Getting out the vote: Social structure and the mobilization of partisanship in the 1989 European elections

Abstract: Why do European elections look more like national elections in retrospect than in prospect? One possibility is that during the run-up to a European election party leaders appeal for the votes of their 'normal' supporters, and their success in these appeals gives rise to the 'normal' outcome of the campaign. To test this hypothesis two definitions of 'normal supporters' are evaluated and the outcome is to discredit the use of party identification as a means of identifying supporters. Instead, social structure is employed to identify the groups that might respond to party appeals, and the basic finding of the article is that supporters defined in this fashion do increase their support for appropriate parties during the run-up to a European election, as though they were responding to appeals of the hypothesized kind.     

DECENTRING POLICY NETWORKS: A THEORETICAL AGENDA

This introduction starts by specifying the theoretical and analytical framework underpinning the range of essays in this special issue. It then provides an overview of the existing literature on policy networks and network governance in order to identify what a decentred approach might contribute. What follows is an account of decentred theory, a discussion of the potential alternatives it can offer to existing accounts and how these might be achieved through reconstructing networks by appealing to notions of situated agency and tradition; it concludes by considering the potential methodologies to be employed, with particular emphasis on ethnography.