Do Labour Parties Suffer from Declining Turnout? Evidence from Norwegian Local Elections

The argument that declining voter turnout harms social democratic parties has received little support in research on national elections, but partisan consequences of declining turnout in local elections has been less explored. Norwegian local elections – where both turnout and support for the Labour Party have declined since the early 1960s – are used as a test case. Analyses of aggregate data gave no systematic support for the hypothesis that Labour suffers from lower turnout. Declining turnout and declining Labour Party vote were not causally related, and the correlation between the two variables seemed to be the result of other long-term social changes. Analyses of survey data pointed to three flaws in the premises on which the hypothesis was based. First, the effect of declining turnout on the biased class composition of the abstainers was ambiguous. Second, the Norwegian Labour Party suffers less from differential turnout than before as a result of declining class voting. Third, the Labour Party may suffer from a demobilisation of the working class, but the party may also benefit from a demobilisation of the young.     

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News

Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.     

The Social Basis of Voting Correctly

A large literature has established that people learn from political discussion, and some scholars suggest that people will make better choices if they engage in political discussion with opinion leaders. To establish that discussion promotes better vote choices, however, we have to create a measure of rational choice to test the impact of discussion. Recently, scholars have used Lau and Redlawsk's voting correctly measure to test the impact of various influences on the rationality of vote choice. Using this new measure of rationality—voting correctly—I determine whether political discussion has the predicted positive impact. To test this theory, I use 2000 American National Election Study survey data, and show that greater political discussion with knowledgeable discussants leads to more correct voting.     

The Myth of Media Globalization: Why Global Media Is Not Truly Globalized,by Kai Hafez

Political discussion is often seen as a potential shortcut to enlightened voting. If uninformed individuals receive useful information from their discussion partners, then they can make quality decisions at the ballot box without incurring the costs of becoming informed. Discussion partners, however, have biases and these biases are reflected in what they say about candidates. If individuals accept messages from sources with different preferences, they could end up supporting candidates who benefit their discussion partners instead of themselves. This article argues that egos will often accept messages from individuals with an incentive to mislead. Instead of evaluating the messenger, individuals evaluate the messages. When the messages are all in accord, individuals support the candidate suggested by the messages even if the messengers are all biased. This article presents the results of a group-based experiment in which ego networks were exogenously determined by the researcher. In the experiment, egos tend to vote for their party's candidate, but they defect with greater frequency when they receive messages from members of a different party. This willingness to listen to the other side has detrimental effects for the quality of their decisions.     

Revitalizing the United States‐Japanese alliance

Abstract

While the notion that subjective economic perceptions as well as objective economic conditions affect electoral outcomes has long been explored in advanced democracies and new democracies, evidence of the link between the economy and elections has been rarely found in East Asian countries. As economic issues have become salient since the 1997 financial crisis, political leaders’ capacity to manage the economy has become one of the most important criteria in electoral choice in East Asia. This paper examines how economic issues influenced the results of the 2007 presidential election in South Korea. By making use of the 2007 Presidential Election Panel Study, this study examines the continuity of and changes in the Korean voters’ electoral behavior. This study describes the political situation in the post-1997 financial crisis period under two liberal governments in Korea and introduces the processes and characteristics of electoral campaigns in the 2007 presidential election. This paper then explores the link between the economy and vote choice, focusing on whether economic issues were salient among the electorate, whether retrospective or prospective economic voting was prevalent among Koreans, and how the voters supported Lee Myung Bak across age groups, regions, and parties in the 2007 presidential election.     

Partisan Development in Post-Soviet Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The development of mass partisanship and party identification in post-Soviet societies is a controversial subject of scholarly research. One prevalent view argues that post-Soviet citizens are distrustful of parties and that it will take generations for party identification to appear in these societies. Others argue that partisanship is emerging as a result of citizens perceiving meaningful differences between the parties. If party identification is forming, partisanship should be relatively stable across time at the individual level. This study takes a rare look at 1999 panel data from Ukraine to determine the degree of partisan stability. The findings demonstrate that meaningful party identification appears to be emerging for a significant proportion of the population due to political information and this partisanship is influencing election decision making among Ukrainian voters.     

A theory of identification

This paper analyzes the phenomenon of “identification” by an individual with actors in his environment. It argues that individuals interpret their environment according to “frames,” which they, as recipients of a message, derive by a complex process of interpretation of the communication setting. The paper also argues that individuals identify with actors in their environment, because this identification increases their utility vis-à-vis a “neutral” watching of their environment. The paper applies this approach to a variety of real life examples, in particular to voting.     

股改中征集委托投票制度的思考

征集委托投票制度的理论基础是民法上的委托代理,但股权分置改革赋予委托投票诸多特殊性。同时,关于委托授权范围和法律效力在股改中呈现出百家争鸣的趋势,这不利于保护流通股股东的利益。因此,对委托投票进行统一的规范是必要的。     

论表决权信托

表决权信托作为获取公司控制权的一种重要手段 ,是美国公司法上比较活跃的制度。但是 ,它的命运经历了从否定到争议再到肯定的过程。表决权信托的成立要符合三个要件 ,即采取书面形式、不能超期并进行登记、公示。通过对表决权信托证书持有人及受托人权利和义务的分析 ,对表决权信托的构造进行了深入研究 ,并首重分析了事实上的虚假表决权信托。针对表决权信托的特性 ,我国应通过适当立法途径建立起相应的表决权信托制度。     

Testing for sources of electoral competition under authoritarianism: an analysis of Russia’s gubernatorial elections

What drives electoral competition in competitive authoritarian regimes? Most scholarship has assumed that the outcome of these elections is decided by regime manipulation alone. Using three rounds of newly reinstated gubernatorial elections in Russia’s regions, I test this assumption. I identify three distinct measures of competition calibrated to authoritarian elections and assess whether voter preferences or regime manipulation best explain the degree of electoral competition. Relying on new data on protests across Russia’s regions, I find that regions with high protest activity have more contested elections with narrower margins of victory. The results also confirm recent scholarship highlighting the importance of voter turnout for delivering pro-regime victories.