How partisan affect shapes citizens' perception of the political world

We explore how partisan affect shapes citizens' views of party ideology and political competition. We argue that voters' affective ties to parties (both positive and negative) lead them to perceive the ideological positions of those parties as more extreme. Further, when voters are "affectively polarized," i.e., they strongly like some parties and dislike others, they are more likely to view politics as high stakes competition, where ideological polarization is rampant, participation is crucial, and electoral outcomes are highly consequential. Using cross-national survey data covering 43 elections in 34 countries, we show that partisan affect indeed impacts perceptions of party ideology and that affective polarization alters beliefs about the nature of political competition.     

Macron and the world

Newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, while inexperienced in international affairs, is inclined to return France to a de Gaulle/Mitterand tradition of national assertiveness. At the same time, his native prudence, as well as the geostrategic realities of the early twenty-first century, suggest more continuity than change.     

Living in the world risk society

Abstract

In a world risk society, we must distinguish between ecological and financial dangers, which can be conceptualized as side effects, and the threat from terrorist networks as intentional catastrophes; the principle of deliberately exploiting the vulnerability of modern civil society replaces the principle of chance and accident.     

Japan and the new world order

We present and consider five alternative scenarios of development — past, present and future — for Southeast Asia. Longitudinal data on foreign direct investment, trade, and currency valuation provide our basis for understanding the relations among the countries in this region as well as their relations with major external powers, especially the United States, Japan, and China. Our analysis suggests regional diversity rather than uniformity, with considerable flux and heterogeneity in the external economic ties of the countries resident in this area. Moreover, we argue that it would be overly simplistic to view changes in these ties only in bilateral terms of US or Japanese gains or losses. Instead, the Southeast Asian themselves, the other newly‐industrializing countries, and the constituent parts of Greater China are all increasingly making their presence felt.     

Overcoming the deadlock in world trade

The WTO's Ninth Ministerial Conference is a serious opportunity to break a five-year deadlock in the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Failure to do so could reinforce a growing tendency among major trading powers to focus on regional and inter-regional trade agreements beyond the WTO.     

Electoral accountability in the developing world

Do citizens of the developing world behave as economic voters? Do they blame and reward incumbent governments for their perceived economic performance? In addressing these questions, the current paper fills an important void left by the extant literature by adopting a large-n approach with the use of public opinion survey data and by focusing on emerging democracies of the developing world. The proposed analysis develops a series of incumbent support models to assess the impact of economic assessments. It relies on the use of public opinion survey data from countries of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, and the Arab world. The paper contributes to the extant literature at the empirical, methodological, and theoretical levels. Empirically, it provides a unique and systematic account of the phenomenon through a large-scale comparative approach. Theoretically, it contributes to the debate on the value of economic voting to explain electoral behavior in the developing world. Methodologically, it shows that using presidential approval is a fair alternative to vote choice and that a full model specification is not absolutely necessary to estimating the economic effect.