Channeling frustrations: Institutions,economic fluctuations,and political behavior

Abstract While the literature suggests that clear lines of responsibility lead to greater incumbent dependence on economic conditions for support, little has been said about how electorates channel frustrations in systems characterized by 'fuzzy' lines of responsibility, i.e., the shape and status of parliamentary government in relation to possible choice of electors open to them. The argument presented here is that fuzzy lines of responsibility result in lower incentives to participate in political processes and greater system dissatisfaction given economic circumstances. This decline is greater in systems in which incumbent responsibility is less easily identified by the individual citizen. To test this, data are collected from eight European nations over the period 1975–1992. Split sample and slope intervention models with robust estimation are employed at the individual level. System level aggregates are analyzed using pooled time–series analysis to confirm individual level findings. Finally, election turnout data are also analyzed to obtain election level verification of survey findings. Evidence suggests that participation is more heavily influenced by economic conditions in fuzzy settings. Coupled with existing literature, this suggests that while clear settings encourage punishment of the incumbent unclear settings tend to cause individuals to become more withdrawn and alienated. However, economic conditions are also important to overall system effects. The findings herein suggest that unclear or fuzzy settings increase the role of economic conditions in determination of system affect.     

Channeling frustrations: institutions, economic fluctuations, and political behavior

While the literature suggests that clear lines of responsibility lead to greater incumbent dependence on economic conditions for support, little has been said about how electorates channel frustrations in systems characterized by 'fuzzy' lines of responsibility, i.e., the shape and status of parliamentary government in relation to possible choice of electors open to them. The argument presented here is that fuzzy lines of responsibility result in lower incentives to participate in political processes and greater system dissatisfaction given economic circumstances. This decline is greater in systems in which incumbent responsibility is less easily identified by the individual citizen. To test this, data are collected from eight European nations over the period 1975–1992. Split sample and slope intervention models with robust estimation are employed at the individual level. System level aggregates are analyzed using pooled time–series analysis to confirm individual level findings. Finally, election turnout data are also analyzed to obtain election level verification of survey findings. Evidence suggests that participation is more heavily influenced by economic conditions in fuzzy settings. Coupled with existing literature, this suggests that while clear settings encourage punishment of the incumbent unclear settings tend to cause individuals to become more withdrawn and alienated. However, economic conditions are also important to overall system effects. The findings herein suggest that unclear or fuzzy settings increase the role of economic conditions in determination of system affect.     

Instrument choice,political reform and economic welfare

The purpose of this paper is to formally examine the effect of placing constraints, such as the line-item veto or a balanced budget amendment, on legislative behavior. There are two basic findings that emerge from the analysis. First, constraints on one type of instrument, such as spending, will in general result in more widespread use of other kinds of instruments, such as regulation. Second, it is naive to conclude that constraints on legislative behavior will promote economic efficiency and/or reduce the growth of government. The primary contribution of the paper is to suggest how changes in the political environment can affect instrument choice, economic welfare, and the size of government.This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation Decision, Risk and Management Science Program. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments of Ed Campos and Allan Meltzer. The views in this paper are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Council.     

政治秩序的理论基础:涵义、要素与特征

政治秩序是指各政治实体之间的政治关系的规范化过程及其所呈现的状态.政治实体是政治秩序的能动性要素,政治规则是政治秩序的生长性要素,政治控制是政治秩序的实现性要素.政治秩序具有政治性、有限性、关联性和建构性等四项基本特征.     

解读政治艺术:一种尝试性的政治艺术理论阐释

解读政治艺术首先需要解决其研究必要性、研究方法、历史背景和特质呈现等问题。对于研究必要性,则大致可以从“历史-疏理”、“文化-觉解”、“社会-致用”、“理论-建构”四个角度进行说明。针对研究现状上的孱弱状态,本文则主张采取“理想类型”研究法和“多元-整合”的研究进路。对于其历史背景,则可以从艺术向政治转化、政治向艺术生成、政治与艺术相互涵摄三层关系来展现。而对于其特质呈现,则可以从致思前提、问题意识、思想资源、多维审视四个角度来凸现。     

The economic approach to political behavior: Governors,bureaucrats, and cost commissions

Cost control commissions provide two primary types of recommendations: widespread benefits-widespread costs and widespread benefits-narrow costs. Both types of recommendations are not of the form predicted by the standard economic models of political behavior. The paper explores why governors sanction these commissions and the types of recommendations governors will accept. Legislators use the maxim of concentrate benefits-spread costs to maximize votes. Governors, however, face a lower return to concentrated benefit policies and a lower cost from concentrated cost policies. This leads a governor to favor at the margin, policies which have widespread benefit-widespread cost or widespread benefit-concentrated cost. Evidence from 5 state cost control commissions support the difference between the politicians. The cost control commissions sanctioned by governors have proposed recommendations of the widespread benefit-widespread cost and widespread benefit-concentrated cost form. Governors accepted approximately two-thirds of the widespread benefit-concentrated cost proposals, although they were more likely to accept recommendations of the widespread benefit-widespread cost nature. Recommendations which required legislative approval saw a lower likelihood of acceptance. This is consistent with the view that legislators prefer concentrated to widespread benefit recommendations. qu][The politician's] favorite strategy is to create a commission to study a problem and make recommendations that may then be used as political cover. Call it government by commission.     

