Models of Voter Behavior in Traditional and Evolving Democracies

ABSTRACT

The data of Polish, Slovenian, and U.S. political elections have been analyzed according to Newman's model of voter's choice behavior (Newman & Sheth 1985; Newman 1999). The results of the research were interpreted with the methodology of structural equations, where cognitive domains, the media, and the emotional feelings toward the candidates were variables in mutual cause-and-effect relationships. The results of the analyses demonstrated the differences in the importance of the media for the election process. In established democracies like in the U.S. the media play an important role as independent means of delivering information, while in evolving democracies media are not independent and are oftentimes used by the competing political sides as an element in electoral battles. The article also presents proposals for studying voter behaviors within constructivist and realistic paradigms as well as some suggestions for marketing practice.     

Exploring the Consequences of Negative Political Advertising for Liberal Democracy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores existing thinking and research on the use of negative advertising strategies in political campaigning, and in particular examines their potential impact on liberal democracy. We ask what impacts negative forms of political communication may have on our system of government and democratic participation. Though political advertising makes up only a part of political discourse, an analysis of it is necessary given the increasing “marketisation” of political communication, coupled with concerns regarding the so called “democratic deficit.” In order to more truly evaluate its impact, the evidence pertaining to both the positive and detrimental consequences of employing negative ad strategies is examined. What emerges are some very real short-term benefits, some very real concerns over its use, and confusion over its “true” impact. Of particular note is the need for researchers and campaign managers to take a longer-term view of the potentially detrimental consequences of employing negative advertising strategies-to look beyond the short-term gains of winning elections and to consider the longer-term societal consequences of consistently employing advertising strategies characterised by the creation of doubt, fear, anxiety, violation and viciousness. We argue that the “winning” mentality of political ad campaigns needs to be balanced by a more “nurturing” orientation if the tenets of liberal democracy are to remain sustainable.     

Facing the future: young people's awareness of the 2001 British general election advertising campaigns

This paper presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British general election. It investigates these young people's awareness of the advertising used by the main political parties during this election. Overall what emerges is a young electorate aware of the advertising, who were interested in the election itself and nearly half of whom say they voted in it. Consequently the findings reject the notion that young people are generically unaware of and disinterested in party political messages. In addition the findings indicate that the political parties' print advertisements—to some degree—are penetrating the first layer of young people's message processing, suggesting they are a useful aid in capturing the youth vote. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Advances in the Study of Political Advertising

One of the biggest recent advances in the study of political advertising has been the availability of systematic sources of data on when and where ads air—and their content. In this piece, we review the various data sources that scholars have used to study political advertising, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. We then discuss recent studies that have employed data on political advertising to examine the effects of ad exposure on citizens' attitudes and political behaviors, how the content of advertising varies, and how ads have been targeted in recent political campaigns. We follow that with our own empirical contribution—an analysis of trends in advertising content, including negativity and policy focus—over the past 16 years.     

Advertising Spending by Incumbents and Challengers

Abstract

As candidates spend increasing amounts of money on television advertising, it becomes critically important to assess the degree to which this advertising produces results. In an examination of a particularly hard fought primary for a major state-wide office, this study compares the impact made by each candidate's television advertising on voter intentions during the campaign and the votes ultimately received at the end. Results suggest that over the course of the campaign, television advertising benefited the challenger more than the incumbent.     

Influence of Voter Demographics and Newspaper in Shaping Political Party Choice in India: An Empirical Investigation

Choice of political party is an important decision a citizen faces in a democracy. In recent times, as democracies in many countries have matured, a number of studies are focusing on party and candidate choice and their various determinants. India, being the largest democracy, provides a fertile ground for such research. Accordingly, in this paper we concentrate on demographic characteristics, newspaper-reading habits of voters, and their political choice. To study this we have considered a very unique data set collected just before the watershed elections in the state of West Bengal in India, where the ruling Communist coalition was defeated after thirty-four years of power in the state. The survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire to collect information on demographic characteristics of voters and their political choice. The respondents were asked to indicate their party choice from among the three major political parties. As the literature shows that gender, age, education, income levels, marital status, occupational status, and choice of newspaper have significant impact on political choice, we have considered these as predictor variables for our study. From our study it is seen that among the demographic determinants, gender, marital status, and income of the respondents do not influence the choice of political party in our sample. However, occupation and newspaper choice of voters have significant impact on political party choice in our sample. In addition, we have observed that certain categories of age of voters significantly influence decision making of voters along with occupation and newspaper choice categories.     

