Interparty Spatial Relationships in Norwegian Storting Roll Call Votes*

The purpose of this study is to map interparty spatial relationships embedded in non-unanimous roll call votes recorded during the 1985–86 session of the Norwegian parliament. The analysis is theoretically grounded in the one-dimensional Scandinavian five-party model and a two-dimensional model which assumes that the conventional left–right continuum is intersected by an urban protest/rural traditionalism axis. While the one-dimensional solution which arrays the parties along the conventional left–right continuum is statistically defensible, a two-dimensional solution appears better to reflect the reality of contemporary Norwegian politics in which the post-Second World War welfare-state consensus is being challenged by the Progressive Party. The resulting divisions among the non-socialist parties may preclude a stable center-right governing coalition.     

Nash equilibrium strategies in directional models of two- candidate spatial competition

The standard approach to two-party political competition in a multi-dimensional issue space models voters as voting for the alternative that is located closest to their own most preferred location. Another approach to understanding voter choice is based on preferred direction of change with respect to some specified neutral point (e.g., an origin or status quo point). For the two-dimensional Matthews directional model (Matthews, 1979), we provide geometric conditions in terms of the number of medians through the neutral point for there to be a Condorcet (undominated) direction. In this two-dimensional setting, the set of residual locations for which no Condorcet directions exist is identical to the null dual set (Schofield, 1978) and to the heart (Schofield, 1993). In two dimensions, for most locations of the origin/status quo point, a Condorcet direction exists and points toward the yolk, a geometric construct first identified by McKelvey (1986). We also provide some simulation results on the size of the null dual set in two dimensions when the underlying distribution of points is non-symmetric.     

Die Eigendynamik zur Eindimensionalität des Parteienwettbewerbs: eine Simulationsstudie

While German ideological space is often characterized with two dimensions, empirical estimation demonstrates that party positions can be placed on a uni-dimensional scale. This seems to be inconsistent with conventional spatial models of party competition, since parties should, accordingly, exhaust the two-dimensional space to maximize their votes. This paper suggests an alternative spatial model which adjusts or removes some restrictive assumptions of the conventional models. Most importantly, the model suggested here allows parties to influence the salience and (non-)separability of both dimensions at voters’ decision processes. The simulation results demonstrate that the vote-maximizing parties can coordinate themselves in favor of inequality of the salience or non-separability of both dimensions. This, in turn, leads to a certain level of unidimensionality of party positions.     

Political competitition and multiparty coalition governments

Abstract. Many previous theoretical analyses of multiparty coalition behaviour have been based either on a one-dimensional policy model or on a constant-sum game interpretation. For theoretical and empirical reasons this paper focusses on a competitive two-dimensional model. In this model parties are concerned with policy outcomes but choose party positions both with a view to electoral consequences and as a basis for coalition bargaining. The political heart is proposed as the set of possible coalition outcomes. The heart is either the core of the political game or is determined by a small number of party positions. Under certain conditions an equilibrium in the choice of party positions can be shown to exist. The model suggests that parties can be categorized as either strong or weak core parties, anti-core parties or peripheral parties. This categorization of parties implies a typology of party systems, which gives some theoretical foundation for the occurrence of minority, minimal winning and surplus coalitions in many of the European countries in the postwar period.     

Political competition

Abstract Many previous theoretical analyses of multiparty coalition behaviour have been based either on one-dimensional policy model or on a constant-sum game interpretation. For theoretical and empirical reasons this paper focusses on a competitive two-dimensional model. In this model parties are concerned with policy outcomes but choose party positions both with a view to electoral consequences and as a basis for coalition bargaining. The political heart is proposed as the set of possible coalition outcomes. The heart is either the core of the political game or is determined by a small number of party positions. Under certain conditions an equilibrium in the choice of party positions can be shown to exist. The model suggests that parties can be categorized as either strong or weak core parties, anti-core parties or peripheral parties. This categorization of parties implies a typology of party systems, which gives some theoretical foundation for the occurrence of minority, minimal winning and surplus coalitions in many of the European countries in the postwar period.     

