President Perot or Fundamentals of Voting Theory Illustrated with the 1992 Election

Different voting systems can lead to different election outcomeseven when voter preferences are held constant. Using the 1992 election as anexample, it is shown how the outcome of every positional votesystem can be found. Similarly, every possible cumulative andapproval vote outcome is shown. Multiple vote systems, likeapproval and cumulative voting, have disturbing properties. Usingthe 1992 election as illustration, it is shown how a candidate whowins under every positional vote system, who wins every pairwisevote (i.e. is the Condorcet winner), and who has the most firstplace and least last place votes may nevertheless lose underapproval or cumulative voting. Similarly, it is shown how acandidate who loses under every positional system, who loses everypairwise vote (i.e. is the Condorcet loser), and who has the leastfirst place and most last place votes may nevertheless win underapproval or cumulative voting.     

Democratic skepticism and support for terrorism in the Palestinian Territories

Public Choice - Research has found that, among other factors, skepticism about democracy and its suitability as a form of government helps to drive public support for violent extremism in the...     

Corruption and support for decentralisation

Existing explanations of individual preferences for decentralisation and secession focus on collective identity, economic considerations and party politics. This paper contributes to this literature by showing that preferences for fiscal and political decentralisation are also driven by concern about the quality of government in the face of corruption. It makes two claims. Firstly, information on national-level corruption decreases satisfaction with national politicians, and subsequently increases preferences for decentralisation and secession. Secondly, information on regional-level corruption pushes citizens of highly corrupt regions to prefer national retrenchment and unitary states. The effects of this political compensation mechanism crosscut national identities and involve regions that are not ethnically or economically different from the core. We test our argument using a survey experiment in Spain and confirm its cross-national generalisability with data from the European Values Study.     

Encouraging Political Defection: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes in 1992

Drawing on data from a unique study of the 1992 American presidential election, this article demonstrates that personal discussion networks influence voting behavior, independent of candidate evaluations and partisanship. These social networks encouraged two different kinds of defections from otherwise-expected behavior. People were more likely to vote for Perot if their personal discussants supported him and to convert preferences for him into a Perot vote on election day. Partisans also were more likely to defect to the other major party if their discussion network failed to fully support the candidate of their own party. These results withstood controls for candidate evaluations and partisanship as well as for selective exposure to discussants and selective perception of their preferences. They show the importance of adding social context to personal attitudes, interests, and partisanship in explaining voting behavior.     

Government effectiveness and support for democracy

Diffuse support for democracy, as captured in mass surveys, tends to be treated as impervious to regime performance. Such a finding is often presented as confirmation of the basic distinction between ‘diffuse’ and ‘specific’ support as proposed by David Easton. This study argues that this line of argument stems from an incomplete reading of important aspects of Easton's theorisation about the relationship between system outputs and diffuse support. Using multilevel models, evidence from more than 100 surveys in close to 80 countries, and different measures of democratic support, it is shown that government effectiveness is the strongest macro‐level predictor of such support. In democratic regimes, government effectiveness, understood as the quality of policy‐making formulation and implementation, is linked to higher levels of support for democracy. Furthermore, in non‐democracies, effectiveness and support for democracy are, under some model specifications, negatively related.     

Cognitive mobilization and electoral support for the Democratic Party in Hong Kong

The bases of electoral choice vary. Citizens differ in their ability to reason and make up their minds in different ways. Hong Kong appears to be the most likely case for the idea of cognitive mobilization, because of the the absence of socio-economic mobilization, the paucity of political mobilization, the novelty of partisanship, the high level of education, and the prosperous and easily accessible mass media. Findings on the legislative election in 1998, however, show that partisan attachment remains a powerful factor in electoral choice. Still, political information is more important as it broadens the basis of electoral choice. Specifically, the less-informed voters voted for the Democratic Party (DP) solely on the basis of partisan attachment. In comparison, the vote of the better-informed voters was broadly based, with evaluative factors overtaking partisanship in importance. This paper provides a contribution to the understanding of constrained elections in a partial democracy.     

Public support for congress

The present inquiry focuses upon recent levels and trends of public support and nonsupport of the U.S. Congress. The data are drawn from statewide surveys of Wisconsin adults in 1970–1978 and from such sources as CPS/NES, Gallup, and Harris. Measurement focuses upon four major types of public support for Congress—pure specific support (performance), pure diffuse support (including general confidence in the institution, sense of personal efficacy in relation to Congress, desire for institutional reform or maintenance and the amount of power preferred for Congress relative to other branches), and two mixed types of support, long-term performance assessments and confidence in congressional incumbents. With few exceptions, Congress has suffered a general erosion of public support over the past decade on most indicators.An earlier, longer version of this paper was presented at the XIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Moscow, USSR, August 1979.     

