Abstract
69.2073 ABDULJABER, Malek —
This research uncovers the dimensionality of political ideology on the political parties' level in the Arab World. It tests the polarization thesis claiming that Arab politics is driven by a uni-dimensional political conflict between Islamists and Secularists. This research empirically assesses whether the church-versus-state cleavage has been the dominant political conflict in the region following the Arab Spring. This research utilizes quantitative content-analyses of party manifestos in order to construct a new data-set for measuring party positions in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco on thirty politically relevant issues. From this data, multidimensional scaling is applied, generating a graphical configuration of the dimensionality, type, and structuration of political ideology on the party level in the Middle East. [R, abr.]
69.2074 ABRAHAMIAN, Levon; SHAGOYAN, Gayane —
In April and early May 2018, a rapid mass movement, known as the “Velvet Revolution,” took place in Armenia, leading to the resignation of the prime minister and the election of a new “people's candidate.” In the context of independent Armenia, which had seen a stream of falsified elections and failed mass protests, the success of this revolution was a surprise for most of the populace and remains a riddle for analysts. We show how revolution might have come about in this authoritarian former Soviet regime, looking at how it differed from earlier mass protest movements, who carried it out, and what technologies they used. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2731]
69.2075 ADAMS, Samuel; AGOMOR, Kingsley S.; YOUMBI, Wilfried —
This paper examines the determinants of voting behavior of swing voters in Ghana using a cross-sectional dataset generated from a nationwide survey of 2042 voters from the ten regions of Ghana based on six national elections held between 1992 and 2012. The descriptive and logistic regression results show that personality, human relationships, ability to deal with corruption, overall performance of the ruling party, and educational policy of political parties are key factors that have influenced swing voters' choices. The study demonstrates that the Ghanaian voter (whether core or swing) has become sophisticated, defying many ‘conventional truths' about African elections being an ethnic census. [R]
69.2076 AKSER, Murat —
The relationship between Turkish media conglomerates and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has shown increased conflict since 2009. The AKP, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has displayed increasing fear of and suspicion toward Turkey's liberal media. Censorship of the news in Turkey intensified after the failed coup attempt of July 2016. Media control tools used by business moguls were supported by the government and led the way to the creation of a corporatist media, which in turn has come under increased government pressure. This essay also highlights an ever-present tension within media and politics in Turkey. Turkish journalists tend to define themselves as liberals who historically assigned themselves the mission to inform the public and to raise public awareness on political issues independent of ruling governments. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2139]
69.2077 AL SUBHI, Ahlam Khalfan; SMITH, Amy Erica —
This study investigates the determinants of support for women's representation using the first electoral survey ever conducted in Oman, prior to the October 2015 Majlis al Shura elections. It considers cross-nationally recognized factors — gender ideology and religion — and tribalism, a factor heretofore largely unexplored. Confirming prior studies, citizens with traditional gender ideology are much less supportive of women's representation. Developing a simultaneous equations model, we show that religiosity and tribalism shape gender ideology. Unlike in Western countries, education is unassociated with attitudes, and there is no generational shift towards equality; younger men are less supportive of women's representation than are older men. Increasing women's representation requires not only increasing citizen demand for female leaders, but also changing informal tribal and formal electoral institutions. [R, abr.]
69.2078 ALBLOSHI, Hamad H.; HERB, Michael —
This article explains the failure of the 2012-2014 Kuwaiti reform movement Karamet Watan. We compare Karamet Watan with two previous reform movements in Kuwait: Nabiha Khamsa in 2006 and Irhal in 2011. All three movements were nonviolent, which Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan have shown to be associated with the success of reform movements. We argue that Karamet Watan differed from the earlier movements in its choice of goals; its choice of tactics, especially the boycott of parliamentary elections; and the regional context. Our findings help illustrate the challenges facing political reform movements in Kuwait, the obstacles to further movement toward greater political participation, and the conditions under which reform might succeed in the future. [R]
69.2079 ALDRICH, Andrea S. —
This paper explores how career paths leading to the EP are influenced by the strategic goals of national political parties. Considering both individual career factors and the national electoral fate of political parties, it determines what conditions increase the likelihood that experienced or inexperienced politicians serve in the EP. Experienced politicians are more likely to reach the EP when they serve vote-seeking and policy-seeking parties while inexperienced politicians are more likely to enter the EP when their parties are opportunity-seeking. I find the role of individual ambition is conditioned by party strategy to determine the institutional composition of the EP, contributing to a growing literature on the strategic use of European elections by national political parties. The electoral goals of parties should be examined in order to understand the nature of democratic representation in the EU. [R, abr.]
69.2080 ALONSO, Alba —
The first section of this article reviews the academic debates surrounding the effects of intense territorial cleavages on the women's movement. The second section describes the methodological foundations of the study and the general lines of the explanatory framework. The three subsequent segments analyze the divergent outcomes and explanatory factors for each case separately and for the two comparatively. In the concluding section, I discuss whether significant territorial debates and reforms represent a renaissance opportunity for the movement and conditions that might encourage it. [R]
69.2081 AMICK, Joe —
This article utilizes an original household survey of two regency-level elections in Indonesia to explore campaign targeting. It uses a list experiment to show that direct survey questions about accepting transfers from campaigns elicit honest responses from respondents in Indonesia. Although the relationship between income and whether a respondent accepted transfers from political campaigns decreases over the entire distribution of income, it increases initially, producing a curvilinear relationship between income and accepting transfers from campaigns. This article argues that the poorest voters face barriers to being targeted by campaigns. However, these barriers recede as they become relatively richer, at which point a negative relationship is found due to diminishing marginal utility of accepting these transfers. Finally, in-kind transfers, as opposed to cash transfers, target low-income voters more effectively. [R]
69.2082 ANANIEVA, Elena —
In March 2017, the EU for the first time was given notice that one of its member-states was leaving: Great Britain. The UK, having joined the European Economic Community in 1973, became an “awkward partner”. The EU-Britain relations were not equable and depended largely on the vicissitudes of inter- and intraparty politics that determined the UK government policy – whether Labour or Conservative. Today's speculation on “Russia's interference” in the UK EU referendum ought not to delude: before anything else, the harsh battle over the “European issue” literally tore apart the Conservative Party, not known for its sympathies with Russia. Unable to find a compromise with the “Euroskeptics” in his own parliamentary party, PM D. Cameron was compelled to turn to direct democracy – a referendum. [A]
69.2083 ANDERSON, Cameron D.; LOEWEN, Peter J.; McGREGOR, R. Michael —
Are citizens more likely to vote when they are asked to make plans about how they will cast their ballots? Such planning has been shown to increase many types of desirable behaviors, including exercising and healthy eating, receiving vaccinations, physical rehabilitation, and recycling. Important earlier work in political science suggests voter turnout can also be influenced by implementation intention interventions, whereby electors are prompted to “make a plan” to vote. We demonstrate that implementation intention interventions can improve voter turnout but that this effect is conditional upon electors being exposed to informational materials about how to vote in the election. When survey respondents were provided with information on voting requirements and methods, and then prompted with questions forcing them to contemplate the act of casting their ballots, we observe a sizable increase in turnout rates. [R, abr.]
69.2084 ANDERSON, Christopher J.; HECHT, Jason D. —
To determine how public opinion matters for the politics of European integration, we need to know what Europeans say about Europe. Yet, despite a proliferation of analyses of public support for Europe, fundamental questions remain. First, does aggregate opinion reflect a single preference for Europe? Second, is the content of opinions similar across countries? Third, have opinions about Europe become more structured over time? Finally, what are the long-term dynamics in opinions about Europe? To answer these questions, we construct a new dataset of historical public opinion since 1952 in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Over the long run, aggregate opinion toward Europe reflects one dominant underlying dimension and its content is similar across countries. We examine the trends in support for Europe. [R]
69.2085 ANZIA, Sarah F. —
The American politics literature on representation focuses on voters and elected officials, but a growing group of political scientists are arguing that more should be done to study interest groups. Yet there already is a large literature on interest groups, and it has struggled to show evidence of interest group influence. I argue here that the interest group literature's near-exclusive focus on the federal government has hindered its progress: basic questions have gone unasked, important interest groups have gone underappreciated, and the amount of influence has been underestimated. By studying US subnational policy-making, scholars would discover different constellations of interest groups, and they would find that the variation in subnational governments allows for empirical designs that are better able to detect interest group influence when it exists. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2359]
69.2086 ANZIA, Sarah F. —
When does a group of citizens influence public policy? Mainstream American politics research emphasizes the importance of the group's presence in the electorate, while other scholars argue that group cohesiveness, organization, and nonvoting political activity are potentially more important. These two strands of the literature have largely developed in parallel, in part because they tend to employ different empirical methods. I bridge the divide between them and test these ideas within the same empirical framework, using senior citizens and senior-friendly transportation policy as a test case. My results show that senior voting does not unconditionally predict policies friendlier to seniors. Instead, I find that city policies are friendlier to seniors when seniors are a more cohesive, meaningful group and when they engage in activities other than voting. [R, abr.]
69.2087 ARENDT, Christie Marie —
The surge in gender quotas across Africa raises questions about the varied impacts of these measures on women's empowerment in legislatures. This study contends that we must explore the diverse political conditions under which quotas are adopted to understand the potential for empowerment in legislatures. By examining political context, we can pinpoint why political parties acquiesce to gender quotas and how they design laws to either empower women or reinforce party control. Parties influence aspects of gender quota design that have lasting effects on women legislators elected through these laws. Employing a new measure of legislative leadership equity, this article compares political conditions under which quotas are adopted across 18 African countries and the extent to which women reach leadership positions following the implementation of a quota. [R, abr.]
69.2088 ARIKAN, Gizem; BLOOM, Pazit Ben-Nun —
Religion's effect on individual tendency to engage in political protest is influenced both by the resources available to citizens at the individual level and opportunities provided to religious groups and organizations at the country level. Combining data from last two waves of the World Values Surveys with aggregate data on religious regulation, we show that private religious beliefs reduce an individual's protest potential while involvement in religious social networks fosters it. At the country level, we find that government regulation of religion decreases individual tendency to protest, and has an especially detrimental effect on the likelihood of religious minorities joining peaceful protest activities. These findings are in line with opportunity structure theories that stress the importance of system openness for fostering political protest. [R]
69.2089 ARREGUI, Javier; CREIGHTON, Mathew J. —
Do EU citizens' preferences shape EU immigration policy? Using mixed methods and a unique data-source on policy-making in the EU Council of Ministers, we qualitatively and quantitatively assess the link between public sentiment and immigration policy-making. Accounting for the economic, political and institutional context, we find that domestic public opinion does not play a central role in the policy positions adopted by Member States nor in the salience Member States attach to immigration issues during the negotiation process. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of how EU immigration policy reacts to public opinion. [R]
69.2090 ARRINGTON, Celeste L. —
How and when do people participate in sustained collective action via the courts? Previous research highlights group identity or resources and political opportunities but overlooks civil procedural rules' effects beyond the courtroom. This article explores how rules regarding privacy shape individuals' decisions about sustained participation. Fears of exposing one's identity deter participation, especially in the context of public trials. Yet, a paired comparison of litigation by victims of hepatitis C-tainted blood products in Japan and Korea reveals that court-supervised privacy protections, which were available in Japan but not in Korea, facilitate plaintiffs' participation inside and outside the courtroom. Theorizing “pseudonymous participation” as an understudied mode of activism between full exposure and anonymity demonstrates that seemingly technical aspects of law have significant political consequences. [R, abr.]
69.2091 AUNE, Kristin; HOLYOAK, Rose —
Since the start of the new millennium in the UK, a range of new feminist activities — national networks, issue-specific campaigns, local groups, festivals, magazines and blogs — have been formed by a new constituency of mostly younger women and men. These new feminist activities, which we term “third-wave” feminism, have emerged in a “post-feminist” context, in which feminism is considered dead or unnecessary, and where younger feminists, if represented at all, are often dismissed as insufficiently political. Representations of North American third-wave feminism are brought into play in these criticisms of the UK third wave, and insufficient attention has been paid to the distinctiveness of the UK contexts. Drawing on data from a survey and semi-structured interviews, the article sketches out the contours of the contemporary feminist movement and its activists, activism and priorities. [R, abr.]
69.2092 AVDAN, Nazli; WEBB, Clayton —
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication amplifies threat perceptions independent of group reputation, fatality rate, or target location because sophistication suggests a greater capability to inflict harm. We provide experimental evidence of the relationship between coordination and threat perceptions. [R, abr.]
69.2093 AVIS, Eric; FERRAZ, Claudio; FINAN, Frederico —
This paper examines the extent to which government audits of public resources can reduce corruption by enhancing political and judiciary accountability. We do so in the context of Brazil's anticorruption program, which randomly audits municipalities for their use of federal funds. We find that being audited in the past reduces future corruption by 8 percent, while also increasing the likelihood of experiencing a subsequent legal action by 20 percent. We interpret these reduced-form findings through a political agency model, which we structurally estimate. Our results suggest that the reduction in corruption comes mostly from the audits increasing the perceived non-electoral costs of engaging in corruption. [R]
69.2094 AVIV, Efrat —
This article aims to demonstrate the importance of the relationship between the Naqshbandi Ismailaga community and the AK Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, “Justice and Development Party”) government. As one of the most widespread Sufi brotherhoods in the world, the strength of the Naqshbandiyya lies in its characteristic combination of strict adherence to religious law and active involvement in social and political affairs. The Ismailaga community, one of five main Naqshbandi communities in Turkey, is highly conservative and traditional, historically dominated by elders who have remained aloof from any power struggles within the Turkish government. While the AK Party has developed ties with religious orders in recent years, including the Ismailaga, some voices within the Ismailaga community have become critical of this relationship, leading to a rift within the community. [R, abr.]
69.2095 AYDIN, Yasar —
The outcome of the 2018 Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections was a surprise in Turkey and Germany. Signs of a financial crisis, anti-democratic authoritarianism in domestic affairs, setbacks in foreign policy as well as a strong mobilization of the secular-left CHP were important factors. Equally, the energetic and passionate campaigning of CHP's presidential candidate Muharrem Ince and the euphoria in parts of the society raised hopes for a change of power. But in the end Erdogan and the AKP prevailed yet again. The double elections in June 2018 reflected Turkey's polarized social structure, the overlap of cultural and socio-economic fault lines and the influence of sub-collective identities and affiliations on citizens' voting behavior. They also showed the weaknesses and dissatisfaction of the opposition in Turkey as well as a stagnation of the AKP. [R, abr.]
69.2096 BAGIC, Dragan; KARDOV, Kruno — Politička participacija i stranačke
The paper examines distinctiveness of war veterans compared to general population in Croatia according to three important political phenomena: political participation, party preferences and ideological self-identification. Analysis of sociological survey conducted in 2015 shows that there is no difference in the level of political participation measured by voting turnout in 2011 and 2015 parliamentary and 2015 presidential level between Croatian war veterans and the rest of the public. On the other side, war veterans differ from the rest of the electorate, with other variables held constant, in terms of party preferences and ideological self-identification. Compared to non-veterans, war veterans are more inclined to vote for the right and center-right parties and position themselves to the right side of the political spectrum. The paper discusses these differences, as well as its roots and consequences. [R]
69.2097 BAKER, David C. —
I examine the democratic consequences (on turnout, vote quality, and representation) of being encouraged to think more deliberately about political preferences. A nationally representative survey experiment randomly exposes some respondents to a treatment designed to encourage greater cognitive deliberation; I observe the treatment effects on (1) a measure of the ideological consistency of candidate preferences, (2) preference certainty, and (3) intentions to turn out, dividing the sam ple according to age, gender, and political knowledge in order to observe hypothesized conditional effects. The treatment tended to reduce voting incentives among those who tend to be less engaged — women, the young, and low-knowledge citizens. It did not, however, predict preference consistency significantly. [R, abr.]
69.2098 BANDA, Kevin K.; CLUVERIUS, John —
Elites in the US have become increasingly polarized over the past several decades. More recently, the degree to which partisans view the opposing party more negatively than their own — a phenomenon called affective, or social, polarization — has increased. How does elite polarization inform affective polarization? We argue that partisans respond to increasing levels of elite polarization by expressing higher levels of affective polarization, i.e. more negative evaluations of the opposing party relative to their own. Motivated reasoning further encourages partisans to blame the opposing party more than their own. Results from surveys collected from 1978 through 2016 provide strong support for our theory. [R, abr.]
69.2099 BARACCO, Luciano —
A revisiting of Salvador Martí i Puig's approach to globalization and the turn toward governance in explaining the roots and impact of the political mobilization of Latin America's indigenous peoples since the 1990s recasts governance as a disciplinary regime that in the case of Nicaragua co-opted potentially radical oppositional movements into the neoliberal project that accompanied Latin America's democratic transition. The discussion takes as its empirical case the autonomy process on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, which in its twenty-fifth year represents the most sustained devolution of power to indigenous peoples in Latin America. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2864]
69.2100 BARANY, Zoltan —
In the quarter century between 1990 and 2015, Burma/Myanmar experienced an unusual period in its electoral history. The opposition, National League for Democracy (NLD), handily won the 1990 general elections, but the ruling military junta declared the results invalid. The generals won the 2010 elections only because they were boycotted by the National League for Democracy. The opposition participated in the 2012 by-elections and then won the majority of the 75 percent of parliamentary seats it could contest in the 2015 national elections. Still, despite significant progress in electoral freedom and fairness, and notwithstanding the NLD's 2015 victory, no true transfer of power has taken place in Myanmar. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2101 BARRIO, Astrid; BARBERÀ, Oscar; RODRÍGUEZ-TERUEL, Juan —
This article analyzes to what extent traditional mainstream Catalan regionalist parties and groups have adapted their discourses and collective performances in what might be seen as a “populist drift” from regionalism to secessionism. This strategic move has been favored by increasing party competition among these actors and would respond to the grievances reinforced by a context of austerity policies, political corruption, and a long institutional conflict on the center-periphery. Our contribution is twofold. First, we show how parties and movements may combine regionalist and populist arguments in order to adapt their language, stressing the will of the Catalan people and its opposition against the Spanish political elites. Second, we explore how secessionist parties and groups have innovated their mobilization repertoires in order to fit with this populist-oriented discourse, employing mass mobilization, referenda simulations, and a populist political style in the institutions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2102 BAUMGARTNER, Jody C.; LOCKERBIE, Brad —
This study examines the relationship between viewing late night political humor and political participation. We used various measures of viewership of late night talk shows and political participation in the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) data set. We show that viewership of “Late Night with David Letterman,” a simple form of political comedy, seems to be unrelated to political participation. However, viewership of Comedy Central's “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report,” considered by most to be genuine political satire, is associated with higher levels of political participation. The results suggest that advocates of political satire may be correct when they suggest that satire mobilizes viewers to political action. [R]
69.2103 BAYSHA, Olga —
Drawing on Ernesto Laclau's theory of articulation, this article analyzes Barack Obama's and Vladimir Putin's public speeches on the Ukrainian crisis of 2014. The article discusses how the presidents constructed rival discourses by erasing the nuances of complex tensions between the logics of equivalence and difference existing within the Ukrainian discursive space. Acting like imperial administrators from colonial times, Obama and Putin pushed representations of Ukraine based on two “impossible wholes”: a unified nation whose sovereignty was threatened from outside (Obama's discourse) and a consolidated pro-Russian Southeast needing to be defended from Kyiv-based nationalists and extremists (Putin's articulation). [R]
69.2104 BELGIOIOSO, Margherita; GLEDITSCH, Kristian Skrede; VIDOVIC, Dragana —
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) experienced an unprecedented wave of nonsectarian antigovernment protests in 2014. Although the key motivating factors generally highlighted, such as economic marginalization and poor governance, were common throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, the protests did not extend to all parts of the country. Notably, despite very similar initial conditions in the two jurisdictions of the country, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) saw major unrest with a large number of participants in many locations while subsequent protest mobilization was much more limited in the Republic of Srpska (RS). We argue that variation in government responses and its impact on perceptions of prospects for successful collective action can help account for the differences in mobilization across the two entities. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1638]
69.2105 BELL, Emma —
The British referendum of 23 June 2016 and subsequent withdrawal from the EU is often regarded as heralding a new democratic era for Britain, as she is freed from the shackles of undemocratic EU institutions. After briefly analysing the validity of claims regarding the existence of a ‘democratic deficit' in the EU, this paper examines whether national and popular sovereignty are likely to be reaffirmed by the experience of the referendum and its aftermath. It argues that, on the contrary, national sovereignty risks being further undermined as the UK, under the current conservative government, assumes a hyperglobalist position which prioritises free trade over other democratic freedoms. Far from solving the democratic deficit, the problem has only been exacerbated at a national level following the ‘Remain' votes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. [A, abr.] [See also Steve McGiffen's response, pp. 74-81]
69.2106 BELLUCCI, Paolo —
This article introduces the special issue on the 2018 Italian general election. It presents the main features of the election and reviews contemporary models of voting choice in established democracies. [R] [Introduction to a special issue on “The 2018 Italian general election”. See Abstr. 69.2129, 2148, 2276, 2336]
69.2107 BERENI, Laure; REVILLARD, Anne —
Over the past several decades, scholarship on women's movements, feminism, and the state has brought renewed attention to the study of protest politics by questioning its frontier with dominant institutions. This article takes this critique a step further by considering the institutional dimension of the state-movement intersection. Drawing on the French case, we argue that institutions that are formally devoted to women's rights inside the state (women's policy agencies) can operate as movement institutions — that is, as bureaucratic instances routinely engrained with a protest dimension — rather than being only a shelter for a network of insider activists. As such, they can provide a specific, institutional feminist socialization to their members; they can purvey, rather than only relay, feminist protest, and they can deploy institutional repertoires of protest, combining bureaucratic and movement dimensions. [R, abr.]
69.2108 BERG, Carin —
Using Hezbollah as a case study, this article acknowledges how different types of anashid fill a central function in Islamist organizations, not simply to stir up support for jihad. Dividing anashid into mainstream Islamist and jihadi genres and based on fieldwork observations of political events put on by Hezbollah, this article argues that anashid play a significant role in transmuting the group's shared goals and ideology. The core argument is that both types anashid constitute a vital part in fostering a Hezbollah movement identity that underpins the group's political ambitions and mobilizes its supporters to action. [R]
69.2109 BERGLUND, Oscar —
The paper considers what it means to contest austerity and what political contestation of austerity says about how austerity as a political process should be conceived. It separates a narrow view of austerity as fiscal consolidation from actually existing austerity as a broader political economic process ongoing in different ways in different countries. Through a case study of crisis, austerity and contestation as it relates to housing in Spain, the paper argues that to contest actually existing austerity it is necessary to contest both the wealth and power of the actors that have gained from austerity, not least finance capital. The Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) has contested austerity in Spanish housing by contesting finance capital through civil disobedience whilst campaigning for anti-austerity reforms to housing and mortgage legislation. [R, abr.]
69.2110 BERNHARDT, Nicole S.; PIN, Laura G. —
This paper critiques the deployment of the term “identity politics” in Canadian political science. We examine whose politics are labelled identity politics and what intellectual work transpires through this label. Identity politics tends to be applied to scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, but with a lack of analytical rigor, indicating a degree of conceptual looseness. Moreover, the designation identity politics is not neutral; it is often mobilized as a rhetorical device to distance authors from scholarship that foregrounds analyses of ethnicity, race and gender, and to inscribe a materialist/culturalist divide in claims-making. We argue that the effect of this demarcation of identity from politics is to control the boundaries of political discourse, limiting who and what gains entry into the political. [R, abr.]
69.2111 BIGLAISER, Glen; McGAUVRAN, Ronald J. —
Since the mid-1990s, some rightist governments in Latin America have adhered to a strict market orientation while others have shown less attachment to doctrinaire neoliberal policies, a puzzle as rightists are expected to favor minimal government intervention in the economy. In an environment over the past two decades in which market-oriented policies, in general, have grown increasingly unpopular with many Latin Americans, we contend that rightists have less political cover to endorse neoliberal policies. Using panel data for eighteen Latin American countries from 1995 to 2015, we find that, because of the clarity of responsibility that occurs under political mandates and the unpopularity of market reforms, mandate-holding rightist governments will tend to go against their ideological preferences and decrease neoliberal policies. [R, abr.]
69.2112 BISCHOF, Karin; ILIE, Cornelia, eds. —
Special issue introduced, pp. 585-593, by the authors. Articles by Cornelia ILIE, “‘Behave yourself, woman!': patterns of gender discrimination and sexist stereotyping in parliamentary interaction”, pp. 594-616; Maria STOPFNER, “Put your ‘big girl' voice on: parliamentary heckling against female MPs”, pp. 617-635; Edma AJANOVIC, Stefanie MAYER and Birgit SAUER, “Constructing ‘the people': an intersectional analysis of right-wing concepts of democracy and citizenship in Austria”, pp. 636-654; Ville HÄKKINEN, “Redescribing the nation: anti-Semitism as a tool of nation-building in the Hungarian numerus clausus debates, 1020-1928”, pp. 655-675; Karin BISCHOF, “Austrian postwar democratic consensus and anti-Semitism: rhetorical strategies, exclusionary patterns and constructions of the ‘demos' in parliamentary debates”, pp. 676-695.