Dimensionality,ideology and party positions towards European integration

The rise of political contestation over European integration has led many scholars to examine the role that broader ideological positions play in structuring party attitudes towards European integration. This article extends the existing approaches in two important ways. First, it shows that whether the dimensionality of politics is imagined in a one-dimensional ‘general left?right’ form or a two-dimensional ‘economic left?right/social liberal-conservative’ form leads to very different understandings of the way ideology has structured attitudes towards European integration, with the two-dimensional approach offering greater explanatory power. Second, existing approaches have modelled the influence of ideology on attitudes towards European integration as a static process. This article shows that the relationship between ideology and European integration has changed substantially over the history of European integration: divisions over social issues have replaced economic concerns as the main driver of party attitudes towards European integration.     

Normative Modelle, institutionelle Typen und beobachtbare Verhaltensmuster: Ein Vorschlag zum Vergleich parlamentarischer Demokratien

The article proposes a two-dimensional, institutional determination of types of parliamentary democracy, with respect to the proportionality of the electoral system and (quasi-)legislative veto points. Three basic types of parliamentary democracy are distinguished: pluralitarian, majoritarian and supermajoritarian. The typology has important advantages over the approach of Arend Lijphart. It has a consistent two-dimensional conceptual foundation, it can be directly related to central controversies in normative democratic theory, it can be systematically linked to action theory approaches such as Veto Player Theory, and it highlights the characteristics of democracies with majoritarian constitutions, which are systematically downplayed in Lijphart’s approach. The most important variant of this type uses a proportionality principle in the electoral system and a majoritarian principle in the legislative system. It is shown that in these democracies, legislative majority rule can itself contribute to “consensual” patterns of behavior.     

The Structure and Dynamics of Group Politics: 1964–1992

In the realm of politics the relevance of groups derives from their centrality to government institutions, the policy process, and election campaigns. In addition, individuals have a predisposition to rely on cues and shortcuts when making choices and forming preferences; groups are ideal for this purpose. Groups help orient individuals to their social world by providing standards, supplying information, and defining friend and foe. If groups are central to politics and political cognition then we should find an underlying political structure within which group attitudes can be organized, and through which other political attitudes, coalitions, and behaviors can be viewed. In our analysis we apply Rabinowitz (1976) Line of Sight method for ordering object pairs consistent with the Euclidean spatial model to the complete series of group thermometer ratings from the NES Presidential Election Studies, 1964 through 1992. The resulting eight group by group matrices are subjected to a series of multidimensional scaling models to determine the underlying structure of the group spatial distances. Our findings suggest that orientations toward groups can be satisfactorily mapped into a two-dimensional space defined by partisan and affective axes. Over this 30-year period we find that attitudes toward groups have become more emotional and less partisan in nature. Interpretation of the group space is further aided by the use of ideal-point regressions that make it possible to place voters, members of the New Deal coalition, and issue publics in the space defined by group attitudes.     

Voting for Pareto optimality: a multidimensional analysis

We compare unanimity rule and majority rule in their abilities to produce Pareto superior and Pareto optimal alternatives in fixed number of rounds of voting using a two-dimensional spatial voting model with random proposals, sincere proposals, and strategic proposals. Our findings show that for random or sincere proposals, majority rule is at least as likely to select a Pareto optimal outcome as unanimity rule. For strategic proposals, the subgame perfect equilibrium under unanimity rule is Pareto optimal. For other k-majority rules, the outcome is Pareto optimal or very close to it. For outcomes that are both Pareto optimal and Pareto superior, unanimity rule outperforms majority rule.     

