Abstract
62.7578 ADAMU, Fatima L.; PARA-MALLAM, Oluwafunmilayo J. —
Legal reform is necessary but not sufficient to realize women's rights. This paper compares two campaigns for legal reform in Nigeria: attempts to domesticate the UN Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in federal law, which resulted in defeat of the bill in 2007, and a successful campaign to introduce legislation to prevent the mistreatment of widows in Anambra State. It considers the role of religion in the campaigns, by examining how the women's movement engaged with religious actors. The research shows that religious beliefs, discourses, and actors had a significant influence on the outcomes of the campaigns, in part because of the content of the proposed legislation, but also because of the strategies adopted by the campaigners and the interests of the religious bodies concerned. [R, abr.]
62.7579 AKKERMAN, Tjitske; LANGE, Sarah L. de —
Radical right parties are becoming increasingly likely candidates to participate in government coalitions in Western Europe. Our overview of the electoral effects of government participation of six parties in national governments shows that they do not run a higher risk of losing votes after government participation than other parties. There is considerable variation, however. Some radical right parties experienced great losses, while others won additional support. Focusing on the ways in which radical right parties conducted themselves in government, we explore why some parties won votes and others lost in post-incumbency elections. We compare their policy achievements with regard to immigration and integration policies, the performance of their ministers, and the party coherence of the six parties in office. Policy records do not fully explain the variation in post-incumbency electoral results. [R, abr.]
62.7580 ALLERN, Elin H.; SAGLIE, Jo —
This article addresses the issue of how parties organize and work across territory in unitary states. Concentrating on policy-making in Norway, it provides a multi-dimensional description of intra-party links and power relations. Norwegian parties tend to be well-integrated, partially governed bottom-up, rather centralized, and to allow significant local autonomy. Hence, the findings support the hypothesis that non-hierarchical elements might develop within parties in unitary, as well as federal, settings. However, the parties examined are still quite far from the stratarchical imperative described in R.S. Katz and P. Mair's cartel party thesis, and the documented degree of vertical integration and, to a lesser extent, centralization corresponds to the unitary nature of the state. The article briefly speculates on what might explain the somewhat conflicting nature of Norwegian party organizations. [R, abr.]
62.7581 ALTAN-OLCAY, Ozlem; ICDUYGU, Ahmet —
This article comparatively assesses the meaning of civil society in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey, by utilizing the results of a study conducted among civil society actors. In recent decades, civil society has become integral to discussions of political liberalization. At the same time, there is a growing rift between international democracy promotion through investment in civil society and the more critical literature on the relationship between the two. This article contributes to these debates by comparing the actual experiences of civil society actors. [R, abr.]
62.7582 ALVAREZ, R. Michael; SINCLAIR, Betsy —
We apply social network theory to study patterns of legislative choices under different primary election systems, and this approach leads us to study how electoral institutions affect the interactions between legislators. We use data on legislative voting behavior from the California [US] State Assembly and exploit the changes that have been implemented in California's primary elections process over the past two decades. Specifically, we hypothesize that legislators elected during the years in which a nonpartisan blanket primary was used in California (1998 and 2000) will be more centrally networked and more likely to compromise with other legislators. We find evidence to support the hypothesis: legislators elected under the nonpartisan blanket primary are more likely to agree with other legislators. Electoral institutions, especially primary elections, have important effects on legislative behavior. [R, abr.]
62.7583 ANDRÉ, Audrey; WAUTERS, Bram; PILET, Jean-Benoit —
This article analyzes the decision of Belgian voters to cast a preference vote in the 2009 regional elections. Preference votes could be given three meanings. First, preference voting appears to be a sophisticated voting behavior more accessible to politically interested and involved voters. Second, preference voters are more likely to support candidates when they know one or several specific candidates directly or via the media. Finally, preference voting is also very much dependent on the structure of institutional incentives. The more influence a preference vote has on the process of intra-party seat-allocation, the more likely voters are to make the effort. This article shows the diversity of motivations behind preference voting, and more importantly the different meanings it could take in elections. [R, abr.]
62.7584 ARAPI, Lindita —
A new political party in Albania is presently attracting the attention in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. The Black-Red-Alliance (AK), named after the colors of the national Albanian flag, brings turmoil to the Albanian political landscape. The AK started its political life as a regular Albanian party in March 2012 by attacking all major politicians, as they failed in advancing Albania's EU-integration process. AL presents itself as the new hope for all Albanians wherever they may live and meets a positive reaction. Moreover, it is especially the nationalist demand for the unification of Albania and Kosovo that causes further major discussions in the Albanian public opinion. Is AK a real nationalistic danger in the Southern Balkans or simply a new Albanian party looking for its electorate? [R]
62.7585 ARRUDA DE ALMEIDA, Monica —
Following Brazilian President D. Rousseff's inauguration in 2011, a series of corruption scandals emerged within the highest echelon of her administration. The scandals threatened to blemish Rousseff's reputation as a pragmatic technocrat with little tolerance for petty politics and administrative incompetence. This article looks at how extensive corruption is in Brazil as well as the ability of the administration of Rousseff to persistently resist criticism. [R]
62.7586 ARTER, David — “
This article analyzes the performance of the political parties in each of the 103 general elections staged in the five Nordic states between 1944 and 2011. It follows the work of J. Sundberg, focusing on the three “pole parties” that emerged from the struggle between labor and capital (Social Democrats versus Conservatives), on the one hand, and between rural and urban economies (Agrarians versus Conservatives) on the other, and [evaluates] his conclusion of “a remarkable stability among the three pole parties”. Sundberg characterizes Scandinavia as “an enduring party system”. [Yet] there have been a number of “big bang” elections and a striking rise in support for parties in the “Others” category. What does the significant growth in this category indicate about the nature of electoral party system change in Scandinavia? [R, abr.]
62.7587 ARZHEIMER, Kai —
The 2011 election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a political earthquake: Following a string of political scandals, the SPD lost almost ten percent, while the CDU could hardly improve on their disastrous 2006 result. The Greens more than tripled their last result, allowing them to enter a coalition with the SPD for the first time. Analyses show that the party improved most in their urban strongholds while still showing a (relatively) weak performance in rural areas. This will make it difficult to sustain the momentum of their victory. Moreover, the SPD is battered and bruised and needs to select a new leader, but veteran minister-president K. Beck shows no inclination to step down. This does not bode well for a coalition that needs to organize the state's fiscal consolidation and structural transformation. [R, abr.]
62.7588 ARZHEIMER, Kai; EVANS, Jocelyn —
The effect of geographical distance between candidate and voter on vote-likelihood in the UK is essentially untested. In systems where constituency representatives vie for local inhabitants' support in elections, candidates living closer to a voter would be expected to have a greater probability of receiving that individual's support, other things being equal. We test this concept using constituency data from the British General Election of 2010 and the British Election Survey, together with geographical data from Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, to test the hypothesis that candidate distance matters in voters' choice of candidate. Using a conditional logit model, we find that the distance between voter and candidates from the three main parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) matters in English constituencies. [R, abr.]
62.7589 ASHE, Jeanette; STEWART, Kennedy —
Many legislative recruitment scholars seek to explain why women, visible minorities and other social groups are underrepresented in the world's legislatures. Researchers in this area often use a supply-and-demand metaphor to frame their work, but cannot agree whether underrepresentation is mainly a supply- or demand-side problem. This article offers a new approach to operationalizing supply and demand and shows how reverse-flow diagnostic testing, supply-first analysis and an improved testing regime can pinpoint when and why underrepresentation begins to occur in any political system. The new diagnostic approach is applied to data from a provincial election in British Columbia, Canada. The new diagnostic and BC case demonstrates how underrepresentation in any political system is attributable to demand-side discrimination by gatekeepers and not an undersupply of political aspirants from any particular social group. [R, abr.]
62.7590 AUSTIN, Sharon D. Wright; MIDDLETON, Richard T.; YON, Rachel —
This research examines group consciousness among people of African descent in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and its possible impact on their political participation. Using an original survey of over one thousand respondents, the authors question whether African-Americans and black ethnics (Africans, Afro-Caribbean Americans, Afro-Cuban Americans, and Haitians) possess a shared group consciousness and, if so, why. Second, does group consciousness or socio-economic status most influence the political participation of our respondents? The authors find that these groups have a common consciousness because of their skin color, experiences with discrimination, common interests, similar ideological views, and leadership preferences. They also find that while group consciousness has more of an impact on African-American political participation, socio-economic status more heavily influences black ethnics. [R, abr.]
62.7591 AZROUT, Rachid; VAN SPANJE, Joost; DE VREESE, Claes —
First, this study tests for media effects on support for EU enlargement in a natural setting, while including actual media content in the analysis. Second, the moderation by anti-immigrant attitudes of media effects is tested, as it is argued that perceptions of others' influences how new information on enlargement is received. The study draws on a two-wave panel survey and a media content-analysis in 21 countries. The results suggest there is a media effect, although not from individual exposure but from the information environment. In addition, individuals with stronger anti-immigrant attitudes are more strongly affected by a negative information environment. [R]
62.7592 BAGASHKA, Tanya —
Do electoral rules affect the progress of economic reforms? The students of economic reform have neglected the more direct effects of electoral rules, namely the extent to which they encourage the personal vote. More broadly, studies of the effect of electoral rules on economic policy have relied on the simplistic SMD/PR distinction and have neglected features of electoral institutions that affect the level of intra-party competition. Building on the personal vote literature, we argue that electoral institutions that encourage the personal vote are not conducive to reform progress. We provide the first systematic multivariate cross-country test of the implications of the personal vote literature for economic reform in the context of the post-communist countries from 1990 to 2006. [R, abr.]
62.7593 BALESTRINI, Pierre P. —
This article empirically investigates the significant rise in public Euroskepticism in Italy in the post-Maastricht period. This decline in EU support is all the more surprising and significant as Italian public opinion has traditionally strongly supported the EU, and as the large majority of Italian political parties and media still remain today strongly in favor of European integration. Using Eurobarometer data, our results demonstrate that the perceived negative EU role in socio-economic and societal issues explains this decline in EU support. The effects of socio-economic and societal issues on EU support are also found to interact with one another. These results are compared to those of two similar large EU member states, namely the UK and France, and implications are drawn. [R, abr.]
62.7594 BALESTRINI, Pierre P. —
This article examines the pattern of interactions between education, occupation, personal economic expectations and feelings of national identity and how these interactions affect public support for the EU. Using Eurobarometer data from 1993 to 2006, the results in this paper demonstrate that occupation mediates the relationship between EU support and education. It is also found that the sway of citizens' personal financial expectations on EU support is not conditioned by education and occupation. Finally citizens' personal economic expectations are not found to condition the relationship between EU support and feelings of national identity. [R, abr.]
62.7595 BAUER, Gretchen — “
It has been 25 years since the National Resistance Movement took power in Uganda and ushered in an era of women's increased presence in African legislatures. In 2008, Uganda's neighbor Rwanda became the first country in the world to have more women than men in a chamber of parliament. In mid-2012, eight African countries were among the top 30 countries worldwide in terms of women's presence in a single or lower house of parliament. Across the continent one country after another has taken measures to increase women's presence in the national legislature. This article provides an update on these developments within sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, it evaluates women's descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation in African parliaments in the last quarter-century by reviewing a growing literature. [R, abr.]
62.7596 BAWN, Kathleen, et al. —
We propose a theory of political parties in which interest groups and activists are the key actors, and coalitions of groups develop common agendas and screen candidates for party nominations based on loyalty to their agendas. This theoretical stance contrasts with currently dominant theories, which view parties as controlled by election-minded politicians. The difference is normatively important because parties dominated by interest groups and activists are less responsive to voter preferences, even to the point of taking advantage of lapses in voter attention to politics. Our view is consistent with evidence from the formation of national parties in the 1790s, party position change on civil rights and abortion, patterns of polarization in Congress, policy design and nominations for state legislatures, Congress, and the presidency. [R]
62.7597 BEACHÁIN, Donnacha Ó. —
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Abkhazia are pluralistic and competitive. They have led to the transfer of power from government to opposition forces. This in itself is a remarkable fact in the post-Soviet context, where the outcome of elections very often is determined in advance by the ruling elite. The article explains how and why this form of electoral democracy could occur in Abkhazia, arguably the most ethnically heterogeneous of all post-Soviet de facto states. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources and data from within Abkhazia, particularly interviews with key players, the author describes the remarkable willingness of the main political actors to compromise and assesses to what extent Abkhazia's democratic credentials are sustainable. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7478]
62.7598 BEISCHL, Martin —
This paper analyzes the role played by anti-European political parties in the context of South Eastern Europe's EU integration process, with special attention to the structural factors enabling their electoral success. Comparing Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia shows that it is not justified to speak of an Eastern or South Eastern European type of Euroskepticism among political parties because there are tremendous differences between the various countries concerning the relevance and content of criticisms directed towards the EU. Nevertheless, the varying degree of electoral success enjoyed by anti-European parties can be explained, to some extent, by the presence of populism in the individual country's political culture, by the opportunity structures provided by the electoral and party system and by the way the country's accession process is conducted by its political elites. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7774]
62.7599 BELLUCCI, Paolo —
Between 1996 and 2008, Italy experienced four government alternations in as many consecutive elections. It could be argued that after the dramatic party change in the early 1990s, the Italian system is in a state of constant flux and voters appear rather bewildered. This paper presents an opposite argument, showing that voters' choice reflects the greater importance of valence politics — performance, the economy — acting as a cue to voting behavior, interacting with a long-term political predisposition. In turn, this promotes parties' responsiveness and accountability since the overall performance of a government — even of a coalition government — appears as a goal to be shared by all partners, under the threat of defeat for all. The analysis is carried out employing the Italian National Elections Studies series. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7600 BELLUCCI, Paolo; COSTA LOBO, Marina; LEWIS-BECK, Michael S. —
This paper introduces the articles which address the issue of democratic accountability and economic voting in polities on the European periphery. The economic crisis that hit the world economy in 2008 has severely challenged the capacity of governments to steer the national economy and has had a strong impact on their electoral support. The papers discuss whether economic voting and democratic accountability are increasing or, on the other hand, they could be depressed by globalization and by shifts of ruling competence from the national to the supranational European arena. [R] [Introduction to a thematic issue of the same title, edited by the authors. See also Abstr. 62.7599, 7618, 7638, 7686, 7688, 7755, 7768, 7785, and Thomas J. SCOTTO's “Conclusion: thinking about models of economic voting in hard times”, pp. 529–531]
62.7601 BELOT, Céline; BRÉCHON, Pierre —
Attitudes towards immigrants have played a major role in French politics in the last 50 years. Understanding how these attitudes are structured and what makes people become more tolerant or intolerant of immigrants appears therefore essential. In the literature, five hypotheses have been tested: the interest hypothesis, the cognitive hypothesis, the authoritarian attitudinal system hypothesis, the contact hypothesis and the contextual hypothesis. Recent studies have emphasized the importance of context. This article revisits these hypotheses using the French European Values Study data-sets. Our results confirm the increase in tolerance of immigrants over the last 20 years. Disentangling the attitudinal system to which these opinions belong allows us to claim that this growth of tolerance is, at least partly, an effect of the individualization of society. [R] [First of two articles on “The impact of citizens' values on French politics”. See also Abstr. 62.7653]
62.7602 BERINSKY, Adam J.; HUBER, Gregory A.; LENZ, Gabriel S. —
We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com 's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the US population than in-person convenience samples — the modal sample in published experimental political science — but less representative than subjects in internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples. [R]
62.7603 BERLET, Chip —
The Tea Parties are a right-wing populist movement echoing earlier episodes of white nationalism in the US. Power elites have encouraged similar counter-subversion panics using populist rhetoric and producerist narratives to enlist a mass base to defend their unfair power, privilege, and wealth. The blame for economic, political, and social tensions is transferred away from free-market capitalism to mythical conspiracies of collectivists, communists, labor bosses, and other scapegoated subversives and traitors. At the same time, defense of unequal racial and gender hierarchies can be mobilized as part of these counter-subversion efforts. Patriots, economic libertarians, Christian dominionists, militia activists, nativists, and ethnic nationalists fit under the Tea Party umbrella in an uneasy coalition ostensibly built around reversing the “big government” policies of the B. Obama administration. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7745]
62.7604 BERNHAGEN, Patrick —
Comparatively little is known empirically about the effectiveness of different power resources in policy struggles and how organized interests succeed or fail to employ these resources to achieve desired political outcomes. The main factors behind the empirical neglect of political influence include problems of measurement and a scarcity of relevant data. To address this problem, a newspaper analysis was conducted to compile a data-set of 163 policy proposals advanced by UK governments between 2001 and 2007 and to record the reported policy position of organized interests. The data are used to assess frequently voiced expectations in the literature about organized interest politics and political influence in a new light. The results show that support from interest groups is positively related to a proposal becoming policy. [R, abr.]
62.7605 BHERER, Laurence; BREUX, Sandra —
This article [examines] the relations of complementarity and competition between participation mechanisms, a topic that has as yet attracted little empirical investigation. We study the cases of Montreal and Quebec City, where, since the amalgamations in 2002, a public assembly/referendum process has been added to the participation tools already in place in the two cities (public hearings and neighborhood councils). What can we learn from these two cases about the impact on public participation of the diversification of tools? To explore this subject, we have chosen to use a policy instrument framework to analyze three factors that affect the interactions between policy instruments: the design of the participation tools, the meaning that the actors give to these instruments, and the institutional context in which they are implemented. [R]
62.7606 BISHIN, Benjamin G.; KLOFSTAD, Casey A. —
This article examines the political implications of the changing demographics of the Cuban-American community. Over the past decade, pundits have predicted a massive shift in Cuban-American voting behavior owing to demographic changes in the community. The authors find evidence that the attitudes of Cuban-Americans have undergone significant changes, driven largely by the increased number of post-Mariel (1980) immigrants. The authors also find, however, that these dramatic changes have not yet been reflected at the ballot box, nor are they likely to be soon, owing to the slow process of immigrant political incorporation. [R]
62.7607 BOB-MILLIAR, George M. —
This article analyzes the factors that influence some Ghanaians to join a political party and become active in the party. It illuminates the multi-dimensionality of the motivational basis of party activism in Ghana by exploring the following problematics: Why join the National Democratic Congress (NDC)/New Patriotic Party (NPP)? and Why be active in the NDC and NPP? Based on interviews, it argues that some Ghanaians signed up for the membership of political parties and became party activists because of the selective incentives the parties dispense to their members. The decision to join a party is thus part of a survival strategy and serves practical ends, immediate or remote, social and individual. [R]
62.7608 BOEHMKE, Frederick J., et al. —
This study considers the importance of spatial context in [US] state ballot-initiative elections. We argue that spatial context provides important information voters use to decide how to vote on initiatives with geographically based policy implications. Herein, we analyze tract-level voting on three California Indian Gaming initiatives. The findings indicate that voters located near Indian nations without gaming were less likely to support expansion of gaming, whereas those with exposure to tribes with gaming were more likely to vote in favor of its expansion. Further, exposure to gaming conditions the relationship between exposure to tribes without gaming and voting on gaming initiatives. Theoretically, the results suggest that spatial location serves as a proxy for the information that voters rely on when voting on geographically linked ballot initiatives. [R]
62.7609 BOLLEYER, Nicole; VAN SPANJE, Joost; WILSON, Alex —
Previous studies suggest, and common wisdom holds, that government participation is detrimental for new parties. This paper argues that the opposite is true. Drawing on a large-N analysis (111 parties in 16 countries) in combination with two case studies, it demonstrates that new parties generally benefit organizationally from supporting or entering a government coalition. Compared to established parties, new parties have the advantage that their leadership is more able to allocate effectively the spoils of office, and can change still malleable rudimentary party structures so as to respond to intra-organizational demands, as well as the functional demands of holding office. The authors set their finding in wider perspective and elaborate on its implications for contemporary West European politics. [R]
62.7610 BOOTH, John A.; RICHARD, Patricia Bayer —
R. Putnam extolled the virtue of social capital by arguing that social networks, civil society, and trust contribute to democracy. Subsequent research, however, identified a weakness in the social capital “model” in its underspecification of the mechanisms by which social capital affects political systems. This article proposes the concept of political capital as a likely product of social capital that links civil society participants to the political system. The article tests this two-stage model of social capital and political capital and their effects on democratization using survey data from eight Latin American nations. [R, abr.]
62.7611 BRIERLEY, Sarah —
This article assesses the position of the Parliament of Ghana under the Fourth Republic. Evidence suggests that parliamentary committees have become increasingly adept at handling legislation, and inputting into the policy process. It also shows that the parliament was increasingly able to oversee the implementation of legislation. Although the findings of hitherto undocumented progress represent a valuable nuance, the parliament's capacity to amend legislation was rarely witnessed. The article argues that parliamentary development in Ghana has been a function of three interacting structural factors: the constitution; unified government since 1992; and political party unity. More substantially, the article seeks to force a revision of the dominant narrative that generalizes African party systems as fluid and fragmented, and African political parties as lacking any recognizable internal cohesion or ideology. [R, abr.]
62.7612 BUHR, Renee L. —
Can extremist parties benefit from a backlash against EU integration? A theoretical model that integrates demand-side, supply-side and political opportunity space explanations for extremist party success is used here in an effort to predict the conditions under which extremist parties may have utilized increased public discontent with EU integration to increase their vote-share in national legislative elections. The plausibility of the model is then tested against the evidence in fourteen EU member states from 1992 to 2006, with the use of matrices and political opportunity space maps. In the majority of the elections examined, extremist parties increased their vote-share in circumstances fitting the theoretical model. [R]
62.7613 BURT, Richard; SIMES, Dimitri K. —
This year's hollow [US presidential election] campaign discourse on foreign policy seems to be a residue of the post-Cold War conceit that the Soviet Union's demise was a historically inevitable manifestation of America's superior values and way of life. Meanwhile, international trends have become less favorable to the US. This national vacation from serious foreign-policy analysis in the political arena is both ill-timed and dangerous. [R]
62.7614 BUTTICE, Matthew K.; STON, Walter J. —
We re-examine voting choice in [US] congressional elections by using panels of district experts to identify the ideological positions and leadership qualities of candidates running in a national sample of districts. We show that: (1) candidate-quality differences affect voting choice; (2) that the effect of candidate quality increases with reduced differences between candidates on ideology; and (3) that the effect of issues on voting depends on candidate differences in quality and ideology. The conditional nature of these effects has consequences for candidate position-taking that challenge conventional wisdom because candidates with a quality advantage have an incentive to moderate while candidates who are at a quality disadvantage do not. Analyses that do not include competitors' differences on both ideology and quality are incomplete. [R, abr.]
62.7615 CANACHE, Damarys —
Throughout Latin America, democratic political structures reflect liberal conceptualizations of democracy. Since the election of H. Chávez, Venezuela has emerged as an exception, with President Chávez sponsoring initiatives designed to foster participatory democracy. This article draws on the Venezuelan case in an effort to gain insight on the malleability of citizens' definitions of and attitudes toward democracy. Two key findings emerge. (1) In data gathered ten years into the Chávez presidency, the vast majority of Venezuelans still define democracy in liberal terms, whereas relatively few have embraced participatory conceptualizations. (2) Although Venezuelans as a whole are highly supportive of democracy as a form of government, no evidence is found that either support for Chávez or defining democracy in terms of participation corresponds with higher favorability toward democracy. [R, abr.]
62.7616 CANCINO, Hugo —
The national-popular movements are a recurrent phenomenon in the history of Latin America. Revolutions and the most significant social movements of the 20th c. were popular and national movements. The national and popular movements led by Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales represent a new left compared to of the traditional left and the new call for the left. These movements built by the people as historical subjects and in the struggle for the construction of a new state by radical democracy, replace the state and national creole oligarchy that excluded indigenous people and mestizos from power and wealth. [R]
62.7617 CAREJA, Romana; EMMENEGGER, Patrick —
We [examine] whether migrants returning from Western countries display different political attitudes [from those of] their fellow non-migrant citizens. The analysis of survey data shows that migration experience diversifies the array of political attitudes: Although migrants are more likely to trust EU institutions and to try to convince friends in political discussions, they do not differ from non-migrants in their attitudes toward domestic institutions. Based on earlier works on determinants of political attitudes, the authors argue that migration experience has a significant effect only when these attitudes are related to objects that are associated with improvements in the migrants' material and cognitive status. [R, abr.]