69.2113 BLAS, Asier —
From 1987 to 1998, the Basque government was made up of a coalition between Basque nationalists and unionists. However, there are doubts about whether this experience has a consociational character. In order to clarify this, the article analyzes the four characteristics of A. Lijphart's scheme, focusing on the degree of power-sharing of the Basque governments using the qualitative distinction of J. McGarry and B. O'Leary and the centripetal approach, creating the power-sharing-in-government index and studying the degree of ideological proximity of the parties making up the coalition. The conclusions are that in the Basque case, there were no complete or concurrent consociational governments, but instead, there were centripetal coalitions. [R, abr.]
69.2114 BLINDER, Scott; ROLFE, Meredith —
Scholarship on the political gender gap in the United States has attributed women's political views to their greater compassion, yet individual level measures of compassion have almost never been used to directly examine such claims. We address this issue using the only nationally representative survey to include psychometrically validated measures of compassion alongside appropriate political variables. We show that even though women are more compassionate in the aggregate than men in some respects, this added compassion does not explain the gender gap in partisanship. Female respondents report having more tender feelings towards the less fortunate, but these empathetic feelings are not associated with partisan identity. [R, abr.]
69.2115 BLUHM, Katharina —
The term “populism” fails to adequately describe the contours of the new illiberal conservatism? Russia is of particular importance for this movement against (neo-)liberalism. Long before President Putin's swing towards conservatism in 2011-2013, a conservative intellectual field was formed that gained in influence in several bursts. This essay outlines this process and analyzes how development and tradition are connected as key conservative concepts in Russia, and why the new Russian conservatives, despites their declared loyalty to Putin, continue to have a strained relationship with those in power. [R] [Part of a thematic issue on “Der Fall: Gefangen in Russland, Erinnerung in Litauen (The case: captured in Russia, remembrance in Lithuania)”]
69.2116 BODE, Leticia, et al. —
When political disputes devolve into heated partisan conflicts, do the factors known to trigger electoral political engagement continue to operate, or do they change? We consider this question during a divisive electoral context — a gubernatorial recall — focusing on how media consumption, conversations, and interactions with social media feed into the decision to participate in politics. To do so, we employ high-quality survey data collected in the weeks before the 2012 Wisconsin recall election. Results indicate that during times of contentious politics, political communication does not operate as observed in less polarized settings, calling into question widely held assumptions about what spurs and suppresses electoral participation. [R, abr.]
69.2117 BOL, Damien, et al. —
A vast literature shows that voting for the winning party in elections boosts satisfaction with democracy. But in many list PR systems, voters do not only vote for a party, they can also vote for candidates within parties. Yet, we know very little about how such votes affect voters’ satisfaction with democracy. We analyse pre- and post-election panel survey data from Belgium, in which we asked respondents to report their vote choice for parties and for candidates. The main finding is that casting a preference vote for a winning candidate makes little difference, as party-list voters are those with the largest increase in satisfaction with democracy. [R, abr.]
69.2118 BOLLEYER, Nicole; CORREA, Patricia; KATZ, Gabriel —
Existing scholarship offers few answers to fundamental questions about the mortality of political parties in established party systems. Linking party research to the organization literature, we conceptualize two types of party death, dissolution and merger, reflecting distinct theoretical rationales. They underpin a new framework on party organizational mortality theorizing three sets of factors: those shaping mortality generally and those shaping dissolution or merger death exclusively. We test this framework on a new data-set covering the complete life cycles of 184 parties that entered 21 consolidated party systems over the last five decades, resorting to multilevel competing risks models to estimate the impact of party and country characteristics on the hazards of both types of death. Our findings show that dissolution and merger death are driven by distinct factors [and] separate logics. [R, abr.]
69.2119 BONICA, Adam —
This article validates donation-based measures of ideology against a rich battery of policy items from the [US] Congressional Campaign Election Study. Donation-based measures are powerful predictors of policy preferences for a wide range of issues and successfully discriminate between donors from the same party. The overall predictive accuracy and relative improvement over party are comparable to what is achieved by scaling roll call votes in legislatures. The results add to an existing body of evidence on the internal validity and reliability of donation-based measures. They also resolve a standing debate in the literature over whether political donations are a valid indicator of donors' policy preferences. [R]
69.2120 BONILLA, Lauren; SHAGDAR, Tuya —
In the run-up to parliamentary elections in Mongolia, it is not uncommon for aspiring political candidates to distribute things like noodles, calendars and cash to citizens. Although the practice is prohibited, it continues to thrive under different guises. This article examines electoral gifting in Uvs, Mongolia, before the 2016 parliamentary election. Drawing on ethnography, it suggests that gifts provide citizens a tool to evaluate candidates while also affording candidates the opportunity to make aspects of themselves known publicly, often through the giving of items that express their economic acumen and business success. Instead of seeing gifting through the prism of democratic ideals, the article argues that the practice operates within culturally specific responsibilities and obligations. [R, abr.] [Part of special issue on “Capitalism in Mongolia”, edited and introduced by Rebekah PLUECKHAHN and Dulam BUMO-CHIR, “Capitalism in Mongolia — ideology, practice and ambiguity”, pp. 341-356]
69.2121 BORAH, Porismita; FOWLER, Erika; RIDOUT, Travis Nelson —
Few studies have examined political content on YouTube, especially in comparison to the traditional television spots. Relying on both audience-and platform-based theories, we develop expectations of differences in content between political ads posted online and aired on television. We use content analysis to compare both online political ads and televised political ads from the 2012 presidential campaign, relying upon data from YouTube and the Wesleyan Media Project. We find that negative ads are more likely to be sponsored by groups than candidates on both television and YouTube. Online ads are less negative and less policy focused. By comparing ads made for TV uploaded to YouTube and those only on YouTube, we find that there is no difference in viewership between the two types, but online ads are more likely to be shared. [R]
69.2122 BRAUN, Daniela; SCHWARZBÖZL, Tobias —
This article contributes to the debate about the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidates) in the 2014 EP election. Focusing on parties' efforts to make the candidates visible to voters, we argue that the multi-level character of these elections creates large differences concerning individual parties' incentives to promote the Spitzenkandi-daten in their campaigns. Analyzing a novel dataset of campaign communication on Facebook, we find that only a few parties highlighted them, while many did not. In line with our theoretical argument, this variation is systematic and can be attributed to lacking incentives for most parties. Especially nominating a candidate at the European level only has a modest positive effect on national parties' willingness to put the candidates in the spotlight. [R, abr.]
69.2123 BREY, Thomas —
In the ex-Yugoslav states, the revision of their own history and populism are gaining new momentum. At the same time, Russia has penetrated deeply into the Serbian media landscape with its quasi-news agencies and state media. In many Serbian media Moscow is succeeding in defining the interpretation of domestic political and geopolitical developments. The EU must witness how more and more anti-European values and national disputes between neighboring countries in Southeast Europe are being fueled by Russia's influence. The spearhead of Russian propaganda activities is the state agency Sputnik with its offers in multiple languages. The article analyses the impact of Sputnik's influence on the domestic and foreign policy of Serbia and its neighbors. [R]
69.2124 BRITO, Tarsis Daylan —
This paper engages with the philosophical underpinnings of the Beijing Conference on women's rights that took place in 1995. Drawing on Derrida's concept of undecidability — which becomes here both a method of analysis and a political strategy — it critiques the universalising aspects of Beijing' 95's. In so doing, it aims to provide a remodelled strategy for a feminist global politics, one that be able to maintain feminism on the undecidable terrain of the binaries ‘Woman/Man', and ‘Woman/women'. This strategy, it is argued, allows the project to be at once open to difference/particularism and always prepared to universal-ise its aims, offering women the possibility of fighting as ‘humans or women', and as a ‘universal woman or particular women'. [R, abr.]
69.2125 BROOKES, Stephanie —
[As] public and media discussion in some Western democracies is concerned with labeling particular political parties, movements and ideas as “populist”, this article [considers] what is signified by the act of labeling. It analyzes political and media discussions of populism during and following the 2016 Australian federal election and US presidential election. The article first conducts a discourse-analysis of print and online news coverage in the two election cycles, analyzing who and what is labeled populist in political journalism in these spaces. It then analyzes why: what is it about the current political moment that inspires the application of this label? The article explores how populism operates as shorthand for the identification of — and often, dismay about — the importation of the discourses, logics and technologies of cultural populism into the realm of “serious” politics. [R, abr.]
69.2126 BUSCHMANN, Andy —
This article presents the Myanmar Protest Event Dataset, a unique dataset on protest assemblies in transitional Myanmar/Burma. The data contents were derived from the most visible forms of assembly — demonstrations, protest marches and labor strikes — and collected through a protest event analysis of local news reports. The coded variables range from information on the actual moment of the protest event, such as participants, issue, duration and location, to the aftermath, including variables related to legal consequences for protesters and the success of protesters' claims, and many others. Besides a concise description of the research design and data collection process, this article discusses methodological strengths and weaknesses of the dataset. [R]
69.2127 CASAL BÉRTOA, Fernando; WEBER, Till —
The recent global financial crisis has been a serious stress test for representative democracies. Voter support has supposedly become more volatile, fragmented, and polarized, leaving elites with an intricate mix of economic and political challenges. However, a closer look at a new data-set of European party systems during three major crises (1929, 1973, and 2008) reveals that the reality is less dramatic than the popular impression suggests. We propose a novel theory of party-system change that explains both the impact of economic crises as well as the robustness of party systems to more serious destabilization. Since voters and elites are risk averse, economic crises tend to disturb party systems that are generally “restrained” but, at the same time, help consolidate more complex systems. This explains why party systems rarely fall apart, nor do they reach ultimate stability. [R, abr.]
69.2128 CAUGHEY, Devin; WARSHAW, Christopher —
Until recently, the study of representation at the subnational level was hobbled by the lack of high-quality information about public opinion. The advent of new data sources, however, as well as of new methods such as multilevel regression and post-stratification, has greatly enhanced scholars' capacity to describe public opinion in states, legislative districts, cities, and other subnational units. These advances in measurement have in turn revolutionized the study of subnational representation. We summarize new approaches to the measurement of subnational opinion. We then review recent developments in the study of the role of subnational public opinion in the political process and discuss potentially fruitful avenues for future research. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2359]
69.2129 CAVALLARO, Matteo; PREGLIASCO, Lorenzo; VASSAL-LO, Salvatore —
The 2018 elections confirmed the tri-polar format of the party system, with three opposing aggregations, each of which has a majority (or at least enjoys considerably more support) in a specific area of the country. The paper shows that, in a way, the highly unequal geographical distribution of the vote is revealing of the main social factors underlying the choices of voters. In another respect, it masks the potential disproportionality of the electoral system. The paper also shows that uncertainty about the possible evolution of alliances between parties, the risk that early elections could again produce a hung Parliament, and the high level of mobility of the electorate, make it probable that the electoral law will at some time in the near future, once again be subject to revisions driven by the short-term interests of the political actors involved. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2106]
69.2130 CAVARI, Amnon; FREEDMAN, Guy —
How does the extension of party conflict to a foreign policy issue affect the ability of Americans to form an opinion about the issue? We test this using elite references and longitudinal public opinion data about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a salient foreign policy issue in the US that is increasingly characterized by partisan divisions. Our findings demonstrate that since the turn of the 21st century, the availability and clarity of party cues have increased, as well as the share of Americans who hold an opinion about the issue. Applying regression models to individual-level data, we reveal that the extension of party conflict to this issue has made it easier for more Americans to form an opinion. [R]
69.2131 CECCARINI, Luigi; BORDIGNON, Fabio —
2017 is an important year in the short history of the Italian Five star Movement (M5s). Municipal elections held in June marked the end of M5s's first cycle as a governing actor at the local level, which began in 2012 with its success in the northern city of Parma. Together with the seats gained during regional elections in Sicily in November, the M5s continued its ongoing consolidation in local politics. The M5s also continued to have enduring problems both on the ground and internally. Furthermore, 2017 is an important year from an organizational perspective, since the M5s witnessed the selection of Luigi Di Maio as candidate for prime minister and leader. The young vice-president of the Camera dei deputati embodies the slow, controversial, and largely incomplete shift from an anti-system movement to a ruling party. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2179]
69.2132 CELEP, Ödül —
This article applies moderation theory to the Kurdish left of Turkey, namely the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The HDP's electoral breakthrough in June 2015 elections carried the potential for this party to transform itself into a larger and moderate actor. Nevertheless, the repeat elections of November 2015 weakened the HDP's prospects as the ruling AKP won enough seats to reconstitute a single-party government. This article puts forth three major explanations for the recent moderation of the Kurdish left: first, the then-ongoing peace (resolution) process between the Turkish government and Kurdish actors; second, the “Demirta factor”, the personality and politics of Selahattin Demirta, the HDP's co-chair; and finally, the HDP's direct confrontation with President Erdogan in both electoral and political terms in the 2015 general elections. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2877]
69.2133 CHAISTY, Paul; WHITEFIELD, Stephen —
Ukraine's 2014 parliamentary election, which took place in the aftermath of the Maidan revolution of February 2014 and at the height of war in the East of the country, appeared to produce significant party political realignment. In particular, support for parties that had represented the Russian element of the ethno-linguistic/geo-political cleavage that had dominated electoral competition in Ukraine since independence collapsed. The paper considers whether 2014 was a ‘critical' or ‘realigning' election for Ukraine. Our argument is that the 2014 election lacked the conditions that critical elections theory posits as necessary and that, on the contrary, there are strong theoretical reasons to expect cleavage stability in these volatile electoral circumstances. We offer evidence for this continuity drawn from surveys undertaken among Ukrainian voters from 1995 to 2014. [R]
69.2134 CHAMBERLAIN, Darry —
The UK's local press is in a mess. Cut back to the bare bones after years of consolidation and cost-cutting, hundreds of titles have closed, while many of those that survive are pale imitations of what they were. Revenues have been savaged by the internet and social media, while some in the industry have pointed fingers at council newspapers. But while there are signs of life and innovation in the industry, from newcomers as well as established players, finding funding is an urgent challenge. [R]
69.2135 CHARLES, Nickie; WADIA, Khursheed —
This article examines the renaissance of feminism through the example of one of the most active and publicly visible organizations, UK Feminista. It draws on ethnographic research into young women's feminist activism, exploring the emergence of UK Feminista as part of this new wave of feminist activism in Britain. We argue that to understand how the political practice of a small feminist organization contributes to the amplification of this wave of feminist activism it is helpful to draw on concepts developed within social movement theory such as cycles of protest, repertoires of action and collective identities. We show how UK Feminista mobilizes young women and provides resources to existing and new feminist organizations and activist groups, commenting particularly on its use of the internet and social media as a mobilizing device. [R, abr.]
69.2136 CHMIELEWSKA-SZLAJFER, Helena —
The study explores the effect of social media visibility on public discussion and, possibly, on the results of the 2015 presidential elections in Poland, unexpectedly won by Andrzej Duda. Instead of newspaper analyses and polls, Facebook interactions proved more accurate in predicting the final results. In the study, focus is laid on two key sources of visibility of opinion that emerged during the campaign: major daily newspapers, which provide space for opinion only to selected writers; and presidential candidates' Facebook fan pages, which offer broad visibility to Facebook users' opinions. The proposed interpretation of this discrepancy is that of a major shift in making public opinion more self-expressive and personal: public discussion is formed “in between” rationality and emotion, publicness and privacy. [R, abr.]
69.2137 CHO, Joan E.; KRUSZEWSKA, Dominika —
How does the public evaluate politicians’ reactions to crises that damage their party's image? Using an experimental survey design and the 2016 South Korean political scandal, we explore which strategies allow politicians to avoid electoral accountability for corruption in their party. The scandal prompted some politicians from the president's party to participate in protests calling for her impeachment, make statements criticizing her leadership, or join a new splinter party. We find that all of these strategies both increase electoral support and decrease perceptions of corruption. However, leaving the party is the least successful at increasing electability and politicians are more likely to gain votes if instead they take a clear position against corrupt politicians. [R, abr.]
69.2138 CHOATE, Thomas; WEYMARK, John A.; WISEMAN, Alan E. —
We extend the canonical Baron-Ferejohn model [D. P. Baron, J. A. Ferejohn, “Bargaining in legislatures”, American Political Science Review 83(4), Dec. 1989: 1181-1206; Abstr. 40.1257A] of majoritarian legislative bargaining in order to analyze the effects of partisanship on bargaining outcomes. We consider three legislators, two of whom are party affiliated, with each partisan placing some value on the share of the dollar obtained by his co-partisan in addition to his own share. We characterize the equilibrium of our model as a function of the strength of party affiliation and the degree to which the legislators have concern for the future; and we determine how the equilibrium varies in response to changes in these two parameters. We show how partisanship advantages the affiliated legislators relative to the nonpartisan and identify the circumstances in which a majority party legislator proposes a bipartisan outcome. [R]
69.2139 CHRISTOFIS, Nikos —
The essay shows how Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) and, most importantly, the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, use the concept of Yeni Turkiye (New Turkey) in attempts to construct a new national state tradition, a counterhegemonic narrative to replace Turkey's traditional one, Kemalism. It is argued that the AKP aims to replace Kemalism to reconstruct the imagined Turkish community anew. It is further argued that collective memory is central to AKP discourses and repertoires in the party's attempt to construct stabilized, sedimented, dominant, and durable features in this renewed process of Turkish national-identity formation and nation building. [R] [First article of Special issue on “Critical crossroads: Erdogan and the transformation of Turkey”, edited and introduced by Kumru F. TOKTAMIS and Isabel DAVID, “Democratization betrayed — Erdogan's new Turkey”, pp. 3-10. See also Abstr. 69.2076, 2310, 2391, 2735, 2746]
69.2140 CIORDIA, Alejandro —
The attack carried out by Daesh against Kobane in 2014 prompted the mobilization of worldwide media attention and of large crowds protesting across Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast and beyond. This paper examines the potentially transformative effects of this event on the popular geopolitical codes of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey. This is done through a qualitative content-analysis of 36 op-ed articles published in the newspapers Evrensel and Özgür Gündem. Three core findings stand out: (a) a constant emphasis on Turkey's alleged links with Daesh, even before Kobane; (b) a boundary deactivation with respect to the US and “the West”; and (c) a re-articulation of self-representative frames, which initially relied on post-materialistic arguments and later emphasized security and stability. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2877]
69.2141 CIUK, David J.; LUPTON, Robert N.; THORNTON, Judd R. —
The post-materialism thesis contends that newer cultural and social justice issues will supplant traditional, class based economic concerns as societies become increasingly wealthy. Although macrolevel evidence broadly supports this prediction, individual level evidence for the theory in the United States has been sparse. Moreover, alternative theories predict that post-materialism will not travel well to the American context because religious cleavages that divide the major parties will be most salient. We test the post-materialism thesis at the individual level using unique data that enable us to evaluate citizens’ value preference structures across income levels, as well as the conditional effect of income on the relationship between individuals’ ranked value preferences and political attitudes and behavior. [R, abr.]
69.2142 CLUVERIUS, John; BANDA, Kevin K. —
Despite declining trust in government institutions, political scientists have observed increasing political participation across activities, including grassroots lobbying. We argue that higher levels of trust in the state political system as a whole — diffuse political trust — and in state legislatures — specific political trust — should increase the likelihood that citizens contact their state legislators about policy matters because higher levels of trust tend to correlate with believing that the policy-making process produces equitable political outcomes. We use observational data from a nationally representative survey sample taken in 2015. We find mixed results: whereas diffuse political trust predicts participation in grassroots lobbying at the state level, specific political trust does not. [R, abr.]
69.2143 COLLIGNON, Sofia; SAJURIA, Javier —
The literature on candidate selection has found that voters favour local candidates, as they are thought to be more apt to represent their constituents. An important caveat is that it requires that voters have knowledge of the candidates’ characteristics, and to value localism. Previous research concentrates on candidate characteristics, leaving unanswered the question of who considers localism to be important when making their vote choices. This research addresses the gap by showing that regional identification has a strong relationship with preference for local candidates. We test this argument by analysing data from the British Election Survey 2015 using multilevel models. The results show that voters who feel stronger about their distinctive regional identities care significantly more about localism. [R]
69.2144 COMAN, Ramona —
The Eurozone crisis has spectacularly increased the EU's institutional demand for expert knowledge. While the crisis has challenged the legitimacy of the EU in many ways, it has in contrast amplified the visibility and the role of Brussels-based think tanks as laboratories of ideas that think ahead about Eurozone governance and policies. This article explores when, how and why Brussels-based think tanks expand their networks in times of crisis. While the article leaves aside the question of their ideational impact upon agenda-setting and the policy formulation process leading to the new European economic governance, it shows how think tanks adapt to crises and how they seek to have a voice in thinking about the future of the EU's economic governance. [R]
69.2145 CONWAY, Lucian Gideon, III, et al. —
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right wing and left wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. [R, abr.]
69.2146 COOKMAN, Colin —
The disputed outcome of Afghanistan's 2014 presidential election ended with an American-brokered agreement to form a new national unity government and a prominent commitment by the two leading candidates to a series of electoral reforms. Those reform talks have proceeded fitfully throughout the government tenure, and there has been little progress in preparing for parliamentary elections. With donors unenthu-siastic about assuming the administrative costs of this next round of elections and the government consumed by internal security challenges and other political crises, the official timeline for parliamentary elections looks increasingly uncertain. This essay will assess the politics of elections in Afghanistan, both among domestic actors and as they relate to the international community's engagement with and continued support for the Afghan government. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2147 COPPIETERS, Bruno —
The article examines the extent to which secessionist conflicts involving contested states are forgotten. A distinction is drawn between three particular meanings of forgetting. These conflicts are not forgotten in the sense that the parties involved cease to attach crucial importance to them — even the lack of prospects for overcoming these conflicts does not allow the parties to disregard them. They are, however, liable to be forgotten in the sense of not being prominent on the international security agenda. In terms of knowledge, they are certainly not forgotten: they generate large quantities of military intelligence, observer mission reports, policy papers and academic analysis. The article examines these various types of non-forgetting and forgetting and the relationships between them. [R]
69.2148 CORBETTA, Piergiorgio, et al. —
We explore the motivations behind the electoral success of the Lega and the Five-star Movement at the 2018 Italian general election. In most of the literature on populism, the success of the new European populist parties is interpreted as stemming from the process of globalization, which has produced the so-called “modernization losers”: “cultural losers” and “economic losers.” It is these “modernization losers” who are claimed to have voted for the populist parties. To this two-fold theoretical hypothesis, we added another: the rise in populism can be explained by the democratic malaise, and particularly by the crisis of mainstream parties, which have steadily lost their function as a link between the people and politics. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2106]
69.2149 COURTIN, Sébastien; LASLIER, Jean-François; LEBON, Isabelle —
A “walk up” survey conducted in the city of Caen between the two rounds of the 2017 French presidential election shows that more than one elector in six would like to have changed their first-round vote. Some voters faced a dilemma between strategic and expressive voting. The analysis of their motivation reveals that both types of regrets were present: many respondents wished that they had voted more strategically, and just as many wished that they had voted less strategically. Many participants also considered that they would rather have cast a blank vote in the first round rather than choosing a particular candidate. [R]
69.2150 COX, Gary W.; FIVA, Jon H.; SMITH, Daniel M. —
A prominent line of theories holds that proportional representation (PR) was introduced in many European democracies by a fragmented bloc of conservative parties seeking to preserve their legislative seat shares after franchise extension and industrialization increased the vote base of socialist parties. In contrast to this “seat-maximization” account, we focus on how PR affected party leaders' control over nominations, thereby enabling them to discipline their followers and build more cohesive parties. We explore this “party-building” account in the case of Norway, using roll-call data from six reform proposals in 1919. We show that leaders were more likely to vote in favor of PR than rank-and-file members, even controlling for the parties' expected seat payoffs and the district-level socialist electoral threat facing individual legislators. [R, abr.]
69.2151 CULLEN, Pauline —
Lacking a power base in national political parties, Irish feminists and EU officials, including MEPs, have worked to secure progress on gender equality issues such as equal pay legislation. This research explores whether, in the contemporary context, Irish female MEPs remain critical actors for women's interests at the EU level. [R]
69.2152 DAHLUM, Sirianne —
This study investigates whether protest movements consisting of students and educated protesters are more likely to (a) use nonviolent rather than violent resistance and (b) successfully reach their goals. Extant literature suggests that education is negatively linked to violent conflict, and the commonly assumed mechanism is that educated groups are less likely to resort to violence. Moreover, many argue that education is a force for regime change and democratization, by inducing successful protest movements. This article is the first to systematically test implications of these mechanisms at the protest level. The empirical analysis builds on original data on the educational background of participants in all protest campaigns aiming for regime change from 1900 to 2006 identified in the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes Dataset 1.0. [R, abr.]