The ‘Too Difficult Box’: Its Temptations and How to Avoid Them

Within our democratic political system too many of the pressing and serious political, economic and social challenges of our times are delayed or put off, deposited in the ‘Too Difficult Box’. This happens for a variety of reasons which include failure correctly to identify the best solution, failure to understand obstructions in implementing the proposed solution, difficulties in placating or overcoming a range of vested interests, glitches in circumnavigating a range of legal constraints, lack of appreciation of the international dimension of the issue, succumbing to the vicissitudes of the political process and evaporation of the necessary political creativity and energy. It is a responsibility of democratic politics to find ways of dealing with these problems, through more collaborative or consensual politics if necessary. Otherwise citizens will lose confidence in the ability of democracy to solve the problems which concern them.     

Regulation as a political question

There are at least two frameworks within which the debate on proper institutional arrangements for regulation can be carried out. One rests on seeing the various possibilities as instruments and its central concern is with the most efficient means for achieving regulatory objectives. The second framework views regulation as an essentially political act. It focuses on adapting our choice of institutional alternatives to take account of valued features of our existing political world. It also involves an understanding of how our choice of institutional alternatives actively shapes that world and thus helps to form our regime or the way of life to which we aspire. These two frameworks are examined with special attention being given to the political view.     

The psychology of electoral mobilization: a subtle priming experiment

In this paper we test the idea that citizens can be stimulated to vote in an election via subtle psychological processes, which have little or nothing to do with the act of voting as such. More specifically, we argue that presenting voters with stimuli that induce an active mood will increase their tendency to vote. We conducted an experiment to test our ideas. Participants were subtly primed by giving them a campaign leaflet that contained a word puzzle, which included words that are associated with either action or inaction. The results indicate that subtly primed participants in the action condition reported stronger voting intentions than those in the inaction condition. These findings suggest that individuals can indeed be stimulated (or inhibited) to vote through subtle psychological processes. We discuss the implications of our results for the study of voting behaviour as well as campaigns aimed at electoral mobilization.     

State of the Art: Divided by a Common Language: Political Theory and the Concept of Power

Power is probably the most universal and fundamental concept of political analysis. It has been, and continues to be, the subject of extended and heated debate. In this article I critically review the contributions of Bachrach and Baratz, and Lukes to our understanding of the multiple faces of power. I suggest that although the former's two-dimensional approach to power is ultimately compromised by the residues of behaviouralism that it inherits from classic pluralism, the latter's three-dimensional view suggests a potential route out of this pluralist impasse. To seize the opportunity he provides, however, requires that we rethink the concept of power. In the second half of the paper I advance a definition of power as context-shaping and demonstrate how this helps us to disentangle the notions of power, responsibility and culpability that Lukes conflates. In so doing I suggest the we differentiate clearly between analytical questions concerning the identification of power within social and political contexts, and normative questions concerning the critique of the distribution and exercise of power thus identified.     

Private operation with public supervision: evidence of hybrid modes of governance in prisons

Received theories suggest a possible cost-quality tradeoff when private outsourcing arrangements are used in public services. Using data from Brazilian prisons, our study provides evidence that contradicts this prediction: the prisons not only run at a lower cost, but also show similar or improved performance on a range of quality indicators. The attenuation of the cost-quality dilemma in our context is due to the hybrid management, which allocates control rights to a state-appointed public supervisor. We also discuss conditions in which the public supervisor may refrain from colluding with the private agent, therefore guaranteeing an effective monitoring of service quality.     

Voter preferences,simple electoral games,and equilibria in two-candidate contests