62.7618 ÇARKOĞLU, Ali —
Turkish elections reflect two competing influences. One concerns a long-term increasingly conservative ideological orientation; the other, more short-term pragmatic evaluations primarily on the economic policy front. This article uses three nationwide representative surveys from 2002, 2007 and 2011 to assess the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. The findings indicate that the critical election of 2002 is not shaped by economic performance evaluations but rather by indicators of ideology at large and left-right ideology in particular. The influence of ideology appears to rise from 2002 to 2007 and 2011. Economic performance evaluations increase in salience from 2002 to 2007 but seem to have somewhat lost their power for 2011. Implications of these findings for the Turkish party system and further research questions are discussed in the concluding section. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7619 CARMICHAEL, Jason T.; JENKINS, J. Craig; BRULLE, Robert J. —
In 1900, there were only a few environmental movement organizations (EMOs), but by 2000, there were over 6,000 national and regional EMOs and over 20,000 local EMOs. What drove this phenomenal growth of EMOs? We examine a 100-year time-series of EMO founding, showing that, in addition to the “legitimization-and-competition” effects of organizational density, EMO founding is facilitated by the discourse-creative activities of critical communities, objective threats in terms of air pollution, foundation giving, and powerful political allies in the presidency and Congress. Environmental discourses also legitimized and competed against one another, favoring “early risers” and preservationist discourse. Environmental mobilization needs to be understood in terms of the creation of new discursive frames that identify environmental problems, as well as objective environmental threats, resources, and political opportunities. [R, abr.]
62.7620 CATELLANI, Patrizia; ALBERICI, Augusta Isabella —
Little is understood of how the perception of candidates' traits influences different categories of voters. Based on a large-scale electoral-panel survey (ITANES, ITAlian National Election Studies), this study investigated whether the voting choice of early and late deciders differentially relied on candidate traits. Results showed that after considering the influence of ideology and economy assessment, candidate traits still influenced the voting choice of early deciders and, even more, of late deciders. However, while early deciders took into account both incumbent and challenger traits, late deciders mainly relied on incumbent traits. Political sophistication moderated this effect, with high-sophisticated early deciders relying even more on the challenger, and low-sophisticated late deciders relying even more on the incumbent. [R, abr.]
62.7621 CELIS, Karen; WAUTERS, Bram —
This article investigates whether group-based politics is still relevant in Belgian and Dutch politics. Based on the PARTIREP MP Survey, it studies the extent to which Belgian and Dutch MPs in comparison to other European countries attach importance to the representation of “old” cleavage groups (class and religious groups) or new groups (age-groups, women and ethnic minorities), and which strategies are considered most appropriate. Group representation of old and new groups is found to be of great importance in both countries. Class is not dead and age-groups are also highly represented. In contrast, religious groups and ethnic minorities receive far less attention in the Low Countries. [R, abr.]
62.7622 CHAMOREL, Patrick —
It is undoubtedly in foreign policy that Obama's first term will display the most success. The economic deadlock, paired with the longest crisis since the Great Depression of 1929, however, will pose serious questions for the candidates, both of whom know their fiscal maneuverability to be extremely limited. The increasing polarization of political opinion should lead to a hotly contested election where the personalities of the candidates are likely to play decisive roles. [R]
62.7623 CHENG, Joseph Yu-shek; NGOK King-lun; YAN Huang —
The evolution of international production chains has facilitated the flow of industrial capital from developed countries into China. Multinational corporations in China apparently make huge profits through exploiting cheap labor, but they also exert pressure on their contractors to improve workers' rights. International NGOs enter into the relationship with their moral force and global networks. The authority of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions was challenged, and new channels were offered in fighting for workers' rights. But within the existing Chinese political system and labor-market system, their roles all remain limited; the protection and promotion of workers' rights in China still demand a reform of the prevalent systems. [R]
62.7624 CHIRU, Mihail; GHERGHINA, Sergiu —
This article is the first systematic exploration of the leadership selection process in the Romanian party system. We use process-tracing and qualitative tools, using data from party statutes and documents of the national conventions. We focus on the parliamentary political parties throughout the entire post-communist period. The analysis shows that nothing has changed at the level of centralization of decision, and inclusiveness with the members' involvement remaining marginal in all parties. The competitiveness of the internal elections presents a more diverse and dynamic picture. We propose a novel typology for cross-case comparisons that illustrates the association between informal decentralization and increased competitiveness. Second, we advance explanations for the persistence of the “exclusiveness” status quo that take into account intraorganizational, institutional, and exogenous factors. [R]
62.7625 CHO Jinman; EOM Kihong —
Generation has played a role in Korean elections, especially since the democratization movement of 1987. We unify the concept of generation effects to produce two dimensions (the aging effect and the cohort effect), and examine whether these have been embodied in Korean elections. Analysis of survey data for two presidential elections and three National Assembly elections reveals that the importance of generation effects is somewhat exaggerated. For the 2002 and 2007 presidential elections, we find that generation had a significant effect on the former but not on the latter. Neither aging effect nor cohort effect had a significant influence on voter choice in any of the National Assembly elections. Even in the 2002 presidential election, in which generation effects are statistically meaningful, their substantive importance is minor compared to that of ideology. [R, abr.]
62.7626 CHO, Wendy K. Tam; GIMPEL, James G. —
In research on American politics, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) is most often thought of in connection with redistricting and the study of election results. In the past ten years, political scientists have realized that GIS can help them address many research questions and data analysis tasks quite apart from these traditional applications. These include the analysis of point patterns and the detection of clustering; the study of diffusion of influence; and the measurement of spatial relationships involving key constructs such as proximity and distance, flow, and interaction. GIS tools also prove to be the exploratory complements to the suite of tools being used in spatial econometrics to test explicit hypotheses about the impact of geography and spatial arrangement on political outcomes. [R]
62.7627 CHOW, Joseph Kui Foon; KENNEDY, Kerry J. —
Large-scale assessment of student performance is a regular feature of the international education landscape. The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) is a recent attempt with a focus on citizenship knowledge and skills. Student political trust data from ICCS is reported here and a mixture Rasch model is used to identify the heterogeneity in these data. The results indicate the complexity of within country and cross-country estimates of measures of political trust. The problem of relying on a single-scale score to represent this complexity is underscored and the implications for citizenship education are discussed. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7138]
62.7628 CHRISTIANSEN, Flemming Juul; PEDERSEN, Rasmus Brun —
Does EU membership influence coalition patterns in national parliaments? For governments in the Scandinavian countries — with their relatively high share of minority governments requiring external parliamentary support to form parliamentary majorities — the question of “coalition management” is highly relevant. This article provides an empirical test of three central arguments in the Europeanization literature on the impact of EU membership on national parliaments when political parties pass legislation in the Danish Folketing. The effect of EU content in a law on coalition patterns is compared across policy areas and four electoral periods from 1998 to 2011 encompassing 2,894 laws. The data provide support for the argument that the loss of national agenda-setting over the legislative process has an impact on coalition patterns in the Danish parliament. [R, abr.]
62.7629 CHU Lan T. —
While scholars have recognized a resurgence of religion, their focus mainly has been on religion's more violent aspects, overlooking its peaceful capacities and effects. This oversight is due in part to the lack of theoretical rigor when it comes to the study of politics and religion. Using the Catholic Church's opposition to the US's 2003 war in Iraq, this article highlights the political significance of religion's moral, symbolic voice, which is as important as the hard power that has traditionally dominated international relations. The post-Vatican II Catholic Church's modern articulation of human dignity and interpretation of just war theory challenges both scholars and policy-makers to utilize the peaceful, diplomatic methods that IR theory and practitioners have made available. Religion's role in politics can be supportive of modern political societies and need not be violent. [R, abr.]
62.7630 CLIFFORD, Scott —
Recent research has adopted a proximity approach to measuring unequal representation, focusing on the ideological distance between citizen and legislator. This approach has produced evidence that Latinos and African-Americans receive unequal representation relative to whites. I argue that work employing the proximity approach conflates two conceptual standards of equal representation, leading to ambiguous results. I clarify these conceptual standards and reevaluate analyses from two previous articles. My results confirm previous findings that Latinos and African-Americans are ideologically further from their Representatives than whites. However, my analyses uncover no evidence that Representatives place greater weight on the views of white constituents. This seeming contradiction arises from minorities tending to reside in more ideologically diverse districts. [R, abr.]
62.7631 COLLIER, Paul; VICENTE, Pedro C. —
Post-Soviet African democratization has introduced elections into contexts that often lack restraints upon the behavior of candidates, resulting in the emergence of voter intimidation, vote-buying, and ballot fraud. We propose a model of electoral competition where, although some voters oppose violence, it is effective in intimidating swing voters. We show that in equilibrium a weak challenger will use violence, which corresponds to a terrorism strategy. Similarly, a nationally weak incumbent will use repression. However, a stronger incumbent facing local competition will prefer to use bribery or ballot fraud. We discuss the applicability of the model to several African elections. [R]
62.7632 COLLINS, Kathleen; OWEN, Erica —
Does religion or religiosity affect Muslims' regime preferences? Developing constructivist and ideational approaches, we theorize why and how religiosity shapes regime preferences. We test our hypotheses on our novel survey data from Azerbaijan in the Caucasus and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Our findings question civilizationist, rationalist, and modernizationist theories by showing that religiosity among Muslims strongly affects regime preferences for various types of democracy and political Islam. Religious affiliation, however, does not. Finally, we challenge standard measurements of democratic support among Muslims and argue for more nuanced definitions; our surveys generate significant improvements in data for studying these issues. [R]
62.7633 COLLOMBIER, Virginie —
Mohamed Morsi is the first civilian president of Egypt, but nobody knows what powers he has. This will inevitably need to be specified within the framework of the negotiations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The confrontation between these two dominant forces will determine the outcome of the constitutional process. Much will also depend on the cohesion of the Brotherhood and the relationships it will maintain with other Egyptian political forces. [R]
62.7634 CONWAY, Lucian Gideon, III., et al. —
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative complexity as the election season progressed than nonwinning candidates. Study 2 presents laboratory evidence that, while the complexity of B. Obama's rhetoric had little impact on college students' subsequent intentions to vote for him, the complexity of J. McCain's rhetoric was significantly positively correlated with their likelihood of voting for him. Taken together, this research is inconsistent with an unqualified simple-is-effective view of the complexity-success relationship. [R, abr.]
62.7635 CORBETT, Steve; WALKER, Alan —
This article contributes to the steady flow of critiques of the big society idea contained in The Political Quarterly. It focuses chiefly on two sets of parallels. The first is between the big society and the policies pursued by the M. Thatcher government which, despite their obvious rhetorical differences, contain many striking similarities, including their neoliberal origins, application of the “crowding out” thesis and uncritically idealized notions of community. The second is between the big society and a policy with the same name pursued doggedly by the Chinese Communist Party for nearly 20 years until being abandoned as a failure. Lessons for the Prime Minister's flagship policy are drawn from the Chinese experience. [R, abr.]
62.7636 CORSTANGE, Daniel —
Vote-buying and vote-selling are prominent features of electoral politics in Lebanon. This article investigates how vote-trafficking works in Lebanese elections and examines how electoral rules and practices contribute to wide and lively vote markets. Using original survey data from the 2009 parliamentary elections, it studies vote-selling with a list experiment, a question technique designed to elicit truthful answers to sensitive questions. The data show that over half of the Lebanese sold their votes in 2009. Moreover, once we come to grips with the sensitivity of the topic, the data show that members of all sectarian communities and political alliances sold their votes at similar rates. [R]
62.7637 COSSART, Paula; TALPIN, Julien —
Research on politicization has stressed the role of specific social spaces on the development of political practices, or even of a political consciousness, among the more dominated individuals. But People's Houses have drawn little attention so far. This article examines the one created by the socialist cooperative La Paix à Roubaix, from 1885 to 1914. We study its role for sociability. The analysis of the politicization of workers' traditional sociability leads us to tackle its effects on individuals and groups who attended La Paix. We emphasize the difficulty to track precisely individual trajectories of politicization. But attendance to the People's House might have been a springboard for a political career and, more generally, fostered the formation of a local working-class consciousness. [R]
62.7638 COSTA LOBO, Marina; LEWIS-BECK, Michael S. —
Whereas economic perceptions influence the national vote in Western European countries, globalization, or international openness, conditions the influence of economic perceptions on that national vote. But how do attitudes toward the EU itself influence the economic vote? After establishing the presence of a national economic vote in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal) we test the hypothesis that heightened perception of European Union economic responsibility reduces the magnitude of the national economic vote coefficient. These tests are carried out on current (2009) survey data, via logistic regression analysis of fully specified voting behavior models, estimated country-by-country and in a data pool. Clearly, the national economic vote diminishes, to the extent the EU is held responsible for the economy. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7639 COUYOUMDJIAN, Juan Pablo; LONDREGAN, John Benedict —
In Chile's two-member legislative districts, we show there are two groups of swing voters, one group for the first seat won by the governing coalition, another for the second. We build a model that allows us to identify the relative prevalence of these voters across communities. Using data on the allocation of discretionary agricultural loans, we find that communities with relatively many voters pivotal for the first seat receive more loans than they otherwise would have, but we find no systematic advantage for districts that are pivotal for the second seat. [R]
62.7640 CROZIER, Michael P.; LITTLE, Adrian —
Taking the aftermath of the 2010 Australian election as its backdrop, this article examines the shifting character of democratic expression in contemporary democratic polities. Increasing societal pluralization along with the growing professionalization of political elites poses significant challenges to prevailing models of representative democracy. Key questions arise about the status of popular sovereignty as traditional conduits of democratic voice struggle to register and mediate new and highly differentiated interests, values and demands. The article problematizes this issue simultaneously as a conceptual reformulation of democratic theory and as an analytical investigation of the reorientation of political practice. [R]
62.7641 CUONO, Massimo —
Governability, intended as effectiveness in decision-making, has been a key concept in the social sciences since the late 1970s. In contrast to political representation, governability is often conceived as the standard for evaluating electoral systems. This paper (1) analyzes Italian electoral debates from a historical perspective in order (2) to assess critically the relationship between governability and representation in the current electoral system. [R]
62.7642 CURTICE, John; HEATH, Oliver —
We examine how much the public say they want choice in the provision of public services, and how far perceptions of the amount of choice they feel they should and do have are related to satisfaction with public services. Our findings cast critical light on some of the claims made by both opponents and advocates of choice about the value the public place on choice. The claim of opponents that the public do not want choice is not supported. Citizens say they want choice and the more they say they want it the less satisfied they are with NHS hospital services. However, the claim that citizens value choice for its own sake is also not supported. [R, abr.]
62.7643 CUTTS, David, et al. —
The Conservatives needed a net gain of 116 seats at the 2010 general election if they were to win an overall majority and form the next government. From 2007 onwards, a unit in the central party organization worked with local parties to promote their candidates' cause in a substantial number of marginal constituencies. The efforts involved the expenditure of several million pounds during the pre-election campaign period in an effort to win over voters in key battleground seats. But was it effective? Using a path-modeling approach, we provide substantial evidence that it was. Not only did it have both a significant direct effect and an indirect effect on Conservative Party support in 2010, but the Conservatives were significantly more likely to win key battleground seats against Labour where larger grant allocations were made. [R, abr.]
62.7644 DANCEY, Logan —
This paper argues cynicism toward elected officials colors how individuals in the mass public interpret information about political scandals. Specifically, citizens rely on prior levels of cynicism toward elected officials when assessing new information about potential political malfeasance. Drawing on panel data surrounding two prominent political scandals, this paper demonstrates prior levels of cynicism shape individuals' interpretations of information about scandals, but cynicism does not affect the amount of attention individuals pay to scandals. Ultimately, the results shed light on individual-level variation in response to scandals, and suggest expressed cynicism toward politicians is a politically consequential individual-level attitude that affects whether or not political leaders can survive ethical transgressions. [R]
62.7645 DASSONNEVILLE, Ruth —
The Netherlands are exemplary of how the cleavage structure has waned and how this has led to a weakening of the bonds between parties and voters and to higher levels of electoral volatility. Christian democratic and social democratic parties are most affected by these changes, because of their strong roots in the cleavage structure. The alterations in electoral behavior are generally assumed to be evolving gradually through a process of generational replacement. Composition effects on the one hand and a weakening of the impact of socio-structural factors, partly caused by cognitive mobilization on the other hand are considered to be the mechanisms behind this generational change. This paper tests these assumptions with regard to the Netherlands on the basis of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Surveys, 1971–2010. [R, abr.]
62.7646 DAVIDSON, Lawrence —
This essay looks at the 2012 [US] Republican primaries through the lens of “localism” and how candidates and lobbies manipulate for their own purposes the ignorance of their voting constituencies on issues not relevant to their everyday lives. After a discussion of the wider process, the piece focuses on the eight leading candidates in the presidential primary race with regard to Israel and Palestine, with an overview of their positions and advisers. It ends with some reflections on the consequences of the peculiarly American mix of localism, national politics, and special interest groups. [R]
62.7647 DAVIS, William —
This analysis focuses on the effects of domestic public pacifist opinion and international security threats on foreign policy outputs. Much work has suggested that governments' foreign policy outputs are responsive to public opinion in advanced democratic countries. Using the cases of several Western democracies, this article offers a theory of the effect of public pacifism on foreign policy. It employs a cross-sectional time-series analysis over a period of a quarter century to test the theory and the generalizability of the hypothesis of an opinion-foreign policy nexus using new measures and broader data. Results here contradict literature on expected public opinion and policy outputs in the Cold War period, yet are supported after. [R, abr.]
62.7648 DAVIS, William —
Does public opinion influence foreign policy? IR theory is divided on whether foreign policy outputs follow public opinion in advanced democratic countries. Using the case of Cold War and post-Cold War Germany, I offer an integrated realist theory of the effect of public opinion on foreign policy. I test the theory and the generalizability of the hypothesis of a public opinion-foreign policy nexus using process tracing as well as a time-series analysis between the years 1973 and 2002. Using new measures, results here contradict literature on expected public opinion and policy outputs in the cold war period yet are supported after. I find that the predicted effect of public opinion on foreign policy outputs to be confounded by such factors as security threats. [R]
62.7649 DAXECKER, Ursula E. —
This article investigates the relationship between international election observation, election fraud, and post-election violence. While international electoral missions could in principle mitigate the potential for violence by deterring election fraud, the ability of international observers to detect manipulation may in fact induce violent uprisings. When elections are manipulated to deny citizens an opportunity for peaceful contestation and international observers publicize such manipulation, violent interactions between incumbents, opposition parties, and citizens can ensue. Consequently, the author expects that fraudulent elections monitored by international organizations will have an increased potential for subsequent violence. This expectation is evaluated empirically in an analysis of post-election conflict events for African elections in the 1997–2009 period. [R, abr.]
62.7650 DE ROOIJ, Eline A. —
This article explores differences in the pattern of political participation between immigrants and the majority population in Western Europe. Using data from the European Social Survey, I find that for immigrants the pattern of political participation is less distinct: participation types are more strongly related than for the majority population; this cannot be explained by differences in levels of resources and engagement, but by differences in the importance of mobilization and by the amount of time spent in the new country of residence. This indicates that the explanatory mechanisms operate differently for immigrants than the majority, impacting not only on the decision on whether not to participate, but also on how. [R, abr.]
62.7651 DE VLIEGER, Pieterjan; TANASESCU, Irina —
Church organizations are engaged in a constant dialogue with the European Commission. The Commission saw this interaction as part of its wider framework of consultations with third parties, based on an open and all-inclusive understanding of participation. On the other hand, Church groups pressed for a more systematic and institutionalized dialogue, based on the special characteristics of Church associations. This article looks at how the dialogue between the European Commission and Church organizations has evolved throughout the years and assesses to what extent it is emblematic of the overall evolution of the framework of interactions between the Commission and interest groups. The recent emphasis on the dialogue with Church groups in the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty can be seen as a sign of changing patterns of interaction. [R, abr.]
62.7652 DECHESNE, Mark; MEINES, Marije —
The present contribution remarks a change in the nature of radicalization in the Netherlands. We note that group-based radicalization is on the decline. Radicalization has become an individual process. We suggest that in policy that deals with the new individualized form of radicalization, the community and Internet monitoring may play a critical role in detecting and managing the threat. However, above and beyond these suggestions, this shift implies a departure from the interethnic context and the religious (Muslim, Salafi) and ideological (fundamentalist, jihadist) characteristics that are typically associated with radicalization. [R]
62.7653 DEGEORGES, Adrien; GONTHIER, Frédéric — “
By combining a series of EVS [European Values Survey] items, we point out that the French grew more skeptical of market capitalism well before the beginning of the Great Recession, and that all income and ideological groups have moved in parallel between 1990 and 2008. Yet by examining the extent to which individual-level differences can mirror the dynamics of politics and inequalities, we show that income does not influence statist attitudes equally on the right and on the left. Ideology thus appears to be a good predictor of attitudes toward economic liberalism and a powerful moderator of the influence of income. Finally, we suggest that the coexistence of different attitude dimensions might explain why the public's demand for redistribution has often been disconnected from election outcomes in France. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7601]
62.7654 DENHAM, Andrew —
Since 1965, British political parties have radically, and repeatedly, changed [how] they choose their leaders. I explain how and why these changes occurred and assess the consequences of the “new” selection procedures adopted by Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. I first outline a theoretical framework to explain the criteria used by parties in parliamentary systems when choosing their leaders. I then examine the four parties in turn and consider two questions: (1) how and why has the process of selecting British party leaders changed over time; and (2) to what extent, and why, have the “new” selection procedures adopted since 1965 produced different outcomes, resulting in the election of leaders who would not have been chosen had the decision rested with their party's elites and/or MPs alone? [R, abr.]
62.7655 DI MASCIO, Fabrizio —
The politicization of the state is a relevant feature of contemporary democracies. At the analytical level, the article contributes to the study of patterns of politicization of the state, distinguishing the concept of patronage from other notions of political particularism often used synonymously in the literature. At the empirical level, the article examines patronage practices in contemporary Italy. It is part of a cross-national qualitative survey that allows the contextualization of the Italian case within a wider set of 15 European democracies for which aggregate comparative data will be presented. The empirical analysis identifies the causal mechanisms that explain why Italy still displays high, albeit decreasing, levels of politicization of the state. [R]
62.7656 DINAS, Elias; PARDOS-PRADO, Sergi —
The existing empirical findings regarding the electoral impact of the EU in national politics have failed to [offer] an unambiguous conclusion. This lack of consensus has given rise to the contested argument that the EU is a potentially relevant issue not yet “awaked” — the “sleeping giant” metaphor. Nevertheless, none of these studies has investigated not whether but rather how this issue manifests itself in vote-choice. We examine the EU issue under a spatial perspective focusing on the distinction between proximity and directional voting. Comparing it with the classic left-right dimension, we show that the EU evokes a more directional way of thinking about parties' stances, rewarding those parties able to overcome the lack of differentiation in the centre of the spectrum and to present clearer alternatives. [R]
62.7657 DINÇ AHIN, Şakir —
This article focuses on the populist strategy of the Turkish Justice and Development Party [AKP] between the 2007 presidential election, when Turkish politics experienced an impasse, and the 2010 referendum over the constitutional amendments. As a means of analyzing populism, the symptomatic approach is preferred over other theoretical perspectives, including empiricism and historicism. An analysis of the discourse articulated by Prime Minister R. Erdogan leads us to the conclusion that he has continually appealed to the masses with an anti-institutional rhetoric that divides society into “the people” and “the elite”, thereby fulfilling the criteria of populism according to the symptomatic approach. [R]
62.7658 DISCH, Lisa —
That acts of democratic representation participate in creating the interests for which legislators purport to stand gives rise to the “constituency paradox”. I elucidate this paradox through a critical reading of Hanna Pitkin's The Concept of Representation [Berkeley, 1967], together with her classic study, Wittgenstein and Justice [Berkeley, 1975]. Pitkin's core insight into democratic representation is that democratic representation is “quasi-performative”: an activity that mobilizes constituencies by the interests it claims in their name. I develop this insight together with its implications for contemporary scholarship on the political effects of economic equality. I argue that the fundamental democratic deficiency of the US political system is a matter of system biases that foster the formation and expression of wealthy interests, while mitigating against mobilization by those Americans who want inequality to be reduced. [R, abr.]
