Mixed evidence for a relationship of cognitive fatigue to political engagement

Daily cognitive fatigue is widespread, yet we are still learning about its influence on political behavior. Existing research suggests fatigue will reduce consumption of politics at the margin. Moreover, when fatigued individuals do engage with political material, they should be more likely to choose content and decision rules that require minimal effort. We find mixed empirical evidence for these claims. In observational data, we find a negative relationship between fatigue and engagement, on average, but the coefficients are typically small and statistically insignificant and we find substantial variation across different measures of fatigue. In three experiments, we find mixed evidence that manipulated fatigue reduces the demand for political content over sports and other non-political entertainment. In a fourth experiment, we find no evidence that manipulated fatigue shapes heuristic versus systematic processing. We discuss the limitations of our study, its relationship to existing work, and avenues for future research.     

Legislative Organisation and its Determinants in European Parliamentary Democracies

Questions regarding the origin and evolution of legislative institutions are at the heart of comparative legislative studies. Much research in this area focuses on the US Congress; in contrast, comparative studies of European democracies have been more limited. Addressing this imbalance, this special issue showcases newly emerging research on legislative organisation in Europe. In doing so, it brings together contributions that explore the rationales behind the emergence of, and variation in, national European voting practices, investiture rules, minority rights, committee power, agenda control, debating rules and individual MPs’ rights.     

Civic engagement and participation among Ghanaian and Kenyan students and their correlates

This article examines levels of civic engagement among university students in Ghana and Kenya and identifies factors that may account for their civic engagement. Overall, the students reported low civic engagement, with the Kenyans reporting higher engagement. Demographic factors (gender and age) and personal values hardly contributed to the students’ civic engagement. Political interest and attentiveness, barriers and motivation towards participation made a consistent and significant contribution to political participation and future participation. Furthermore, trust, social endorsement and social efficacy showed a consistent and significant contribution to civic engagement. The findings underscore the need to work towards getting the youth more engaged.     

Collective and Private Resources and the Inequalities of Non-violent Political Protest in European Countries

Abstract

Political participation is deemed to be a fundamental component of democratic regimes. The literature on political participation has shown that some social groups of citizens tend to be less involved in politics than other social groups, and the consequence is that the interests of these specific groups of less involved citizens are underrepresented in the political process. Given the increasing popularity of non-violent protest in contemporary democracies, it is important to understand whether political inequalities are present in this form of political engagement. In this article, we argue that non-violent protest may present inequalities, that examining the consequences of public social spending can help in understanding the cross-national differences in the levels of non-violent political protest, and that political inequalities in non-violent protest may vary according to public social spending. We test our argument using sources that include the European Values Study (1980–2009), multilevel models, and contextual data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.     

Religious parties and the problem of democratic political legitimacy

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of democratic political legitimacy.     

The European lavender vote: Sexuality,ideology and vote choice in Western Europe

In many European democracies, political punditry has highlighted the attempts of political parties on the left to court the ‘lavender vote’ of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This article examines the presence of a gay vote in Western Europe with a focus on assessing the role of sexuality in shaping individuals’ political preferences and voting behaviour. Empirically, the effect of sexuality on both ideological identification as well as party vote choice is analysed. Using a cumulative dataset of eight rounds of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2017, this article demonstrates that partnered lesbians and gay men are more likely than comparable heterosexuals to identify with the left, support leftist policy objectives and vote for left-of-centre political parties. The analysis represents the first empirical cross-national European study of the voting behaviour of homosexual individuals and sheds new light on the importance of sexuality as a predictor of political ideology and voting behaviour within the Western European context.     

Electoral reforms,entry barriers and the structure of political markets: A comparative analysis

This article investigates the impact of electoral reforms on entry barriers in political markets. The discussion starts by delineating the theoretical boundaries of various political markets, such as those for participation, parties and government. By taking a cue from industrial organisation theory, the article offers an analysis of entry barriers, both hard and soft, along with their operationalisation for empirical research. Based on this theoretical framework, a single hypothesis is investigated. It posits that the modification of the entry barriers in the market for parties leads to changes in the concentration of the popular vote for party lists. An observable implication of this relationship would be if an electoral reform that raises entry barriers led to subsequent increases in the Herfindahl index (a measure of market concentration), and vice versa. This proposition is empirically tested by a comparative analysis of a new database covering Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The analysis offers support for the following proposition: in most cases the changes in the entry barriers led to a corresponding change of concentration in the market for parties.     

The effects of membership decline on party organisations in Europe

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat‐rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party‐year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom‐made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.     

