IV: Political Process: Public Opinion, Attitudes, Parties, Forces, Groups and Elections/Vie Politique: Opinion Publique, Attitudes, Partis, Forces, Groupes et Élections
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451606600104 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Abstracts |
62
IV
POLITICAL PROCESS : PUBLIC OPINION,
ATTITUDES, PARTIES, FORCES, GROUPS AND ELECTIONS
VIE POLITIQUE : OPINION PUBLIQUE,
ATTITUDES, PARTIS, FORCES, GROUPES ET ÉLECTIONS
66.611 ADAM, Heribert — Xenophobia, asylum seekers, and
immigration policies in Germany. Nationalism and Ethnic
Politics 21(4), 2015 : 446-464.
After Germany's anti-Semitic past, current attitudes towards refugees
and immigrants are surveyed and compared with other countries. Fre-
quent xenophobia in former East Germany, despite fewer foreigners than
in West Germany, is explained by official denial of fascist legacy, in
contrast to Western re-education policy of Nazism. Islamophobia and
allegations of welfare tourism are a xenophobic obsession. Yet, overall
attitudes towards outsiders have improved with legislative changes in
immigration policy and citizenship acquisition — anti-Muslim demonstra-
tions by PEGIDA in Dresden and arson attacks on asylum homes not-
withstanding. Younger, better-educated Germans are far less xenopho-
bic. This analysis of German public discourse provides relevant statistics
on immigration, explores contested integration/asylum policies, scruti-
nizes implications of categories from the cultural repertoire through which
migrancy is understood and assesses the contending political forces. [R,
abr.]
66.612 ÁGH, Attila — The transformation of the Hungarian party
system. From democratic chaos to electoral autocracy.
Südost-Europa 63(2), 2015 : 201-222.
This article describes the developments of the Hungarian party system in
two radically different periods: the “democratic chaos” when there was a
democratic yet weak government and the subsequent “electoral autoc-
racy” which saw a semi-authoritarian government. The first party system
(1987-2010) was indeed both democratic and dynamic but because the
state was unable to come to grips with the huge complexity of the sys-
temic transformation, it was fragile and chaotic too . But as a result of
their great dissatisfaction, Hungarians were not ready to defend democ-
racy against the attack of populist forces, so that by 2010 the second
party system emerged based on a special version of authoritarianism. It
was an electoral autocracy in which the ruling party comes to power
through electoral manipulations, and supreme power is concentrated in
the hands of very few individuals. [R] [See Abstr. 66.561]
66.613 AGUILAR, Rosario, et al. — Ballot structure, candidate
race, and vote choice in Brazil. Latin American Research
Review 50(3), 2015 : 175-202.
Although racial injustice and inequality are widely acknowledged in
Brazil, recent experimental research concludes that citizens there do not
rely on racial cues when voting. We test for the impact of candidate race
on vote-choice. We find evidence of identity-based voting in Brazil that
interacts with ballot size. When facing a short ballot with only a few
candidates, most subjects chose candidates without regard to race or
color. But when presented with a large ballot with many candidates,
white and brown subjects show a significant preference for same-race
candidates. Self- identified black subjects, however, demonstrated a
strong and consistent preference for black candidates regardless of
choice set size. These results are particularly important given Brazil’s
electoral rules that provide voters with overwhelming numbers of candi-
dates from which to choose. [R]
66.614 AKKERMAN, Tjitske ; ROODUIJN, Matthijs — Pariahs or
partners? Inclusion and exclusion of radical right parties
[in Western Europ e] and the effects on their policy posi-
tions. Political Studies 63(5), Dec. 2015 : 1140-1157.
Radical-right parties face diverging political opportunity structures in
Western Europe. In some countries, the prospect of office has become a
realistic option since the beginning of this century; in other countries,
radical-right parties remain ostracized by mainstream parties. Research
has focused mainly on the electoral effects of inclusion and exclusion
strategies. Systematic analyzes of the effects on polity agendas are
scarce. This article focuses on the policy positions of radical-right parties
with respect to the key issues of immigration and integration. The finding
is that ostracized parties have not changed much over time, but there is
no evidence that cordons sanitaires have a freezing effect. Contrary to
expectations, non-ostracized radical-right parties have become just as
radical as their ostracized cousins. [R, abr.]
