Public campaign financing and the rise of radical-right parties

While public campaign financing is often thought of as a way to “level the playing field” of elections, I argue that such policies may have unintended second-order consequences. Namely, that increasing the degree to which public funding drives political campaigns disproportionately aids radical-right parties. This is a counter-intuitive result, as public financing of elections has recently become an important issue for those on the political left as a method to restore power to the majority. Rather, it seems to aid not only those on the right, but those on the political fringe. Through a cross-national analysis of 328 lower-house elections in 20 advanced democracies, I demonstrate that public financing serves to significantly increase vote-share of the radical-right.     

A Matter of Fact? Knowledge Effects on the Vote in Swedish General Elections, 1985–2002

What would have happened in general elections if all voters had more closely approximated the democratic ideal of a ‘fully informed’ voter? Earlier analyses have demonstrated politically consequential effects of political information on American voters’ political preferences. In an effort to expand the validity of these results, the author of this article performed counterfactual analyses of aggregate election outcomes in six Swedish general elections from 1985 to 2002. The analyses show that the aggregated gains for right‐wing parties average +2.1 percentage points during the period. In two elections, the outcome would have resulted in a different government majority. The findings challenge a widespread idea that voters’ extensive use of cognitive heuristics can compensate fully for their lack of factual knowledge. This article demonstrates that factual knowledge can indeed have significant effects in places where one would least expect it – in a Northern European multiparty context where voters are renowned for making extensive use of cognitive heuristics.     

Of(f) Course: Michel Foucault,the Mobile Philosopher and his Dreamworlds

Foucault extolled the Iranian revolution and, anticipating the havoc that his public intervention in favour of the revolution would create, he wrote: “I can already hear the French laughing, but I know that they are wrong”. Examining Foucault’s (so unlikely) valorisation of certainty and the partisan affectivity it bestows upon knowledge and truth, I read his unusual engagement with the Iranian revolution against the grain. A major tendency is to approach Foucault’s Iranian writings as aberration; against this tendency, I read them as an effect of Foucault’s specific epistemic and utopian optics. Through a critical reading of neglected aspects of Foucault’s comments on Iran, I argue that much nuance is missing when damning critiques fail to see why and how Foucault’s interest in an active rather than folklore non-European political identity unveils deeper tensions of his own worldview and outlook on international politics and interrogates mainstream appraisals of Foucault’s political philosophy.     

Polarization,Ideology, and Vote Choice in U.S. Congressional Elections

Despite the debate about mass polarization, most scholars agree that parties in Congress have become increasingly polarized over time. Scholars have sought to connect party polarization to the beliefs and perceptions of individual citizens, but little work exists on the relationship between polarization and the vote choices made by ordinary citizens. In this article, I examine the link between party polarization at the elite level, the use of ideology by citizens, and their vote choices in Congressional elections. I argue that the increased polarization that has occurred over time has led people to place more weight on ideology when casting their votes in U.S. House elections. My hypothesis stems from work on group conflict theory, which suggests that when people sense a high degree of conflict between two groups, a cue from elites, they will be more likely to rely on their own relevant characteristics or attitudes when making choices. This study differs from previous work on Congressional elections in that I examine variation in the effect of ideology on vote choice over multiple elections rather than just in one or two elections. I argue that an exploration of the political context (or the political context perceived by voters) is necessary in order to more fully understand the use of ideology in U.S. elections. To the extent that polarization facilitates the use of information shortcuts among voters, it might be viewed as a positive development within the context of electoral politics.     

Cracking the whip: the deliberative costs of strict party discipline

ABSTRACT

This article explores the deliberative costs incurred when political parties rely on strict discipline to attain unity. I begin with a brief discussion aimed at clarifying the notion of strict party discipline. The second section explores how such discipline affects the formation, expression and reception of dissenting views. In the third section, I go on to outline two approaches towards deliberation in Parliament: the epistemic approach and the political justification approach. I argue that the impact of strict party discipline on dissenting views entails costs on legislative deliberation conceptualised in either way. The fourth section highlights how intra-party deliberation could potentially mitigate the deliberative costs outlined in this article. Finally, I turn to the implications of my analysis for assessing party discipline, and then I take a closer look at the case of India’s anti-defection law, demonstrating why the deliberative costs outlined in this article are particularly severe there.     

Attention! The meanings of attention to politics in surveys

This research note explores the role of reported attention to politics in survey overclaiming about politics. Using recognition of real and fictitious political parties in the context of the UK's 2019 European Parliament elections, we find that people who report higher attention to politics are more likely to over-report recognition of fictitious parties, and are also more likely to recognize new real political parties - those that emerged around the issue of ‘Brexit’ in the months before the election. To resolve these patterns, we show that political attention makes little difference to the accuracy of responses for people who have high political knowledge, or if it does so, it increases accuracy. However, for those with lower political knowledge, high reported political attention is a source of potential survey error and bias. These findings are consistent with higher survey satisficing and norm compliance among those who report having greater attention to politics, particularly among those who have lower knowledge. The implications are important for understanding the meaning and consequences of ‘attention to politics’ in surveys.     

