Political Studies as Narrative and Science, 1880–2000

Today we are often skeptical of the role played by representations of the nation state in constructing and legitimating ways of life and public policies. We portray what once appeared to be neutral, scientific representations of our practices and our heritages as contingent historical objects. How did we become so skeptical? The answer has several parts: developmental historicism dominated the human sciences in the latter half of the nineteenth century; the turn of the century witnessed an epistemic rupture and the rise of a modernist empiricism that came to dominate the social sciences; modernist empiricists reformulated their approach during the latter half of the twentieth century in response to alternative visions of social science; and, finally, the close of the twentieth century also saw the rise of a radical historicism that spread from philosophy and literature to history and even social science. In short, we have become skeptical as we have moved toward a radical historicism that challenges scientism and decenters the grand narratives of yore.     

Politics by denunciation: Political whistleblowing against members of parliament in Italy

Judicial investigations into politicians are a fundamental component of politics, with these investigations often leading to public scandals. Yet, empirical evidence of the strategic determinants of judicial investigations is intrinsically hard to gather, a problem that has significantly limited the study of this important phenomenon. This paper studies the politics behind judicial investigations by leveraging new data on prosecutors’ informants in 1125 episodes of misbehavior of Italian MPs involved in different crimes (1983–2019). Results provide evidence in favor of a political use of denunciations for corruption crimes: when a party weakens, the likelihood that political enemies denounce past misbehavior of members of the weakened party increases, suggesting that the political use of denunciation is elastic to changes in the electoral performance. Furthermore, weakened MPs are more likely to be accused of misbehavior that happened a long time before the accusation, which further supports the argument that accusations are politically motivated.     

Rhetoric, Practice and the Dynamics of Institutional Change: Immigrant Policy in Sweden, 1964–2000

This article explains why different policy changes can occur on different institutional levels at the same time. I distinguish between the rhetorical and practical levels. Previous studies have described the different functions of rhetoric and practice: losses on one level can be compensated by gains on the other; to minimize conflicts between the two levels they are kept separate. However, no causal explanation of such decoupling has been suggested. I suggest that the reason why rhetoric and practice are decoupled is that they are evaluated in different ways: rhetoric is eva-luated in public political debates whereas practice is evaluated through government audits and different questions are asked in the two arenas. This argument is tested through a study of Swedish immigrant policies between 1964 and 2000. The main conclusion is that the rhetoric of immigrant policy has changed, whereas the practice of immigrant policy has not.     

The price of personalizing politics: Political distrust and economic performance in Latin America, 1996–2006

While research has provided evidence that culture and institutional performance shape individual level trust in political institutions, scholars have neglected to adequately estimate the effect of political institutions and macroeconomic conditions on trust. Using data from the World Value Surveys for eleven Latin American cases, we test if countries with “partyizing” electoral systems - those with rules that encourage voters to hold the party, not individuals, accountable for government performance - experience lower levels of distrust in political parties and the legislature in times of poor economic conditions than those countries with “personalizing” electoral rules. Our analysis shows that the macro political and economic context largely conditions the impact of culture and institutional performance on political trust.     

Economics, ideology and vote: Southern Europe, 1985–2000

Abstract.  This article analyses the role of economics in voting behaviour in Greece, Portugal and Spain. First, it describes the objective economic conditions in these countries and investigates the degree to which they reflect the electorates' economic perceptions. Second, a multilevel model of voting behaviour for Greece, Portugal and Spain is tested to determine if, as expected, economics is more important than social and political cleavages. This approach allows one to assess the effects of both individual voters' economic perceptions and objective economic conditions to determine which are more important, and to compare their effects with social and political cleavages. With the exception of Greece, the economic voting model will also be tested under different political conditions (i.e., type of government in each country).     

