Introducing a New Data Set: Budget Support Suspensions as a Sanctioning Device: An Overview from 1999 to 2014

This article presents a new, publicly available data set covering all budget support (BS) suspensions in the period 1999–2014. The data set covers 239 BS suspensions, involving 18 donors and 40 recipient countries. This article shows an aggregate picture of these suspensions, including the reasons why donors suspended, which donors have been active in suspending their BS, and which countries have been undergoing these aid sanctions. From this aggregate picture some patterns drawn out, substantiate a couple of things that have surfaced in the literature already. With 42% of BS suspensions in the Democracy and Human Rights category, it is clear that democratic governance has been a pertinent reason to legitimize BS suspensions. The large number of suspensions in some countries also indicates the unpredictability of budget support. The data set and the user guide can be downloaded at www.uantwerp.be/budget-support-suspensions .     

The Compensation Effect of Civic Education on Political Engagement: How Civics Classes Make Up for Missing Parental Socialization

Political Behavior - The development of political engagement in early life is significant given its impact on political knowledge and participation. Analyses reveal a large influence of parents on...     

The United Kingdom 2017 election: polarisation in a split issue space

Abstract

After decades in which party competition was fought in the centre ground, the 2017 UK General Election witnessed a return to more conflictual politics. This article assesses public support for the electoral strategies of the main parties and examines the extent to which the issues the parties campaigned on resonated with their own supporters, as well as with the wider public. Drawing on the issue-yield framework, the article shows that the Conservative campaign – generally considered to be badly run – did not focus on issues that would fully exploit the opportunities for expanding support that were open to the party. Labour, by contrast, played a much better hand. While taking a clear left-wing stance on many policies that were popular with its constituency, the party also skilfully emphasised valence issues that Labour is often seen as more credible on, such as healthcare and education.     

World Bank Lending and the Quality of Economic Policy

This study investigates the impact of World Bank development policy lending on the quality of economic policy. It finds that the quality of policy increases, but at a diminishing rate, with the cumulative number of policy loans. Similar results hold for the cumulative number of conditions attached to policy loans, although quadratic specifications indicate that additional conditions may even reduce the quality of policy beyond some point. The paper measures the quality of economic policy using the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessments of macro, debt, fiscal, and structural policies, and considers only policy loans targeted at improvements in those areas. Previous studies finding weaker effects of policy lending on macro stability have failed to distinguish loans primarily intended to improve economic policy from other loans targeted at improvements in sector policies or in public management. The paper also shows that investing in economic policy does not ‘crowd out’ policy improvements in other areas, such as public sector governance or human development. The results are robust to using alternative indicators of policy quality and correcting for endogeneity with system generalized methods of moments and cross-sectional two-stage least squares. The more positive results in the study relative to some previous studies are consistent with claims by the World Bank that it has learned from its mistakes with traditional adjustment lending.     

Political ideology, quality at entry and the success of economic reform programs

This study investigates how government ideology matters for the success of World Bank economic policy loans, which typically support market-liberalizing reforms. A simple model predicts that World Bank staff will invest more effort in designing an economic policy loan when faced with a left-wing government. Empirically, estimates from a Heckman selection model show that the quality at entry of an economic policy loan is significantly higher for governments with a left-wing party orientation. This result is robust to changes in the sample, alternative measures of ideology, different estimation techniques and the inclusion of additional control variables. Next, robust findings from estimating a recursive triangular system of equations indicate that leftist governments comply more fully with loan agreements. Results also suggest that World Bank resources are more productive—in terms of reform success—in the design of policy operations than in their supervision. Anecdotal evidence from several country cases is consistent with the finding that left-wing governments receive higher quality loans.     

The embarrassment of riches? A meta-analysis of individual-level research on voter turnout

Voter turnout has puzzled political scientists ever since Anthony Downs postulated the paradox of voting. Despite decades of research aiming to understand what drives citizens to the polls, the jury is still out on what the foundations of micro-level turnout are. This paper aims to provide a modest yet important contribution by taking a step back and summarizing where we stand and what we know. To this end, we review 90 empirical studies of individual level voter turnout in national elections published in ten top-journals during the past decade (2000–2010). Through a meta-analysis of the results reported in these studies, this paper identifies those factors that are consistently linked to individual level turnout.     

Revealing preferences: Does deliberation increase ideological awareness among the less well educated?

Research suggests that the rightist discourse on immigration appeals to left‐leaning citizens with lower levels of education. The opposite is, however, not true for right‐wing voters with lower educational levels, and this asymmetry leaves left‐wing parties at a disadvantage compared with the right on immigration and integration issues. Deliberative theory promises that discussion, information and reflection can promote a more balanced political discussion and a more enlightened citizen. This article assesses the extent to which deliberative polling increases the ideological awareness of citizens with lower educational levels. More specifically, it gauges the extent to which especially less well educated left‐wing voters – those whose attitudes research finds to be particularly out of tune with their ideological predispositions regarding immigration and integration – adjust their attitudes as a consequence of deliberate exposure to informational input and the presentation of two‐sided arguments. Use is made of unique data generated during the first European‐wide deliberative polling project, ‘EuroPolis’, held in 2009. The results indicate that less well educated left‐wing voters indeed have slightly more negative attitudes towards immigrants than leftist voters with secondary or post‐secondary educational levels. Turning to the micro‐mechanisms of attitude change in a deliberative setting, the analyses show that both levels of education and ideological predispositions play a role in the extent to which participants of the deliberative poll adjust their attitudes. In three out of four models, evidence is found that less well educated left‐leaning citizens are indeed most likely to adjust their attitudes on immigration and integration after being presented with a more balanced discussion of the topic.