62.7659 DJUPE, Paul A.; CALFANO, Brian R. —
Using data from a national survey of 465 American Muslims conducted just after the 2008 election season, the authors assess whether American Muslims are invested in the practices (political discussion, especially across lines of difference) and norms (tolerance) that many theorists suggest are crucial to the maintenance of liberal democracy. The authors find that American Muslims tend to be intolerant of acts against religion. The authors' explanation draws on intergroup relations theory, finding that post-September 11, 2001, discrimination served an educational function boosting tolerance, and disagreement in Muslim social networks tends to depress tolerance unless it is with an in-group discussion partner. [R]
62.7660 DOM, Rosanna —
This paper deals with populism and “cultural anti-Europeanism” as a type of Euroskepticism among the Russian elite in Moldova. The elite is very present in public spaces and often uses strong symbolism and populist rhetoric. In order to overcome political marginalization caused by the breakdown of the USSR, the Russian elite tries to maintain boundaries between them and the Moldovan government and to legitimize their ethno-political organizations by constructing a notion of a new Eurasian empire dominated by East-Slavs as a counter-balance to Europe and the western world. Accordingly, the anti-European discourse of the Russian elite can be defined as post-imperial. Moreover, the anti-European approach of Moldova's Russian elite is a deeply rooted view of Europe as “the other” which is part of the anti-Western tradition of Russian intellectual history. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7774]
62.7661 DOUZET, Frédérick —
Since 29 May, it is virtually certain that Romney will be the Republican candidate for [US] president in the November elections. But to say that his candidacy has not exactly stirred wild enthusiasm in the ranks would be a euphemism. The former governor of Massachusetts emerged victorious from a particularly bitter primary struggle, but is still only a fallback choice for many Republican party faithful. Romney now has only a few months to convince his fellow citizens his party does in fact have several advantages. [R, abr.]
62.7662 DOWNS, William M. —
Observers of elections in European democracies increasingly encounter the assertion that campaigns and candidacies have become poisoned by a creeping “Americanization”. When a comedian in Denmark, a professional wrestler in Finland, or a porn star in Italy enjoys electoral success by appealing to least-common-denominator populism, the lament coming from academic and journalistic quarters is typically the same: the US style of politics has, unfortunately, arrived. The literature supporting such pejorative claims is, however, largely anecdotal, usually atheoretical, and almost exclusively directed at national-level elections. Building upon theories of diffusion at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations — and drawing upon individual-level survey data from elections to the Scottish Parliament — this article evaluates the merits and consequences of the Americanization thesis. [R, abr.]
62.7663 DRESSLER, Wanda, et al. —
This article discusses some findings of a research project — “Eurosphere: Diversity and the European Public Sphere — Towards a Citizens' Europe” — [which] evaluated perceptions of the construction of a European Public Sphere and of transnational relations among specific social actors interviewed in 16 European countries, between 2007 and 2012. We examine reactions to the European Diversity Directive in France among three political parties, three think-tanks, three NGO/SMO, and four media. Analysis of their attitudes towards diversity reveals a Girondin/Jacobin cleavage across actors. The Directive had a positive impact in France because it obliged organizations and institutions to position themselves and revisit the debate on racial and postcolonial questions and on the European role in the democratization process of European societies. [R, abr.]
62.7664 DUMOULIN, Marie —
An analysis of a sample of 690 biographical notices of members of the political and administrative elites of Kazakhstan casts doubt on the idea of a continuity in elites during the periods of Soviet rule and independence. The picture that emerges is, on the contrary, that of an elite divided into three generations — communists, komsomol and technocrats — with differentiated career profiles: “installed” and “would-be” and “managerial” technocrats. Owing to the rotation of elites, communists are being replaced at a rhythm that varies among institutions. [R]
62.7665 DURAN-MARTINEZ, Angélica —
For some, given the strong tradition of Latin American presidentialism, referenda can be manipulated by populist presidents attempting to bypass unpopular representative institutions such as congresses or to bolster their popularity. This article provides a more nuanced view of referenda, arguing that presidents cannot always manipulate referenda to increase their power. The effect of referenda on executive power varies depending on the scope of the referenda — that is, whether they aim at institutional change or, alternatively, at policy change. Moreover, the agenda-setting process and the role of political parties in referenda campaigns also mediate the effect of referenda on executive power. Although referenda do not necessarily enhance executive power, the risks of presidential manipulation are strong, and thus referenda should be carried out taking sufficient precautions. [R, abr.]
62.7666 DYLKO, Ivan B. —
This study explores several claims about the democratizing potential of the internet and extends gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content-analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 US presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which non-elites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while non-elites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today's user-driven communication environment. [R]
62.7667 EGAN, Patrick J.; MULLIN, Megan —
How do people translate their personal experiences into political attitudes? It has been difficult to explore this question using observational data, because individuals are typically exposed to experiences in a selective fashion, and self-reports of exposure may be biased and unreliable. In this study, we identify one experience to which Americans are exposed nearly at random-their local weather- and show that weather patterns have a significant effect on people's beliefs about the evidence for global warming. [R]
62.7668 EGLITIS, Daina S.; ARDAVA, Laura —
On 23 August 1989, two million Balts joined hands in a human chain that stretched through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. How has this phenomenon of solidarity against the Soviet regime and historical remembrance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact been narrated and commemorated in the 20 years that followed? This article highlights the memory and commemoration of the Baltic Way in Latvia and identifies agents and contesting narratives in memory politics. It introduces the concept of commemoration spectacle, a collective ritual untethered from the burdens of the past or “grand narratives” of history, which subsumes struggles over memory beneath show and spectacle. [R]
62.7669 EHIN, Piret; SOLVAK, Mihkel —
While independent candidates rarely perform well in party-centered systems, a genuinely independent candidate attracted a quarter of the nationwide vote in the 2009 EP elections in Estonia. This study uses data from the Estonian case to address the question of why voters vote for independents. It develops and tests two explanations: the first construes mass vote for an independent candidate as a manifestation of anti-party sentiment, while the second argues that voting independent constitutes a variation on the familiar theme of punishing the incumbents in second-order elections. The results lend strong support to the latter explanation, suggesting that voting independent constituted a low-cost strategy for punishing the incumbents in a context where strong sociopolitical cleavages inhibited vote-switching to the opposition. [R]
62.7670 EICHENBERGER, Reiner; STADELMANN, David; PORTMANN, Marco —
We explore the quality of political representation of constituents' preferences for budgetary decisions within a quasi-experimental setting. In the Swiss referendum process, constituents reveal their preferences for budgetary proposals which are either expected to increase or decrease public debts. We match individual politicians' voting behavior on debt-increasing and debt-reducing legislative proposals with eight real referendum decisions on exactly the same issues from 2008 to 2011. Thereby, we directly explore deviations of politicians from constituents' preferences with respect to budgetary policies. [R]
62.7671 ELINDER, Mikael —
Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting makes people more positive toward the party or candidate they have voted for. Following S. Mullainathan and E. Washington (“Sticking with your vote: Cognitive dissonance and political attitudes”, American Econonic Journal: Applied Economics 1(1), 2009: 1–86), I test this prediction by using exogenous variation in turnout provided by the voting age restriction. I improve on previous studies by investigating political attitudes, measured just before elections, when they are highly predictive of voting. In contrast to earlier studies I find no effect of voting on political attitudes. This result holds for both Sweden and the US. [R]
62.7672 ELISCHER, Sebastian —
Despite a growing interest in African parties, no comparative analyses of African party manifestos have been undertaken to date. This study applies the Manifesto Research Group's (MRG/CMP) coding scheme to a complete set of manifestos in three countries. The study [considers] whether a research tool [used] in the study of Western politics can advance the study of political parties in non-industrialized societies. It first examines the extent to which African manifestos advance programmatic ideas. [It then] investigates how parties position themselves on a right–left spectrum, [and] outlines which policy categories African parties stress most. Finally, it examines the stance of individual parties on specific policy issues. The study argues that the MRG coding scheme can contribute to a much more nuanced analysis of African parties. [R, abr.]
62.7673 ENGELFRIED, Alexandra —
In early May 2012, V. Putin was once again inaugurated as Russia's president. The grandiose ceremony was only marginally different [from] his first move into the Kremlin in 2000. It is believed that we know him now. But Putin is a quick-change artist. The media's presentation of him as omnipotent ruler, commander, good tsar, and savior of his people uses national traditions from the pre-revolutionary era. Efforts to draw on the aesthetics of international mass media and popular stereotypes cast Putin in the role of modern hero, sex symbol, as well as media and pop star. The symbolic politics of the Putin era has arrived in the age of politainment. [R]
62.7674 ENGLEHART, Neil A. —
Burma's recent [by] election was clearly not free and fair. However, it can also be seen as improving a uniquely unrepresentative government, creating greater pluralism, and institutionalizing differences within the ruling junta. Even the rigged election may have created opportunities for further opening in the future. [R]
62.7675 ENNS, Peter K.; KELLSTEDT, Paul M.; McAVOY, Gregory E. —
We investigate the role of economic perceptions in macropolitical analyses, with a particular focus on the role that partisanship might play in shaping [US] consumer sentiment. Instead of taking consumer sentiment at the fully aggregated level, as is customary, we disaggregate by party in order to see the effects of partisanship on over-time evaluations of the economy. Analyzing four presidential administrations' worth of public opinion data, we find that differences in Republicans' and Democrats' beliefs about the changing economy do not cancel in the aggregate. Furthermore, our macroanalysis shows that the endogeneity of consumer sentiment to partisanship leads to a clear overestimate of the role of consumer sentiment on approval of the president's handling of the economy. [R]
62.7676 ERIKSON, Robert S.; WLEZIEN, Christopher —
Prediction markets have drawn considerable attention in recent years as a tool for forecasting elections. But how accurate are they? Do they outperform the polls, as some scholars argue? Do prices in election markets carry information beyond the horserace in the latest polls? This paper assesses the accuracy of US presidential election betting markets in years before and after opinion polling was introduced. Our results are provocative. (1) We find that market prices are far better predictors in the period without polls than when polls were available. (2) We find that market prices of the pre-poll era predicted elections almost on par with polls following the introduction of scientific polling. (3) When we have both market prices and polls, prices add nothing to election prediction beyond polls. [R, abr.]
62.7677 ERLINGSSON, Gissur Ô.; PERSSON, Mikael; ÖHRVALL, Richard —
What are the causes for political party membership? And why do some members [go] further and [become a] candidate for political parties in local parliament elections? We evaluate these questions using a Swedish survey of local politicians. The article reports three main findings. (1) The results do not support that social status, career ambitions and material rewards are causes behind participation in political parties. Rather, sense of civic duty has a strong impact. (2) Many representatives refer to the fact that they were recruited as a main factor influencing their participation. (3) Our results show that active local party members describe themselves as “reluctantly active altruists”, driven by civic duty and recruited by others. A minority became active by their own initiative, and a majority got involved in party politics after being recruited. [R]
62.7678 EVANS, Diana, et al. —
The accelerated growth of the Latino population in the US has made Latinos a coveted addition to each major political party's base. We examine the influence of ethnic concerns on the party identification of Latinos in the US. We account for Latinos' perceptions of the political parties' concern for their ethnic interests, allowing such interests to be self-defined. In a multinomial logit analysis of pooled data from three surveys of Latinos taken in 1999, 2004, and 2006, we find such perceptions do affect Latino partisanship, along with variables such as nativity and country of origin or ancestry. We also find a tendency toward independence among Latinos. Finally, we find movement toward the Democratic Party in 2004, once ethnic concerns are taken into account. [R, abr.]
62.7679 EVANS, Stephen —
The Conservative party has been the real awkward partner in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. The Conservatives were reluctant coalitionists to begin with: they would have preferred to see a minority Conservative government, they had made far too many concessions to the Liberal Democrats, they had been bounced into accepting a coalition deal by a controlling party leadership, and they had lost out on those ministerial positions now held by Liberal Democrats. There was thus no great enthusiasm for the establishment of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in the parliamentary Conservative party in May 2010. Conservatives merely resigned themselves to an outcome which they had been given little opportunity to influence and which D. Cameron had made it very difficult for them to reject. [R, abr.]
62.7680 FENECH, Dominic —
Divorce legislation was enacted in Malta in 2011 following a consultative referendum. The process leading to the introduction of divorce showed: that the political parties still feared confronting the Church; that the Church itself had been losing ground as a politically coercive or persuasive force; and that the biggest challenge to its status and relevance was coming from below, as a result of people's changing attitudes and lifestyle. This contrasts starkly with the history of Church-State relations and its landmark political-religious conflicts, involving the ecclesiastical establishment on the one hand, and secularizing political forces on the other. Retracing the history of political-religious strife, this paper evaluates the changing quantity and quality of ecclesiastical power in Malta, up to the point when the divorce question exposed its limits, though not its end. [R, abr.]
62.7681 FERMAN, Barbara —
Why are Americans, and young Americans in particular, so turned off to government and politics? And, what can be done to arrest these trends? I suggest that three primary, and mutually reinforcing, trends, which can be summed up as the “relevance factor”, the “negativity factor”, and the “triumphant market factor”, have conspired to pre-empt any interest in government and politics on the part of young people. Consequently, these young people do not develop the skills and knowledge that democratic participation requires nor do they see a need to do so. As educators, however, we have a unique opportunity to address these barriers and, thus, to help repair a key aspect of our democratic fabric. This article presents a case study of such an effort at Temple University. [R, abr.]
62.7682 FIELDHOUSE, Edward; CUTTS, David —
Models of youth turnout often neglect the importance of the household and local context. Drawing on theories of socialization, contextual effects, and voting as habit, we offer an account of why some young people vote and others do not. Using evidence based on electoral returns from the 2001 British General Election, we find that young people's participation is particularly sensitive to the presence of other voters in the household. Using survey data, we discount the possibility that the effect is simply attributable to varying levels of political interest and strength of partisan support between households. [R]
62.7683 FISHER, Dana R. —
Although the empirical reality of American politics has increasingly blurred the lines between activism and electoral politics, sociology has yet to explore these changes and provide theoretical and methodological tools to understand them. Focusing on the experience of young Americans, this review explores this relationship and outlines opportunities for future research. I review the main themes in the study of youth political participation in America. Using examples from the 2008 election, the article examines recent increases in youth participation. Finally, it discusses the case of the Obama campaign, its transition into the Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America, and aspects of the 2012 election to highlight the complex relationship between movements and electoral politics in America today. [R, abr.]
62.7684 FORCHTNER, Bernhard; KØLVRAA, Christoffer —
The 1990s and 2000s saw a memory and remembrance boom at both the national and supra-/transnational level. Crucially, many of these memory frames were not simply about a glorious and heroic past. Rather, groups started to narrate their symbolic boundaries in a more inclusive way by admitting past wrongdoings. We look at a corpus of “speculative speeches” by leading politicians in the EU and analyze their representations of Europe's past, present and future. By utilizing the discourse-historical approach in critical discourse analysis, narrative theory and elements of R. Koselleck's conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), we illustrate how a “new Europe”, based on admitting failure, is narrated. However, we also show that such a self-critical narration of a “bitter past” is, paradoxically, transformed into a self-righteous attitude towards Europe's “others”. [R, abr.]
62.7685 FOX, Ruth —
The Hansard Society's Audit of Political Engagement is the only annual health check on our democratic system. Now in its ninth year, each Audit measures the “political pulse” of the nation, providing a unique benchmark to gauge public opinion across Great Britain with regard to the political system. This year, it finds that coalition politics does not appear to have been good for public engagement. It shows that the public's growing sense of indifference to politics, as highlighted in last year's Audit, has hardened into something more serious as public attitudes become more negative. A number of the trends have declined, dramatically so in some instances, suggesting a public that is turning away from national politics. [R]
62.7686 FRAILE, Marta; LEWIS-BECK, Michael S. —
In other leading Western democracies, the effects of economic voting are well-established. However, for Spain, a strong scholarly current argues against economic voting in that nation. Unfortunately, these various studies are limited, because they are based on incomplete survey cross-sections, which use individual subjective measures of the economy. We employ a full survey pool (of eight elections, 1982–2008), to examine the effects of two national economic measures (one objective and one subjective). In a carefully specified, and estimated, general voting model, the impact of economic conditions, variously measured, reveals itself to be statistically and substantively significant. After all, national economic voting in Spain appears to operate much as it does elsewhere. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7687 FREELON, Deen G., et al. —
Unlike 20th-c. mass media, the internet requires self-selection of content by its very nature. This has raised the normative concern that users may opt to encounter only political information and perspectives that accord with their pre-existing views. This study examines the different ways that voters appropriated a new, purpose-built online engagement platform to engage with a wide variety of political opinions and arguments. In a system aimed at helping Washington state [US] citizens make their 2010 election decisions, we find that users take significant advantage of three key opportunities to engage with political diversity: accessing, considering, and producing arguments on both sides of various policy proposals. Notably, engagement with each of these forms of participation drops off as the required level of commitment increases. [R, abr.]
62.7688 FREIRE, André; SANTANA-PEREIRA, José —
This article tests the economic voting hypothesis in Portugal during the three most recent first-order elections (2002, 2005, 2009), trying to make sense of the multiplicity of choices in the Portuguese party system. We observed that positive sociotropic perceptions increase the probability to vote for the incumbent, even when we control for long-term factors of vote choice; egotropic effects are weaker. Negative economic perceptions not only lead to a higher probability to vote for the major opposition party, but, in some cases, increase the probabilities to vote for small parties or to refrain from voting. Sociotropic effects are actually quite constant in this time-frame, but their strength to explain the vote is lower than that of ideology and (before 2009) religiosity. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7689 FRIDKIN, Kim; KENNEY, Patrick; GERSHON, Sarah —
The struggle for the power to nominate candidates for office between party elites and rank-and-file partisans surfaced in the late 1700s. The battle endures today and superdelegates in the Democratic Party represent the contemporary political elites in the nomination process. Indeed, superdelegates played a decisive role in determining the outcome of the 2008 [US] Democratic nomination campaign. We examine the attitudes and decisions of superdelegates towards the candidates and their own role in the nomination process. We also examine the attitudes of rank-and-file Democrats towards the delegates and the nomination process. We rely on survey data collected immediately following the 2008 primary season. [R, abr.]
62.7690 FRIEDMAN, Steven —
Collective action in support of the redistribution of wealth and power in South Africa was initially led by the trade union movement. But, as more labor-market entrants have failed to find work in the formal economy, unions' capacity to speak for the poor has declined. Scholars and activists have, therefore, come to see new social movements as a superior source of effective action for redistribution. Analysis reveals that the movements are not equipped to lead a redistributive coalition but that cooperation between unions and social movements, and a synergy between their approaches, is most likely to produce effective redistributive politics. [R]
62.7691 FRIESEN, Amanda; WAGNER, Michael W. —
While it is well-known that religiosity measures inform modern political alignments and voting behavior, less is known about how people of various religious orthodoxies think about the role of religion in society. To learn more about this veritable “black box” with respect to whether and why people connect their spiritual life to the political world, we conducted several focus groups in randomly selected Christian congregations in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our analysis offers confirmatory, amplifying, and challenging evidence with respect to the “Three Bs” (believing, behaving, and belonging) perspective on how religion affects politics. [R, abr.]
62.7692 GAMBLE, Andrew —
In October 2011, 81 Conservative MPs defied the Conservative whip to vote for a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the EU. The Conservative party is now an overwhelmingly Euroskeptic party, but Conservative Euroskeptics are divided over whether the Government should use the opportunity of the Eurozone crisis to take Britain out of the EU, or whether it should negotiate a looser arrangement, or do nothing at all. Conservative policy on Europe has been further complicated by the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and by the consequences for the British economy if the Eurozone disintegrates. Public opinion is also divided. British policy on the EU remains ambivalent and muddled because British aims are inconsistent, and because there is no consensus on where Britain's interests truly lie. [R, abr.]
62.7693 GEHL, Katerina —
Through analysis of selected media texts from current high-circulation newspapers as well as from popular non-fiction books dealing with politics or politicians, the author concludes that oppositional and ruling politicians alike are represented consistently in the same manner. Given these developments since the political changes of 1989, the article discusses whether it makes sense to use the western conception of “populism” to describe the behaviors and strategies of Bulgarian politicians. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7774]
62.7694 GIN, Willie —
Sociologist P. Berger once said that if India is the most religious country and Sweden the least, then the US is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. In terms of use of religious rhetoric by politicians, however, the US actually comes closer to being a nation of Indians ruled by Indians, while Australia a nation of Swedes ruled by “Swindians”, and Canada a nation of “Swindians” ruled by Swedes. This article provides evidence for these claims and assesses theories as to what causes greater use of religious rhetoric by politicians. Size of the religious population and the rights revolution are not decisive in determining whether politicians heavily use religious rhetoric. The article argues that the politicization of religion is related to coalition-building incentives with Catholics. [R]
62.7695 GOMEZ, Edmund Terence —
This paper assesses the patterns of financing of political parties and elections in Malaysia. The poor regulation of party activities and of political elections has contributed to allegations of covert funding of politicians, from both Malaysian and foreign sources. Since parties have grossly unequal access to funds, this has led to unfairness in federal and state elections. This paper also deals with two fundamental issues in the financing of politics: (1) Malaysia is one of very few countries where parties own corporate enterprises, a trend known as “political business”; (2) money-based factionalism — “money politics — is threatening the existence of parties and undermining public confidence in government leaders. Party factionalism is based not on ideological differences but on which political leader has the greatest capacity to distribute funds to capture grassroots-level support. [R, abr.]
62.7696 GORDON, Elizabeth Ellen; GILLESPIE, William L. —
Political mobilization by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints against ratification of the [US] Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was more widespread and important than most studies of the episode have acknowledged. Several decades later, the Church is again organized and active in opposing legal recognition of same-sex marriage. We explore why and how the Latter-Day Saints mobilized on these two issues. We argue that their mobilization can be understood through classic social movement theory, even though the Church is not an economic-based interest group. [R, abr.]
62.7697 GREČIĆ, Vladimir; KORAĆ, Srdan —
The paper identifies the basic characteristics and changes in the European migration flows in the last twenty years and to point to their possible implications on the changes in support to the far right in West European countries. It is almost impossible to generalize the characteristics of the migration flows and their effects since the general picture differs from country to country in the number of foreign population and their share in the total number of inhabitants of the EU members which are mostly receiving countries, the net immigration rate and the number of applications for asylum. Although the rounds of EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007 have not caused mass migrations within the Union, the political discourse of the far right is focused just on immigration policy. [R, abr.]
62.7698 GRUBIŠA, Damir —
This text analyzes consequences of the January 2012 Croatian referendum for the EU from various standpoints and from the angle of the public controversy it caused, but also in the expert and scientific discourse in Croatia. It first discusses the date of the referendum, which brought about a dispute between the government and the opposition and a part of the Euroskeptic public. Second, controversy arose regarding participation in the referendum, approached here in the context of irregularity accusations. Third, there is the issue of the referendum's legality and legitimacy, and the author draws a comparison with referenda held in other accession countries. [R, abr.]
62.7699 GRUDCYNA, Ljudmila Yu.; PETROV, Semen M. —
The state is a necessary factor for the creation and the very existence of a civil society. If the state did not use force, will or compulsion in certain matters of public and economic life, disorder and chaos would take over. The middle class and civil society are probably the ones most concerned, civil society being a self-adjustable economic force and a difficult system needing constant control from the state. Interpretations of the Russian civil society tend to be idealist and in many respects do not reflect the reality of modern Russia. A great role in the relation between people and civic society plays power (the state), which over the last decade has been imitating the creation of a civil society.