Bargaining in legislatures,portfolio allocation,and the electoral costs of governing

What motivates political parties in the legislative arena? Existing legislative bargaining models stress parties’ office and policy motivations. A particularly important question concerns how parties in coalition government agree the distribution of cabinet seats. This article adds to the portfolio allocation literature by suggesting that future electoral considerations affect bargaining over the allocation of cabinet seats in multi-party cabinets. Some parties are penalised by voters for participating in government, increasing the attractiveness of staying in opposition. This ‘cost of governing’ shifts their seat reservation price – the minimum cabinet seats demanded in return for joining the coalition. Results of a randomised survey experiment of Irish legislators support our expectation, demonstrating that political elites are sensitive to future electoral losses when contemplating the distribution of cabinet seats. This research advances our understanding of how parties’ behaviour between elections is influenced by anticipation of voters’ reactions.     

PCC Elections as a ‘Failed Experiment’: What Lessons can be Learned?

The low turnout of the 2012 police and crime commissioner (PCC) elections have led to questions surrounding their legitimacy and have even led to the former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg describing the elections—elections his party helped to introduce—as a ‘failed experiment’. Despite this, the election of a majority Conservative government in May 2015 appears to offer some longevity to the role of police and crime commissioners and cements next year's PCC elections in the political diary. Concerns in the immediate aftermath of the elections focused upon the costs of the elections. In this article I offer some suggestions as to what lessons could be learned from this experiment and, through exploring the attitudes of voters, political parties and the media, suggest that we can learn four lessons: (1) that spoilt ballots cannot be ignored; that (2) political parties and (3) the media's attitudes toward elections are important in encouraging people to vote; and (4) that high numbers of independent candidates cannot simply be welcomed at times of elections.     

Bet Out the Vote: Prediction Markets as a Tool to Promote Undergraduate Political Engagement

ABSTRACT

Over the course of three semesters spanning the 2016 primary and general elections, we conducted a series of quasi-experiments to evaluate the effects of prediction markets on undergraduate interest in the political process. We gave several classes in our institution’s core American politics course the opportunity to collectively invest in election-related markets on PredictIt.org, and over two-thirds of our students reported that the exercise stimulated their interest in the elections and political process. Roughly half also reported reading more news articles because of their participation in the market. While our treatment group did not demonstrate statistically-significant improvement in tangential political awareness, knowledge, or engagement, our findings do challenge previous conclusions that prediction markets have limited capacity to motivate students in an introductory learning context.     

Long-Term Performance of Political Parties

Abstract

Whilst politicians can “buy” votes in the short-term, most political parties are more interested in maintaining power over a period of years in order to implement their policies. This paper explores whether political parties can be considered to possess long-term competitive resources that sustain their competitive advantages. It employs the well-established strategic management concept of the Resource-Based View of strategy development for this purpose. Because such a concept has not previously been applied to political parties, the paper begins by considering the nature of the competition that exists between political parties and the role of resources in developing superior political performance. A series of theoretical propositions about why some parties maintain political power and influence for lengthy periods is then developed. We argue that the competitive resources of a political party such as its policies, leadership, organisational and communications skills require long-term investment and development, rejecting the notion that long-term electoral success is based primarily on the promises and resources deployed in the final election campaign.     

Some talk: Money in politics. A (partial) review of the literature

The financing of political campaigns is an area of active scholarly study. I review some of the recent literature and discuss important methodological issues that arise in empirical research on campaign expenditures and campaign contributions. The effects of campaign expenditures and advertising on candidate and ballot-measure elections are summarized, as are the impacts of contributions on contributors’ welfare. Many states have changed their campaign finance laws in the past few years, and I describe work that exploits variations in these laws. A discussion of the strategies used by interest groups to allocate their campaign contributions provides insights into contributors’ motives.     

Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment

Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.     

What citizens learn from elections: The normative consequences of voter eligibility

Advocates of innovations for ways to expand citizens’ political participation claim that institutions that require more in-depth participation than voting are required to attain a democratic system with profound civic engagement. They often base this claim on the assumption that elections fail to encourage citizens to be socially and politically involved. In this paper I challenge this assumption by exploring whether voter eligibility reinforces the notion that a good citizen participates in politics. Applying a regression discontinuity design that uses the voting-age restriction as the threshold, I find that voter eligibility boosts support for extensive (non-electoral) forms of political participation. Hence, I argue that the importance of elections should not be underestimated in the quest for societies with civic-minded citizens.     