69.2153 DARNOLF, Staffan —
This article will discuss several integrity-related risks facing election administrators in both established and emerging democracies and suggest common solutions to properly address these vulnerabilities and thereby safeguard the credibility of elections. These risks sometimes stem from election fraud perpetrated by domestic or foreign entities attempting to undermine the credibility of a country's election by breaching its information technology infrastructure. The integrity of an election could also be jeopardized by insufficient planning by an election authority resulting in unreliable results due to undertrained election officials. However, not all challenges to holding elections stem from individuals intending to directly defraud electoral processes or malpractices conducted by election administrators. This article argues that irrespective of often drastically different conditions, both established and emerging democracies could significantly increase electoral fraud and malpractice resiliency by broadening election authorities’ planning requirements. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2154 DAVID, Yossi; ROSLER, Nimrod; MAOZ, Ifat —
The goal of the present study was to investigate how empathy and gender-empathic constructions affect the levels of support for political compromise in an intractable conflict. Gender-empathic constructions relate to perceptions that individuals hold about self or others as having feminine-empathic gender traits. We hypothesized that empathy will be positively associated with support for compromise, but that perceiving one's own group as feminine empathic will be negatively associated with such attitudes, with empathy being a significant mediator. Data were collected through a public opinion survey conducted with a representative sample of Israeli-Jewish adults (N = 511). The findings supported our hypotheses, thus indicating that perceiving one's own group as having feminine-empathic traits and empathy toward opponents made significant contributions to explaining Jewish-Israeli willingness to compromise with Palestinians. [R, abr.]
69.2155 DAXECKER, Ursula; JUNG, Alexander —
The introduction of electoral processes in developing countries has led to a mix of voting and violence rather than the establishment of peace and stability, as violence in recent elections in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Zimbabwe illustrates. Developing countries display various forms of violence closely linked to elections. Until recently, a lack of globally available data complicated efforts to properly describe and understand election violence. This paper uses disaggregated event data from the Electoral Contention and Violence (ECAV) dataset to provide a global, post-Cold War assessment of election violence in the developing world. We first present a descriptive assessment, beginning with temporal and regional patterns, which show that most election violence occurs in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. We then examine timing, election type, electoral systems, and the actors and targets of election violence. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2156 DEAN, Jonathan; MAIGUASHCA, Bice —
The primary aim of this article is to develop a distinctive set of criteria that can help us trace the extent to which particular instances of left-wing politics can be described as “feminist.” To carry out this task, we draw on the work and ideas of several feminist thinkers, relying particularly on the concepts of “embodied performance” and “affect.” A secondary aim of the article is empirical and involves exploring the utility of this framework in the context of several recent renditions of British left politics, including, but not limited to, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. [R]
69.2157 DECKER, Frank —
Parties of the left are now approaching direct democracy with increasing skepticism. One reason can be found in the sobering experiences at the municipal and state levels, where the instrument has seen a universal integration into the legislative process since the 1990s. Those experiences can be traced back to the preferences of the constitutional authors for the citizens' initiative, an approach that conflicts with the parliamentary form of government. To escape this constitutional impasse, states could devise a middle way regarding their implementation of “popular legislation” which they cannot repeal outright. Such measures should not be introduced at the federal level at all where the use of plebiscitary instruments ought to be limited to obligatory referendums or referendums called by the federal government. [R, abr.]
69.2158 DENHAM, John; DEVINE, Daniel —
Recent research has indicated that English identity was a strong predictor for a Leave vote in the referendum on membership of the EU, and that it is an identity that is increasingly playing a role in British politics. We explore whether Englishness affects even left-right positioning of parties. Focusing on Labour, we find that it does, even controlling for other attitudinal and demographic variables. Alongside age and perceptions of the party leader, perceptions of immigration change and perceived lack of political efficacy also play a significant role. Given the potential electoral significance of this, we reflect on and propose a range of policy options that Labour could utilize to address this gap between English-identifiers and the party. [R]
69.2159 DEUTSCHMANN, Emanuel; MINKUS, Lara —
Coinciding with the shift to the left in Latin American politics, regional integration in Latin America accelerated during the last two decades. Yet, whereas support for European integration has been tracked systematically for decades, trend analyses of public opinion on Latin American integration are still missing. Combining data from eight Latinobarometer surveys on 106,590 respondents from seventeen South and Central American countries, this article provides the first longitudinal analysis of Latin Americans' support for their continent's economic and political integration. Using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression, we reveal intra- and intersocietal trends and cleavages. Our results show that support rates are generally declining from high initial levels. Contrary to prevailing ideas, the political center is not necessarily the primary supporter of integration. [R, abr.]
69.2160 DIEZ, Jordi; DION, Michelle L. —
Research in advanced industrialized democracies on social attitudes toward same-sex marriage suggests that intergroup social contact and positive media coverage play an important role in promoting tolerance and support for same-sex marriage. Using AmericasBarometer survey data for eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014, this article examines the ways in which individual-level internet use interacts with news exposure, country-level quality of democracy, internet penetration, and their association with support for same-sex marriage. The results suggest that not only is internet use associated with greater support for same-sex marriage, but that among those who both use the internet and pay more attention to the news, the positive effects are amplified. In addition, national level of democracy, economic development, and internet use are also associated with overall higher probabilities of supporting same-sex marriage. [R, abr.]
69.2161 DiSALVO, Daniel; KUCIK, Jeffrey —
Many American state governments have made extensive promises to pay for employees' health care and other benefits in retirement. Currently estimated at over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities, these other post-employment benefits (OPEB) are creating a major fiscal problem for state governments. We examine the politics of OPEB. We explain the variation in the generosity of OPEB across US states. We argue that party competition theories do not adequately explain the outcomes we observe. Instead, we draw on the emerging Schattschneiderian approach to the politics of public policy to show that public union strength conditions a party's incentives to represent unions' interests. In states where public sector unions are strong, unions can find their way into either party's coalition. [R, abr.]
69.2162 DRUCKMAN, James N., et al. —
Partisan media — typically characterized by incivility — has become a defining element of the American political communication environment. While scholars have explored the consequences of partisan media for political attitudes and behaviors, little work has looked at how variations in incivility moderate partisan media's effects. Using a population-based survey experiment, we show that incivility affectively depolarizes partisans when it comes from an in-party source (e.g., MSNBC for Democrats, Fox News for Republicans). Incivility on out-party sources affectively polarizes the audience, however, and we show that the respondent's degree of conflict aversion conditions these effects. Our results raise intriguing normative questions about the trade-offs between polarization and incivility and highlight how scholars must account for both levels of incivility and partisan slant when studying the effects of partisan media. [R]
69.2163 DRÜEKE, Ricarda —
The Watchdog function of the media is derived from normative models of democracy; in these theoretical approaches the control function of the media is emphasized in addition to the functions of information, transparency and thus legitimization of political processes. Based on these approaches the contribution aims to explain the public role of media and highlights various forms of watchdog journalism. Subsequently current challenges triggered by digital media are discussed with focus on the increased numbers of actors who could exercise control on both the state and the media. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2164 DUCHATELET, Dorothy, et al. —
Current research struggles to illuminate significant learning outcomes of role-play simulations, such as Model European Union (MEU) and Model United Nations (MUN). In this study, we introduce a model for measuring simulation effects, distinguishing between cognitive, affective and regulative learning outcomes. In particular, we introduce the MISS-model (Motivation, Interest and Self-efficacy in Simulations), which enables measuring affective learning outcomes more in depth and connects these with other learning outcomes. To get more insight in how students vary with respect to affective learning outcomes, we apply the MISS-model in a cross-continental simulation context. Results show student variation for all affective learning outcomes and thus support for applying the MISS-model to measure affective learning outcomes of simulations more in depth. Findings are discussed with regard to simulation practice and future research on simulation effects. [R, abr.]
69.2165 DURST, Noah J. —
As cities expand their jurisdictional borders via the process of municipal annexation, they sometimes leave low-income and minority enclaves perpetually excluded on the urban fringe, a process known as municipal underbounding. Despite a number of small-scale studies documenting the gerrymandering of municipal borders, robust empirical evidence of its extent is limited and little is known about the institutional factors that facilitate or stymie efforts to underbound poor and minority communities. I use a metropolitan area matching design to measure the effect of state annexation laws and federal protection of voting rights under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act on municipal underbounding between 1990 and 2010 in the US. [R, abr.]
69.2166 EAGLETON-PIERCE, Matthew —
A range of socio-economic dislocations have spawned renewed interest in the capitalist system and its critiques. Within these trends, the politics of international trade has often been a flashpoint for civil society organizations (CSOs) concerned with social justice. This paper uncovers a neglected feature of this landscape: how, since the 1980s, certain CSOs have shifted from being “radical outsiders” to “reformist insiders” to protest the design and purpose of global trade. We know why CSOs have criticized the political economy of trade, but less about how they have historically struggled to gain admission into this policy milieu; their internal strategizing and tensions; and what makes for effective protest. To understand such experimentation, this paper argues that literature on professionalization offers a valuable lens for exploring the relationship between expertise and power. [R, abr.]
69.2167 EICHORST, Jason; LIN, Nick C. N. —
Democratic accountability relies on citizens to anticipate future governing behavior. We explore the strategic incentives for parties to shape voter expectations by generating vague or concrete campaign statements. Using an English-language dictionary, we scale electoral statements from all industrialized English-speaking nations to develop a measure of concreteness. Concrete statements can create electoral risks from unfulfilled expectations. Yet, political parties have incentives to use concrete statements to clarify reputation uncertainty associated with unclear informational cues. Political context shapes these incentives. Incumbent parties tend to dictate concrete statements to balance attributed responsibility for government outcomes and signal that they are competent managers. Strong government performance, however, reduces the incentive for incumbents to be concrete, as favorable outcomes reveal competent management. Opposition parties are unconstrained from these demands. [R, abr.]
69.2168 EKAYANTI, Mala; XIAOMING Hao —
Using the Model of Hierarchy of Influences on Media Content as its conceptual framework, this study examines the impact of political ownership of newspapers on journalists' practice of professional values in day-to-day news-reporting activities in Indonesia. Through a survey of newspaper journalists in Jakarta, this study aims to find out whether journalists perceive political ownership as a potential threat to their practice of professional values. The findings show that political ownership of newspapers may not directly affect the practice of professional values but it can affect such a practice indirectly through interventional practices in the newsroom. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2199]
69.2169 ELAD-STRENGER, Julia; SHAHAR, Golan —
Based on the view of political worldviews and threat perceptions as multifaceted constructs, the present study suggests that certain types of perceived threat are actually associated with the endorsement of more politically liberal positions. Employing a three-wave naturalistic design, we examined the unique longitudinal effects of perceived threats from real-life political events that challenge either liberal or conservative values, on conflict-related attitudes, using a nationally representative sample of Jewish-Israelis (N = 437). Consistent with our hypotheses, perceived threat from events that challenge conservative values was associated with increased militaristic attitudes and decreased willingness to compromise for peace over time, whereas perceived threat from events that challenge liberal values was related to decreased militaristic attitudes and increased willingness to compromise for peace over time. [R, abr.]
69.2170 ELSÄSSER, Lea; SCHÄFER, Armin —
This article explores the relationship between the political representation of women and welfare state change in 21 OECD countries. Several authors have argued that a higher share of female parliamentarians leads to an increase in social expenditure, in particular when labor market participation of women is high. However, existing studies focus on highly aggregated social expenditure measures or on social services alone. We can show that most countries have implemented both cutbacks in traditional decommodificaton measures and an expansion of activating social policies. The interplay of women's descriptive representation and rising female employment helps to understand this welfare state change in recent decades. [R]
69.2171 EWIG, Christina —
I develop the concept of intersectional interests and a method for identifying these. Intersectional interests represent multiple perspectives and are forged through a process of political intersectionality that purposefully includes historically marginalized perspectives. These interests can be parsed into three types: expansionist, integrationist, and reconceived. Identification of intersectional interests requires, first, an inductive mapping of the differing women's perspectives that exist in a specific context and then an examination of the political processes that lead to these new, redefined interests. I demonstrate the concept of intersectional interests and how to identify these in Bolivia, where I focus on the political process of forging reconceived intersectional interests in Bolivia's political parity and pension reforms. [R, abr.]
69.2172 FAHEY, Kevin —
Have electoral reforms to reduce the incumbency advantage worked as intended? I articulate a theory wherein reforms may contribute to a weakening incumbency advantage, or may counterintuitively weaken challengers by changing party incentives. Combining causal inference techniques on a set of 70,000 US state legislative elections, I estimate changes to the annual incumbency effect after the implementation of two popular reforms, term limits and staffing cuts. This test arbitrates between two competing expectations of how reforms should change the incumbency effect. My findings show that the reforms did not work as intended. The incumbency effect grew faster in term-limited states than in states without term limits, while staff cuts failed to slow the growth of the incumbency effect. [R, abr.]
69.2173 FANGEN, Katrine; VAAGE, Mari —
We explore Norwegian Progress Party politicians' change of their rhetoric of immigration after the party for the first time became part of a coalition government in 2013. Equal to other right-wing populist parties in Europe, immigration has been the main reason for voters to support the Progress Party. How then does their immigration rhetoric change after entering office? This is important, as an intolerant immigration rhetoric has far-reaching consequences for the political climate in Europe. Right-wing populist parties can achieve much regarding migration policies merely because there is broad consensus on a strict migration policy today. However, to succeed remaining in office, they must remain being acceptable to other parties in the parliament and their coalition partner and therefore they need to moderate the way they go about communicating their message. [R, abr.]
69.2174 FERREIRA DA SILVA, Frederico —
Although recent research on the personalization of politics has provided empirical evidence of leadership effects on voting behaviour, previous studies have dealt primarily with an impact on vote choice, neglecting the primary step of the voting decision process: turnout. Exploring the relationship between leader effects and turnout gains relevance considering the generalized decline in voter turnout rates across Western democracies as a symptom of the dealignment process, pointed as a key cause of the personalization of politics. Despite this theoretical linkage, it is yet unstudied whether voters’ evaluations of leaders have an effect on turnout. Results show a positive significant effect of voters’ evaluations of candidates on turnout. Moreover, this effect was especially strong amongst dealigned voters. [R, abr.]
69.2175 FIERASCU, Silvia I., et al. —
We explore the party co-affiliation networks of Romanian politicians who were in Parliament after the regime change in 1989, while focusing on individual party-switchers. We propose a set of three novel measures to understand the context of party-switching, at both micro level (individual MPs' career choices), as well as macro level (the party performance of the receiving political organizations). We thus build a network in which nodes represent individual politicians, while links represent shared membership within the same political party over the same electoral cycle. We combine these insights with a centrality analysis of influential switchers during the period of 1990 to 2018. we make explicit the link between heterogeneity of strategic party-switching choices at the individual MP level and homogeneity and political fragmentation at the party level. [R, abr.]
69.2176 FINGER, Leslie K. —
How do interest groups shape the diffusion of policies they oppose across the states? This study explores this question using the case of teachers’ unions and education reform policies. Using a novel dataset on charter, voucher, and performance pay policies spanning 1992-2013, I find evidence that strength of the teachers’ unions decreases the likelihood of performance pay and that additional strength is less impactful with more Democratic control of the legislature. Teachers’ unions are weakly related to a lack of charter laws and do not impact voucher laws. The latter two policies are more strongly associated with policymaker learning and education reform advocacy groups, respectively. These findings suggest that vested interests most strongly impact the policies that most fundamentally threaten their organizational strength and that this effect is conditioned on the party in power. [R, abr.]
69.2177 FITZPATRICK, Jasmin —
How did political parties apply Twitter during the 2017 German election campaign? Can we find similarities and differences in their communication tactics? These questions guide this study, which focuses on parties' goals (vote-seeking, office-seeking, policy-seeking) and campaign tactics (negative campaigning, acclaiming, mobilization). A closer look is taken at official party accounts in order to learn more about their official tactics. Therefore, the most frequently used hashtags were evaluated. All parties that won seats during the election used Twitter for their campaigns. The CDU and the SPD pushed their candidates on Twitter, while the FDP, the Left, and the Greens used the mobilizing hashtag #btw17 to refer to the election in general. The AfD mostly referred to themselves using the hashtag #afd. A closer look reveals strengths and weaknesses of parties campaigning on Twitter. [R, abr.]
69.2178 FLESKEN, Anaïd —
This article tests the explanatory power of rational choice and social-movement-informed approaches to ethnic party formation that, it argues, differ in their assumptions about the location of agency (elite vs. grassroots) and motives for party formation (office- vs. policy seeking). The assumptions are tested through an analysis of original data on party registration and socio-economic factors in 327 Bolivian municipalities during the 2004 local elections. The elections took place under new electoral rules during a period of political restructuring, allowing an analysis of party entry decisions per se. Through a series of logistic regression models and various robustness checks, this article finds that social movement approaches are better able to explain ethnic party formation, and in particular that grievances over political maladministration and socio economic inequalities drive ethnic party formation. [R, abr.]
69.2179 FORESTIERE, Carolyn; TRONCONI, Filippo —
The year 2017 brought to an end the 17th legislative term and prepared the ground for the upcoming general elections. In a climate of extreme uncertainty, fostered by an evolving political scenario and persistently high levels of electoral volatility, political actors had to rewrite the electoral law while facing a number of internal and external challenges. This introduction discusses the context and outcomes of a transitional (but by no means negligible) year, summarizing the content of the articles making up this Issue. The reconfiguration of the tripolar political space, together with several unsolved problems (for instance in the field of immigration and citizenship of the “new Italians”) set the game table for the crucial elections of 2018. [R] [Introduction to a special issue of the same title. See Abstr. 69.1985, 2131, 2194, 2339, 2351, 2517, 2682, 2745, 2876]
69.2180 FORTIN-RITTBERGER, Jessica, et al. —
Women's representation is highest in local assemblies in some countries, while others display the largest share of female office-holders at the national level. Drawing on a new data-set mapping the representation of women at all four levels of government in Germany during the 2000s, we argue that differences in party system configurations across echelons explain these distinct patterns and provide evidence for this claim. We show that left-wing parties, the main source of female office-holders, perform better at higher echelons, while minor parties and independent representatives, which favor male candidacy, win more seats at the lowest levels of government. [R]
69.2181 FOX, Colm A. —
Election campaigns have shifted their focus from the local to the national level, increasingly featuring party leaders, labels, and national platforms. Despite this trend, there remains significant variation in the local/national orientation of campaigns across countries and parties. This article tests several propositions on why campaigns adopt a local or national orientation by analyzing a unique collection of more than 12,000 geocoded Thai election posters. Specialized software was used to measure the spatial proportions of visual and textual content on each poster. Using Thailand's mixed electoral system to enable a controlled comparison of electoral rules, I demonstrate that proportional rules were associated with national campaign strategies whereas majoritarian rules fostered local strategies. [R, abr.]
69.2182 FRAUSSEN, Bert; GRAHAM, Timothy; HALPIN, Darren R. —
Ascertaining which interest groups are considered relevant by policymakers presents an important challenge for political scientists. Existing approaches often focus on the submission of written evidence or the inclusion in expert committees. While these approaches capture the effort of groups, they do not directly indicate whether policy-makers consider these groups as highly relevant political actors. We introduce a novel theoretical approach to address this important question, namely prominence We argue that, in the legislative arena, prominence can be operationalized as groups being mentioned strategically “used as a resource“ by elected officials as they debate policy matters. We illustrate this novel method relying on a dataset of mentions of over 1300 national interest groups in parliamentary debates in Australia over a six-year period (2010-2016). [R, abr.]
69.2183 FREEDER, Sean; LENZ, Gabriel S.; TURNEY, Shad —
What share of citizens hold meaningful views about public policy? Despite decades of scholarship, researchers have failed to reach a consensus. Researchers agree that policy opinions in surveys are unstable but disagree about whether that instability is real or just measurement error. We revisit this debate with a concept neglected in the literature: knowledge of which issue positions “go together” ideologically. — or what Philip Converse called knowledge of “what goes with what.” Using surveys spanning decades in the US and the UK, we find that individuals hold stable views primarily when they possess this knowledge and agree with their party. These results imply that observed opinion instability arises not primarily from measurement error but from instability in the opinions themselves. [R, abr.]
69.2184 FREISE, Matthias; MENZEMER, Luisa —
NGOs play an important role in the process of policy-making in the EU. Particularly, they fulfill three functions: (1) They contribute expertise and legitimacy, (2) monitor the complex European regulations for their members, (3) and support the Commission in the supervision of policy-implementation in the member states. Over the years, a symbiotic relationship between NGOs and the European institutions has evolved, which opens channels of influence for NGOs, but also prevents resistance and protest against political decisions of the EU. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2185 FUKUSHIMA, Tatsuya —
This study examines patterns of demand statement distribution in newspaper editorials during the 2013 Japanese House of Councilors (i.e., Upper House) election in anticipation that their ideological slant will become salient in the skewed patterns of certain linguistic forms. Distribution patterns in this study contradict the predictions inferable from the ideological slant of newspapers. In particular, this study finds that a conservative newspaper distributes its demands equally at both sides of the political spectrum. However, this newspaper frequently — and exclusively — employs partisan follow-ups (wherein a demand statement directed at all parties or candidates is followed by an example of concrete action/inaction by a certain party) in an implicit attempt to express its view in favor of the ruling coalition of conservative parties. [R]
69.2186 GALLEGO, Jorge —
What are the effects of war on political behavior? Colombia is an interesting case in which conflict and elections coexist, and illegal armed groups intentionally affect electoral outcomes. Nonetheless, groups have used different strategies to alter these results. This paper argues that differential effects of violence on electoral outcomes are the result of deliberate strategies followed by illegal groups, which in turn result from military conditions that differ between them. Using panel data from Senate elections from 1994 to 2006 and an instrumental variables approach to address potential endogeneity concerns, this paper shows that guerrilla violence decreases turnout, while paramilitary violence has no effect on participation, but reduces electoral competition and benefits non-traditional third parties. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2748]
69.2187 GARRIDO LÓPEZ, Carlos —
Referendums can complement representative democracy, by enhancing its representativeness and acting as a counterbalance. However, not all referendums enrich democracy: it depends upon who is asking, what they are asking about and under what conditions the campaign is debated. In short, it depends on its guarantees. I analyze the functionality of several types of referendum and the principal guarantees that can be implemented to make them compatible with representative democracy, especially the expansion of people with the legal authority to lobby for their calling, the exclusion of certain issues in referendums and the requirements for a quorum or for a qualified majority for the result to be recognized as valid. [R, abr.]
69.2188 GAUFMAN, Elizaveta —
This article argues that a Russian analytical paradigm of carnival culture can help explain the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin developed the notion of carnival culture while analyzing Francois Rabelais' work and its connection to the popular culture of Renaissance. Carnival ethos stood in opposition to the “official” and “serious” church sanctioned and feudal culture, by bringing out folklore and different forms of folk laughter that Bakhtin denoted as carnival. Carnival culture with its opposition to the official buttoned-up discourse is supposed to be polar opposite, distinguished by anti-ideology and anti-authority, in other words, anti-establishment — the foundation of Trump's appeal to his voters. This article examines the core characteristics of carnival culture that defined Trump's presidential campaign from the start. [R]
69.2189 GAVIN, Neil T. —
The notion that the media's principal role regarding public opinion is reinforcement of pre-existing attitudes — and that this idea is relative inconsequential politically — is pervasive, across many political and social science sub-disciplines, and in non-academic commentary. This article comprehensively challenges the evidential and theoretical underpinnings of this thesis, drawing on a wealth of contemporary survey data and media coverage research, across a range of issues, including climate change, Brexit, immigration, the economy and benefit fraud. It also argues that ‘reinforcement' is an important and consequential power, and that the processes involved have significant implications for public misperception of salient political issues. It [argues] that the media create attitudinal uncertainty, and can have pervasive but subtle influences on political attitudes, particularly when there are persistent patterns of coverage across a range of media. [R, abr.]
69.2190 GEN, Sheldon; WRIGHT, Amy Conley —
Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function for many nonprofit organizations, yet their advocacy activities have largely escaped theoretical grounding. The literature on nonprofits has described how they engage in policy advocacy, without linking them to theories of policy change. The policy studies literature, on the other hand, has explained how various forms of influence result in policy change, but has largely ignored organizational perspectives on those processes. These two literatures remain largely disconnected. Drawing upon interviews with a purposive sample of policy advocacy directors at 31 nonprofit organizations, this study applies Q-methodology to identify and describe six distinct policy advocacy strategies employed by the organizations, and their resonant theoretical views of policy processes. These findings suggest strategic approaches for nonprofits seeking to influence policy processes. [R, abr.]
