La Donna e Mobile – or is She? Voter Preferences and Public Support for the Performing Arts

This paper investigates a referendum held in 1994 on the public support of the Zürich Opera House. The estimates demonstrate that well over 85% of the variance in the approval rates across ballot districts can be explained with a few variables characterizing the socio-economic composition of the electorate. Since these variables have been shown to influence the level of public support for the arts in representative democracies as well, our result lends support to the view that in democracies public support for the arts is coupled to the stable preferences of the electorate. This insight may, to some extent, mitigate and qualify existing fears that cultural policy is completely at the mercy of changing government ideologies and interest group influences.     

Are they listening? Public opinion,interest groups and government responsiveness

What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. It is argued here that interest groups importantly influence government responsiveness to public opinion, but that the effect varies by type of interest group: while cause groups increase the responsiveness of governments to their electorate, sectional groups decrease government responsiveness. Drawing on a new and unique dataset, this article examines the relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government expenditure across 13 policy areas in Germany from 1986 until 2012 and shows that interest groups indeed have a differential effect on the responsiveness of governments. The article’s findings have important implications for understanding political representation and the largely overlooked relationship between public opinion, interest groups and government policy.     

The Impact of Elite Polarization on Partisan Ambivalence and Indifference

Considerable evidence documents the impact that elite polarization has had on the influence of partisanship on vote choice and attitudes. Yet, much of the electorate remains moderate. This paper seeks to shed some light on this paradox. Examining trends from 1952 to 2004 demonstrates that the electorate is now more opinionated about the parties than in the recent past, but that a significant portion of the increase is in the form of negative statements about an individual’s party—there are fewer indifferent individuals, but the electorate is not overwhelmingly more one-sided, instead there has been an increase in both the proportion of one-sided and ambivalent individuals. It is next examined if the intensity of one’s ideological and partisan self-identification influences how they respond to elite polarization. The results suggest that non-ideologues and pure independents are more likely to be indifferent; all other groups have shown a decline in the likelihood of being indifferent and an increase in ambivalence. The results demonstrate that the public is responding to the increased clarity in elite positions in the form of an increased number of opinions, but for many the increase results from a mix of positive and negative reactions.     

Elections and Deceptions: An Experimental Study on the Behavioral Effects of Democracy

Traditionally, the virtue of democratic elections has been seen in their role as means of screening and sanctioning shirking public officials. This article proposes a novel rationale for elections and political campaigns considering that candidates incur psychological costs of lying, in particular from breaking campaign promises. These nonpecuniary costs imply that campaigns influence subsequent behavior, even in the absence of reputational or image concerns. Our lab experiments reveal that promises are more than cheap talk. They influence the behavior of both voters and their representatives. We observe that the electorate is better off when their leaders are elected democratically rather than being appointed exogenously—but only in the presence of electoral campaigns. In addition, we find that representatives are more likely to serve the public interest when their approval rates are high. Altogether, our results suggest that elections and campaigns confer important benefits beyond their screening and sanctioning functions.     

Do elections lead to informed public decisions?

Democracies delegate substantial decision power to politicians. We analyse a model in which the electorate wants an office-motivated incumbent to design, examine and implement public policies. We show that voters can always encourage politicians to design projects. However, they cannot always induce politicians to examine projects. In fact, politicians who would examine policies without elections, say because of a concern about the public interest, may shy away from policy examination with elections.     

Political evocation and styles of candidate evaluation

Recent work in cognitive processing and individual decision making has emphasized that individuals vary in the criteria they bring to bear to evaluate political objects. In this paper we argue that individual differences are but one piece of the decision-making puzzle, and that environmental factors are also important. Of particular interest to us is the idea that different candidates evoke different evaluative criteria. Using data from a 1984 sample of undergraduates and the 1980 National Election Study, we find evidence that political evocation effects do exist. This result has implications for understanding both the decision calculus of individuals and the collective rationality of the electorate.     

Social Structure and Campaign Style: Finland 1954–1987

This study addresses the hypothesis concerning the ideological convergence of political parties in light of election campaigns in Finland. The basic expectation is that the parties have become more alike in terms of their orientation vis-à-vis the electorate and in their use of propaganda techniques. The empirical data consists of editorials in the leading newspapers of the four largest Finnish parties in connection with the parliamentary election campaigns of 1954, 1966, 1975 and 1987. The main hypothesis is clearly corroborated, as traditional elements such as class orientation have been replaced by references to the nation at large and to the political elite. A re-ideologization could be noted in connection with the 1975 campaign, followed by a strong de-ideologization in 1987. Despite the virtual disappearance of offensive propaganda techniques, recent campaigns were not found to be decisively less 'propagandists' than the earlier ones.     

