IV Political Process: Public Opinion, Attitudes, Parties, Forces, Groups and Elections vie Politique: Opinion Publique, Attitudes, Partis, Forces, Groupes et Élections
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002083451806800404 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Abstract |
500
IV
POLITICAL PROCESS : PUBLIC OPINION,
ATTITUDES, PARTIES, FORCES, GROUPS AND ELECTIONS
VIE POLITIQUE : OPINION PUBLIQUE,
ATTITUDES, PARTIS, FORCES, GROUPES ET ÉLECTIONS
68.4890 ABRAMOWITZ, Alan I. ; WEBSTER, Steven W. — Negative
partisanship: why Americans dislike parties but behave
like rabid partisans. Political Psychology 39, Suppl. 1, Feb.
2018 : 119-135.
One of the m ost important developments in American politics over the
last 40 years has been the rise of negative partisanship — the phe-
nomenon whereby Americans largely align against one party instead of
affiliating with the other. Though it has the power to reshape patterns of
political behavior, little is known about the microfoundations driving
negative partisanship. We show how the growing racial divide between
the two major parties, as well as the presence of partisan-friendly media
outlets, have led to the rise of negative partisanship. We also utilize the
growing literature on personality and politics to show how the Big Five
personality traits are predictive of negative partisanship. The results
suggest that the psychological roots of negative partisanship are both
widespread and, absent drastic individual and structural-level changes,
likely to persist. [R] [First article of a symposium on "Partisanship". See
also Abstr. 68.4636, 4708, 4730, 4732, 4959, 4971, 4973, 5018]
68.4891 ALVES, Jorge Antonio — Transformation or substitution?
The Workers’ Party and the Right in Northeast Brazil.
Journal of Politics in Latin America 2018(1) : 99-132.
One of the most significant recent changes in Brazilian politics is the
inroads made by the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT)
and other leftist parties into state and municipal governments in the
country’s most conservative region, the Northeast. An important strand of
literature argues that this is due to a transformative strategy anchored in
institutional growth, based on opening local party directorates. In con-
trast, this analysis shows that the PT has made gains in the region by
segmenting its strategy — focusing on two well-established political
practices. First, the PT has leveraged executive office at federal and
state levels of government in order to advance at lower levels. Second, it
has constructed pragmatic alliances with opportunistic parties, revealing
how the migration of opportunist politicians into allied parties allowed
entrenched elites to remain in power. [R, abr.]
68.4892 ANDERSON, Tim — Media democratization in Ecuador.
Latin American Perspectives 45(3), May 2018 : 16-29.
A regulatory process of “democratizing the media” based on recent
constitutional guarantees and a 2013 communications law is under way
in Ecuador. The initiative comes from a demand for new forms of social
accountability and participation in the mass media after the Latin Ameri-
can experience of media companies’ direct engagement in coups and
the destabilization of progressive governments. Media democratization is
seen as necessary for the construction of democratic societies. It is
distinct in Latin America from recent Northern approaches, suggesting
democratic transformation through new online media and enhanced
consumer options. Ecuador’s process follows similar initiatives in Vene-
zuela, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay but is perhaps more articulate
and systematic. It builds on well-established public policy themes of the
containment of monopoly power, redress of civil wrongs, and the promo-
tion of participation and diversity. [R, abr.] [First article of a thematic
issue on "Media, politics, and democratization in Latin America", edited
and introduced, pp. 4-15, by Javier CAMPO and Tomás CROWDER-
TARABORRELLI. See also Abstr. 68.4904, 4937, 4942, 4956, 4992,
5015, 5043, 5046]
68.4893 ANGELOVA, Mariyana, et al. — Veto player theory and
reform making in Western Europe. European Journal of
Political Research 57(2), May 2018 : 282-307.