Competition in political and economic markets

Prepared as a response to Frey and Eichenberger's Anomalies in Political Economy. We thank Gordon Tullock for helpful discussions. This work was partially supported by the Taylor Experimental Laboratory at Washington University.     

From calculation to alienation: disentangling economic abstractions

This article uses a debate between Michel Callon and Daniel Miller to explore tensions within economic sociology and anthropology.The tension is between characterizations of markets and economic rationality that seem to dissolve them into a generalized notion of culture and those which seem to abstract them as specific social forms. The paper argues that markets are best defined in terms of a form of transaction rather than a specific mode of calculation: market transactions involve the alienation of goods in the form of property. Such transactions require the kinds of socio-technical apparatuses that Callon describes, in order to establish both alienability and its limits; on the other hand, and drawing on Callon's own concepts of framing and overflowing, such transactions allow for more diverse, ambiguous and contradictory forms of calculation than Callon seems to allow. The latter point is developed particularly in relation to cultural calculation, typified by marketing and advertising.     

The political monetary business cycle: Political reality and economic theory

This paper addresses the issue of expectations incorporated into political business cycle models. Rational agents anticipate Democratic efforts to stimulate the economy via monetary policy, discounting money supply from the calculations for determining output variance, so that output under Democrats is wholly unaffected by changes in the money supply. Rational agents appear to be naive about Republicans, incorporating money supply into the calculations for determining output variance, so that output under Republicans is significantly related to money supply.     

Cognitive links between economic grievances and political responses

Changes in the economy are associated with changes in support for the incumbent President (or members of his party) at the aggregate level but not generally at the individual level. That is, thepersonal impact of economic hardships has only rarely been linked to individual political responses. This paper finds again that various indicators of personal economic grievances are not in general associated with either economic policy preferences or support for President Carter. However, some rare circumstances in which the personal impact of economic grievances did have more power were identified, specifically when voters blamed the President for their economic hardships. Support was also found for Kinder and Kiewiet's (1979) notion that collective judgments about the health of the economy, rather than one's personal economic situation, drive political responses.     

The global economic crisis and domestic political agendas

There is an ongoing debate within the economic voting literature about whether the economy's salience systematically fluctuates over time or is constant. The recent global economic slowdown provides leverage to test the proposition that voters give greater weight to economic performance when it is weak. Data on voters' issue priorities from 2000 to 2011 shows that voters were more likely to consider the economy an important issue during periods of bad or volatile economic performance. A weak economy also focuses voter attention on corruption and crime while reducing attention to social policy and foreign affairs. Crime rates, terrorist attacks, globalization, and the level of development also affect the economy's place on the electoral agenda. Thus one impact of the recent financial downturn was a shift toward economic voting in countries where it was deepest.     

Beyond issue diversification: N-VA and the communitarisation of political,economic and cultural conflicts in Belgium

Since the early 2000s, the Flemish nationalist party New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) has experienced a burgeoning growth. Paradoxically, for a stateless nationalist and regionalist party (SNRP), this performance has occurred without major changes in mass support for independence and only ambiguous ones for more regional autonomy, which suggests that the party appeals to different electoral subgroups through a vote-maximisation strategy of issue diversification. Providing an in-depth analysis of the multi-dimensional ideology of N-VA, this article contributes to the literature on SNRPs by arguing that N-VA has gone beyond issue diversification through a strategy of ‘issue communitarisation’ that consists not only in expanding its agenda beyond the centre–periphery cleavage, but rather in framing all other policy issues explicitly in (sub-state) nationalist terms. According to this strategy, all major conflicts on political power, social redistribution and cultural identity are systematically represented as being based on an unresolvable and overarching centre–periphery antagonism between Flanders and francophone Belgium.     

Protest participation and economic crisis: The conditioning role of political opportunities

The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource‐based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it is likely that mechanisms at both levels are interrelated. To fill this lacuna, this article examines the ways in which individual‐level grievances interact with macro‐level factors to impact on protest behaviour. In particular, it examines whether the impact of individual subjective feelings of deprivation is conditional on contextual macroeconomic and policy factors. It is found that while individual‐level relative deprivation has a direct effect on the propensity to have protested in the last year, this effect is greater under certain macroeconomic and political conditions. Both significant results for the cross‐level interactions are interpreted in terms of their role for opening up political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies in order to further clarify the mechanisms underlying protest behaviour.     

政治民主、经济民主及其相互关系分析

人类历史演进的过程表现为自身权利的无限扩展和实现的过程.经济民主和政治民主正是人类实现其自身权利的重要途径.因此在厘清两者基本概念的基础上,对其交互关系进行分析是十分必要的.