Social media and political communication in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament

Social media play an increasingly important part in the communication strategies of political campaigns by reflecting information about the policy preferences and opinions of political actors and their public followers. In addition, the content of the messages provides rich information about the political issues and the framing of those issues during elections, such as whether contested issues concern Europe or rather extend pre-existing national debates. In this study, we survey the European landscape of social media using tweets originating from and referring to political actors during the 2014 European Parliament election campaign. We describe the language and national distribution of the messages, the relative volume of different types of communications, and the factors that determine the adoption and use of social media by the candidates. We also analyze the dynamics of the volume and content of the communications over the duration of the campaign with reference to both the EU integration dimension of the debate and the prominence of the most visible list-leading candidates. Our findings indicate that the lead candidates and their televised debate had a prominent influence on the volume and content of communications, and that the content and emotional tone of communications more reflects preferences along the EU dimension of political contestation rather than classic national issues relating to left-right differences.     

Mapping the production of political communications: a model to assist in understanding the relationships between the production and consumption of political messages

High public interest today in political communications such as ‘spin’ and in political participation such as electoral turnout suggests that there may be value in exploring the processes by which political messages are produced and consumed, and their inter‐relationship with participation. It may be that what citizen‐voters think of message production influences how they consume political news and publicity (through observing and evaluating), and that the propensity to political participation is subsequently affected. This paper offers a model which traces the production of political communications, starting at their origins in the political class, and flowing via traditional political journalism or controlled media and new media to citizen‐voters who both observe and evaluate them (ie consume them) before, during and after making any political choices. It is hypothesised that the observation and evaluation of message production and content by political consumers influences both their types and levels of participation. Research of this nature into political organisations is relatively rare. Similarly, there is little evidence of investigations into other aspects highlighted in the model: attitudes of the political class towards political communications, the production of political communications before they reach the media and how they are received by the media, and their consumption by citizen‐voters in relation to the propensity to participate in politics. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation

Recent scholarship shows that social capital has a large influence on political behavior. Social capital’s definition includes trust, norms of reciprocity, and social networks. Most studies, however, ignore the networking component. Here, we test the influence of social networks on political participation using new Japanese survey data. We separately test the effects of involvement in formally organized voluntary associations and informal social networks. We also examine whether hierarchical networks have a different impact on participation than equal relationships. To determine if networks with bridging or bonding social capital affect participation differently, we also measure the openness to outsiders of these networks. Negative binomial regression models indicate a strong positive relationship between formal and informal social networking—including network hierarchy and some forms of openness—and political participation.     

Cynicism about Change,Work Engagement,and Job Satisfaction of Public Sector Nurses

This paper uses the job demands‐resources theory to examine the consequences of changes on nursing work. Data were collected from 220 public sector nurses in Australia to test the model. We conducted a two‐wave data collection process where independent variables (organisational change, workload, job control, nursing administrative stressors, cynicism about organisational change, and demographic variables) were collected in Time 1. The dependent variables (nursing work engagement and job satisfaction) were collected 6 months later. Changes to nursing work were found to cause high workload and an increase of administrative stressors that leads to an increase in nurses’ change cynicism. Job control was needed to cope with the increase in workload and reduction in cynicism about change. Cynicism about organisational change was found to have a direct negative effect on nurses’ engagement which in turn was found to negatively impact job satisfaction. Our contribution to theory and practice arises from the discovery that the connections between organisational change, work environment variables, and job outcomes of nurses are more complicated than previous research suggests. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.     

Sponsored study abroad and civic engagement in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

The article explores whether study abroad programmes sponsored by multilateral and bilateral development organizations and private philanthropic foundations promote civic engagement of their alumni upon their return to their home country. The article focuses on the case of Kyrgyzstan, which has had a number of international study abroad scholarship programmes since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The research was exploratory and utilized in-depth interviews for collecting data.

In agreement with the literature, the research found that the alumni of scholarship programmes had experienced changes in their values and worldviews as a result of being exposed to a new environment but also of having a formalized study programme that enabled them to critically reflect on their own country and culture and to expand their knowledge in the new context. These changes prompted most participants in the research to be civically engaged in the social and political issues of their society in their home country through voluntarism. Importantly, the article expands the literature by arguing that this civic engagement has positive implications for the development of civil society and democratic values and practices in Kyrgyzstan.     

