What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites

What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians’ attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians’ attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.     

Paying for Happiness: Experimental Results from a Large Cash Transfer Program in Malawi

This study analyzes the short‐term impact of an exogenous, positive income shock on caregivers’ subjective well‐being (SWB) in Malawi using panel data from 3,365 households targeted to receive Malawi's Social Cash Transfer Program that provides unconditional cash to ultra‐poor, labor‐constrained households. The study consists of a cluster‐randomized, longitudinal design. After the baseline survey, half of these village clusters were randomly selected to receive the transfer and a follow‐up was conducted 17 months later. We find that the short‐term impact of household income increases from the cash transfer leads to substantial SWB gains among caregivers. After a year's worth of transfers, caregivers in beneficiary households have higher life satisfaction and are more likely to believe in a better future. We examine whether program impacts on consumption, food security, resilience, and hopefulness could explain the increase in SWB but do not find that any of these mechanisms individually mediate our results.     

Management strategies in response to an institutional crisis: The case of earthquakes in the Netherlands

When a policy sector is confronted with a relatively strong and steep decline in legitimacy, we speak of an institutional crisis. We know little about the causes or consequences of these crises. This article explores how institutional crises are managed. It focuses on the effects of management strategies observed in a case study of an institutional crisis in the Netherlands. While we found that policy elites displayed a tendency to maintain the status quo of a policy sector, we also found that the effectiveness of their response strategies was negated by the counter‐response it evoked among freshly energized interest, advocacy and citizen groups. We conclude that the resolution of an institutional crisis is inherently contested. Based on our case study, we develop a theoretical model and formulate propositions that may help to improve our understanding of institutional crisis management.     

The Shifting Framing Strategies and Policy Positions of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego

This article asks why, in contrast to other historic territories with a regional language, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country, nationalist parties in the Autonomous Community of Galicia receive less electoral support. Going beyond prior explanations of this counterintuitive political outcome, which were mainly based on economic, sociological, and institutional factors, this piece of research sheds light on the strategies of political parties. It examines not only nationalist forces but statewide ones that successfully compete in Galicia. Our analysis is focused on the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) because this is the only nationalist force that has consistently achieved representation within the regional Parliament. Along with BNG's translation into party positions in both the left-right and center-periphery dimensions, the article's main contribution is its updating of the BNG's three framing strategies: the nationalism/“Spanishism” (1982–1993), the “common project” discourse (1993–2005), and the sovereigntist one (2005 onward). Shifts in public opinion regarding the territorial model and other attitudes toward self-government are also examined.     

The Czech Islamophobic movement: beyond ‘populism’?

ABSTRACT

Sla?álek and Svobodová’s paper focuses on the ideology of the Czech Islamophobic movement as seen during the 2015–16 migration crisis. In their analysis of interviews with demonstrators and speeches by leaders of the movement, they discuss first how the movement imagined its enemies, and then describe its vision of positive core values. They conclude that the movement’s key ideological features are: an emphasis on social and civilizational decline (declinism); a return to an assumed naturalness in economic and gender relationships (naturalization); and the open evocation of violence and severity (brutalization). In terms of Rogers Brubacker’s distinction between xenophobic ethno-nationalism in Eastern Europe, and the xenophobic defence of liberal values in the West, Sla?álek and Svobodová find that the Czech case fits the allegedly western pattern better than the eastern one, which may cast doubt on the whole essentialization of distinctions between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ populisms.     

Walking Away From The Wire: Housing Mobility and Neighborhood Opportunity in Baltimore

Families using the Housing Choice Voucher Program rarely experience large gains in neighborhood or school quality when compared with unassisted poor renters. Research on housing mobility programs has reached mixed conclusions about whether vouchers can improve neighborhood and school quality, especially in the long term. We revisit these findings using new data from the partial remedy to the Thompson v. HUD desegregation case in Baltimore, known as the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program (BHMP). Through targeted vouchers, intensive counseling and innovative policy features, the BHMP helped families move to low-poverty, nonsegregated neighborhoods with higher performing school districts. We examine residential outcomes for the first 1,800 families that moved through the program for a period of up to 9 years. We find that BHMP families moved to more integrated and affluent neighborhoods, in school districts with more qualified teachers and fewer poor students—and most families stayed in these neighborhoods beyond their initial lease-up period. Eventually, a small proportion of families moved to neighborhoods that are less white, but still significantly less poor and less segregated than their original communities. We interpret these findings in light of past mobility programs and discuss policy implications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.     

Regional tailor‐made policy making in trade licensing administration—case of Slovakia

Local public administration contributes to a favorable business environment. Slovak Trade Licensing Administration (TLA) provides public services for traders. Centrally managed policy making without taking into account of local and regional specifics is not fully conforming to the current local needs of territorial units. Innovative administrative interventions from the central tier may reflect territorial needs of these units. Spatial distribution of performance data points out regional differences in the territorial units of the TLA. There are significant regional differences in the numbers of trades per employees and performed administrative actions. It creates conditions for individual approach in policy making. Cluster analysis groups the territorial units of the TLA for suitable tailor‐made policy making from the central tier. Based on the findings, there are seven clusters of territorial units with specific local and regional needs. Tailor‐made policy making can take into account of territorial specifics and strengthening the role of territorial units of the TLA in regional development.     

Teaching Students about the Vietnam War: The Case for Balance

This work examines how the American role in the Vietnam War has been portrayed in standard college- and university-level textbooks dealing with American foreign policy. It argues that this topic has been presented in a manner that leaves an incomplete understanding. This conclusion is based on scholarship that has been available for decades as well as much Cold War historiography that has appeared since 1975. I conclude that the distortions need to be addressed for several reasons. Their propagation produces bad scholarship, gratuitously alienates Americans from their institutions of government, and justifies anti-Americanism and authoritarianism elsewhere.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.