The image of the Jews in Hungarian public opinion

ABSTRACT

Nowhere has the debate about a ‘new antisemitism’ been as fierce and relevant as in France. In recent years this country has witnessed high recorded levels of antisemitism, prompting many commentators to claim the existence of an anti-sémitisme nouveau. Something has indeed changed, at least in terms of the nature, frequency and perpetrators of antisemitic violence in France. Previously connected exclusively to the extreme right, it has now also become associated with a group that is itself a victim of discrimination: ethnic minority youths living in the poor suburbs (banlieues). Peace first discusses and explains the statistics produced by the French watchdog on racism and antisemitism as well as the effects of the Middle East conflict. He then traces the debate on this ‘new antisemitism’ in the French context, contrasting the views of the label's promoters and opponents. He argues that, while antisemitism has undoubtedly evolved, the ‘new’ label is effectively erroneous as it fuses supposedly leftist and ‘Muslim’ antisemitism into one entity when they are not necessarily linked. In addition, he offers vital clarification of the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism along with suggestions for further research.     

The power and limitations of televised presidential debates: Assessing the real impact of candidate performance on public opinion and vote choice

A growing literature establishes that presidential candidates can help and hurt themselves through their performance in televised debates. Debate performance, however, is a somewhat elusive concept. Voters' post-debate assessments of the participants may be heavily colored by pre-existing attitudes toward candidates, parties, and the incumbent president. This paper attempts to tease out the “true” impact of debate performance, i.e., those times in which the candidates' superiority or inferiority on stage breaks through voters' cognitive filters. We find that debate performance is responsible for only about half of the variance in viewers' assessments of winners and losers; that it is possible to be declared the winner in the post-debate polls based entirely on factors exogenous to the debate itself; and that even a highly successful performance might yield only a narrow win in the post-debate polls. We also present evidence that, when measured properly, debate performance can actually alter candidate preferences.     

Unions in politics: public opinion in the United Kingdom and Denmark

Abstract. The paper examines public opinion about the political involvement of trade unions in the UK and Denmark. Both are systems in which trade unions are linked to a political party and both have high rates of union density. However, whereas British unions have contested governments of both parties and opposed regulation of industrial relations, Danish unions have a tradition of cooperation with government and are entangled in a web of institutionalized industrial relations. Results, however, are amazingly similar. Both the public at large and union members accept unions in general and also their political involvement, but oppose contestation of political authority. Irrespective of union behaviour, beliefs in the supremacy of parliament seems to be firmly rooted in public opinion.     

Deservingness versus values in public opinion on welfare: The automaticity of the deservingness heuristic

Public attitudes towards welfare policy are often explained by political values and perceptions of deservingness of welfare recipients. This article addresses how the impact of values and perceptions varies depending on the contextual information that citizens have available when forming welfare opinions. It is argued that whenever citizens face deservingness‐relevant cues in public debate or the media, a psychological ‘deservingness heuristic’ is triggered prompting individuals spontaneously to think about welfare policy in terms of who deserves help. This is an automatic process, equally influential among the least and the most politically sophisticated. Moreover, when clear deservingness cues are present, the impact of values on opinions vanishes. These arguments are supported by data from two novel experimental studies embedded in separate nationwide opinion surveys. The findings revise conventional wisdom of how values and heuristics influence public opinion and have major implications for understanding dynamics in aggregate welfare opinion and attempts from political elites to manipulate public opinion.     

Impersonal influence: Effects of representations of public opinion on political attitudes

Many phenomena of interest to political scientists involve what may be termed impersonal influence; that is, influence that derives from individuals' perceptions of others' attitudes, beliefs, or experiences. Others in this case refers not to the close friends and acquaintances that concerned the authors of classics such asThe People's Choice andPersonal Influence, but rather to the anonymous others outside an individual's realm of personal contacts. Modern mass media facilitate the influence of anonymous others by devoting considerable time and attention to portraying trends in mass opinion. This study explores the rationale for theories of impersonal influence, synthesizing existing research findings falling under this general theoretical framework, and investigating its psychological underpinnings using experiments embedded in representative surveys.     