69.2191 GHORASHI, G. Reza —
It is quite natural to be skeptical about a meaningful election in the IRI; the elections are a form of referendum on it. Iran's first attempts to enter “modernity” go back almost 200 years. A major force opposed to any move towards modernity and secularism was the Shi'a clergy establishment. Iran's economic problems are due to domestic and external factors; lack of transparency and mafia-like control by quasi-state institutions are the main domestic obstacle, while the US government's uncooperative policies and attitude are the main external factors. The IRI under Rouhani is not a democracy, nor does it have any major elements of secularism. Will the Rouhani administration be able to improve its record in the second term?
69.2192 GIASSON, Thierry; DUBOIS, Philippe —
This article examines how the government framed its communications during the so-called “Printemps érable” (Maple Spring), a historic student protest movement that took place in Quebec in 2012. Six years after the end of the conflict, and despite the production of a significant volume of analysis and reflections on this social crisis, no empirical work had been dedicated yet to the study of the government's communication strategy. The analysis shows how the government tried to define the problems, solutions and protagonists involved in this societal conflict. Our study highlights the government's failure to maintain the framing initiative of the crisis, and the change in communication strategy that resulted. [R, abr.]
69.2193 GIFT, Thomas; LASTRA-ANADÓN, Carlos X. —
Are politicians with elite backgrounds more electable? We test whether being an elite is a net positive or negative in running for public office via an original survey experiment that manipulates one of the most salient indicators of eliteness in American life: university education. We find that liberals, but not conservatives, perceive politicians who attended elite schools to be more competent. Meanwhile, conservatives, but not liberals, perceive politicians who attended elite schools to be less relatable. On average, citizens are mildly, but not significantly, less inclined to vote for elite-educated politicians. By embedding treatments in our survey for whether politicians came from advantaged or disadvantaged upbringings, we also confirm that our results do not entirely reflect generic attitudes toward economically privileged candidates. [R]
69.2194 GIORGI, Elisabetta de; TRONCONI, Filippo —
In 2017, the parties of the centre-right camp faced the puzzle of deciding whether to participate in the imminent general elections as allies or as rivals. On the one hand they had partially different aims and the problem of choosing the leadership of the alliance; on the other, the new electoral system forced them to present common candidates in order to maximize their chances of reaching a majority of seats in parliament. We outline the stages through which the centre-right parties attempted to solve this puzzle over the course of the year, finally reaching an agreement to make a formal electoral alliance. Finally, we focus on one additional political actor of the right wing: the neo-fascist movements, notably Forza Nuova and CasaPound, which received significant media coverage during 2017. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2179]
69.2195 GIROD, Desha M.; STEWART, Megan A.; WALTERS, Meir R. —
Why are some dictators more successful at demobilizing protest movements than others? Repression sometimes stamps out protest movements (Bahrain in 2011) but can also cause a backlash (Egypt and Tunisia in 2011), leading to regime change. This article argues that the effectiveness of repression in quelling protests varies depending upon the income sources of authoritarian regimes. Oil-rich autocracies are well equipped to contend with domestic and international criticism, and this gives them a greater capacity to quell protests through force. Because oil-poor dictators lack such ability to deal with criticism, repression is more likely to trigger a backlash of increased protests. [R, abr.]
69.2196 GLAURDIC, Josip; VUKOVIC, Vuk —
This study exposes post-war voters' fiscal liberalism using individual-level and aggregate-level data covering a decade and a half of local electoral competition in post-war Croatia. Aggregate-level analysis shows Croatian voters' fiscal liberalism to be conditional on their communities' exposure to war violence: greater exposure to violence leads to greater support for fiscally expansionist incumbents. Individual-level analysis, on the other hand, shows post-war voters' fiscal liberalism as rooted in their different levels of war-related trauma: more feelings of war-related trauma lead to greater economic expectations from the government. Our analysis also shows that voters' war-conditioned preferences for fiscally expansionist incumbents show little sign of abating over time — a testament to the challenge presented by post-war recovery, and to the impact war exerts on political life long after the bloodshed has ended. [R]
69.2197 GLEIBS, Ilka H.; HENDRICKS, Kristen; KURZ, Tim —
We explore the nature and evolution of the role of candidates’ spouses in U.S. presidential election campaigns through a lens of social psychological theorizing that sees leadership as emerging from activities of identity construction of leaders and followers. Our discursive analysis examines how aspiring First Lady speeches at party national conventions construct both their husbands and the particular national identity construction most presently politically relevant in a way that strategically aligns the two. Building on previous social identity work on leadership, we show how it is not only the leader or their followers who are active participants in leadership construction but that there may also be a role for “third parties” who link prospective leaders with followers. [R, abr.]
69.2198 GOLOSOV, Grigorii V. —
This article explores the structural determinants of aggregate change in the party composition of legislative assemblies, i.e., legislative party turnover. To a large extent a product of electoral volatility, it has its own causal dynamics due to the differentiated impact exerted by electoral rules, party system properties, and institutional design upon the two phenomena. The empirical test on elections held in 111 electoral democracies of the world (1992-2014) demonstrates that the impact of institutional factors (including electoral rules, federalism, and presidentialism) and party system nationalization upon legislative party turnover tends to be mitigated in comparison with their effects upon electoral volatility, even though the direction of the impact is almost invariably the same. [R]
69.2199 GONG Qian; RAWNSLEY, Gary —
This article analyzes the perceptions of media freedom and responsibility by journalists and politicians in South Korea during the Presidency of Roh Moo-huyn (2003-2008). It draws on in-depth interviews with 10 journalists and 10 politicians with different political affiliations and interests. Findings suggest that both groups had positive appraisals of the country's media democratization. For them, the media could function as a watchdog on political power without having to fear direct political reprisals for doing so. However, the political press remained partially shackled to specific legacies and economic conditions. The most pressing example is the way the paternal power of conservative media owners challenged the editorial independence of journalists. [R, abr.] [Part of a special issue on “Journalism in South-East Asia”. See Abstr. 69.2168]
69.2200 GRAEB, Frederic; VETTER, Angelika —
The results of the recent German federal election show a general increase in votes for small parties and consequently a growing number of non-represented votes in the German Bundestag. In order to solve this issue, the concept of a spare vote occasionally is discussed among political scientists, according to which the first and second vote are combined into the main vote. The spare vote is counted if the party or candidate receiving the main vote does not gather enough main votes to enter parliament. Based on an online poll, the effects of a potential electoral reform on the outcome of the German federal election were analyzed. The results show a larger share of votes for small parties when voted via main vote compared to the second vote. [R, abr.]
69.2201 GREEF, Samuel; KIEPE, Lukas —
Monitoring and critical control of the activities of the state and its institutions is a central function of watchdog organizations. The paper examines government-related watchdogs that are not part of the core of the civil society. The authors argue that labor unions, welfare organizations, the Federal Audit Office, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and the German Taxpayers Federation increase the accountability of government action. In this way, they stabilize representative democracy as control bodies. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2202 GROFMAN, Bernard; TROUMPOUNIS, Orestis; XEFTERIS, Dimitrios —
We introduce primaries — both closed and open — into a Downsian model of two-party electoral competition allowing the two candidates in each party's primary to differ in valence as well as in policy platform. The good news is that the introduction of either type of primary acts as a stabilizing force since equilibriums exist quite generally, serves as an arena for policy debates since all candidates propose differentiated platforms, and guarantees that each party's nominee is of higher quality than its primary opponent. The bad news is that the winner of the general election need not be the candidate with the highest overall quality since primaries that are too competitive can prove harmful. We show that the choice of primary type is particularly important and may determine the winner of the general election. [R, abr.]
69.2203 GROSSMAN, Guy; MANEKIN, Devorah; MARGALIT, Yotam —
How do economic sanctions affect the political attitudes of individuals in targeted countries? Do they reduce or increase support for policy change? Are targeted, “smart” sanctions more effective in generating public support? Despite the importance of these questions for understanding the effectiveness of sanctions, they have received little systematic attention. We address them drawing on original data from Israel, where the threat of economic sanctions has sparked a contentious policy debate. We first examine the political effects of the EU's 2015 decision to label goods produced in the West Bank, and then expand our analysis by employing a survey experiment that allows us to test the differential impact of sanction type and sender identity. We find that the EU's decision produced a backlash effect. [R, abr.]
69.2204 GUARISO, Andrea; INGELAERE, Bert; VERPOORTEN, Marijke —
This article examines the impact of electoral gender quotas in post war Burundi and Rwanda on women's political representation. First, it looks at the evolution in descriptive representation by studying the number of female representatives and the prestige of their positions in the legislative and executive branches of government. The results show that, in both Rwanda and Burundi, the number of female political representatives significantly increased with the introduction of gender quotas. While women disproportionally end up in ministries of relatively lower prestige, the gap with men has been closing over time, as more women have joined the executive branches of power. The study considers whether such an increase has been accompanied by a positive evolution in the way ordinary women perceive their political representation. [R, abr.]
69.2205 HADDEN, Jennifer —
How do advocacy organizations make tactical choices? This paper contributes to theory building in advocacy studies by examining how the decision-making processes of advocacy organizations are affected by the choices of their peers. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners in two contexts — the EU and the US — I document that organizations face pressures toward cohesion and differentiation with the tactical choices of other organizations. Other important processes — such as rational evaluation of political opportunities, resource dependence, and ideological constraint — are also reported to be influential, although these processes are sometimes influenced by relational dynamics. These findings suggest new variables and relationships of interest for future quantitative research and provide insight into the growing complexity of climate politics. [R]
69.2206 HALL, Jonathan —
Following forced expulsion and campaigns of ethnic cleansing, substantial portions of national communities affected by conflict no longer live within the boundaries of the state. Nevertheless, existing wartime and postwar public opinion research is largely confined to countries directly affected by conflict. As a result, current research may overlook important war-affected populations and processes shaping their opinions. I address this problem by examining the question: does incorporation in settlement countries reduce support for conflict ideology? Examining this question requires new microdata. I examine the results of a large-scale survey of ex-Yugoslavs in Sweden. The findings suggest that incorporation undermines support for conflict ideology by increasing the socio-economic security and social identity complexity of migrants. [R, abr.]
69.2207 HANRETTY, Chris —
In the 2010 election for the post of leader of the British Labour party, almost all members of parliament endorsed one of five leadership candidates. I investigate the effect of these endorsements on the votes cast for candidates in each Westminster constituency. I find that an MP's endorsement caused an average increase of 7.5 percentage points in the vote share of the endorsed candidate in that MP's constituency. [R]
69.2208 HANSSEN, Gro Sandkjaer; HAMRE, Lina; SKOG, Kristine Lien —
We execute a comparative case study of the two municipalities of Spydeberg and Hobøl. They are chosen through a Most Similar Systems Design. By interviewing politicians and others working with farmland conversion, we find that most of them consider party politics to be very important locally, even though it is not reflected in how much farmland that is actually converted. The main finding is that conservation of farmland is weighted in a local context, not in a party political one. Thus, in order to strengthen farmland preservation, more emphasis could be put on farmlands provision of collective goods at the local level. [R]
69.2209 HAVERCROFT, Jonathan; MURPHY, Justin —
Research on the Tea Party finds that both libertarian and authoritarian attitudes drive support for this movement, but political scientists lack a satisfactory explanation of this contradiction. Factor-analysis of nine attitudes from the 2012 American National Election Study is used to explore whether statism and moral traditionalism are intercorrelated on a dimension distinct from attitudes toward government; regression analysis is used to test if these distinct dimensions help to explain support for the Tea Party. Controlling for several competing explanations, the multiplicative interaction of anti-government and morally statist ideological factors is shown to be a predictor of Tea Party support, especially among conservatives. Our results suggest the Tea Party movement is in part driven by what Nietzsche called “misarchism,” an ideological mixture of moral-ism, statism, and libertarianism. [R]
69.2210 HAWKINS, Kirk A.; KALTWASSER, Cristóbal Rovira —
Rather than defining populism in structuralist, economic, or political-strategic terms, a growing number of scholars around the world are using an ideational conceptualization that draws heavily from earlier discursive theories. By employing the ideational approach, scholars have been able to provide empirical measures of populist discourse. In this article we explain and show the advantages of this ideational approach to a Latin American audience by presenting a new historical dataset measuring the discourse of Argentine, Chilean, and Peruvian presidents across the 20th c. Our main intent is to clarify the ideational approach as well as to enliven the conceptual debate. While we are critical of alternative definitions, we acknowledge and reassess their theoretical insights. [R, abr.]
69.2211 HE Baogang; WAGENAAR, Hendrik —
This introductory paper reviews the origin and development of the concept of authoritarian deliberation, and highlights the importance of culture and cultural tradition associated with public consultation. It summarizes and illustrates six key features of authoritarian deliberation in China. (1) Deliberation in China is a precarious balance between legal rule and state intervention. (2) The Party appeals to public reason to address and manage social conflict, and develop the soft coercion that accompanies much authoritarian deliberation. (3) This highly controlled deliberative process does, however, allow the freedom of local participants to find spaces for democratic expression. (4) Authoritarian deliberation is characterized by mutual instrumentalism. (5) There is an importance of an administrative and policy perspective in authoritarian deliberation. (6) The concept of authoritarian deliberation is not limited to China. [R, abr.] [Introduction to a special section of a same title, edited by the authors. See Abstr. 69.2325, 2333, 2367, 2820, 2871, 2904]
69.2212 HEINISCH, Reinhard; LEHNER, Thomas; MÜHLBÖCK, Armin —
Do municipal mergers affect the democratic development at the local level? Existing research focuses on the effect on local economic efficiency or political efficacy. However, few studies show effect of mergers on local democracy clearly. With this gap in mind, we focus on the recent municipal mergers in the Austrian State of Styria. The reform presents a natural experimental setting, which allows for a controlled test of the effect of “size” on voter turnout. We contend that, as a consequence of the merger, individual votes lose weight. We expect turnout in merged municipals to decrease compared to the elections prior to the merger. We use aggregate data from the 2010 and 2015 municipal elections in Styria and employ regression models to test our argument empirically. [R, abr.]
69.2213 HEINISCH, Reinhard; MARENT, Vanessa —
The radical right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been known for its considerable political success in national politics since the 1980s. While the party entered two regional governments recently and held the governorship in a third federal state for over a decade, it has largely remained frozen out of power in all other Austrian provinces. In this paper we examine how and to what extent the FPÖ used territorial claims and notions of territoriality in its political mobilization when campaigning for public offices. We argue that sub-state territorial claims making occurs in regions in which ethnic and sociocultural cleavages are highly salient and where the local political system is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2214 HEINISCH, Reinhard; MASSETTI, Emanuele; MAZZOLENI, Oscar —
The relationship between populism and ethno-territorial politics has emerged repeatedly in empirical studies outside Western Europe. This article presents the main aim of the special issue, which is the systematically and empirically based investigation of the linkages between populism and ethno-territorial ideologies in Western European states. By introducing a conceptual map, in which the defining characteristics of populism, regionalism, state nationalism, and Euroskepticism are identified and conceptualized, the article proceeds with the possible linkage points between both concepts. It also proposes a smallest common denominator relationship between populism and ethno-territorial ideologies in that the notion of “homogeneous people” becomes inexorably connected to the concept of “nation” or “region” pitted against political, economic, and cultural elites operating at various levels of government. [R, abr.] [First article of a special issue on “Addressing the territorial dimensions in party-based populism”, edited by the authors. See Abstr. 69.2101, 2213, 2229, 2280, 2283, 2374]
69.2215 HEINSOHN, Till —
France voted for a new president on May 7, 2017. Emmanuel Macron, the candidate for the social liberal party En Marche!, won in a runoff election against Marine Le Pen, the candidate for the right-wing populist and nationalist party Front National. An enormous increase can be recorded comparing the shares of blank and spoiled ballot papers in the first round on 23 April, when no candidate won a majority, with that of the runoff election, which was held between the top two candidates less than a month later. Exceeding 11% in the 2017 runoff election all in all, invalid voting is more common than it has ever been before. In light of this, there is a strong suspicion that numerous voters decided to vote blank or spoiled their ballot paper in the second round. [R, abr.]
69.2216 HERKMAN, Juha —
The paper analyzes political scandals connected to the contemporary populist parties of Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The typical neo-populist scandal [begins] due to the moral transgression of a member of a populist movement, usually through the use of unacceptable language or behavior, insulting non-native inhabitants or other minorities within the population. However, provocation and playing the role of the underdog are common strategies employed by populists, and a populist movement may even benefit from a scandal, though the consequences of the scandal depend on the life phase of the movement and on the status of the member involved in the scandal. The moral transgressions and political consequences of neo-populist scandals may serve as an indicator of the condition liberal democracy enjoys, but also reveal contextual differences in particular societies and their moral order. [R, abr.]
69.2217 HICKSON, Kevin; MILES, Jasper —
The referendum result of 2016 creates a timely opportunity to reappraise Euroscepticism in British politics. This article examines the Eurosceptic tradition within the Labour Party, specifically its moderate wing. During the referendum campaign, Euroscepticism within the Labour Party was presented as a temporary phenomenon limited to the ‘hard left' of the Party in the early 1980s. However, this view neglects a much longer tradition of Euroscepticism on the moderate wing of the Labour Party dating back to the earliest post–Second World War attempts to foster European unity. This article seeks to restore that tradition and concludes that it is built on a clear conceptualisation of social democratic ideology. [R]
69.2218 HÖGSTRÖM, John —
The purpose of this study is to examine whether citizens are more likely to vote in a political system that uses a proportional electoral system if the election is close. The results show that citizens who live in Swedish municipalities in which the competition between the two leading parties is close are more likely to vote. However, the results also show that the vote gap between the two major traditional blocs, the left and the right, is not important for citizens when they are considering whether or not to vote in municipal elections. In the study, a theoretical argument has been formulated which suggests that voters are confused and discouraged when there are many aspects to consider regarding the form of an upcoming coalition government. [R, abr.]
69.2219 HOOD, M. V.; MONOGAN, James E. —
We build on prior work by M. V. Hood III, Q. Kidd, and I. L. Morris [The Rational Southerner: Black Mobilization, Republican Growth, and the Partisan Transformation of the American South, Oxford U. P., 2012], who show that growth in Republican identification in Southern states since 1965 rose in response to black mobilization. In their theory of relative advantage, as more African-Americans registered with the Democratic Party, white voters could maintain the same intraparty status by moving to the sparser-populated Republican Party. We focus on Louisiana and how the state's local-level politics created the opportunity for partisan contagion among parishes for organizational, electoral, and mobilization reasons. We show that whenever a parish in Louisiana became more Republican, there were spillover effects in neighboring parishes. [R, abr.]
69.2220 HOPKIN, Jonathan; ROSAMOND, Ben —
Debates about economic policy in Britain have been dominated by claims that sovereign debt problems are due to loose fiscal policy and excessive spending rather than volatile capital flows and flawed monetary policy. Such claims are better thought of as bullshit rather than outright falsehoods: as speech acts that are indifferent to the truth and proceed without effective concern for the veracity of the claim in question. We examine the characteristics of political bullshit applied to economic policy debates since the financial crisis, and seek to explain its hold on the popular imagination. We assess what makes some particular brands of bullshit more successful than others, and argue that in a world of competing realities as well as competing theories, the power of rhetoric is more likely to settle an argument than evidence and logic. [R, abr.]
69.2221 HOPKINS, Daniel J.; SIDES, John; CITRIN, Jack —
Previous research shows that people commonly exaggerate the size of minority populations. Theories of intergroup threat predict that the larger people perceive minority groups to be, the less favorably they feel toward them. We investigate whether correcting Americans' misperceptions about one such population — immigrants — affects related attitudes. We confirm that non-Hispanic Americans overestimate the percentage of the population that is foreign-born or in the US without authorization. However, in seven separate survey experiments over 11 years, we find that providing accurate information does little to affect attitudes toward immigration, even though it does reduce the perceived size of the foreign-born population. This is true even when people's misperceptions are explicitly corrected. These results call into question a potential cognitive mechanism that could underpin intergroup threat theory. [R, abr.]
69.2222 HUTCHINSON, Francis E. —
The results of Malaysia's 14th general elections held in May this year were unexpected and transformative. Against conventional wisdom, the newly-reconfigured opposition grouping Pakatan Harapan decisively defeated the incumbent Barisan Nasional. Despite a long-running financial scandal dogging the incumbents, an opposition victory had been all but discarded due to the advantages of incumbency, a deep fissure amongst opposition ranks, and a favorable economic outlook. Notwithstanding this, deeply-rooted political dynamics and influential actors came together, reconfiguring the country's political landscape in the process. In order to understand the elections and their implications, this article sets out the country's institutional context and then identifies key drivers and agents of change. From there, it assesses the conduct of the elections, analyses their results, and explores implications for the future. [R]
69.2223 ILHAN DEMIRYOL, Gaye —
Urban spaces have always been sites of conflict. This article examines the Gezi Park occupation of June 2013 in Istanbul. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's political theory and constructing Arendt's public space as an actual, physical location that allows members of a community to come together and act in concert to bring about social, political and cultural change, this article demonstrates that the occupied public spaces, such as Gezi Park, hold the potential for the creation of inclusive and active citizenship practices, and the possibility of direct, participatory democratic politics. [R]
69.2224 ILLÉS, Gábor; KÖRÖSÉNYI, András; METZ, Rudolf —
Hungary's political backsliding, which has transformed it from a former frontrunner of liberal democracy in the post-communist region to an illiberal and/or authoritarian state, has puzzled political scientists. As a contribution to understanding the problem of Viktor Orbán's leadership and the regime change, we apply Stephen Skowronek's concept of ‘reconstructive leadership'. The politics of reconstruction, with an emphasis on the introduction of new standards of legitimacy and the mobilization of support for new modes of governance, leaves ample room for appreciating the role of political leadership. Through an analysis of three policy areas (constitution-making, macroeconomic and immigration policy) related to Orbán's efforts at reconstruction, we argue that the Hungarian case underscores the formative role of agency even more than in Skowronek's original conception. [R, abr.]
69.2225 INCERTI, Devin —
This paper answers these questions by using Bayesian election forecasts to estimate a probabilistic voting model. The model provides realtime estimates of the marginal value of additional resources in a district during a campaign and can be used to compare actual spending patterns to the amount that should have been spent according to the model. The correlation between observed and optimal spending is over 0.5 in each non-redistricting year from 2000 to 2010 and observed spending patterns respond to new polls during a campaign. The correlations are consistent across different types of campaign donors including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, various political action committees, and individuals. [R, abr.]
69.2226 INGIRIIS, Mohamed Haji —
The prevailing discourse in Mogadishu among the government of Somalia and the international community is that Al-Shabaab is no longer relevant in contemporary Somali political landscape. In the language of the government, Al-Shabaab is like a lost crocodile thrown out from the river. In the lexicon of the international community, Al-Shabaab is gradually receding. In fact, Al-Shabaab is actually puissant and potent in terms of social, political and military capabilities; not just in Somalia, but also in the wider East Africa region. Why is Al-Shabaab resilient and resistant? Why is it even more effective than the federal government? This article reveals how Al-Shabaab is increasingly more legitimate than the federal government. It proposes that negotiated settlement with the insurgency movement could lead to peace in war-torn southern Somalia. [R]
69.2227 ISHIYAMA, John; MARTINEZ, Melissa; OZSUT, Melda —
This study examines whether a state's abundance of natural resource wealth, such as oil or gas, leads to lower levels of social and institutional trust than in countries that are not as “cursed” with resources. To test this, we use survey data from both the Afrobarometer survey (2008-2009) and comparable data on Latin America from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), using 44 countries, as well as subnational data from two large oil-producing countries (Nigeria and Mexico). Using multilevel logit analysis we find that individuals in countries that are oil and gas producers are less likely to exhibit high levels of social or institutional trust than individuals in countries that are not oil or gas producers. [R, abr.]
69.2228 ITZKOVITCH-MALKA, Reut; FRIEDBERG, Chen —
The study focuses on the links between gender and national security in the legislative arena in Israel, considering whether men and women legislators prioritize security differently, alongside other thematic policy areas. The centrality of national security issues in Israeli politics makes it a good case study for these questions, as it enhances existing gendered stereotypes. The article examines two competing hypotheses. The first suggests that Israeli female legislators will mostly refrain from addressing national security policy issues, focusing instead on softer policy issues, such as gender equality, education, health, and welfare. The second suggests the opposite, claiming that women legislators in Israel will align themselves with their male counterparts' set of priorities, focusing heavily on issues related to national security. [R, abr.]
