The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15-country experiment

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in-group is portrayed as being threatened by various out-groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti-elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right-wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in-group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti-elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.     

The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy?

Major crises can act as critical junctures or reinforce the political status quo, depending on how citizens view the performance of central institutions. We use an interrupted time series to study the political effect of the enforcement of a strict confinement policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we take advantage of a unique representative web-based survey that was fielded in March and April 2020 in Western Europe to compare the political support of those who took the survey right before and right after the start of the lockdown in their country. We find that lockdowns have increased vote intentions for the party of the Prime Minister/President, trust in government and satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, we find that, while rallying individuals around current leaders and institutions, they have had no effect on traditional left–right attitudes.     

Process Tracing in Public Administration: The Implications of Practitioner Insights for Methods of Inquiry

The field of public administration is often seen as a late adopter of cutting-edge research methods. Related disciplines like political science use more advanced research methods for single or small-n case studies including techniques like process tracing. Many elements of process tracing are analogous to investigations. To inform process tracing practices, political scientists looked at Sherlock Holmes novels. We draw on the experiences of a police inspector and a former soldier who worked with intelligence to offer insights on the implementation of process tracing, bridge the academic–practitioner gap, and increase the methodological rigor in public administration research.     

Models of Municipal Budget Allocation: Empirical Data from Spanish Municipalities

The present work empirically analyzes diverse budgetary theories (incrementalism, garbage can, rational) in municipal cost programs, paying special attention to the utility of financial information in decision making. The sample analyzed corresponds to a set of Spanish city councils in the period 1996–2004, and the econometric methodology used is a dynamic panel data model. The main conclusion reached is that the budgetary allocation of municipal costs does not follow a random path; incrementalism is of particular importance, together with financial information variables. The utility of budgetary indicators is reflected in the fact that municipal managers adopt rational elements, although incrementalism remains the habitual behavior.     

Discipline and Punish? Youth Gangs' Response to ‘Zero‐tolerance’ Policies in Honduras

The response of youth gangs to ‘zero tolerance’ policing in Honduras are examined with respect to territoriality. Focusing on two main gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha and the 18^th Street Gang, the ways in which state authority is challenged are assessed from an analysis of body territoriality, the respatialisation of organisational structures across urban neighbourhoods, and the production of new enclosed spaces of gang territoriality. These redefinitions of group territoriality strengthen the emotional bonds and sense of belonging towards the gang, enabling the emergence of a transnational/imagined community.     

Nationalisation in Hungary in the Post-Crisis Years: A Specific Twist on a European Trend?

Abstract

The expansion of public ownership after 2008 occurred in many European countries as a crisis-management tool. Is the new wave of Hungarian nationalisation a part of this general trend or a component of a unique, ‘unorthodox’ economic policy? The article sums up the main features of recent European nationalisation and reveals similarities and differences in this context. It argues that although current ownership changes in Hungary are outwardly consistent with those that have occurred in other European countries (and in the United States), they in fact reflect the particular agenda of the post-2010 Orbán government. The key peculiarity of the recent Hungarian nationalisations is their embeddedness in a complex system of political and economic changes rather than being aimed at short-term crisis management.     

Institutional checks and corruption: The effect of formal agenda access on governance

Legislative checks give whoever wields them influence over policy making. It is argued in this article that this influence implies the ability not only to affect legislative content, but also to direct public resources toward private ends. Rational politicians should use access to checks to make themselves better off – for example, by biasing policy toward private interests or creating opportunities to draw directly from the public till. Disincentives exist only to the extent that those able to observe or block corruption do not themselves benefit from it. Political opponents thus can use checks to stymie each other, but legislative checks controlled by political allies create conditions for collusion and corruption. Testing this claim against data from a sample of 84 countries, the results presented in this article show strong support for the hypothesised relationship between institutional checks and corruption.     

Crime and Delinquency Prevention in Some European Countries

As part of a larger study on crime and delinquency prevention programs in North America, the authors visited four European countries, Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland in order to compare prevention programs and their evaluation.

The authors found that the systematic study of the programmatic effectiveness and efficiency of crime and delinquency prevention is unknown to European practitioners and researchers.

The authors describe in this article six European crime and delinquency prevention programs: family case-work, leisure activities, community organization, crisis intervention centers, information for victims and prevention police activities.     

Early prevention of life-course personal and property violence: a 19-year follow-up of the Montreal Longitudinal-Experimental Study (MLES)

Objectives

This study assessed the impact of a multi-component prevention program on personal and property violence across three developmental periods (early adolescence, mid-adolescence and late adolescence/early adulthood).

Methods

The preventive intervention targeted disruptive kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic status families when they were 7 through 9 years of age. A randomized control trial was conducted to assess the impact of the preventive intervention relative to a control group.

Results

Two different approaches to data analysis were adopted: an intention-to-treat (ITT) approach and an instrumental variable (IV) approach. Results from the ITT analysis showed that the level of property violence for the intervention group was persistently lower across the three developmental periods compared to the control group. However, the intervention group did not differ from the control group on personal violence throughout adolescence and early adulthood. Results from the IV analysis generally confirmed these findings.

Conclusions

The discussion focuses on the differential effects of the prevention program on personal versus property violence.