Global Politics of Mercury Pollution: The Need for Multi-Scale Governance

This article analyses international legal and policy developments on mercury from the 1970s to the present time, and examines options for continued abatement. Multiple scientific assessments have demonstrated that mercury is an environmental pollutant that can pose a serious threat to human health and development. Currently, the international community is engaged in extensive debate about options for improved mercury governance. This article will critically examine three major policy options under discussion: the creation of a global mercury convention; the regulation of mercury under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; and the development of voluntary partnerships. It is concluded that expanded and better integrated policy efforts are needed across global, regional and local governance scales to address mercury pollution and contamination effectively.     

The determinants of democracy: a sensitivity analysis

Public Choice - Numerous studies—operating with diverse model specifications, samples and empirical measures—suggest different economic, social, cultural, demographic, institutional and...     

Electoral Rules,Labor Market Coordination and Macroeconomic Performance

Two distinct literatures have studied the macroeconomic effects of electoral systems and of labor market structures, respectively. Results include a positive association between proportional representation (PR) electoral systems and growth, but also between PR and inflation, as well as negative or hump‐shaped relationships between labor market coordination and the ‘misery variables’, unemployment and inflation. However, these results could be biased; particular electoral system and labor market features co‐vary systematically, and extant studies have typically not taken this into account. Effects attributed to PR systems could really stem from labor market coordination, and vice versa. In this article the relationships with macroeconomic outcomes for both electoral systems and labor market structures are re‐evaluated by modelling them jointly. Employing data from more than 30 democracies, with time‐series from the period 1960–2010, some robust and some non‐robust associations are identified. First, PR systems are, indeed, associated with higher growth rates, but not with higher inflation. Regarding labor market coordination, robust curvilinear relationships with unemployment and inflation are identified; intermediate levels of coordination correspond with worse macroeconomic performance – albeit not lower growth – even when accounting for electoral system features.     

The Finnish Citizens’ Initiative: Towards Inclusive Agenda‐setting?

This article examines whether the Citizens' Initiative (CI) in Finland has enhanced inclusion in processes of political agenda‐setting. Democratic innovations such as CIs have been proposed as a solution to the challenges facing Western democracies. CIs are expected to increase political inclusion by allowing citizens to set the political agenda and by mobilising otherwise marginalised or passive citizens. However, the empirical evidence on this proposition remains scarce. This study examines the impact of the CI in Finland on political inclusion. It relies on the Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) to determine whether the CI mobilises citizens who otherwise tend to be less involved in political matters and thereby enhances inclusiveness. The data come from the Finnish National Election Study 2015 (FNES2015), which is a cross‐sectional representative survey conducted in the wake of the national parliamentary elections in April 2015. Logistic regression models are used in the article to examine the relative importance of socioeconomic resources and civic skills, psychological political engagement and recruitment networks. The results show that while users have many of the familiar traits of political activists, the CI also activates marginalised groups. Most importantly, young citizens are likely to support CIs and the Internet constitutes a central recruitment network. In this sense, the CI has helped increase democratic inclusiveness.     

A Matter of Fact? Knowledge Effects on the Vote in Swedish General Elections, 1985–2002

What would have happened in general elections if all voters had more closely approximated the democratic ideal of a ‘fully informed’ voter? Earlier analyses have demonstrated politically consequential effects of political information on American voters’ political preferences. In an effort to expand the validity of these results, the author of this article performed counterfactual analyses of aggregate election outcomes in six Swedish general elections from 1985 to 2002. The analyses show that the aggregated gains for right‐wing parties average +2.1 percentage points during the period. In two elections, the outcome would have resulted in a different government majority. The findings challenge a widespread idea that voters’ extensive use of cognitive heuristics can compensate fully for their lack of factual knowledge. This article demonstrates that factual knowledge can indeed have significant effects in places where one would least expect it – in a Northern European multiparty context where voters are renowned for making extensive use of cognitive heuristics.     

Mapping the Nordic Party Space

The left-right positions of the political parties in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland are compared from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. To locate the parties, survey data on the voters' self-placements along the left-right continuum are used. In order to study changes in the left-right polarity and the degree of consensus along the left-right continuum in each of the countries, we use the mean party positions to calculate three different measures of party distances. The wing party distance is that between the party farthest to the left and the party farthest to the right. The rival party distance is that between the Social Democratic Party and the traditional Conservative Party. Finally, the mean party distance is the average distance between all pairs of parties. One of the main conclusions is that in Sweden and Iceland the left-right continuum seems to contract, whereas in Norway and Denmark the left-right polarity and the distances between the parties are increasing. In today's Nordic party space, the distance between left and right is longest in Denmark and shortest in Norway. Eventually, 39 Nordic parties are brought together on the same left-right scale. The analysis reveals that there are some clearly distinguishable clusters of parties or party families in the Nordic countries, such as, for example, the socialist parties, the social democratic parties and the conservative parties. Other party groups differ greatly in left-right position, like the progressive parties, the liberal parties and the centre parties.