The 2003 Russian Duma election and the decline in rural support for the communist party

The December 2003 Duma election was a landmark in Russian elections, marking a significant decline in electoral support for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). This article explains the decline of support for the KPRF in the December 2003 election. Our specific focus is on the decline in rural support for the KPRF. This particular aspect is important because rural voters constituted a large portion of the KPRF's support throughout the 1990s. Using data from two rounds of surveys in several Russian regions, the article demonstrates that by 2003 the KPRF failed to capitalize on the ‘misery of the market,’ that is, to capture support from the ‘losers and malcontents’ during market reform, suggesting that KPRF supporters dealigned themselves from the party.     

Civil society support for military coups: Bangladesh and the Philippines

As of yet, civil society support for military coups has hardly been investigated in depth. This article compares the attempted military coup in 2006 against Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which received support from prominent civil society leaders, to the collaboration between civil society actors and the military-backed Caretaker Government that ruled Bangladesh from 2007 to 2008. It argues that in both cases, civil society support for military intervention can be traced to the weakness of the state.     

Comparing non-voters in the USA and Norway: permanence versus transience

Abstract. Voter turnout for the 1984 presidential election in the USA was 30 percent lower than the last parliamentary election in Norway (1985). Similarities among the factors which explains non-voting in the two nations are apparent, but the factors unique to each country are important for understanding the difference in turnout level as well as patterns of non-participation. While the Norwegian non-voters are in a transient situation where youth and limited life-cycle experience determine non-voting, factors effecting American non-voters are more permanent. In particular, if socio-economic resources are not acquired in youth, the development of political involvement and participation will be obstructed.     

Public support for state surveillance

This study examines citizens’ support for state surveillance, contingent upon factors related to policy design and the context of implementation. While most people want to live in a secure environment, we argue in this study that the support of policies to reach this goal depends on their necessity, extensiveness and reliability. Results from survey experiments in four European countries show that citizens are ready to approve the introduction of far-reaching state surveillance that includes measures of facial recognition and motion detection. Public support is further enhanced if these measures are to be targeted at potential criminals, rather than at all citizens (i.e., policy extensiveness), as well as if a safety threat is salient (i.e., policy necessity). Concerns about data security reduce support (i.e., policy reliability). While these conditions matter for the support of specific policies, they do not influence how trustworthy citizens consider government and other political authorities to be.     

Understanding variation in public support for European integration

Abstract. Much of the research on the European Community focuses on elites and institutions and as a result downplays the importance of the mass public in determining the direction of European integration. A common justification for this viewpoint is that members of the public provide a stable reservoir of strong support for European integration. Recent political events, however, raise doubts about this depiction of a 'passive public'. Consequently, there is a need for a fuller understanding of European attitudes. We specify a number of hypotheses dealing with the effects of international trade interests, security concerns, and demographic characteristics on cross-national and cross-sectional variations in public support for European integration. Using Eurobarometer surveys and OECD data on EC trade from 1973–1989, we investigate these hypotheses in a pooled cross-sectional model. Our statistical results reveal that an individual's level of support is positively related to her nation's security and trade interests in EC membership and her personal potential to benefit from liberalized markets for goods, labour, and money.     

Policy design and domestic support for international bailouts

Financial bailouts for ailing Eurozone countries face deep and widespread opposition among voters in donor countries, casting major doubts over the political feasibility of further assistance efforts. What is the nature of the opposition and under what conditions can governments obtain broader political support for funding such large‐scale, international transfers? This question is addressed by distinguishing theoretically between ‘fundamental’ and ‘contingent’ attitudes. Whereas the former entail complete rejection or embrace of a policy, the latter depend on the specific features of the policy and could shift if those features are altered. Combining unique data from an original survey in Germany – the largest donor country – together with an experiment that varies salient policy dimensions, the analysis indicates that less than a quarter of the public exhibits fundamental opposition to the bailouts. Testing a set of theories on contingent attitudes, particular sensitivity is found to the burden‐sharing and cost dimensions of the bailouts. The results imply that the choice of specific features of a rescue package has important consequences for building domestic support for international assistance efforts.     

Authoritarian attitudes and support for radical right populists

ABSTRACT

This paper examines which parties attract support from people with authoritarian attitudes by comparing multi-party systems to a pure two-party system (the US). It proposes reasons why radical right populist (RRP) parties may serve as outlets for illiberal sentiments in multiparty systems, and offers reasons why such attitudes could correspond with support for the US Republican Party. Some have raised concerns about democratic deconsolidation in liberal democracies. There is limited evidence here consistent with deconsolidation. Politically authoritarian attitudes do exist among a small but non-trivial proportion of electorates in established democracies. In multiparty systems people with such attitudes were more likely to be supporters of smaller RRP parties that generally do not join government, but not centre-left or centre-right parties. However, US Republicans had supporters who resembled European RRP supporters in their politically authoritarian attitudes, and authoritarian attitudes were a notable predictor of support for Donald Trump in 2016.