How partisan affect shapes citizens' perception of the political world

We explore how partisan affect shapes citizens' views of party ideology and political competition. We argue that voters' affective ties to parties (both positive and negative) lead them to perceive the ideological positions of those parties as more extreme. Further, when voters are "affectively polarized," i.e., they strongly like some parties and dislike others, they are more likely to view politics as high stakes competition, where ideological polarization is rampant, participation is crucial, and electoral outcomes are highly consequential. Using cross-national survey data covering 43 elections in 34 countries, we show that partisan affect indeed impacts perceptions of party ideology and that affective polarization alters beliefs about the nature of political competition.     

Social inequalities and collective action in times of crisis: The case of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area

During the international financial crisis, Portugal found itself in a very difficult and vulnerable socioeconomic situation that has led to an increase in social inequalities. This article seeks to understand two things: firstly, how much the impacts of the crisis contributed to a general perception that people's social position has gone backwards, compared to their pre-crisis situations; secondly, whether it is possible to link this generalized perception that living conditions have gone downhill to an increase in and diversification of collective action practices. The authors analyse data from a 2014 survey of 1,500 residents of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, which they use to measure how far the level of collective action practices has increased and varied in accordance with a set of social inequality indicators, such as resource and educational inequalities.     

The GCC Monarchies: Perceptions of the Iranian Threat amid Shifting Geopolitics

ABSTRACT

The systemic shift triggered by a progressive retrenchment of the United States (US) from the wider Middle East region has been a fundamental game changer in the security perceptions of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) monarchies. The retrenchment activated a security dilemma in US-GCC relations, especially in relation to their view of Iran. However, the impact was uneven. While the dilemma triggered fears of abandonment in the three more hawkish players – Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain –, it generated fears of entrapment in the three less hawkish players – Oman, Kuwait and Qatar. The key differences between these two camps lie on their threat perceptions. Seemingly shaped by state ideology and religion, narratives of identity, socio-political demography and, finally, leadership cognition, these fears interact with domestic factors such as structural vulnerabilities, to affect the perception of Iran as an existential or non-existential risk.     

逻辑·观念·理路:习近平对邓小平现代化观的继承与发展——学习习近平关于社会主义现代化强国的重要论述

党的十八大以来,习近平总书记就"什么是现代化""要实现什么样的现代化""怎样实现现代化"等问题形成了一系列新思想、新观点、新论断,体现了新时代"现代化"发展的新理念、新路径、新战略。但新的现代化观念不是凭空产生的,有其历史基因和思想源流。文章通过对相关文献的梳理,可以发现习近平同邓小平的现代化观念之间存在明晰的继承与发展关系:逻辑层面从起点、原则到落脚点整条逻辑链上的一脉相承;观念层面从理念、路径到战略上的三维拓宽。从时间、空间、模式三重理路着手,对这种关系之形成背景、发展方向进行审视,以展现和阐释二者关系的多个面向。     

Coalition type and voter support for parties: Grand coalitions in German elections

While scholars have generally acknowledged that coalition governments are less accountable to voters than single party majorities, surprisingly little differentiation is made among different types of coalition governments. In this paper, we examine voter support for two very different types of coalition governments: those with a single large party and a junior partner and grand coalitions—governing coalitions between two large but ideologically dissimilar parties. We argue that grand coalitions differ from the more typical senior–junior partners in terms of the ability of individual parties to respond to their constituencies. We test this argument using survey data from four German Election Studies (GES), before and after each of the two German grand coalitions (1965, 1969, 2005, and 2009), which provide a unique opportunity to compare voter support for grand coalitions to those of the more typical senior–junior party model. We find evidence that voters responded to grand coalitions by moving away from their traditional voting patterns, and increasing their support for parties outside of the grand coalition, although this effect varies by the number of alternative parties.     

Disproportionality and voter turnout in new and old democracies

A long-standing puzzle in electoral research is why the disproportionality of electoral systems has a negative effect on voter participation in established democracies, but not in new democracies. We propose a learning theory of electoral system’s effects, and test it in a cross-national analysis and by using Spain as a case study. Electoral disproportionality is unrelated to voter participation in early elections after democratization, but the relationship is increasingly visible as democracies grow older. The case study uncovers two mechanisms: small parties optimize their mobilization strategy only after the first democratic elections, and the difference in the turnout rates of small party supporters and large party supporters grows over time. Time is needed before the consequences of electoral systems are fully revealed. Importantly, the findings suggest that studies carried out just after an electoral system is created or reformed may provide downward biased estimates of their long-term consequences.     

The design,purpose, and effects of voting advice applications

In recent electoral politics, one of the most striking internet-related developments is the increasingly widespread use of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). In this introduction to the symposium devoted to analysing the design, purpose, and effects of voting advice applications, we briefly discuss the literature on these tools for voters, articulate the aims of the symposium, and summarise the six contributions. These papers represent the leading edge of an emerging subfield of electoral research, which has not only significant practical relevance but also research links with many other fields in political science.     

安全观与东盟气候变化认知及政策

东南亚是世界上最易受到气候变化影响的地区之一。作为东南亚重要的地区一体化组织,东盟应对气候变化的政策受到越来越多的关注。作为对基于物质条件与能力的解释的补充,从观念的影响出发可以为理解东盟气候变化安全认知与应对政策提供一个新的视角。由于地理暴露度与社会经济脆弱性,东盟面临着高度的气候变化风险。而东盟如何认知与应对气候变化风险带来的安全威胁,除了受到客观条件的影响外,还受到其综合安全观的框定作用。在综合安全现的影响下,东盟对气候变化安全的认知与应对表现出三个特征,即将气候变化安全诠释为实现可持续发展问题、采取多领域综合性应对措施以及鼓励多元化主体参与。目前,东盟的主导安全观是以国家为中心的综合安全观,但随着"人的安全"思想影响的增强,东盟气候变化认知与应对正在发生微妙变化。     

Making wasted votes count: Turnout,transfers, and preferential voting in practice

Proponents of electoral reform champion the single transferable vote (STV) or aligned forms of preferential voting (AV, IRV, RCV) as a method to improve participation among and representation of the general public. Voters provide an ordinal ranking among alternatives on the ballot, and ballots not used to elect a candidate are transferred to another favored alternative. Preferential voting is intended to encourage both citizen participation in an election and sincere voting. Yet the empirical evidence about the effects of preferential voting in the scholarly literature is scant. Elections of members to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of national parliament in Ireland, provide a wealth of data on preferential voting. Data from four recent Irish elections (1997, 2002, 2007, and 2011) are analyzed to assess the effectiveness of STV on reducing wasted votes. The number of nontransferable ballots, votes not used for any candidate, is large and increases as the need for lower level preferences (that is, later counts or rounds) grows. Voter turnout does not correspond to preferential voting in predictable ways; turnout declines as the number of candidates elected increases. Although preferential voting systems have much to offer, their effects need to be evaluated.     

Political budget cycles and media freedom

This paper examines the effects of elections on the conduct of central governments' fiscal policies. To do so, it uses a unique panel database that includes disaggregated spending and revenue series at the central government level for multiple countries over the 1975–2010 period. Examining political environments under which incumbent governments generate political budget cycles (PBCs), and comparing the relative importance of factors influencing cycles, we identify media freedom as the factor that plays the most critical role. This result provides a micro-foundation for rational opportunistic models for PBCs that rely on asymmetry of information about politicians' competence, and also offers a way to relate different conditioning factors of PBCs, including fiscal transparency and the maturity of democracies. Further, we show that the election-year rise in budget deficits under low media freedom is primarily driven by an increase in the current, not capital, component of public expenditure.