Measuring Political Preferences: Ratings for Members of the Swiss National Council

Party affiliation as the standard measure of political preferences of Swiss legislators is associated with several problems. To overcome these problems the authors develop ratings for members of the National Council, based on roll-call votes. They discuss the construction of the ratings and their limitations in detail, and outline the importance of this kind of information for the participants of the political process, as well as some applications in empirical research.     

The interaction of international institutions from a social network perspective

The literature increasingly acknowledges that international institutions do not exist in isolation, but regularly interact with each other. This interplay might induce influence, affecting institutions’ development and performance. The following research adds to this debate by systematically analyzing the quantitative evidence on how institutional interaction drives institutional design from a network perspective. Using dyadic cross-sectional data on international environmental agreements in 1952–2000, the authors find support for their theoretical argument that regimes’ similarity in design as captured by their degree of legalization strongly depends on institutions’ interaction. However, while “soft law” disseminates between regimes that are well connected through direct or indirect links, this does not apply to “hard law.” The authors explain this divergence with states’ concerns about binding-law commitments and sovereignty costs associated with the latter. This research may have important implications for studies of international institutions and of network analysis in general.     

Trust and Safety in the Segregated City: Contextualizing the Relationship between Institutional Trust,Crime‐related Insecurity and Generalized Trust

Trust is a crucial asset for any society, and the quest to generate and uphold trust is as crucial as ever. Several contemporary societal developments are proposed as being particularly challenging for upholding and restoring the levels of trust in society, including increasing ethnic diversity, rising inequality and the related geographical segregation. It has been convincingly argued that democratic institutions may generate trust by neutralizing some of these effects. This article explores how the mechanisms of trust differ in segregated, disadvantaged neighbourhoods as opposed to the surrounding general society. The empirical material consists of individual‐level data from a segregated neighbourhood (Vivalla) in a medium‐sized city in Sweden (Örebro), with a random sample from the population of the city (the Vivalla area excluded) as the comparison reference point, representing the general society. In the article, perceived safety is introduced as an important mediator between trust in legal and government institutions and generalized trust, through which the differing mechanisms become evident. In the disadvantaged neighbourhood, it is shown that trust in government institutions has the function of primarily decreasing crime‐related insecurity, which in its turn affects generalized trust. Thus, the relationship is indirect. In the city population, the effect instead goes directly from trust in government institutions to generalized trust. The results suggest that the potentials of different means to build and restore trust are dependent on local context.     

Trustee strategies,politicization and de-delegation: The case of the European Central Bank

This article shows how the European Central Bank (ECB) reduced the risk of politicization and de facto de-delegation despite experiencing contestation. During the euro area crisis and the coronavirus emergency the ECB's monetary policy measures have been widely praised for their effectiveness. Even though the ECB is an independent trustee that cannot be easily sanctioned, it needs to engage with its principals to receive their political backing for common projects and in order to reaffirm its own centrality in governance. This article identifies different trustee strategies to reduce politicization and thereby to decrease the risk of de facto de-delegation: (i) dualism, (ii) voluntary self-restraint, and (iii) changing the yard stick. It concludes by showing that the ECB has expanded its monetary policy toolbox without triggering neither formal nor de facto de-delegation.