Positions and saliency of immigration in party manifestos: A novel dataset using crowd coding

Immigration is one of the most widely debated issues today. It has, therefore, also become an important issue in party competition, and radical right parties are trying to exploit the issue. This opens up many pressing questions for researchers. To answer these questions, data on the self‐ascribed and unified party positions on immigration and immigrant integration issues is needed. So far, researchers have relied on expert survey data, media analysis data and ‘proxy’ categories from the Manifesto Project Dataset. However, the former two only give the mediated party position, and the latter relies on proxies that do not specifically measure immigration. The new dataset presented in this article provides researchers with party positions and saliency estimates on two issue dimensions – immigration and immigrant integration – in 14 countries and 43 elections. Deriving the data from manifestos enables the provision of parties’ unified and unfiltered immigration positions for countries and time points not covered in expert surveys and media studies, making it possible to link immigration and immigrant integration positions and saliency scores to other issue areas covered in the Manifesto Project Dataset. Well‐established criteria are used to distinguish between statements on (1) immigration control and (2) immigrant integration. This allows for a more fine‐grained analysis along these two dimensions. Furthermore, the dataset has been generated using the new method of crowd coding, which allows a relatively fast manual coding of political texts. Some of the advantages of crowd coding are that it is easily replicated and expanded, and, as such, presents the research community with the opportunity to amend and expand upon this coding scheme.     

Unions in politics: public opinion in the United Kingdom and Denmark

Abstract. The paper examines public opinion about the political involvement of trade unions in the UK and Denmark. Both are systems in which trade unions are linked to a political party and both have high rates of union density. However, whereas British unions have contested governments of both parties and opposed regulation of industrial relations, Danish unions have a tradition of cooperation with government and are entangled in a web of institutionalized industrial relations. Results, however, are amazingly similar. Both the public at large and union members accept unions in general and also their political involvement, but oppose contestation of political authority. Irrespective of union behaviour, beliefs in the supremacy of parliament seems to be firmly rooted in public opinion.     

Are Regulators Responsive?

For decades there has been a trend in regulatory studies to advocate a responsive, tit-for-tat, regulatory strategy. However, most of the prominent arguments for this strategy are theoretical and few have tested its effectiveness. Even less tested has been whether or not regulatory inspectors manage to react responsively to the "conduct" of regulatees. By distinguishing between five different kinds of responsiveness, the present article tests these different kinds of responsiveness in four different regulatory areas, using data about more than 2,500 legal breaches. The empirical analyses show that regulatory inspectors manage to act responsively, but only to a small degree and not necessarily in the way that the theories of responsive and tit-for-tat regulation recommend. Furthermore, the analyses show large differences between the four regulatory areas suggesting that future studies should focus on the role of formal and informal institutional settings in creating responsiveness. If we want to design regulatory agencies that are able to regulate responsively we need to know what kind of institutional settings promote responsiveness.     

Competition and interaction: Party ties to interest groups in a multidimensional policy space

Political parties and interest groups play a vital role in incorporating societal interests into democratic decision-making. Therefore, explaining the nature and variation in the relationship between them will advance our understanding of democratic governance. Existing research has primarily drawn attention to how exchange of resources shapes these relationships largely neglecting the role of contextual conditions. Our contribution is to examine whether parties’ structured interactions with different categories of interest groups vary systematically with the pattern of party competition at the level of policy dimensions. First, we argue that higher party fragmentation in a policy space makes organisational ties to interest groups more likely, due to fears of voter loss and splinter groups. Second, we expect higher polarisation between parties on a policy dimension to make ties to relevant groups less likely due to increased electoral costs. We find support for both expectations when analysing new data on 116 party units in 13 mature democracies along nine different policy dimensions. Our findings underline the value of considering the strategic context in which parties and interest groups interact to understand their relationship. The study sheds new light on parties and interest groups as intermediaries in democracy and contributes to a new research agenda connecting interest group research with studies of parties’ policy positions and responsiveness.     

Religion and the Media in a Battle for Ideological Hegemony: the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and TV Globo in Brazil

Abstract – Starting out from a celebrated 1995 controversy which arose from a late-night incident on Brazilian TV, the relationships between neo-Pentecostalism and established culture are explored. Taking into account traditions of legal rhetoric and of political adherence, the paper shows that what appears at one level as a religious conflict is at another level a conflict over political power, over the rhetoric and imagery of power, and for control of the popular imaginary.     

ARE STREET‐LEVEL BUREAUCRATS COMPELLED OR ENTICED TO COPE?

Traditional studies of street‐level bureaucrats see the bureaucrat’s behaviour as a kind of self‐defence – a way to minimize negative aspects of the job and thereby job frustration. I argue – and empirically show – that it is equally relevant to consider at least part of street‐level bureaucrat behaviour as positively motivated – as a way of maximizing job satisfaction. Behavioural mechanisms such as coping are not just a way to avoid frustration, but also a way to gain satisfaction. This becomes clear when we attempt to explain differential treatment among regulated companies.     

Differential Treatment and Communicative Interactions: Why the Character of Social Interaction is Important

Regulatory studies have traditionally focused on external political and administrative factors when explaining the behavior of regulatory inspectors. This is, however, only one part of the story about regulatory behavior. To understand the behavior of street-level bureaucrats such as regulatory inspectors, it is essential to look not only at external political and administrative factors but also at the very interaction between the bureaucrat and the client. By focusing on differential treatment of regulated firms by inspectors and the explanatory power of the interaction between inspector and firm, the article shows that variation in the level of communication between inspector and regulatee helps to explain variation in regulatory leniency. The higher the level of communication, the more lenient is the inspector.