S. García,
2011). Nonetheless, as this
same author observes, despite numerous electoral reforms at the federal level, in their desire for power,
politicians in Mexico have become mired
in the vices of the political
system and stopped serving the cause that put them
in office.
In his book, García Montaño
(2004) establishes that political and electoral democracy
is the most
refined format that postmodern societies must agree to on
matters of public power and government. However, as Morris
(2011) points out, Mexico faces a serious problem of lack
of the rule of law and respect
for the law
by society (for example, the
informal market) and the state itself (for
example, corruption and violation of human rights), which has led Mexicans to have
little trust in the law, government institutions, and politicians.
Duarte and Jaramillo (2009), note that the authoritarian regime that characterized
the political culture of Mexicans in the last century
has caused citizens to develop a sense
of apathy and lack of interest
in political phenomena.
Tronco (2012) comments that
there is a fundamental assumption that political trust is essential for democracy.
This trust links citizens to the institutions
designed to represent their interests. Unfortunately, as the same author
notes, the National Survey on Political
Culture and Citizen Practices
(ENCUP) conducted by the Secretariat of the Interior in 2008 shows that the lack
of trust among Mexican citizens is explained primarily
by the deficient
performance that citizens attribute to their
representatives.
Rodríguez-Virgili, López-Escobar, and Tolsá (2011) rightly
point out that the loss
of prestige in Mexican politics over the last
few years should not be considered
a minor issue, and that we should
regard this development with caution for three
reasons: in the first place, many citizens affirm that they do not
have the slightest interest in politics; secondly, we must take
into account that politics do not have the
same meaning for everyone; and finally, the rejection
of politicians is not necessarily
equivalent to a lack of interest
in politics. On the contrary, criticism
can be a reflection of interest.
The impact of these attitudes
of trust and interest, among others, towards
political phenomena, whether positive or negative, are studied in this paper, through
an unconventional technique that seeks to establish
causal relations as in a regression
analysis or its specific technique
for structural equations. The tool we propose
to implement is situated within
the framework of the Theory
of Forgotten Effects to study
both direct and indirect causal relations.
To illustrate this tool, we
use topics from a public agenda prepared by Corral (2016) for a 2011-2012 pre-electoral study in Mexico. The topics
on this public
agenda are considered the
causes of the model, while the
political attitudes of citizens will
be considered as the effects. By applying
the Theory of Forgotten Effects,
we identify those relations of incidence or
causality concealed within the public
agenda and political attitudes.
DEVELOPMENT
The Public Agenda
In the field
of political science, the meaning
of the term
agenda, as defined by
Maldonado and Casar (2008), is simply
a set of topics or issues that
are to be advanced or that are important
to take into
account in order to understand the
reality experienced by individuals or a society.
Different agendas are considered
in the literature as a function of the
social actors involved. We can identify the public agenda, the political agenda, the government agenda, and even the agenda of the media. Several
authors (Aruguete, 2009;
Bouza, 2012; M.J. García, 2011; Corral, 2016; Maldonado and Casar, 2008; Petrone,
2009; Rubio, 2009; Stubager, 2015), have studied these
agendas within a political framework.
Of the different
agendas mentioned, in this study, we focus
on the public
agenda, using two aspects as a frame of reference: what are these
agendas, and how are they developed? With respect to the
first item, the public agenda is defined as a list of topics
that citizens and different groups in society seek to
position for consideration by the representatives
(Macassi, 1999; Maldonado and Casar, 2008; Petrone, 2009).
In terms of the second aspect,
Tamayo and Carrillo (2005) note that one way to
set the public agenda is to use opinion
polls on the problems or
issues that people consider important for their
representatives to resolve. In this regard, Petrone (2009) affirms that the highest
proportion or percentages obtained from said surveys
should become the top priorities on the public
agenda.
When setting the public agenda, the list is
determined by the number of
issues mentioned by citizens when
asked, What do you think is
the most important problem facing the country today? McCombs and Evatt (1995)
note that this list is very
limited by nature and rarely exceeds five or
seven topics. This limitation is possibly an
important factor in the media’s power to
include more topics on the agenda.