Political Advertising in Greek Municipal and Prefecture Elections of 2002

Abstract

Since the restoration of democracy in 1974, Greek politics have undergone a serious transformation, exemplified by the increase in political participation that strongly affected political advertising at the national and local level. The major claim of the paper is that political campaigns in major cities in Greece are “modern” while in the periphery of the country political campaigning is based more upon direct forms of interpersonal relations. Our claim is based upon an examination of the role of political advertising in the major metropolitan city of Thessaloniki (around 1.000.000 inhabitants), and the semi-peripheral city of Kastoria (around 17.000 inhabitants), both situated in Northern Greece. The primary objective of this study is to establish a strong factual foundation that can be used by policy makers, opinion leaders, and citizens in order to understand the role of political advertising in national and municipal elections in Greece.     

The Combet Case and the Appropriation of Taxpayers' Funds for Political Advertising – An Erosion of Fundamental Principles?

This article contains a critical discussion of Combet v The Commonwealth (2005) and the reasons given by the High Court in that case, for dismissing the legal challenge to the present government's political advertising campaign in support of its Workchoice legislation which was conducted before the publication or enactment of that legislation. It also deals with the implications of the case for the declining significance in modern times of the parliamentary appropriation process as a means of ensuring the accountability of governments for the expenditure of taxpayers' funds. The article concludes with a discussion of the possibility of future parliaments (regardless of their political complexion) reasserting their control over the appropriation process and restricting the use of government advertising for political purposes.     

产经新闻在广告经营中的地位与作用

产经新闻的独特性体现在:定位于目标人群,追求报道的深度和广度,在新闻宣传中渗透知识的内涵和新闻张力,做到精、专、深、细,深入报道读者所关心的企业发展和社会影响力方面的新闻,增强媒体吸纳广告的渠道和空间。以阜新日报产经新闻的发展历程为例,分析了产经新闻的特点及在广告经营中的地位与作用,结果表明产经新闻能有效提升企业知名度,整合广告经营中的新闻资源,增强媒体在广告市场中的竞争力。     

Advertising and the conquest of culture

Thomas Frank's important The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism usefully described the advertising industry's “conquest of cool” in the 1960s and beyond, the co-optation of the hip and the cool for the purposes of advertising marketing. This article argues that, since Frank's book appeared, the “convergence of commerce and content” – as the advertising industry calls it – has meant that the production of content is even more entwined with advertising than ever before. The first part of this article describes this shift with particular attention paid to the production of advertising music, which increasingly employs well-known rock, hip-hop, and other popular musicians. The analytical portion of this article draws on the studies of Richard A. Peterson and others on the rise of the socially elite “omnivore” consumer of cultural products to argue that advertising has played a crucial role in this shift, emphasizing the cool and the trendy. Last, the article updates Pierre Bourdieu's influential notion of cultural capital, for, if social elites are more omnivorous in their tastes, then cultural capital today must increasingly be associated with knowledge of the trendy, not only the fine arts.     

The antecedents of voter loyalty and the mediation role of party attachment: A case study from Turkey

The primary objective of the present study is to identify the antecedents of voter loyalty, with a particular focus on the mediating role of party attachment in the relationship between inner-self, social-self, trust, and loyalty. Using a convenience sampling method, the data for this study were gathered from a sample of 750 voters residing in a developing European country, Turkey. The collected data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling. The results of the study demonstrate that significant and positive relationships exist between the aforementioned antecedents (i.e., inner-self, social-self, trust, and party attachment) and voter loyalty. Additionally, the findings suggest that party attachment acts as a mediator between the antecedents and loyalty. Drawing on these results and the existing literature on voter behavior and practice, the authors discuss methodological, theoretical, and practical implications for inner-self, social-self, trust, and party attachment.     

Morality and Competence in Shaping the Images of Political Leaders

Psychological models of forming impressions about other people assume that this process is strictly connected with social categorization. Therefore, it is clear that the results of many studies show that the evaluations of other people are based on two crucial and separable criteria: morality and competence. Obviously morality and competence are two fundamental and distinct dimensions of the perception of politicians. These dimensions substantially influence voters’ behavior toward politicians and are clearly visible both in the preelection polls as well as in the scientific analyses concerning forming the images of politicians. The evaluations of politicians on the morality and competence dimensions are central in forming the interpersonal attitudes in which the dominant elements are affect and respect toward the evaluated person. Consequently, affect and respect are crucial factors in establishing the support of candidates for political offices. The morality and competence dimensions trigger the causal structures in the voter's mind in which formed attitude creates affect and respect, which determine voting behavior.     

The Impact of Advertising and Media on the Arab Culture: The Case of the Arab Spring,Public Spheres,and Social Media

The Arab world has experienced some unprecedented social movements, labeled by the media as the Arab Spring. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of public policy, advertising, media, and public spheres on the Arab Spring. The media and economic policies enacted in the Arab world in the 1990s played a significant role in changing consumer culture in the Arab region, resulting in significant changes in public policy. Two studies were conducted to test how the change in consumer culture along with new public polices in the region contributed to the uprisings.     

