How electoral reform alters legislative speech: Evidence from the parliament of Victoria,Australia 1992–2017

Does changing single-member district (SMD) systems to proportional representation (PR) systems affect politicians' behavior? Previous studies, which have utilized cross-sectional or temporal variation in electoral systems, fail to estimate their effects. In contrast, we employ a difference-in-differences design and text analysis to estimate the causal effect of an electoral reform on politicians' issue attention. In particular, we estimate the causal effect of the electoral reform in the Parliament of Victoria in Australia, which changed the electoral systems of the Legislative Council from SMD to PR while holding the system of the Legislative Assembly constant. We analyzed a newly collected dataset of legislators' inaugural speeches from 1992 to 2017 using a topic model. The results show the electoral reform increased politicians’ attention to new economic issues but did not decrease attention to local interests such as promoting primary industries.     

Teaching Party Systems: A Culinary Demonstration

Abstract

Duverger’s Law—the principle that first-past-the-post systems tend to promote two major political parties while proportional representation systems tend to promote multipartism—is a commonly taught topic in introductory and some upper-level political science courses across subfields. However, it also contains concepts that are difficult for undergraduate students to grasp, particularly those who are unfamiliar with other electoral systems. In partial response to these concerns, this article introduces a memorable in-class demonstration that utilizes food items to illustrate the logic behind Duverger’s Law. The demonstration serves as a flexible blend between lecture-oriented and active learning techniques, and can be adapted to teach other topics—such as directional and proximity models of voting, the Median Voter Theorem, and other topics in rational choice theory. Preliminary evidence presented suggests that students enjoy the demonstration, remember the concepts, and perform better on assessments related to the topic. The article concludes by challenging political science educators to develop and share more demonstration-type activities, which are commonly used in STEM and other fields.     

新中国70年巨变背后的“政治密码”

回首新中国70年风雨砥砺、春华秋实,是我们党带领人民一路披荆斩棘、一往无前,是无数共产党人不忘初心、牢记使命的奉献与担当,也让世界更加看清新中国70年巨变背后的“政治密码”:坚持党的领导是最大变因,站稳人民立场是最大的政治优势,坚定马克思主义信仰是华美政治乐章,把准政治方向是坚强政治定力,走好政治道路是重大政治保证。     

"政绩式改革"的生成逻辑及其治理路径

党的十八大以来,地方政府改革和创新的热情不断高涨,诞生了以"最多跑一次""街道吹哨、部门报到"等较为典型的改革模式,得到中央的认可并在全国推广。但同时也要看到,地方自主行为空间的增大和上级对于地方政府官员绩效考核指标从单纯的注重经济增长到经济发展与改革创新并重的转变,使得地方政府官员的行为策略发生明显变化,相伴而生的就是"政绩式改革"问题日渐凸显。"政绩式改革"的存在,使得地方治理易于陷入政府工作重心发生偏离、治理资源出现错配或无效配置、公共政策缺乏稳定性和连续性、真正干实事的干部难以获得晋升等问题。而增强顶层设计方案的可操作性、提高居民满意度在地方官员绩效考核指标体系中的权重、帮助地方政府官员树立正确理性的改革观和维持地方政府政策的稳定性和连续性是治理"政绩式改革"的基本路径。     

从中国共产党百年历史看加强政治建设的内在逻辑

中国共产党是社会主义中国的领导核心,是中国政治体系的核心特征和显著优势,是实现中华民族伟大复兴的根本保障。党的十九大在党的建设方面最具开拓性的贡献,是第一次把党的政治建设纳入党的建设总体布局,突出新时代党的建设要以党的政治建设为统领。我们不仅要把政治建设看作党建理论和实践的重大突破,更要把它作为党建重大课题的破题和任务的开启。要深刻理解和把握党的政治建设的深刻内涵和重大实践意义。从理性逻辑上看,中国共产党强调政治建设遵循了现代政党建设的一般规律和要求;从历史逻辑上看,中国共产党强调的政治建设是总结国际共产主义运动和中国共产党百年历史经验教训所得出的基本结论;从现实逻辑上看,中国共产党强调的政治建设是推进党的自身建设和实现中华民族伟大复兴的要求。     

Socialised to think in terms of left and right? The acceptability of the left and the right among European voters

The left-right dimension plays a crucial role in how political scientists think about politics. Yet we know surprisingly little about the extent to which citizens are able to position themselves on a left-right dimension. By analysing non-response on left-right self-identification question from seven waves of the European Social Survey (N = 295,713), this study demonstrates that citizens’ ability to position themselves on the left-right dimension depends on the political system they live in and its history. Citizens in countries with lower levels of elite polarization place themselves on a left-right dimension less often, this difference is partiularly pronounced for citizens with high levels of political interest. Citizens in countries with a recent authoritarian history were unable to place themselves on the left-right dimension more often. These findings show the importance of political socialization for left-right self-identification.     

Exploring Personal Political Brands of Iceland’s Parliamentarians

This paper focuses on an under-researched and under-developed typology of political branding and conceptualizes politicians as personal political brands. Further, this study answers explicit calls for more research devoted to exploring the development of intended brand identity particularly from a brand creator perspective. Members of Parliament from the Republic of Iceland contextualizes this study. This qualitative case-study approach reveals how personal political brands create, construct and communicate their identity. Personal political brand identities were established and managed via a clear brand mantra and offline-online communication tools, which in turn revealed a degree of alignment with their party-political brand. However, this paper also demonstrates the challenges of managing the identities of personal political brands in terms of authenticity and integration particularly with coalition partners. Our paper builds on the six-staged analytical process of personal branding and proposes the Personal Political Brand Identity Appraisal Framework as an operational tool to introspectively evaluate personal political brand identity. This framework can be used by political actors across different settings and contexts to assess personal political brands from multiple perspectives.     

Isolating the effect of compulsory voting laws on political sophistication: Leveraging intra-national variation in mandatory voting laws between the Austrian Provinces

Compulsory voting laws introduce a legal requirement to vote that substantially increases in voter turnout. Additionally, this study provides evidence that a legal requirement to vote also generates a more politically informed population. A comparative case study leverages intra-national variation in mandatory voting regulations across the Austrian Provinces over time. The analysis constructs novel measures intended to quantify recent and accumulated exposure to compulsory voting laws. The results suggest that exposure to mandatory voting laws caused Austrian citizens to increase their political interest and attention to political news, as well as their level of information about party platforms on whether or not to expand EU integration. As a whole, the study suggests that compulsory voting not only increases voter turnout; it also leads to an increase in political information.     

Fact-sensitive political theory

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the importance of attention to facts in normative theorising. I discuss the problems that arise from both not displaying such attention (as some idealists do) and from doing so in the wrong way (as, for example, realists do). I propose a different brand of theorising – fact-sensitive political theory, which aims to avoid these two problems by paying attention to key facts while retaining a solid normative anchoring in abstract normative principles. The merit of abstract vs. non-abstract reasoning is that the normative debate is not torn between two distinct ends of a spectrum in the way the idealist–realist debate is. By contrast, the locus of the investigations is vertical in the sense that abstract and concrete normative discussions are given equal status and can co-exist compatibly. One of the main differences between abstract and concrete normative principles is whether abstract or concrete facts are considered necessary for the determination of the normative principles. The fact-sensitive account of normativity is neither realist nor non-ideal: it is an ambitious and demanding normative theory that contains both abstract and concrete normative reasoning. The fact-sensitive account of political theory meets the two criteria set out in this article: to integrate concrete and empirical facts about the subject matter and to subject the selection of facts to theoretical and methodological discussion and justification.