Do terrorist attacks feed populist Eurosceptics? Evidence from two comparative quasi-experiments

Over recent years, Europe has experienced a series of Islamic terrorist attacks. In this article, conflicting theoretical expectations are derived on whether such attacks increase populist Euroscepticism in the form of anti-immigration, anti-refugee and anti-European Union sentiment. Empirically, plausible exogenous variation in the exposure to the 2016 Berlin attack is exploited in two nationally representative surveys covering multiple European countries. No evidence is found for a populist response to the terrorist attack in any of the surveyed countries. On the contrary, people in Germany became more positive towards the EU in the wake of the Berlin attack. Moreover, little evidence is found that ideology shaped the response to the attack. The findings suggest that terrorist attacks are not met by an immediate public populist response.     

REVIEW ARTICLE: THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF DELEGATION: THREE DOMINANT TRADITIONS

This article focuses on the theories and methods that have been developed and deployed by scholars in order to understand both the cause and effect of delegation within state systems. It identifies three dominant traditions in the study of delegation, each of which reflects a certain disciplinary lineage as well as great variety in terms of ontological, epistemological and methodological positions. The aim of this article is not to make any normative claims about the innate superiority of any particular approach but to instead argue in favour of a pluralistic methodology which is sensitive to the layered quality of knowledge. By way of forging a sense of a shared enemy or weakness, the article concludes by arguing that all three traditions are united by their relative failure to study the logic of delegation and the power of ideas. In essence, each of the traditions has focused too heavily on what could be termed the politics of delegation (that is, the secondary consequences of delegation) and has, as a result, failed to focus attention on the politicization of delegation in terms of locating the basic logic of delegation back within the contours of public contestation.     

The Politics of Fiscal Austerity: Implications for the United States

As austerity becomes the new normal for advanced nations, questions are raised about whether nations can make the hard choices necessary to bring about a sustainable fiscal future. The political defeat experienced by so many European governments undertaking fiscal consolidations points to the vulnerabilities that leaders will face. This article shows that how some Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations have survived the daunting politics of fiscal consolidation by timing actions for periods of economic recovery and political honeymoons following elections and by pursuing deficit reduction strategies that emphasize broad sweeping changes yielding high potential for dramatic economic gains over the longer term. Unlike many European nations today, the seemingly endless appetite for US treasuries by worldwide markets give the United States the luxury of choosing to begin deficit reduction only when the economy strengthens. However, the absence of market pressure also reduces the sense of urgency, consigning national leaders to create internal crises such as the 2012 “fiscal cliff” to force their own hand. While the polarized politics characterizing our party system does not bode well for concerted fiscal action, divided government carries the potential for spreading political risks and promoting more sustainable fiscal outcomes, as it has in our recent history and in other nations as well.     

Strategic Eurosceptics and polite xenophobes: Support for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2009 European Parliament elections

While Euroscepticism is the most important driver of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) support, other attitudinal drivers – namely dissatisfaction towards mainstream parties and xenophobia – are also important. Examining vote‐switching between first‐ and second‐order elections evidence is found of a distinction between two types of supporter: more affluent and middle‐class ‘strategic defectors’ from the mainstream Conservative Party who support UKIP to register their Euroscepticism, and more economically marginal and politically disaffected ‘core loyalists’ who are attracted to UKIP by its anti‐immigration rhetoric and populist anti‐establishment strategy. UKIP also succeeds in attracting core support from groups such as women who have traditionally rejected extreme right parties such as the British National Party (BNP). This suggests that UKIP is well positioned to recruit a broader and more enduring base of support than the BNP.     

In Defence of Politics

In this, my inaugural lecture, I wanted to sing out in praise of politics! This seemed such a good idea twelve months ago, but now in the wake of even more stories about MPs not declaring foreign trips and former ministers demanding ‘cash for access’ the idea of trying to defend politicians and praise politics suddenly seems like a very bad idea. And yet it is exactly because politics is held in such low esteem that the lecture is so important. Democratic politics matters because it achieves far more than we generally give it credit for. I want to rediscover the essence and arguments of Bernard Crick's classic book In Defence of Politics because its arguments are more appropriate today than when they were first published in 1962.     