62.7700 GU Man-Li; BOMHOFF, Eduard J. —
This article presents a cross-country empirical analysis of the relationship between religion and political attitudes among the Catholic and Muslim publics, using the most recent data from the World Values Survey. We find that public support for democracy is stronger among the better educated in both the Catholic and Muslim countries. Contrary to the conventional belief that pious believers are less receptive to democracy, individual religiosity, measured by belief in God, is found to have a significant positive impact on desire for democracy in both types of society. Our findings further indicate that at the societal level, overt support for democracy is consistently positively correlated to the attachment of a set of more implicit tolerant civil values in Catholic-majority countries, while exactly the opposite is observed in Muslim-majority countries. [R]
62.7701 HABEL, Philip D. —
Media elites strive to shape the policy preferences of their audience through the publication of their opinions. Scholars, however, have not fully distilled whether the opinions communicated by media elites are successful in moving the public or politicians toward their preferred policy position, or whether media is responsive to these actors. This article offers a means of assessing media influence. I provide measures of the policy preferences of two leading newspaper editorial pages, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and employ these scales in a dynamic time series analysis. I find that the announced positions of the media have minimal influence. Rather, I find evidence of a movable media, where media opinion shifts in response to changes in the policy positions of politicians. [R]
62.7702 HAKHVERDIAN, Armen; VAN DER BRUG, Wouter; VRIES, Catherine de —
M. Bovens and A. Wille [“The education gap in participation and its political consequences”, ibid. 45(4), Dec. 2010: 393–422, Abstr. 61.817; Diplomatiedelocratie: Over de spanning tussen meritocratie en democratie, Amsterdam, 2011) state that the Netherlands has turned into a “diploma-democracy”. They argue that the higher educated have come to dominate political processes in the Netherlands. While the effect of education on political and civic participation is well documented, they make a longitudinal claim — that the political gap between education groups has increased over time. Yet, the longitudinal evidence presented to back up their claim is limited. We track the education gap in various political behaviors and attitudes in the Netherlands from 1971 to 2010. Our analyses show no evidence for a widening educational gap. In the case of political interest, the gap between educational groups has even narrowed significantly. [R] [See also Abstr. 62.7885]
62.7703 HALL, Richard L.; REYNOLDS, Molly E. —
This article examines where, when, and why interest groups run television issue advertisements. We start from the premise that issue advertising is a form of outside lobbying, but we argue that it can serve two legislative ends. We hypothesize that group strategists will target areas represented by committee allies they want to mobilize more than pivotal members they want to convert. When a roll call is approaching and the vote is likely to be close, however, groups will expand their advertising targets to include floor voters near the chamber pivot. Our statistical tests use data on television issue ads concerning the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. [R, abr.]
62.7704 HALPIN, Darren R.; THOMAS, H.F., III —
This article probes the variation in the breadth of policy engagement among organized interests. The literature, heavily shaped by large-n US studies of Washington and its lobbying system, suggests many reasons for organized interests to focus policy engagement relatively narrowly. This claim of policy specialization has been long repeated in the British public policy literature. This article empirically tests the extent to which expectations of narrowed engagement hold in a UK context. It uses a new Scottish dataset that tracks actual engagement by any organized interest on executive policy consultations over a 25-year period. It tracks over 90,000 “mobilization events” by over 18,000 organizations in 1,690 distinct consultation issues across the entire Scottish policy system. [R, abr.]
62.7705 HANIF, Noman —
Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) or the Liberation Party, established in 1952, has continued to challenge the widespread conception that political Islam has so far failed in the contemporary era to provide a systematic philosophical, political and social alternative to global capitalism and the nation-state. Yet HT's ideological and political construct has been largely unexplored. Academic discourse on the movement seemed to be moving in the right direction until the events of 9/11 [2001], when the focus radically changed and HT was increasingly considered through the lens of international terrorism. This article critically assesses the validity of these more recent perspectives from the standpoint of the pre-9/11 established academic discourse on the movement. [R, abr.]
62.7706 HANSEN, Martin Ejnar; DEBUS, Marc —
Analyzing the roll-call votes of the MPs of the Weimar Republic we find: (1) that party competition in the Weimar parliaments can be structured along two dimensions: an economic left-right and a pro-/anti-democratic. Remarkably, this is stable throughout the entire lifespan of the Republic and not just in the later years and despite the varying content of votes across the lifespan of the Republic, and (2) that nearly all parties were troubled by intra-party divisions, though, in particular, the national socialists and communists became homogeneous in the final years of the Republic. [R]
62.7707 HARCOURT, Alison — “
By selecting the cases of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and the agreement of “cultural protocols” in trade agreements between the EU and third countries, this article explains why and how the third sector should be considered in analyses of regulatory co-operation at the international level. The article investigates key triggers of regulatory competition and how non-governmental organizations and broader coalitions of third-sector actors played a key role in fostering cooperation. [R]
62.7708 HARRIS-HOGAN, Shandon —
This article explores the presence and evolution of neojihadism in Australia. Through the use of a modified social network analysis, it identifies, analyzes and visualizes individual neojihadists who are either Australian citizens, or have presented a threat on Australian soil. The roles which each of the various participants undertook within the network are documented, as is each cell's size and structure. Following analyses of five cells, a map is presented visualizing a network of Australian neojihadists over time and space. This map is then analyzed in order to better understand how the Australian neojihadist network is structured and operates. [R]
62.7709 HARTMAN, Todd K. —
Scholars have argued for centuries that metaphors are persuasive in politics, yet scant experimental research exists to validate these assertions. Two experiments about the issue of federally regulating the internet were conducted to test whether metaphors confer a unique persuasive advantage relative to conventional messages. The results of these studies confirm that an apt metaphor can be a powerful tool of persuasion. Moreover, the evidence suggests that metaphor-induced persuasion works particularly well for politically unsophisticated citizens by increasing assessments of message quality. Ultimately, this research concerns how individuals make sense of politics and how policy-makers can use what we know about human cognition to convey their platforms to the general public. [R]
62.7710 HARTMAN, Todd K.; NEWMARK, Adam J. —
Recent polls reveal that 20–25% of Americans erroneously indicate that President B. Obama is a Muslim. We compare individuals' explicit responses on a survey about religion and politics with reaction-time data from an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to investigate whether individuals truly associate Obama with Islam or are motivated reasoners who simply express negativity about the president when given the opportunity. Our results suggest that predispositions such as ideology, partisanship, and race affect how citizens feel about Obama, which in turn motivates them to accept misinformation about the president. These implicit associations increase the probability of stating that Obama is likely a Muslim. Interestingly, political sophistication does not appear to inoculate citizens from exposure to misinformation, as they exhibit the same IAT effect as less knowledgeable individuals. [R]
62.7711 HASSIG, Kongdan Oh —
In December 2012, Korea will elect a new president to lead the nation until 2018. What happens in these years will be critical. The first step in choosing a new president is to consider the challenges Korea will face in the years ahead. The second step is to consider how prepared a presidential candidate is to meet those challenges. Korean voters will be tempted to vote for a candidate who promises to make their economic lives better, but many of the challenges that Korea faces are bigger than the nation. The next president must be able to see the big picture of international relations, and he or she will also need a long-term policy to transform North Korea into a society and economy that can eventually be merged with Korea. [R, abr.]
62.7712 HATUKA, Tali —
What is the role of citizenship in a protest? How are civilian rights used as a source of power to craft socio-spatial strategies of dissent? I argue that the growing civilian consciousness of the “power to” (i.e., capacity to act) and of the border as public space is enhancing civil participation and new dissent strategies through which participants consciously and sophisticatedly use their citizenship as a tool, offering different conceptualizations of borders. This paper examines the role of citizenship in the design and performance of dissent focusing on two groups of Israeli activists, Machsom Watch and Anarchists against the Wall. Using their Israeli citizenship as a source of power, these groups apply different strategies of dissent while challenging the discriminating practices of control in occupied Palestinian territories. [R, abr.]
62.7713 HAWLEY, George —
This article tests the hypothesis that differences in the housing market can partially explain why some American counties are strongly Republican and others strongly Democratic, and that this phenomenon can be largely attributed to the relationship between home values and marriage rates within counties. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that, in the 2000 election, G.W. Bush did comparatively better in counties with relatively affordable single-family homes, even when controlling for other economic, demographic and regional variables. Using county-level data, I test this hypothesis using spatial-lag regression models, and provide further evidence using individual-level survey data. [R, abr.]
62.7714 HE Baogang; XIE Yuhua —
In 2007–8, more than 100 Wal-Mart stores in China established trade unions, which were praised by labor organizations and scholars throughout the world. This article questions these positive assessments and evaluations. The empirical findings reveal that both the Chinese government and Wal-Mart have successfully coopted a few more or less independent unions. Although the presence of the trade union seems to challenge Wal-Mart's neoliberal corporate ideology and governance, the compromise and tacit agreement between Wal-Mart and the party-state not only reflects a marriage of convenience but also indicates some deeper compatibility between China's state corporatist model and the neoliberal approach taken by Wal-Mart. China continues to move in a “state corporatist” direction and the transition towards civil society and “societal corporatism” has been stymied. [R, abr.]
62.7715 HELFEN, Markus —
Employer associations' organizational capacity to extend collective bargaining coverage (CBC) beyond unionization levels is one important factor contributing to the stability of multi-employer bargaining in Germany. Based on a representative sample of 142 German employer associations, this article empirically examines the characteristics influencing this capacity. The major results are that a wider political domain and adherence to social partnership positively contribute to associations' static capacity to extend CBC, as approximated by membership density. Yet, in a dynamic perspective, a paradoxical trend is revealed by which organizational stabilization of associations is achieved at the expense of decoupling firms' membership status from collective bargaining arrangements, weakening employer associations' future capacity to extend CBC. [R]
62.7716 HELGASON, Jon —
This article focuses on the Swedish literacy canon debate preceding the Swedish government elections in September 2006. The debate was instigated by an article written by liberal politician C. Wikström, in which she suggested reinstating an official Swedish literacy canon. Wilkström's article sparked an inflamed debate that took place in all major Swedish newspapers, stretching over a period of more than two months in the Summer of 2006. Due to the article and the debate that followed, questions concerning culture and cultural politics were more prominently featured in the 2006 election campaign than in previous campaigns. [R, abr.]
62.7717 HENNING, Peter —
[During] the general election in 2010, Swedish Radio invited seven prominent MPs, each prompted to read and reflect upon modernist G. Ekelöf's 1941 poem “En värld är varje människa”. Examining a key aspect of the mutual relation between literature and politics, this article analyzes the show and its reception in media, identifying the dichotomization of politics and literature as a central characteristic. Literature — both from a consumer's and a producer's perspective — is depicted as independent from, and in every way contrasting, everyday political life. While Ekelöf is not appropriated ideologically in a traditional manner, e.g., using his poems to support a political argument, he becomes a means to step out of an official position, instead assuming the role of a fellow man. [R, abr.]
62.7718 HILDEBRANDT, Timothy —
Identity movements, such as those representing LGBT communities, are often thought to be highly dependent upon international linkages in order to emerge and develop. Although the Chinese LGBT movement owes much of its development to global civil society and international donors, this article presents survey and interview data that show its linkages with the international community are not as strong as we might expect. The economics and politics of transnational activism in China are tightly intertwined. The means by which LGBT activism has developed in China has simultaneously contributed to division within its ranks and with global civil society: the nature of international funding — while from foreign sources it is funneled through the Chinese government — and local political conditions ultimately impedes the growth of stronger transnational linkages. [R] [First article on “Chinese NGOs — international and online linkages. Part II”. Part I: see Abstr. 62.6058]
62.7719 HOBOLT, Sara B.; SPOON Jae-Jae —
Voters behave differently in EP elections compared to national elections because less is at stake in these “second-order” elections. While this explains the primary characteristic of EP elections, it has often led to a conflation of distinct motivations for changing behavior — namely sincere and protest voting. By distinguishing these motivations, this article addresses the question of when and why voters alter their behavior in EP elections. In addition, it argues that the degree of politicization of the EU in the domestic debate shapes the extent to which voters rely on EU, rather than national, considerations. These propositions are tested in a multilevel analysis in 27 countries in the 2009 EP elections. The findings have important implications for understanding why voters change their behavior between different types of elections. [R]
62.7720 HOFFMAN, Lindsay H. —
This study clarifies the differences between political participation and political communication online. Although many studies have examined the nature and effects of online activity, none has effectively distinguished between the two types of behavior. This lack of clarity has arguably led to conflicting findings and confusion about what demarks a truly participatory act online. Using Pew 2008 data, online [US] political behaviors are defined and examined. Results suggest that online communication and participation do appear to be different constructs, and while online participation predicts voting, online communication does not. Implications for conceptualizing these behaviors and directions for future research are discussed. [R]
62.7721 HÖGSTRÖM, John —
I introduce a new concept for examining women's political representation. This concept deals with women's representation both in parliaments and governments: “women's representation in national politics”. The empirical results demonstrate that the independent variable region is the variable with the greatest explanatory power of the independent variables used in this study. The results show that Scandinavia has extraordinarily high levels of female representation in national politics. The results also show that three countries in Oceania — Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu — do not have any female representation in national politics. [R]
62.7722 HÖHN, Sabine —
This article analyzes how discourses about accountability have shaped shared beliefs within and between NGOs in Namibia where the state has traditionally made strong claims to be the sole representative of national unity. Using different concepts of accountability, NGO activists try to advance their position vis-à-vis colleagues, other organizations and the government. In these ongoing contestations agents use accountability sometimes in the sense of accounting and sometimes as moral answer-ability for one's actions. The article shows that global concepts provide agents with room for maneuver to advance their own position in a strong state and in internal fights for turf. [R, abr.]
62.7723 HOLT, Lanier Frush —
This analysis compares how the press covered the [2008] campaigns of then-senators B. Obama and H. Clinton to determine if — when not compared to a White male candidate — the press still focused on a Black candidate's skin color, a female candidate's gender and appearance, and if it continued to portray both candidates unfavorably. As the first national election with an African-American male and White female frontrunners, this is perhaps the first study that directly examines the effect the novelty of race and gender have on press coverage. It found the press still made gender a salient aspect of Clinton's campaign. Also, despite his reticence to focus on race, the press still more frequently portrayed Obama as the “Black” candidate. [R, abr.]
62.7724 ISHIYAMA, John —
What explains bloc voting among ethnic groups in Africa? Using the Herfindahl Hirschman Index of Concentration on partisan preference data from the Afrobarometer, this article tests several hypotheses regarding the explanation as to why some ethnic groups: (1) express voting preferences as a bloc; (2) express voting preferences as a bloc for the governing party or the opposition. I found that the geographic concentration of the group best explained general bloc voting. The degree to which a group is discriminated against and politically mobilized explains bloc voting against the governing party, whereas bloc voting for the governing party is explained by the extent to which the governing party is politically dominant. This suggests that the prospects for patronage helps explain voting as a bloc for almost all groups. [R, abr.]
62.7725 JAHN, Detlef; OBERST, Christoph —
“Party cohesion” is a central concept in the analysis of agenda-setting, veto-players and coalition-building as well as in the analysis of policy efficiency and party responsiveness. However, there is no indicator to measure party cohesion in a systematic manner over time and across parties. As a consequence, most established studies treat political parties as unitary actors although from an analytical point of view they should be considered collective actors. In order to overcome this deficiency, in this article a time-variant and party-specific index of party cohesion is developed which can be used in macro-comparative statistical analysis. The concept of “ideological cohesion” is developed along the Left-Right dimension. This index is applied in order to compare the party cohesion of Nordic social democratic parties (SDs) with their counterparts in 17 additional countries. [R, abr.]
62.7726 JERIT, Jennifer; BARABAS, Jason —
Perceptual bias occurs when beliefs deviate from reality. [US] Democrats and Republicans are thought to be especially susceptible to this type of biased-information processing. And yet we know little about the pervasiveness of perceptual bias outside the domain of “performance issues” (e.g., unemployment, inflation) or how individual-level partisan motivation interacts with the information environment. We investigate these issues in two studies that examine perceptual bias on a wide range of political topics spanning two decades. Using survey data as well as an experiment with diverse subjects, we demonstrate that people perceive the world in a manner consistent with their political views. The result is a selective pattern of learning in which partisans have higher levels of knowledge for facts that confirm their world view and lower levels of knowledge for facts that challenge them. [R, abr.]
62.7727 JÕESALU, Kirsti —
This article analyzes the dynamics of memory politics in post-Soviet Estonia from the 1990s to the present. It focuses on speeches by Estonian presidents, which are treated as a specific type of commemorative activity and studied in relation to other social memories. The analysis links the meaning conveyed in the speeches to the presidents' personal experiences during the Soviet period. The article shows that in these speeches, the primary discourse used with regard to Soviet times was that of “rupture” as well as the related discourse of “resistance”. [R]
62.7728 JOHNSTON, Hank; ALIMI, Eitan Y. —
Expanding on D. McAdam, S. Tarrow and Ch. Tilly's approach to the study of contentious episodes, we develop a conceptual framework to analyze front-stage politics in the light of back-stage cultural and interpretative processes, drawing upon the Chechen and the Palestinian national movements. We elaborate on E. Goffman's original notion of “primary frameworks” to capture the influence of fundamental cultural templates, and his concept of “keying processes” to capture the way primary frameworks are reworked in the dynamics of political contention. We then identify three central components of primary frameworks: collective identity (the subject), what the subject does (the verb) and who or what is the object of those actions (the object). This article identifies the primary frameworks and keying processes of Chechens and Palestinians with relation to Russia and Israel, respectively. [R, abr.]
62.7729 JUNGHERR, Andreas —
The German election year 2009 saw the first attempts by political parties to include Web 2.0 services in their online campaigns. The 2009 election therefore offers the opportunity to examine how political parties outside the US choose to use online tools in their campaigns. This paper examines the online campaign of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with a special focus on the campaign's use of Web 2.0 services. The different elements of the campaign are discussed with regard to three basic functions of online campaigning provided by the relevant literature: (1) presence in the online information space; (2) support of the infrastructure of politics; (3) creation of symbols for political support and participation. These functions were all present in the CDU's use of online tools in the campaign of 2009. [R, abr.]
62.7730 KANOL, Direnç —
This paper explains why there is no Green Party in the northern part of Cyprus. Since the public opinion surveys give a blurred picture, the author relies on in-depth qualitative interviews. Findings suggest that the Cyprus problem, economic problems and low trust in the output legitimacy of the system are the main variables to explain Green Party absence in northern Cyprus. The finding on the impact of the belief in the deliverability of the political system on Green Party formation stands out as a proposition that has to be tested in other cases as this has not yet been discussed in new-party-formation literature. [R]
62.7731 KARADAG, Roy —
Within the last decade, Turkey has experienced fundamental political, economic and cultural transformations. Compared to other Islamist movements in the Middle East, moderate Islamists have been capable of exerting substantial social and political power. How was this possible given the formerly uncontested supremacy of the Kemalist military that suspiciously guarded political developments? This article presents a process-based explanation of the success and political entrenchment of the AKP. It argues that the aims of the 1980 military intervention to bring neo-Kemalist order into the political field backfired and paved the way for moderate Islamists. These, in turn, not only safeguarded their place within the regime, but engaged in contentious interactions with the military, thereby introducing gradual changes with one revolutionary institutional outcome: a Turkish regime free from military interference. [R]
62.7732 KATSOURIDES, Yiannos —
The paper explores the composition, the recruitment mechanisms and the career patterns of the people who comprised the political elite in Cyprus over a period of 22 years, from 1988 to 2010. The analysis provides a useful database on the social and political elite of Cyprus. The Cypriot political elite is small in number and its members have a particular profile and seem to follow certain paths with regard to their political recruitment and advancement. The most significant independent variable explaining membership in the political elite of Cyprus appears to be the political parties. [R]
62.7733 KINNEY, Nancy T. —
A growing number of international networks, like those linking religious institutions, engage in development-related activities across the world. Improvements in technology and increased travel opportunities for international volunteers have given these networks new influence, with unknown implications for the trajectory of development, especially where states are weak. This paper examines the role of a transnational religious network in a newly formed nation: the Republic of South Sudan, where the dominant Episcopal Church has links with dioceses elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. Through field observations, interviews and a survey of US Episcopal Church links in other countries, preliminary evidence is presented about the real and potential impact of this emergent form of globalized solidarity. [R]
62.7734 KITFIELD, James —
The putative GOP standard-bearer both faces a puzzle and represents one. The puzzle he faces concerns the domestic political forces driving his party's foreign-policy outlook. The neocons still appear dominant within the GOP, but it remains unclear whether their continued preeminence is driven by voters or insiders. Meanwhile, Romney's own foreign-policy views are equally difficult to decipher. [R]
62.7735 KLEINEN-VON KÖNIGSLÖW, Katharina —
Presenting new data for a large-scale longitudinal content-analysis of newspapers in newspapers in six European countries between 1982 and 2008, the article explores what has previously been described as the process of “segmented Europeanization” of national public spheres. Expanding on the theoretical concept of political discourse cultures, the article tests the explanatory power of national and editorial political discourse cultures on the degree of Europeanization of national public spheres. The analysis reveals the persistent stability of the pattern of “segmented Europeanization” in which national public spheres increase their monitoring of Brussels but not their efforts to connect with other European countries. Still, the revealed national differences pale compared to the transnational gulf existing between quality and tabloid newspapers which may ultimately represent a far greater threat to the legitimacy of the EU. [R, abr.]
62.7736 KNOBLOCH-WESTERWICK, Silvia —
Right before the 2008 US presidential election, this two-session online field study examined consequences of selective exposure to political messages on accessibility of attitudes and of partisanship. In the first session, participants indicated attitudes toward political issues and their partisanship, which allowed measuring accessibility of attitudes and of partisanship. In the second session, participants browsed articles. Four issues were covered by eight articles, with two articles featuring opposing perspectives. Selective exposure was unobtrusively logged. Finally, participants completed measures for attitudes and partisanship again. Selective exposure to attitude-consistent articles was linked to greater attitude accessibility. The indirect impact of selective exposure on partisanship accessibility through attitude accessibility was significant. [R]
62.7737 KOOP, Royce —
Effective representation requires that representatives learn of the needs and preferences of their constituents and communicate their representative accomplishments back to those constituents. This article demonstrates how Canadian political parties, specifically their constituency associations in the ridings, assist MPs in their representative functions by facilitating communication between MPs and constituents. Representatives of local “sectors” on constituency association executives provide a means for focused communication between MPs and constituents. The result is that constituency associations enhance the service, policy and symbolic responsiveness of many MPs in their ridings. This article therefore elucidates the largely unrecognized role of Canadian parties' constituency organizations as important democratic and representational actors in the ridings. [R]
62.7738 KOPKO, Kyle C. —
Traditionally, Mennonite doctrine discouraged political activity because of its “worldly” nature. But it is uncertain if traditional doctrine influences the political behavior of contemporary church members. This [examines] (1) to what extent there is a religious identity among contemporary Mennonites; (2) does this identity discourage support for political participation; and (3) if Mennonite identity discourages political participation, what is the substantive difference in support for political participation between low- and high-identity Mennonites? The analysis reveals that Mennonite religious identity is widespread in the Mennonite Church USA and high levels of identity decreases support for political activity. Despite this, Mennonites as a whole are fairly supportive of political participation, regardless of their level of identity. [R, abr.]
62.7739 KOSS, Michael —
This article analyzes the institutional-structural, discursive, cultural and political opportunities underlying the success of the Swedish Pirate Party in the 2009 EP election. Even though privacy is usually no subject of successful political mobilization, the rise of the information society provided the Swedish Pirate Party with two opportunities which explain its success: on the discursive level, the Pirate Party was able to associate the protection of privacy with the important (and formerly opposed) freedom of information principle. On the cultural level, new communication technologies (mainly the internet) enabled the party to institutionalize activists' protest and to transform it into an electoral success. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7146]
62.7740 KOWALCZYK, Krzysztof —
The Catholic Church can be defined as a denomination, religious community, an interest group or as an entity influencing the political system. The latter suggests that the Church can act to realize its objectives and intentions: in this sense the Church is an institutionalized causative entity. Members of a causative entity transfer part of their attributes onto the level of the group to which they belong. In order to implement its values and formulate its interests, the Church exerts its influence on political parties so that they can affect legislation and the government's decisions. The Church also affects formal and informal rules that regulate the functioning of the political system, thus influencing the behavior of collective and individual political actors alike.
62.7741 KUISMA, Mikko; RYNER, Magnus —
Recent elections in Sweden and Finland confirm that the rightward shift in Nordic politics is not confined to Norway and Denmark but forms a more general trend. This includes increased appeal of both mainstream conservatives and populist radical right forces. This article contextualizes this phenomenon within broader European developments. In accounting for the shift in question, the article stresses the cumulative effects of choices made by erstwhile center-left hegemonic agents, most notably the consequences of the so-called Third Way. This perspective has the merit of providing a way for holding politicians accountable, and it avoids the fatalism entailed in invoking “inevitable” structural developments. [R]
62.7742 KUNOVICH, Sheri —
Scholars have debated the impact of open-list systems on women's representation. While some argue that open lists provide a unique opportunity for voters to overcome parties' bias against women, others argue that they create additional barriers. I examine several mechanisms that impact women's representation within Poland's open-list system. Results suggest that (1) voters shift women's original list placements positively across all parties over three elections; (2) these shifts are more pronounced when women's overall presence on the list and list placement are lower, regardless of party; and (3) positive shifts often result in the election of substantially more women than would have been expected. These findings add to our understanding of open-list systems by documenting variability in the effects of preferential voting across time and party in a post-communist context. [R, abr.]
