Population Pressure,Horizontal Inequality and Political Violence: A Disaggregated Study of Indonesian Provinces, 1990–2003

All parts of a country are rarely equally affected by political violence. Yet statistical studies largely fail to address sub-national conflict dynamics. We address this gap studying variations in ‘routine’ and ‘episodic’ violence between Indonesian provinces from 1990 to 2003. Within a grievance framework, the article focuses on the violence potential of resource scarcity and population pressure, as well as inter-group dynamics related to polarisation and horizontal inequality. Demographic pressure and inequality seem to have little effect in isolation. However, in provinces where population growth is high, greater levels of inequality between religious groups appear to increase the violence risk.     

How political parties’ issue ownerships reduce to spatial proximity

Abstract

Scholarly interest in issue ownership is growing rapidly. Although originally introduced as a competence-oriented, alternative concept to the predominantly spatial understanding of voting and party behaviour, parties’ policy positions are an inescapable aspect of issue ownership. Using data for multiple issues in several countries over time, this article shows that the party with issue ownership sides with the median voter. A party earns issue ownership by taking up a position as close to as many voters as possible. Moreover, the analysis indicates that a party’s issue emphasis only matters to issue ownership insofar as it is used as a device to make its position credible to voters. Hence, to have issue ownership is to have a credible position, and in that sense, issue ownership has less added theoretical value to spatial proximity than previous literature suggests.     

Party Elites' Perceptions of Voters and Public Opinion

Given the vast amounts of research on party competition, party strategy, political communication and electoral campaigning, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the study of national party elites' perceptions of voters and public opinion. This article argues that the mindset of leading party officials, and more specifically their perceptions of voter and public opinion rationality, driving forces and knowledge, is a much‐neglected explanation for why parties adopt the electoral strategies they do. Analysed here are unique internal party documents from two Swedish parties during the period 1964 to 1991: the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. A simple analytic framework is proposed for the study of party elite perceptions of voters and public opinion. In contrast to the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of voter rationality that still prevails in contemporary research, the findings presented in this article suggest that national party elites in general have had a surprisingly positive view of voters and, in particular, public opinion. Perceptions of voters and public opinion were largely unaffected by the parties' electoral fortunes, and did not become gloomier over time.     

Which democracies prosper? Electoral rules, form of government and economic growth

Electoral rules and form of government have important economic effects, for example on taxation and public spending. However, there are no robust results in the literature when it comes to their effect on economic growth. This paper investigates whether electoral rules and form of government affects economic growth by applying panel data techniques on a very extensive dataset. There is no robust effect of presidentialism or parliamentarism on growth. However, there is very robust evidence for a positive, and quite substantial, effect of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral rules on economic growth. This is partly due to PR systems’ propensity to generate broad-interest policies, like universal education spending, property rights protection and free-trade, rather than special interest economic policies. Also semi-proportional systems seem to enhance growth relative to plural-majoritarian systems.     

Struggles over Identity and Territory: Regional Identities in Ethnoreligious Conflict in Northern Nigeria

This article explores how ethnoreligious conflict over boundaries and territoriality involves a politics of scale, that is, how positions and demands are framed by actors according to, for instance, local, regional, and national scales. The analysis focuses on how Muslim actors in a conflict in Kaduna State in Nigeria frame a regional, northern Nigerian identity that varies in content and form depending on the scalar context in which communal conflict is placed with regional and national politics yielding different identifications.     

Global networks and global change-induced tipping points

The existence of “tipping points” in human–environmental systems at multiple scales—such as abrupt negative changes in coral reef ecosystems, “runaway” climate change, and interacting nonlinear “planetary boundaries”—is often viewed as a substantial challenge for governance due to their inherent uncertainty, potential for rapid and large system change, and possible cascading effects on human well-being. Despite an increased scholarly and policy interest in the dynamics of these perceived “tipping points,” institutional and governance scholars have yet to make progress on how to analyze in which ways state and non-state actors attempt to anticipate, respond, and prevent the transgression of “tipping points” at large scales. In this article, we use three cases of global network responses to what we denote as global change-induced “tipping points”—ocean acidification, fisheries collapse, and infectious disease outbreaks. Based on the commonalities in several research streams, we develop four working propositions: information processing and early warning, multilevel and multinetwork responses, diversity in response capacity, and the balance between efficiency and legitimacy. We conclude by proposing a simple framework for the analysis of the interplay between perceived global change-induced “tipping points,” global networks, and international institutions.     

Election Campaigns,Issue Focus and Voting Intentions: Survey Experiments of Norwegian Voters

This article investigates whether and how changes in issue focus in election campaigns affect voting intention, even if no preference change takes place, and whether such effects vary systematically across different groups of voters. Evidence is reported from two survey experiments of Norwegian voters, where respondents were treated with information drawing their attention towards issues pertaining either to immigration or the environment. Although irrelevant for policy learning or persuasion, this information strongly increased the support of particular parties. More specifically, parties with ‘ownership’ of the issues involved gained votes. Certain types of voters were more likely to change voting intentions post‐treatment than others, but which types crucially depended on the issue area under focus. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the issue focus of campaigns is very important for vote choice. Hence, one should expect that, for instance, even ‘neutral’ political news coverage at or close to election day could affect voters in predictable ways. Furthermore, one should expect different parties to fight hard to steer the focus of campaigns towards issues where they have ownership.