{"title":"Does municipal amalgamation affect trust in local politicians? The case of Norway","authors":"Øystein Solvang, Jo Saglie, Marte Winsvold","doi":"10.1177/01925121231216426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231216426","url":null,"abstract":"When municipalities merge, they grow and, at the same time, experience a comprehensive reform process, both of which may affect political trust. We explore whether and how the large-scale municipal amalgamation reforms in Norway in the 2010s affected citizens’ trust in local and national elected officials and assemblies. We examine the effects of both changes in size and reform processes using survey data on trust in local and national political officials and assemblies before, and at the time, of the merger. In contrast to studies conducted in Denmark, we do not find evidence that the Norwegian Local Government Reform had significant negative effects on political trust. We argue that this difference between Denmark and Norway can be explained by differences in how the two reform processes were implemented.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":" 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139139976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The revenge of ‘democratic peace’","authors":"Bann Seng Tan","doi":"10.1177/01925121231200122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231200122","url":null,"abstract":"The Russo-Ukrainian war may have given democratic peace a new lease of (research) life. The stronger-than-expected reaction of liberal democracies coupled with the poorer-than-expected battlefield performance of the Russian military, invites us to re-apply the logic of democratic peace. To understand the strong reactions of liberal democracies, I apply a militant interpretation of Kant’s perpetual peace and reexamine the role of trade interdependence in capitalist peace. To understand the battlefield performance of Ukraine, I examine theories of war-fighting with an emphasis on the legitimacy mechanism. To understand the battlefield performance of Russia, I examine the deleterious impact of corruption and preference falsification ( vranyo). To the extent that the field is still generating novel research that advances our understanding of the impact of regime type on international conflict, democratic peace remains a progressive research programme.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":" 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139144112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Behind the technocratic challenge: Old and new alternatives to party government in Italy","authors":"Antonino Castaldo, Luca Verzichelli","doi":"10.1177/01925121231216438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231216438","url":null,"abstract":"The growing presence of technocrats in contemporary governments has emerged as a relevant phenomenon worldwide. Italy, once known as a paradigmatic case of party government and now identified as the promised land of technocracy, constitutes a crucial case to test the major short-term (critical junctures) and long-term (complexity of policy-making; party decline) factors identified to explain this phenomenon. Our analysis is based on two innovative tools: a new dataset updated to the current back-to-politics Meloni Italian government, including all the cases of the ‘technocratic decade’ (2010s); and a new typology combining partisanship and expertise, which allows us to overcome dichotomous categorizations equating technocrats and non-partisans. This more accurate and updated picture of minister profiles in Italy unveils unexpected dynamics and allows us to reassess both previous findings on the Italian case and the explanatory power of the tested theories on the growing diffusion of technocrats in contemporary governments.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"11 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139150771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The deepest foundation of our democratic crisis","authors":"Jane Mansbridge","doi":"10.1177/01925121231203719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231203719","url":null,"abstract":"The deepest foundation of our democratic crisis is our increasing human interdependence. That interdependence creates increasing needs for ‘free-use goods’: goods that, once produced, anyone can use without paying (other names: “public goods,” “non-excludable goods”). Such goods produce the classic “free-rider” problems to which the most efficient solution in societies of strangers is usually government provision through taxes or regulation, both of which depend on a combination of voluntarism (based on duty and solidarity) and legitimate coercion. More interdependence creates more free-rider problems, which require more government intervention/coercion. Our eighteenth-century democratic mechanisms were not designed to legitimate the amount of state coercion we now need. To bolster legitimacy, we need to embrace the logic of free-use goods and replace one-way with recursive representation, the principle of distinction with more descriptive representation, corruption with clean institutions, and legislative-centric democracy with a full representative system approach, all drawing on our collective intelligence.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"75 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138952883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Don’t put a ring on it: Gender stereotypes in citizens’ preferences for executive positions","authors":"Sílvia Claveria, Sebastián Lavezzolo","doi":"10.1177/01925121231214272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231214272","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarly investigations have greatly advanced our understanding of gender stereotypes as they pertain to leadership roles. However, an examination of citizens’ evaluations of the personal and political characteristics of ministers using an experimental design is still lacking. In this article, we aim to determine whether individuals exhibit discrimination against women occupying the position of finance minister (FM), which presents an opportunity to assess the impact of stereotypes within one of the most ‘masculine’ cabinet portfolios. We implement a conjoint analysis in Spain to isolate the influence of appointees’ attributes on their selection. The results suggest that women are preferred for this post. In contrast to established knowledge derived from legislative studies, being single benefits female ministers more than it does their male counterparts in obtaining the position of FM, as agentic attributes can hold more value in these positions.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"15 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138968087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving referendums with deliberative democracy: A systematic literature review","authors":"Irene Witting, C. Wagenaar, Frank Hendriks","doi":"10.1177/01925121231210048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231210048","url":null,"abstract":"This article systematically reviews the literature on combining referendums and deliberative processes. With referendums being criticized for various reasons, including their deliberative deficit, and amid the deliberative turn in democracy, various hybrid combinations of referendums and deliberative processes have been practised or suggested. We bring together the hitherto scattered literature that focuses on assumed and observed strengthening effects of deliberation in light of ascribed referendum deficits. