Should I stay or should I go? An experimental study on voter responses to pre-electoral coalitions

Abstract.  Pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) are one of the most often used methods to coordinate entry into the electoral market. Party elites, however, do not know how voters will respond to the coalition formation at the polls. In this article, the authors report on an experimental study among 1,255 Belgian students. In order to study voter responses to the formation of PECs, respondents were presented with two ballots: one with individual parties (party vote condition) and one with coalitions (coalition vote condition). The aim of this experiment is to predict under what conditions party supporters will follow their initially preferred party into the coalition and vote for the PEC, and under what conditions they would desert the PEC at the polls. The decision whether to follow the coalition or not can be traced back to four considerations: dislike of the coalition partner; ideological congruence between coalition partners; size of the initially preferred party; and being attracted to a specific high-profile candidate. (Dis)liking the coalition partner is independent from the ideological congruence between the two coalition partners. The study's results also show support for an adjustment effect, as respondents became more loyal toward cartels over the course of the 2003–2005 observation period.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Voluntary Retirement from Danish Local Government

Why do politicians choose to retire voluntarily from a position they have been working hard to get? It is argued in this article that the institutional setting of the elected assemblies influences the direct, as well as the alternative costs and benefits of having a political career and hence the patterns of voluntary retirement. Drawing on previous research from the United States Congress, this is explored in a new empirical setting: local government in Denmark. The results show that positions at the labour market matter as private‐sector employees are more likely to retire than public‐sector employees. Furthermore, internal institutional factors matter. Holding an institutional position such as chairing a committee makes retirement less likely. Furthermore, seniority makes the councillors more likely to retire when age is controlled for – a result not found in national studies. However, councillors who reach a high‐ranking position at an early stage are not more likely to quit with seniority than those who do not reach such a position. A high personal share of votes decreases voluntary retirement. In contrast to previous findings, the ideological distance from the ruling party does not play a role. This may be due to norms of consensus in the local councils.     

Rule-takers,rule-makers,or rule-promoters? Turkey and Mexico's role as rising middle powers in global economic governance

Rising middle powers play increasingly active international roles, yet so far we lack systematic analyses of their aspirations and impact on global economic governance. This paper addresses this gap. I argue that the role that rising middle powers assume in global economic governance depends on the degree of alignment of their regulatory preferences with those of established powers, and on the strength of their regulatory institutions. If their preferences are aligned and they develop high regulatory capacity in an issue area, they will aspire to promote existing global rules in their own region. They will engage in regional rule-promotion because of growing economic ties to their region, and also because their regulatory agencies are socialized into these rules within transgovernmental networks. I explore these arguments empirically through case studies of two rising middle powers, Turkey and Mexico, in the global governance of competition law and policy.     

Who participates in global environmental governance? Partial answers from international relations theory

An important current of research in international environmental affairsdeals with the roles of non-state actors in international environmentalgovernance. For many, the growing influence of non-state actors is a welcometrend because these actors, especially non-governmental organizations,facilitate environmental negotiations between states and perform keyinformation-gathering, dissemination, advocacy, and appraisal functions thatstates are either unwilling or unable to do. For the student of internationalrelations (IR), examining the roles and responsibilities of non-state actorsin global environmental affairs is a departure from the ordinary concern ofthat field – namely, the study of interstate behavior. But for the studyof global environmental problems, particularly those problems that aresimultaneously global and local, the investigator must map the influence ofan even broader assemblage of actors. Little is known about how local levelinstitutions or ordinary citizens fit into global environmental policyprocesses. Understanding what motivates public demands for globalenvironmental quality is an especially important research task, especially forthose pervasive environmental problems like global climate change and complexexhortations like sustainable development that require the attention andacquiescence of ordinary citizens.     

Conflict,choice or geography? Explaining patterns of democracy in continental Europe

The ‘character’ of democracy is regularly summarised using political‐institutional measures of, for instance, ‘consensus’ or ‘majoritarian’ democracy. Yet, there is little quantitative‐comparative research on the origins of such configurations. Drawing on literature on endogenous institutions and constitutional design, this article proposes a model for the explanation of empirical patterns of democracy. Using a novel database of 26 continental (neighbouring) European democracies and Bayesian spatial modelling, the results indicate that while today's empirical patterns of democracy in terms of proportional power diffusion can be traced back to waves of democratisation rather than historical partisan power configurations, decentral power diffusion can partially be explained by socio‐structural factors, and spatial dependencies exist for all variants of power diffusion.     

Does transnational private governance reduce or displace labor abuses? Addressing sorting dynamics across global supply chains

The attention of practitioners and scholars of private regulation of working conditions is focused on whether and how corporate buyers can help improve labor and safety standards in the factories that supply them by adopting codes of conduct, joining social certification schemes, participating in social audit processes, and financing safety improvements. I argue that more attention should be paid to the possibility that private regulation schemes – whatever degree of compliance they achieve – mostly result in a displacement effect or sorting dynamic that leaves the overall level of working conditions unchanged. I sketch a research agenda aimed at identifying the conditions under which a sorting dynamic can occur and at conceiving innovative private governance designs that could avoid it.     

Unity or Distinction over Political Borders? The Impact of Mainstream Parties in Local Seat Majorities on Refugee reception

This study exploits close elections in Sweden to assess the causal relationship between seat majorities for mainstream political parties and refugee reception policy. The study focuses on the two dominant mainstream political blocs, in a centre-right and a centre-left coalition, during three waves of elections from 2002 to 2010. In doing so, the study makes a few contributions to current research: Firstly, besides addressing a current knowledge gap in the focus on mainstream parties and refugee reception policy, this study investigates the impact of seat majorities which potentially have a more influential position compared to individual parties. Secondly, the study relies on an empirical strategy which allows comparison of comparable cases. Lastly, the study focuses on mainstream parties at the local level of government within one institutional context and thus addresses the obstacle of case comparability within cross-country studies. In conclusion, this study finds that the relationship between the mainstream political blocs and refugee reception policy is of an associative nature. In order to find significant estimates of seat majorities, the win margin for each bloc needs to be substantial. These results indicate that there is a unified political attitude over the mainstream blocs towards refugee reception and that other factors, and not political seat majorities, have contributed to the uneven distribution of refugees among municipalities in Sweden.