69.2229 IVALDI, Gilles; DUTOZIA, Jérôme —
Based on a case study of the French Front National (FN), this paper examines the territorialization of national-populist parties. We adopt a sub-national approach and ask to which extent the FN engages in different ideological and organizational strategies to take advantage of territorialized opportunities. We draw on a comparative qualitative analysis of two emblematic French regions with the highest electoral returns for the FN, namely Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Hauts-de-France. We find that the FN is adapting its supply of national-populism to different arenas and contexts where cultural and economic issues vary in salience and in the resonance they find in the political process. In doing so, the FN seems to be successfully meeting the needs and interests of the local constituencies that it targets. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2230 IZAK, Stefan —
The paper identifies the basic discourses about the EU present in the migration news in Slovak pro-Kremlin media. A qualitative discourse-analysis allows us to investigate patterns, which create social reality through discourse. The Theory of discourse by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe makes our basic theoretical background. Pro-Kremlin media can be considered as a challenge to standard media discourses, which try to create a hegemony of discourses that suits Russia. At the same time, the existence of pro-Kremlin media can be also considered as a part of so-called hybrid warfare that Russia is waging (not only) against individual countries of the EU to achieve its goals. The migration is an ideal opportunity for politics of Russia and people who support it to gain an advantage in this hybrid warfare. [R, abr.]
69.2231 JANG Jinhyeok —
This paper presents a considerable amount of variance in the decision-making of the legislators, meaning that the Macau legislature is not just a rubber stamp but a place where a series of collective decisions are made with careful consideration of the individual legislators. Unlike the conventional wisdom that the pro-establishment politicians dominate Macau politics, its social network analysis reveals that two distinct groups shape legislative politics in Macau. Its spatial model of roll call voting finds that most of collective decision-makings fit a single government-opposition dimension. [R]
69.2232 JAROS, Bronislav; VODA, Petr —
This article clarifies connections between citizens' knowledge and their positions in a political space in the Czech Republic. Rather than a political space as a whole, previous studies examined particular issues, values, participation or accuracy of citizens' positions compared to positions of their preferred candidates in association with the knowledge variable. Thus, this study provides a new piece of the puzzle. The election study 2017 of Centrum pro výzkum veřejného mínění (Public Opinion Research Centre) is a source of the data for this analysis. The results suggest, in contrary to our presumptions, that the knowledge does not significantly influence if a person advocates rather central or clear-cut positions. On the other hand, more knowledgeable citizens are slightly more liberal in the conservative-liberal dimension. [R, abr.]
69.2233 JENSEN, Carsten; LEE Seonghui —
One of the core questions facing political scientists is how politicians are able to implement cutbacks without suffering electoral backlash. A possible explanation might be that the mass media refrain from reporting on welfare state reforms in a consistent way. In order to explore this, two unique datasets have been collected: one contains information on all policy reforms of British old age pensions and unemployment protection from 1996 to 2014, and the other contains hand-coded media articles that allow the tracking on a monthly basis of what reforms are picked up. It is found that the mass media report on cutbacks, but not on expansions, and that they prioritise easy-to-understand cutbacks over cutbacks that are more technical in nature. [R]
69.2234 JEONG Gyung-Ho; QUIRK, Paul J. —
Severe party conflict, not a high-minded suspension of politics, now prevails “at the water's edge.” Democrats and Republicans fight pitched battles over foreign affairs. But are the two parties polarized in their substantive preferences on foreign policy, or mainly jockeying for partisan advantage? Are they polarized on foreign policy less sharply than on domestic policy? What are the sources of party polarization over foreign policy? Using a new measure of senatorial foreign-policy preferences from 1945-2010, we explore party polarization over foreign policy. We find that foreign-policy preferences have had varying relationships with party politics and general ideology. We show that foreign-policy polarization has developed in response to partisan electoral rivalry, foreign-policy events, and general ideological polarization. The analysis indicates an increasing influence of domestic politics on foreign policy. [R, abr.]
69.2235 JOLY, Jeroen; DANDOY, Régis —
Based on the growing scholarly recognition of domestic influences on foreign policy, political parties are considered to be among the main drivers behind foreign policy in most parliamentary democracies. In order to understand party influences on the governmental foreign policy agenda, we examine what determines the congruence between party manifestos and the ensuing government agreements in Belgium from 1978 to 2008. We find that a combination of variables related to political parties' negotiation position during government formation and regarding their ideological left-right position co-determine their impact on the content of the coalition agreement in terms of foreign policy priorities. This study shows that political parties differ in their foreign policy priorities and that they compete to see these priorities included in the future government's policy program. [R]
69.2236 JOLY, Philippe —
Certain theories of political socialization hold that cohorts reaching political maturity under dictatorship are subject to apathy. Yet, it remains unclear whether mobilization during the transition can counterbalance this effect. This article examines the protest behavior of citizens socialized in Eastern Germany, a region marked by two legacies: a legacy of autocracy and, following the 1989-1990 revolution, a legacy of transitional mobilization. Using age-period-cohort models with data from the European Social Survey, the analysis assesses the evolution of gaps in protest across generations and time between East and West Germans. The results demonstrate that participation in demonstrations, petitions, and boycotts is lower for East Germans socialized under communism in comparison with West Germans from the same cohorts. [R, abr.]
69.2237 JONES, Calvert W.; PARIS, Celia —
Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radical — especially violent — forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fiction's effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2726]
69.2238 JUST, Petr —
Slovakia entered another stage of its post-communist political development after its last parliamentary elections held in March 2016. These elections could be described as realigning elections, as they brought quite dramatic changes to its party system. The 2016 elections (and its subsequent impact on the party system and party representation in parliament) were followed by forming quite an unusual governing coalition, which did not comply with any of the classic cleavages or any “Slovak traditions” of coalition-formation. This paper analyzes the factors influencing the post-election coalition-formation process, characterizes the coalition that was eventually formed after the 2016 elections, identifies common political and program features shared by the member parties and therefore identifies the cleavage upon which the coalition was formed. [R]
69.2239 KANG Woo Chang; PARK Won-ho; SONG B. K. —
We investigate the effect of incumbency in three different electoral settings in South Korea using a regression discontinuity (RD) design. We claim that incumbency provides advantages in local elections, but its positive effects diminish in national legislative elections. Local politicians have an opportunity to develop close ties with their constituents, insulating themselves from national politics; but, due to the centralized nature of national politics, members of the National Assembly do not. Consistent with our expectation, incumbency effects are generally positive in local elections, but insignificant or even negative in national legislative elections. We also find that politicians who previously held local elected office enjoy an incumbency advantage in national legislative elections. [R]
69.2240 KAYA, Cansarp —
Practical implementation has attracted significant scholarly attention in the European Union in the last decade, and the EU compliance literature started to focus more on the players in the domestic arena to help understand the application of EU law. However, a systematic analysis on interest group activities at the application stage is yet to be conducted. Relying on enforcement and management approaches, this article argues that interest groups act as providers of legal and technical information that are needed for correct application of EU law. Also, interest groups actively demand information from political actors to build internal capacity during this period. The results show that interest groups act as providers of information, but only in the national political arena. [R, abr.]
69.2241 KERSTING, Norbert; MEHL, Max —
Political homophily and the confirmation bias lead to the development of echo chambers and information bubbles spurned by online participation. Were there echo chambers in the 2017 German online election campaign? Diverse context settings in the realm of social media lead to different forms of expressive demonstrative participation. In this context, celebrities and celebrity endorsements play an ambivalent role. Corpus linguistic content-analysis of political party websites during the 2017 German campaign for the national election did not reveal any echo chambers, in particular not as a reaction to Facebook posts endorsed by celebrities. The results do, however, point to the problem of hate speech, flaming, and a low level of discourse quality ensued by celebrity endorsements. [R, abr.]
69.2242 KHAN, Helal Mohammed —
This essay revisits the 2013 Hefazat-e-Islam protests in Bangladesh, a religion-based social movement that infused activism in a people that were rather shying away from activist tendencies, and seeks lessons thereof. The first angle of inquiry looks into the Gramscian counter-elite that acts against the hegemony of the powerful as well as the powers-to-be in Bangladesh during that period and compares analytics with the autobiographical experiences of N. Mandela in South Africa. The wider lens developed helps to explain why despite initial success — evident in the speedy formation and flare-up of the movement among various social strata in Bangladesh — the Hefazat gave way to the traditional, and the demands for alternative cultures petered out. The second string recognizes the movement as social activism. [R, abr.]
69.2243 KHENKIN, Sergei M. —
The nationalist movement in Catalonia with its centuries-old history has never gone beyond demanding the expansion of the region's rights within the Spanish state. In times of the crisis, the situation changed fundamentally: the nationalist sentiments and practices developed into a strong and steadfast separatism movement. Referring to the current legislation, Spanish authorities denied the Catalan government the right to hold a referendum on independence, which it insisted on. That resulted in the legal deadlock and the most acute political crisis in the relations between the sides. After the Catalan authorities unilaterally proclaimed independence in October 2017, Madrid introduced direct control over the autonomous region, dissolving the local parliament and government. [R, abr.]
69.2244 KIEWIET DE JONGE, Chad P.; LANGER, Gary; SINOZICH, Sofi —
This paper presents state-level estimates of the 2016 [US] presidential election using data from the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll and multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP). While previous implementations of MRP for election forecasting have relied on data from prior elections to establish poststratification targets for the composition of the electorate, in this paper we estimate both turnout and vote preference from the same pre-election poll. Through Bayesian estimation we are also able to capture uncertainty in both estimated turnout and vote preferences. This approach correctly predicts 50 of 51 contests, showing greater accuracy than comparison models that rely on the 2012 Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement for turnout. [R, abr.]
69.2245 KILBORN, Mitchell —
Conventional wisdom holds that public campaign financing can diversify the socioeconomic makeup of candidate pools and, therefore, of US elected officials, which could make US public policy more responsive to lower socioeconomic status (SES) citizens. I argue that in addition to the absence of a positive relationship between public financing and candidate socioeconomic diversity, public financing, depending on the program design, may, in fact, reduce candidate socioeconomic diversity. Using occupational data on state legislative candidates in public financing state Connecticut and two paired control states to execute a difference in difference analysis, I demonstrate that when public financing is available, fewer low SES candidates run for state legislative office, and those who do run are not more likely to win and are less likely to utilize public financing. [R]
69.2246 KITIS, E. Dimitris; JEGELS, Dimitri —
Protest is reconfiguring the political landscape. Political speeches have been analyzed to date as one-person speeches with few interruptions from the audience except in the form of applause, laughter or booing in backchannel utterances of uninterrupting agreement, or clarificatory questions. However, little attention has been given to the function of audience response to political speeches as significantly shaping the whole event of protest. Focusing on the discourse of a specific speech that was delivered at Rondebosch Common, in Cape Town, South Africa on 26 June 2012, we argue that: (1) audience participation is crucial to the speech's discourse; (2) the speech is an exercise of “linguistic citizenship”; © the speech subverts ‘conventional' political speeches, indicating a more participatory, hybrid genre rooted in African oral tradition and performance. [R, abr.]
69.2247 KLÜVER, Heike; PICKUP, Mark —
What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. It is argued here that interest groups importantly influence government responsiveness to public opinion, but that the effect varies by type of interest group: while cause groups increase the responsiveness of governments to their electorate, sectional groups decrease government responsiveness. Drawing on a new and unique dataset, this article examines the relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government expenditure across 13 policy areas in Germany from 1986 until 2012 and shows that interest groups indeed have a differential effect on the responsiveness of governments. [R, abr.]
69.2248 KOO Sejin —
Party activists are important for building party-voter links. This study focuses on the motivations of these activists and the hypothesis that economic factors are associated with more programmatic and policy-driven platforms. I examine a novel comparative survey data-set of party activists collected in multiple districts in South Korea and Mongolia to determine whether national economic development, the local economy, or individual income shapes activist motivations. The results challenge the economic account and, instead, shed light on the importance of party characteristics, such as size, ideology, and whether a party has its roots in authoritarianism. [R]
69.2249 KÖRTING, Claus; GOLTERMANN, Lukas —
The association VENRO is the umbrella organization of development and humanitarian aid in Germany. The watchdog-function with a view to government action is of fundamental importance. VENRO monitors, accompanies und influences political processes on different political levels. Therefore VENRO can be called a “Process-watchdog”. One example is the implementation of the Agenda 2030 and the agreement of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris. VENRO pays a particular attention to the scope of action of the civil society in the entire world because we observe shrinking spaces of civil society organizations. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2250 KREPS, Sarah; MAXEY, Sarah —
Humanitarian interventions (HIs) are a common aspect of US foreign policy. Policy-makers acknowledge the importance of public support for interventions, but scholars remain divided about the extent and basis of that support. Using a series of survey experiments, we evaluate attitudes about HIs, assess whether the public supports these interventions for instrumental or moral reasons, and test which aspects of morality are most salient. The findings indicate that interventions addressing humanitarian crises boost public support, with the basis of that support residing primarily in normative contentions that the United States has a moral obligation to protect civilians. This research advances understandings of morality in foreign policy, mediates debates about the determinants of public attitudes — including when the public makes moral rather than prudent decisions about interventions — and has important policy implications. [R, abr.]
69.2251 KWASCHNIK, Gerrit —
Landesgruppen are groups consisting of MPs from the same German state in a parliamentary party. Their meetings, committee and parliamentary group meetings are firmly anchored in the work routine of the Bundestag. Political science literature, however, has neglected the Landesgruppen almost entirely. Do the Landesgruppen influence negotiations and decision-making processes in their parliamentary party? In order to close this research and knowledge gap an explorative study with interviews of the chairpersons of eleven Landesgruppen was conducted. In this study, the Landesgruppen presented themselves as transmission belts, providing a permanent exchange between leadership and members in their respective parliamentary party. Furthermore, they boost decision and negotiation processes, especially in the arenas of staff and issue policies. [R]
69.2252 LAGO, Ignacio —
How party strategies vary by electoral system remains largely unexplored in election studies. Using qualitative and quantitative data from Spanish national and European elections, we test how party strategies diverge between districted electoral systems and systems using a single national district. We use the number of visits to districts by the party leaders to determine if targeted party strategies are driven by district magnitude, the share of the population entitled to vote in every district, the number of districts or the strength of parties' local organizations. Our results show that only the frequency of visits to districts by large parties are clearly affected by electoral systems and, more specifically, by the number of districts and district population. [R]
69.2253 LAJEVARDI, Nazita; ABRAJANO, Marisa —
Since 9/11 [2001], scholarly work has demonstrated that Muslim Americans are viewed unfavorably, but existing measures lack enough contextual specificity to capture the unique experiences and situation of Muslims in the US. Given the central role that Muslims and the war on terror played in the 2016 presidential campaign and election, we fill this void by introducing a new measure that focuses on Muslim Americans, specifically, and then examine its role in explaining presidential vote choice in 2016. Across five distinct surveys fielded on convenience and nationally representative samples from May 2016 to June 2017, we find that anti-Muslim American sentiment is a strong and significant predictor of supporting Trump, even when controlling for a whole host of factors. [R, abr.]
69.2254 LANGSTON, Joy K. —
This paper explores how Mexican congressional candidates campaign in single-districts. It looks beyond the effects of the electoral system and single-term limits and examines both party leaders’ incentives and the strong likelihood that deputies will return to their locality to continue their political careers. We argue that theories that examine only electoral rules miss the crucial input of the party leadership as well as different ways that office-seeking deputies can continue career trajectories. With a database on the campaign activities for a sample of the candidates from the three major parties in Mexico, we show first, that plurality candidates are active campaigners; and second, that running in competitive districts and holding greater personal experience lead to more personal vote type activities. [R, abr.]
69.2255 LAXER, Emily; KORTEWEG, Anna C. —
Analyzing parties' media representations in the context of France's 2010 legal ban of Islamic facial coverings and Québec's (rejected) Charter of Values in 2013, this paper foregrounds the neglected role that party competition plays in shaping the construction of nationhood in public debates around immigrant religious practices. Our findings show that in these debates, political parties aim to maintain their distinct identities by generating a particular universalism, in which purportedly “universal” values, such as gender equality, are imbricated with particularistic images of nationhood. [R]
69.2256 LEE, Francis L. F. —
According to conventional understanding, the Chinese government has exerted indirect influence over the Hong Kong media through co-opting media owners, most of whom were entrepreneurs with ample business interests in the mainland. At the same time, there were internal tensions within the political economic system. The latter opened up a space of resistance for media practitioners and thus helped the media system as a whole to maintain a degree of relative autonomy from the power center. However, into the 2010s, the media landscape has undergone several significant changes, especially the worsening media business environment and the growth of digital media technologies. These changes have affected the cost-benefit calculations of media ownership and led to the entrance of Chinese capital into the Hong Kong media scene. The digital media arena is also facing the challenge of intrusion by the state. [R, abr.] [First article of a special issue on “Twenty years after: Hong Kong's changes and challenges under China's rule”, edited and introduced by Jean-Pierre CABESTAN and Éric FLORENCE, “Twenty years after the handover: Hong Kong's political and social transformation and its future under China's rule”, pp. 3-7. See also Abstr. 69.2390, 2392, 2785, 2809]
69.2257 LEE, Francis L. F. —
English version: see Abstr. 69.2256.
69.2258 LEE Sang Kook —
Using the case of Burmese refugees in South Korea, this study reveals how the convergence of democratization in the homeland and the attainment of legal refugee status prompted former political exiles to establish socially responsible businesses for furthering their activism. By shining new light on the emergence of such social entrepreneurship amongst former political exiles, this study seeks to overcome two tendencies in refugee studies, namely to relegate the establishment of a business to a livelihood pursuit, dealing with business largely from an economic standpoint; and to approach activism only from the perspective of direct political engagement. This study integrates these two separate threads and brings the discussion of social entrepreneurship into refugee studies. [R, abr.] [Part of special issue on “Forced migration in/of Asia — interfaces and multiplicities”, edited and introduced, pp. 262-273, by Elaine Lynn-Ee HO and Cabeiri DeBERGH ROBINSON]
69.2259 LEIGH, Benjamin Tyler —
Political participation scholars have argued for years over whether or not civic education has any effect on political participation, with no clear conclusion being drawn, despite a variety of analyses. These analyses tend to ignore the country characteristics and structural factors that influence the relationship between civic education and political participation. This article seeks to address the gap in the literature by using data from the International Civic and Citizen Study and other sources to show through quantitative analysis that country characteristics such as low economic development, stable state authority structures, and high inequality play a clear role in how effective civic education is in encouraging political participation. The article concludes by discussing limitations of the research and suggestions for future research. [R]
69.2260 LEJAVA, Nino —
In Georgia, the political arena is dominated by influential men, while parties play a subordinate role. The real lines of conflict between the wealthy and the poor are not reflected in the party system. The “Georgian Dream“ party, which describes itself as being social democratic, also does not act as a representative of the interest of the weaker sections of society. The political discourse frequently revolves around the relationship with Russia and the West. Here, the fact is ignored that the government party, which is accused of having close ties with Russia, has signed an association agreement between the EU and Georgia. Equally, people forget that all parties seek to associate ideas that are propagated by Moscow. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2902]
69.2261 LÉVÊQUE, Christophe —
Politicians often rely on family members both during electoral campaigns and once elected. In France, during the 2008 and 2014 municipal elections, individuals with the same family name — a proxy for family network — are observed in approximately 40% of lists of candidates. I suggest that observing several individuals from the same family in a list may constitute a negative signal to voters about some characteristics of the (main) candidates, such as integrity, competence and responsiveness. During municipal elections, I observe that lists with homonyms obtain fewer votes than lists without homonyms (-1.6 in the favorite specification). [R, abr.]
69.2262 LEY, Sandra —
Organized crime-related violence has important electoral consequences. Analyses of aggregate panel data on Mexican elections and an original post-electoral survey conducted in Mexico show that the strategic use of violence by organized crime groups during electoral campaigns demobilizes voters at large. Regions where criminal organizations attempted to influence elections and politics by targeting government officials and party candidates exhibited significantly lower levels of electoral participation. Consistently, at the individual level, results reveal that voters living in regions where organized crime engaged in high-profile violence were more cautious when deciding whether to vote or not. Prior research has focused on the role of crime victimization in non-electoral participation, but the empirical evidence presented here suggests that the impact of a criminal context on turnout transcends personal victimization experiences. [R]
69.2263 LI Quan; POMANTEIL, Michael J.; SCHRAUFNAGEL, Scot —
Our research uses principal-component analysis and information on 33 different state election laws, assembled in seven different issue areas, to create a Cost of Voting Index (COVI) for each of the 50 American states in each presidential election year from 1996 through 2016. In addition to providing detailed description of measurement and coding decisions used in index construction, we conduct sensitivity analyses to test relevant assumptions made during the course of index construction. The COVI reported is the most theoretically sound and empirically indistinct from the other index construction options considered. We also test the construct validity of the COVI using both state-level and individual-level voter turnout. We find aggregate voter turnout is lower in states with higher index values and self-reported turnout also drops in states with larger index values. [R]
69.2264 LI Zhonglu; WU Xiaogang —
This article analyzes the data from the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to investigate the effects of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on people's political trust and policy expectations in China. Results from difference-in-differences (DID) analyses show that those in the NRPS pilot areas reported higher levels of trust in government at both central and local levels than their counterparts in non-NRPS areas, with the former gaining more support than the latter. Moreover, the potential NRPS beneficiaries show similarly higher levels of trust in both central and local governments than non-NRPS beneficiaries. However, the policy did not increase rural residents' rights consciousness that the government should take the main responsibility for the provision of the old-age support. [R, abr.]
69.2265 LIENDO, Nicolás; BRAITHWAITE, Jessica Maves —
A critical element that is often overlooked when studying negotiations in civil wars is popular support for the peace process itself. This is particularly important when agreements are subject to ratification by the broader population, as was the case in the Colombian conflict with the FARC. Using survey data from 2014, we find that attitudes toward this peace process were driven by political preferences more than conflict experiences. Some demographic traits (education, religion, and rural residency) were also important. Notably, these determinants of support for talks with the FARC map closely onto voting patterns in the October 2016 plebiscite. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2748]
69.2266 LOKOT, Tetyana —
This paper explores the self-presentation and online discursive practices of grassroots hacker collectives on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict within a larger geopolitical climate of a contested globalisation agenda and a growing fear of cyber warfare. Both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian hacker groups engage in DDoS attacks, malware distribution and leaking stolen information from the opposing side. They also use social media to enter the broader political discourse around the conflict. The paper analyses the Twitter posts of both collectives to reveal key modes of online practices and key discursive themes in the context of the conflict, such as political activism, information warfare, hacker ethics and patriotism. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1872]
69.2267 LORENZ, Jan —
The elections in the German federal state Bremen 2011 and 2015 empirically show that personal votes are increasingly used with more competence. At the same time, the proportion of voters who cumulate all their votes instead of splitting them is also increasing. As a result, more representatives, especially male ones, receive their votes from comparably few voters, who strongly cumulate votes. Candidates have disadvantages when they try to convince vote-splitting voters. The block of list seats as part of the electoral system of Bremen also creates incentives for candidates to avoid personal votes. A more sensible reform would be to restrict the options to cumulate votes and to remove the block of list seats. All candidates would then have incentives to canvass voters personally. [R, abr.]
69.2268 LOW Choo Chin —
This article engages with the liberalist conception of extraterritorial citizenship in examining the pioneering attempt of the Malaysian diaspora to make a rights-based claim for extraterritorial voting. Using the case study of MyOverseasVote (MOV), a transnational advocacy group, this paper demonstrates how the Malaysian diaspora staked their constitutional claim as absent citizens and challenged the state's definition of absent voters. The bottom-up reform is framed within the context of equalization of rights due to the salient ethnic element embedded in extraterritorial Malaysian citizenship. This liberalization of the external voting legislation has de-ethnicized but not equalized voting rights outside the country between publicly and privately employed citizens overseas. [R, abr.]
69.2269 LUNDGREN, Magnus —
I investigate whether group photos of international leaders can provide useful data on interstate status perceptions. I formulate a spatial model of social hierarchy and evaluate it against newly gathered data on the placement of leaders in 121 European Council group photos between 1975 and 2015. I find support for determinants of placement at the international, institutional, and individual levels. The results suggest that: (a) group photos provide a previously untapped source of data on international status; (b) data derived from group photos can supplement existing status proxies based on material capabilities or diplomatic connectivity; (c) group pictures can be particularly useful for discerning status hierarchies among sets of relatively homogenous countries, such as those of the EU. [R]
69.2270 LUST, Aleksander —
Since the 2000s, Switzerland and Estonia have used internet voting (i-voting) in national elections and referenda, along with other methods of voting. This paper finds that i-voting in Switzerland is demographically biased in favor of young, male, and college-educated voters, but has not affected electoral outcomes because it has not increased voter turnout. By contrast, i-voting has reinforced the ethnic cleavage in Estonia and reduced the vote share of the left by mobilizing new voters who are ethnically Estonian and vote for parties of the right. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2271 MADER, Matthias; SCHOEN, Harald —
Studies show that globalisation creates political potentials that can transform electoral competition in Western societies. The specific process of how these potentials become effective is not completely understood. It is argued in the article that attention-grabbing events can trigger the transformation of electoral competition as they force actors to take clear positions and thereby allow citizens to align their partisan preferences and policy attitudes. The article analyses the case of German parties' reaction to the arrival of large numbers of refugees at Europe's borders in 2015/16. Using panel data that bracket this event, it is shown how German citizens responded to party behaviour by changing partisan preferences on the basis of prior immigration attitudes. The so-called refugee crisis may thus have been a critical juncture transforming party competition in Germany. [R, abr.]