The issues from the public
agenda used in this research were taken
from a study conducted by Corral (2016) about pre-electoral issues in Mexico in the 2011-2012 period.
Having presented our understanding of the concept of agenda, which is the entity
used to identify
the causes in the Forgotten Effects methodology, we are going to present
the second entity considered as the effects, which
are the political attitudes that citizens adopt.
Political Attitudes (an approximation)
In order to establish the meaning
of citizens’ political attitudes, it is important
to clarify the meaning of
certain terms. Mateos
(2004) defines an attitude
as a set of beliefs focused on a particular object or situation
that provides a favorable or unfavorable response facilitating an individual’s predisposition. In
particular, if that object is the
political system or politics of
a given country or nation, we can then speak of
political attitudes.
However, in order to obtain a fuller
understanding of political attitudes, we must situate
them within the definition of political culture.
The study of political culture is not new and dates back to the middle
of the last
century. In the 1960s, Almond and Verba established a first definition arguing that “the
political culture of a nation is the
particular distribution of patterns of orientation
toward political objects among the
members of the nation” (Mateos, 2004, p.
94).
In this paper, we adopt the
following definition of political culture: “the values, conceptions,
and attitudes that are directed towards the specifically political sphere, that is, the
set of elements that configure the subjective perception that a population has with respect to
power” (Peschard, 2019, p.
20), confirming that attitudes
are only one component of the
political culture.
Following the classic definition established by Almond and Verba, Mateos
(2004) states that the operationalization of the concept of political culture allows it to
be divided into three types of
political dimensions or orientations: the cognitive dimension,
which refers to the information
and knowledge one has about the political
system as a whole, and about its roles and actors in particular; the affective dimension, which refers to
the feelings one has regarding the political system,
which may be of adherence or
rejection, and lastly, the evaluative dimension, which refers to the
population’s judgments and opinions about the political system.
Each of these
dimensions is, in turn, comprised of political attitudes,
beliefs, and values.
From these three dimensions, we focus on
the attitudes that are specific to each of
them. However, we must clarify
that the judgments and opinions of the third
evaluative dimension include the valuation
of individuals as subjects participating in political life. Therefore, some Spanish scholars such as Óscar García Luengo refer
to this component
as the behavioral dimension to designate
political attitudes that demonstrate levels of activism
or civic and political participation (Aruguete and Muñiz, 2012). Consequently,
this paper adopts the term
behavioral for the third dimension.
It is worth
mentioning that participation can take place at different levels, ranging from exercising
the right that every citizen
has to vote, to implementing or having specific responsibilities within a political party. We will take
this participatory attitude within the behavioral dimension into account in our model.
Within the affective dimension, an attitude incorporated
in this study is the trust that
links citizens with the institutions created to represent
their interests (Tronco,
2012). This attitude of trust is another
one that we must take
into account in our study for
government leaders, political parties, and institutions.
Lastly, in this article, we incorporate
the attitude of interest in political issues under the cognitive
dimension. Political scientist Pippa Norris affirms that people
exposed to the media and electoral campaigns
are more knowledgeable in terms
of politics; they trust the government and the political system and are more involved in electoral processes
(García, 2005). Norris (2001) has called this position a virtuous circle, where, in the long term,
the media serve to make those most
interested more aware of these issues.
Norris cites Kurt and Gladys Lang (1966) to mention that before
the so-called virtuous circle, these authors were
the first to suggest the
opposite position, arguing that excessive exposure of citizens
to political information channels produces a negative effect, generating a sense of disconnection from politics (Norris, 2001).
Robinson (1976) was the first to popularize
the term videomalaise to describe the negative effect
generated by the media with their audiences in terms of political
topics.
We can say that citizens’ political attitudes are influenced not only by the
media, but are also shaped through the different elements
involved in the lives of individuals,
such as environmental factors, coworkers, and family, among others.
Having described the meaning that
we attribute to the public
agenda and the term political attitudes, we now present
a brief reflection on the existing
literature, applying the methodology we selected in this article to
different areas.
Application of the Methodology to Other Areas
The methodology
used in this study is located
within the framework of the
Theory of Forgotten Effects. Carreón,
Figueroa, and Montoya (2017) comment that we are nothing
more than human beings; intelligent, but not always reliable.
