PTV gap: A new measure of party identification yielding monotonic partisan attitudes and supporting comparative analysis

Despite the cornerstone role of party identification for analyzing voting behavior in the United States, its measurement (in terms of the classic American National Electoral Studies – ANES – seven-point scale) is affected by a systematic problem of non-monotonicity, and it proved impossible to be directly applied outside the United States. We introduce a novel, complementary measurement approach aimed at addressing both problems. We test on US data (an expressly collected computer-assisted web interviewing survey dataset) a new, seven-point scale of partisanship constructed from PTV (propensity-to-vote) items, acting as projective devices for capturing partisan preferences, and routinely employed in multi-party systems. We show that a PTV-based (suitable for comparative analysis) seven-point scale of partisanship outperforms the classic ANES scale. Groups identified by the new scale show monotonic partisan attitudes, and the comparison of multivariate models of political attitudes testify significantly larger effects for the new scale, as well as an equal or higher predictive ability on a range of political attitudes.     

Targeting the Motivated? Ethnicity and the Pre‐emptive Use of Government Repression

Research on government repression often focuses on the comparison between states over time and provides little insight about the targets of repression within a state. This article unpacks government repression against different ethnic groups. It argues that non‐democratic governments use pre‐emptive and targeted repression against ethnic groups that are discriminated, strong, or have a history of protest or rebellion in order to prevent future ethnic rebellions. For democratic governments, on the other hand, the cost of pre‐emptive repression is too high. The article tests this argument in a quantitative analysis of government‐group dyads. It finds at least partial support for some implications of the argument: Autocratic governments use more repression than democracies against discriminated groups, but only when they are also weak, and against groups with a history of protest. There is little evidence that regimes of either type respond to previous violent mobilization or group strength with repression.     

Empowering women through the positive birth movement

Childbirth has been positioned as a life changing event that has profound long-term psychological effects upon women. This paper adopts a community psychology approach to explore the role that the Positive Birth Movement (PBM) may have in tackling negative birth experiences by supporting women before and after birth. Six women who all regularly attend UK-based PBM meetings and had given birth to at least one child participated in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore the support they received before, during and after their birth, as well as their experiences with the PBM. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis explores themes relating to the lack of support and information provided by the NHS and the function of the PBM as a transformative community space which offers social support and information. Within these themes a focus on neoliberalism, choice and the woman’s position as an active consumer of health care is critically discussed. It is argued that the PBM has the potential to prepare women for positive birth experiences but more attention needs to be paid to the wider contexts that limit women’s ability to make ‘free’ choice.     

Croyances et coopération : analyse du réseau des acteurs de la Politique de sécurité et de défense commune de l'UE

This article analyses the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy in a sociological perspective. Although nationalities still influence ESDP actors' preference in matters of European defence, they are not linked to their cooperation relations in a policy field that has been transgovernmentalized in a decade only. using Social Networks Analysis and an original database, we compare the cooperation relations of a sample of key ESDP actors with their beliefs on some issues of this policy field. In accordance with our theoretical framework, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we find that the increasing number of cooperation relations between our actors is linked with the convergence of some categories of beliefs about European defence.     

The Calculus of Voting in Compulsory Voting Systems

Compulsory voting laws have consistently been demonstrated to boost electoral participation. Despite the widespread presence of compulsory voting and the significant impact these laws appear to have on voting behavior, surprisingly little effort has been devoted to analyzing how mandatory voting alters the decision-making calculus of individual voters in these systems. Moreover, studies that investigate the influence of compulsory voting laws on electoral participation generally treat these policies monolithically, with scant attention to the nuances that differentiate mandatory voting laws across systems and to their consequences for voting rates. Analyses that explicitly and empirically examine the effects of penalties and enforcement are surprisingly rare. This study aims to fill that void by adapting rational choice models of participation in elections for compulsory voting systems. I find that the level of penalties countries impose for non-compliance and the degree of penalty enforcement impact turnout rates. Voters in mandatory voting systems abstain least when both the penalties and the likelihood of enforcement are high, and abstain most when both meaningless.

国外电子政务服务研究综述

服务一直是电子政务的主旨,国外自本世纪初就关注这一主题,我国在2006年的《国家电子政务总体框架》中明确提出"服务是宗旨"的电子政务建设目标。在大量文献调查的基础上对国外电子政务服务研究的基本情况及特征进行定量的统计分析,发现国外电子政务服务文献占整个电子政务研究文献的三分之一以上,文献内容主要集中在一般性介绍、服务传递、服务管理、技术实现、服务作用、影响因素、实证研究、综述与评论等方面;研究的特点是注重服务的作用和影响因素,注重服务管理,关注服务传递,强调实证研究等。认为我国电子政务服务的研究要结合我国国情在服务管理、服务传递和对社会发展推动等方面以实证的方法进行深化研究。     

The fragility of an independent judiciary: Lessons from Hungary and Poland–and the European Union

When the European Union was founded, it was assumed that all Member States admitted as consolidated democracies would maintain their constitutional commitments. In recent years, Hungary and Poland have challenged this premise as elected autocratic governments in those countries have captured independent institutions and threatened long-term democracy. The judiciaries of these countries have been hard hit. In this paper, we trace what has happened to the judiciaries in Hungary and Poland, showing how first the constitutional courts and then the ordinary judiciary have been brought under the control of political forces so that there is no longer a separation of law and politics. We also explore why the European Union has so far not been able to stop this process. In the end, the European judiciary, particularly the Court of Justice, is attempting a rescue of national judiciaries, but the results are so far unclear.     

Ideological congruence over government mandates under majoritarian and proportional representation electoral systems

The existing literature on ideological congruence has typically looked at congruence immediately after elections when governments are formed. This article goes beyond that comparative static approach by examining changes in citizen-government ideological congruence between two fixed points in time, namely at the beginning and end of government mandates. Building on a veto player approach and dynamics of party competition under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems, the results indicate, first, that government positions are more stable in between elections, as the number of parties and their ideological distance increase in cabinet. Second, it appears that single-party and homogeneous coalition governments decrease ideological congruence between elections under low levels of polarisation, while they increase congruence under very high levels of polarisation. Third, it was found that governments under majoritarian systems slightly decrease congruence between elections while congruence stays stable on average under PR systems. The different levels of party system polarisation across majoritarian and PR electoral systems mostly explain this difference.     

Civic integration in Western Europe: three debates

Since the late 1990s, civic integration has become the dominant immigrant integration policy in Western Europe. This article reviews three debates surrounding the new policy: first, whether there is policy convergence or persistent variation along national models of integration; secondly, whether civic integration marks a retreat from multiculturalism, or is merely layered on resilient multiculturalist policies; and, thirdly, whether the new policy is liberal or illiberal, and whether it entails a return of cultural assimilation. It is argued that civic integration converges cross-nationally with respect to policy goals and instruments, while extant variation is often incoherent or touching more on the form than the substance of policy; that civic integration is national-level policy that tends to coexist with ongoing de facto multiculturalism, especially at local level; and that civic integration mostly remains in a liberal register, as it is still integration and not assimilation, which would connote forced identity change.