Intra-party heterogeneity and voter perceptions of party positions

Do voters correctly perceive left-right positions of political parties? This question received considerable attention in the literature in the past decades. Previous research has shown that most voters have somewhat ‘correct’ perceptions of where parties are located on a left-right dimension, but that both individual and party level factors influence how much those perceptions deviate from the real positions. This paper adds to this literature, relaxing the unitary actor assumption and introducing heterogeneity to the analysis. Using data from elite surveys to measure intraparty preference heterogeneity on two dimensions, I demonstrate that voters' misperceptions of party positions strongly increase the more heterogeneous the positions of party elites are on the economic dimension, but not on the sociocultural dimension, and that the effect size depends on how salient this dimension is for the party. The findings have implications for future research on mass-elite linkages, representation, as well as voting behavior.     

Culture and the Study of Politics*

This article is an introduction to a new and promising alternative to dominant reductionistic, utilitarian and instrumental political theories. ‘Cultural Theory’, or ‘Grid-Group’ analysis has been developed by the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and transferred to political science by the American political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. Starting from two dimensions - ‘group’ (group strength) and ‘grid’ (the number of rules that influence the individual space of action), there exist four main forms of human interaction or ways of life - individualism (markets), sectarianism (egalitarism). collectivism (hierarchy) and fatalism (slavery) which can be applied to all kinds of societies, organizations and individuals. These cultures are then used to predict political action (politics), institutions (polity) and results (policies). The article shows how the theory is built up and where it comes from, and then concentrates on important logical and empirical problems that so far remain unsolved.     

Paths and Constraints of Subnational Government Mobilization in East-Central Europe

The article studies the impact of enlargement on subnational governments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. It compares the resources and political constellations of subnational governments and analyses how these variables interact with Europeanization to influence domestic intergovernmental relations, the management of structural funds and the European Union relations of subnational governments. The article argues that stronger regional governments (in Poland and the Czech Republic) have been able to resist attempts to centralize intergovernmental relations. Decentralizing reforms occurred where incumbent governing parties dominated subnational government (Poland). Under ‘vertically divided’ government (Czech Republic), subnational governments sought unmediated access to European Union institutions.     

„Politische Führung“ als politikwissenschaftliches Problem

‘Political leadership’ is one of the classic subjects of political science research on an international scale. Recently, in modern western democracies, ‘leadership’ has gained additional importance as a political function to evaluate governments and political leaders and is seen as rather independent of the policy dimension of leadership. Despite this increased relevance of ‘political leadership’, it has remained among the most neglected major issues in political science, particularly within research in the German-speaking world. This article discusses a wide range of recent approaches to studying ‘political leadership’. It then argues in favour of an ‘interactionist’ approach which takes into account both of the crucial empirical variables which influence the leadership process, the institutional, societal, and personal factors as well as political circumstances, and the normative expectations towards political leadership in modern established democracies.     

Political science,political ideas and rhetoric

The article reviews ‘ideational’ analysis and theory in political science. It argues that this is an important area of research limited by lack of a clear sense of what ideas in politics are and of how to analyse them as directly as possible. It is argued that political science should learn from the ‘rhetorical turn’ in various areas of the social sciences, developing ways, appropriate to political science, of analysing the language, rhetoric and argumentation of political and policy discourse in its governmental contexts. Such an approach rests on a strong sense of the dynamic, contested and creative nature of political activity.     

‘The dead are coming’: acts of citizenship at Europe’s borders

This article combines the research agenda of the acts of citizenship literature with reflections on emancipatory theatre. I examine the Centre for Political Beauty’s activity-based artwork ‘The dead are coming’ which problematizes the cruelties of the European border regime in symbolically charged spaces in the German public. Focusing particularly on the roles available to ‘actors’ and ‘spectators’, and the directionality of the message conveyed through the artwork, I examine how the performance subverts the ‘sites’ and ‘scales’ of citizenship. My analysis indicates that the artwork’s subversive potential emerges not only from the political vision conveyed by the artist collective, but also from the way in which others become involved in the performance. Acts of political beauty thus most extensively challenge instituted citizenship’s orientalist anchoring, reverse status-based role allocations and subvert the structural violence of borders when the performance enables the enactment of novel forms of political agency and solidarity.     

Towards the Vernacular,Away from Politics? Political History after the ‘New Political History’

This article considers how modern British political history has changed since the ‘new political history’ of the 1990s. It focusses on the ‘vernacular’ histories which have emerged in the last decade or so. The vernacular ‘turn’ is frequently framed by its proponents in opposition to the new political history, with its focus on the rhetoric of politicians and subsequent tendency to reproduce the perspectives of political elites. This article, however, identifies continuities between these approaches, noting their shared interest in advancing a more complex understanding of the relationship between politics and people in the past. It argues that the real challenge posed by the vernacular lies in the necessary reckoning with the ‘apartness’ of politics from the perspective of ordinary people. Yet here too, this piece suggests, the vernacular turn can be seen as the latest stage in a continual rethinking of the relationship between political, social and cultural history.     