The fundamental assumption of spatial models of party competition is that voters possess cardinal utility functions defined on all combinations of issue positions which candidates may adopt. Furthermore, spatial theorists usually assume that utility functions have a shape common to all voters and that voters' most preferred positions are distributed in some regular manner. Employing these and attendant assumptions, the spatial theorist seeks to ascertain what deductions can be made about candidate strategies, i.e., the positions which vote or plurality-maximizing candidates should adopt in an election. It has been found that, in many situations, convergence to an opponent's positions and/or adoption of the median/mean of the most preferred positions of all voters is an important candidate strategy. In this context, two main problems have arisen: (1) difficulties of empirical or statistical analysis; (2) the abovementioned candidate strategy is generally not applicable to elections in so-called ‘plural’ societies. One path out of this latter problem has been formulated by Rabushka and Shepsle (1972). This article explores another potential solution by addressing the following question: If voters arenot characterized by cardinal utility functions, but some other type, what are the consequences for candidate strategies? The alternate assumption employed is that voters are characterized bylexicographic utility functions. The consequences for candidate strategies of this assumption are then determined for two plurality-maximizing candidates in some one- and two-dimensional, three-, five-, and seven-voter electoral games.     

LOCAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT GROUPS: PERSPECTIVES AND PROFILES

Local industrial development groups (LIDGs) are often among the most visible organizations involved in community economic development. LIDGs annually spend billions of dollars directly or indirectly in various promotional and community improvement efforts. Yet relatively little is known about their organizational forms, their operating strategies, or their real impact on the economic development of communities. The study reported here was undertaken by researchers from three academic backgrounds in order to capture a rich, comprehensive view of this organizational type. In this paper, we discuss the research perspectives which informed our overall approach to the study, and subsequently, we present and discuss a preliminary profile of LIDGs, based on our recent national survey.     

Class and Politics in Denmark: Are Both Old and New Politics Structured by Class?

The trend within studies of voting and political attitudes has been to give less attention to class as a structuring dimension and more to postmaterial values. The basic argument of this article is that this is a false opposition: The adherence to different sets of values is related to social background, although in complex ways, which can only be discovered with a multidimensional conception of class. This conception may be found in Pierre Bourdieu's analytical approach, which is here applied in an analysis of survey data from the Danish city of Aalborg. Data from a survey of political attitudes are subjected to multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which reveals a pattern of attitudes that is highly structured by both the old and the new dimensions of politics. Up to this point, the results converge with the state of the art. However, the methodology utilised (MCA) allows one to link the constructed space of attitudes to a set of indicators based on a two-dimensional conception of social class. On the basis of this analysis, the article concludes that the political landscape appears as highly structured by the two principles of social differentiation from Bourdieu's class model: volume and composition of capital. The conclusion is that social class understood in this way is closely related to both old and new politics, as well as to the propensity to vote for a political party from the left- or right-wing alliance.     

The Big Questions of Public Administration Education

Following Behn's observation that scientists in other fields understand the big questions of their disciplines and focus attention and their discussions on those questions, public administration scholars have attempted to identify the “big questions” in public management and public administration. In this article, I suggest that scholars in public administration should also be attentive to the big questions of public administration education, those timeless and enduring concerns that speak to the basic perspectives that we bring to the educational process. Specifically, I identify four big questions: Do we seek to educate our students with respect to theory or to practice? Do we prepare students for their first jobs or for those to which they might aspire later? What are the appropriate delivery mechanisms for MPA courses and curricula? What personal commitments do we make as public administration educators? I argue that these big questions in public administration education are far more connected than we usually think, and by posing these questions in terms of processes of human development we can at least provide a framework through which we might develop more coherent answers to these big questions, answers that recognize and build on the diversity of our students and our faculty.     

Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared

Abstract.  This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization 'winners' and 'losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France.     

Voter Turnout in Norway: Time, Space, and Causality

This article focuses on diachronic and synchronic variation in Norwegian electoral turnout from 1945 to 1991. The model contains aggregate data divided into two-year intervals with regions as cross-sections. The impact of both socio-economic and political variables is tested. The two-dimensional view on turnout variation makes it possible to distinguish between short-term and long-term effects, as well as between national versus local factors. In contrast to related studies, this analysis actually tests for causality relationships between different political variables. The empirical results indicate that an increase in either national unemployment or regional income contributes to an increase in turnout rates. Electoral participation is also positively related to Labour support, industrial employment and strike activity.