69.2272 MADRID, Raúl L. —
Democracy is often a conquest of elite opposition parties. In electoral authoritarian regimes, opposition parties will promote suffrage expansion in order to weaken the ruling parties' control over elections and improve their own electoral possibilities. Ruling parties, by contrast, will oppose suffrage expansion for the same reasons that opposition parties support it, and they will use their control of the political system to block it. Suffrage reforms typically occur in electoral authoritarian regimes only when there is a split within the ruling coalition that leads a faction to side with the opposition. I explore these arguments through detailed qualitative analyses of suffrage reforms in Chile in 1874 and Uruguay in 1918, as well as a quantitative analysis of a roll-call vote in Chile. [R]
69.2273 MAILLOT, Agnès —
This article analyzes the extent to which the presence of the Front National (FN) in the 2017 Presidential Election influenced the content of the other candidates’ manifestos. In spite of a process of “dédiabolisation” whereby Marine Le Pen attempted to put forward a more respectable, and less racist, image of her party, the FN's program is still characterized by its strong anti-immigrant, nativist proposals. This article analyzes the manner in which the general theme of immigration, which can be considered the main identity marker of the party, has been approached by the four other main candidates (F. Fillon, E. Macron, J.-L. Mélenchon and B. Hamon). This is done through a study of the words used both in the manifestos and in public speeches in order to assess the “contagious” effect that a populist organization has on the mainstream parties. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1872]
69.2274 MANNING, Nathan —
It is widely acknowledged that political dissatisfaction is rife across many established democracies, and yet we generally know very little from citizens themselves about what might be driving this disaffection. Where attention has been paid it typically focuses on groups whose relationship with politics is deemed problematic for one reason or another (e.g. young people). Those with higher rates of political participation are often overlooked, but if participation is undertaken by such people because they feel a sense of duty and obligation then we have little reason to accept their engagement as tacit approval of the political system or status quo. This article explores the question of how those at the normative core of citizenship feel about electoral politics. [R, abr.]
69.2275 MANSELL, Jonathan; URBINA, Maria L.; WATKINS, Heather —
The extent to which neoliberalism constitutes a coherent and consistent ideology, or merely a contingent and contextual set of broadly related policies, remains a source of contention. We explore this question through a comparative analysis of the political discourse of neoliberal transition in Britain and Chile. Drawing on the model of historical comparison developed by Antonio Gramsci, we argue that these two countries represent paradigm cases of the constitutional and authoritarian routes to neoliberalism. However, by focusing on the discourses of national renewal in the speeches and writings of Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet, we argue that both cases rest on a particular articulation of the themes of coercion and consent. We suggest that it is the relationship between the two that is essential to the political ideology of neoliberal-ism. [R, abr.]
69.2276 MARAFFI, Marco —
The massive vote shift in the 2018 elections, underlies a changed configuration of the social stratification of the vote. The end-result is one of an increased heterogeneity of the social bases of partisan support and of the contradictory social landscape parties are confronted with. Driven by the paramount salience of economic concerns among voters, labor market position and type of employment appear to be the main axes of stratification: self-employed voters massively supported the center-right coalition and especially the Lega, attracted by the promise of huge tax cuts; but the Lega disproportionally attracted also manual workers with poor education. On the other hand, non-manual employees and skilled manual labor, with middle-level education, showed a clear propensity to vote for the M5s. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2106]
69.2277 MARSCHALL, Melissa; LAPPIE, John —
Though it is often assumed that US local elections are uniformly low-turnout events, there is actually considerable variation across space and time. Building on literature on local turnout and broader theories of political participation, this study examines more than 1,000 California mayoral elections held between 1995 and 2014. We analyze how two specific features of the local electoral context — election timing and contestation — provide information, stimulate interest, mobilize voters, and ultimately shape turnout. We argue that high turnout may not mean much if voters have no decisions to make and explore the possibility that the effects of contestation may vary depending on whether elections are held off- or on-cycle. Findings from our empirical analysis indicate not only that on-cycle elections are associated with appreciably higher levels of voter turnout but that contestation also matters. [R, abr.]
69.2278 MARSHALL, John —
Information plays an integral role in theories of political behavior. However, little is known about why — if ever — voters choose to acquire political information. This article proposes that voters strategically acquire costly political information to cultivate a reputation among their peers as politically sophisticated. I test this theory in Mexico using experimental and observational research designs that exogenously vary the likelihood that individuals' peers observe the political knowledge they possess. The results demonstrate that social incentives significantly increase political knowledge among voters nested within groups that collectively value political knowledge. Consistent with the model, I find that relatively unsophisticated voters seek to reach a minimum standard within their social group, while more sophisticated voters acquire higher levels of information to differentiate themselves from less informed peers. [R, abr.]
69.2279 MASON, Chris; MORAN, Michael —
This article analyzes social enterprise policy in the UK and Australia, comparing the different ideational strategies adopted by policymakers in each country. Drawing upon a unique policy dataset, it reveals that in the UK policymakers combined several ideas into a sophisticated narrative that sought to reflect sector growth and engage more deeply with the public. In comparison, Australian policy actors focused on a single idea, which underlined a more pragmatic approach to the utilization of policy narratives. Empirically, the article provides the first comparative examination of the interplay between ideas and rhetoric in the field of social enterprise policy. Theoretically, it demonstrates the utility of discursive institutionalism in the field of policy analysis, and develops its analytical leverage by identifying the different strategies available to policymakers. [R]
69.2280 MASSETTI, Emanuele —
The article shows how the main regionalist parties in Scotland and Wales — the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru — have engaged with a populist discourse in the wake of the Great Recession. Based on a qualitative analysis of party manifestos and party-elite interviews, the article shows that the two parties have adopted a left-wing populist discourse, based on a critique of austerity policies. In this way, albeit from distinctively regionalist perspective, they performed roles very similar to that of other contemporary left-wing populist parties, particularly in Southern Europe. The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru were able to frame their anti-austerity stances within a populist discourse because all three traditional British parties shared a preference for pro-austerity economic policies. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2281 MATANOCK, Aila M.; GARBIRAS-DIAZ, Natalia —
Designing peace agreements that can be signed and sustained can be difficult in civil conflict. Many recent cases of successful settlements include electoral provisions, often for rebel groups to participate as political parties. Engaging the electoral process, however, can also open the peace process to the population at large, potentially derailing a settlement or some of its provisions, perhaps especially those related to politics. We examine popular support for peace processes, specific electoral provisions, and potential concessions that provide former rebels with protections, legitimacy, and power. Using a survey experiment in Colombia, we find that the peace process overall is more popular than its electoral provisions, and that rebel endorsement of the provisions further diminishes support. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2748]
69.2282 MATSUMOTO, Asuka —
In Japan, campaigning over the Internet was once strictly prohibited, but this ruling was finally reversed for the 2013 election as a result of observations of the US presidential campaigns and the effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. The US has few restrictions on Internet campaigning and a longer history of the use of the Internet in elections. Internet campaigns promote grassroots movements and connect politicians and voters. However, certain side effects have also appeared. This paper will analyze election campaigns using the Internet, comparing the present state of the United States and Japan. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2283 MAZZOLENI, Oscar; RUZZA, Carlo —
There is a general acceptance of the thesis that contemporary Western European regionalist parties develop strategies that aim to defend territorial interests in opposition to statewide authority. It would seem unlikely, therefore, to be able to identify a combination of regionalist claims and statewide nationalism coexisting within the strategy of a single party. This article contends, however, that the adoption of such a dual frame arises once regionalist parties perceive statewide nationalism as being less of a threat to regional interests than EU-promoted policies and politics. Secondly, it is argued that such a dual frame is likely to develop when specific facilitating conditions emerge. Focusing on this issue, the article compares two regionalist-rooted parties, the Lega Nord in Italy (recently renamed “Lega”) and the Lega dei Ticinesi in Switzerland. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2284 McCARTHY, Rory —
This article is a case study of how Tunisia's Islamist party, the Ennahda Movement, responded to new political opportunities that opened up after the 2011 Arab uprisings. It argues that Ennahda chose to make a hard-to-reverse commitment to politicization in the pursuit of electoral legitimacy, as protection from repression, and for fear of marginalization. The article demonstrates how the context of a democratic transition exposed internal debates within the movement over ideology, strategy, and organizational structure, ultimately dislocating the relationship between political ambitions and the religious social movement. [R]
69.2285 McINROY, Neil —
The piece focuses on how the economics of market liberalism are incapable of addressing social injustice and how we need a fundamental reset to the UK's political economy. The article comments on the ideas contained within The Everyday Economy, a publication by Rachel Reeves MP, and acknowledges the important role that everyday economic sectors (such as retail, care, transport and utilities) play, and the usefulness of these sectors as an entry point to turning back the market liberal tide through more democratic control and new forms of ownership. However, the article highlights how a new economics must go even further in terms of correcting wealth extraction, with a much deeper intentional reform of state institutions. [R, abr.] [See the reply by Rachel REEVES, pp. 618-620]
69.2286 MEDINA, Lucía; CAÍNZOS, Miguel —
This article studies changes in class patterns of ideological differentiation in Spain. We use ten general election surveys and more than 200 opinion polls taken from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas database. First, we depict the evolution of the ideological self-placement of members of different occupational classes during the last three decades; we identify changes that, despite their modest magnitude, imply a qualitative alteration of the formerly prevailing pattern of ideological differentiation. Second, we show that these changes are not simply a by-product of the makeover of the socio-demographic, educational and sector composition of classes. Finally, we [examine] whether the observed changes are due to a process of generational replacement, finding this to be so only in part. We outline three possible explanations that should be tested in future research. [R, abr.]
69.2287 MEILÁN, Xabier —
This article, based on structured interviews with fifteen of the main national observation groups of Latin America, shows that the most active civil society groups have been applying a variety of tools involving new information and communication technologies since 2005 to conduct what is known in English as crowdsourced election observation. According to those interviewed, the new technologies have mainly served to raise awareness among the general population of the importance of elections, to have people involved in observation activities, and to introduce election observation to areas where it would have been impracticable without these new technologies. Crowdsourced election observation now faces the challenge of setting a commonly accepted standard for verifying the information potentially collected by an anonymous crowd of observers who might not have received enough training. [R]
69.2288 MICHAEL, Gabriel; AGUR, Colin —
We seek to understand the contemporary power of the presidential “bully pulpit” in a context of shifting patterns of mediation. We do so by examining a major social media communication platform (Twitter) for evidence of changes in public opinion before and after President Obama's high-profile statements on net neutrality in November 2014. This study includes novel and comprehensive data on the effects of a presidential announcement on public opinion. With social media playing a growing role in both electoral and policy discourse, this paper offers a methodological foundation for future studies in the changing nature of the presidential bully pulpit and the role of social media as a tool of mediation in political communication. [R, abr.]
69.2289 MITCHELL, James —
Scotland voted in favor of Remain in the Brexit referendum, adding to existing tensions in UK-Scottish government relations. The institutions and procedures of intergovernmental relations which were designed to cope with tensions are being tested as never before under devolution. The assertion of UK power in these relations has undermined claims made by David Cameron to pursue a “respect agenda” and commitments made immediately after the independence referendum. But while this evidence of divergent views on such a significant matter creates potential challenges for the UK union, it also creates new challenges for the SNP. The prospect of a hard Brexit raises the issue of separatism once more, with a choice of either remaining in the EU but separate from the rest of the UK (rUK), or remain in a separatist UK. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2694]
69.2290 MOCHTAK, Michal —
Electoral disputes accompanied by violent outbreaks have become an emerging problem in societies under transformation, in authoritarian regimes, as well as in young democracies. After the fall of Communism in the beginning of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe stood at a crossroads. This period of imbalance and uncertainty affected the violent interaction in newly reformed electoral arenas with serious consequences for legitimizing democratic change. Despite the well-documented tension that existed in the region, the importance of violence in the electoral arena is rather neglected. The article maps electoral violence in a new typological environment where the process of transformation has affected political pluralism and the patterns of political contest. It argues that electoral violence is not a rare phenomenon in the region of post-Communist Europe and the dynamic varies on a great scale. [R, abr.]
69.2291 MÖLLHOFF, Judith —
The paper questions the status of indigenous peoples' collective land rights in Brazilian constitutional legislation and in international law. First, it connects the desperate situation of the Guarani to the phenomenon of “land grabbing.” The main part discusses national and international legal regulations. It gives an overview of the development of international law and national sovereignty in the colonial context. Then, it critically discusses the process of Brazilian nation-building and the current Brazilian constitution. Next, it examines the international and regional treaties regulating indigenous peoples' collective land rights and connects the reasons for state resistance to the theoretical debates. [R, abr.]
69.2292 MONIRUZZAMAN, M.; FARZANA, Kazi Fahmida —
The 14th general election in Malaysia held on May 9, 2018 altered the political landscape of the nation. It caused to change the government from Barisan Nasional (national front) coalition to Pakatan Harapan (Coalition of Hope), formed in 2015. This article analyzes the election results and the probable factors that might have contributed to the historic change. It argued that since 1999 the ruling Malay elites have become permanently divided challenging the dominance of United Malay National Organization (UMNO) in politics and the prospect for a viable alternative became consolidated with the rise of Parti KeAdilan Rakyat (PKR) offering an avenue for a new generation politics. The return of Mahathir Mohamad to politics and a strategic coalition mainly between his party and PKR made an alternative to BN/UMNO a reality through winning the election. [R, abr.]
69.2293 MONTAGNES, B. Pablo; PESKOWITZ, Zachary; McCRAIN, Joshua —
The presidential approval rate among a president's co-partisans has received a great deal of attention and is an important quantity for understanding accountability of the executive branch. We show that the reported composition of the [US] president's party is endogenous to presidential popularity, with the party growing and becoming more ideologically moderate as presidential popularity increases. As a result, observed partisan approval rates may be biased because of compositional change in respondents who self-identify with the president's party. We derive bounds on the compositionally corrected partisan approval rate under a theoretically motivated monotonicity condition. We examine how the bounds have evolved during the Obama and Trump presidencies. The proportion of survey respondents who identify with the Republican party has decreased rapidly from the pre-election benchmark during the Trump presidency. [R, abr.]
69.2294 MOORE-GILBERT, Kylie —
This article examines Bahrain's February 14 Coalition, an anonymous and decentralized youth movement that was formed during the small Gulf state's 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising. Drawing on fieldwork interviews and a content-analysis study of the group's Facebook page, this article explores how the group uses its opaque organizational structure and strong social media presence to promote its offline activities. In providing empirical data on the ideology, aims, and approach to activism of this important yet understudied group, this article questions prevailing sectarian narratives and makes the case for a more nuanced understanding of Bahrain's ongoing civil unrest. [R]
69.2295 MORGENBESSER, Lee; PEPINSKY, Thomas B. —
The theory of democratization by elections holds that elections — even when flawed — can, over time, have an independent causal effect on democratic transitions. Despite the recent growth of this literature, questions remain about the global scope of the argument and its structural preconditions. We show that, in Southeast Asia, elections are almost always the culmination rather than the cause of democratization, and use case materials from seven Southeast Asian countries to illustrate the mechanisms that lead from democratization to elections. Our argument has implications both for Southeast Asian democratization and for existing scholarship from other world regions. [R]
69.2296 MORISI, Davide —
In most referendum campaigns, voters face a choice between an uncertain “Yes” for a change and a safer “No” for maintaining the status quo. Given this asymmetrical structure in terms of uncertainty, this study argues that individual dispositions toward taking risks play a crucial role in explaining support for referendum proposals. Panel data and two experimental studies provide empirical evidence that in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and in the 2016 EU referendum in the UK, risk propensity significantly influenced voting behavior — specifically, that risk takers were more likely to vote for a change than risk-averse voters. However, risk propensity mattered less to informed voters than uninformed voters, since only the latter were influenced by risk preferences in their voting decisions. [R, abr.]
69.2297 MOROZOVA, Natalia —
This paper analyzes Russia's discourse on humanitarian cooperation in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the changes it has undergone since the reintegration of the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014. This is a particularly pertinent task, given that the discourse on humanitarian cooperation was initiated in 2005 to convey to the regional elites Russia's commitment to uphold the principles of sovereignty and non-interference and to ensure the stability of their regimes. Applying the concept of a layered discursive framework, the paper detects and discusses three different meanings of “humanitarian cooperation” deployed by Russia in the context of its regional integration initiatives. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2518]
69.2298 MUHAMMAD, Umair —
Over the course of the last decade and a half the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has transformed its ideological orientation in accord with the changing outlook of its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan. It has discarded its erstwhile Marxist-Leninist ideology for the anarchist-inspired thought of the American political theorist Murray Bookchin. Yet, the PKK's new theorist of choice may not be an entirely suitable one. Book-chin was a rabid anti-nationalist, and this paper argues that, even after having appropriated Bookchin, the PKK has been unable to chart a non-nationalist course. Scholars of the Kurdish question have so far let Bookchin's seeming unsuitability go unnoticed. This is likely because Bookchin's thought is not well known. This paper offers an overview of Bookchin's thought, and in doing so, hopefully contributes to making Bookchin better understood. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2877]
69.2299 MUKHERJEE, Shivaji —
My article shows the historical origins of insurgency by addressing the puzzle of why the persistent Maoist insurgency, considered to be India's biggest internal security threat, affects some districts along the central eastern corridor of India but not others. Combining archival and interview data from fieldwork in Maoist zones with an original district-level quantitative data-set, I demonstrate that different types of British colonial indirect rule set up the structural conditions of ethnic inequality and state weakness that facilitate emergence of Maoist control. I address the issue of selection bias, by developing a new instrument for the British choice of indirect rule through princely states, based on the exogenous effect of wars in Europe on British decisions in India. [R, abr.]
69.2300 MUSTILLO, Thomas; POLGA-HECIMOVICH, John —
Free list proportional representation is an electoral system that gives voters as many votes as there are seats, and allows the voter to distribute them anywhere on the ballot. Computing party support under this system can be complicated, since different electors possess and use different numbers of votes. As a result, national election results and derivatives thereof (e.g. electoral volatility) may be calculated incorrectly. We describe obstacles to vote aggregation under the free list and develop four approaches for counting votes. The first two, “naive aggregation and the “fictional voter technique, have known applications. We propose the third, which we call “weighted votes,” to deal with missing data about the number of voters. The last, “weighted preferences,” has been used intermittently, and we offer a generalization for a broad range of applications. [R, abr.]
69.2301 NAFTALI, Orna —
The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date, however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state's “patriotic education” campaign waged in schools and in the mass media. Studies have also overlooked how rural and urban youth in China juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese media that they consume with school and domestic media messages. This study finds that while a majority of youths from different backgrounds express animosity toward Japan, they separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese popular culture. [R, abr.] [First of two article on “Relations between China and Japan”. See also Abstr. 69.2674]
69.2302 NEDERHAND, José; VAN MEERKERK, Ingmar —
This study explores the growing interest of governments in co-production and self-organization by examining the framing of roles and responsibilities of citizens and professionals in care reforms. As in many other western countries, the Dutch welfare state is subject to major reforms, shifting responsibilities back towards society. A qualitative content-analysis of policy letters of the Dutch national government shows that newer roles (citizen-as-co-producers) do not substitute traditional roles (citizen-as-clients), but constitute a new layer resulting in an expansion and diversification of roles for regular providers. Activating, supporting and partnering with citizens are framed as new competences of professionals. [R]
69.2303 NEWIG, Jens —
Many have advocated for collaborative governance and the participation of citizens and stakeholders on the basis that it can improve the environmental outcomes of public decision-making, as compared to traditional, top-down decision making. Others, however, point to the potential negative effects of participation and collaboration on environmental outcomes. This article draws on several literatures to identify five clusters of causal mechanisms describing the relationship between participation and environmental outcomes. We distinguish (1) mechanisms that describe how participation impacts on the environmental standard of outputs, from (2) mechanisms relating to the implementation of outputs. Three mechanism clusters focus on the role of representation of environmental concerns, participants’ environmental knowledge, and dialogi-cal interaction in decision-making. Two further clusters elaborate on the role of acceptance, conflict resolution, and collaborative networks for the implementation of decisions. [R, abr.]
69.2304 NIKOLA, Silaev; FOMIN, Ivan —
This article is devoted to the comparison of two Armenian protest coalitions: the 2016 coalition of Sasna Tsrer supporters and Nikol Pashinyan's My Step coalition of 2018. The analysis shows that Pashinyan's coalition, unlike the coalition of Sasna Tsrer supporters, was not a liberal-nationalist alliance, but rather a liberal-bureaucratic one. This difference turns out to be crucial, as the Sasna Tsrer polemic was heavily polarized by the clash between the statist and counter-statist frames of the Armenian nation, with none of the sides possessing enough symbolic or political resources to win. The generally successful outcome of Pashinyan's protest can thus be explained by the fact that it was not so strongly framed by a counter-statist understanding of the Armenian nation. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2731]
69.2305 NORRIS, Pippa —
Doubts about the legitimacy of the 2016 US elections continue to reverberate and deepen partisan mistrust in America. A perfect storm followed Republican allegations of fake news and massive voter fraud, Democratic complaints of voter suppression and gerrymandering, discontent with the Electoral College's awarding of victory to a presidential candidate who lost the popular vote, compounded by intelligence reports of Russian meddling. These issues raise the broader question: how serious do perceived electoral flaws have to be to raise doubts not just about the election but about democracy itself? Do ordinary people actually care about the quality of their elections or are they more concerned with jobs, growth and taxes and/or influenced by partisan cues? And how do attitudes vary among electoral winners and losers? [R, abr.]
69.2306 NYAMNJOH, Anye —
In contemporary peacebuilding debates, it is argued that local ownership renders peacebuilding more sustainable, democratic and legitimate. However, these claims have not been seriously interrogated as to their empirical validity. Such evaluations must begin by answering the question, “Who is local?” Different local actors have varying resources, capacities and levels of authority and autonomy. Taking the relatively unexplored case of diasporas, this paper illustrates the absence of a straightforward relationship between ownership and its normative benefits. By assessing the significance of resources like local/ethnic bonds, financial and social remittances, this paper argues that diasporas can undermine the legitimacy of peacebuilding. [R, abr.]
69.2307 ODINTSOV, Nikita —
This article explains the PKK's strategy towards regional energy supplies: why the PKK attacks energy infrastructure, how important a target it is compared to other targets, and what kinds of consequences these attacks might have in the future. I have chosen the Copenhagen School of security studies as the framework for this analysis, as it focuses on regional-security complexes and the process of securitization, showing why and how energy supplies became a security issue. [R]
69.2308 OLIVER, Steven; OSTWALD, Kai —
The People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore is one of the world's longest ruling dominant parties, having won every general election since the country's independence in 1965. Why do Singaporeans consistently vote for the PAP, contrary to the expectations of democratization theories? We argue that valence considerations — specifically, perceptions of party credibility — are the main factor in the voting behavior of Singapore's electorate, and are critical to explaining the PAP's resilience. Furthermore, we argue that the primacy of valence politics arose in part by design, as the PAP has used its control of Singapore's high-capacity state to reshape society and thereby reshape voter preferences towards its comparative advantages. Our findings suggest that a focus on valence politics can increase the resilience of dominant parties, but that such a strategy also faces natural limits. [R, abr.]
69.2309 OLIVOLA, Christopher Y.; TINGLEY, Dustin; TODOROV, Alexander —
Research shows people share common political facial stereotypes: they associate faces with political ideologies. Moreover, given that many voters rely on party affiliation, political ideology, and appearances to select political candidates, we might expect that political facial stereotypes would sway voting preferences and, by extension, the share of votes going to each candidate in an election. And yet few studies have examined whether having a stereotypically conservative-looking (or liberal-looking) face predicts a candidate's vote shares. Using data from US election exit polls, we show that the Republican voters within each state are more likely to vote for a candidate (even a Democrat) the more that person has a stereotypically Republican-looking face. By contrast, the voting choices of the Democratic voters within each state are unrelated to political facial stereotypes. [R, abr.]