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses method, we reviewed and thematically analysed 55 publications. We show that, despite their different focal points, a clear overlap exists between perceived shortcomings of referendums and the added value of deliberation. Expectations of hybridization run high, with empirical evidence emerging that shows promising positive effects. Nevertheless, non-positive effects are both anticipated and observed, and these underscore the importance of ensuring appropriate connections between aggregative and deliberative processes and of systemic embedding.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139208489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Miklós Sebők, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Christian Rauh, Péter Visnovitz, Gergő Balázs, Jan Schwalbach
{"title":"Comparative European legislative research in the age of large-scale computational text analysis: A review article","authors":"Miklós Sebők, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Christian Rauh, Péter Visnovitz, Gergő Balázs, Jan Schwalbach","doi":"10.1177/01925121231199904","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231199904","url":null,"abstract":"Advances in data accessibility and analytical methods opened new frontiers for comparative studies of European legislative activities. However, these advances still need to be fully harnessed by legislative scholars for multiple reasons. We provide an overview of extant research agendas to identify these reasons and explore the opportunities for tapping the potential of big data and quantitative text analysis. We present significant data collection efforts, such as ParlSpeech, the Comparative Agendas Project and CLARIN, and highlight their respective value for, primarily, large-N comparative research focusing on European Union member states and the European Union itself. Our review highlights the most consequential gaps in the literature and shortcomings of available data and analysis. These include the lack of extensive historical and geographical coverage, missing harmonisation and cross-linking between separate efforts, no unified speech and document (bill, law) databases, and the unavailability of good-quality full-text variables.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139258324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michał Wenzel, Karina Stasiuk-Krajewska, Veronika Macková, Kateřina Turková
{"title":"The penetration of Russian disinformation related to the war in Ukraine: Evidence from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia","authors":"Michał Wenzel, Karina Stasiuk-Krajewska, Veronika Macková, Kateřina Turková","doi":"10.1177/01925121231205259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121231205259","url":null,"abstract":"This article novel research on disinformation conducted by the Central European Digital Media Observatory. We have identified Russian disinformation strategies related to the war in Ukraine and established the extent of their penetration in Central European countries. This international comparison shows that thecountries in question are susceptible to Russia-related disinformation efforts to a highly varying degree. Poland is largely immune to narratives about the Ukraine war and the Ukrainian state imposed by official and unofficial actors connected to the Russian authorities and their supporters. On the other hand, Slovak society is relatively receptive to such sentiments, while Czechs are somewhere between these poles. The use of social media as a source of news contributes to disinformation, but the effect is weak. In all three societies there is a strong, significant influence of individuals’ degree of education and material situation. Respondents with post-secondary education and those who consider themselves well off are less vulnerable to disinformation, regardless of their media consumption.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"51 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139270268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hugo Marcos-Marné, Pablo González-González, Homero Gil de Zúñiga
{"title":"Media skepticism and reactions to political scandals: An analysis of the Trump–Ukraine case","authors":"Hugo Marcos-Marné, Pablo González-González, Homero Gil de Zúñiga","doi":"10.1177/01925121211073005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211073005","url":null,"abstract":"While the discussion on the individual level variables that affect responses to political scandals has focused mainly on variables such as partisan identity or political cynicism, we suggest that media skepticism could also moderate whether and how individuals respond to political scandals. To test this relationship, we rely on panel data from the United States gathered before and after the Trump–Ukraine scandal occurred (Wave 1 in June 2019, Wave 2 in October 2019). Our results show that individuals who rank higher on media skepticism hold comparatively more positive views of Trump after the scandal, even when previous evaluations and alternative explanations are controlled for. Conversely, we find no effect of media skepticism in trust toward the US political system and government. We believe our findings have significant consequences to understanding the relationship between the governed and those governing in times of widespread media skepticism.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"7 1","pages":"645 - 660"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139305757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reciprocating to the bottom: Is there negative diffuse reciprocity in social economic human rights","authors":"Sara Kahn‐Nisser","doi":"10.1177/01925121211073325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211073325","url":null,"abstract":"Is reciprocity possible in human rights agreements? This article argues that human rights agreements can create negative diffuse reciprocity if there is reliable information about countries’ compliance levels. The article analyses the link between information on countries’ non-compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the one hand, and countries’ efforts to protect social economic rights on the other. It finds that the more information is published on violations of rights, the lower the levels of countries’ efforts to protect these rights. This means that countries practice negative diffuse reciprocity with regard to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This is a notable finding since there are several factors working against the practice of reciprocity in human rights agreements. The article draws theoretical conclusions regarding the conditions for reciprocity in human rights agreements and sheds new light on the concept of reciprocity and its link with information.","PeriodicalId":47785,"journal":{"name":"International Political Science Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"661 - 675"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139300742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}