62.7743 LADNER, Andreas; FIECHTER, Julien —
Based on the data of a survey conducted among Swiss municipalities, this article inquires into the relationship between different institutional settings of local democracy and the amount of political interest of citizens as well as electoral participation and new forms of citizen participation like participatory planning or local agenda 21. The study identifies six distinct settings of local democracy in Switzerland, ranging from pure direct democracy to representative democracy. The analysis shows that the institutional setting of local democracy has no impact on the political interest of the citizens. It also reveals that instruments of direct democracy do not significantly weaken representative democracy as far as electoral participation is concerned. New forms of citizen participation are predominantly used alongside with means of direct democracy. [R]
62.7744 LAGO, Ignacio —
Relying on data from a natural experiment in Spain, I produce an unbiased estimate of the extent to which strategic voting occurs in multimember districts. I show that voters have fully adapted to the different incentives provided by distinctive electoral systems in Spain since the first election and also that they behave strategically only when the opportunity to do so is present. That is, contamination effects do not seem to exist when voting strategically. [R]
62.7745 LANGMAN, Lauren —
Right-wing populism has typically consisted of anti-statist/elitist mobilizations by the “common people” opposed to government policies and/or various out-groups. Such cycles of contention, typically prompted by various social changes and/or crises, have long been an essential feature of American society. The Tea Party (Parties) appeared in 2009 as a response to economic stagnation and crisis, secular challenges to traditional religious identities and the election of an African-American president. The Tea Partiers were generally highly conservative, highly religious, rural/suburban, lower-middle-class Republicans. Such movements might be best understood as reactionary “resistance movements” that attempt to defend and retain traditional identities and statuses based on race, patriarchy and hetero-normativity that have been under assault by late modern “network” society. If/when such movements gain power, they foster “buyer's remorse” and eventually wane. [R, abr.] [First article of a symposium on “Tea Party politics in America. Conclusion by Lauren LANGMAN and George KUNDSKOW, “Down the rabid hole to a Tea Party”, pp. 589–597. See also Abstr. 62.7603, 7761, 7843, 7855, 7893]
62.7746 LARSSON, Anders Olof; MOE, Hallvard —
Since its launch in 2006, Twitter use has evolved and is increasingly used in a variety of contexts. This article utilizes emerging online tools and presents a rationale for data-collection and analysis of Twitter users. The suggested approach is exemplified with a case study: Twitter use during the 2010 Swedish election. Although many of the initial hopes for e-democracy appear to have gone largely unfulfilled, the successful employment of the internet during the 2008 US presidential campaign has again raised voices claiming that the internet, and particularly social media applications like Twitter, provides interesting opportunities for online campaigning and deliberation. Besides providing an overarching analysis of how Twitter use was fashioned during the 2010 Swedish election campaign, this study identifies different user-types based on how high-end users utilized the Twitter service. [R, abr.]
62.7747 LAWRENCE, Regina G.; SCHAFER, Matthew L. —
On 7 August 2009, S. Palin's posting to her Facebook page came to define a summer of discord around [US] health care reform. This study examines how traditional media reported on the “death panels” claim that was immediately debunked by several fact-checking organizations. Our content-analysis of over 700 newspaper and television stories shows that journalists stepped outside the bounds of procedural objectivity to label the “death panels” claim as false, often without attribution. Many stories, however, simultaneously covered the claim in typical “he said/she said” fashion, thus perhaps extending some legitimacy to the claim. Our study illustrates the challenges to fact-based public deliberation in the contemporary media environment, and suggests that competing practices of objectivity undercut the ability of mainstream media to help the public separate truth from fiction. [R, abr.]
62.7748 LE Hong Hiep —
This article examines the link between the legitimation process of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and its adoption of the Doi Moi (renovation) policy. It argues that socio-economic performance emerged as the single most important source of legitimacy for the CPV in the mid-1980s as its traditional sources of legitimacy were exhausted and alternative legitimation modes were largely irrelevant or ineffective. The CPVs switch to performance-based legitimacy has had significant implications for Vietnam's domestic politics as well as its foreign policy and has served as an essential foundation for the Party's continued rule. [R, abr.]
62.7749 LEAL, David L.; LEE Byung-Jae; McCANN, James A. —
In many of the major migrant-sending countries of the developing world, governments have extended political rights to expatriates, often including the right to vote via absentee ballot. Little is known about the factors that shape transnational electoral participation, however. Using official records provided by the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute, we model the incidence of expatriate ballot solicitations prior to the 2006 presidential election in Mexico. Based on a series of event-count regression analyses conducted at the level of US metropolitan statistical areas, we find that transnational involvement in the election depended not only on socio-economic factors but also on the concentration of Mexican civic associations within the local community, the presence of Spanish-language media, and distance from the Mexican border. [R, abr.]
62.7750 LEE Aie-Rie; GLASURE, Yong U. —
Using 2003 Asian Barometer Survey study data, this paper examines the economic voting model in the 2002 presidential election in South Korea. The emphasis is on an investigation of the relative effects of different dimensions/scopes of economic evaluations on voting behavior, namely whether one form of assessment (e.g., pocketbook vs. sociotropic) can have similar consequences for electoral participation as others. The findings indicate that the overall economy is salient for Koreans to shape their political choices. In other words, voting behavior in Korea depends on how she or he thinks the national economy has been for the past five years. Also found is that voters' perceptions of their own personal financial situations did not matter much as a predictor of voter choice. [R]
62.7751 LEE Sangkuk —
Unlike China's other top leaders, Premier Wen Jiabao has presented his political views after the 17th CCP Congress. Wen's assertive attitude for further political reform has attracted attention from international as well as domestic media. This article utilizes both institutionalism and network analysis to explain this uncommon political phenomenon, while it illuminates the drawback of the attribute perspective which has been used popularly to infer the attitudes of China's political elites. This study argues that Wen's attitude with personality has been produced by some institutional and network factors. They include: the decline of a powerful rival, different functions of the party and state in China's policy-making and implementation, division of policy work among Politburo Standing Committee leaders. [R]
62.7752 LEFEBVRE, Rémi; MARREL, Guillaume —
The article analyzes the process of the candidates' nomination to the European elections of 2009 for the French Socialist Party. It shows that the elaboration of the lists is strongly linked to internal policies and disregards the European capital of the candidates. By linking qualitative sociography and interviews, the purpose is to grasp as subtly as possible the numerous and contradictory logics which govern the elaboration of the lists. The fact that the Europeanization of the candidates is not really taken into account is linked to conjunctural and structural logics. The increase of the criteria at stake in 2009 multiplies the doubts hanging over the negotiation process. [R] [Part of a thematic issue on “The institutionalization of the European Parliament”]
62.7753 LEMAITRE, Julieta —
Catholic backlash against the liberalization of abortion and same-sex marriage laws in the Americas has been gathering momentum through the use of constitutional and human rights arguments. While [religious officials] frame sexual and reproductive rights in the language of God and faith, lay Catholic lawyers have translated theology into constitutional and human rights arguments to halt and reverse liberal abortion and same-sex marriage laws. Their arguments invoke reason instead of faith, based on the claim that the right use of reason in legal arguments leads to the same conclusions as theological reasoning. This article examines the main arguments recently used by lay Catholic lawyers in the US, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil and relates them to the Vatican's position on human life, religious freedom, and gender equality. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7134]
62.7754 LEVINTOVA, Ekaterina —
Did the ideological discourse of the KPRF, the communist successor party in post-Communist Russia, evolve in the same direction as the identity and discourse of the majority of ex-communist parties in Eastern and Central Europe which now embrace social democracy? In particular, did the KPRF's Marxist-Leninist and nationalist-socialist rhetoric change with time as the political climate for its functioning as the only viable Russian opposition party continued to deteriorate? This question is addressed through content-analysis of public documents and internal party documents, which reveals that the latter are considerably more liberal and democratic in tone than the former. [R]
62.7755 LEWIS-BECK, Michael S.; NADEAU, Richard —
Economic voting has been little studied in the nations of Southern Europe. Here we examine economic voting in the Southern European countries of Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece — the PIGS. Through the analysis of a large, ten European nation survey pool, we establish that economic voting exists in the PIGS, with a strength that significantly exceeds that in non-PIGS of Northern Europe. The explanation for such a difference, we suggest, lies in the generally less complex governing coalitions and the poorer economic performance that characterize these Southern European nations. This relatively greater strength of the economic vote in the PIGS implies their electorates will hold government tightly accountable for management of the ongoing economic crises they face. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7756 LI Lianjiang; LIU Mingxing; O'BRIEN, Kevin J. —
What precipitated the 2003–2006 “high tide” of petitioning Beijing and why did the tide wane? A marked increase in petitioners was at least in part a response to encouraging signals that emerged when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao adopted a more populist leadership style. Because the petitioners helped expose policy failures of the previous leadership team, the Hu-Wen leadership appeared reasonably accommodating when petitioners arrived en masse in Beijing. Soon, however, the authorities shifted towards control and suppression, partly because frustrated petitioners employed disruptive tactics to draw attention from the Center. In response to pressure from above, local authorities turned to coercion to contain assertive petitioners and used bribery to coax officials to delete petition registrations. The high tide receded in late 2006 and was largely over by 2008. [R, abr.]
62.7757 LIOW, Joseph Chinyong —
The Malaysian parliamentary elections proved to be a historic event. For the first time, the political opposition managed to deny the incumbent National Front coalition a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Attempts to explain the opposition coalition's 2008 success have identified new media as a critical factor that turned the tide in the opposition's favor. This paper [examines] the new media factor at the 2008 elections and its immediate aftermath by analyzing its role, advantages proffered, and limitations in terms of advancing democratization and greater political openness in Malaysia. [R]
62.7758 LITTOZ-MONNET, Annabelle —
Over the last few years, EU institutions have taken on the task of promoting an “active European remembrance” of Europe's 20th-c. totalitarian experiences. At stake in this process is the possibility of constructing an EU-wide historical narrative. However, EU-level debates on the remembrance of European history are permeated by struggles between policy actors who vie for control over the telling of Europe's past. Using insights from the agenda-setting and framing literatures, the article examines the conditions under which memory narratives [can] become prominent or, conversely, lose ground in the EU's overall discourse. Although the constellation of actors in place was a key factor in explaining fluctuations in the EU's remembrance discourse, the weight of their arguments also depended on how well their discourse resonated with existing memory cultures at the domestic and the EU levels. [R, abr.]
62.7759 LORENZINI, Jasmine; GIUGNI, Marco —
This paper examines the relationships between employment status, social capital, and the participation of young people in different kinds of political activities such as contacting, consumer, and protest activities. We focus on the role of social capital for political participation, addressing three related questions: Do unemployed and employed youth display different levels of social capital and political participation? Does social capital favor the political participation of unemployed and employed youth? Is social capital more important for unemployed youth than for employed youth? To address these questions we compare long-term unemployed youth to regularly employed youth using original survey data. Our analysis suggests that the employment status has only a limited impact on political participation, affecting only consumer actions. [R, abr.]
62.7760 LU Jie —
Grassroots democracy has been practiced in rural China for more than a decade. However, evaluations of the quality of China's rural grassroots democracy, particularly electoral institutions, have unfortunately been inconclusive, due to primary reliance on case studies and local surveys. Moreover, the lack of comparable data over time prohibits effective studies on the evolution of grassroots democracy in Chinese villages. This article provides some systematic information on how village committee elections are practiced and have evolved in China, using two village surveys based on comparable national probability samples, implemented in 2002 and 2005 respectively. It further explores the validity of some key theories in contemporary literature on the uneven implementation of village committee elections in China with the help of an integrated regression model. [R]
62.7761 LUNDSKOW, George —
The contemporary lower middle class, as constituted in the Tea Party movement, holds increasingly unfavorable views of government, especially among exurban whites, based on imagined and preferred versions of reality, valorizing the in-group as the hegemonic standard even as their actual status and class opportunities decline. The Tea Party movement relies on moralism (conservative values), essentialistic fantasy (racism and religiosity), and Manichaean categorization (good/evil) to explain the reality of job-loss, rising prices, and severe real estate decline. Rather than interrogate finance capital and deregulation, the Tea Party movement instead indulges in spectacle as both individual gratification and to herald renewed white privilege. However, the simultaneous rejection of the established institutions of power, simplistic policy-formulation, and condemnation of out-groups suggests a racially motivated authoritarianism and destructiveness rather than any particular political commitment. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7745]
62.7762 LYNCH, Philip; WHITAKER, Richard; LOOMES, Gemma —
The UKIP came second in the 2009 EP elections, but niche parties associated with a single issue face a dilemma about how to progress. On one hand, if they move too far beyond their core issue, they risk losing their distinctive position and support base. On the other, if they are to grow their representation, they need to develop a broader platform and this can provoke internal tensions. We assess the political attitudes and views on party strategy of UKIP candidates using surveys at the 2009 European and 2010 general election, and compare them with the views of UKIP supporters using opinion poll data. We demonstrate that UKIP's candidates and supporters are closely aligned, with both groups being strongly Eurosceptic, favoring tighter immigration policies and distrusting the main parties. [R, abr.]
62.7763 MA Jun —
The development of Chinese social accountability illustrates that society itself is a powerful force for enhancing accountability. It can enable a form of societal control of the government in a non-electoral regime. However, the absence of competitive election has limited the development of social accountability in China. The Chinese case nevertheless helps improve our understanding of the role of society in accountability building. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on “Citizen's engagement in Australia and China”, introduced, pp. 101–110, by Andrew PODGER, et al., “Putting the citizens at the centre: making government more responsive”. See also Abstr. 62.7271, 7355, 7356, 7424, 7511, 7530, 7540, 7548, 7570, 7575, 7895, 7896]
62.7764 MAHEO, Valérie-Anne; DEJAEGHERE, Yves; STOLLE, Dietlind —
With a two-pronged methodology, this article [examines] an understudied [Canadian] group: the disengaged youth. Using interviews, we discern four different types within this disengaged group: the criticals, those lacking political resources, the busy and those waiting for mobilization. The “criticals” constitute only a minority of the disengaged group, while the young people who lack political resources are more common. Most importantly, a great proportion of young people show a certain potential for engagement. The quantitative analysis reveals that these types resemble distinct attitudinal and demographic profiles, and differ in their future willingness to participate. Thus the non-engaged are not a monolithic group. [R]
62.7765 MARCOTTE, Philippe; BASTIEN, Frédérick —
A content-analysis of media coverage during the 2005–2006 and 2008 Canadian federal elections by French-language radio and television networks provides evidence of a significant impact of funding mode on campaign framing and journalists' tone towards politicians and political parties. The more a media outlet is shielded from market competition, the more likely are its journalists to frame the campaign through an issue schema and to feature a descriptive tone. We also present evidence that journalists are less descriptive as they cover the campaign through horse-race journalism rather than issue journalism. [R]
62.7766 MARQUES DE MORAIS, Rafael —
After decades of war, repression, and authoritarian rule, the fear that has gripped the Angolan people is cracking under the bold protests of a few daring individuals. Their actions are reverberating throughout Angolan society and catalyzing the important democratic shifts occurring throughout the country. The author discusses the weakening power of the administration's historic tools of control and the possible tone of future popular uprisings. [R]
62.7767 MARSCHALL, Stefan; SCHULTZE, Martin —
Regarding the effects of political internet communication on political participation, two positions oppose each other: while the normalization thesis contends that online communication reinforces already existing disparities within political participation, the mobilization thesis assumes that online communication can mobilize individuals who are not interested in politics. The paper contributes empirically to this debate by analyzing the effect of a popular online application, “Wahl-O-Mat”, on voting intention at the 2009 German federal election. The findings support the mobilization thesis. [R]
62.7768 MARSH, Michael; MIKHAYLOV, Slava —
The paper explores a question raised by the 2011 Irish election, which saw an almost unprecedented decline in support for a major governing party after an economic collapse that necessitated an ECB/IMF “bailout”. This seems a classic case of “economic voting” in which a government is punished for incompetent performance. How did the government lose this support: gradually, as successive economic indicators appeared negative, or dramatically, following major shocks? The evidence points to losses at two critical junctures. This is consistent with an interpretation of the link between economics and politics that allows for qualitative judgments by voters in assigning credit and blame for economic performance. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7769 MASCARO, Christopher M.; NOVAK, Alison N.; GOGGINS, Sean P. —
The activity of the Facebook Group, “Join the Coffee Party Movement” (Coffee Party), is studied during a seven-month period leading up to and following the 2010 US midterm election. During this time period, the Coffee Party Facebook Group Administrator account posted 872 parent posts, which received 152,762 comments from participants. We examine the resulting electronic trace data utilizing a method for analyzing weighted social networks of discourse [C. Mascaro and S. Goggins, “Brewing up citizen engagement: the coffee party on Facebook”, Proceeding of Communities and Technologies, 2011]. Our findings explore the network centralization and total post activity across three units of analysis: (1) time, (2) parent post category, and (3) specific parent posts. [R, abr.]
62.7770 MATTHEWS, Julian; BROWN, Andy R. —
This article examines coverage presented in a news campaign (on asylum and immigration) by the UK tabloid newspaper, The Sun, from January to March 2003. The analysis reveals how tabloid news conventions rather than government definitions or viewpoints frame the character and contours of campaign representations, an observation that throws into sharp relief existing explanations of elite influence or authority skew. It is striking how tabloid representations of public opinion, featuring consistently through the coverage, offer additional hostility to asylum policy and government officials. The article outlines how such representations and appeals garner the attention of the political elite and elite media on this occasion and develop new concerns over the newspaper's role in negatively shaping the asylum agenda. [R, abr.]
62.7771 MAŽYLIS, Liudas; JURGELIONYTĖ, Aušrinė —
This article explores the structural factors and the arguments of the political actors in the Lithuanian referendum of 2008 on extending the working of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Station. By applying a new institutionalism theoretical perspective, this article studies campaign development, its structural framework and the actors' arguments. The presupposition has been confirmed that the value normative environment of the referendum was long-term and sustained, without any “paradigmatic shifts” during the referendum debates themselves. This model of referendum campaign development is typical for the Lithuanian direct democracy tradition. [R, abr.]
62.7772 McDONALD, Michael P.; THORNBURG, Matthew P. —
In 2000, the US media's exit poll organizations began supplementing their traditional in-person exit polls with early-voter phone surveys. Given the rise of early voting, this dual interviewer mode approach helps ensure that exit polls are representative of voters, but it may introduce other biases. Scholars find that respondents may answer questions differently depending on how questions are asked. An analysis of the 2004 and 2008 phone surveys and exit polls reveals differing patterns of item non-response across the two interview modes. Understanding and mitigating these patterns of non-response is important for valid comparison of exit polls over time and improvement of future exit polls and other surveys. [R]
62.7773 McTHOMAS, Mary; BUCHANAN, Robert J. —
We examine the role and potential impact of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) voters in the 2008 and 2012 [US] presidential elections. We look at trend data from 1990 to 2010 to assess the fluctuations in support for the Democratic Party by GLB voters, specifically a substantial decrease in support during the 2010 midterm elections. We use data from the 2008 election to assess the estimated contribution the GLB vote made toward President B. Obama's margin of victory in key battleground states. Looking at the Obama administration's record on gay rights, specifically the failure to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), we argue that the Democratic Party could be held accountable in the 2012 election for their failure to provide protection from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. [R, abr.]
62.7774 MEHLER, Daniela; PETROVIĆ, Ksenija; BIEBER, Florian —
Populism has been a prominent feature of political parties in Southeastern Europe over the past two decades. Euroskepticism has, on the other hand, been a more recent phenomenon and is represented only at the political margins in most countries of the region. The introduction to the special issue explores the relationship between the two. We argue that there has in fact been a decline of right-wing populist parties in recent years, simultaneously to an increase of skepticism toward the EU among citizens. Euroskepticism has not found strong political representation in Southeastern Europe, [due to] the apparent lack of alternatives to EU integration and the inability to dissociate Euroskepticism from right-wing populism, which has lost its appeal and is in decline. Instead, populism does however remain potent in the region. [R, abr.] [Introduction of a series of articles on “Populism and Euroskepticism in Southeastern Europe”. See also Abstr. 62.7598, 7660, 7693, 7812, 7999]
62.7775 MENDELSOHN, Barak —
This article presents al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir through the lens of the relationship between religion as an organizing principle for world politics and the state-based logic. It examines these groups in the context of repeated attempts by religious actors throughout history to render religion the dominant and constitutive element in world politics. While it accepted religion's role in the domestic affairs of the units in the international system, the Westphalian order kept religion subordinated to the logic of the state system. The ascendance of al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir should remind scholars that the existing order is not inevitable and that the resurgence of religion in international politics also involves the resurrection of interpretations of religion that compete with and challenge the logic of the state-based system. [R, abr.]
62.7776 MÉNDEZ DE HOYOS, Irma —
Pre-electoral coalitions in Mexico constitute one of tendencies of party competition in federal and local elections. Their frequency, composition and level of success are examined and it pretends to show that relevant institutional and political factors are associated to the tendency of growing number of pre-electoral coalitions. Findings show that electoral rules that establish costs and benefits, as well as electoral competitiveness are positively related to building coalitions. In addition, and despite opposite perception, ideological compatibility is also important in the process of building coalitions. The evidence that supports these findings consists on the analysis of six federal deputies elections and three presidential elections between 1994 and 2009; and 96 governors elections in 32 states between 1994 and 2001. [R]
62.7777 MENESES C., Aldo, et al. —
What impact has the Zapatist discourse, emanated from the rebellion of January, 1994 had in the Mexican political system? Who were the dreamers of this group who dared to stand “hooded” against an army, a state and the hidden powers behind them? What trends do define the principles and responsibility claimed for the EZLN, and the movement organized around it? This research seeks to analyze the political environment and social impact of the Zapatista discourse, the main weapon of a movement that, soon after the 1994 insurrection, renounced violence and has been marked by a political project in constant construction and redefinition. [R, abr.]
62.7778 MERLE, Patrick; ZHANG Weiwu —
R. Putnam's lament on the decline of civic engagement has generated extensive literature on social capital. However, cross-national research remains deficient. In an effort to fill the gap, this research thus concentrates on a comparative assessment of social capital in the US and France. On the basis of secondary analyses of M. M. Howard, J. Gibson and D. Stolle's “US Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy” survey of 1001 respondents in the US and the 2002 European Social Survey of 1503 respondents in France, this article measured the impact of media use and political variables on levels of trust, citizen norms, associational involvement and political participation. Findings suggested that for both countries interpersonal political discussion, external efficacy and interest were positive predictors for several dimensions of social capital. [R]
62.7779 MOHANTY, Pete —
“Thick moralities” are those that reflect the values or way of life of a community, while “thin” moralities are those that reflect more basic claims to decency that can be recognized across even the most diverse moral communities. I use the 2008 European Values Study to examine attitudes towards immigration and the politics of left and right in the EU and in the Schengen Area. I show that thick preferences increase opposition to immigration in Europe and that thin preferences increase openness to immigration. I also demonstrate that thick values lead to support for the right and that thin values lead to support for the left in the majority of the countries studied. [R] [See Abstr. 62.6980]
62.7780 MONSEN, Lars —
Starting with the historical review of the struggle for participative democracy in Norwegian schools, this article take evidence from history, from recent reforms and evaluation of these to answer the question. The struggle began in the 1920s and is still evident in more recent national curricula from 1994, 1997 and 2006. The author's evaluation research has documented how difficult it can be to follow up reform ambitions to include pupils in a democratic classroom where pupils can give their voice in decision-making and evaluation. In recent years, it has become more demanding to fulfill these ambitions with an influx of pupils from Third World countries where democratic traditions are even less developed. [R, abr.]