In fact, even with the most
powerful computers to manage information,
the risk of forgetfulness will never disappear.
The literature on this methodology
applied to political issues is practically non-existent. However, it has been widely
used in the study of social, economic, financial, and accounting phenomena, among others.
As an example of the above,
we can mention the paper written
by Gil Lafuente and Barcellos
(2010), whose objective is to promote
the sustainable growth of companies
through two entities. The first
is comprised of factors related
to a country’s political environment, such as its political
stability, level of corruption, and armed conflicts, among others. The
second entity is comprised of
elements within a company, such as its internal politics,
professional ethics, talent development, and financial-economic viability, among others.
Another study is that published
by Salazar-Garza (2012), where
he links certain macroeconomic
and microeconomic variables of
the Mexican currency market that influence the determination of the peso-dollar
equilibrium exchange rate.
For his part,
Álvarez (2016) presents the
incidence of certain variables proposed by a group of
experts on the exchange risk
faced by small and medium-sized manufacturing companies.
In the field of marketing, Tinto, Luna, and Cisneros (2017) used this methodology
to identify Forgotten Effects in rescuing the commercial
image of a group of artisans
in a province of Ecuador.
Despite all these applications and many more found in the literature, we were only
able to identify
one paper (Sarasola, 2004) that used this
methodology for political marketing. That paper starts with
the hypothesis that political campaigns preceding elections must secure electoral victory for candidates. The causes were the different
means of information and the effects of the
perceptions about the candidates based on their personal attributes. The study found Forgotten
Effects not readily perceived by those interviewed.
When analyzing certain characteristic features of the
problems solved with the Theory
of Forgotten Effects models, we can note that one of the
advantages of using this methodology
is the possibility
of studying causal relations in complex phenomena, where in many cases the behavior is not
aligned with variables or determinants that have a degree
of imprecision according to a systemic character, where there are mutual interrelationships that condition and influence each other to
produce effects.
Given that there is practically
no literature applying the Theory of
Forgotten Effects to political marketing, we apply these
unconventional tools to this field
of study, rather than traditional
statistical methods. This methodology is described below,
followed by an empirical application.
Methodology
The concept of
incidence is used or associated
with the idea of an effect
caused by one set of entities
(causes) on another set of entities (effects)
or on itself.
In this manner, we can say, for
example, that the creation of
jobs impacts trust in politicians, which simultaneously impacts interest in politics.
Kaufmann and Gil Aluja (1988) note that the concept of incidence is present
in all actions of living beings. Even though the
notion of incidence is quite simple in itself, the authors
mention that incidences, when propagated in a chained manner across a network, often involuntarily omit stages and overlook conclusions. Each omission produces secondary effects that have
repercussions across the network of
incidence relationships in
a kind of combinatorial process, as mentioned by Gil Lafuente and Barcellos (2010). These omissions can often lead to unfavorable secondary consequences regarding the decisions
made.
To illustrate how the Theory
of Forgotten Effects operates, we will assume
that we have
a set of entities (causes),
which in the empirical study consists of a list
of topics on the public
agenda about another set of entities (effects),
which is also a list of
the political attitudes that citizens experience. We represent these
sets with the letters P (public agenda) and S (political attitudes), respectively:
P = {pi / i = 1, 2, 3,…n} (causes)
S = {sj / j = 1, 2, 3,…m} (effects)
We say that
there is an incidence of
pi in sj if the characteristic function of belonging
of the pair
(pi, sj) is valued at [0,1]. It is important to
recall that the concept of valuation is linked
to a subjective measurement, as mentioned by Gil Aluja (2002).
The degree of incidence of
each pair (pi, sj) can be expressed through a function:
µ: PXS → [0,1] such that Ɐ
(pi, sj) ϵ PXS, µ(pi, sj) ϵ [0,1]
The matrix formed by the
set of elements valued from each
element of P to each element
of S is known
as the direct incidence or first-generation
matrix. Figure N°
1.
