Diversifying British Political History

This article explores what the diversification of British political history might look like. Building on an expanded definition of citizenship and attention to ‘ordinary’ politics, it suggests several questions which might diversify political history's content and approach. Whom do we count as political actors? Who has access to democratic processes and where does politics happen beyond these processes? To what forms of political thought do we attend? Drawing on examples from my own research on refugees and asylum seekers in modern Britain, and on the wider field of modern British history, I demonstrate the possibilities of diversification as a way to enliven political history's future.     

Political competition and politician quality: evidence from Italian municipalities

We use data from Italian local level governments for the years 1985?C2008 to investigate whether political competition affects the quality of politicians, as measured by some ex-ante characteristics such as educational level and type of job held. We handle endogeneity problems through an instrumental variable approach using as an instrument for political competition a variable taking into account whether the previous Municipal Council survived until the end of its legislative term. Two Stage Least Square estimates support the view that political competition positively affects politician quality. Results are robust to different measures of political competition and to different estimation strategies.     

Networks and political engagement of migrant organisations in five European cities

This article investigates networks and political actions by migrant organisations in five European cities. It examines how political opportunity structures moderate the impact of organisational networks on organisations' political contacts and protests using data from organisational surveys undertaken between 2005 and 2008 in Budapest, Lyon, Madrid, Milan and Zurich. Results suggest that the political context moderates the role that different types of networks have on mobilisation. It is found that migrant organisational networks may be sources compensating for the lack of contextual opportunities, thus fostering the use of protest by migrant organisations. However, migrant organisational networks can also favour the creation of political subcultures, marginalised from mainstream politics. Finally, migrant networks are likely to foster migrant organisations' political integration in multicultural contexts through conventional as well as non‐conventional politics.     

PBB in American Local Governments: It's More than a Management Tool

Despite academic findings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executive–legislative relationship and departmental appropriations, the author examines the budget implications of applying performance information at the subdepartmental program level. Case analysis of Indianapolis’s IndyStat initiative underscores that performance measurement application is positively related to intradepartmental program budget changes. Hence, performance‐based budgeting (PBB) can improve local budgeting despite severe political constraints. Still, successful use of PBB requires strong executive leadership, and its effects remain less visible at the departmental level or within the wider political arena of legislative bargaining. The author concludes by recommending some rethinking of the current analytical focus of PBB both in future research as well as recommended practice.     

Comparing Local,National and EU Knowledge: The Ignorant Public Reassessed

Empirical research has repeatedly confirmed the political ignorance of ordinary citizens, but democracy prevails. This article offers a new perspective into this paradox by arguing that typical political knowledge indicators are inadequate because they only measure national‐level knowledge. The study makes two contributions. First, it compares national, local and European Union political knowledge. Second, it does so with a nationally representative dataset, which comes from a survey from Finland (n = 1,020) devoted solely to political knowledge. Two questions are posed: Are the sociodemographic determinants of knowledge the same on all levels of politics? And is public ignorance equally widespread on all levels? Challenging some established findings, the study shows that people in rural communities know more about local politics than urban counterparts, that women know more about local politics than men and that young people are equally knowledgeable about the EU as older people. The results thus indicate that people are to varying extents knowledgeable about varying aspects of politics.     

Political Campaigning Environments in Latvia: From a Global to a Local Perspective

Political campaigning is a global phenomenon in the sense that the methods for achieving political goals are becoming similar all over the globe where elections are being used as a tool for the legitimation of a political elite. This article addresses the question of the extent to which the political campaigning environment in Latvia is influenced by global trends. Globalization in this case is viewed from the perspective of Latvia's geopolitical location between the West and Russia and a comparison of political campaigning practices in Western democracies and authoritarian Russia. What methods of political campaigning are more appropriate in Latvia, those such as used in old democracies or the authoritarian regime? At the same time, there are also considerable local peculiarities in every country that affect the strategic planning and implementation of political campaigns. Therefore, the second research question relates to the main areas that determine the specific framework of the political campaigning environment in Latvia. The results of the research reveal that the influence of both Western and Russian styles of political campaigning are detectable in Latvia, although the international effect is rather limited, because Latvia as a political campaigning environment is dominated by its own unique characteristics. The main aspects that determine the local framework of the political campaigning environment in Latvia are the media system, political parties, and political culture.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

These rules are made for spending: testing and extending the law of 1/n

What is the influence of the rules of political representation on local spending? This research tests the law of 1/n in the Portuguese local context and finds that the law fails to apply. We suggest an alternative measure—the density of representation—to assess the impact of the rules of city council representation on local public expenditures. Density of representation is defined as the number of elected officials in the city council divided by city population. We find an S-shaped relationship between the density of representation and the level of local government expenditures. The level of municipal spending initially declines with increases in the density of representation, reflecting an increase in the ability of constituents to monitor their elected representatives. At higher levels of representation density, the relationship becomes positive, suggesting that the dynamics of the budgetary commons become salient. The relationship becomes negative again for extremely high density of representation owing to increases in the transaction costs of legislative decision-making. This paper discusses the implications of our findings for the reform of local government institutions and the rules of political representation.     