62.7781 MOULLIN, Sophie —
For egalitarians, families are part of the problem. By bringing together advantages and passing on to their children, families redouble and (literally) reproduce inequalities. And, by cordoning off a private sphere into which government cannot roam, the family marks the limits of any progressive agenda. But defending families should be part of any answer to social injustice. Family relationships should be seen as a primary good: we need close, caring committed relationships no matter what else we want in life. Families are also increasingly important to one's chances in life. The gulf is widening between those rich and those poor in family life. This should worry egalitarians because lacking good, stable family relationships is a major disadvantage, and one that holds back progress towards other aspects of social justice. [R]
62.7782 MPESI, Andrew Mabvuto; MURIAAS, Ragnhild L. —
African electorates are expected to use non-evaluative rationales, like patronage and ethnicity, when casting their vote. In famine-struck countries like Malawi, it is however worthwhile to investigate how a salient political issue like food security influences voters' decisions. At the turn of the millennium, Malawi went through a series of famines. In 2005, the government changed its famine-prevention strategy and started to subsidies fertilizers. The fertilizer program was a political success and is used to explain the outcome of the 2009 elections. Although this explanation seems plausible, such analyses should be grounded in thorough analyses of the origin and implementation of the food policy. Through archival studies and fieldwork, this study reveals the importance of the opposition in changing the food policy and the politics of the implementation process. [R, abr.]
62.7783 MUSIAL-KARG, Magdalena —
Over the last few decades, a number of countries throughout the world have witnessed a decline in the level of citizens' participation in national elections. Could electronic voting be the solution to the universal problem of low election turnouts? Its followers claim that thanks to e-voting, elections and referenda turnout may be increased, as this method enables disabled people and people who are abroad to take part in elections. A comparative study of Estonia's and Switzerland's cases, two pioneer countries in e-voting, allows for an evaluation of this voting method, which is also much more convenient when compared to traditional voting in polling stations.
62.7784 NAFI, Basheer —
On 17 June 2012, Egypt ended the first presidential election since the removal of Mubarak and his regime in February 2011. This was long-awaited, as many Egyptians hoped that the election of a new president would conclude the long and drawn-out transitional period. Since the fall of Mubarak, Egypt has been ruled by the 19 generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who were expected to hand over power to the new president. But the new president, Dr. M. Morsi, the Muslim Brothers' candidate, triumphed against a powerful opponent. To contain Morsi's rise to the presidency and secure their share of power and influence, the military took a number of preemptive measure aimed at limiting the president's power and authority. This is an examination into the presidential elections and their aftermath. [R, abr.]
62.7785 NEZI, Roula —
Having joined the Eurozone in 2001, Greece experienced a short period of economic euphoria before confronting a major financial crisis some nine years later. In the period between joining the Eurozone and accepting the joint IMF/EU bailout package, the economic situation facing Greek voters changed dramatically. I use this setting to test the economic voting hypothesis. Using longitudinal aggregate data from 1981 to 2009, I investigate the relationship between macroeconomic indicators and vote-share of the incumbent party to test the “grievance asymmetry” hypothesis. Moreover, by using individual-level data from 2004 to 2009, I investigate the extent to which retrospective sociotropic evaluations about the state of the economy are associated with support for the incumbent party. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7600]
62.7786 NYKÄNEN, Tapio —
Conservative Laestadianism is the biggest revival movement inside Finnish Lutheran Church with approximately 120,000 members. I analyze the concept of authorities in the movements' teaching, based on C. Schmitt's theory of political theology. Schmitt's fundamental idea is that secular political concepts share the same “form” with theological concepts and political and religious ideas are thus on conceptual relationship. My argument is that in the teaching of Conservative Laestadianism the concept of authorities can be seen as counterpart for the concept of single, deistic God. [R]
62.7787 ÖBERG, PerOla; SVENSSON, Torsten —
Changing circumstances in Western Europe may produce a decline in the integration of civil society into political life — especially deliberative activities at the national level. This article discusses [the case] of Sweden. It focuses on fours indicators of organized civil society's contribution to deliberative democracy. (1) Have efforts to contact politicians, public servants and the media, as well as participation in public debates, decreased? (2) Has civil society directed interest away from national arenas and instead concentrated resources in local and/or supranational arenas? (3) Is there any evidence of a withdrawal from public activities, such as public debates and media activities in favor of direct contacts with politicians and public servants? (4) Has civil society become more professionalized in the sense that interest groups are increasingly hiring professional consultants? [R, abr.]
62.7788 ORTIZ, Jean —
For about ten years, the refusal of the neoliberal model in Latin America by determined popular movements has carried to the power, in several countries, post-neoliberal governments, some of those have as a horizon a “socialism of the 21st century” They are in search of a new development model, of justice, and social inclusion. To carry out a new redistribution of wealth, they changed the institutions (constitutional convention, etc.) while remaining within an electoral and democratic framework. They explore innovative logics which restore the primacy of politics, within a national framework, and put the stress on regional integration. For the time being, a counter-model to liberalism has not emerged yet, but these countries offer a basis for anticapitalist popular attempts. [R]
62.7789 OSIPIAN, Ararat L.; OSIPIAN, Alexandr L. —
There appears to be a virtual absence of any serious distinctions in the programs and rhetoric of the three leading political parties in Ukraine: The Party of Regions, Bloc of Yulia Timoshenko, and Our Ukraine. Each party supports the market economy, democracy, human rights, and joining the EU. The major distinction is [how] they see the country's past. This article analyzes how the past has been used in Ukrainian politics during the period of active political and regional confrontation in 2004–2010. In particular, what specific historical stories and topics are in high demand in the political rhetoric and why, and how all of these factors may prevent the process of political consolidation of the nation. [R, abr.]
62.7790 PACZEŚNIAK, Anna; JACUŃSKI, Michal; DE WAELE, Jean-Michel —
A characteristic feature of most political parties in Central and Eastern Europe, also present on the Polish political market, is the absence of ideological crystallization. The transition from the stage of transformation to the consolidation of democracy failed to make the Polish political scene less chaotic. The historical division (post-communism versus anticommunism) has lost its significance, while the ideological gap between the political parties in question, except for the national and conservative Law and Justice (PiS), is constantly getting narrower. A comparative study of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the anti-communist Civic Platform (PO) and their respective members allows for the evaluation of the extent of ideological differences as well as of the consequences of this situation for the Polish political landscape.
62.7791 PANAGIOTIDIS, Elena —
The Greek parliamentary election of May 2012 marked the end of the traditional two-party-system dominating Greek politics since 1974. Greece's political landscape has radicalized. Conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND) won the polls but marginally failed to achieve the number of votes needed to form an outright majority in parliament. Socialist PASOK placed a distant third. The radical leftist party Syriza that renounces the Troika's bailout memorandum is now a major player on the scene. The fascist party Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) made (irregular) immigration its priority, but PASOK and ND were also fishing in the far-right vote, thus contributing to poisoning the climate in Greek society. In the period before the June elections, all parties were distancing themselves from the memorandum and its harsh austerity measures. [R, abr.]
62.7792 PEREKLI, Feriha —
The “Turkish model” — in the form of a marriage between moderate Islam and democracy, the AKP's electoral success and the economic growth witnessed in the last decade — has become the ultimate allure to which Arab Islamists aspire. This study focuses on the main premises of the Islamist PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement) of Morocco in order to understand what the “Turkish model” signified for them. The idea is to uncover which features of the “Turkish model” are espoused by the Moroccan Islamists and which features are not appreciated. After a brief introduction regarding the AKP's understanding of secularism and how it differs from radical secularism, the emphasis is given to the PJD's position on secularism. [R, abr.]
62.7793 PERSSON, Mikael —
In several countries, it is apparent that individuals with academic gymnasium (upper-secondary) education show significantly higher levels of political participation than individuals with vocational education. However, previous research on this issue draws exclusively on one-shot cross-sectional data. This article utilizes a Swedish panel survey to gauge whether there is a direct causal link between type of education and political participation. Results demonstrate that differences in political participation are already present when students enter different types of education. The analyses show no significant effects of education; instead results support the education-as-a-proxy view: pre-adult factors predict political participation as well as educational choice. [R]
62.7794 PETERSEN, Marie Juul —
Transnational Muslim NGOs are increasingly important actors in the field of aid provision. Much of the literature has presented a rather static and homogeneous picture of this group of organizations, overlooking their heterogeneity and changing nature. Tracing the historical trajectories of transnational Muslim NGOs, this article shows how changing political, economic, and social contexts have shaped the identities, activities, and relations of these organizations. Using four specific events — the famine in the Horn of Africa, the wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and the War on Terror — as windows through which to study these trajectories, the article argues that recent history has seen the emergence of at least four types of transnational Muslim NGO: da'watist, jihadist, solidarity-based, and secularized. [R]
62.7795 PIEKE, Frank N. —
At the core of China's rise lies the Chinese Communist Party's ability to reinvent itself and its administration. This article investigates one aspect of the gradual overhaul of administrative institutions, processes, and strategies, namely the increasing prominence of neoliberal ideas emanating from the discipline of public management in the recent emphasis on “social management” in government rhetoric and action. The article concludes that social management may ultimately entail a corporatist reengineering of Chinese society that allows a considerable degree of pluralism while strengthening the leading role of the Party over society. [R] [See Abstr. 62.8270]
62.7796 PINGREE, Raymond J.; SCHOLL, Rosanne M.; QUENETTE, Andrea M. —
Candidate debates are unique in modern politics in their potential to draw widespread attention to policy reasoning, but game-framed post-debate coverage may interfere with this potentially deliberative moment. Two experiments tested effects of policy- versus game-framing of post-debate coverage on audience use of policy reasons, using a new dependent variable we develop and label spontaneous policy reasoning (SPR). In Study 1, a game-framed post-debate story decreased SPR relative to no post-debate story, while exposure to a policy-framed story increased SPR. Study 2 added manipulations of the timing and wording of the reason-giving prompt, replicating the framing effects in another context while validating SPR as a spontaneous tendency to give reasons distinct from existing measures of the ability to do so. [R]
62.7797 PRESS, Robert M. —
This is a study of young human rights activists who provide a unique window on Kenya's recent and turbulent political history (1997–2012). The period includes the end of authoritarian rule and election of a “reform” government in 2002 that expanded some human rights but abused others. The article first identifies the often-overlooked role of secondary-level activists in a human rights/democracy social movement, the so-called “foot soldiers”. Second, it explores the failure of Kenya to consolidate its democracy and quell police violence, including the assassination of two human rights investigators, an event which sent a chill through the activist community. Third, by tracing the trajectory of some “foot soldiers” during this period, the study confirms a theory of a cycle of social movement activism but suggests modifications. [R, abr.]
62.7798 PRIOR, Markus —
To examine whether a campaign event affected candidate preferences or candidate knowledge, survey researchers need to know who was exposed to the event. Using the example of [US] presidential debates, this study shows that survey respondents do not accurately report their exposure to even the most salient campaign events. Two independent methods are used to assess the validity of self-reported debate exposure. First, survey estimates are compared to Nielsen estimates, which track exposure automatically. Second, the temporal stability of self-reports across independent daily estimates in the National Annenberg Election Survey is analyzed. Both approaches indicate low validity of self-reports. [R, abr.]
62.7799 PUT, Gert-Jan; MADDENS, Bart —
In a closed or semi-open PR-system, the designation of the MPs is primarily determined by their position on the list. We [seek] the basis of which criteria a party selects the candidates who are most likely to be selected, due to their high and/or visible position on the list. We compare these realistic candidates with the candidates on unrealistic positions on the list. A multi-level logistic regression analysis of the Flemish candidates in four subsequent federal elections in Belgium shows that the selectorates have a marked preference for incumbents and for mayors. Aldermen also stand a better chance of being elected, but only if they are from a larger communality. Women are strongly underrepresented amongst the realistic candidates, but only [because] there are relatively few women mayors and incumbents. [R, abr.]
62.7800 QUINN, Thomas —
The rise of “spin doctors” and news-management is one of the most important changes in British party politics. This article provides a rational-choice model of news-management, in which parties supply information on things such as policies and intra-party gossip to journalists in return for favorable coverage. The article develops a cost-benefit model of news-story production in which the constant onset of deadlines leaves journalists considerably dependent on official information sources, such as spin doctors. Drawing mainly from the experience of New Labour in Britain, the article discusses various techniques for maximizing positive coverage and counteracting negative coverage, and shows how they relate to the theoretical framework. It concludes that news-management is inevitable when parties communicate through news media that make their own choices over which stories to run. [R, abr.]
62.7801 RABOU, Ahmed Abd —
[When] M. Morsi [became] president of Egypt, a harsh battle was going on among different political actors to decide the political future of the nation. Elected on the basis of a constitution created by a military that had grabbed power, Morsi is torn now between both the constitutional and the revolutionary legitimacies and as a result he needs to make compromises to satisfy all actors. Can he harness the military, the intelligence, the presidency, and other deep institutions in a country where his political affiliation was for six decades considered illegal? Will Morsi meet regular Egyptians' high expectations in the political, economic, and social spheres? These questions are examined as part of an analysis of the implication of latest the presidential election in Egypt. [R, abr.]
62.7802 RAHAMAN, Muhammad Mustafizur —
International donors to Bangladesh have emphasized governance reform since the 1990s, on the basis that bad governance was siphoning away both domestic and foreign aid resources. While donor support towards good governance is encouraging, such support should be judged in the light of actual contributions to the promotion of good governance. This article examines a donor-funded project called the Participatory Rural Development Project (PRDP), which aims to promote good governance at the grassroots level. The article assesses the effectiveness of PRDP in promoting good governance, especially in bringing transparency and accountability to Bangladeshi Public Administration. The core finding is that the project achieved remarkable success, with a tangible impact in terms of promoting good governance at the local level. The paper analyzes the reasons for this success. [R, abr.]
62.7803 RAKIC, Marko; JURISIC, Dragisa —
This article examines the impact of the spreading of Wahhabism (as one of the most militant religious teachings) on the escalation of international terrorism on European soil. It points out potential hazards and proposes possible measures to protect Western Europe from further penetration of this conservative Islamic movement through the Balkans. In order to elaborate the stated interdependency, it analyzes the phenomenon and spreading of Wahhabism throughout the Balkans, more concretely — on the territories of the Republic of Serbia, Montenegro, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is precisely the region where Wahhabism has made its first step to “conquer” Europe. [R]
62.7804 REED, Richard —
This article reflects upon four aspects of methodology in the context of the author's doctoral research in Northern Ireland: managing identity and research relationships, the ethics of dissemination and the reception of potentially polemic research in the academy. It argues that identity influences research in sensitive contexts in ways that are often hard to anticipate, that more inclusive approaches to dissemination can help counter issues related to research relationships, and that responses to work in controversial contexts highlight ambiguities within the academy regarding the nature and function of social science research, presenting particular challenges for early-career researchers. [R]
62.7805 REED, Steven R.; SCHEINER, Ethan; THIES, Michael F. —
The loss of power by the Liberal Democratic Party after more half a century of dominance was the most obvious outcome of Japan's 2009 election, but together, the 2005 and 2009 elections demonstrate significant shifts in both the foundations of party support and the importance of national swings in support for one party or another. Since 2005, urbanrural differences in the foundations of the leading parties have changed dramatically, and Japan has moved from a system dominated by locally based, individual candidacies toward a two-party system in which both party popularity and personal characteristics influence electoral success or failure. [R]
62.7806 REEVES, Andrew; GIMPEL, James G. —
Assessment of the nation's economic performance has been repeatedly linked to voters' decision-making in US presidential elections. Here we inquire as to where those economic evaluations originate. One possibility in the politicized environment of a major campaign is that they are partisan determinations and do not reflect actual economic circumstances. Another possibility is that these judgments arise from close attention to news media, which is presumably highlighting national economic conditions as a facet of campaign coverage. Still a third explanation is that voters derive their national economic evaluations from living out their lives in particular localities which may or may not be experiencing the conditions that affect the nation as a whole. Drawing upon data from the 2008 presidential election, we find that varying local conditions do shape the economic evaluations of political independents. [R, abr.]
62.7807 REMMER, Karen L. —
Over the past decade the contours of political party competition in Latin America have been dramatically altered by an upsurge of support for leftist–populist parties and the related weakening of established parties on the center and right end of the political spectrum. Drawing on both aggregate and individual-level evidence, this article explores the roots of this swing. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, which attributes the rising “pink tide” to citizen dissatisfaction with market-oriented policies, economic performance, and/or social inequality, the analysis focuses on the role played by improving external economic conditions during the early 2000s, which relaxed the preexisting constraints on policy choice, enhanced the credibility of anti-status quo political actors, and created new opportunities for the pursuit of statist, nationalist, and redistributive political projects and associated challenges to US hegemony. [R, abr.]
62.7808 RIM Yejoon —
This article examines international responses to the post-election crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, where two distinct governments were established due to contradiction between the election results proclaimed domestically and those certified by the internationally entrusted authority observing the election. Between two competing authorities, the international community stood firmly in favor of the internationally recognized president-elect as “legitimate authority” while acting against the opponent whom they considered to hold “illegitimate authority”. Considering the principle of democracy as the underlying rationale grounding the international responses, this article identifies three mechanisms that incorporate and thus promote the principle of democracy: international election monitoring as setting mechanism, international representation as consolidating mechanism, and international intervention as enforcing mechanism. [R, abr.]
62.7809 RIZVI, M. Mahtab Alam —
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is Iran's most powerful security and military organization, responsible for the protection and survival of the regime. Over time, the IRGC has attained a position of dominance vis-à-vis the regular army, [and become] a leading political and economic actor. In view of the importance of Iran and its military, especially the IRGC, this article analyzes the political and economic roles of the IRGC. It argues that the IRGC's political and economic role is likely to increase due to its unique relationship with Iranian political elites and in view of the current power struggle between various political factions within Iran. However, expansion of the IRGC's role may not go unchallenged. The unintended consequence of this could be the erosion of the IRGC's credibility and people's trust. [R, abr.]
62.7810 ROBBINS, Michael D. H.; TESSLER, Mark —
Given the importance of developing a democratic culture for the long-term survival of democracy, it is crucial to understand whether and how public support for democracy changes over time in response to different events, particularly those that may contribute to democratization. Elections are a key institution associated with democracy; but elections are also found in most nondemocratic regimes, raising questions about whether electoral experiences affect the way that ordinary citizens think about democracy. The present article uses original survey data collected in Algeria in 2002, 2004, and 2006 to investigate this question. It finds that individuals who favor platforms, ideological orientations, or candidates who are excluded from participation in an election and/or believe that an election has not been free and fair have lower levels of support for democracy after the election than other members of society. [R]
62.7811 SAGLIE, Jo; BERGH, Johannes; BJØRKLUND, Tor —
The argument that declining voter turnout harms social democratic parties has received little support in research on national elections, but partisan consequences of declining turnout in local elections has been less explored. Norwegian local elections — where both turnout and support for the Labour Party have declined since the early 1960s — are used as a test case. Analyses of aggregate data gave no systematic support for the hypothesis that Labour suffers from lower turnout. Declining turnout and declining Labour Party vote were not causally related, and the correlation between the two variables seemed to be the result of other long-term social changes. [R, abr.]
62.7812 SALAMUROVIĆ, Aleksandra —
This paper examines public communication in Serbia and Croatia in the frame of EU discourse. Elements of both political communication (direct statements by politicians, political slogans, etc.) as well as print media were analyzed. The paper elaborates linguistic resources that are particularly relevant for populist and/or Euroskeptic statements, such as active-passive transformation, the use of the personal pronoun “we”, certain types of clauses, and especially lexical and stylistic figures. The findings confirm the hypothesis that public communication in both countries has strong similarities to those in the 1990s. Regardless of some lexical innovations in the Euroskeptic and critical statements about the EU, no relevant linguistic and discourse changes could be determined in the surveyed countries. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7774]
62.7813 SCHAFRAAD, Pytrik, et al. —
This article investigates changes in attention to the far right in Flemish newspapers. Not only is the volume of attention analyzed but especially how newspapers pay attention to the far right, focusing on the portrayal of far-right actors (“substantial attention”), and on favorable and unfavorable attributions of third parties in the news texts (“support attention”). For the content-analysis, 2,356 articles from three newspapers are investigated. The Flemish far right (Vlaams Blok) is unique because of its uninterrupted electoral growth between 1987 and 2004. Flemish newspapers still portray the far right as a controversial outsider. Such an image is constructed in the 1980s by focusing on a limited set of controversial characteristics of the far right. [R, abr.]
62.7814 SCHMITT-BECK, Rüdiger; PARTHEYMÜLLER, Julia —
Against the background of a substantial rise of the number of late-deciding voters at recent elections, the paper simultaneously tests four complementary hypotheses on the background of contemporary electors' timing of decision-making. The traditional floating voter hypothesis fares best in this analysis: lacking partisan predispositions and a general detachment from politics appear as the main reasons why people take longer to make up their minds. Indifference and attitudinal ambivalence as well as mixed party-political signals from voters' social networks also lead to electors postponing their voting decisions. The hypothesis that late deciding is a consequence of increased availability and attention to mediated political information is refuted. Several long-term trends are discussed as reasons for the increase of late deciding. [R]
62.7815 SCHUMACHER, Gijs — “
Welfare state retrenchment is electorally risky for social democrats and often contrary to their principles. Therefore cases of welfare state retrenchment by social democrats provide an excellent case study of the difficult trade-offs parties have to make between office, policy and vote pay-offs. The article claims that leadership-dominated parties advance office-seeking strategies and are therefore responsive to economic conditions and public opinion. Conversely, activist-dominated parties advance policy-seeking strategies and therefore support traditional social democratic policy platforms or seek more radical solutions. By comparing seven social democratic parties (Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK) between 1980 and 2005, this article explains variation in when social democrats introduced welfare state retrenchment. [R, abr.]
62.7816 SERDAR, Ayşe —
This article examines the labor-renewal strategies implemented by Central de Los Trabajadores de la Argentina. It argues that union organizing is conditioned by historical legacies and structural constraints, while social movement unionism, which for the most part promotes building alliances with community groups, can be achieved by taking advantage of political opportunities and mobilizing resources. To maintain these alliances, trade unions and social movement organizations need to build institutionalized partnerships and compensate for their individual weaknesses. The article also argues that organizing the unorganized and building alliances with the community are not a substitute for each other. [R, abr.]
62.7817 SHAIR-ROSENFIELD, Sarah —
Between the 1999 and 2009 elections the proportion of national female legislators in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority democracy, more than doubled. While this substantial increase may be partly explained by the recent imposition of a gender quota and placement mandate that have forced parties to increase the number of female candidates, quotas cannot fully explain the strong performance of women in the 2009 elections: (1) many parties placed women higher on their lists than the laws required; (2) voters appeared to over-vote for women in some districts. Although incumbency's typical effect is to inhibit female electoral success by advantaging traditional (male) competitors, I argue that women benefited largely from an alternative effect: female incumbency can improve female candidate-placement and electability by demonstrating female capacity and capability. [R, abr.]
62.7818 SHUFELDT, Gregory; FLAVIN, Patrick —
We use new data on state legislative partisan balance and election returns to compute (and make publicly available) the two measures of competition from 1970 to 2003, a time-span that is significantly longer than any previous study. We show that the relationship between the two measures has drastically changed over the last 30 years. Although the two measures were positively correlated in the 1970s and 1980s, they are now (as we might expect, given they are different concepts) negatively correlated. We investigate one possible explanation for this change and discuss a set of practical recommendations for scholars who plan to incorporate a measure of competition in future studies. [R, abr.]
62.7819 SHULMAN, Stephen; BLOOM, Stephen —
The empirical and theoretical study of the effect of foreign intervention in the electoral processes of states is exceedingly weak. Using insights from the nationalism literature, this article provides a theoretical argument on domestic reactions to foreign interference in a state's internal politics. It then tests the predictions generated by the argument using mass survey data in Ukraine. The article analyzes the Ukrainian people's reaction to Western and Russian intervention in the 2004 presidential elections — the Orange Revolution. We find that efforts by Western governments, international organizations, and NGOs to shape Ukraine's electoral landscape appear to be unwelcome to average Ukrainians while electoral interference by a non-democratic state, Russia, is seen as less alienating. Our theoretical framework accounts for these potentially surprising results. [R]
62.7820 SIK, Domonkos —
What are the special difficulties of civic socialization in post-socialist democracies? In order to elaborate an answer, first a general theory of civic socialization has to be reconstructed, which can be used as a reference point; for this purpose, J. Habermas's model of a communicative-intentional socialization is evoked. Second, those special difficulties have to be identified, which reveal the limits of such a general theory; P. Bourdieu's theory of pre-intentional habitus is used. Third, a way has to be introduced capable of overcoming these difficulties; here, H. Arendt's ideas on the original impression of freedom prove to be helpful. I argue that the Habermasian model of democratic socialization is incapable of providing an analytical framework for the special problems of post-transition condition. [R, abr.]