Assessments of group influence,subjective political competence,and interest group membership

This research examines the relationship between citizens' assessments of how much influence the group they identify with is able to exercise in American politics and their subjective political competence and political participation. Appraisals of group influence have a powerful effect on subjective political competence, fulfilling theoretical expectations outlined by Leon Festinger many years ago. Moreover, assessments of group influence affect individuals' decision concerning membership in an interest group that promotes the interest of one's reference group. The work reported here is an improvement over past efforts in that it explicitly defines and assesses the causal importance of a concept that has been featured in prior research.     

Markets and democracy: A critique of Charles E. Lindblom

Abstract

Using a 1988 Home Box Office (HBO) series as a point of departure this paper examines the state of mass‐mediated politics. Examples from Tanner ‘88 reveal unmistakable signs of contemporary electoral campaigns ‐ stage management, monitored public opinion, and mythinformation. Pseudo‐events replace actual political circumstances to create politically useful images. The consciousness industry, in creating almost universal commodification, has fused propaganda and advertising in the selling of products and politics. Emphasis on spectacle and happening, immediate delivery, and manipulation of demand represent important changes in the way that capitalism and democracy work. A new mode of information in which social relations are mediated by electronic communication systems is being created. But saturation coverage in the media has not created a better‐informed, more active electorate. Rather, it has reduced the political process to a level of mindless slogans, trivial issues, and meaningless simulations.     

If you can't please everyone,must you only please yourself?

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 8221, U.S.A. Shirking models, especially those of Kalt and Zupan, have demonstrated that Senators often vote contrary to their constituents' ideology. These models establish two components of Senators' ideology through a regression of constituency demographics on interest group ratings. The predicted scores are constituency attitudes while the residuals are Senators' personal ideologies. Senators' personal ideology is presumed to be independent of constituency factors. The use of demographics is problematic, because it is unclear that they are good surrogates for attitudes. Using statewide estimates of ideology from public opinion surveys, I show that demographics provide reasonable estimates of public attitudes. However, estimates of shirking from public opinion depend upon constituency characteristics, a finding that is inconsistent with shirking models based upon residualization. The existing shirking models depend heavily upon a legislator's party as a key component of constituency opinion. But party is an attribute of the Senator and not of the electorate. A better interpretation is that Senators respond to their fellow partisans in the electorate.     

They Come over Here … 300 Years of Xenophobic Propaganda in England

England's rulers, merchants, and organized labor in the early modern period (from the 16th to the 18th centuries) were all actively using what today we would call propaganda. Each group appreciated the need to get popular opinion on its side, or at the least to convince other groups it was in the public interest to act in a particular way. This study focuses on the use of xenophobic narratives by these actors in order to further their political, economic, or cultural objectives. The targets were economic rivals including the Dutch, but most particularly ethnic and religious outgroups, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Although there were public relations win-wins for anyone who was able successfully to demonize foreigners, racist and xenophobic propaganda was often more pernicious than the tellers realized, in many cases extending its influence over several generations. In addition, it is clear that many narratives failed to engage with public opinion, for reasons that were not always clear to the groups responsible for them.     

Corporatism, Pluralism, and Swedish Interest Group Influence in Social Welfare Policymaking

Corporatism and pluralism predict different characteristics of interest groups; their environments are important in understanding the level of influence that these groups have. This article describes variables related to these theoretical approaches and tests them as determinants of two operationalizations of interest group influence, one objective and one reputational. Results of these tests on Swedish interest group information indicate that, although Sweden has usually been considered a model corporatist political system, the situation is more complicated, with some pluralist factors being quite important. The study suggests that interest group influence may be more objectively determinable than is usually believed.     

Is There Demand for Radical Right Populism in the Finnish Electorate?

Since the 1980s, the main interest in radical right-wing studies has been on occurrences of the phenomenon. Non-occurrences have not received much attention, although they could have something to offer the field as well. This article focuses on the 'Finnish exception' and by approaching the theme in terms of single-issue and protest voting theories, asks to what extent the electorate in Finland differs from those of other European countries with respect to the two crucial sets of attitudes for radical right-wing parties: those towards the political system and those towards immigration. After the country comparison, the focus turns to the Finnish case to explore where in the electorate anti-system and anti-immigrant appeal would find the strongest support. The data used in the study is taken from the European Social Survey 2002–2003, which is analysed by principal component analysis and linear regression. The country comparison shows that in the light of single-issue and protest voting theories, the attitudinal atmosphere in Finland provides a breeding ground for radical right populism as fertile as that in most other West European countries. Second, the case analysis of Finland reveals that anti-immigrant attitudes and dissatisfaction with the political system are most accentuated among older, poorly educated men with no interest in politics.     