Is Small Still Flexible? An Evaluation of Recent Trends in Danish Politics

How has Denmark been able to adjust its economic and industrial policies in an era of major changes in the international economy? The article gives a survey of the last 10 years, especially more recent years. Before 1986 wage policy and public-expenditure policy were dominant. Since then they have been supplemented by a new structural policy to increase the level of technology, to improve education and research and to change the composition of Danish exports as far as products and markets are concerned. The adjustment of policies has taken place in a stable multi-centred political system. The process has been characterized by institutionalized campaigning, moulding of interests and mobilization of compromises and mutual understanding. The capacity for flexible adjustment seems to originate from the stability of the political system. Likewise, uncertainty and instability seem to weaken the capacity for political flexibility. During the last two years the transformation of the elite consensus into state programmes and administrative decision-making has been hampered and the whole structural policy approach has been challenged by a neoliberal alternative. This is mainly due to an extraordinary parliamentary stalemate in a situation of extreme minority parliamentarism.     

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.     

Checking the Fact-Checkers in 2008: Predicting Political Ad Scrutiny and Assessing Consistency

Which types of political ads are most likely to draw criticism from fact-checkers? Are fact-checkers consistent in their evaluations of political ads? Examining general election television ads from the 2008 U.S. presidential race, and based upon the evaluations of FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and the Washington Post's Fact Checker, this study demonstrates it was the attack ads from candidates that were most likely to draw scrutiny from the fact-checkers. Most importantly, a high level of agreement between the fact-checkers indicates their success at selecting political claims that can be consistently evaluated. While political advertisers are increasingly using evidence to support their claims, what may be more critical in drawing evaluations from fact-checkers is the verifiability of a claim. The implications of consistent fact-checking on the public, political actors, journalism and democracy are discussed. With the revelation that fact-checking can be consistently practiced, localized efforts at fact-checking need encouragement, particularly as political TV ads increasingly drown out other potential sources of information for the public and increasingly are used in downballot races, local initiatives, referendums and judicial races.     

政府环境治理工作的公众评价：央地差距与结构性制约

近年来,随着环境问题日益受到社会各界的重视,政府在环境治理工作中的表现正成为公众关注的重点。但是,我们对于目前我国政府环境治理工作公众评价的基本情况和影响因素还知之甚少。基于对中国综合社会调查2013年（CGSS2013）数据的分析,我们发现,我国公众对于中央政府环境治理工作的评价显著高于地方政府,包括受教育程度、收入水平、社会经济地位感知、政治身份、城乡差距和地区差距在内的结构性因素制约着公众对于政府环境治理工作的评价。在对研究发现进行深入讨论的基础上,进一步提炼了研究发现在政策意义上的启示。     

Choices for Chinese Political Science: Methodological Positivism or Methodological Pluralism?

Like its American counterpart, Chinese political science is experiencing a similar concern regarding its societal relevance as it attempts to assess and focus on China’s unique political and social concerns. Should Chinese political science tread the same path? Should it pursue a purely methodological positivist approach or should it engage in a more holistic and methodologically pluralistic approach such as that found in public administration? A mixed-methods approach, which includes both problem-driven research and theory-driven research, might be a better way to serve both the discipline and China.     

Antecedents of political market orientation in Britain and Sweden: analysis and future research propositions

• During the last 20 years, political marketing has become a widespread phenomenon around the world. However, most of the research concerning political marketing has been carried out in countries such as the United States and Britain. Thus, in order to understand the antecedents of political marketing, as well as its effectiveness as an electoral strategy, there is a need for comparative research including countries that differ significantly from the U.S. and Britain.
• One such country is Sweden. Thus, the purpose of this article is to compare and analyze Sweden and Britain with regard to two analytical research questions: (1) What differences are there between Britain and Sweden that might be relevant in understanding why parties choose to be sales‐ or market‐oriented? (2) What are the implications with regards to differences between countries and between parties within countries that might help to explain why some parties in some countries are more likely than others to be market‐oriented?

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reigniting the fire: a contemporary research agenda for social,political and nonprofit marketing

The paper reports on the core challenges faced by the nonprofit, political and social marketing disciplinary areas and suggests a series of research agendas to develop theory and practice to meet these challenges.