The conscience of a fugitive: sheldon wolin and the prospects for radical democracy

Amidst increasing and seemingly intransigent inequalities, unresponsive institutions, and illegible patterns of social change, political theorists are increasingly faced with questions about the viability of democracy in the contemporary age. One of the most prominent voices within this conversation has been that of Sheldon Wolin. Wolin has famously argued that democracy is a ‘fugitive’ experience with an inherently temporary character. Critics have pounced on this concept, rejecting it as an admission of defeat or despair that is at odds with the formation of democratic counter-power. In this article, I push back against this view of fugitive democracy. I do so by contextualizing the idea within Wolin’s broader democratic theory, and especially his idea of the ‘multiple civic self’, in order to give a more coherent form to a conception of citizenship often concealed by the attention given to the supposedly momentary nature of democracy. This all too common misreading of fugitive democracy has significant stakes, because it shapes not only how we approach Wolin’s impact as a political theorist, but also how we approach practices of democratic citizenship and how we think about political theory and political science’s relationship to those practices.     

Dimensions of political conflict and party positions in multi-level democracies: evidence from the Local Manifesto Project

Partisan conflicts have been frequently analysed in comparative political science research. Yet little is known about the dimensions of political conflict at the local level in multi-level democracies. This article contributes to the literature on the estimation and analysis of party positions by first presenting a new dataset of more than 800 local party manifestos in Germany that allows for a systematic analysis of the dimensions of political conflict at the German local level. Secondly, it is demonstrated that (semi-)automatic content analysis of these texts offers a promising approach for gaining new insights into local party positions. Thirdly, the empirical analysis of German local party manifestos shows that partisan conflicts are not only structured along the left–right dimension but also along a dimension which distinguishes between parties addressing ‘local’ and ‘national’ issues to a varying degree in their manifestos, due to the different behaviour of established and populist parties.     

Did the Egalitarian Reforms of the Swedish Educational System Equalise Levels of Democratic Citizenship?

In the mid‐1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a ‘school for everyone’ intended to function like a ‘social equaliser’. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an extended curriculum of social science courses. This article examines whether the well documented gap in levels of democratic citizenship indicators between students in theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes persisted after this massive reform. Given the vast amount of empirical research that has shown that education promotes democratic citizenship, the reform could be expected to result in a decreased civic gap. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom in research on the impact of education, little evidence is found linking the initiation of longer educational programmes with more social science courses to an increase in the levels of the examined dimensions of democratic citizenship. The egalitarian reform of the Swedish gymnasium, which provided more civic education, did not produce hypothesised positive effects on any of the dimensions under study (i.e., political participation, political knowledge and political attentiveness). Rather, results support the pre‐adult socialisation models since the gap between citizens from theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes remained after the unification of the educational system.     

Rethinking Postwar Liberalism: The Road to 2010 and Beyond

The nineteenth and early twentieth century Liberal Party has been well served by British political historians. By contrast, research on the post-1945 Liberal Party and Liberal Democrats has become a specialised field, with strong empirical foundations (including in biographies and political science work) but few connections with the larger narratives that historians tell about postwar Britain. This article explores how the story of the ‘long Liberal revival’ from the late 1950s to the 2010–15 coalition might be reintegrated with contemporary historiography, including debates about deindustrialisation, class dealignment and the rise of ‘popular individualism’. It argues that careful attention to the nature and limits of Liberals’ political agency can help us understand the changing meaning and significance of third-party politics in Britain.     

The range and limitation of sub-national regime variations under electoral authoritarianism: The case of Russia

ABSTRACT

As has been demonstrated by scholars, different levels of a polity may encompass different political regimes. In this study we examine variations in regional political regimes which have developed under Russia's system of electoral authoritarianism. Comparing the results of two cycles of regional assembly elections (2008–12 and 2013–17) we analyse and compare elections results and levels of electoral contestation in both the party list (PL) and single member district (SMD) contests. This allows us to identify the range of sub-national regime variations: ‘hegemonic authoritarian’, ‘inter-elite bargain authoritarian’, ‘clearly-competitive authoritarian’, and ‘moderately-competitive authoritarian’ regions. Approximately half of the regions demonstrate stable electoral patterns across both cycles. At the same time, none of the regions go beyond the authoritarian limitations imposed by the Russian regime. The variation is explained by a combination of structural and agency factors with a prevalence of the latter.     

Politicians,professionalization and anti-politics: why we want leaders who act like professionals but are paid like amateurs

Why are politicians so unpopular? One common explanation blames a professionalized political class that is increasingly detached from ‘ordinary citizens’. But, there is very little empirical investigation of what it is about the professionalization of politics that engenders distrust. This article uses 12 focus groups and 15 interviews with civil servants from the Australian Public Service—‘insiders’ with first-hand knowledge and experience of the political system—to reflect on political professionalization and its impacts. As a group, civil servants’ views on this question remain largely unexplored yet their proximity to the political process gives them a distinct vantage point from which to reflect on current explanations for rising anti-political sentiment. We find both positive and negative attitudes towards professionalization that destabilize prevailing explanations: on the demand side, civil servants share first-hand experience and knowledge of how the political process works but remain cynical about politicians, whilst on the supply side, they value governing competence more than demographic representation yet still want more ‘amateur’ politicians. Our reflections on these findings highlight contradictory expectations: we want politicians who act like professionals, but who are paid like amateurs.     