It's Not You,It's Me: Determinants of Voluntary Legislative Turnover in Canada

The Canadian federal parliament is unique among Westminster parliamentary democracies due to the unusually high level of voluntary and involuntary MP turnover that occurs at each general election. This article builds on existing research to test the hypothesis that the MP career duration is related to MPs' expectations about parliamentary roles, insofar as voluntary turnover is concerned. Data on MPs drawn from historical records collected by the Library of Parliament and from surveys conducted in 1993 and 2001 ¹ are used to develop an event history model which estimates the hazard of voluntary career termination when different parliamentary roles are taken into consideration. Findings suggest that a number of individual factors play a role in voluntary turnover, most notably that MPs who enter Parliament hoping to affect policy are the most likely to move on.     

CIVIC COMMUNITY IN THE HINTERLAND: TOWARD A THEORY OF RURAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND VIOLENCE*

Drawing on the civic community literature, this article explicates a theoretical model to explain variation in rates of violence across rural communities. It is hypothesized that rural communities with a stable population base that is locally invested, a vibrant participatory civic culture with a well‐developed noneconomic institutional base, and a robust economically independent middle class will have lower rates of violent crime. Results from the analysis of data for more than 1,000 rural counties reveal that the 11 variables used to operationalize the theory are empirically distinguishable from indicators of resource disadvantage and form three well‐defined indices: a residential stability/local investment factor, a local capitalism/independent middle class factor, and a civic engagement factor. Negative binomial regression models confirm that violent crime rates are generally much lower in communities that score high on these dimensions. Implications of these findings for future macrolevel criminological research are discussed.     

Conserving the Constitution? The Conservative Party and Democratic Renewal

In 2008 David Cameron declared that the Conservative party was 'ready for government' and suggested that 'the change we need is not just from Labour's old policies to our new policies… It's about a change from old politics to new politics'. This 'new politics' narrative is something of a cliché: British constitutional history reveals a regular pattern whereby opposition parties renege upon implementing far-reaching constitutional and democratic reforms once they win power. It is in this context that this article draws upon documentary analysis and a number of interviews to examine the Conservative party's position on constitutional reform and democratic renewal. It concludes that although the Conservative party has spent the last decade decrying the 'destruction' of the constitution it has undertaken little detailed preparatory work in relation to how it might seek to alter the governance of Britain. As a result the research presented in this article provides a number of insights into elite politics, strategic game-playing and executive veto capacities within a context of growing political disengagement from politics and falling levels of trust in politics.     

AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF TITTLE'S CONTROL BALANCE THEORY*

Classic statements of control theory propose that individuals who are controlled or bonded will be more likely to be deterred from deviance, while those who are not controlled or bonded will be more likely to turn to deviance. In a recent restatement of control theory, Tittle (1995) offers an alternative viewpoint. Though he agrees that a lack of control (a control deficit) can lead to repressive forms of deviance (predation, defiance, and submission), Tittle also asserts that overcontrol (a control surplus) may lead to autonomous types of deviance (exploitation, plunder, and decadence). Terming it control balance theory, Tittle argues that the amount of control to which one is subject relative to the amount of control one can exercise (i.e., the control ratio) affects not only the probability that one will engage in a deviant act, but also the specific form or type of deviance. In this article, we focus on one of the key hypotheses of control balance theory: an individual's control balance ratio predicts deviant behavior. We examine this hypothesis using two vignettes designed to investigate the repressive acts of predation and defiance. Segmented, nonlinear regression results yield mixed evidence in that both control surpluses and control deficits significantly predict predation and defiance. The theoretical implications of our results for control balance theory are discussed.