Elements of Negativity: Volume and Proportion in Exposure to Negative Advertising

Recent studies contend that negative advertising benefits voters. However, these studies only measure the volume of negativity in campaigns, often relying on survey data on voter behavior coupled with estimates of negative ad exposure. Theories of information processing indicate that the proportion of negativity may yield influences spanning a range of judgments related to candidate construction and voting behavior, yielding effects that are different from the influence of sheer volume. Thus, I argue that the proportion of negativity also has an influence, and that it is likely more often to be detrimental. I examine this claim using survey data and conclude that prevailing accounts of the effects of negative advertising campaigns are underspecified and, as a result, potentially overly optimistic. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Politics and Image: The Conceptual Value of Branding

This article argues that the brand concept is a powerful tool for understanding political images. It challenges typical economic versions of political marketing that tend to deemphasize the significance of communication, popular culture, and personality in politics and argues that the brand as a concept can bring together the economic and the aesthetic, rational choice and cultural resonance. It proposes a model of brand distinctiveness and argues that this may be useful both in the analysis of party communication and in the normative evaluation of that communication.     

The consequences of supply gaps in two-dimensional policy spaces for voter turnout and political support: The case of economically left-wing and culturally right-wing citizens in Western Europe

Parties with left-wing positions on economic issues and right-wing (i.e., authoritarian) positions on cultural issues have been historically largely absent from the supply side of the policy space of Western European democracies. Yet, many citizens hold such left-authoritarian issue attitudes. This article addresses the hypotheses that left-authoritarian citizens are less likely to vote, less satisfied with the democratic process and have lower levels of political trust when there is a left-authoritarian supply gap. Using data for 14 Western European countries from the European Social Survey 2008 in the main analysis, it is shown that left-authoritarians are less likely to vote and exhibit lower levels of satisfaction with democracy and political trust. A supplementary analysis of national election studies from Finland before and after the electoral breakthrough of the left-authoritarian True Finns Party in 2011 indicates that whether left-authoritarians participate less and believe less in the efficacy of voting is contingent on the presence of a strong left-authoritarian party. This study illuminates how constrained party supply in a two-dimensional policy space can affect voter turnout as well as political support, and has broader implications for the potential further rise of left-authoritarian challenger parties.     

Why Right‐Leaning Populism has Grown in the Most Advanced Liberal Democracies of Europe

Immigration and new class divisions, combined with a growing anti‐elitism and political correctness, are often used as explanations for the strong gains for right‐leaning populist parties in national elections across Europe in recent years. But contrary to what we might assume, such parties have been very successful in the most developed and comprehensive welfare states, in nations—such as the Nordic countries—with the best scores on economic equality and social inclusion and long established political and judicial institutions enjoying a high degree of popular legitimacy. As argued in this article, this seems to happen because a duopoly of the centre‐left and centre‐right political establishment has kept issues such as immigration and new class divisions off the public agenda and hence paved the way for right‐leaning ‘disruptor’ populist parties with an anti‐immigration agenda in times of increasing immigration.     

Regulating political advertising in the EU and USA: a human rights perspective

Underlying the American model of political campaign communication are the US Constitutional guarantees of free speech, which secure the rights of citizens to support political candidates of their choosing and express that support in various forms, from bumper stickers to television advertising. Courts have at times struck down measures regulating political advertising, including limits on the amounts of such advertising and the amounts of funds which candidates, parties and individuals may spend on election‐related speeches and advertising as infringements of these rights. With few exceptions, in the USA, government may not limit the number of spots a candidate airs in an election. In Europe, international norms concerning free expression and fair elections appear in a number of legal instruments, including, most recently, the UK's Human Rights Act 1998 and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. This paper compares the role and development of American First Amendment doctrines in limiting restrictions on political advertising in the USA with the development of comparable norms of free expression under the European Convention on Human Rights, European Union treaties and legislation and national laws of the member states and accession countries. In particular, this paper addresses the validity and enforceability of European legal limits on number, timing, placement, quantity and content of political advertisements under applicable human rights rules and similar regulations. The paper concludes that (1) a combination of European legal instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Community Treaty, the European Community's ‘Television Without Frontiers’ Directives and the Council of Europe's Convention on Transfrontier Television offer protections of a kind and type which broadly track the protections of the USA's First Amendment; that (2) it seems that governmental justifications for restricting these freedoms are more readily accepted in Europe than they might be in courts in the USA; and that (3) certain restrictions on political advertising identified in previous studies as existing throughout Europe will face increased judicial scrutiny and some of them are probably illegal under European Human Rights principles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

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.     

中国转型期政治腐败的类型、程度和发展演变趋势

中国转型期的政治腐败在类型、程度和发展演变趋势方面都有着自身的特点,对此需要进行深入的研究。本从多种不同的角度对腐败的类型进行了初步的划分并介绍了不同类型划分的用途,章还评介了两种不同的测量政治腐败程度的方法。最后分析了中国转型期政治腐败发展演变的规律和特征,并预测了它的发展趋势。