Figure N° 1 Direct or first-generation incidence matrix
Source: Prepared
by the author
Matrix [D], when each
entry µ (pi, sj) in the interval [0,1] is valued, will
approach value 1 to the extent
that there is a higher incidence,
while it will approach value
0 to the extent that a lower
incidence is valued.
If the matrix
[D] reflects the direct, that is,
first-generation, relations
of cause and effect, we must obtain
two new incidence matrices for the purpose
of our proposed
analysis. On the one hand,
the matrix that reflects those
incidence relationships within the set of causes among themselves, and on the other hand,
an incidence matrix within the
set of effects themselves. These matrices are square by nature.
If [A] = PXP, the incidence matrix of the causes among
themselves.
[A] = {µ(pi, pj) ϵ
[0,1] / i, j = 1,2,3,…n}
If [B] = SXS, the incidence matrix of the effects
among themselves.
[B] = {µ(si, sj) ϵ
[0,1] / i, j = 1,2,3,…m}
Where µ(pi, pj) and
µ(si, sj) are the values of the
characteristic function of belonging.
[A] and [B] coincide by nature,
since both are reflexive; that is, in the diagonal, µ(pi, pi) =
1 and µ(sj, sj) = 1. This means that
each element has the highest impact
on itself.
On the other
hand, matrices [A] and [B] do not
have to be symmetric. This means that there
can be at least one pair of sub-indexes
i, j such that i≠j, such that:
µ(pi, pj) ≠ µ(pj, pi) y µ(si, sj) ≠ µ(sj, si)
For example, if the creation
of jobs affects
trust in politicians at a certain
level, trust in politicians
does not necessarily have an impact on
job creation, and if it does,
there is no reason for it
to produce the same incidence.
As Kaufmann and Gil Aluja (1988) indicate, once the three incidence
matrices [D], [A], and [B] are constructed, the mathematical operation that allows us to
know the incidence of [A] on [D] and of [D] on [B] is the
maximum-minimum or simply the max-min
composition. Said composition
is expressed as:
[A] ᵒ [D] ͦ [B] = [D*]
Taking care of the sizes
of the matrices when executing the operations, the new matrix [D*] gathers the incidences
between causes and second-order
effects and is called the second-generation
effects matrix. Figure N° 2.
Gil Lafuente and Barcellos (2010) mention that this matrix captures the initial causal relations affected by the possible interpolated incidence of a given cause or effect.
Figure N° 2. Second-generation effects matrix [D*]
Source: Prepared
by the author
Continuing with
this brief presentation of the methodology of the Theory
of Forgotten Effects, Kaufmann and Gil Aluja (1988) propose
to determine the existence of such
effects in order to obtain the
mathematical difference, cell by cell,
between the second-generation matrix [D*] and
the direct or first-generation incidence matrix [D]. If the differences
are zero or very close to
zero, this means that there
are no Forgotten Effects; however, if the
differences move away from the
zero value, this will reveal
the degree to which certain
causal relations have been forgotten or are taken as obvious.
This last matrix [O] = [D*] - [D] displays the Forgotten Effects.
Figure N° 3.
Figure N° 3. Matrix of Forgotten Effects
Source: Prepared
by the author
Analyzing this last matrix, we can identify the elements with the highest valuation: the greater the value, the greater the degree of forgetfulness between pi and sj produced in the first-order incidence matrix. Rodríguez, Ramírez, and Díaz (2008) mention that this matrix reveals the effects that individuals or experts do not take into account when evaluating the relationships between the entities under analysis. In several studies conducted with this methodology, it is customary to mention that a value of 0.4 or more provides a good criterion to analyze the Forgotten Effects of that cell. However, this criterion can be flexible, depending on the entities analyzed.
Forgotten Effects between the Public Agenda and Political Attitudes in Mexico
With the methodology explained in the section above,
we will now
illustrate the existence of Forgotten
Effects in concerns that are common among citizens and how these issues
affect the attitudes experienced by individuals regarding certain components of the
political system on the west
side of the
Mexico City Metropolitan Area.
As a point of reference, we started
by using the public agenda in Mexico of a 2011-2012 pre-electoral study prepared by Corral (2016). This research included
the design of the public
agenda through opinion studies prepared by the market
research firm Mercaei and published by the Presidency
of the Republic
on its website
(the current government eliminated the link to this
website). These surveys were carried
out considering a 95% confidence level with a maximum error of 3%.