Direct and Derived Policies: Illicit Drug Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Australia

We distinguish two types of public policy issues: direct issues, in which concern comes bottom-up from the electorate at large; and derived issues, in which pressure for change comes top-down from expert opinion. We outline two continuing, contentious issues: policies towards illegal drug use and policies towards the prospect of global climate change. We argue that the media play a role in both policies' formulation: chaneling concern up in direct policy, and maintaining general interest and motivating the electorate to accept the pain of change in derived policy.     

Ballot Structure and Satisfaction with Democracy

This article analyses the influence of ballot structure over satisfaction with democracy. In line with previous literature, we hypothesize that some ballot structures – such as preferential ballots – generate more satisfaction with democracy than closed ones. Yet, we expect these differences to be especially relevant among the more knowledgeable electorate, since any open ballot structure requires more sophisticated voters. Using CSES surveys, our results do not show a clear and simple relation between ballot openness and satisfaction with democracy as some previous research seems to suggest. Our findings rather suggest a more limited effect. Preferential ballots and open lists are the only ballot structures that generate more satisfaction, when compared to most of the remaining ballot structures. Yet, this relation is restricted only among the more knowledgeable electorate. The liberty of choice that ballot structure offers only concerns a reduced portion of the electorate, namely the more politically sophisticated one.     

A model for disaggregating political change

We present a model for identifying the components of aggregate change in an electorate between two points in time. When the electorate is constant in size, change in the mean opinion disaggregates into two components: conversion among those who continue to participate in the electorate (Stayers), and replacement of those who drop out of the electorate at Time₁ (Dropouts) by Newcomers to the electorate at Time₂. We add to this simple formulation the possibility of variation in the size of the electorate. When an electorate expands, the model includes a mobilization term to accommodate the fact that there are more Newcomers at Time₂ than Dropouts at Time₁. When an electorate shrinks in size, the demobilization term reflects the fact that Newcomers as a group are smaller than Dropouts. The model includes appropriate weights for each component so that the change in opinion (or any other aggregate characteristic in the electorate) can be allocated across the three components. We apply the model to Iowa caucus attenders in both parties between 1984 and 1988, and we suggest that the model can be also productively applied to a variety of contexts besides nomination politics, where fluctuations in the size of electorates are significant.Ronald B. Rapoport. College of William and Mary.     

The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.     

The Paradox of the Politically-Sophisticated Partisan: The French Case

The erosion of partisan ties observed in many advanced industrialised democracies has been attributed to a cluster of factors associated with societal modernisation. This article considers the impact of one of these explanatory factors, the political sophistication of the electorate, in the case of France. Specifically, it tests the proposition that a more highly-educated and better-informed electorate will be less partisan. Its findings challenge a number of the assumptions behind the ‘independent’ voter thesis. The evidence points to the fact that it is lower rather than higher cognitive mobilisation that is associated with apartisanship. More politically-sophisticated voters, young and old alike, tend to have stronger party attachment and to rely on this rather than on complex evaluations of issues and policy to guide their voting decision.     

The effects of political involvement and cross-pressures on multiple party identifications in multi-party systems – evidence from Germany

Despite being part of the original concept in “The American Voter”, multiple party identifications (MPID) have rarely been analyzed. Based on a 2016 survey that is representative of the German electorate, we investigate the determinants of multiple party attachments in Germany. With the help of a new measurement instrument for MPID, we can show that multiple attachments are a common phenomenon in Germany: Nearly 30% of the respondents and more than half of all party adherents identify themselves with more than one party. Political interest and education as facets of political involvement have a significant effect on the likelihood of holding multiple attachments within ideological camps. Cross-pressures lead to a higher probability of having multiple identifications between political camps.     

Constituency Opinion and PAC Contributions: A Case of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League

To test whether interest group politics doharm to a representative democracy, thispaper simulates congressionaldistrict-level constituency opinion onabortion. Analyzing the relationshipbetween the constituency opinion andNARAL's contributions in the 102nd and103rd Congresses, this paper presentsempirical evidence that NARAL'scontribution decision is influenced byconstituency opinion. The evidence,however, is mixed. Constituency opinioninfluences NARAL's decision on who will getits money. Constituency opinion, however,does not influence NARAL's decision on whowill get more money. According to theseresults, financial representation byinterest groups does not seriously causeharm to a representative democracy, but itcan still bias the representativeness tosome extent. An interest group may selectlegislators whose districts support itsposition less strongly and contribute agreater amount of money to the legislators.