Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on psychological theories of attitude formation, we argue that those who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively than they had prior to casting their ballot in the 1997 election. Similarly, we posit that Labour supporters would view the future state of the national economy under Labour more positively than they had before the election. This indicates that, contrary to many assumptions in the economic voting literature, voting behavior influences evaluations of the economy as voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters’ post-election economic perceptions are, at least in part, influenced by and thus endogenous to their vote choice. This finding has two major implications: first, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.     

The European Union’s credibility–expectations gap in its European neighbourhood policy: perspectives from Georgia and Ukraine

ABSTRACT

Fifteen years have passed since the European Union launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Despite the EU’s attempts to reload the ENP, first in 2011 and later in 2015, in response to challenges in the neighbourhood, the ENP continues to suffer from a credibility-expectations gap. This article argues that understanding neighbour perceptions of the ENP offers useful insights about the ENP. Supported by twenty-five interviews with Georgian and Ukrainian public officials, the article unveils the EU’s credibility challenge in the Eastern neighbourhood caused by a gap between the EU’s own perception of its role and the role expectations held by the ENP partners, as well as a gap between partners’ expectations and the EU’s performance on the ground. The lack of coherence, legitimacy and consistency has undermined the credibility of the ENP in the eyes of its Eastern partners. The latest review of the ENP does not seem to address the credibility challenge.     

当代西方恐怖主义威胁认知与治理目标和路径

恐怖主义威胁认知对治理政策的有效性具有决定性的影响,也是外部政策评估的有效切入点:威胁认知通过影响政策目标与政策路径,构成恐怖主义治理能够在多大限度内发挥其有效性的前提。九一一事件以来,西方对恐怖主义威胁出现了"传统智慧""本土恐怖主义"和"极端意识形态"三种不同的认知,治理政策经历了"全球反恐战争""反激进化"和"反极端化"三个阶段,政策目标经历了"文化安全化—族群安全化—思想安全化"的演进,政策路径出现了从"群体化"到"个体与群体兼重"再到"个体化"的转变。恐怖主义威胁认知的三个阶段演进,更多的是面对新恐怖威胁的被动更新,而非针对前一阶段问题所做的主动修正。这导致当代西方恐怖主义治理的既有政策有限性将会持续,反恐的政策负担会越来越重,甚至"越反越恐"。在当前国际恐怖主义不断发展变化的背景下,西方乃至全球的恐怖主义治理又处于一个需要更新威胁认知的关头,这可能会进一步影响当前恐怖主义治理的效果。     

CYNICAL STREETS: NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL PROCESSES AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINAL INJUSTICE*

Studies have found that African Americans are more likely to perceive racial biases in the criminal justice system than are those from other racial groups. There is a limited understanding of how neighborhood social processes affect variation in these perceptions. This study formulates a series of hypotheses focused on whether perceived racial biases in the criminal justice system or perceptions of injustice vary as a function of levels of moral and legal cynicism as well as of adverse police–citizen encounters. These hypotheses are tested with multilevel regression models applied to data from a sample of 689 African Americans located in 39 neighborhoods. Findings from the regression models indicate that the positive association between structural disadvantage and perceptions of injustice is accounted for by moral and legal cynicism. Furthermore, adverse police encounters significantly increase perceptions of injustice; controlling for these encounters reduces the strength of the association between cynicism and injustice perceptions. Finally, the findings reveal that cynicism intensifies the association between adverse police encounters and perceptions of criminal injustice. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for research regarding perceived biases in the criminal justice system and neighborhood social processes.     

HEURISTICS AND BIASES,RATIONAL CHOICE,AND SANCTION PERCEPTIONS*

The relevance of several cognitive heuristics and related biases for rational choice perspectives on crime, and for perceptions of sanction risk, were investigated. We present findings from a series of randomized experiments, embedded in two nationwide surveys of American adults (18 and older) in 2015 (N = 1,004 and 623). The results reveal that offender estimates of detection risk are less probabilistically precise and more situationally variable than under prevailing criminological perspectives, most notably, rational choice and Bayesian learning theories. This, in turn, allows various decision‐making heuristics—such as anchoring and availability—to influence and potentially bias the perceptual updating process.     

NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER IN CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHINA*

By drawing on the two streams of Western literature on “neighborhood effects” and perceptions of neighborhood disorder adapted to the distinctive organizational infrastructure of neighborhoods in contemporary urban China, we examine the contextual effects of different forms of neighborhood social control (i.e., collective efficacy, semipublic control, public control, and market‐based control) on different types of perceived disorder (i.e., criminal activity, social disorder, physical disorder, and total disorder) across neighborhoods. The analyses are based on data collected in the year 2013 from a survey of approximately 2,500 households in 50 neighborhoods across the city of Tianjin. Collective efficacy as a form of informal control has a significant effect only for perceived social disorder. Public control as measured by the activities of neighborhood police stations has a significant contextual effect on all forms of perceived disorder, whereas the role of market‐based control as represented by contracted community services is limited to perceived physical disorder. Finally, semipublic control as measured by the activities of neighborhood committees significantly affects all forms of perceived disorder, but the direction of the effect is positive. We interpret this positive effect with reference to the complex processes surrounding the “translation” of neighborhood disorderly conditions into perceptions of disorder.     

Intra-party heterogeneity and voter perceptions of party positions

Do voters correctly perceive left-right positions of political parties? This question received considerable attention in the literature in the past decades. Previous research has shown that most voters have somewhat ‘correct’ perceptions of where parties are located on a left-right dimension, but that both individual and party level factors influence how much those perceptions deviate from the real positions. This paper adds to this literature, relaxing the unitary actor assumption and introducing heterogeneity to the analysis. Using data from elite surveys to measure intraparty preference heterogeneity on two dimensions, I demonstrate that voters' misperceptions of party positions strongly increase the more heterogeneous the positions of party elites are on the economic dimension, but not on the sociocultural dimension, and that the effect size depends on how salient this dimension is for the party. The findings have implications for future research on mass-elite linkages, representation, as well as voting behavior.     

Winning cures everything? Beliefs about voter fraud,voter confidence,and the 2016 election

Rhetoric about “rigged” elections has raised concerns about the solidity of public trust in the integrity of the voting system. Mitigating these concerns, research by Sinclair et al. (2019) on the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign documents a robust “winner's effect” on voter confidence despite intense partisan messaging aimed at influencing citizens' acceptance of the legitimacy of the election. This suggests that regularly fluctuating electoral outcomes in competitive democracies limit the impact of elite messages on trust in electoral institutions. A critical question is whether similar dynamics apply to dimensions of electoral trust that are more clearly partisan-branded and targeted, such as beliefs about the prevalence of illicit voting. This paper uses a panel study with waves conducted before and after Election Day 2016 to compare the effect of election on beliefs about the extent of illicit voting and voter confidence. Underlining both the promise and limitations of democratic competition as a counterweight to elite efforts to sow electoral distrust, there are significant “winner's effects” on both but substantially smaller impact on beliefs about illicit voting, a difference that is especially large among strong Republican partisans.