66.615 AL-ADAWY, Heba — The 16th Lok Sabha: India’s lurch to
the right. Regional Studies 32(3), Summer 2014 : 40-60.
The larger-than-life persona of N. Modi remains decidedly crucial to any
analysis of the 16th Lok Sabha. But while the exact course of his tenure,
from a structu ralist point of view, remains difficult to predict, the seismic
rise of Modi begs the question: what has prompted India’s Lurch to the
Right? Is this the beginning of a new era for India? Arguably Indian
secularism — albeit a defining norm in the Constitution with its corollary
set of checks and balances — has not been left untainted by secular
parties occasionally pandering to communalism in order to capture vote
banks. Does the 16th Lok Sabha signal a mere shift in referents from
secularism to development or a qualitative shift in the ethos of Indian
mainstream politics?
66.616 ANDERSON, Cameron D. ; McGREGOR, R. Michael —
Economic attitudes and political identities: evidence
from Canada. International Journal of Public Opinion Re-
search 27(3), Autumn 2015 : 361-382.
Existing economic voting literature implicitly assumes a direct, causal
relationship between perceived economic performance and vote choice.
This link is, in fact, indirect and hinges on opinions of governmental
impact on the economy. We consider the relationship between these two
economic attitudes, and find that they have different relationships with
vote-choice. While the relationship between economic variables and
vote-choice is well established, little is known about factors that influence
economic evaluations. Using insights from the theory of motivated
reasoning, we show that two important political identities (partisan and
geographic) influence perceptions of the status of the economy and the
government’s economic impact. We conclude that political identities have
a biasing effect on responses to subjective attitudinal questions. [R]
66.617 ARTER, David — Why do MPs want to be MEPs? Candi-
date incentives and party nomination strategies in Euro-
pean Parliament elections in Finland. European Politics
and Society 16(4), Dec. 2015 : 540-555.
Twenty per cent of the Finnish MPs elected at the April 2011 general
election stood as MEP-candidates at the May 2014 EP election, the
highest proportion in Western Europe. Why? Who do Finnish MPs —
and indeed former MPs — want to be MEPs and, more particularly, why
do the political parties run a distinctively high proportion of parliamentari-
ans on their Euro-lists? This article assesses the impact of the electoral
system and the electoral cycle on candidate incentives and party nomi-
nation strategies at “second order” EP elections using Finland as a case
study. [R]
66.618 ASSI, Abbas ; WORRALL, James — Stable instability: the
Syrian conflict and the postponement of the 2013 Leba-
nese parliamentary elections. Third World Quarterly 36(10),
2015 : 1944-1967.
Given the morass of the Syrian civil war and Lebanon’s exposure to the
consequences, this article explores how the intersecting dynamics of
Lebanese domestic conflicts and the multiple implications of the blood-
bath in Syria have influenced the behavior of Lebanese political parties in
their ongoing struggle over the formulation of a new electoral
law, leading to a broad consensus among the country’s parties to post-
pone the 2013 parliamentary elections. The decision to postpone the
elections demonstrates a degree of pragmatism and political develop-
ment since, despite dire predictions to the contrary, Lebanon has not
succumbed to the return of its own civil war. Instead a complex mixture
of pragmatism, elision of interests and external influence, combined with
local agency, has led Lebanon into a situation of stable instability. [R,
abr.]
66.619 AVERY, James M. — Does who votes matter? Income
bias in voter turnout and economic inequality in the
Vie politique : opinion publique, attitudes, partis, forces, groupes et élections
63
American states from 1980 to 2010. Political Behavior
37(4), Dec. 2015 : 955-976.
