{"title":"‘Place’ does matter for populist radical right sentiment, but how? Evidence from Germany","authors":"Kai Arzheimer, Theresa Bernemann","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000279","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The notion of ‘place’ has become a central concern in research on the populist radical right (PRR), but scholars seem to have different things in mind when talking about how geography affects individual political attitudes. In our paper, we therefore aim to structure the debate on the impact of place and to understand exactly how place affects PRR attitudes (nativism, right-wing authoritarianism, and populism). Conceptually, we identify four potentially relevant aspects of ‘place’ that underpin much of the current literature: place-related attitudes (localism and resentment), place-specific living conditions, socio-demographic composition, and characteristics unique to a particular place, i.e., its local history and culture. We also discuss how these aspects are related and how they may interact. Empirically, we assess the relative importance of these four aspects of place for PRR sentiment in Germany, a country that is particularly well suited to this type of analysis. Using fine-grained geocoded survey data collected prior to the 2017 election, we find that (1) there is considerable spatial variation and clustering in PRR attitudes, (2) a place’s socio-demographic composition and (3) place resentment account for much of this, while (4) localism has weaker effects. We find (5) no relevant interaction between localism and place resentment, (6) no substantial evidence that mediation through place-related attitudes leads to an underestimation of the other aspects, and (7) no evidence for effects of the unique culture or history of the places we studied. Moreover, (8) location in the former GDR still has a substantial impact, whereas (9) other place-specific conditions (deprivation, demographic decline, migration, rurality) that could be addressed by policy interventions have no or rather weak effects. We conclude that PRR sentiment in ‘places that don’t matter’ results also, though by no means exclusively, from a lack of recognition.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135815744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Partisan districting and the adoption of proportional representation: gerrymandering and its discontents","authors":"P. Emmenegger, A. Walter","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000267","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Electoral engineering strategies in majoritarian electoral systems, in particular the possibility to contain insurgent parties by manipulating electoral districts for partisan gain, are key determinants of parties’ positions on the adoption of proportional representation (PR). Providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence, this paper demonstrates that partisan districting can be an effective strategy to protect incumbent parties’ dominant political positions. In addition, it shows how insurgent parties push for the adoption of PR to end the practice of partisan districting. Finally, it demonstrates that incumbents – in the face of increasing electoral threats – cling to the existing majoritarian system if partisan districting allows them to influence vote-seat distortions in their favor. Together, these findings suggest that the possibility to contain insurgent parties by means of partisan districting is an important but overlooked alternative to the adoption of PR. Moreover, by demonstrating that vote-seat distortions moderate the relationship between district-level electoral threats and legislators’ support for PR adoption, this paper offers an important corrective to Stein Rokkan’s influential electoral threat thesis.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44862406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When do voters perceive intra-party conflict? A democratic life cycle perspective","authors":"Tristan Klingelhöfer, Jochen Müller","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000243","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Political parties commonly experience internal disagreements. Recently, evidence is accumulating that outright internal discord makes a party much less attractive to voters. However, we do not understand well when citizens perceive a party to be internally conflicted in the first place. We here explain citizens’ perceptions from a democratic life cycle perspective: Factors related to the periodic conduct of elections induce higher levels of intra-party conflict and make it more visible to citizens. To test this argument, we combine survey data on citizens’ perceptions of political parties in Germany spanning 16 years with indicators moderating (the visibility of) intra-party conflict. The analysis shows that citizens perceive more internal conflict when parties are heterogenous, when they are governing, when election day is distant, and when electoral losses accumulate. This demonstrates the recurring patterns in citizens’ perceptions of political parties and suggests self-reinforcing dynamics between citizen assessments and election outcomes.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43420849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Some differences, many similarities: comparing Europe’s responses to the 1973 oil crisis and the 2022 gas crisis","authors":"L. Schramm","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000255","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars of European integration are primarily interested in explaining change and variation over time. Indeed, given that integration has progressed over 50 years and competences have been transferred to the European level in policy fields, including energy, fast and coordinated action in the face of a major external threat might have been anticipated. Yet, as this article documents, member states struggled to establish a cohesive and solidary European response to the 2022 gas crisis, just as they had failed to cooperate effectively during the 1973 oil crisis. Building on recent literature on European polity development and integration through crises, this article argues that differences in national crisis affectedness and energy structures hampered cooperation. Such asymmetries became particularly visible on the part of France and Germany, the Union’s two largest member states, who could have provided regional political leadership. Consequently, both the 1973 and 2022 energy crises led to very limited steps in European integration and collectively suboptimal policy outcomes, such as high energy prices and uneven access to energy resources.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49588658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mainstreaming the populist radical right? Online news exposure and voting behavior in the 2019 European Parliament election","authors":"Sebastian Stier, Caterina Froio, J. Ho","doi":"10.1017/s175577392300022x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s175577392300022x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 How does media exposure relate to support for radical right populist parties (RRPPs)? We contribute to this classic debate by analyzing the web browsing histories and survey responses of six thousand study participants in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK during the 2019 European Parliament election. Linking direct measures of online news exposure to voting behavior allows us to assess the effects of the salience of issues politicized by RRPPs on their electoral support. The likelihood to vote for RRPPs was higher when the EU was more salient in individual media diets, while exposure to the less salient issue of immigration did not increase the propensity to vote for RRPPs. Alongside consistent results for other party families and interactions with pre-existing voting intentions, the findings indicate that the electoral effects of online media are contingent on the overall salience of a specific issue and voters’ predispositions.