69.2310 ÖNEY, Berna —
This essay explores the evolution of the constitutional debate in Turkey during the 2009-2011 period in terms of political parties’ strategies. It provides analytical insight via quantitative text analysis into party positions based on the four major parties’ proposed constitutional drafts in 2013. The analyses reveal a path from the employment of heresthetics to hegemonic, single-party dominance: the dominant party employed the constitutional debate to manipulate the ethnic dimension by engaging in heresthetics while various political party constellations were also in play. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2139]
69.2311 OSEI-HWEDIE, Bertha Z.; AGOMOR, Kingsley S. —
Political parties are key institutions for enhancing female participation and representation in leadership positions. However, in Ghana, this role of parties has not taken root. The study analyzes women's participation and presentation in party leadership structures, and as candidates in the 2016 parliamentary elections. Qualitative methodology was used. Findings suggest that the gender gap has not been substantially reduced in Ghana's two dominant political parties, the National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party. This situation undermines enhancement of democracy. The gender gap is caused by the parties' lack of political will, patronage politics and culture. [R, abr.]
69.2312 OWEN, Catherine; BINDMAN, Eleanor —
This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens' groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government's desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens and civic groups in place of state departments perceived to be bureaucratic and inefficient, while controlling and curtailing their participation. Arguing that these countervailing tendencies can be conceptualized as limited pluralism, a category elaborated by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, we show that citizens and civic groups are able to influence policy outcomes to varying extents using these mechanisms. [R]
69.2313 OWENS, Michael Leo; WALKER, Hannah L. —
A growing body of research explores the influence of involuntary criminal justice contact on political participation, demonstrating that all types of contact weaken political participation. We posit, however, that personal connections to civil society organizations (CSOs) moderate the negative effects of involuntary criminal justice contact on political participation, particularly political activism beyond registering to vote and voting. We test this proposition with individual-level and aggregate-level data from metropolitan and municipal Chicago. Our findings confirm a paradox of participation by custodial citizens. Our study suggests that an associational account of political participation deepens our understanding of the political behavior of custodial citizens and their communities in the age of mass incarceration. [R]
69.2314 PAGE, Douglas —
The established consensus in political behavior research is that discrimination by political institutions motivates marginalized groups to vote and protest their conditions. However, existing studies miss a comparison between states with high and low levels of political discrimination, and they miss a comparison between states before and after the development of opportunities for groups to mobilize. In particular, a growing body of research shows that sexual minority groups face discrimination to varying degrees across Europe. Sexual minorities in states with high levels of discrimination lack the support of other minority group members, which encourages political participation. [R, abr.]
69.2315 PALACIO MARTÍN, Jorge Del —
The elections held in Italy on March 4 2018 [were] historic and opened a new stage in Italian politics. The electoral results led to the formation of the first populist and Euroskeptic government in one of the founding members of the EU. This review article takes on the publication of four new volumes on Italian populism to highlight two key developments in the Italian party system. First, the decline of the two main parties — Partito Democratico and Forza Italia — that dominated Italian politics during the last decade, and second, the emergence of a new populist consensus led by M5S and Lega Nord. [R]
69.2316 PAP, Norbert; GLIED, Viktor —
Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary, is a new generation, radical right-wing political party. In many ways it is similar to other far-right groups in Europe, although it has several unique characteristics. It is a strange anomaly that the party, alone among radical parties in Europe, has pursued a Muslim-friendly policy. Is it an adequate explanation that this anti-Semitic and anti-Israel party considers Muslims its natural allies? Is this relationship solely based on anti-Semitism, or are there deeper explanations? [R]
69.2317 PARK Youngduek; KIM Yongmin —
On 23 June 2016, the UK's “Brexit” referendum saw a majority vote to leave the EU — a result that shocked the world. Using European Social Survey data, we argue that Brexit was not simply decided by less-educated voters who did not understand the EU's value. Pro Brexit votes were determined by economic interests as well as emotional, psychological, and attitudinal factors related to European integration. We demonstrate that skill level played a more important role in voter decision than education, gender, age, and political stance. [R]
69.2318 PÉTRY, François; DUVAL, Dominic —
The determinants of fulfilling campaign promises in Canada over the period 1994–2015 are analyzed in a comparative perspective. All other factors being equal, we find that promises to reduce government spending are more likely to be fulfilled by the Conservatives than by the Liberals. Majority and re-elected governments facing a budget surplus are more likely to fulfill their election promises than minority and newly elected governments facing a budget deficit. Promises are more likely to be fulfilled at the start than at the end of a mandate. We also find a small but noticeable increase in the rate of fulfilling campaign promises over time. [R]
69.2319 PILLOW, David R., et al. —
Authenticity has emerged over recent decades as a prominent theme in both the press and in political research — and peaked in the 2016 presidential contest that pitted D. Trump against H. Clinton, B. Sanders, M. Rubio, and T. Cruz. We attempted to answer the question: How do voters judge a presidential candidate's authenticity? Here we use motivated reasoning and correspondent inference theory as theoretical frameworks to examine how partisan preference combines with perceptions of unfettered speech and strategic impression management to influence voter judgments of a candidate's authenticity. An online survey of 525 respondents demonstrated that individuals’ partisan preferences influenced both judgments of a candidate's authenticity and their perceptions of behaviors signifying authenticity (use of unfettered speech versus strategic impression management). [R, abr.]
69.2320 POKALOVA, Elena —
Ever since the world found out about a war going on in the Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, Al Qaeda leadership has attempted to represent the Chechen struggle as one of its own battlefields. In turn, the Russian government has tried to justify its policies in the North Caucasus through demonstrating to the world that the Kremlin is fighting nothing less than Osama bin Laden's agents in Chechnya. The North Caucasus insurgents in turn have embraced some of Al Qaeda's narratives. While such narratives have proliferated, the factual evidence to show the direct links between the North Caucasus insurgents and Al Qaeda is still lacking. The article examines how terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda use framing for strategic ends. [R, abr.]
69.2321 POLETTI, Monica; WEBB, Paul; BALE, Tim —
What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model' are significant. [R, abr.]
69.2322 POPKOVA, Anna —
The crisis in Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea negatively affected Russia's image in the US and in Western Europe. At the same time, the dynamic of the Russian-US relations during the crisis prodded several prominent American right-wing politicians and commentators to make statements about Vladimir Putin that reflected their own “desire for a tough leader who will dispense with niceties and embrace power”. This article explores the phenomenon of Putin's “popularity” among the American conservatives through qualitative textual analysis of the coverage of his persona in several right-wing publications and blogs. The project engages with the concept of “soft power” by raising the following conceptual question: can a leader who “wrestles bears and drills for oil” leverage these characteristics as a type of “soft power”? [R, abr.]
69.2323 PORTER, Ethan; ROGOWSKI, Jon C. —
Though political candidates, observers, and voters often express concern about partisan meddling in supposedly neutral elections, existing research has not directly studied partisan bias among election administrators. We report results from a field experiment conducted in Wisconsin [US] during the 2014 general election. Local election clerks were sent an information request from a putative constituent, randomizing the sender's partisanship. Our findings are mixed. Overall, partisan email-writers were somewhat more likely to receive responses from local election clerks than email-writers who provided no partisan signal, though these effects are driven mostly by greater responsiveness to Republican constituents. However, we find no evidence that local institutional context moderates the effects of the partisan treatments. [R, abr.]
69.2324 PUKELSHEIM, Friedrich —
A new method is proposed for the apportionment of seats in the EP among political parties at European level: compositional proportionality. Compositional proportionality achieves two goals. First, it safeguards the composition of the EP: it realizes the preordained allocation of seats between the Member States. Second, it apportions the subset of seats to which it applies proportionally to union-wide vote totals: it reflects the political division of the Union citizens according to the motto “one person-one vote”. Compositional proportionality is demonstrated using the data of the 2014 elections. However, since past elections were contested by domestic parties rather than by European parties, the union-wide vote totals of those domestic parties who joined the same political group in the 2014 EP are hypothetically substituted for the non-existing vote totals of political parties at European level. [R]
69.2325 QIN Xuan; HE Baogang —
Authoritarian deliberation has been used widely to describe the specific form of deliberation developed in China. However, whether its practice will strengthen authoritarianism or lead to democratization remains unknown. In this study, we examine this question from the perspective of participants in public deliberation. Surveying the participants in participatory pricings held in Shanghai over the past 5 years, we find that participants' perception of deliberative quality has a statistically significant negative impact on their level of political activism, while their level of empowerment has a moderating effect on this negative relationship. In this light, Chinese deliberative practices characterized by high-quality deliberation and low-level empowerment are likely to have a demobilization effect; thus, they reinforce the authoritarian rules. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2211]
69.2326 RAMÍREZ GALLEGOS, Jacques Paul —
The Constitution of Ecuador of 2008 established new rights for migrants, among which political rights stand out. This paper begins with a theoretical reflection on political transnationalism and state anthropology to examine the behavior of the migrant vote in the last decade and the profile of Ecuadorians who go to the polls. With data from the National Electoral Council and a multisite survey conducted as part of this research in several cities around the world during the presidential elections of 2017, the text supports the thesis that the vote from abroad is a central element for observing the deployment and reconfiguration of the transnational state. [R]
69.2327 RANDAHL, David —
This article uses a large-n dataset to investigate the effect of terrorist attacks with American victims on the popularity of the US president. The study uses two broad theoretical frameworks to analyze this effect, the score-keeping framework and the rally-effect framework. The findings of the study show that, when excluding the effect from the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, actual terrorist attacks have no generalizable short-term impact on the popularity of the US president. This indicates that even though the topics of national security, terrorism, and the president's ability to handle these issues are important in the political debate in the US, actual terrorism has little or no short-term impact on presidential approval ratings. [R]
69.2328 RANEY, Tracey —
This paper is about the ways that citizens perceive their place in the political world around them, through their political identities. Using a combination of comparative and quantitative methodologies, the study traces the pattern of citizens' political identifications in the EU and Canada between 1981 and 2003 and explains the mechanisms that shape these political identifications. The results show that in the EU and Canada identity-formation involves the participation of both individuals and political institutions yet between the two, individuals play a greater role in identity-construction than do political institutions. The paper argues that the main agents of political identification in the EU and Canada are citizens themselves: individuals choose their own political identifications, rather than acquiring identities that are pre-determined by historical or cultural precedence. [R, abr.]
69.2329 RAVNDAL, Jacob Aasland —
Combining new quantitative and qualitative data, this article first describes and compares the evolution of right-wing terrorism and militancy in the Nordic countries between 1990 and 2015. Having established that Sweden has experienced considerably more right-wing terrorism and militancy than the other Nordic countries have, the article then seeks to account for Sweden's outlier position. It draws on three concepts proposed by social movement research: organizational resources, political opportunities, and frame analysis. Applying these concepts to the Nordic countries, the study finds that Sweden's outlier position may result from different WWII experiences, leaving Sweden with a stronger and more resilient extreme right movement, but also from receiving more immigrants while lacking influential anti-immigration (radical right) parties, and from conducting a more restrictive public debate on immigration, leaving little room for anti-immigration concerns in the public sphere. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2804]
69.2330 RENWICK, Alan, et al. —
The Citizens' Assembly on Brexit was a major exercise in deliberative public engagement conducted in autumn 2017. It brought together fifty randomly selected members of the public for two carefully structured weekends of listening, learning, reflecting and discussing. Assembly members considered what post-Brexit arrangements the UK should pursue, focusing on trade and migration. On trade, most members wanted the UK to pursue a bespoke arrangement with the EU and rejected the option of leaving the EU with no deal. On migration, most wanted the UK to maintain free movement of labor while using already available policy levers to reduce immigration numbers. These findings provide unique insight into informed public opinion on vital, pressing policy questions. The Assembly also illustrates the valuable role that such deliberative exercises could play in UK democracy. [R, abr.]
69.2331 RENWICK, Alan; PALESE, Michela; SARGEANT, Jess —
It is widely recognized — by both Remainers and Leavers — that the quality of public debate in the lead-up to the UK's 2016 referendum on EU membership was dismal. The referendum was on a broad proposal rather than a specific law; the government that called it did not support the change on the ballot paper and refused to prepare for the possibility of a vote for leaving the EU. It was also influenced by the nature of the campaign: both sides propagated misinformation; key issues were barely discussed; the public were often left dissatisfied and bewildered. This paper sets out evidence on these points and then analyses whether anything could be done to address them. Drawing on recent comparative research into referendums, it explores the importance of preparing for the decision to call a referendum. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2694]
69.2332 ROMANIUK, Peter, et al. —
Violent extremism is a key issue on the regional security agenda in East Africa. However, our review of the relevant literature, complemented by original primary research, suggests that the evidentiary baseline regarding violent extremism in East Africa is modest. The existing literature focuses largely on Somalia and Kenya and serves to underscore that mobilization to extremist violence in the region is diverse. These findings have important implications for development actors seeking to advance “countering violent extremism” (or sometimes “preventing violent extremism”) measures in East Africa. More generally, development actors seeking to advance countering violent extremism measures in East Africa or elsewhere should ensure that their approaches are evidence-based, responsive to the problems they are designed to address, proportional in light of existing development and security priorities, and effective. [R, abr.]
69.2333 ROMANO, Giulia C. —
This paper, the first step of a project aiming at analyzing the establishment of practices of resident participation and consultation in urban renewal in China, proposes a reflection upon these practices through a comparison with similar experiences in France. Identifying some convergences between the practices adopted in the two countries, the paper reflects upon such puzzling outcomes, provocatively questioning the classic distinction between authoritarian and democratic regimes. It suggests that our analyses and interpretations embrace a comparative analysis of the policies and practices introduced in various local contexts, and reflect upon their underlying logics. It engages with He and Warren's concept of ‘authoritarian deliberation' as well as with the critiques expressed by a number of French scholars on concepts such as “participative democracy” and “good governance”. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2211]
69.2334 ROMANO, Michael K. —
This article investigates whether public officials exhibit “cognitive shirking” prior to announcing retirement by changing the way they communicate during their final term. I analyze monthly speeches made by members of the US House between the 105th and 109th terms, and collect data on psychological indicators found to indicate changes in cognition. A mixed-effect logistic regression examines whether these indicators increase the probability of retirement before the end of the term. The probability of retirement is amplified by increases in the level of cognitive inconsistency they display in public speeches. Public officials, when deciding whether to retire from politics, display patterns of shifting priorities before and after making their retirement announcement. This suggests that representatives' justifications for policy choices go through significant reorganization as the electoral connection is severed. [R]
69.2335 ROMANO, Sarah T.; HIGHBY, Wendy —
This article takes a case study approach to examine social justice-oriented environmental activism of faculty in the context of neoliberalism. As an evolving trend, university corporatization places new economic burdens on universities and their students and has contributed to a tenuous landscape for faculty in terms of academic freedom and job security. In particular, we examine a faculty-led response to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. Drawing on participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and campus-wide survey data, we document this response as a “tempered grassroots leadership” approach to workplace inquiry and activism. We discuss both the opportunities and limitations of promoting more transparent, informed, and inclusive decision-making on campus via internal and tempered activism strategies. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2842]
69.2336 RONCAROLO, Franca; MANCINI, Paolo —
This article derives from a survey research and a content analysis of traditional media, in the 2018 Italian election campaign. In the first part, traditional Italian news media partisanship is discussed as findings demonstrate that it still alive in-spite of novelties deriving from the development of new media. In the second part, authors investigate the level of negativity of news stories and how it is linked to different habits of consumption and different political affiliations of viewers and readers. Findings demonstrate that at the basis of the electoral result, which deeply modified the previous political landscape, there was a climate of opinion that was influenced by the way news media treated contentious issues such as immigration and Europe. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2106]
69.2337 ROSSINI, Patrícia, et al. —
Political campaigns have been systematically using social media for strategic advantage. However, little is known about how competitiveness affects the ways candidates communicate online. Our study analyzes how race competitiveness as measured by polling performance influences candidates' strategies on Twitter and Facebook. We analyze all social media messages of Republican and Democratic candidates in states that held gubernatorial elections in 2014 using supervised automated content analysis. We find that position in the polls and that race competitiveness are correlated with the ways candidates communicate on social media, and that candidates use Twitter and Facebook in different ways to communicate with the public. [R]
69.2338 SÄNDIG, Jan; GRANZOW, Tanja —
Self-determination campaigns in the Global South have often been pursued through warfare. Since the 1990s, however, an increasing number of such movements have endorsed legalistic mechanisms of international law and the UN's core principle of nonviolence. We introduce the concept of UN-aligned self-determination movements for them. We examine two major cases: The Peaceful Southern Movement (Hirak) in Yemen and the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in contemporary Nigeria. We observe that since the end of the Cold War the rule of law, role of the UN, and norms of nonviolent conflict resolution have been strengthened in the international system. We argue that this has given self-determination movements in the Global South new opportunities for claims-making. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1638]
69.2339 SANDRI, Giulia; SEDDONE, Antonella —
The year 2017 represents a key moment in the political life of the PD. The party celebrated 10 years of existence and did so by electing a new leader via open primaries, following the same symbolic process of its founding moment in 2007. However, the party has radically changed in the last decade and in the last year in particular. Not only has a dynamic of personalization started (and continued) to characterize the functioning of the party's central organs (thanks to the centralized leadership imposed by Renzi, especially during his tenure as PM), but in 2017 the party has also experienced the most relevant organizational split since its creation. Party unity has wavered, in particular, since the results of the constitutional referendum in December 2016. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2179]
69.2340 SAPIEZYNSKA, Ewa —
This article presents a thematic analysis of three parliamentary debates that are key to the topic of freedom of expression in the Chilean media since the return of democracy: the debate on the Press Law, 1993-2001; the Report of the Special Commission on Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Expression, 2007-2010; and the debate on the Digital Television Law, 2008-2014. In all three cases, the debates turned fundamentally on the central issue of the very meaning of the concept of freedom of expression: whether it should be understood in a merely negative sense — as freedom from state “interference” — or as a positive right to expression (presupposing an active state). These debates were all won by those who view regulation as state intrusion against the market. [R, abr.]
69.2341 SCHIFFERS, Maximilian —
The role of watchdogs is essential for a critical public sphere. Due to the dominance of business interests, NGOs can serve as an important counterbalance. This article argues that NGOs need to combine both short-term and long-term issue-management for their watchdog strategy. Using the threefold organizational logics of support, influence and reputation, this article presents varying strategies employed by the German transparency NGO LobbyControl and discusses their role in NGO advocacy and interest representation. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2342 SCHILDKRAUT, Deborah J.; MAROTTA, Satia A. —
White Americans will soon lose their majority status — news that provokes group threat and a conservative response. Yet an alternative outcome focused on white millennials is also possible. This study examines whether young whites are distinct in their racial attitudes and how they react to demographic change. Using two nationally representative surveys from 2012 and 2016 and a nationally representative experiment from 2016, we find that race affects attitudes more than generation, and in no case are white millennials as racially liberal as nonwhites. Exposure to information about changing demography makes white millennials more conservative on some questions, but what matters more is whether respondents are Republicans and identify as white. White millennials are hardly immune to the power of race to shape their attitudes. [R] [Part of a thematic issue on “Immigration and changing identities”, edited and introduced, pp. 1-25, by Nancy FONER, Kay DEAUX, Katharine M. DONATO]
69.2343 SEDO, Jakub —
This review essay discusses new definition of a semi-presidential system, which has been introduced by Milos Brunclík and Michal Kubát in their book Kdo vládne Česku? (Who Governs in Czechia?) [Polopre- zidentský režim, přímá volba a pravidla hry, Barrister & Principal Publishing, 2017]. Advantages and problems of their definition are discussed, with the result that the definition is interesting and generally correct. However, some modifications to the definition are proposed. Subsequently, arguments put forward against the post-Duvergerian definition of semi-presidentialism are critically evaluated, including alternatives to the definition proposed by Brunclík and Kubát. The essay closes by presenting alternative ways of dealing with the dispute over the definition of semi-presidentialism among Czech political scientists. [R]
69.2344 SHAO Li —
Recent literature claims that China censors information that has the potential to ignite collective action. This article extends this finding by arguing that Chinese censors respond differently to political challenges than they do to performance challenges. Political challenges call into questioning the Party's leading role, whereas performance challenges are directed at the failures of public goods provisions. A survey experiment of about 60 media professionals finds that censors are inclined to block political challenges and to tolerate criticism of the government's performance. However, when criticism contains both performance and political challenges, censorship is far more likely. By exploring the range of censorship activities, the results suggest that the Chinese regime's reliance on popular support constrains its censorship decisions. [R]
69.2345 SHINAR, Chaim —
In order to silence the resistance, the Soviet Union under Stalin kept the population in permanent fear and uncertainty by recurrent purges of innocent citizens, “Old Bolsheviks” and Red Army commanders, thus terrorizing the entire population. Similar conspiracy narratives are used under Putin. In order to keep his grip on power, after the Beslan massacre, Putin's administration discourse hints at the operation of an international conspiracy of states using terrorism as an instrument to weaken Russia. [R]
69.2346 SMELTZ, Dina; WOJTOWICZ, Lily —
In late 2016, opinion polls in the United States showed that Americans expected a reset in US-Russia relations with the election of Donald Trump. However, more than a year into the Trump administration, the bilateral relationship has only worsened. A Chicago Council survey conducted year-end 2017 shows that Americans express continued mistrust of Russia and a majority think Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. But the results also reveal surprising new partisan divides. In a twist from previous patterns, Republicans are less likely to view Russia as a threat than Democrats, and Democrats are now far more hawkish on Russia. These partisan divisions are a clear signal that everyday Republicans are following Donald Trump's lead in their skepticism of Russia's interference in US elections. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2347 SOARES DE AGUIAR, Bruna —
The development debate in Latin America is presented by several types of bias. The theme is addressed in the light of the thematic of gender. In addition to the feminist critiques, the social-liberalism structure, which perpetuates the reality of the marginalization of women in the region, will be analyzed. In a context in which the development model has traditionally been transferred from the Center and the pattern of capitalist power is maintained in Latin American society, femicide is delimited as the summit of female exclusion, taking into account the power relations and gender performances inserted in the process. To achieve this goal, quantitative data on femicide rates in Latin America and bibliographical review on the subject will be presented. [R]
69.2348 SOMUANO, Ma. Fernanda —
This paper analyzes and compares the factors determining the presidential approval of two Mexican presidents: Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto. The data are taken from two series of the Surveys of the Americas 2008 and 2014. I find that, on the one hand, the issues that prevailed in the press (which to some extent are the same as those that predominated n presidential speeches) coincide significantly with those that citizens perceive as the most important issues for them. On the other, even with different presidents, in different situations, economic issues weigh most heavily in the evaluation of their performance. However, the issues of insecurity and corruption appear and remain during the two six-year terms in office as issues that continue to have a significant effect on the presidential approval rating. [R, abr.]
69.2349 SOOLS, Anneke, et al. —
This article adopts a pragmatic communicative approach, derived from Gregory Bateson's cybernetic theory, to the Greek Referendum Vote of 2015. Applying this approach, we interpret the Referendum as a double-bind situation. Our research question is twofold: (1) How do potential Greek voters discursively construct the Referendum? (2) How do they respond to the communicative situation posed? A total of 124 written narratives, “Letters from the Future,” written by 99 participants, were collected during the days prior to the vote. Their letters focused on a desired future situation after a YES or a NO vote outcome. Qualitative analysis showed how the letters were used to appropriate the Referendum query in a unique and deeply personalized manner. Moreover, we identified four types of responses to the ambivalent query: confirmation, rejection, disconfirmation, and meta communication. [R]
69.2350 SPECK, Bruno Wilhelm —
This article studies the low presence of women in Brazilian politics. We test whether the election of a female mayor increases the number of women running for the next mayoral election in the same municipality. The analysis of this contagion effect engages in a dialogue with other research focusing on the presentation and selection of female candidates as one of the decisive filters hindering the election of more women in popular elections. This study is based on the municipal elections for mayor in Brazil between 2000 and 2012. We conclude that in the municipalities in which a female mayor was elected, the probability of having first-time female candidates in the next election is 1.8 times higher than in the last electoral contest. [R, abr.]
69.2351 SPLENDORE, Sergio —
The absence of an electoral law able to provide a clear winner at the 2013 parliamentary elections has contributed to the 2017 Italian political communication environment. The parties and leaders' communication activities could not find any clear possibility of governing. Nevertheless, the multiplication of available channels has increased the amount of political information available. This article summarizes the communication dynamics within the hybrid media system among political actors, media actors and citizens. It focuses particularly on three different issues: (1) the debates about the obligatory nature of vaccinations; (2) the discussion about the so-called ius soli law; and finally (3) fake news. These issues highlight how political debate in Italy has become highly polarized and characterized by distrust toward traditional newsmakers. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2179]
69.2352 STOCKMANN, Daniela; ESAREY, Ashley; ZHANG Jie —
Public opinion polls show that political trust tends to be higher in authoritarian regimes compared to liberal democracies. Many scholars have argued that respondents may provide false answers out of fear about repercussions by the state, thereby skewing survey results in a positive direction. Using an unobtrusive measure based on affect transfer, we find that adult participants in experiments conducted in China transfer positive affect toward the state onto evaluations of television advertisements upon mere exposure to the name of a central party institution. Participants did not have incentives to lie because they did not associate the advertisements with the state. Furthermore, people who evaluated the ads more positively upon viewing the name of the state also reported more positive levels of trust in government. [R, abr.]