A growing body of research examines the political sources of US eco-
nomic inequality. A second literature examines the political conse-
quences of who votes. This study contributes to both literatures by
examining the influence of income bias in voter-turnout on income
inequality in the American states from 1980 to 2010. I use power re-
sources theory and research demonstrating growing partisan polarization
across income levels as theoretical foundations. Time-series and cross-
sectional analysis, shows states with greater income bias in turnout have
higher levels of income inequality than states with greater parity in voter
turnout across income levels, findings that are robust across various
model specifications. The implications of these findings for our under-
standing of economic inequality, low-income voter-turnout, and state
electoral laws are discussed. [R]
66.620 BABER, Zaheer — The promise of Occupy [Wall Street
Occupy Movement]. International Sociology 30(3), May
2015 : 134-140.
The Occupy Wall Street movement caught many analysts of social
protest by surprise. Although there were isolated social protests against
social inequality and disenfranchisement in many parts of the world, the
Occupy movement as a global phenomenon was unprecedented. In this
review essay, three recent books that focus on the social context that
contributed to the Occupy Wall Street movement are discussed. The role
of anarchism in imparting the distinctive characteristics of the movement
is emphasized. [R]
66.621 BABOŠ, Pavel — Corruption experience, perception and
anti-corruption trust: different effects in various post-
communist states. Revista română de Ştiinţe politice (Ro-
manian Journal of Political Science) 15(1), Summer 2015 :
107-128.
This paper investigates relationships among corruption experience,
perception and their impact on institutional trust. It addresses the mutual
causality issue between corruption perception and trust by structural
equation modeling. This research uses the Eurobarometer data with a
special module on corruption, which allowed this study to distinguish
between corruption experience and the perception of it. Another novelty
is that it narrows the conceptualization of trust down to trust in the gov-
ernment institutions’ anti-corruption fight. Our findings suggest that the
causal influence runs from the trust to corruption perception and not vice-
versa. Additionally, the analysis shows that the impact of corruption
experience on the anti-corruption trust varies across countries with
different cultural background. [R, abr.]
66.622 BÄCHTOLD, Stefan — The rise of an anti-politics machin-
ery: peace, civil society and the focus on results in
Myanmar. Third World Quarterly 36(10), 2015 : 1968-1983.
“Results”, “value for money”, “effectiveness” and similar buzzwords have
become commonplace in development cooperation and peace-building.
The use of technical instruments such as project-cycle management and
evaluations is hardly questioned anymore: these are presented as a
minor shift of focus to make current practice more effective. This paper
argues that there is far more to this shift: a machinery of practices and
institutions has been installed that removes political questions on devel-
opment or peace from the political realm and places them under the rule
of technical experts. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of dis-
course-analysis, the paper analyzes how this machinery prioritizes
gradual reform, subjugates other approaches to societal change and
reproduces power/knowledge networks in both the global South and
North. [R, abr.]
66.623 BAGNO-MOLDAVSKI, Olena — The effect of religiosity on
political attitudes in Israel. Politics and Religion 8(3), Sept.
2015 : 514-543.
This article studies the influence of religion on political attitudes in Israel
by testing two propositions: “religion-friendly” democratization and
“greedy” socialization. The former implies that accommodation of relig-
ious demands stimulates democratization, the latter argues that domi-
neering religious socialization does not motivate democratic attitudes.
Analysis of data from representative surveys conducted in 2006-2013,
supports “greedy” socialization over the “religion friendly” hypothesis. I
show that in most instances, socialization in religion-friendly environ-
ments does not moderate the political attitudes of religiously conserva-
tive groups. The results suggest that unbounded accommodation of
religious needs in non-religious institutions may strengthen undemocratic
political attitudes. [R]
66.624 BARBERÁ, Pablo, et al. — Tweeting from left to right: is
[US] online political communication more than an echo
chamber? Psychological Science 26(10), Oct. 2015 : 1531-
1542.