For our study,
we attempted to find the
same information coinciding with the 2017-2018 pre-election period. However, Mercaei did not
conduct another study of this
type, and although we requested an
update from the Presidency of the Republic
through its official website, we did not
receive a response to our request.
Therefore, we decided to adopt
most of the
main topics on the public
agenda used by Corral
(2016), assuming that in a span of time as brief as that between
2012 and 2018, the number of differences would be limited.
McCombs and Evatt (1995) affirm
that an agenda cannot be considered merely a list of
important subjects, but should be considered
a way to put matters of
importance in order. Therefore, in our case, we respected the
order of the topics selected
from the agenda mentioned above, except for the
topic of education that was added at the
end of the
list, considering the importance of this issue
based on the 2012 Panel Study of the National
Survey on Political Culture and Citizen Practices (ENCUP) (http://www.encup.gob.mx/). It should be noted
that the agenda used is not
exhaustive and could also be different depending on the
country and the point in
time.
Table N° 1 includes
the list of the 12 topics
on the public
agenda that act as causes
in the model.
P = {p1, p2, p3, p4, p5, p6, p7, p8, p9, p10, p11, p12}
Table N° 1. Topics on
the Public Agenda
Source: Prepared by the author,
from Corral (2016)
Regarding political
attitudes, we identified five that include the
three dimensions or orientations of political culture indicated by García Luengo as cited by Aruguete
and Muñiz (2012), these are the
affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions.
Table N° 2 presents
the list of political attitudes
included in the model as effects on topics on
the public agenda.
S = {s1, s2, s3, s4, s5}
Table N° 2 List of
Political Attitudes
Source: Prepared by the author,
from Aruguete and Muñiz
(2012)
Once the P elements
were defined as causes and the S elements as effects, we conducted
120 personal interviews with citizens
living on the west side of
the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. The age limit
was set between 40 and 80, since citizens aged 40 and older have experienced a good part of
contemporary Mexican politics, considering the materialization of a more open struggle between political parties since the
end of the
last century, which has given rise to party
alternation. The sample was constituted
by an equal
distribution of 50% male and 50% female those interviewed with a high school
education or above.
Before starting the interview, we clarified the meaning
of the term
incidence as a subjective assessment of cause and effect among the
elements to be assessed.
The valuation of each cell
between causes and effects was carried out
with the following 11-point endecadary scale.
0: null incidence
0.1: practically null incidence
0.2: almost null incidence
0.3: very weak incidence
0.4: weak incidence
0.5: medium incidence
0.6: sensitive incidence
0.7: considerable incidence
0.8: strong incidence
0.9: very strong incidence
1: major incidence
Before starting to apply the
Forgotten Effects methodology, the valuations made by all citizens
interviewed on the subject matter
of this paper
must be aggregated.
To achieve this aggregation, in the field of
uncertainty, Kaufmann and Gil Aluja (1993), define expertage as the process involved in applying a survey to a specific group
of experts (the 120 citizens interviewed in this case), using a relatively simple process to obtain
a value representing the aggregate opinion
of the citizens
surveyed for each incidence in our model.
Table N° 3 illustrates,
by way of
example, how we obtained the
aggregate opinion of the incidence
between the topic of Insecurity
with the Intention to Participate
in Politics (p1 → s5)
Step 1. Statistics
or absolute frequency. The number of times that the same
incidence valuation is obtained from
the citizens is counted using
values from 0 to 1 (endecadary valuation).
Step 2. Relative or normalized frequency. The absolute frequency
table is used to divide each value by the
total number of citizens—120, in this case.
Step 3. Accumulation of complementary frequencies. The relative frequencies
are accumulated starting the aggregation from the bottom
up; that is, from 1 to 0, thus
obtaining a tool for appraisal by
a group of experts, the experton.
Gil Aluja (2002), notes that an
experton thus represented is the uncertain number
that constitutes the aggregation of quantifiable opinions in numerical figures, keeping all the
information and allowing for any subsequent
linear or non-linear operation.