62.7821 SIKA, Nadine —
This study analyzes the dynamics of youth political engagement in Egypt in the light of “dual motivation” theory, which defines political engagement in terms of both citizens' interest in changing the outcome of elections and the prevalence of social capital conducive for political engagement. The article first focuses on the dynamics of political mobilization in general, prior to the uprising of 25 January 2011. The second part examines the political attitudes and levels of political participation of young people prior to the uprising. The study found that the youth believed in democratic values but did not participate politically. This is explained by an understanding of the dynamics of authoritarian rule and corruption, leading to a general abstention from civic and political engagement. [R, abr.]
62.7822 SILVA, Eduardo —
Free-market reforms in the last quarter of the 20th c. weakened the point of production — labor unions — as the source of effective nonparty political countermovement to liberal capitalism. Building on the work of Polanyi, this article argues that circuits of exchange — the commodification of labor, land, and money — can be powerful sources of movement against contemporary forms of free-market capitalism. It draws on the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador to explore how Polanyi's exchange-based approach helps to elucidate three phenomena: the great variety of identities behind the myriad movements against free-market capitalism, the emergence of community as a powerful locus for organizing, and the proliferation of new forms of transgressive and highly disruptive direct action to reinforce the debilitated effectiveness of the strike. [R, abr.]
62.7823 SIMPSER, Alberto —
Does electoral manipulation reduce voter turnout? The question is central to the study of political behavior. Nevertheless, existing evidence suggests contradictory answers. This article clarifies the theoretical relationship between electoral manipulation and turnout by drawing some simple conceptual distinctions and presents new empirical evidence from Mexico. The deep electoral reforms in 1990s Mexico provide a hitherto-unexploited opportunity to estimate the effect of electoral manipulation on turnout. The empirical strategy makes use of variation over time and across the states of Mexico in turnout and in electoral manipulation. The analysis finds that electoral manipulation under the PRI discouraged citizens from voting. Conceptually, the article shows that true and reported turnout need not move in the same direction, nor respond in the same way to electoral manipulation. [R]
62.7824 ŚLIWA, Michal —
Polish public life does not fill one with optimism. Politicians' actions are subordinate to electoral tactics and an adequate level of political popularity. Fundamental concepts and principles of organizing political thought, such as justice, equality, freedom, dignity, and democracy, have almost disappeared from their sight and have become irrelevant even for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Moreover, the Movement for Christian Democracy (MCD) has significantly contributed to the transformation of the Polish political scene, especially of her right and centrist pole, but also of its post-communist left pole. Consequently, the Polish political and ideological space has taken almost a religious dimension, especially in terms of the right-left dyad.
62.7825 SMOLNIK, Franziska —
The article analyzes political rule in an entity affected by violent conflict. Aiming at contributing to the study of the South Caucasus “de-facto states”, it is argued that so far insufficient attention has been paid to the influence the persistent violent conflicts have had on political processes inside these entities. To substantiate the argument three elections in the de-facto state of Nagorno-Karabakh are scrutinized. The analysis reveals that contrary to prevalent classifications the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not frozen, but that indeed the persistent violent conflict constitutes a significant factor that helps us account for the specific character of political rule in Nagorno-Karabakh. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7478]
62.7826 SNOW, Dave; MOFFITT, Benjamin —
This paper builds on the insights of M. Sawer and D. Laycock (“Down with elites and up with inequality: market populism in Australia and Canada”, ibid., 47(2), 2009: 133–150; Abstr. 59.6652) to explore similarities in the use of populist discourse by former Australian Prime J. Howard and current Canadian Prime Minister S. Harper. While Sawer and Laycock label this discourse “market populism” and focus on economic issues, we argue that Howard and Harper's populism is better understood as “mainstream populism” due to the equal importance of socio-cultural issues in their discourses. To demonstrate this, the treatment of issues such as immigration, multiculturalism, the culture wars, criminal justice, and childcare is considered. Such populist policies were used to satisfy rival wings of their respective parties — neoliberals and social conservatives — that do not always share the same priorities. [R]
62.7827 SOKHEY, Anand Edward; McCLUR, Scott D. —
A common criticism of interpersonal networks is that most people have insular social circles and that when they do not they are unlikely to engage in politics. We show that such pessimistic assessments are unwarranted, though for unexpected reasons. Using data from the 1992 Cross-National Election Project and the 2000 ANES, we examine the conditions under which social networks promote interest-based voting in the US. We find that networks facilitate connections between individuals' vote decisions and their underlying preferences when they provide unambiguous signals regarding candidates: because many Americans reside in supportive social environments, networks often help citizens make “correct” voting decisions [R. Lau and D. Redlawsk, “Voting correctly”, American Political Science Review 91(3), Sept. 1997: 585–598; Abstr. 48.3476]. Thus, social networks appear to help shoulder the demands of democratic theory, but not by helping people learn about politics in any traditional sense. [R, abr.]
62.7828 SOKHEY, Anand Edward; MOCKABEE, Stephen T. —
Inspired by work on the survival, loci, and democratic consequences of political disagreement, we survey voters at the moment when the literature would suggest they should be most likely to report agreement: Election Day. Wedding exit-poll methodology with items that capture the major dimensions of networks and the content of discussion, we re-examine the contexts in which discussions take place and untangle issue-specific patterns of disagreement. We find evidence that church-based networks fulfill important democratic roles relative to other contexts, exposing individuals to cross-cutting discourse while serving as unique sources of information in the midst of broader electoral environments. [R, abr.]
62.7829 SOLHAUG, Trond; KRISTENSEN, Niels Nørgaard —
This article uncovers the dynamics of political reasoning among young immigrants. How do people reason about the larger social and political world around them and what rationalities are in play? A dynamic approach is used to analyze cognitive functioning. A model of political reasoning combining identities, emotions, and information is suggested and examined empirically. In a qualitative study, the reflectivity of the students and their willingness to act as rational and responsible citizens is evaluated. Based on a selection of young Danish and Norwegian immigrant students, the dynamics between the elements of the model are explored. In the analysis, some identities play a decisive role, while emotions seem fairly often to be the trigger and the mechanism of political action. [R]
62.7830 SOTO ZAZUETA, Irvin Mikhail; CORTEZ, Willy W. —
After several decades of nil political competition, Mexican system began a process of increasing competition since late 1980. There are several theories that try to explain such phenomenon. Particularly, we present some evidence about the positive role of education on Mexico's political competition. Our results indicate that across Mexican states political competition is positively dependent on higher education. Furthermore, in light of current theories, we argue that education is a necessary condition for the former. [R]
62.7831 SPANIHELOVA, Lucie; ZICHA, Brandon C. —
Some argue that the direct representative relationship between voters and party elites is difficult to establish in transition democracies. In part, the difficulty stems from the fact that parties may have a hard time discerning the preferences of their respective voter coalitions. In the case of EU integration, parties may have additional incentives to disregard the interests of the public in the hope of securing benefits associated with their country's membership of the EU. We investigate the extent of party responsiveness on EU integration issues in early transition years in central and eastern European countries. We find that while mainstream parties do consistently show more support for EU integration, we find no evidence that parties, in fact, track their voters. [R, abr.]
62.7832 SPEHAR, Andrea —
This article examines women's movements as agents of change in post-communist Croatia and Slovenia: whether, and in what ways, they may have succeeded in politicizing and institutionalizing the issue of domestic violence in the two countries. Theoretically, this article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the effectiveness of different forms of women's policy agency. Using a policy-process analysis, the study demonstrates the key role women's movements have played in putting the issue of domestic violence on the political agenda and pressuring governments to enact new legislation. The findings challenge the common assumption that Central and Eastern European women's movements have remained weak, antifeminist, and apolitical, exerting only marginal influence on the gender policy processes in the region. [R]
62.7833 SPENCER, Alexander —
The article illustrates a constructivist understanding of studying terrorism and counter-terrorism by applying metaphor analysis to a British tabloid media discourse on terrorism between 2001 and 2005 in The Sun newspaper. It identifies four conceptual metaphors constituting terrorism as a war, a crime, an uncivilized evil and as a disease, and it illustrates how these understandings make certain counter-terrorism policies such as a military response, judicial measures or immigration policies acceptable while at the same time excluding from consideration other options, such as negotiations. It thereby re-emphasizes that a metaphorical understanding of political phenomena such as terrorism can give IR insights into how certain policies become possible while others remain outside of the range of options thought to be appropriate. [R]
62.7834 SPIRES, Anthony J. —
Over the past decade, a number of foreign grant-makers and international NGOs have funded or designed training programs that introduce their Chinese grantees to “best practices” in “NGO management”. Drawing on several years of fieldwork, this article [examines] the origins and lessons conveyed by two such “capacity-building” programs. Rather than being grounded in the actual, lived experience of Chinese civil society organizations and emerging organically from the bottom up, these programs are shown to reflect more accurately the concerns of foreign donors and the professionalized segment of the North American nonprofit world. The article suggests that, despite recurring Chinese suspicious of civil society as a new weapon of foreign imperialism, the structures and practices promoted by donors mesh well with state efforts to channel new social energies into predictable and governable organizational forms. [R]
62.7835 SPRINGER, Melanie J. —
Expansive and restrictive state electoral institutions have been instrumental in structuring the vote throughout American history. Studies focused on a small number of reforms, years, or states lack the scope necessary to comprehensively evaluate the effects of institutional change over time. This work, however, places recent reforms in historical context and offers a long-term perspective. Using an original data-set, it identifies the institutions that have generated the most substantial effects on state turnout rates during presidential elections from 1920 to 2000. Findings demonstrate that restrictive laws (those aiming to limit the vote or make voting more costly) produced large and consistently negative effects in the Southern and non-Southern states alike, but the effects associated with expansive reforms (those making participation more convenient or less costly) vary. [R, abr.]
62.7836 SRIDHARAN, E. —
This paper explains the apparently exceptional pattern of coalition politics in India compared to international patterns — the prevalence of minority governments and among them, minority coalitions, among non-single party majority governments, as well as the predominance of very large coalitions of 6–12 parties — in the light of theorizing on coalition and minority governments and the specificities of India's political institutions. It shows that there are two general and three specific circumstances that favor such a pattern and that most of these have been present at government formation since 1989, and particularly since 1996. [R]
62.7837 ST JOHN, Ronald Bruce —
In landmark elections, Libyans went to the polls for the first time in 60 years to elect a General National Congress which will form an interim government, oversee the writing of a constitution, and supervise polls for an elected government based on the new constitution. Taking place only nine months after the successful conclusion of the 17 February [2011] Revolution, the elections were widely hailed as an extraordinary achievement. The election results were a surprise to many observers as Libyan voters largely supported moderate parties and candidates, reversing a regional trend in support of Islamists. [R]
62.7838 STADELMANN-STEFFEN, Isabelle; VATTER, Adrian —
This paper takes the influential “direct democracy makes people happy” research as a starting point and asks whether direct democracy impacts individual satisfaction. Unlike former studies we distinguish two aspects of individual satisfaction: satisfaction with life (“happiness”) and with how democracy works. Based on multilevel analysis of the 26 Swiss cantons, we show that the theoretical assumption on which the happiness hypothesis is based has to be questioned, as there is very little evidence for a robust relationship between satisfaction with democracy and life satisfaction. Furthermore, we do not find a substantive positive effect of direct democracy on happiness. However, our analysis shows some evidence for a procedural effect of direct democracy, i.e., positive effects related to using direct democratic rights, rather than these rights per se. [R]
62.7839 STEGER, Manfred B.; WILSON, Erin K. —
Globalization has unsettled conventional, nationally-based political belief systems, opening the door to emerging new global political ideologies. Drawing on data collected from 45 organizations connected to the World Social Forum, this article examines the political ideas of the global justice movement, the key antagonist to market globalism from the political Left. Employing morphological discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis, the article assesses the ideological coherence of “justice globalism” against M.M. Freeden's [Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach, Oxford, 1996] three criteria of distinctiveness, context-bound responsiveness, and effective decontestation. We find that justice globalism displays ideological coherence and should be considered a maturing political “alter”-ideology of global significance. The evidence presented suggests the ongoing globalization of the 21st-c. ideological landscape. [R, abr.]
62.7840 STEIN, Robert M.; VONNAHME, Greg —
We explore the different ways Americans exercise their right to vote on Election Day and how these alternatives shape the voter's experience. Our study draws on data collected from exit polls with Election Day voters in the 2008 Colorado presidential election. Colorado is unique among the 50 states in that it affords its voters the widest array of voting options, both before and on Election Day, and thus provides an ideal setting for testing our hypotheses. We find voting places that are more accessible and open (i.e., voters can vote at more than one location on Election Day) significantly enhance voter performance and evaluation. There are valuable lessons regarding the centralization and location of polling places that could be applied to precinct voting models. [R, abr.]
62.7841 STOCKEMER, Daniel —
The Swiss People's Party (SVP), currently the most successful extreme-right party at the electoral booth in Western Europe, has nearly doubled its vote-share from 15% in 1995 to almost 30% in 2007. To understand the reasons for this vote increase, I compare the individual characteristics of the SVP voters in 1995 (such as individuals' socialization and their self-placement on an ideological left-right scale) to those 12 years later. I find that the profile of the typical SVP voter has not changed. Both in the mid 1990s and mid 2000s, the SVP is supported by traditionally right-leaning citizens with rather low levels of education. However, what has changed is that the SVP has become more successful in mobilizing its base of conservative identity-based voters. [R]
62.7842 STOCKEMER, Daniel; PRAINO, Rodrigo —
While every student in American politics knows that the incumbency advantage grew post-1965, it is less clear as to whether or not this growth has been sustainable throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Focusing on the last three decades, we show that the electoral margins of sitting members of the House of Representatives have not linearly grown over the past 60 years. On the contrary, the constant increase in incumbents' vote-shares between the 1960s and 1980s could not be sustained in the 1990s. In fact, in the 1990s, the incumbency advantage dropped sharply to levels experienced in the 1960s. In recent years, the electoral margin of sitting House members seems to have grown again to levels comparable to those in the 1970s. [R]
62.7843 STREET, Paul L.; DiMAGGIO, Anthony R. —
We examine and criticize inaccurate stereotypes of the Tea Party as a revolutionary, insurgent, populist force. We demonstrate the Tea Party's role in furthering the longstanding and polarizing rightward drift of the Republican Party. We trace the pro-establishment voting biases of the Tea Party in a variety of policy areas and the capitulation of the Democratic Party to the Tea Party–Republican political and economic agenda. The role of the mass media in amplifying the message of the Tea Party (largely neglected in the dominant political discourse) is also examined. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7745]
62.7844 STUVLAND, Aaron —
Religion is a common source of “thick” morality and therefore a common obstacle to public-policy consensus in pluralistic societies. But religion also adapts its thick moral commitments to prevailing social, cultural, and procedural dispositions. Engaging the model of “thick moralities and thin politics” proposed by B. Gregg [Abstr. 62.6980], I explore the process by which religion adapts to the demands of normatively “thin” politics. To conceptualize this, I survey how American Christianity is negotiating aspects of post-modernism and how this negotiation offers one way to understand religion's increased engagement with politics at the level of thin normativity. Thus, I would add to Gregg's model by focusing on one example of a transition from “thick to thin”. [R]
62.7845 SUS, Pawel —
Domestic patterns of political competition are revealing of Turkish foreign policy's new doctrine, implemented after the electoral victory of the pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) in November 2002. The AKP is a moderate pro-Islamic party because of its past connections with Necmettin Erkaban's Islamic National Outlook Movement. If the European states turn totally their backs on Turkey's EU membership aspirations, the geopolitical situation could be altered quite significantly and would have an impact on the security situation throughout the Middle East. In order to evaluate Turkey's foreign policy in the Middle East, however, it is first necessary to consider AKP's political elites' strategy in addition to the doctrine of the “strategic depth” in Turkish foreign policy.
62.7846 SUTCLIFFE, John B. —
This article examines the causes and consequences of Euroskepticism through a study of the UK Independence Party. Based on an analysis of UKIP's election campaigns, policies and performance, the article examines the roots of UKIP and its potential consequences for the British political system. The UKIP provides an example of Euroskepticism as the “politics of opposition”. The party remains at the fringes of the political system and its leadership is prepared to use misrepresentation and populist rhetoric in an attempt to secure support. The party, nevertheless, cannot be completely dismissed as a marginal force. Its roots lie in the general popular and elite antipathy towards the EU and it has shown itself capable of attracting considerable electoral support in EP elections. It also has the potential to influence the major political parties. [R]
62.7847 SZWARCBERG, Mariela —
Party brokers have information about voters' political preferences and likelihood of turning out to vote, and are able to target clientelistic inducements and monitor voter participation in exchange for voters' electoral support. However, brokers may also use the clientelistic inducements they receive from bosses to pursue their personal enrichment, at the cost of lost votes for their party. An original dataset tracing the political careers of 137 municipal candidates in Argentina shows how bosses combine information from voter turnout at rallies and elections. By comparing a broker's ability to mobilize voters, bosses are able to make inferences about reliable brokers who will distribute party goods to voters, and unreliable brokers who will use party goods to pad their own pockets. [R]
62.7848 TADJOEDDIN, Mohammad Zulfan —
This paper constructs an electoral hostility index for 282 local direct elections (PILKADA) of district heads during 2005–2007 and examines the socio-economic determinants of local democratic maturity in Indonesia. There are 67 PILKADAs (out of 282) categorized as having medium, high or very high levels of electoral hostility. The picture is dominated by hostilities directed towards the local elections commission after voting day. The large-sample quantitative analysis employs ordered logistic regression. The results show some evidence in support of the modernization hypothesis in the context of Indonesia's local democracies. Higher PILKADA hostility or less mature local democracy tends to be experienced by districts with lower income, higher poverty incidence and less urbanized. The results also imply that democracy cannot be deepened in the absence of economic development. [R]
62.7849 TANG Wenfang; DARR, Benjamin —
Using the 2008 China Survey, this paper examines Chinese respondents' feelings toward their country and how such feelings are related to their democratic values. First, it compares Chinese nationalism with that of 35 countries and regions in the 2003 National Identity Survey. Second, it looks at the origins of Chinese nationalism as embedded in the social and political characteristics of individuals. Third, it further examines the impact of nationalism on people's political attitudes. The findings show that nationalism in contemporary China is better predicted by the political and economic characteristics of an individual rather than cultural attributes, and that nationalism serves as a powerful instrument in impeding public demand for democratic change. [R]
62.7850 TAYLOR, Michael —
This paper describes attempts in Nigeria and Tanzania to build the capacity of selected religious organizations to participate in policy consultation processes, by strengthening their ability to speak effectively to governments on behalf of poor communities. These attempts arose out of enquiries into the limited involvement of faith-based organizations in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper processes which were a condition of debt relief. Two pilot projects, one in each country, set out to foster inter-faith networks for cooperation and resource sharing, increase skills in data collection and use the evidence gathered to put forward constructive proposals for future policy and practice aimed especially at poverty reduction. [R, abr.]
62.7851 TEPE, Sultan —
Whether religious parties' inclusion in electoral competition moderates or polarizes their positions remains an enigma, as deductive accounts yield contradictory results. This analysis questions the institution- and ideology-centered approaches to party change and shows that dichotomizing religious parties as moderate or extreme and moderation as a monolithic process obscures religious parties' role in democracy. When scholars view moderation as consisting of behavioral and ideological dimensions and examine it through an inductive analysis of Israel and Turkey's religious parties, several modes of moderation emerge with different democratic outcomes. While some bolster procedural democracy, others thwart the expansion of liberal democracy. [R]
62.7852 THOBURN, Nicholas —
What are the possibilities for a political magazine in the new media environment? This article [examines] the London-based art and politics magazine Mute, an experimental publishing venture that currently exists as a “hybrid” of Web and print platforms. The politics resides not only in the magazine's content, but throughout its media form. Mute's coverage of the evolving political and aesthetic capacities of new media has intersected with an insistent self-critique and remodeling of its magazine form, a reflexive orientation it set out in its “hybrid publishing” manifesto, “Ceci n'est pas un magazine”. The article explores Mute's hybrid media form through its publishing platforms, participatory mechanisms, aesthetic styles, commissioning practices, temporal modes, and commercial structures. [R, abr.]
62.7853 THOMAS, Melanee —
In the 1960s, the gender gap in subjective political competence was assumed to reflect women's lack of socio-economic resources, their confinement to the domestic sphere and their gender role socialization. Since then, conceptions of gender roles have been radically altered under the influence of the feminist movement. Yet, the gender gap in subjective political competence persists. This paper uses the Canadian Election Studies (1965–2008) to analyze gender differences in subjective political competence across time. Not only is the association between affluence and subjective political competence weaker for women, but the effect of affluence has weakened over time for women but not for men. Few generational effects are found; this suggests that the politicizing role of feminist socialization is much weaker than had been anticipated. [R]
62.7854 THOMAS, Ryan J. —
This article examines the implications of the 2011 phone-hacking scandal for press freedom in the UK. It argues that the language of rights has too long dominated public discourse. There is now an opportunity for a radical restructuring of the relationship between the press, the public, and the political system that restores the media to their rightful role as a watchdog on government and steward of the people. [There is a] need for independent regulation of the press and a statutory right of reply as means through which the relationship between media and citizen can be recast on the grounds of obligation and responsibility; only when we move away from a framework grounded in rights to one grounded in responsibilities can meaningful change flourish. [R, abr.]
62.7855 THOMPSON, Michael J. —
This article explores the hypothesis that the wellsprings of the recent upswing in new conservative movements such as the Tea Party can be found in the socio-spatial context within which individuals are socialized. Non-urban forms of space possess certain social and structural characteristics that can shape styles of moral cognition that in turn lead to conservative predispositions within the personality structure of the individual. Suburban and exurban spaces provide a context for new conservative world-views as a result of the ways social interaction shapes the moral-cognitive style of individuals. When activated by different forms of social threat or social change, they will be more inclined to turn to conservative movements and ideologies that express their insecurity and social anxieties that are themselves produced by the world-views within which they feel comfort and security. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7745]
62.7856 THORNTON, Patricia M. —
Well over 3.5 million Party members now work in “non-publicly owned enterprise”, a sector of the [Chinese] economy in which the Party has continued to expand. The Party is experimenting with new organizational arrangements and remaking its social agenda in order to increase its popularity, relevance and appeal, particularly among young urban professionals. This article outlines recent Party-building initiatives in the private sector over the last decade. Drawing upon membership and other data from over 1,000 local Party committees in non-publicly owned enterprises in greater Shanghai, I analyze contemporary “Party life” in “two new” branches — new social and new economic organizations since the adoption of market reform — as a reflection of the Party's possible future as it absorbs the “advanced forces” of an increasingly market-oriented China. [R, abr.]
62.7857 TIEMANN, Guido —
Party system nationalization is a crucial aspect of political competition. The territories of Eastern Europe have often been characterized by outstanding levels of territorial heterogeneity. However, during and after World War II, ethnic cleansing and forced migration resulted in more homogeneous nation states, and these trends were significantly reinforced by bureaucratic, centralized communist rule. I present a systematic empirical assessment of party and party-system homogeneity or heterogeneity in post-communist Eastern Europe and discuss some major macro-sociological and institutional factors determining the degree of party and party-system nationalization such as the political consequences of social diversity and political cleavages, legacies of the communist regimes, electoral systems, and federalism. [R]
62.7858 TILLMAN, Erik R. —
This article examines the effect of political knowledge on support for the euro and voting on the euro issue in the 2001 and 2005 UK general elections. Political knowledge increased support for the euro in 2001 but had no effect in 2005 and it conditioned the effect of the euro issue on vote choice in both elections. The effect of the euro issue on voting was stronger among knowledgeable voters, who were more likely to vote correctly on the issue by choosing a party closest to their own views on the euro. These findings demonstrate heterogeneity in voting on the euro issue in these elections and should motivate further inquiry into the role that political knowledge plays in conditioning voting behavior on European issues. [R]
62.7859 TODOSIJEVIĆ, Bojan —
The article examines the influence of sociological and socio-psychological variables onto the selection of groups towards which political intolerance is directed. By comparing findings for Eastern and Western Europe, different political histories and levels of political actualization of social divisions are taken into account. The main hypothesis argues, contrary to J. L. Sullivan et al [Political Tolerance in Context Boulder, 1985], that socio-psychological variables are crucial factors affecting the target group selection. The research is based on World Values Survey data, which include the “least liked” measure of political tolerance. The findings suggest that differently ideologically colored targets of political intolerance have specific associations with socio-psychological variables. [R, abr.]