State political culture, primary frontloading, and democratic voice in presidential nominations: 1972–2000

In light of the notorious “frontloading” phenomenon in U.S. presidential nominating elections, this paper examines the relationship between state political culture and state primary scheduling, for the purpose of understanding how differences in institutionalized community values may have affected the equity with which democratic voice has been distributed in modern presidential nominations. Using stratified event history analyses of nomination campaign schedules from 1972 to 2000, we find that “moralistic” states tend to schedule primary dates earlier in the campaign season than do individualistic or (especially) traditionalistic states, particularly in states with more ideologically liberal elites. Moreover, this tendency toward frontloading among moralistic states becomes more dramatic as racial homogeneity increases relative to other states. These results disturbingly reveal that the democratic voices of racial minorities have often been muffled under the modern institution of presidential nominations.     

Political Disagreement in Context: The Conditional Effect of Neighborhood Context, Disagreement and Political Talk on Electoral Participation

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context moderates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person’s relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion.

Race,Partisanship, and Political Trust Following <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bush versus Gore</Emphasis> (2000)

In contrast to what we know about the sources of political trust among whites, recent research suggests that political mistrust among blacks indicates discontent with the political system. The current study adds to research investigating racial differences in political trust by examining racial differences in the influence of the 2000 United States presidential election on political trust. Specifically, I test for whether whites and blacks adjusted their trust in government in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush versus Gore (2000) and whether the influence of the Court’s decision on trust was dependent on partisan identification. The findings indicate that blacks perceived the Court’s decision as illegitimate, reinforcing their mistrust in their political system.

Liberal Democrat Policy-making: An Insider's View, 2000–2004

Little attention has been paid to the way in which political parties make policy. From the perspective of a former member of party staff, this article explains why the Liberal Democrats have adopted their current procedure, and what the strengths and weaknesses of this are. It pays particular attention to the party's working groups, which produce policy papers, and also focuses on the process for writing manifestos. The article argues that policy-making should change as the party grows in strength. Shorter conferences with more focused debate would allow delegates the same voice in deciding crucial policies that will form the basis of the next manifesto, but get rid of the fringe debates that attract ridicule in the media. It would also allow parliamentarians more freedom to respond to specific events within the very general policy framework agreed at conference.     

Strategic Party Government: Party Influence in Congress, 1789–2000

Why does the influence of Congressional parties fluctuate over time? Building on prevailing answers, we develop a model, Strategic Party Government, which highlights the electoral motives of legislative parties and the strategic interaction between parties. We test this theory using the entire range of House and Senate party behavior from 1789 to 2000 and find that the strategic behavior of parties complements members' preferences as an explanation for variation in party influence. Specifically, the strongest predictors of one party's voting unity are the unity of the opposing party and the difference between the parties in the preceding year. Moreover, we find strong links between party behavior in Congress and electoral outcomes: an increase in partisan influence on legislative voting has adverse electoral costs, while winning contested votes has electoral benefits.     

Political knowledge,the decision calculus,and proximity voting

This paper employs an online voting simulation to examine how the vote decision process affects the vote choice. We focus on proximity voting, an empirically powerful but informationally demanding model of voter behavior. Holding contextual factors constant, we find that more politically knowledgeable individuals engage in a deeper and broader decision process prior to casting their ballot, and, in turn, a more detailed decision process boosts the likelihood that one will vote proximately. In addition, we find that detailed decision processes have a stronger link with proximity voting among the most knowledgeable individuals, who are able to skillfully engage with new information.     

Government approval in Italy: Political cycle,economic expectations and TV coverage

This paper analyses government approval in Italy – which has become a key aspect for electoral support in the new party system of the Second Republic – exploring the influence that TV coverage exerts on approval net of traditional accounts of government support. Relying on both aggregate time series and pooled individual-level surveys analyses, it is shown that communication has a sizable impact on government approval. The popularity of Centre-Left and Centre-Right governments is affected evenly by the economy but differently by the news coverage of their activity. People with lower political interest are the most reactive to news coverage of government performance.     