Accessing the Corridors of Power: Puzzles and Pathways to Understanding Minority Representation

Three major constraints hinder cross-national comparisons: a lack of data on the immigrant origins of political candidates and elected representatives, incomplete public data on the immigrant origins of national populations or electorates, and cross-national differences in the definition of the minority population. This article addresses these methodological difficulties and the conceptual challenges of studying minority representation. Using public data for a number of West European countries and three ‘Anglo-settler’ immigration countries, it elaborates an index to evaluate representational equity and to compare women’s and minorities’ presence in national legislatures. The index reveals the limits of a ‘national models’ or simple ‘electoral rules’ framework. Future research should focus on dynamics of group mobilisation, ideological contexts and the recruitment practices of political parties.     

Rethinking Local Politics: Towards a Cultural Political Economy of Entrepreneurial Cities

The territorial dimensions of the state are undergoing substantial changes. Political entities, such as cities and regions, are gaining in importance. Described as entrepreneurial city politics, policy-makers of contemporary cities are using new, economically oriented strategies to strengthen their city's position in interurban competition. Despite this state of affairs, social science still tends to treat local politics as equal to sub-national politics. This has especially been the case in Scandinavia, where local governments have traditionally functioned as an extension of the central welfare state. Since processes associated with entrepreneurial city politics are manifested in Scandinavia as well, this article argues that there is a need to rethink what local politics ultimately is about. The article proposes the ideas recently formed at the ‘Lancaster School of Cultural Political Economy’ as an approach with which to reconceptualise local politics. In the final section, some remarks on a future research agenda, centred on the cultural political economy of contemporary city politics, are presented.     

Strategic postures of political marketing: an exploratory operationalization

• In contrast to most political marketing theories which imply that such concepts as ‘voter‐orientation’ or ‘voter‐centric political management’ are trivial and uni‐dimensional, this article will take its starting point from an alternative perspective.
• It draws on the concept of political marketing ‘postures’, i.e. a multi‐faceted conceptual entity, based on varied dimensions of political marketing orientations. The main duality consists of the constructs of ‘leading’ and ‘following’, with an auxiliary (and complementary) dimension of ‘relationship building’.
• This article provides an exploratory methodology to operationalize this concept, which will also be initially tested empiricially, using expert judgements as well as electorate's perceptions.
• Changing postures will be exemplified within a longitudinal application of the concept to perceptions of Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Introduction: Issue Congruence and Political Responsiveness

It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of ‘electoral turnover’, while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in ‘rational anticipation’ of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.     

Understanding varieties of populism in times of crises

Abstract

This introduction presents the conceptual and analytical framework which constitutes the background for the special issue entitled ‘Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises’. More specifically, this contribution investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the recent economic crisis and the more long-lasting political and cultural crises. Analytically, the article disentangles the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. It argues that although the economic crisis has without any doubt provided a specific ‘window of opportunity’ for the emergence of new political actors, which have capitalised on citizens’ discontent, long-lasting political factors – such as the increasing distrust toward political institutions and parties – and the more recent cultural crisis connected with migration issues have offered further fertile ground for the consolidation of populist parties in several European countries. Furthermore, as confirmed by the articles presented in the special issue, the various crises have offered differential opportunities for different types of populism – both inclusionary and exclusionary.     

‘Left behind’ people,or places? The role of local economies in perceived community representation

Modern economics attributes importance to spatial inequality: yet in studying discontent with politics, existing research has mostly neglected local contexts and attitudes people hold about them. I use British Election Study data to investigate the factors leading people to believe their community is ignored by the political process. Firstly, real economic contexts play a role, since residents of low-income communities tend to take more negative views about how well their community is represented. Secondly, negative perceptions of the local economy are associated with more negative views of community representation, whereas equivalent ‘egotropic’ measures of people's personal economic situation have no such effect. Thirdly, I observe a ‘grievance’ effect wherein people are particularly negative about community representation when they believe that the national economy is more successful than that of one's local community.     

Demokratie oder Fiskalunion?

What challenges do European tax states face from fiscal integration? Which structural problems need to be overcome to deepen it? Building on insights from the literature on European integration, fiscal sociology and political economy, this article shows how the heterogeneity of European tax states sets high stakes for the legitimacy of further fiscal integration. It analyses the debate on a ‘fiscal union’, which shows a yawning gap here. The article concludes that fragmentation and ‘constitutionalization’ as well as the conflicts of interest and power around fiscal issues deem the democratizing impact of further integration unlikely, though not impossible.