Political Studies Review

vLex
Publisher:
Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:
2021-09-06
ISBN:
1478-9299

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • COVID-19 and Political Trust in Local Governments: Evidence From Nepal

    The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated debates about the drivers of political trust. Research so far has mainly focused on national-level institutions, during the early stages of the pandemic and using data from established democracies. However, how does this relationship look like if we pay attention to subnational institutions in non-consolidated democracies, and further away from the initial COVID-19 outbreak? To contribute to this line of research, this article focuses on the local level and explores the association between individuals’ satisfaction with COVID-19 performance and political trust in Nepal. For that, it uses novel data collected via telephone interviews (N = 1400) conducted between 25 April and 24 May 2021, during the second wave of COVID-19. Our main results reveal that satisfaction with local institutions’ COVID-related performance is significantly and robustly associated with levels of political trust at the local level. The association holds even when geographical and time specifications are added, trust towards national institutions or expectations about local governments are included in the analysis and the dependent variable is disaggregated to discard measurement biases. The study thereby provides important insights into the role performance plays for institutional trust beyond the national level and in an unconsolidated democracy.

  • Part of the Job? The Effect of Exposure to the Online Intimidation of Politicians on Political Ambition

    It is increasingly common for politicians to experience online harassment. Even though numerous studies show the prevalence and impact of online abuse towards politicians, the broader societal impact of this phenomenon is understudied. This study focuses on the deterring effect that witnessing online abuse towards politicians could have on bystanders, testing to what extent online intimidation influences the appeal of political office. This pre-registered project examines whether exposure to abusive or sexist Twitter comments towards politicians weakens the interest of UK citizens, women especially, in pursuing political office. We hypothesized that seeing intimidating Twitter comments addressed to politicians leads to less political ambition in bystanders, especially if their gender identity aligns with that of the targeted politician. Sexist abusive comments were expected to have a greater impact on women participants than non-gendered abusive comments. The findings show that citizens are generally not easily deterred by exposure to abuse. However, we find differential effects that are concerning for political participation and female representation. There is evidence that sexist comments do discourage women observers. Respondents also generally espouse very negative expectations about the online experience of political aspirants.

  • Commissioned Book Review: Donatella Della Porta, Regressive Movements in Times of Emergency: The Protests Against Anti-Contagion Measures and Vaccination During the Covid-19 Pandemic
  • Routine Presidential Activism by Going Public under Semi-Presidential and Parliamentary Regimes

    Presidential research commonly focuses on the most prominent cases of going public by presidents in semi-presidential regimes: such as expressing a lack of trust in the cabinet members. However, it is also important to understand the day-to-day functioning of semi-presidential republics and routine efforts by the presidents to insert themselves into government decisions. Moreover, presidents in parliamentary republics may also try to influence the government through the power of the public word. In this article, we conceptualize going public as an instance when a president weighs in on the performance of the cabinet and/or individual minister in the media. We analyze the focus and intensity of these instances in semi-presidential (Lithuania) and parliamentary (Latvia) regimes. Our main finding is that on average, presidents are more routinely active in public under semi-presidentialism. We also find that the intensity and focus of presidential attention on the cabinet are highly correlated to the media attention. Furthermore, presidents go public more often during the first year of their terms and pay more attention to foreign and defense policy than to other areas. Our results tend to support the presidency-centered arguments that emphasize the institutional prerogatives and political culture in the explanation of presidential activism.

  • Presidential Activism and Success in Foreign and Defence Policy: A Study of Portugal’s Premier-Presidential Regime

    This article investigates presidents’ foreign and defence policy activism under Portugal’s premier-presidential system from 1982 to 2021. First, the article discusses the extant literature on intra-executive conflicts in semi-presidential systems. Then, it provides an overview of Portugal’s experience with semi-presidentialism since 1976 and the powers of the Portuguese president. The third section describes all significant foreign and defence policy presidential interventions from 1982 to 2021 that resulted in disputes with the prime minister. This section estimates presidents’ and prime ministers’ ex-ante preferences over the issues at stake. We verify which preference is closest to the ex-post content of the policy implemented – if it is the president’s, it counts as a presidential win. We identify the formal and informal means by which presidents acted. Informal means are essentially going public tactics. In addition, we inductively pin down the necessary and sufficient conditions under which presidents intervene and succeed. The article’s main findings are two: first, the president’s second term, absence of a strictly unified executive and a majority cabinet are separately necessary but jointly sufficient for presidential interventions to occur; second, formal powers are a necessary but insufficient condition for presidential victory. Finally, we speculate on the policy, institutional, and electoral consequences of presidential activism.

  • Commissioned Book Review: Beth Rabinowitz, Defensive Nationalism – Explaining the Rise of Populism and Fascism in the 21st Century
  • Commissioned Book Review: Edward Ashbee, Countering China: US Responses to the Belt and Road Initiative
  • Patterns of Party Positioning in Referendums in Switzerland

    Parties play an important role in the study of direct democracy, but mainly as independent variables. To start investigating the way in which parties position themselves in referendums, a new framework is presented and tested for plausibility. As case study the complex but well observed case of Swiss Direct Democracy was chosen. First, a differentiated understanding of what a party position in a referendum process is leads to the identification of four different stages of positioning for Swiss parties. The main message of the theoretical framework is that positioning logics of different parties in one vote can be similar when there are underlying mechanisms applying to all parties. Four ideal type models of party positioning show how. To explore their plausibility, an original data set of 162 single positions of five Swiss political parties in 37 national referendums between 2015 and 2019 is compiled. Using qualitative methods, first results show that Swiss parties’ positioning in referendums is not as strongly dominated by policy as one could expect,given the strong polarization of the party system. In consequence, this demands for an update of our understanding of the interplay of direct democracy and political parties as a two-way channel.

  • Economic Hardship and Support for Redistribution: Synthesising Five Themes in the Literature

    Does becoming poorer always cause people to shift their attitudes towards higher demand for redistribution? Through a systematic review of the literature on this question, we reveal five important themes in existing research: a person’s current income, their future expectations, their expectations about redistribution benefits, their income in early life and their attitudes towards beneficiaries. Identifying these themes helps explain why responses to economic hardship are variable and heterogeneous, and can very usefully guide future research.

  • Religion, Perceived Unfairness, and Political Protest: Empirical Evidence From East Asian Countries

    Religion is considered to have different aspects of influences on political protest, and some have argued that religious participation often mobilizes collective political actions by enhancing individuals’ civic skills and political efficacy. By contrast, religious values and beliefs that emphasize the importance of traditional norms and conformity tend to reduce individuals’ propensities to participate in political protest. The influences of religion on individuals’ attitudes toward coping with injustice and unfairness can be critical for explaining their propensities to participate in political protest. Using data from the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, this study investigates the role of perceived unfairness in shaping the link between religion and political protest in 13 East Asian countries. In accordance with the arguments of mobilizing and conforming effects, we find that religious attendance increases individuals’ propensities to engage in political protest, while religiosity has a negative effect on political protest. In particular, the results show that the perceived unfairness of income distribution mediates the indirect effects of religion on political protest. They also present that religious affiliations mitigate perceived unfairness and indirectly reduce individuals’ propensities to participate in political protest. Nevertheless, the direct effects of religious attendance on mobilizing political protest are stronger.

Featured documents

Add as a preferred source on Google