Effects of public opinion on abortion policies and use in the American states

A central feature of democratic theory is substantial publiccontrol over the shape of public policies. Recent research onpublic opinion bolsters the connection between public preferencesand policies enacted in the American states. Yet, the next logicalconnection—that of policy and public behavior—isoften omitted in the research. Ideally, preferences should influencepolicy, and policy should influence public behavior. This studyexamines the hypothesis that public opinion influences abortionpolicies, and that public opinion and public policy both influencerates of abortion utilization by state publics. The findingssuggest that public preferences have profound effects on thecontours of abortion policy and access to abortion providers.There are equally significant links to abortion use, even whencontrolling for socioeconomic factors and religious orientationsin the states.     

Ideology-driven opinion formation in Europe: The case of attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden

Abstract. This paper uses attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden to test general assumptions about how citizens in West European political systems apply ideological schemas as shortcuts to political preferences. Attitudes towards the third sector are found to be affected by all ideological schemas reflected in the Swedish party system (state–market, Christian traditionalism, and growth–ecology). Contrary to what is implied by findings from America, these effects are very stable across socio–economic groups (especially those of the dominant statemarket schema). Similarly, no interaction effects of political sophistication could be traced, and the relative impact of the schemas remains the same regardless of whether or not the third sector is presented as an alternative to the welfare state. The implications of these findings for the nature of public opinion formation in ideologically clear and structured political systems are discussed.     

The public sector growth and state autonomy in Western Europe: The changing role and scope of the state in Ireland since 1950

The expansion of the state in advanced industrial societies since 1945 has stimulated studies of the determinants of public sector growth, the nature of state intervention and the capacity for the state to act in a quasi‐autonomous way. The last also provides a means for distinguishing between alternative models of state action. In this article the issues of state expansion and state autonomy are used as the basis for examining the growth of the public sector and shifting activities of the state in Ireland since 1950. It is argued that a state‐centred model best accounts for the behaviour of the Irish state.     

Re-examining the evidence on the electoral impact of terrorist attacks: The Spanish election of 2004

This paper re-examines the electoral effect of the 11-M terrorist attacks in Madrid. Previous research has focused on post-electoral surveys to construct counterfactuals for the evaluation of the electoral impact of the attack. Bali (Electoral Studies, 2007) claims that the terrorists attacks had an important electoral impact while Lago and Montero (2005) claim the opposite. In this paper I propose to re-examine the evidence using a methodological approach based on actual votes instead of opinions revealed by surveys, and the difference-in-differences estimator. The calculations under the counterfactual of “no terrorist attack” support the forecasts of the polls taken prior to the terrorist attack and the results of Bali (2007). The incumbent (conservative) party would have won the election with between 42% and the 45% of the votes, while the socialist party would have obtained 37% of the votes.     

Women and the left in Western Europe: A continuing dilemma

Feminism in Europe: Liberal and Socialist Strategies 1789–1919. By Maria Mies and Kumari Jaywardena. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 1983. Pp.208.

Sisters or Citizens? Woman and Socialism in France Since 1876. By Charles Sowerwine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pp.248. £16.40.

Enquête sur les femmes et la politique en France. By Janine Mossuz‐Lavau and Mariette Sineau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983. Pp.280. Fr. 90.

German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature. Edited by Edith Hoshimo Altbach, Jeanette Clausen, Dagmar Schultz and Naomi Stephan. New York: State University of New York Press, 1984. Pp.389. $12.95 (paperback); $39.50 (hardback).

Unfinished Democracy: Woman in Nordic Politics. Edited by Elina Haavio‐Mannila, Drude Dahlerup, Maud Eduards, Esther Gudmundsdottir, Beatrice Halsaa, Helga Maria Hernes, Eva Hänninen‐Salmeljri, Bergthora Sigmundsdóttir, Sirka Sinkonnen and Torild Skard. Translated by Christine Badcock, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985. Pp.206. £14.50 (hardback).

The Situation of Women in the Political Process in Europe. Preliminary report submitted to the Council of Europe, Strasbourg: Directorate of Human Rights, Council of Europe. 1984. Pp.74 (Part 1); pp.185 (Part 2); pp.43 (Part 3).