Veto player theory generates predictions about governments’ capacity
for policy change. Due to the difficulty of identifying significant law s
needed to change the policy status quo, evidence about governments’
ability to change policy has been mostly provided for a limited number of
reforms and single-country studies. To evaluate the predictive power of
veto player theory for policy making across time, policy areas and coun-
tries, a dataset was gathered that incorporates about 5,600 important
government reform measures in the areas of social, labor, economic and
taxation policy undertaken in 13 Western European countries from the
mid-1980s until the mid-2000s. Veto player theory is applied in a com-
bined model with other central theoretical expectations on policy change
derived from political economy (crisis-driven policy change) and partisan
theory (ideology-driven policy change). Robust support is found that
governments introduce more reform measures when economic condi-
tions are poor and when the government is positioned further away from
the policy status quo. [R, abr.]
68.4894 ANGERBRANDT, Henrik — Deadly elections: post-
election violence in Nigeria. Journal of Modern African
Studies 56(1), March 2018 : 143-167.
Two decades after the ‘third wave of democratization’, extensive violence
continues to follow elections in sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas national
processes connected to pre-election violence have received increased
scholarly attention, little is known of local dynamics of violence after
elections. This article examines the 2011 Nigerian post-election violence
with regard to the ways in which national electoral processes interweave
with local social and political disputes. The most affected state, Kaduna
State, has a history of violent local relations connected to which group
should control politics and the state. It is argued that electoral polarisa-
tion aggravated national ethno-religious divisions that corresponded to
the dividing line of the conflict in Kaduna. A rapid escalation of violence
was facilitated by local social networks nurtured by ethno-religious
grievances. [R]
68.4895 ARGOTE, Pablo ; NAVIA, Patricio D. — Do voters affect
policies? Within-coalition competition in the Chilean
electoral system. Journal of Politics in Latin America
2018(1) : 3-28.
It has been argued that close elections lead to policy convergence, as
legislators elected by a small margin are more likely to adopt moderate
policy positions (A. Downs, 1957). However, D. Lee, E. Moretti, and M.
Butler (Do Voters Affect or Elect Policies? Evidence from the U.S.
House, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(3), 2004: 807-859) find that
electoral competition does not affect legislators’ policy preferences in the
US, questioning the median voter paradigm. To help to discern this
paradox, we estimate the effect of close elections on legislators’ subse-
quent policy positions under different electoral rules. With Chile’s two-
seat open-list proportional representation system, we exploit the dynam-
ics of within-coalition competition to test both hypotheses. Using the
margin of victory in parliamentary elections and roll-call votes for the
Chamber of Deputies from 1998 to 2014, we find that electoral competi-
tion did not lead to policy convergence under either the center-left Con-
certación coalition or the rightist Alianza coalition. [R, abr.]
68.4896 BAFAEVA, Anna S. — Far-right parties in Western
Europe: running out of resources. Mirovaja Ekonomika i
meždunarodnye Otnošenija 62(2), 2018 : 37-46.
The article details the phenomenon of the modern right-wing radicalism
in Western Europe. Special attention is paid to the analysis of far-right
politics in different West European countries, such as France, the Neth-
erlands, the UK, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway. The
author identifies the causes and factors which facilitated the transforma-
tion of several marginal extreme-right movements and parties into a real
threat to the European political mainstream. It reveals the latest trends
amid the Europe elections 2016-2017: right-wing parties have limits on
the political scene. [R, abr.]
68.4897 BANKOV, Petar — As eleições parlamentares búlgaras de
2017: tudo como dantes (Bulgarian parliamentary elec-
tions in 2017: business as usual). Relações internacionais
56, Dec. 2017 : 13-37.
The 2017 early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria were held in circum-
stances of relative economic stability, but clear political uncertainty due
to the inability of the fragmented party system to respond to public
discontent with the stagnating standard of living and deteriorating states
of democracy. The election results suggest a continuation of this situa-
tion, returning the centre-right Citizens for European Development of
Bulgaria on power with an old-new coalition-partner, the nationalist
United Patriots. The centre-left Bulgarian Socialist Party improved its
Vie politique : opinion publique, attitudes, partis, forces, groupes et élections
501
performance, while the parties advocating radical pro-liberal democratic
reform failed to enter parliament. [R] [First article of a thematic issue on
"Elections in post-crisis Europe", introduced pp. 5-12, by Marco LISI,
"The beginning of a new cycles?". See also Abstr. 68.4935, 4954, 5003,
5021, 5149, 5207]
68.4898 BARCELÓ, Joan — The emotional underpinnings of
attitudes toward transitional justice. Political Studies
66(2), May 2018 : 480-502.
