Attitudes towards highly skilled and low‐skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries

To what extent do economic concerns drive anti‐migrant attitudes? Key theoretical arguments extract two central motives: increased labour market competition and the fiscal burden linked to the influx of migrants. This article provides new evidence regarding the impact of material self‐interest on attitudes towards immigrants. It reports the results of a survey experiment embedded in representative surveys in 15 European countries before and after the European refugee crisis in 2014. As anticipated by the fiscal burden argument, it is found that rich natives prefer highly skilled over low‐skilled migration more than low‐income respondents do. Moreover, the study shows that these tax concerns among the wealthy are stronger if fiscal exposure to migration is high. No support is found for the labour market competition argument predicting that natives will be most opposed to migrants with similar skills. The results suggest that highly skilled migrants are preferred over low‐skilled migrants irrespective of natives’ skill levels.     

Insult as an Offence in African Customary Law

The writer, who is Simon Research Fellow in Manchester University,is author of Nigerian Land Law and Custom, and has recentlypaid a visit to Uganda.     

Defending the European court of human rights: Experimental evidence from Britain

As nationalist sentiments gain traction globally, the attitudinal and institutional foundations of the international liberal order face new challenges. One manifestation of this trend is the growing backlash against international courts. Defenders of the liberal order struggle to articulate compelling reasons for why states, and their citizens, should continue delegating authority to international institutions. This article probes the effectiveness of arguments that emphasise the appropriateness and benefits of cooperation in containing preferences for backlash among the mass public. We rely on IR theories that explain why elites create international institutions to derive three sets of arguments that could be deployed to boost support for international courts. We then use experimental methods to test their impact on support for backlash against the European Court of Human Rights in Britain (ECtHR). First, in line with principal-agent models of delegation, we find that information about the court's reliability as an ‘agent’ boosts support for the ECtHR, but less so information that signals Britain's status as a principal. Second, in line with constructivist approaches, associating support for the court with the position of an in-group state like Denmark, and opposition with an out-group state like Russia, also elicits more positive attitudes. This finding points to the importance of ‘blame by association’ and cues of in/out-group identity in building support for cooperation. The effect is stronger when we increase social pressure by providing information about social attitudes towards Denmark and Russia in Britain, where the public overwhelmingly trusts the Danes and distrusts the Russians. Finally, in contrast to Liberal explanations for the creation of the ECtHR, the study finds no evidence that highlighting the court's mission to promote democracy and international peace contains backlash. We show that the positive effects of the first two arguments are not driven by pre-treatment attitudes such as political sophistication, patriotism, internationalism, institutional trust or political preferences.     

The Proof of Capitalism: Usher's Celebration of the Status Quo

In The Economic Prerequisite to Democracy , Dan Usher tries to prove that capitalism is necessary for the survival of democracy, defined as majority rule by means of a popularly-elected legislature. Usher assumes that this survival requires general agreement both on the legislative majority-rule method and on certain substantive issues. This assumption turns out to be doubtful. Usher believes that the issues most likely to provoke serious disagreement are 'assignment' issues; that is, those issues which involve the stability of the positions assigned to individuals in the economic rank order. Some of his reasons for this belief do not seem valid, although the belief is somewhat plausible. Usher asserts that to prevent serious disagreement from disrupting legislative majority rule, assignment issues must be largely decided by a 'system of equity'. Usher's reasoning here is unconvincing. Finally, Usher states that (the present form of) capitalism is the only practicable system of equity. This statement is open to doubt. Usher has not proved that capitalism is necessary for the survival of democracy. One implication of Usher's argument is that major reassignment by the legislature will be strongly opposed by the economically superior ranked. Another is that some of the most important issues—assignment issues—should be largely kept out of the legislative majority decision; in other words, democracy must be curtailed in order to survive.     

Systemic polarisation and spatial voting

The controversy between proximity and directional models of issue voting has not been settled. Instead of appointing an ultimate winner, this article explores the conditioning impact of the level of systemic polarisation and provides evidence that proximity is a more relevant determinant of voter behaviour in less polarised systems, whereas there is a centrifugal and directional dynamic in more polarised contexts. By so doing, the article shows how a largely forgotten notion – namely Sartori's idea of the spatial elasticity of the political spectrum – leads to different spatial viewpoints. In distinguishing between party (supply side) and voter (demand side) polarisation, this framework provides a comprehensive picture about the conditions that turn a centripetal electoral dynamic into a purely centrifugal one.