{"title":"Opening the door to anti-system leaders? Anti-corruption campaigns and the global rise of populism","authors":"NIC CHEESEMAN, CARYN PEIFFER","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12682","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12682","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Almost all anti-corruption drives contain an awareness raising element. However, recent research reveals that anti-corruption awareness raising messages can backfire by triggering a sense that corruption is too big of a problem to tackle, thus encouraging resignation rather than resistance. We advance this literature by exploring another potential unintended impact. Corruption scandals have played a prominent role in the rise of many populist leaders, who claim to challenge ‘the corrupt status quo’. We test whether anti-corruption messages that call attention to the problem unintentionally help to foster populist attitudes through an original survey experiment in Albania. Breaking new ground by testing messages based on descriptive (how the world is) and injunctive (how people want it to be) norms, we find that while the latter has no effect, exposure to the former – which is more common in contemporary anti-corruption campaigns – is associated with greater agreement with populist sentiments and beliefs.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"134-155"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12682","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140664437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
JANA BELSCHNER, RAIMONDAS IBENSKAS, FLORIAN WEILER
{"title":"When do voters reveal candidate gender preferences? Evidence from individual-level ballot data","authors":"JANA BELSCHNER, RAIMONDAS IBENSKAS, FLORIAN WEILER","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12679","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12679","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Does candidate gender matter for vote choice? Whereas experimental research suggests an average preference for female candidates, observational studies tend to find null effects. In this note, we address the recent debate on how to measure voter preferences on the aggregate and the individual level. We argue that candidate gender preferences exist, but that whether and when they are revealed varies <i>between</i> and <i>within</i> voters. Drawing on an observational design and using data from over 500,000 individual ballots in Lithuanian elections, we employ multilevel regression and exponential random graph models to show how voters' candidate gender preferences are distributed across the electorate and how they vary in size and direction. We find that about half of all voters prefer either male or female candidates. Whereas preference for male candidates tends to be revealed in the first and second preference votes, preference for female candidates is first revealed in lower preference votes. Our results help explain contradictory findings in the literature and illustrate how observational data and methods can be used to assess voter preferences within electorates.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"430-441"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12679","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140692269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Auction politics: Party competition and expansionary election promises","authors":"RORY COSTELLO","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12678","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12678","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Party competition sometimes resembles an auction, where parties seek to ‘buy’ elections through promises of economic largesse. In this article, I argue that whether parties engage in this practice will depend on political circumstances, such as the level of ideological competition. Incentives to promise more to voters will also vary depending on a party's electoral prospects: for parties that expect a significant level of government responsibility, promising too much is a risky strategy. I test these arguments by focusing on the spending commitments in party manifestos from 20 countries over the period 1945–2017. In line with expectations, parties tend to make more expansionary election pledges when ideological competition is more muted. In addition, left-wing parties’ spending commitments are found to be influenced by their projected seat shares (based on opinion polls from before the start of the election campaign) relative to their competitors. Specifically, the stronger a left-wing party's electoral prospects, the more fiscally conservative it tends to be, and vice versa.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"29-52"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12678","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140708561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strategic postponement of coalition policymaking in European Parliamentary democracies","authors":"XIAO LU","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12677","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12677","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Coalition policymaking concerns not only who decides what in which jurisdiction but also when, how speedy and in what rhythm. Due to the limited time budget and shadow of future elections, parties in charge of respective ministerial portfolios have to strategically organize their policy agendas to trade off between policy and electoral incentives in the face of coalition partners who monitor and control ministerial autonomy. However, despite the burgeoning literature on coalition governance, the temporal dimension of ministerial agenda control is less well understood. I advance this research by proposing a model to directly account for the influence of time budgets on timing decisions of ministers in policy initiation. In this model, I distinguish between different timing strategies of policy initiation a ministerial party may possibly adopt and identify in equilibrium a conditional postponing strategy by which ministers facing high scrutiny of coalition partners will postpone bill initiation till the end of the term. The empirical examination lends support to my argument and further demonstrates that the timing strategy of ministers can also be influenced by coalition conflict and policy saliency of bills.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"94-116"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12677","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140712887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SARAH C. DINGLER, LORE HAYEK, CHRISTIAN SCHWADERER, MARTIN SENN, ANDREAS M. KRAXBERGER, NADA RAGHEB
{"title":"Everyone will know someone who died of Corona: Government threat language during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"SARAH C. DINGLER, LORE HAYEK, CHRISTIAN SCHWADERER, MARTIN SENN, ANDREAS M. KRAXBERGER, NADA RAGHEB","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12676","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12676","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Threat language is an important, albeit ambivalent, element of political crisis communication. It raises public awareness and enhances compliance with emergency measures, but, if overused, it also carries the risk of making governments appear overwhelmed by a crisis. Research on political communication during the COVID-19 pandemic has so far only produced very limited insights into the use of threat language by governments. To address this gap in the literature, our article analyses which factors influence the likelihood of threat language in the crisis communication of governments. We argue that individual-level factors (politician vs. non-politician and gender) shape the odds of including threat language and that contextual factors (time and subject area) determine the probability with which speakers employ this communication tool.</p><p>Based on a unique dataset of 1108 press conferences with 433 speakers in 17 OECD countries and three US states, we demonstrate that men are slightly more prone to employ threat language than women. The most important determinant of its use, however, is the subject area that speakers are addressing. In particular, in the context of the health system and public management, speeches are likely to be associated with risks, dangers, and threats. Overall, our findings imply that crisis communication across countries is not as diverse as indicated by previous literature. Once countries are facing a comparable challenge, political actors largely communicate in a similar manner.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"53-71"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12676","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140717769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AMANDA DRISCOLL, JAY KREHBIEL, MICHAEL J. NELSON, SANGYEON KIM