• Social marketing's research agenda involves the continued adaptation of the new developments in commercial marketing, whilst building a base of social marketing theory and best practice benchmarks that can be used to identify, clarify and classify the boundaries of social marketing against social change techniques.
• Nonprofit marketing is pursuing the dual research agenda of developing the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship whilst seeking deeper consumer‐based research to understand motivations for charitable behaviour and gift giving.
• Political Marketing's research agenda looks for an increase in the level of background research, core data and market research to use as a basis for developing more advanced theoretical and practical models. In addition, as political marketing is being transferred internationally between a range of political and electoral systems, there is a need for comparative research into both the relevance and effectiveness of these techniques to isolate nation independent and nation dependent political marketing strategies and campaigns.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Embracing the Tension Between Ethnic Identity and Academic Identity: An Analysis of Challenges to Chinese American Political Scientists’ Presentation of Knowledge

An increasing number of foreign-born Chinese political scientists teach and engage in research at colleges and universities in North America. Like other foreign-born scholars, these Chinese American political scientists must manage the tension between their ethnic identities and academic identities. What is the ethnic identity of Chinese American political scientists? What do their ethnic identities have to do with the objects of their critical inquiries? What challenges will they face on their way to reaching an epistemological middle ground between professional judgment and subjective perception? By using survey, discourse analysis, and ethnography, this essay analyzes the influence of ethnic identity on the work of Chinese American political scientists. Rather than comment on their individual scholarship, this essay examines the impact of ethnic identity on the effectiveness and quality of their presentation of scholarship to the public.     

Political Persuasibility: Dynamics of Attitudes towards Taxation of Old Age Pensioners

Opinion research has for long discussed the robustness of individuals' political opinions. Panel data have been a much used method to study opinion change and stability. This method can tell how many change position from one point of time to another, but it can hardly be used to tell why individuals change or maintain their attitudes. To be able to study the significance of information upon people's political views, opinion research has in recent years adopted an experimental approach. This article examines the results from a survey experiment, based on the counter-argument technique developed by Sniderman, Piazza and Kendrick. The technique makes it possible to study how readily people can be persuaded to leave a political position when confronted with a counter-argument. The subject of the experiment was taxation of old age pensioners. The analyses showed that it was easier to persuade respondents to abandon a position in old age pensioners' disfavour than a position in old age pensioners' favour. Respondents with a low educational level were easier to persuade than respondents with a high level of education.     

Help-seeking from public authorities: Who arrives at the agency door?

For ordinary citizens, political life is increasingly characterized by a request for a check, not a trip to the polls. Yet for all their frequency, very little is known about help-seeking encounters. This article asks the question “Who gets to the agency door?” or, more formally, “How do individuals decide to apply for public social benefits or services, and what does that decision signify?” Three topics are explored. The first defines help-seeking as a type of political participation. The second conceptualizes the process by which individuals decide to seek help from public social agencies. The third presents an agenda for research and action on the politics of help-seeking.     

Review Article: Scandinavian Parties in the Internal and External Arena

Party research lived a relatively quiet life during the 1970s and 1980s in the western world, and to some degree also in Scandinavia, although the central role of parties in the Scandinavian democracies made it impossible for political scientists to completely ignore political parties in their research. However, from the end of 1980s, political party research has been revitalized, and the number of publications has increased substantially. The three books reviewed here are part of the upswing during 1997, which, of course, includes other books and publications from that particular year. Why this renewed interest in studying political parties? For a long period after World War II, Scandinavian political parties were characterized as stable mass organizations. In 1973, the established Danish political system suffered an electoral backlash, and the shock waves gave fuel to speculations of party decline in electoral behavior studies. At the same time, similar trends were visible in Finland and Norway. Much later, interest focused on finding the same signs of decline in the internal party arena. The discussion is still alive, and during this process students of political science have gained new knowledge about parties and their organizations in Scandinavia.     

Public affairs and political strategy: theoretical foundations

During the past two decades there have been hundreds of articles published within the broad topic of business political strategy, many of them rigorous and innovative. This paper presents a review and assessment of the theoretical bases of extant research, focusing on three broad research questions: Why do firms participate in the political process? What strategies and tactics do firms employ? What are the limitations on firms' capacity for rational action in the political arena? Research in political strategy has been informed by interest group theory, collective action theory, public choice theory, transaction costs theory, game theory, resource dependence theory, institutional theory, agency theory, the behavioural theory of the firm, business strategy, and population ecology. The paper concludes with a plea to scholars to conduct research in this area which is explicitly and consistently grounded in broad theories of social science. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications