Progressiveness and the New Right: The Electoral Relevance of Culturally Progressive Values in the Netherlands

Whereas electoral support for new-rightist parties is often understood as driven by ethnocentric anti-immigrant sentiments, scholars have noted that new-rightist politicians have, surprisingly, stressed culturally progressive arguments in the last decade. Using recent Dutch survey data (N = 1,302) especially collected for this purpose, the article analyses the electoral relevance of three types of cultural progressiveness for voting for the new right and their relation to the well-documented anti-immigrant agenda. The analysis shows that neither moral progressiveness nor aversion to public interference of religious orthodoxy underlies the new-rightist vote. Support for freedom of speech proves relevant, but, in accordance with literature on the new right’s electoral strategy and with theorising on framing, this only leads towards the new right among those who are ethnocentric. These findings are discussed in the light of electoral competition, and questions for further research are formulated.     

Injuries due to deliberate violence in areas of Argentina. I. The extent of violence. Copenhagen Study Group

As part of a transcultural investigation of violent behaviour in Argentina and Denmark an analysis was made of the incidents involving deliberate violence as registered in the emergency wards of Hospital Fernandez and Hospital Pinero in Capital Federal Buenos Aires over a period of 13 and 17 months, respectively. In the two emergency wards a total of 281 victims of deliberate violence were observed corresponding to a rate of approximately 0.2/1000 per year in a mainly middle income area of the metropolis Buenos Aires, the catchment region of Hospital Fernandez, and 0.6/1000 per year in a mainly low income area of Buenos Aires, the catchment region of Hospital Pinero. Men aged 20-24 years and 40-49 years were found to be the most frequent victims of deliberate violence, 13% and 11%, respectively. Elderly women greater than or equal to 60 years of age were rarely found to be victims of deliberate violence (2%). Skilled and unskilled male workers were over-represented as victims of violence. Sixty-four percent of the victims were men and 29% women, 6% were boys and 0.7% girls less than or equal to 14 years of age. Twenty-one percent of the male victims and 5% of the female victims were alcohol intoxicated when arriving in the emergency ward. The incidents took place in restaurants or in the vicinity of restaurants for only 7% of the male victims, while 55% of male victims and 34% of female victims had been injured in the street, most often by non-acquainted men. Fifty-eight percent of the female victims had been subject to deliberate violence at home, in the majority of the cases beaten by their spouse. Twelve percent of the male victims and 8% of the female victims were estimated to be under the influence of drugs. The incidence of deliberate violence seems to be lower in Argentina than in Denmark. However, serious lesions appear to be considerably more frequent in male Argentinian victims compared to male Danish victims, maybe because the practice of seeking medical assistance is different in the two countries. The pattern of deliberate violence appears to be associated with socio-economic and cultural factors. Influence of alcohol does not appear to play a role that is comparable to the situation observed in Denmark. A considerably larger percentage of victims in Argentina than in Denmark had been injured in the street.     

Redistributing the energy tax burden in the Philippines

This paper uses an aggregate modelling approach to assess the impacts of a redistribution of the taxes and duties that currently exist on crude oil and refined petroleum products on the Philippine economy. The approach used in the analysis consists of a general equilibrium model composed of fourteen producing sectors, fifteen consuming sectors, three household categories classified by income and a government. The effects of replacing the taxes and duties on crude oil and refined petroleum products with a more broad based tax on manufacturing and service sectors output on prices and quantities are examined. The results are revealing. For example, the consequences of redistributing the tax burden away from petroleum products to the manufacturing and service sectors of the Philippine economy will be an increase in output by all producing sectors of about 3.5 percent or about 2.4 hundred billion Philippine pesos, a rise in the consumption of goods and services by about 6.1 percent or 1.6 hundred billion Philippine pesos, a rise in total utility by 6.9 or 1.9 hundred billion Philippine pesos, and virtually no change in tax revenue for the government. When subjected to a sensitivity analysis, the results are reasonably robust with regard to the assumption of the values of the substitution elasticities. That is, while the model's equilibrium values do vary in response to different assumptions of the values of these elasticities, the fluctuations are not so enormous to suggest that the model is unrealistically sensitive to these parameters.     

Party as linkage

Nomination: Costs and benefits of party membership reconsidered by Wolfgang C. Müller, p.169
Reflections: Party as linkage by Richard S. Katz, p171