Bridging the ideological space: A cross‐national analysis of the distance of party switching

Scholars have investigated the characteristics of volatile voters ever since the first voter surveys were carried out and they have paid specific attention to the role of political sophistication on vote switching. Nevertheless, the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear. With increasing volatility over the past decades this question has furthermore grown in relevance. Is the growing unpredictability of elections mostly driven by sophisticated voters making well‐considered choices or is the balance of power in the hands of unsophisticated ‘floating voters’? Several scholars have argued that even under conditions of increasing volatility switching is still mostly confined to changes to ideologically close parties. Most researchers, however, have used rather crude measures to investigate this ‘leap’ between parties. To advance research in this field, this article directly models the ideological distance bridged by volatile voters when investigating the link between political sophistication and volatility. This is done using Comparative Study of Electoral systems (CSES) data that encompass a broad sample of recent parliamentary elections worldwide. Results indicate that voters with an intermediate level of political knowledge are most likely to switch overall. When taking into account the ideological distance of party switching, however, the confining impact of political knowledge on the vote choices made is clearly dominant, resulting in a linear decrease of the distance bridged as voters become more knowledgeable.     

Electoral Success Versus Party Maintenance: National, State, and Local Party Contributions to Illinois Legislative Races

The need for political parties both to expand their legislativebase by winning elections and to maintain their organizationbetween elections is translated into two kinds of campaign contributionstrategies. Federalism affects how political parties choosebetween the two objectives and their related strategies. Contributionsto Illinois legislative races reveal that expansive strategiesaimed at candidates with reasonable chances of winning are mostprominently used by state organizations. Maintenance strategies,concerned with ensuring a continued party presence, are mostconsistently pursued by local parties. In general, except forthe national parties, differences between Democratic and Republicanorganizations are comparatively minor.     

When Governments Regulate Governments

This article advances a political theory of regulation that accounts for the choices of regulators and regulated entities when both are governments. Leading theories of regulation assume that governments regulate profit‐maximizing firms: Governments set rules, to which firms respond rationally in ways that constrain their behavior. But often the entities that governments regulate are other governments. We argue that government agencies and private firms often face different compliance costs, and that agencies have greater incentives than firms to appeal regulations through political channels. Simultaneously, the typical enforcement instruments that regulators use to influence firm behavior may be less effective against governments. Our empirical subjects are public and private entities’ compliance with the U.S. Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. We find that, compared with private firms, governments violate these laws significantly more frequently and are less likely to be penalized for violations.     

Opinion change and voting behaviour in referendums

Abstract. Voters in a referendum obtain information and derive voting cues from a variety of sources. Some of these, such as political parties or ideological orientations, are similar to those also found to be influential in elections. Others can be quite different. In some referendums, the issue may be entirely new and unfamiliar to many voters, initiating a 'learning' or 'cue–taking' process specific to the campaign itself. In referendum campaigns, parties may be internally divided and sometimes send conflicting signals to their electorates. As a result, voting behaviour in referendums often exhibits greater volatility than is found in elections. In the ten papers included in this Special Issue of EJPR , we focus on the process of opinion formation and change which occurred in a number of European, North American and Australia/New Zealand referendums held under a variety of different institutional and political conditions. In this essay, I argue that there are three distinctive patterns of opinion formation and reversal that tend to occur in referendum campaigns, each of which has significant consequences both for voting choice and for referendum outcomes.     

Prospects for the Two-party System in a Pluralising Political World

Political commentators argue that the major political parties are in decline. This article sets out evidence for this view: minor parties and independents securing 20 percent of the vote at federal elections, declining strength of voters' party identification, and issue movements playing a large role in setting the political agenda. Possible causes for these trends range from the political, such as policy failure, undermining traditional constituencies, and ignoring public opinion, to sociological forces, such as postmaterialism, individualism and serious disaffection. However, the article argues Labor and the Coalition will be the dominant political players for the foreseeable future. In most lower houses, the electoral system favours the major parties which on balance is a good thing. The major parties have taken concerns of interest groups into account, while balancing these against majority opinion. They simplify choice for an electorate only moderately interested in politics, and can be held accountable in a way minor parties and independents cannot.     

The political process and the use of debt financing by state governments

Empirical evidence offered in this study suggests that decisions by state government officials to effect debt-financed spending depend in part on the state's gubernatorial election cycle. More specifically, the results reveal relative increases in state debt issues in anticipation of elections, and furthermore, they reveal that such increases are more significant for states characterized by high interparty political competition. While theoretical limitations preclude a definitive explanation for these results, the evidence is consistent with a view of state political markets where incumbent parties manipulate public policy so as to enhance the probability of success in pending elections. This insight is significant in that it suggests a relationship between public policy decisions and election cycles in a context heretofore unexplored.