Women and European Politics: Contemporary Feminism and Public Policy. By Joni Lovenduski. Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1985. Pp.313. £18.95 (hardback); £7.95 (paperback).     

On filtering longitudinal public opinion data: Issues in identification and representation of true change

The Kalman filter is a popular tool in engineering and economics. It is becoming popular in political science, touted for its abilities to reduce measurement error and produce more precise estimates of true public opinion. Its application to survey measures of public opinion varies in important ways compared to the traditionally understood Kalman filter. It makes a priori assumptions about the variance of the sampling error that would not usually be made and does so in a way that violates an important property of the Kalman filter. Consequently, the behavior of the filter modified for public opinion measures is less well-known. Through simulations we assess whether and to what extent filtering: reliably detects the characteristics of time series; does so across series with different rates of autoregressive decay; and does so when the variance of the sampling error is unknown. We also examine whether the filtered data represents the level of true underlying variance and the extent to which filtering assists or hinders our ability to detect exogenous shocks. We learn a numbers of things. Most importantly, taking into account sampling error variance when filtering data can work well, though its performance does vary. First, filtering works best identifying time series characteristics when assuming a stationary process, even if the underlying process contains a unit root. Second, the performance of filtering drops off when we incorrectly specify the variance of the sampling error, and especially when we overestimate it. Third, when estimating exogenous shocks it is better to make no a priori assumptions regarding a measurement error variance unless we are absolutely certain we know what it is. In fact, applying the filter without specifying the measurement error variance is more often than not the best choice.     

Building sustainable capacity in the public sector: What can be done?

Effective government performance is central to the creation of market-oriented economies, secure and productive populations, and democratic political systems in developing countries. Capacity building to improve public sector performance is thus an important focus of development initiatives. Several implicit assumptions underlie most such efforts: that organizations or training activities are the logical site for capacity-building interventions; that administrative structures and monetary rewards determine organizational and individual performance; that organizations work well when structures and control mechanisms are in place; and that individual performance improves as a result of skill and technology transfer through training activities. Each of these assumptions is called into question by the findings of research carried out in six developing countries and reported in this article. Our studies indicate designing interventions that most constructively address sources of poor performance must follow from an assessment of a relatively broad set of variables, including the action environment in which all such activities take place. We also found that effective public sector performance is more often driven by strong organizational cultures, good management practices, and effective communication networks than it is by rules and regulations or procedures and pay scales. Our case studies further indicate that individual performance is more affected by opportunities for meaningful work, shared professional norms, teamwork, and promotion based on performance rather than it is by training in specific skills. In this article, we describe a framework or conceptual map that emphasizes that training activities, organizational performance and administrative structures are embedded within complex environments that significantly constrain their success and that often account for training or organizational failure. When it was applied in the six case study countries, the framework proved useful in identifying capacity gaps and providing a tool for the strategic design of interventions that are sensitive to the roots of performance deficits. This allows us to conclude that the assumptions underlying many capacity-building initiatives may focus attention on interventions that do not generate the highest payoffs in terms of improved performance.     

Interesting but irrelevant: Social capital and the saliency of politics in Western Europe

Abstract. Many explanations of political involvement are based on the idea that higher levels of resources will be matched by higher levels of political involvement. Yet these kind of interpretations seem to overlook the fact that resources potentially increase individual autonomy and widen the scope of alternative actions, and so facilitate a decrease of political involvement. The analyses presented here are based on the rather paradoxical expectation that we will find a higher level of subjective political interest and, simultaneously, a lower level of political saliency among people commanding relatively high levels of social capital or other resources. The empirical evidence available for Western European countries in 1990 and 1998 essentially confirms the notion of diverging consequences of social capital (and other resources) for political involvement. People combining high political interest with a low saliency of politics are labelled spectators here. For them politics has lost its obligatory character – it is interesting and probably important to follow what goes on in this area, but compared with other matters its relevance is relatively low. Besides, a strong gender bias still can be found for each and every aspect of political involvement.