When working with means, in this case, we lose information before it becomes necessary.
Step 4. The frequency accumulation column is then added
without considering 1 in the degree of
assumption equal to zero. The
sum is 4.883.
Step 5. Finally, the value obtained from the previous
sum is divided by 10, which is
the number of levels comprising
the degree of assumption ranging
from 0.1 to 1. In this case it is:
4.883/10 = 0.4883 = 0.5 with one
decimal.
The value of 0.5 represents the aggregate opinion
of the 120 citizens with respect
to the incidence
of Insecurity in relation to the
Intention to Participate in Politics. See Table N° 3.
Table N° 3 Expertage: Insecurity and the Intention to Participate
in Politics
Source: Prepared by the author
This procedure
is used to
form each cell in the aggregate
matrix [D] of direct incidences with the information
provided by the 120 citizens, and the figures in these cells are the levels
of direct or first-order incidences. Matrix N°
1.
Matrix
N° 1. Aggregate Direct incidence Matrix [D]
Source: Prepared by the
author, based on interviews and using expertage
Our objective
in this research is to apply
the Theory of Forgotten Effects
to identify the existence of
relationships that are frequently omitted by not taking
into account the effects created
by both the
causes and effects themselves.
In this case, the citizens interviewed established the incidences between the causes as themselves and the effects themselves.
These aggregate matrices
are Matrix N° 2 and Matrix N° 3, respectively,
as follows.
Matrix N° 2. Aggregate
incidence Matrix [A] among Topics on the
Public Agenda
Source: Prepared by the
author, based on interviews and using expertage
Matrix N° 3. Aggregate Matrix [B] of incidences among
Attitudes
Source: Prepared by the
author, based on interviews and using expertage
Having obtained
the [D], [A], and [B] matrices, as noted by Kaufmann and Gil Aluja
(1988), the mathematical operation that allows us to
determine the incidence that [A] produces on [D] and [D] on [B], is the
maximum-minimum or max-min composition and is expressed as follows:
[A] ᵒ [D] ͦ [B] = [D*]
The program used to perform
the operations between the matrices mentioned above was specifically developed to work
on models based on the
mathematics of uncertainty to recover the Forgotten
Effects in incidence
relationships1.
Kaufmann and Gil Aluja (1988) call [D*] the matrix
of second-order incidences, and it expresses the effects
of [A] and [B] in conjunction.
Matrix N° 4.
Matrix N°
4. Second-Order incidence
Matrix [D*]
Source: Prepared by the author
using FuzzyLog
In the presentation
of this methodology,
it was noted
that Gil Lafuente and Barcellos
(2010) indicate that matrix [D*] captures the initial causal relationships affected by the
possible interpolated incidence of a cause or effect. Therefore,
according to the Theory of
Forgotten Effects developed by Kaufmann and Gil
Aluja (1988), if we obtain the matrix
difference cell by cell, between
the second-order incidence matrix [D*] and the direct incidence
matrix [D], we will obtain the
Matrix of Forgotten Effects: [O] = [D*] - [D] Matrix N° 5.
Matrix
N° 5. Matrix of Forgotten Effects [O]
Source: Prepared
by the author
using FuzzyLog
Results
One of the first general reflections on the Matrix of Forgotten
Effects (Matrix N°
5), is that the values of
the cells that are very close
to zero or
even zero are interpreted as levels where there are no Forgotten Effects between the topics
on the public
agenda and the political attitudes of citizens.
Conversely, if the numerical value
moves away from zero, this
indicates a Forgotten Effect between a given cause or effect. In the case at hand, we have
determined that values equal to
or greater than 0.3 are the hidden incidence relationships. That is, the 11 cells
in gray show the Forgotten Effects of a cause on an effect.
To demonstrate how this tool
functions, below, we present two
forgotten effects of the 11 effects
identified, which we consider are representative of the current situation
in Mexico. The first of these
is shown in Table
N° 4 with its Figure N° 4.