The comparative effectiveness of populist rhetoric in generating online engagement

Worldwide, voters are supporting populist candidates who promise to upend “politics as usual.” Despite all we know about populism, we still do not know how individuals respond to populist content during campaigns, particularly compared to other common content in liberal democracies. This paper adapts framing theory to an online electoral context to argue that populist campaign messages will generate more online engagement compared to three alternative conceptions of the relationship between the people and the elites: pluralism, technocracy, and neutral messages. The paper adapts Snow and Benford's seminal 1988 theory of resonance to studies of populist communication and assess whether populism resonates more with online social media users. An original dataset using the campaign Tweets of 22 national-level actors across five countries is used to test the theory: Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Italy, and Spain (N = 1777). The findings suggest that citizens on Twitter engage with populism more than its alternatives in certain contexts.     

Islands of the Mind: New Labour's Defensive Engagement with the European Union

This article reviews the cumulative development of New Labour's attitude and strategy towards the EU since the late 1980s and argues that the first two New Labour governments' approach to the EU represented a distinct retreat from the 'constructive engagement' and social democratic philosophy of Tony Blair's early modernising phase, moving steadily to occupy a much more traditional British position of 'defensive engagement', mixing national preferences with Atlanticism, and resisting further political integration in favour of traditional 'intergovernmentalism'. It is further argued that New Labour's prioritisation and preferencing of a UK institutional and political economy based upon economic liberalisation, the preservation of key aspects of national sovereignty, and maintaining Atlanticism as the bedrock of Europe's external foreign and defence policies have left Britain almost as far from the true 'heart of Europe' as when Blair inherited office from John Major in 1997.     

The United States,Japan, and the European Union: comparing political economy approaches to China

Abstract

This paper examines US, Japanese, and European political economy approaches to China, and their effect on US–Japan and US–EU relationships. Great powers with a greater security concern in dealing with another major country care more about power while those with less of a concern are preoccupied with calculations for wealth. China's rise and its actions have posed a far greater security challenge to the United States and Japan and are driving the two countries closer together. The political economy game involving China reveals a dominant welfare motive among the advanced market economies. The ambition to transform China politically has diminished. China's integration into the global market makes a relative gains approach difficult to implement. Globalization simply limits the ability of a state to follow a politics-in-command approach in the absence of actual military conflict, which explains why the political economy approaches of the United States, Europe, and Japan are not that different in the scheme of things. China's own grand strategy to reach out to the world to outflank the US–Japan alliance has also contributed to a divergent European policy toward China although there are severe limitations to Beijing's ability to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe.     

The views of an advocatus dei: political marketing and its critics

This paper addresses 11 statements of criticism of political marketing. These statements represent the most commonly voiced issues and were collected from marketers and political scientists. While marketing theorists are more concerned with the state of political marketing theory, political scientists concentrate much of their criticism on aspects of political marketing management as it is experienced in practice. Each statement is discussed and general conclusions are identified. While presenting the personal opinion of the author (advocatus dei), these conclusions and statements concerning political marketing should foster critical discourse on issues such as political marketing management, concepts and ethics. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Conceptualising the policy engagement of interest groups: Involvement,access and prominence

While much progress has been made in empirically mapping and analysing a variety of interest group activities in the last decade, less attention has been devoted to conceptual work that clearly defines and distinguishes different forms of policy engagement. This article contributes to this endeavour by developing a theoretical framework that explicitly links currently available measures of the policy engagement of groups to the distinct concepts of group involvement, access and prominence. It argues that greater conceptual clarity will lead to better accumulation of knowledge in the sub‐field and a better understanding of the role of interest groups in political systems.     

Network Dynamics and Network Effectiveness: A Methodological Framework for Public Sector Networks in the Field of National Security

The network form of organisation is becoming increasingly important across many areas of public administration, but most analysts would agree that not enough is known about networks. This article is based on a detailed qualitative study of public sector networks in the field of national security in Australia. It reviews the dynamics and effectiveness of networks as organisational forms in this important field. A methodological framework involving five interdependent levels of analysis—structure, culture, policy, technology and relationships—is put forward to account for the internal dynamics of networks and the conditions that promote their effectiveness. The article concludes with recommendations for analysing networks in ways that can assist with the important task of network management.     

Co-operation in institutional economics and the political economy of trust

The aim of this paper is to analyze the institutional economics of co-operation and the political economy of trust. It is reviewed the transactions costs, the principal-agent theory, market power, increasing-returns theory and value creation, strategic management, competitive forces, resource-based theory, organizational knowledge and learning, strategic choice theory and the collective efficiency theory. Finally, it is sustained the political economy of trust.