{"title":"The consistency principle: Crisis perceptions, partisanship and public support for democratic norms in comparative perspective","authors":"AMANDA DRISCOLL, JAY KREHBIEL, MICHAEL J. NELSON, SANGYEON KIM","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12673","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12673","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A growing body of research theorizes that partisanship can undermine democracy as citizens prioritize their political interests over abstract norms and values. We argue that crises might counteract intense partisanship by giving citizens clarity on the threats posed by rule of law violations. Examining the differential application of a law – a breach of democratic norms – we draw on an experiment embedded in representative surveys of Germany, the United States, Hungary and Poland to examine citizens’ sense of appropriate punishment for elites’ violation of a municipal mask-wearing ordinance. We find evidence of partisan bias in citizens’ willingness to support punishment in all four countries. But, in the two consolidated democracies, we find that concern about the Covid-19 crisis diminishes partisan biases in punishment preferences: citizens who are most concerned about the crisis also model the most consistency in their willingness to hold copartisans into account.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"406-416"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140729220","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":"Exploring the linkage of higher education and attitudes towards European integration: The British case","authors":"ANDREW McNEIL, ELIZABETH SIMON","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12675","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12675","url":null,"abstract":"<p>While cross-sectional research has consistently shown graduates are less Eurosceptic than non-graduates, little is known about the causal role of university study in determining these attitudes, as few longitudinal studies have explored this. This study does so, providing robust causal estimates of higher education's effect on Euroscepticism through applying individual- and sibling fixed-effect modelling techniques to British Household Panel and Understanding Society data from 1999–2022. Both specifications provide consistent results; suggesting university study does little to decrease Euroscepticism in the short-run but has substantial long-run effects. This alludes to an ‘allocation’ effect, whereby it is largely not the experience of obtaining a degree itself, but the opportunities afforded by virtue of doing so that shape attitudes towards Europe. Our novel findings not only demonstrate that within-sibling estimates of higher education's effect can be generalised to the wider British population but also advance our understanding of the mechanisms linking education with Euroscepticism.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"5-28"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12675","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140737555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ZSÓFIA PAPP, JULIEN NAVARRO, FEDERICO RUSSO, LAURA EMŐKE NAGY
{"title":"Patterns of democracy and democratic satisfaction: Results from a comparative conjoint experiment","authors":"ZSÓFIA PAPP, JULIEN NAVARRO, FEDERICO RUSSO, LAURA EMŐKE NAGY","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12674","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12674","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study presents the results from a series of conjoint experiments evaluating how the various components of political systems affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). Compared to earlier studies, our approach is unique in that we were able to disentangle the effects of otherwise highly collinear variables corresponding to three defining features of any political system, namely (1) access to power, (2) the policy-making process and (3) performance. We fielded identical conjoint experiments in countries with significant variations across the key independent variables: France, Hungary and Italy. Overall, our study supports the view that citizens are more satisfied with democracy in consensus systems than in majoritarian democracies, while it also contributes to identifying the respective weight of the specific components of political systems. Respondents across all countries recognize that proportionality and party system fragmentation magnify their voices by creating a more representative political climate. With regard to output legitimacy, we find that respondents identify good economic performance and public probity as important features of a well-performing democracy. The positive effect of the legislators’ constituency orientation on SWD is a particularly noteworthy result that is currently understudied in the literature. Moreover, the state of the economy has by far the biggest impact on SWD, which indicates a highly materialistic view of democracy in all three countries.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 4","pages":"1445-1470"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12674","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140739531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differentiation, dominance and fairness in the European Union: Bringing in the citizens’ perspective","authors":"MAX HEERMANN, DIRK LEUFFEN, JULIAN SCHUESSLER","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12672","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article analyses whether and how fairness considerations affect citizens’ support of European Union (EU) policies and integration. While past literature has revealed that perceptions of procedural and substantive fairness impact on public opinion at the level of the nation state, we know less about the fairness-support nexus when it comes to international cooperation. We here make use of the case of differentiated integration (DI) to experimentally dissect normative and utility-oriented considerations in the evaluation of EU policies. DI as an instrument to overcome heterogeneity-induced gridlock has been linked to both autonomy and dominance, and it can generate winners and losers in the EU. Our experiments reveal that citizens largely support DI. However, they are opposed to forms of DI which impose negative externalities on a subgroup of EU member states. This holds irrespective of the affectedness of citizens’ own member states. We take these findings as a first experimental confirmation that citizens, indeed, care about the fairness of the EU and its policies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 4","pages":"1622-1641"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12672","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142404855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political violence and long-term tax morale: Evidence from Romania's 1989 anti-communist revolution","authors":"VLAD SURDEA-HERNEA","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12671","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12671","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Do salient episodes of state violence affect citizens' willingness to pay taxes for different social purposes in the long run? In this article, I answer this question using an original dataset that geolocates individuals who were seriously injured during the anti-communist Romanian revolution of 1989. Using the number of casualties within different regions as a source of quasi-exogenous variation, I show that the places from which more casualties come have systematically lower levels of tax morale. I argue that these results arise because there has been no clear break with the authoritarian past in Romania, and many citizens still associate the current political elites with the former communist rulers who perpetrated the violence of December 1989.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"64 1","pages":"417-429"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140369225","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}