What explains citizens’ attitudes toward transitional justice? Studies that
examined the support for transitional justice mechanisms identified three
sets of factors: individual, socialization, and contextual. Building on the
hot cognition theory, this article argues that the past political regime is an
emotionally charged sociopolitical object encoded with its evaluative
history with consequences in people’s opinion-formation process. Draw-
ing on a specialized survey in Spain, the results first suggest that nega-
tive emotions, especially anger and fear, significantly influence the
support for stronger transitional justice measures, even after adjusting for
relevant co nfounders such as ideology, religiosity, or victimization.
Second, the findings show that those who lack an emotional engagement
toward the past regime, the so-called bystanders, hold attitudes toward
transitional justice that are indistinguishable fro m those who report
positive feelings toward the past regime. [R, abr.]
68.4899 BARGSTED, Matías Andrés ; MALDONADO, Luis — Party
identification in an encapsulated party system: the case
of postauthoritarian Chile. Journal of Politics in Latin Amer-
ica 2018(1) : 29-68.
Since the return of democracy, party identification has been declining
sharply among the Chilean public. We seek to understand this process
by applying an age-period-cohort analysis to survey data from 1994 to
2014. In light of the elite-driven and socially uprooted character, or what
we call the encapsulated nature, of the Chilean party system, we hy-
pothesize that cumulative electoral experience has had a negative effect
on party identification and not the positive effect that Converse’s (1969)
social-learning model would predict. Our findings support these expecta-
tions but also reveal large period effects that have shrunk the overall
level of partisan identification and significant cohort effects whereby
generations born after the 1950s have become less partisan. [R, abr.]
68.4900 BARISIONE, Mauro ; LUCA, Deborah DE — Do the self-
employed still vote for centre-right parties? The cases of
the UK, Italy and Spain. Electoral Studies 52, Apr. 2018 :
84-93.
The disappearance of class voting in post-industrial societies has often
been announced in recent decades. Few studies, however, have focused
on the self-employed, an occupational category which tends to combine
the properties of a social class and a status group. The UK, Italy, and
Spain present different traditions but similar levels of class voting in the
early 2000s, with a persisting tendency of the self-employed to vote for
centre-right parties. These three countries also saw the subsequent
growth of “third” parties. Using data on parliamentary elections from the
2004, 2009, and 2014 European Election Studies, we continue to find
evidence of this form of class voting, which we relate to the specific
political and social dispositions of the self-employed. [R, abr.]
68.4901 BARNES, Lucy ; HICKS, Timothy — Making austerity
popular: the media and mass attitudes toward fiscal pol-
icy. American Journal of Political Science 62(2), Apr. 2018 :
340-354.
What explains variation in individual attitudes toward government defi-
cits? Although macroeconomic stance is of paramount importance for
contemporary governments, our understanding of its popular politics is
limited. We argue that popular attitudes regarding austerity are influ-
enced by media (and wider elite) framing. Information necessary to form
preferences on the deficit is not provided neutrally, and its provision
shapes how voters understand their interests. A wide range of evidence
from Britain between 2010 and 2015 supports this claim. In the British
Election Study, deficit attitudes vary systematically with the source of
news consumption, even controlling for party identification. A structural
topic model of two major newspapers' reporting shows that content
varies systematically with respect to coverage of public borrowing. [R,
abr.]
68.4902 BARRETT, Patrick ; ZIRKER, Daniel — Corruption scan-
dals, scandal clusters and contemporary politics in New
Zealand. International Social Science Journal 221-222,
Sept.-Dec. 2016 : 229-240.
While New Zealand enjoys a widely held view that it symbolises the
qualities of a corruption-free democracy, over the past several years
corruption scandals have increased markedly in number and intensity. It
appears that corruption is becoming a part of the language of politics in
New Zealand in a new way. This article explores this proposition with a
particular focus on the incidence and character of corruption scandals
during politically significant periods. It is an exploratory and admittedly
impressionistic analysis that surveys the incidence of corruption scandals
between 2000 and 2016. The article examines media reports of corrup-
tion scandals and the apparent and periodic appearance of the accumu-
lation of corruption scandals, or scandal clusters. It explores whether
such clusters are evident in media reports. [R, abr.]