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57169212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differential public support and the independence of anti-corruption agencies","authors":"Jian Xu, Jingwen Xu","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000231","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Specialized anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) aim to address corruption problems when conventional institutional mechanisms are dysfunctional. Yet, we still lack thorough understanding of the conditions that enable ACAs to withstand undue influences of the overarching political regime. Informed by the judicial politics literature, we examine the value of public opinion in empowering ACAs. Leveraging the evolving political conditions of Hong Kong, we argue that a lack of public support for other government organs offers opportunities for an ACA to distinguish itself from the rest of the regime and establish operational independence. We find that a signature ACA of Hong Kong, created by the British colonial government, has been uniquely sensitive to public complaints of corruption. The agency is the most responsive when other government branches are perceived to be lacking integrity. Also, negative appraisals of the political regime encourage the ACA’s institutional functions and increase the degree of enforcement discretion entrusted to it. Our findings suggest a mechanism of ACA empowerment whereby the public is committed to sustaining agency independence because of their distrust and the unpopularity of other government organs. Therefore, potential institutional threats posed by an unpopular regime to the ACA may actually strengthen the latter’s power and autonomy.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42303108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New old ways of financing the party: exploring the commercial activities of modern political parties","authors":"N. Miragliotta, R. Manwaring, Josh Holloway","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000176","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The party–money nexus has long excited concerns about corruption and undue influence. However, much of the scholarship in this area has focused on the funding parties receive from external donors or the state. One area of party financing that is underexplored is that of party-controlled commercial enterprises. We examine the nature and scale of the commercial activities engaged in by the two major governing Australian parties: Labor and the Liberals. We find that while commercial activities are long-standing practices, they have diversified over time, becoming more sophisticated and professionalized. Importantly, some of these activities have become decoupled from the proper purposes of parties. The upscaling of party fundraising practices introduces new tensions for parties – both normatively and practically.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44443820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Electoral system preferences of citizens compared: evidence from a conjoint experiment in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom","authors":"Eric Linhart, M. Jankowski, M. Tepe","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000218","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Electoral systems fulfill different functions. Typically, they cannot meet all demands at the same time, so that the evaluation of specific electoral systems depends on subjective preferences about the single demands. We argue that it is the electorate which transfers its power to representatives and, therefore, its preferences should be considered in debates about electoral systems. Consequently, our contribution presents results of citizens’ demands regarding electoral system attributes. Specifically, we rely on a large-scale conjoint experiment conducted in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK in which subjects were asked to choose between two electoral systems which randomly differed on a set of attributes referring to electoral systems’ core functions. Our results show that all core functions are generally of importance for the respondents but reveal a higher preference for proportional electoral systems. These preferences are largely stable for citizens in different countries but also for other subgroups of subjects.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45750294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is the grass greener on the other side? Benchmarking Covid-19 vaccine procurement against the British experience","authors":"A. Reinl, Alexia Katsanidou, Steffen Pötzschke","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000188","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Covid-19 pandemic placed responsibility on the European Union (EU) to effectively mitigate this common challenge. An important aspect of the common fight against the virus was the collective procurement of vaccines. The initially slow process of vaccine delivery may have caused overall frustration within societies and may also have had a profound effect on people’s assessment of their country’s EU membership. This paper examines this assumption via unique panel data collected in Germany in three waves between November 2020 and August 2021. We show that citizens evaluated their country’s EU membership negatively especially when the EU’s progress on vaccinations was in its early stages. In addition, public assessment was particularly negative when vaccination progress was compared to the situation in the United Kingdom (UK). Overall, our findings point to volatile levels of EU support depending on respondents’ perceptions of the success of the UK outside the EU.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41805128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Partisans like any other? How populist supporters assess the economy when their party is in office","authors":"Frédéric Gonthier","doi":"10.1017/s1755773923000206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773923000206","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Populist supporters have been found to take cues from populist incumbents. Yet, little is known about how they incorporate party cues in their political beliefs when populists are in office. This research note argues that (1) citizens who identify with populist parties engage in partisan motivated reasoning – that is, they are driven by the desire to be consistent with their partisan allegiances – and that (2) they engage in partisan motivated reasoning more intensely than their non-populist counterparts because populist party cues strongly prompt them to process biased information. Drawing on data from the European Social Survey, it is evidenced that populist supporters express much warmer economic views when their parties hold power. Warm economic views are also found to increase significantly more in accordance with strength of partisanship and exposure to political information for populist supporters than for non-populist supporters when their respective parties govern. Results highlight a mechanism by which populist incumbents are likely to remain attractive despite their poor economic record. They have implications for our understanding of the mainstreaming of populist parties in Europe.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47321908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}