62.7860 TOMSA, Dirk —
This article analyzes why, how and to what extent Indonesia's once staunchly Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera; PKS) has become more moderate through its participation in democratic procedures. It also examines how this moderation process has affected the party's electoral performance and the overall quality of democracy in Indonesia. It is argued that PKS has indeed become more moderate and that this moderation has, after initial electoral success, now posed some serious challenges to the party's organizational coherence. The article highlights that moderation is a process that is neither linear nor unreservedly positive for democratization. [R]
62.7861 TONGE, Jon; MYCOCK, Andrew; JEFFERY, Bob —
Citizenship education has been a compulsory feature of the curriculum in secondary schools in England since 2002. However, its future may be uncertain amid inter-party disputes over the utility of such teaching. Moreover, there are substantial concerns over the breadth, aims and reach of the Citizenship curriculum. There is a lack of clarity over whether good citizenship can be taught and dispute over whether it can or should go beyond bolstering civil engagement (volunteering) and improving civic (political) activity. This article assesses the motivations for the introduction of Citizenship and the extent to which it has become a politicized panacea to a range of emerging policy challenges. Then, we test whether citizenship education is making a difference to the engagement of young people in the civil and political spheres. [R, abr.]
62.7862 TORABIAN, Saba; ABALAKINA, Marina —
To examine American and Iranian attitudes toward war, questionnaires were administered to American and Iranian college students in the US and Iran respectively. The results of the study revealed that American students generally have more positive attitudes toward war than Iranian students. Since most Iranians in the sample experienced eight years of war with Iraq, whereas Americans never had direct experience of war, it was predicted that direct experiences of military action could explain this cross-national difference. Among Iranians those who experienced the Iran-Iraq war had more negative attitudes toward war compared to Iranians who did not have such experiences. The results further demonstrated that being authoritarian, religious and male were independently related to having positive attitudes toward war in both samples. [R, abr.]
62.7863 TRAÏNI, Christophe —
This article shows how the conversion to a vegetarian diet is an empirical material most relevant to the sociology of collective mobilization and activism. It draws on 39 interviews with animal rights activists who refuse to eat meat or other products derived from the exploitation of animals. This empirical material is used to specify the categories of analysis needed to take into account the affective dimensions of activist commitments. The approach describes the multiple and complementary dimensions of activists' work and careers. [R]
62.7864 TRAVKINA, Natalija M. —
Unlike many previous election campaigns for the US presidency, the attitude [toward] Russia today is a high-priority issue on the agenda of many contenders for the title of a presidential candidate from the Republican Party. Their hard and even harsh remarks against Russia and strong opposition to policy of “reset” became a characteristic feature of the current US election campaign. [R]
62.7865 TRELLES, Alejandro; MARTÍNEZ, Diego —
Almost two hundred years after the term gerrymandering was first used in Massachusetts [US], redistricting remains a complex and politicized process that affects the way the legislative branches are conformed and the quality of political representation around the world. We describe the redistricting process in California and ask how it would work if it were to be implemented by an independent agent (instead of the local legislature or a bipartisan commission). Using a simulated annealing redistricting algorithm we create a hypothetical scenario that reduces significantly partisan bias in the state. Developed by the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute in 2005, this optimization model allowed us to recreate California's 53 Congressional districts and to analyze their racial and electoral composition. We found systematic evidence that the majority party in local legislature ends up with electoral benefits every time districts are drawn. [R]
62.7866 TRESCH, Anke —
This article analyzes the role of the press in direct democratic campaigns. It argues the press has a dual role: on news pages, newspapers ought to inform citizens about the issue positions and frames of the pro and con camps in a balanced way; in editorials, newspapers act as political advocates that promote their own issue-frames and try to shape public opinion through voting recommendations. Comparing the issue positions and frames in editorials and news reports in the run-up to the vote on the popular initiative “Yes to Europe” in Switzerland, this article shows that newspapers give similar visibility to the pro and con camps regardless of the papers' own editorial position. However, some newspapers favor issue-frames in line with their editorial perspectives. [R, abr.]
62.7867 TSANG, Steve —
Ma Ying-jeou's re-election means that there will not be a leadership change in Taiwan, but it forces the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to [accept] that it must now persuade voters in Taiwan that it can manage relations with mainland China effectively in order to win the presidency again. It also requires Ma to define clearly the limits of his mainland policy in order to minimize Beijing's expectations of his second term. On its part, Beijing [grasps] the significance of Taiwan's electoral cycle for managing cross-Strait ties and will put pressure on Ma to move forward over political integration and thus reduce the scope for a future DPP administration to reverse course. Beijing's Taiwan policy will ultimately be determined more by the result of the leadership succession in mainland China itself in the autumn of 2012. [R, abr.]
62.7868 TURYNA, Monika —
We show how choice of the method of measuring the party positions impacts the conclusions about equilibrium positions of parties in a spatial model. We find that for the same set of voters' ideal points we should observe either divergence or convergence to the mean, depending on the choice of the measure. [R]
62.7869 UL'ČENKO, Natalija Yu. —
The active character of social policy has become one of the most important features of the economic course [of the] Justice and Development Party (AKP) since it came to power. The paper focuses on the main orientation and reforming principles of social policy. Particular attention is given to the institutions providing various types of social support to the poorest segment of the population. Active social policy should be regarded as a new form of economic populism, rather than a strategy to create a socially oriented market economy in Turkey. The process of providing social support is “politicized”, and such social expenses lead to delay in solving actual long-term economic tasks. [R, abr.]
62.7870 VAIL, Mark I.; BOWYER, Benjamin T. —
This article explores the changing politics of economic inequality in Germany in a time of economic austerity and high unemployment and how these changes have affected the electoral fortunes of parties on the German Left. While the SPD experienced a precipitous drop in its electoral support in the most recent federal elections, Die Linke (the “Left” Party) has emerged as a viable electoral force on the far Left. Die Linke has seen its vote-share increase in traditional strongholds of the SPD. We analyze constituency-level election results from the 2005 and 2009 federal elections, examining the factors associated with the increase in support for Die Linke. We find that the party's vote-share increased the most in constituencies suffering from economic decline, as well as in areas that were previously strongly supportive of the SPD. [R, abr.]
62.7871 VALELLY, Richard M. —
LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) politics has deeply developmental and “state-centered” dynamics. Until the middle of the 20th c., sexual orientation was simply not widely and deeply politicized in the US. But abruptly, in a period of a decade and a half (roughly 1940–1955), national political and bureaucratic actors created a national sexuality regime that has taken 60 years of LGBT struggle to partly reverse. In seeking to substitute a different, overtly inclusive sexuality regime, LGBT citizens and their straight allies have initiated far-reaching changes in public policy, regulation of the workplace, and the institution of marriage. [R, abr.]
62.7872 VAN DALEN, Arjen —
Political journalism plays a central role in all democratic societies. But the way political journalists fulfill this role varies from country to country. To better understand the role of political journalists in different democracies, this article explores which features of political journalism are universal and which characteristics vary cross-nationally. Comprehensive surveys among political journalists in Denmark, Germany, the UK and Spain (N = 425) show that political journalists are more often male and higher educated than the general population of journalists. Their political conviction is however less towards the left. Despite structural homogenization, the role conceptions and feelings of autonomy of political journalists vary between countries with different historical relations between media and political systems and different traditions of journalistic professionalization. [R]
62.7873 VAN DER MEER, Tom, et al. —
Dutch elections continue to be the most volatile of Western Europe. But to what extent do voters' changes in vote intentions continue to be structured by underlying ideological dimensions? This article discusses various theories on the ideological structure of the Dutch party system at the electoral level, and the way they relate to processes of dealignment and realignment. We test these theories using the 1Vandaag Opinion Panel data-set, which follows 54,763 respondents in 53 waves between November 2006 and June 2010. We assess individuals' changes in vote intentions, and analyze the structure in these changes. [R, abr.]
62.7874 VAN HECKE, Steven —
The abundant literature on the European Constitution has largely overlooked the role party politics played in the European Convention. This article analyzes transnational party groups: how they were organized and which purposes they served. It shows that they mattered, but in unexpected ways due to the particular set-up of the Convention. For instance, they helped to bring MEPs and MNPs closer to each other. Overall, the analysis contributes to a better understanding of how parties operate at the transnational level and helps to explain the way in which polity-building in the EU's multi-level system takes place. [R]
62.7875 VAN LIEFFERINGE, Hilde; DEVOS, Carl; STEYVERS, Kristof —
We measure the effect of inherited political capital in the form of family politicization on legislative candidates' recruitment age and early careers. We differentiate the concept of family politicization between a narrow (i.e., party political) and a broad (i.e., non-party-political) interpretation. Results indicate that narrow family politicization is the only type that plays a role in speeding up political recruitment. However, only the route to candidacy is affected by family politicization, whereas for the route to power other factors absorb this effect, mainly the candidates' preelectoral party engagement. This implies that candidates from narrowly politicized families do not merely rely on inherited political capital to get elected, which rejects a popular opinion. [R, abr.]
62.7876 VANDENBERG, Andrew; HUNDT, David —
Faltering growth and rising unemployment in Sweden and Korea after financial crises in the 1990s seemed to confirm neoliberal expectations that all varieties of corporatism (state/authoritarian and societal/democratic) are doomed to decline, and that corporatism will converge on liberalism. Closer examination of the 1990s crises suggests that Swedish and Korean institutions have been transformed by ideas about networks and governance, interaction between national and international institutions and shifting alliances among export-oriented and competition-shielded employers, private and public sector unions and citizen networks. This article argues that the “dynamics of contention” can explain how these new ideas and alliances transformed regimes in Sweden and Korea and as such constitute an alternative to corporatism as an analytical construct. [R, abr.]
62.7877 VANHALA, Lisa —
This article examines the strategic legal activity of the environmental movement in the UK over the past twenty years. Environmental NGOs have increasingly turned to the courts in pursuit of their policy goals, despite significant losses on substantive legal issues, difficulties gaining standing and high costs awarded against them under the “loser pays” system. Why does the movement continue to pursue legal action in the face of what activists claim is a hostile legal opportunity structure (LOS)? This study explores this seeming paradox using a single-country, cross-temporal comparative approach. It highlights the agency the movement exhibits within opportunity structures and suggests that NGOs that use litigation are able to highlight the failings of the existing system and improve future access to justice for themselves and other groups. [R, abr.]
62.7878 VERGE, Tània; GÓMEZ, Raúl —
This article provides a dynamic framework through which factionalism can be examined and the circumstances of individual parties compared in multi-level contexts. We discuss the interaction between factionalism and party structure by setting out a model of factional organization dependent on the tolerance of host parties to dissent and their degree of vertical integration, their combination yielding four possible strategies for opposition factions: centralized, inter-layered, multi-layered and decentralized. We also consider implications for the party's dominant coalition in episodes of high factionalism. These act as a catalyst for the modification of party rules that regulate dissent and vertical distribution of power. The hypotheses developed are tested on four Spanish political parties that differ on the autonomy of regional branches and factions, the competitive position in the party system and factionalism type — more policy or more patronage-oriented. [R, abr.]
62.7879 VITERNA, Jocelyn —
First of a series of articles on “Critical perspectives on gender and politics. Gender and Latin America's Pink Tide”, introduced by Christina EWIG, pp. 246–248. Articles by Amy LIND, “The contradictions that endure: family norms, social reproduction, and Rafael Correa's citizen revolution in Ecuador”, pp. 254–261; Patricia RICHARDS, “The contradictions of inclusion [in Chile]: Mapuche women and Michelle Bachelet”, pp. 261–267; Christina EWIG, “The strategic use of gender and race in Peru's 2011 presidential campaign”, pp. 267–274.
62.7880 VLIEGENTHART, Rens; BOOMGAARDEN, Hajo G.; VAN SPANJE, Joost —
We advance our understanding of the relationship between mass media news reporting and anti-immigrant party support in three ways. First, we consider the visibility of anti-immigrant parties and party leaders in the news, rather than anti-immigration issues more generally. Second, in addition to analyzing media effects on a party's popularity, we also consider the reverse relationship, the effects of a party's popularity on media coverage of the party. Finally, we analyze the relationships from a cross-party perspective, using time-series analysis for six parties in three countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany) over the past two decades. Our results show strongest support for the effects of party and particularly leader visibility in the news on anti-immigrant party success, rather than the reverse relationship. [R, abr.]
62.7881 WAGNER, Corina; KONZELMANN, Laura; RATTINGER, Hans —
In the public debate concerning the consequences of demographic change in Germany, it is often argued that the rising share of older voters will help the CDU/CSU to consolidate its power. This argumentation applies only if the age effect is assumed to be dominant. However, diverse socialization backgrounds, captured by the cohort effect, also have to be taken into account. Based on the Representative Electoral Statistic (RES) and Population Forecasts, the consequences of demographic shifts for federal elections since 1953 are estimated, as well as for future elections. First, age, cohort and period effects on vote-choice for previous elections are calculated by using cohort analysis. Second, these effects are applied to the future age distribution. [R, abr.]
62.7882 WAGNER, Markus; RUUSUVIRTA, Outi —
Online voting advice applications (VAAs) have become very popular and may significantly influence voting behavior. It is therefore important to ask which model of party-choice VAAs follow. We establish that VAAs see party-choice largely as proximity-based issue-congruence, with some elements of the directional and salience models. We then assess how well VAAs follow the proximity model by comparing policy positions extracted from 13 VAAs in seven European countries with established policy measures from expert surveys and party manifestos. Party positions extracted from VAAs show strong convergent validity with left-right and economic positions, but compare less favorably with immigration and environment measures. [R, abr.]
62.7883 WALCZAK, Agnieszka; VAN DER BRUG, Wouter —
Several studies have identified how voting behavior is structured in post-communist democracies of East-Central Europe and established democracies of Western Europe. This article looks beyond a simple East-West distinction by developing a more sophisticated general model to explain cross-country variations in the effects of issues and left-right on party support. We demonstrate that the more issues are related to left-right, the stronger is the effect of left-right on party preferences. This effect occurs at the expense of the effects of issues on party preferences, which become weaker. These general findings help explain why the effect of left-right on party preferences is weaker in post-communist democracies than in more established democracies. Our proposition is empirically substantiated in a two-stage analysis using the European Election Study 2009. [R, abr.]
62.7884 WALSH, Katherine Cramer —
Why do people vote against their interests? Previous explanations do not consider the work of group consciousness. Based on participant observation of conversations from May 2007 to May 2011 among 37 regularly occurring groups in 27 communities sampled across Wisconsin [USA], this study shows that in some places, people have a class- and place-based identity that is intertwined with a perception of deprivation. The rural consciousness revealed here shows people attributing rural deprivation to the decision making of (urban) political elites, who disregard and disrespect rural residents and rural lifestyles. Thus these rural residents favor limited government, even though such a stance might seem contradictory to their economic self-interests. The results encourage us to consider the role of group consciousness-based perspectives rather than pitting interests against values as explanations for preferences. [R, abr.]
62.7885 WATERBORG, Joost; LUCAS, Kirsten; LINDEBOOM, Gert-Jan —
M. Bovens and A. Wille [“The education gap in participation and its political consequences”, ibid. 45(4), Dec. 2010: 393–422, Abstr. 61.817] argue that the Netherlands has become a diploma democracy in which the higher educated dominate all venues of political participation and thus shape policy in their favor. They see disparities between the political priorities and preferences of the higher- and lower-educated and argue that the lower levels of participation of the less educated lead to their underrepresentation and subsequent disaffection. In this reply, it is argued that the empirical analysis that supports Bovens and Wille's thesis does not warrant such a conclusion. A replication of Bovens and Wille's analysis shows that the gap between higher and lower educated is non-existent and that the differences in political behavior cannot simply be attributed to education. [R] [See Abstr. 62.7702, and Mark BOVENS and Anchrit WILLE's rejoinder, pp. 259–271]
62.7886 WILLIS, Eliza J.; SEIZ, Janet A. —
The process of ratifying CAFTA in Costa Rica required traversing a contentious political landscape involving intense legislative battles, massive public demonstrations, and finally a national referendum in October 2007. By employing the mechanism of direct democracy to ratify a free trade agreement, Costa Rica made history. But how did this experiment with direct participation affect Costa Rica's democracy? This article evaluates what the referendum achieved in terms of promoting citizen engagement, equipping voters to make informed choices, resolving the CAFTA conflict in a way viewed as legitimate, and shaping citizens' relationships to representative institutions. [R, abr.]
62.7887 WILSON, J. Matthew —
Using data from the National Black Election Study, this study tests the importance of group-based economic evaluations in driving African-American political behavior. Group-based evaluations powerfully influence presidential approval and vote-choice, even controlling for national and personal evaluations and a conception of “linked fate”. More importantly, group-based assessments exert a significant and independent influence on turnout, the central variable in black electoral politics. The results extend and reconsider the implications of group solidarity as a motivator of black political behavior and suggest that a revision of traditional notions of economic voting is in order, at least for African-Americans. [R]
62.7888 WOOD, Bronwyn E. —
This paper examines how high school-aged young people from New Zealand are crafting their everyday political subjectivities within the liminal status and liminal spaces they occupy in society. With a specific focus on schooling and the citizenship education curricula in New Zealand, three vignettes are introduced which examine young people's less reflexive and “everyday” forms of political action in the interstitial liminal space between public/private, formal/informal and macro/micro politics. These vignettes underline how young people's everyday politics were embedded within spatial and relational processes of socialization with adults within their schools and communities, yet, also showed both agency and resourcefulness with these spaces. [R, abr.]
62.7889 WOON, Wilson —
Sarawak, formerly a British colony prior to the formation of Malaysia, has been ruled by the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition for over four decades. Although the BN's political domination has been robust, it has never been smooth sailing, particularly in the 1960s and mid-1980s. The crises in the 1960s were resolved partly by the timely and swift interventions of the British and the core BN parties based in Peninsular Malaysia, albeit with resistance from local political parties. When a leadership crisis in the Sarawak BN erupted in mid-1980s, the coalition gained firm control over the state apparatus. This enabled the embattled Chief Minister to utilize the states resources to fend off opponents, rally the support of the electorate and subsequently retain control of the state. [R, abr.]
62.7890 WRAY-LAKE, Laura; HART, Daniel —
Social class differences in civic engagement persist for both youth and adults. Although empirical evidence is mixed, several recent social changes pertaining to youth suggest that social inequalities in civic engagement may be growing over time for young people. Using data from the National Election Study, we compared trends for youth and older adults of varying education levels and tested the hypothesis of an increasing educational disparity in youth political participation. Results for voting supported our expectations: declines over time were found for less-educated youth only. Unexpectedly, participation in other political activities for more-educated youth declined more over time compared to other groups. Our findings highlight the need to create equal opportunities for youth civic engagement across social groups. [R]
62.7891 YAN Xiaojun — “
This article examines the profound transformation market reforms have brought to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rural grassroots organizations. Focusing on the political rise of private entrepreneurs and other economically successful individuals who recently obtained village Party secretary appointments in a north China county, the article explores their differing promotion channels, power bases, political resources and motivations to take up the CCP's grassroots leadership position. It demonstrates that the variety among the new entrepreneurial Party secretaries shaped the network resource, factional affiliation and socio-political capital they rely upon to exercise their newly attained power. It also shows the crucial role played by community-based endogenous forces in transmitting the power of economic liberalization into dynamics for the reshuffling of the Communist Party leadership at the grassroots level. [R, abr.]
62.7892 ZASLOV, Andrej —
Since the 1990s, populist radical right (PRR) parties have experience considerable electoral success. They have also gained formal political power by participating in coalition governments in Austria, Switzerland and Italy, as well as informal power, by supporting center-right governments in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. This article examines the conditions that shape the success and failure of PRR in their attempts to transition from opposition to government. The article focuses on four cases: three successes — the Swiss People's Party, the [Italian] Lega Nord and the Danish People's Party — and one failure, the Austrian Freedom Party. In order to explain the success and failure of the PRR in government, this article combines insights from structure and agency approaches. [R, abr.]
62.7893 ZESKIND, Leonard —
The Tea Parties are described as a unique movement appearing at a specific historical moment. The movement encompasses constituent national networks, core members and more loosely aligned supporters. Its supporters are overwhelmingly white and middle class. Matters of race and national identity motivate many Tea Partiers as well as a sense of dispossession from their place of privilege in the racial order. This analysis takes at face value the movement's dress, symbols and invocation of the constitution, as well as its claims to embody the aspirations of a narrow body of “real Americans”. By making an exclusionary claim on the nation's founding moments, they actually set themselves apart from other Americans. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7745]
62.7894 ZHAN, Jing Vivian —
Corruption exists around the world and throughout the human history, but societies undergoing rapid modernization and institutional transition tend to be more susceptible to this problem. This article analyzes the corruption-facilitating roles of guanxi [personal ties] network under transition. It argues that when deficient political and economic institutions hamper the effective flow of information and resources and when fast structural changes generate uncertainty, people can resort to guanxi network, an informal institution, to overcome these difficulties and advance their private interests. Using empirical evidence from reform-era China, this article demonstrates how the communication, exchange, and normative functions of guanxi network enhance the opportunities, means, and incentives for public officials to engage in corruption, especially transactional corruption through particularistic ties. [R]
62.7895 ZHANG Guang —
How should the government allocate fiscal resources among different sectors in order to satisfy the needs and expectations of its citizens? This question is worth considering because public finance in China has increased at a rate much higher than that of GDP in recent years. Based on a classification of public expenditures, we classify public services and goods provided by the Chinese government into five functions: the administrative, law and order, developmental, welfare, and humanitarian functions. We employ key findings from a survey provided by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) questioning the importance and performance of different programs in a questionnaire sent to young educated citizens — the leaders and administration of tomorrow. To be more responsive, the Chinese government needs to reallocate its fiscal resources towards welfare and humanitarian functions. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7763]
62.7896 ZHANG Zhibin; GUO Chao —
To what extent do Chinese nonprofit organizations, through advocacy activities, engage citizens in influencing public policies and contribute to the development of a participatory policy process in China? This study examines the advocacy activities of Chinese nonprofits and their contributions to a responsive government. We find that the intensity of advocacy activities by Chinese nonprofits is relatively low and varies by organizational type, by degree of professionalization, and by dependence on government funding. We find no association between advocacy intensity and the extent to which Chinese nonprofits engage citizens at the organizational level prior to their advocacy efforts. The ineffective marshalling and integration of citizens' interests within Chinese nonprofit organizations might be attributable to the corporatist structure of the institutional and resource environments in which Chinese nonprofit organizations operate. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 62.7763]
62.7897 ZINGHER, Joshua N.; THOMAS, M. Steen —
Immigration is becoming an increasingly important issue in virtually every Western democracy. However, immigrants' participation in politics varies greatly from country to country. This article identifies and explains the two key determinants of this variation. We establish that ethnicity along with traditional socio-economic factors are the two primary forces that determine immigrant political behavior. We theorize that immigrants' ethnic differences from the native population, along indicators such as language and residential segregation, increase information costs and create barriers to participation in politics as well as influencing partisanship. To empirically evaluate our claims, we analyze data from the Australian Election Study from 1993 to 2010. The results provide strong empirical support for our hypotheses. [R]
62.7898
A symposium. Contributions by Joshua T. PUTNAM, “The impact of rules changes on the 2012 Republican presidential primary process”, pp. 400–404; Dean SPILIOTES, “Ephemeral candidates, virtual voters, and the future of retail politics”, pp. 405–408; Girish J. GULATI, “Super PACs and financing the 2012 presidential election”, pp. 409–417; Lara M. BROWN, “How close is too close?: the 2012 election in the electoral college”, pp. 418–422; Richard M. SKINNER, “Barack Obama and the partisan presidency: four more years?”, pp. 423–429; Heather HURLBURT, “Leadership, belonging, and national security in the 2012 presidential race”, pp. 430–432; William C. MARTEL, “American Grand Strategy after November 2012”, pp. 433–438; R. Ward HOLDER and Peter B. JOSEPHSON, “Obama, Romney, and Christian realism”, pp. 439–443.