We estimated ideological preferences of 3.8 million Twitter users and,
using a data-set of nearly 150 million tweets concerning 12 political and
nonpolitical issues, explored whether online communication resembles
an “echo chamber” (as a result of selective exposure and ideological
segregation) or a “national conversation”. We observed that information
was exchanged primarily among individuals with similar ideological
preferences in the case of political issues (e.g., 2012 [US] presidential
election, 2013 government shutdown) but not many other current events
(e.g., 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, 2014 Super Bowl). Discussion of
the Newtown shootings in 2012 reflected a dynamic process, beginning
as a national conversation before transforming into a polarized ex-
change. [R, abr.]
66.625 BEHNKE, Joachim — Der Einfluss der Kenntnis des
Wahlsystems auf das Wahlverhalten: Weil sie nicht wis-
sen, was sie tun, tun sie, was sie nicht wollen? (The im-
pact of knowledge of the [German] electoral system on
voting behavior: because they do not know what they are
doing, does this mean that they do what they do not want
to do?). Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 46(3), 2015 : 588-
607.
About half of German voters have a correct understanding of the Ger-
man electoral system. The other half incorrectly believes that either the
first vote or that the first and second vote together are decisive for the
distribution of seats. As a consequence of this ignorance, part of the
electorate casts their vote in a manner inconsistent with their intentions.
Some observed cases of strategic voting, i.e. when voters deviate from
their “true” preference with their first or second vote, can obviously be
traced back to this ignorance of the electoral system. In the Federal
election of 2013, a non-negligible part of the supporters of the CDU/CSU
voted with their second vote for the FDP under the wrong assumption
that this vote was not important for the distribution of seats. [R, abr.]
66.626 BEIMERS, David — NASW involvement in legislative
advocacy. Journal of Policy Practice 14(3-4), July-Dec.
2015 : 256-274.
NASW [The National Association of Social Workers] serves as the
professional association for [US] social workers, yet little is known about
how NASW chapters engage social workers and social work students in
policy practice. This article presents the results of a survey of 40 NASW
state chapters, describing how NASW engages social workers in legisla-
tive advocacy, the role of legislative advocacy days, and the involvement
of social work students in NASW advocacy efforts. Findings indicate
state chapters are very involved in policy practice and legislative advo-
cacy days appear to be one prominent vehicle in engaging members and
social work students in legislative advocacy. [R]
66.627 BELLOUBET, Nicole — Les élus locaux confrontés à la
désobéissance civile (Local authorities [in France] con-
fronting with civil disobedience). Pouvoirs 155, 2015 : 97-
111.
Civil disobedience against decisions taken by local authorities is a
source of fear and paralysis. In a broader perspective, these various
forms of resistance question the modes of elaboration of public deci-
sions. However, paths toward a renewed consensus are appearing. [R]
[See Abstr. 66.98]
66.628 BENZ, Wolfgang, ed. — Rechtsextremismus in der Mitte
(Right-wing extremism in the center). Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft 63(9), 2015 : 717-791.
Introduction by the editor. Articles by Helmut KELLERSHOHN; Alexan-
der HÄUSLER; Wolfgang BENZ; Angelike BENZ.
66.629 BERG, Joyce E. ; PENNEY, Christopher E. ; RIETZ, Thomas
A. — Partisan politics and congressional election pros-
pects: evidence from the Iowa [USA] Electronic Markets.
PS 48(4), Oct. 2015 : 573-578.
Using the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), this article assesses the politi-
cal impact of several important events during the fall of 2013: the US
government shutdown, the Senate elimination of filibusters for presiden-
tial nominations (i.e., the “nuclear optio n”), and the implementation of the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (i.e., Obamacare). Did these
events have meaningful effects on congressional control prospects in the
2014 election? According to IEM price-changes, Republican chances fell
dramatically when the government shut down, and they did not recover
on resolution. Overall, political rhe toric does not appear to affect con-
gressional control prospects. Instead, actions matter: deliberate partisan
actions of Congress adversely affect the initiating party’s prospects,
To continue reading
Request your trial