Table
N° 4 First Forgotten Effect: Poverty → Trust in Political Parties
Source: Prepared by the author,
with data obtained from FuzzyLogic
Figure N° 4. Ilustration of the first
Forgotten Effect
Source: Prepared
by the autor, with data obtained from FuzzyLogic
Although initially,
in matrix [D], the incidence between Poverty and Trust in Political Parties was valued
at 0.5, when preparing the second-order matrix [D*], the cumulative incidence between these elements
increased to 0.8 since there is
an intervening element (Corruption) that belongs to
the topics on the public
agenda and that can magnify
and accumulate effects in the initial relationship
that those interviewed did not take into
account, because of the forgetfulness
in this complex relation of incidences
between the topics on the
public agenda and citizens’
political attitudes.
It should be clarified that the value of
0.8 mentioned above is determined by
taking the incidence values, through the path
of the wide
arrows, to select the minimum
(˄) between them: (0.8˄0.8
= 0.8). This demonstrates an opportunity for politicians since they must
undeniably fight corruption if they
want to increase
confidence in political parties, as this produces a strong incidence on Trust in Political Parties.
In fact, one of the main
arguments presented by the current
president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that
helped him obtain a resounding victory in the July 2018 election, was that his
government would eliminate corruption for the first
time in the nation’s history.
The second Forgotten Effect is presented in Table
N° 5 with its Figure N° 5.
Table
N° 5. Second Forgotten Effect: Natural Disaster or Catastrophe
→ Trust in Political Parties
Source: Prepared by the author,
with data obtained from FuzzyLogic
Figure N° 5 Ilustration of the second
Forgotten Effect
Source: Prepared
by the autor, with data obtained from FuzzyLogic
In this
case, the relation of incidence in matrix [D], is 0.3 between Natural Disaster or Catastrophe and Trust in Political Parties. When preparing the second-order matrix [D*], the cumulative incidence between these elements
increases to 0.7. As mentioned above, the values of
the path are taken with wide
arrows to select the minimum
(˄) between them:
(0.7˄0.7˄0.7 = 0.7). Therefore, there
are two intervening elements in this case (The Economy and Trust in Government Leaders in General) that can magnify and accumulate a greater incidence in the initial relationship that was not
taken into account by those
interviewed, because of the forgetfulness
in this complex relationship of incidences between the topics on
the public agenda and the people’s political
attitudes.
The foregoing shows that when a Natural Disaster or Catastrophe
occurs, this event affects the
Economy and Trust in Government
Leaders in General, which provides an opportunity
to strengthen Trust in Political Parties.
CONCLUSION
The current political situation in Mexico has seen better days: the
loss of prestige
of politicians, political parties, and government institutions, in
general, are not minor issues. Inspired by this, this
paper aims to identify elements
of opportunity to improve the
position of the country’s political image.
There is a line of research on
political issues that addresses the impact or
effects on the political attitude
of citizens from the media and information outlets (the media
agenda in general). This study
can be part of that family, conscious
of the differences
that exist in the agendas used and the methodologies applied.
The contribution of this paper
to political marketing is to provide
a causality model through the meaning
of incidence that has a subjective nature. The study
was carried out during the
2018 presidential campaign,
during which people had a heightened
sense of political awareness. However, we identified
hidden elements that, once revealed, could allow political
actors to focus on areas
of opportunity to improve their
affective, cognitive, behavioral, or participatory ties to citizens.
The tools used to demonstrate
the usefulness of expertage to
obtain the aggregate opinion of a group of
citizens on the subject matter
of this article.
In addition, the Theory of Forgotten
Effects is presented as an analytical and novel instrument
in political marketing, which
serves to recover hidden links between entities that act
as causes and entities that
act as effects, contributing in this way to improve
the effectiveness in the performance of politicians with their offer to
their target audiences.
Lastly, we believe that this
study serves as a basis for
future research in the field of
incidence matrices and the application of the Forgotten Effects
recovery methodology in other areas of
political marketing.
NOTAS
1. The Rights of
Use correspond to Professor Anna María Gil Lafuente, researcher
at the University of Barcelona.
http://www.fuzzyeconomics.com/fuzzylog
REFERENCES
Please refer to
articles in Spanish Bibliography.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
ABSTRACT
Please refer to
articles Spanish Biographical abstract.