Polity Size and Local Political Trust: A Quasi‐experiment Using Municipal Mergers in Denmark

This article examines the relationship between polity size and political trust in local government for which two schools of thought offer opposing expectations. The theoretical disagreement has received considerable attention and this article contributes with a dynamic perspective of how changes in polity size affect changes in citizens' political trust on the input‐side of local government. The case examined is the recent municipal mergers in Denmark which were implemented on 1 January 2007. The article reports an analysis of a panel based on a repeated survey of Danish citizens using an untreated control group design with pre‐test and post‐test. A quasi‐experimental difference‐in‐difference identification strategy is used to obtain the effect of municipal size on local political trust. The results show that changes in municipal size negatively affect local political trust, which is consistent with the expectation from the political economy theory that political trust tends to decrease with the size of the polity.     

In Principle <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> in Practice: Learning Political Tolerance in Eastern and Western Europe

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans’ limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.

A theory of coalitions and clientelism: Coalition politics in Iceland, 1945–2000

Abstract.  This article serves a dual purpose. First, it provides detailed information about coalition formation and termination in Iceland from 1945 to 2000 following closely the format of Wolfgang Müller and Kaare Strøm (eds), Coalition Politics in Western Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which considers the other Western European democracies. The political landscape of Iceland is surveyed, as is the institutional framework that structures the formation of coalitions, coalition governance and cabinet termination while providing complete data for each cabinet. Second, the effects clientelism has on coalition politics through the inflated importance of the executive office are considered. The patterns of coalition politics in the Nordic countries are compared to offer preliminary evidence supporting the theory.     

Acts of Faith: Churches and Political Engagement

Many observers suggest that white evangelical Protestant churches serve to mobilize their members into politics, while others argue that they encourage withdrawal from political life. This paper reconciles these two claims. I hypothesize that the time members of evangelical Protestant denominations spend in service to their church comes at the expense of participation in the wider community, contrary to the way mainline Protestant and Catholic churches foster civic activity among their members. However, I further hypothesize that the tight social networks formed through this intensive church activity can at times facilitate rapid and intense political mobilization. Data from the Citizen Participation Study supports the first hypothesis, while applying King's method of ecological inference to two elections in Alabama supports the second.     

锦标赛体制、晋升博弈与地方剧场政治

政治锦标赛体制是中国政府官员的一种压力性激励范式与不容选择的政治生态。行政发包并进行量化考核、绩效排名与择优提拔,是政治锦标赛体制的主要表现形式。但实地调查表明,基层政府官员晋升往往是前台与台后多重原因作用的结果。派系关系、政治背景、社会网络等后台因素往往能左右基层干部的晋升。文章以一个县级市的乡镇干部为观察对象,检验了官员激励分析范式———锦标赛体制在基层地方官员晋升竞争中的解释力,重点对地方官员晋升博弈研究提供一个初步的描述类型学,认为推选博弈、排名博弈与借势博弈是地方官员晋升博弈的三种基本类型。本文初步提出了一个地方官员晋升决定因素的剧场分析模型,并指出,在政治锦标赛体制下,民主集中制在未来地方官员的选拔、任用中的积极作用将日益凸显。     

Political parties,globalization and labour strength: Assessing differences across welfare state programs

This article investigates how globalization and organized labour condition partisan effects on different welfare state programs. The main argument is that the conditional effect of globalization on government partisanship depends on how relevant a program is to the needs of vulnerable groups and that organized labour additionally affects this relationship. Analyzing 21 OECD countries between 1980 and 2011/2014, empirical evidence largely corroborates this argument: Firstly, the expectation that partisan differences decrease with globalization in general and especially in weak labour countries in the case of programs that are less relevant for compensation holds true for old-age provision and partly for sick pay insurance. Secondly, and in accordance with theoretical expectations concerning programs that are primarily relevant for compensation, partisan differences increase with globalization, in general regarding education and only in strong labour countries regarding unemployment benefits. Therefore, while globalization constrains national politics’ room for manoeuvre in some areas, parties are still able to follow their ideologically preferred policies and respond to compensation demands in others.