69.2353 STOJILJKOVIC, Zoran; SPASOJEVIC, Dusan —
We analyze the influence of populist ideas on the emergence and organization of new political parties in Serbia after the elections in 2007 and 2008. These elections represent the turning point in the development of the party system because only after the pro-European consensus among Democrats and Socialists was formed, the division within Serbian Radical Party occurred and the ideological space occupied by the relevant parties has narrowed. On the other hand, high level of distrust in politics among the citizens and lowering of the state of democracy facilitate the emergence of new actors who are under the influence of the growing wave of populism. We apply the ideational approach to populism and, using the new actors as example, we identify ideological and organizational variations which can develop under the influence of populism. [R, abr.]
69.2354 STRANDBERG, Kim; HIMMELROOS, Staffan; GRÖN-LUND, Kimmo —
Political reasoning in like-minded groups easily becomes lop-sided since there is little reason to critically examine information that everyone seems to agree with. Hence, there is a tendency for groups to become more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. We designed an experiment to test whether introducing deliberative norms in like-minded discussions can alleviate such group polarization. Based on their attitudes toward a linguistic minority, participants were divided into a positive and a negative opinion enclave. Within the two enclaves, the participants were randomly assigned to group discussions either with or without deliberative norms. We found that free discussion without rules led to group polarization in like-minded groups, whereas polarization could be avoided in groups with deliberative norms. [R, abr.]
69.2355 STRIJBIS, Oliver; POLAVIEJA, Javier —
Standard explanations of anti-immigrant sentiments as well as explanations of the voting behavior of ethnic minorities would both predict voters with an immigrant background should be less inclined to support anti-immigration policies than comparable natives. We show this was not the case in the Swiss referendum “against mass immigration” held in 2014. In this referendum voters with an immigrant background showed surprisingly high levels of support to the initiative to restrict immigration, which were comparable to those expressed by natives. To explain this puzzling finding, we propose to look at two alternative (but not mutually exclusive) drivers of policy preferences previously overlooked in the voting literature: ethnic boundary making and labor market competition. [R, abr.]
69.2356 SURYANARAYAN, Pavithra —
What explains the popularity of right-wing parties among the poor? This article argues that in hierarchical societies with high social-status inequality, cross-class coalitions can emerge among high-status voters if they believe their social status is under threat. I demonstrate this in the context of the Indian states by exploiting an announcement by the Government of India in 1990 to implement affirmative action for lower castes — an intervention that threatened to weaken the social status of upper caste Brahmans. Using unique data from the 1931 census, this article shows that areas where Brahmans were more dominant in the 1930s experienced a higher surge in right-wing voting after this announcement than other areas. Using survey data, I find that both wealthy and poor Brahmans voted for the right wing where Brahmans were dominant in 1931. [R, abr.]
69.2357 SZOSTEK, Joanna —
As conduits for ideas, values and geographical knowledge, the mass media contribute to the construction of regional order. Moscow-based media organizations with audiences in post-Soviet republics have been described as “soft power tools” or “information weapons” which aid the Russian state in its pursuit of regional dominance. However, a heavy focus on the agency of the Russian state obscures the important role that local actors and their motives often play in delivering Russian media content to large audiences in neighboring countries. This article examines several major news providers which export content from Russia to Belarus and Ukraine. The article argues that Russia's political leadership, despite promoting consensual hegemony as its preferred regional order, has in fact undermined the type of media mechanisms that might have helped to sustain such an order. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2518]
69.2358 TASSINARI, Fabrizio; MADURO, Miguel Poiares —
Populists across the continent see Putin and Trump as the standard bearers on matters of protectionist, nationalist and anti-immigrant policies, ideology and style. There is little doubt that anti-Semitism as a general trend in Europe has been on the rise. [R]
69.2359 TAUSANOVITCH, Chris —
It is now well established that states and localities differ substantially in their policies and that these differences are associated with differences in public opinion. However, this fact is puzzling. People are mostly ignorant of state and local government, and state and local elections appear increasingly linked to their federal counterparts, despite very different candidates and policy stakes. The leading solution to this puzzle is the partisan accountability theory of R. S. Erikson, G. C. Wright, and J. P. McIver. However, this explanation does not fit neatly with the recent literature. I show that ideological divisions in state-level elections fit poorly with the theory as well. New theoretical developments are needed to address this puzzle. I suggest two directions that this could take. [R] [First article of a symposium on “Subnational policy-making”. See also Abstr. 69.1647, 1965, 2069, 2085, 2128]
69.2360 TAVARES, Antonio F.; RAUDLA, Ringa —
What are the consequences of fragmenting political and administrative authority within municipalities? Portugal provides an excellent setting to study the effects of sub-city institutional fragmentation because each of its 308 municipal governments is divided into sub-municipal governments (SMUs). The 4259 SMUs deliver services to the residents and its executive leader serves on the city council. In this paper we investigate the determinants of voter turnout in these SMUs. We argue that the size and density of SMUs affects electoral participation, but this effect is mediated by the municipal context. High levels of population concentration and low levels of territorial fragmentation at the municipal level are expected to improve voter mobilization efforts and mitigate the negative effect of size and density on voter turnout. [R, abr.]
69.2361 TAYLOR, Ariel; BONNER, Michelle D. —
Since the 1980s, liberalized and newly stable markets have helped usher in an unprecedented mining boom across the Latin American region. However, [although] this boom contributes to notable economic growth, protests in opposition to the expansion and practices of mining companies have also grown, often with violent results. How protests are policed matters, but more important for democracy is how state actors respond when violence is employed. We examine two instances of police repression of mining protests: one in Cajamarca, Peru, and the other in Cata-marca, Argentina. We argue that, despite significant differences in context, there are important similarities in state discourse between countries. [R, abr.]
69.2362 TAYLOR, Keeanga-Yamahtta —
This article argues that the Republican Party is the heir of white supremacy given the party's open disdain for multiculturalism, affirmative action, immigrant rights, trans equality, abortion rights, and anti-Muslim hatred. Donald Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party have openly fawned, adored, and courted white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen. His party only differs from the politics of the alt-right or “white supremacists”, who believe that all of these issues represent “white genocide,” by degrees and certainly not by substance. The crises of capitalism are crises that no political party in the US can solve. They are the permanent problems of the market: misery, hunger, disease, prison, and racism mean profit.
69.2363 TAYLOR, Steven L. —
Colombia is currently implementing a peace process with the now demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A clear assumption of the peace process is that electoral integration is necessary for long-term peace and reconciliation. The notion of elections as at least a partial means of reconciliation and peace is not new to Colombia. This article examines the usage of elections and party creation as a means of political integration in Colombian political history as context for understanding the current process. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1802]
69.2364 TEMPORÃO, Mickael, et al. —
Words matter in politics. The rhetoric that political elites employ structures civic discourse. The emergence of social media platforms as a medium of politics has enabled ordinary citizens to express their ideological inclinations by adopting the lexicon of political elites. This avails to researchers a rich new source of data in the study of political ideology. However, existing ideological text-scaling methods fail to produce meaningful inferences when applied to the short, informal style of textual content that is characteristic of social media platforms such as Twitter. This paper introduces the first viable approach to the estimation of individual-level ideological positions derived from social media content. [R, abr.]
69.2365 THESEN, Gunnar —
The success of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) is unprecedented in postwar Western Europe. No other party family, whether newcomers or established players, has seen the same rise in electoral support. The present study picks up the thread from this line of research, investigating how the issues and tone of news coverage have affected the ups and downs of Denmark's Progress Party (FRP) and Danish People's Party (DF) over a 20 year period (1984-2003). The theoretical model combines elements from existing research, arguing that news content facilitates a (more or less) favorable ‘discursive opportunity structure' for PRRPs. [R]
69.2366 TOKTAMIS, Kumru F. —
This essay explores the relationship between the collapse of negotiations between Turkey and the PKK and the rupture between the governing AKP and its former ally, the Cemaat or Gülen Movement. This schism transformed both the AKP regime and Kurdish politics. This article traces the shifting narratives of key actors in this process. It also identifies the multifaceted underpinnings of the political violence that erupted and disrupted the resolution/peace process. In the end, the peace/resolution process was a (re)entrenchment, or inadvertent re-positioning of violent means of suppression against Kurdish politics in Turkey, beyond the particular intentions, beliefs, ideas and attitudes of all parties. [R] [See Abstr. 69.2877]
69.2367 TONG Dezhi; HE Baogang —
Chinese public hearings or consultations have been subject to numerous debates, doubts, and skepticism about the existence of Chinese deliberative democracy. This paper offers a big-picture perspective and the national statistical trend behind the uneven development of grassroots deliberative democracy. It develops an intellectual framework to assess whether grassroots deliberation is democratic. By collecting, validating, and coding 393 cases of Chinese grassroots deliberations, we have assessed Chinese grassroots deliberation, confirmed the cases' democratic attributes, and provided a solid statistical result. Although there is strong evidence to support the claim that these grassroots deliberation experiments are democratic, there remain some variations, nuances, and shortcomings. The full picture is not simple, but instead provides a mixed perspective. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2211]
69.2368 TRUMM, Siim —
The conventional wisdom of electoral politics suggests that parliamentary candidates who run for office under candidate-centred mechanisms tend to conduct more intense and personalised campaigns than those who run under party-centred ones. But what about the campaigns put in place by candidates who simultaneously run under both systems? Using original data from the 2016 Welsh Candidate Study, this article shows that dual candidates’ campaign behaviour is distinct from that of their constituency and regional list counterparts. Their campaign effort tends to be more intense as well as complex than that put in place by candidates who stand in one tier only. In addition, the findings show that dual candidates’ campaign messages tend to be more personalised than those of regional list candidates, but less personalised than those of constituency candidates. [R, abr.]
69.2369 USHERWOOD, Simon —
The 2016 referendum marks the start of a new era of Euroskepticism in the UK, as the basic parameters of debate have shifted from EU membership to non-membership as the central working assumption of the political system. This shift radically alters the political opportunity structure for those groups and elements that have developed in the period since the Maastricht treaty, removing the unifying and rallying calls of withdrawal and/or radical change to the EU. The achievement of Brexit thus poses an existential challenge, as individuals either demobilize or divert their political energies into other issues. While a core of activists is likely to remain, their scope for influencing public debate will be further weakened by the centrality of creating and managing the UK's relationship with the EU to party political debate for the next decade. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2694]
69.2370 UUDELEPP, Agu —
The author argues that propaganda is still used in contemporary democratic societies at peacetime and there are no major differences between instruments of propaganda in the public or the private sectors. The analysis is based on the similarities and differences between Estonian political television advertisements and modern television commercials with an emphasis on the application of propaganda instruments. The author employed content-analysis when studying the sample in which were 100 non-political and 84 political advertisements. This research shows that Estonian political television advertisements and international non-political television advertisements share some significant similarities: cognitive propaganda instruments are more widely employed than social or technological ones. [R, abr.]
69.2371 VACA-BAQUEIRO, Maira Teresa —
The links between distinctive political regimes and media systems are undeniable. As Siebert, Peterson and Schramm wrote 60 years ago (Four Theories of the Press, University of Illinois Press, 1956), “the press always takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates”. Today's world and politics are completely different from the bipolar era that inspired Four Theories of the Press. And yet, media systems studies keep holding to the book's main premises. By debating about its long-lasting normative influence, this paper searches for clarification about current discrepancies between democracies and media's distinctive forms and functioning. In so doing, it proposes an alternative analytical framework on the study of the relationships between the state and the media: the political-media complex. [R]
69.2372 VAINSHTEIN, Grigorii I. —
The article analyzes peculiarities of the current stage of party-political transformations in Western Europe, characterizes its difference from the previous period of changes in the political landscape of the region, and assesses possible consequences of today's processes. It is noted that the fragmentation of the political space, which has been one of the features of its changes in recent decades, currently takes place largely due to the emergence of new parties. Based on empirical data presented, the author states that a significant portion of numerous parties created in the region since 2000, make up the parties distinguished by anti-system orientations. Meanwhile, the article emphasizes the increased analytical complexity of differentiation between systemic and anti-systemic parties, conditioned by changes in the nature of anti-system phenomenon. [R, abr.]
69.2373 VAN DE VOORDE, Nicolas —
Traditionally, scholars have assumed that multiple office-holding (i.e. the combination of a local and national directly elected political mandate) leads to an enhanced electoral performance. Although the prospect of electoral benefits for such a mandate combination seems plausible, it remains unclear whether accumulating a national and local mandate does indeed provide an additional boost compared to holding either one prior to the election. Previous studies have only offered limited support for this assumption. For instance, they have focused exclusively on French national elections. This article, however, scrutinises whether dual mandate-holding pays off individually, for the candidate, as well as collectively, for the list as a whole in both Belgian national and local elections. [R, abr.]
69.2374 VAN HAUTE, Emilie; PAUWELS, Teun; SINARDET, Dave —
This contribution assesses whether populism is inherently embedded in and combined with the ideology of sub-state nationalist parties, using Belgium as a case study. We argue that sub-state nationalist parties tend to emphasize the opposition between a territorial community (“us”) versus a dominant center (“them”), a dichotomous view that could overlap with the populist ideology focusing on the opposition between the homogeneous people and the “corrupt” elite. We compare the policy positions of the three major sub-state nationalist parties that operate in Belgium: the Vlaams Belang, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) and Democrat Federalist Independent, using their manifestos and membership magazines between 2010 and 2015. We show that the manner in which sub-state nationalist parties combine their stances on territoriality to a populist rationale depends on their relationship to power (government vs. opposition). [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2214]
69.2375 VAN STEKELENBURG, Jacquelien; KLANDERMANS, Bert —
This article sheds light on the debate regarding political trust and protest activity. The debate boils down to the question whether trust in politics is positively or negatively related to protest activity. We exploit a dataset encompassing data on about 9,000 demonstrators spread over seven European countries. These demonstrators’ trust in their parliaments varies widely, ranging from trustworthy capable, to corrupt incapable. We examine the diverging sociodemographic profiles and motivational dynamics that turn distrusting and trusting citizens into demonstrators. We hypothesize and show that distrusting demonstrators turn their back to institutionalized politics; for them, demonstrating substitutes the party politics they distrust. For trusting demonstrators, demonstrating supplements party politics. Trusting and distrusting demonstrators also differ considerably in terms of motivation. Distrusting demonstrators are stronger motivated to demonstrate than trusting demonstrators. [R, abr.]
69.2376 VARACHEVA, Tatiana; GHERGHINA, Sergiu —
This article analyzes the media coverage of the uprisings in Kyrgyzstan (February-April 2005) and Egypt (January-February 2011) by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. It aims to identify the features of two frame dimensions, namely the promotion of a particular problem and its causal interpretation. Our analysis uses 184 articles published online by the news agency during the two events and differentiates between three types of articles (news stories, opinion articles and commentaries by experts). The results indicate how several nuances of this framing dimension could bias public perception towards protesters or incumbents. [R]
69.2377 VINES, Emma; MARSH, David —
In the light of BREXIT and the election of Trump there has unsurprisingly been even greater interest in the rise in “anti-politics”. We recognize anti-politics as an important, although not new, problem. The extant literature emphasize either demand-side or supply-side explanations of the phenomena. In contrast, we argue that this involves a mis-specification of the problem, which neglects the interaction between the demand-side and the supply-side and, thus, leads to underdeveloped putative “solutions”. Consequently, this article is structured around four questions that are at the core of any full discussion of anti-politics: what is “anti-politics” and what are its consequences? Is it new? To the extent that it has increased, what are the causes of that increase? and what can be done about it? [R, abr.]
69.2378 VONG Mun; HOK Kimhean —
This article takes a critical view of online activism as its point of departure and explores how the activities of Cambodian youth on Facebook have spilled over into formal politics. Contrary to concerns that Facebook and other social media tools distract activists from more effective means of political participation, this article suggests that facebooking has contributed positively to offline political participation. More importantly, the petty acts of discussing and sharing information on Facebook have, on occasion, succeeded in triggering changes in government decisions and behaviors. In developing these arguments, we draw upon everyday politics perspectives which provide the theoretical ground to qualify facebooking as political and make sense of its importance. [R]
69.2379 WANG Qi —
English version: see Abstr. 69.2380.
69.2380 WANG Qi —
This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalizes three notions of generation — generation as an age cohort, generation as a historical cohort, and “political generation” — to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a “political generation” emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age. [R]
69.2381 WATTS, Jake —
Drawing on B. Anderson's notion of the “imagined community”, this article examines the evolution of the British Labour Party's sense of self as an organization. Accordingly, the analysis interrogates the interrelated elements of history, culture, identity and party structure. It is argued that Labour has moved substantially from the collective class-based notions it once used to define its politics and effectively demarcate its boundaries. In place of these, an increasing focus has been placed on giving the party's political practices an outward-looking, diverse and more individualistic focus. Consequently, Labour's difficulties during the leadership election of 2015 and since are rooted in the combination of this prolonged push to build a new movement beyond its traditional borders and the persistence of historically grounded tribal concerns about the vulnerability of the party to infiltration. [R]
69.2382 WEEKS, Ana Catalano —
In nearly every case of quota law adoption, the support of party elites is critical. But this raises a puzzle: What can motivate predominantly male elites to put these policies in place? This article uses a comparison of two sets of matched pair countries — similar on background characteristics except for quota adoption — to explore the motivations and role of male party elites in quota reform. The cases of Belgium and Austria, and Portugal and Italy highlight two key explanations. First, quota laws are likely to be supported and passed by parties threatened by a new, more progressive competitor on the left, as a way of claiming women voters back from the encroaching party. Second, quotas can be employed as a mechanism for party elites to gain power over candidate selection within their own parties in the face of entrenched local party monopolies. [R, abr.]
69.2383 WEISSKIRCHER, Manès —
The rise of the KPÖ Graz, the Communist Party in Austria's second biggest city, represents perhaps the most counterintuitive case in Western Europe. The rise of the KPÖ Graz contradicts many of the claims made and patterns found about the conditions for the electoral success of radical left parties (RLPs). While the national KPÖ was voted out of parliament in 1959, the Graz branch has been a member of local government since 1998. Since then, the party has managed to gain 20 per cent of the vote in three out of four elections. This analysis shows how the party has managed to “own” the issue of housing and to exploit local political opportunities in order to be electorally successful. [R, abr.]
69.2384 WENZELBURGER, Georg; FEHRENZ, Sabrina —
The article zooms in on the voting patterns of the members of parliament of the CDU/CSU in the German Bundestag on the bill of same-sex marriage. The parliamentary party had decided not to find agreement on that issue but leave the decision on this conscience issue to each MP. Hence, the vote on this bill allowed us to discover patterns of legislative behavior that are usually masked by the effect of party discipline. Including MPs' individual demographics, for instance age or gender, as well as features of their electoral district, such as their voters' church attendance, we find that older and married CDU/CSU MPs from more religious and catholic electoral districts with a somewhat lower level of education were more likely to vote against the bill in question. [R, abr.]
69.2385 WEST, Jonathan P., et al. —
Recently, governments, commercial firms, and individuals have increased their use of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e., “drones”). As with many new technologies, drone use has outpaced government oversight. Attempts to regulate the technology have been met with intense public backlash. Therefore, governments need to understand the public's preferences for a regulatory regime. Analyzing national survey data, we address two questions: (a) What policies do Americans prefer for the regulation of drones? and (b) Does the public believe the federal, state, or local government or nongovernmental actors should be responsible for regulating drone use? Public preferences are one of several important inputs affecting policymaking; therefore, our results provide an important overview of current public opinion toward drone policy, as well as a theoretical blueprint for understanding how such opinions might fluctuate overtime. [R]
69.2386 WIDESTROM, Amy; HAYES, Thomas J.; DENNIS, Christopher —
This article examines the effects of partisan control of government on income distribution within the US. Using newly available data, we estimate the effects of unified Democratic and Republican Party control at the state and national levels on the share of income going to the top 1 percent of income earners, by state, between 1917 and 2011. We find that unified party control at the state level has minimal impact on income going to the top 1 percent of income earners within the states, but that unified party control at the federal level does have an effect. Moreover, we find that over the long term, unified Democratic control at the federal level leads to less income going to the top 1 percent, while unified Republican control increases income going to top earners. [R, abr.]
69.2387 WILLIAMSON, Vanessa —
Widespread and profound public misinformation about government presents a serious challenge for democratic accountability. This article demonstrates that two of the most commonly-cited examples of public misperception of government are overstated, due in substantial part, to differences of elite and popular terminology. “Foreign aid” is widely understood to encompass overseas military spending, and the term “government waste” is popularly used to discuss systemic failures of the democratic process. Failing to take account of what members of the public mean by “waste” and “foreign aid,” existing studies overestimate public ignorance and obscure the substance of public critiques of US policy, particularly among the less educated. This article suggests the need for a reconsideration of what qualifies as evidence of public misinformation, and what that evidence implies for voters' capacity to assess their government. [R]
69.2388 WITTERHOLD, Katharina —
This article deals with the necessity and the general criteria of market controls against the background of the constellation of involved actors. These actors claim control functions. In the center of this consideration are not single consumer organizations but rather new forms of cooperation and association which are enabled through digital communication media. Instead of balancing between control through government agencies and control through civil society, the text examines the assumption that new forms of cooperation between consumer(-citizens) could cushion the deficiencies of legitimacy of consumer organizations, can increase the efficiency of market control and develop new evaluation criteria of market activities. But this requires a new level of public discourse to discuss the public good with a view to consumer. [R] [See Abstr. 69.1832]
69.2389 WONG Stan Hok-Wui; WAN Kin Man —
English version: see Abstr. 69.2390.
69.2390 WONG Stan Hok-Wui; WAN Kin Man —
What has caused the rise of localism in Hong Kong? We propose a political economy explanation: global and regional economic factors have caused a housing boom in Hong Kong since the mid-2000s and produced impactful redistributive consequences. While homeowners benefit tremendously from the hike in asset prices, non-homeowners stand to lose. Their divergent economic interests then translate into political preferences; homeowners support political parties that favor the status quo, while non-homeowners tend to support those that challenge it. Using a newly available public opinion survey, we find preliminary evidence in support of our argument. In particular, homeowners are less likely to identify with localist parties and tend to vote for pro-establishment ones. High-income earners, however, are more likely to vote for localist parties. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2256]
69.2391 YILMAZ, Zafer —
The Gezi uprising can be considered a crucial turning in Turkish politics. As a response to countrywide democratic protests, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government revived the security state, escalated authoritarian tendencies, and started to organize a nationalist, Islamist, and conservative backlash. This essay argues that the Gezi Park protests revealed both the fragility of the AKP's hegemony and the limits of the dominant political group habitus, which were promoted by the party to consolidate political polarization in favor of the party's hegemony. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2139]
69.2392 YUEN Samson; CHUNG Sanho —
Since the early 2010s, a new political force, broadly known as the local-ists, has entered the political domain through a series of protest events and elections. However, just as they gained a foothold in politics, the hybrid regime swiftly moved in to clamp down on the nascent movement to keep them out of the political system. What explains the ebbs and flows of Hong Kong's localist movement? This essay posits that localism is not an inevitable product of the macro-structural socio-political process, but an amalgam of ideas and action logics assembled sequentially through events and discursive constructions. We argue that localism first emerged through the interplay between anti-mainlandization protests and both online and intellectual discourse, and officially ascended to the political stage after the Umbrella Movement. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2256]
69.2393 YUEN Samson; CHUNG Sanho —
English version: see Abstr. 69.2392.
69.2394 ZASLOVE, Andrej —
It is often believed that the dichotomy between racism and anti-racism is quite clear. However, I argue that this distinction is not as clear as it is often perceived. Using Italy as my case study, I outline the various ideological positions on the left and the right, and within the left and right, vis-à-vis immigration legislation and important related issues such as integration and multiculturalism. In the second section, I then examine how these ideological positions respond to the realities of immigration and to new pressures from voters within civil society. The question is whether immigration has created a new electoral dilemma for both sides of the political spectrum. [R, abr.]
69.2395 ZUKERMAN DALY, Sarah —
This article draws on original survey data of 10,951 Colombian ex-paramilitaries to study the determinants of victimizers' support for transitional justice. Understanding ex-combatants' attitudes toward victims of the conflict and measures of justice is critical to gaining leverage on when transitional justice is likely to prove effective. The data suggest that former fighters' views of transitional justice are shaped by the intimacy with which they experience transitional justice: whether they are known to, in close proximity, and accepted by the communities they victimized. Their attitudes are also constrained by the norms of justice in which they have been socialized, and by the extent of the risks to them personally: in judicial terms given their own culpability and in security terms given their vulnerability to retribution. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 69.2748]
69.2396
Articles by Karl-Rudolf KORTE; Horst MÖLLER; Lothar PROBST; Frank DECKER; Jasmin SIRI; Ekkehard FELDER.