68.4903 BASSOLI, Matteo ; MONTICELLI, Lara — What about the
welfare state? Exploring precarious youth political par-
ticipation in the age of grievances. Acta politica 53(2), Apr.
2018 : 204-230.
The authors analyze non-institutionalized political participation patterns
of precarious urban youth in five European cities — Cologne (Germany),
Geneva (Switzerland), Kielce (Poland), Lyon (France) and Turin (Italy) —
following the 2008 financial crisis. The aim is to test the validity of the
"grievance theory" on precarious youth. In fact, the political participation
of precarious youth has been overlooked to date. The article shows that
across the cities, precarious workers exhibit higher levels of political
participation owing to a sense of relative deprivation with respect to their
regularly employed counterparts. The authors apply a logit analysis to
duly consider the local context (i.e. unemployment regulations and labor
market regulations). The empirical results show that precarious youth are
more active than regular workers when unemployment regulations and
labor market regulations are at their intermediate level, featuring as
"issue-specific" political opportunity structures. [R, abr.]
68.4904 BECERRA, Martín ; WAGNER, Celeste M. — Crisis of
representation and new media policies in Latin America.
Latin American Perspectives 45(3), May 2018 : 86-102.
The emergence of new communication policies in Latin America from
2004 to 2015 took place in the midst of an unprecedented public antago-
nism between governments and media groups in Latin America. To
understand the emergence of this conflict, the following variables are
proposed: (1) the populist features of the governments involved, (2) a
crisis of representation, (3) high levels of media concentration in a
context of historically permissive regulation and a crisis of the traditional
media, and (4) the governments’ perception of the media as opponents
and even as threats to their power. [R] [See Abstr. 68.4892; and also
commentary by Rosalind BRESNAHAN, and the rejoinder by authors]
68.4905 BELAND, Louis Philippe ; UNEL, Bulent — Governors' party
affiliation and unions [in USA]. Industrial Relations 57(2),
Apr. 2018 : 177-205.
Employing a regression discontinuity (RD) approach on gubernatorial
elections in the US over the last three decades, this paper investigates
the causal effects of governors' party affiliation (Democrat versus Repub-
lican) on unionization of workers, and unionized workers' working hours
and earnings. Surprisingly, we find no significant impact from the party
affiliation of governors on union membership and union workers' labor
market outcomes. [R]
68.4906 BERDEJÓ, Carlos ; CHEN, Daniel L. — Electoral cycles
among US Courts of Appeals judges. Journal of Law and
Economics 60(3), Aug. 2018 : 479-496.
We find field evidence consistent with experimental studies that docu-
ment the contexts and characteristics making individuals more suscepti-
ble to priming. Just before US presidential elections, judges on the US
Courts of Appeals double the rate at which they dissent and vote along
partisan lines. Increases are accentuated for judges with less experience
and in polarized environments. During periods of national unity — war-
time, for example — judges suppress dissents, especially if they have
less experience or are in polarized environments. We show that the
dissent rate increases gradually from 6 percent to nearly 12 percent in
the quarter before an election and returns immediately to 6 percent after
the election. If highly experienced professionals making common-law
precedent can be politically primed, it raises questions about the per-
ceived impartiality of the judiciary. [R]
68.4907 BERINSKY, Adam J. — Measuring public opinion with
surveys. Annual Review of Political Science 20, 2017 : 309-
329.
How can we best gauge the political opinions of the citizenry? Since their
emergence in the 1930s, opinion polls — or surveys — have become the
dominant way to assess the public will. [However], there is no agreement
among political scientists on how to best measure public opinion through
polls. This article is a call for political scientists to be more self-conscious
about the choices we make when we attempt to measure public opinion
with surveys. I first [consider] whom to interview, discussing the major
challenges survey researchers face when sampling respondents from the
population of interest. I then discuss the level of speci ficity with which we
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