{"title":"Sweet victory, bitter defeat: The amplifying effects of affective and perceived ideological polarization on the winner–loser gap in political support","authors":"L. (LISA) JANSSEN","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12625","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12625","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Accepting defeat in the aftermath of elections is crucial for the stability of democracies. But in times of intense polarization, the voluntary consent of electoral losers seems less obvious. In this paper, I study whether affective and perceived ideological polarization amplify the winner–loser gap in political support. Using multilevel growth curve modelling on pre and post-election panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel collected during the 2015 and 2019 UK general elections, I show that the winner–loser gap is indeed more pronounced amongst voters with higher levels of affective and perceived ideological polarization. Moreover, the results illustrate that polarized voters experience a stark decrease in their support for the political system following their electoral loss. Given the high and, in some Western democracies, rising polarization levels, these findings have important implications for losers’ consent and the stability of democracies in election times.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 2","pages":"455-477"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135425391","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":"Still proud at the polls? LGBT+ rights don't dilute the sexuality turnout gap","authors":"MICHAL GRAHN","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12624","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12624","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent research has shown that sexual and/or gender minority voters are prone to mobilizing when LGBT+ issues are on the political agenda. This increased level of political engagement is attributed to the experience of discrimination, understood both in legal and social terms, which spurs LGBT+ individuals to participate with the aim of advancing their rights. However, a crucial question remains unanswered: do these gaps in participation persist in contexts where core LGBT+ rights are protected? Drawing from comprehensive and verified data on the population of Sweden, this study finds evidence of a positive and sustained sexuality-driven voter turnout gap across multiple elections. This gap manifests itself both shortly and a decade after the enactment of same-sex marriage and shows no tangible signs of abating. In addition to improving our knowledge of political participation patterns among sexual minorities, these findings underscore the potential role of minority rights protection as a mechanism to ensure enduring inclusion of social minority groups within democratic processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 3","pages":"973-996"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12624","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136062196","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}
LARS ERIK BERNTZEN, HAYLEE KELSALL, EELCO HARTEVELD
{"title":"Consequences of affective polarization: Avoidance, intolerance and support for violence in the United Kingdom and Norway","authors":"LARS ERIK BERNTZEN, HAYLEE KELSALL, EELCO HARTEVELD","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12623","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12623","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Affective polarization – that is, antipathy towards political opponents – sits high on the academic and political agenda. This is because it is thought to have a multitude of damaging consequences, both for how citizens view and approach each other and for how they relate to the political system. This study investigates some of the most mentioned and worrying potential consequences of affective polarization at the individual level. Zooming in on Europe, it sheds light on the substantive relationship between partisan antipathy and three kinds of norm-breaking escalation in the form of avoidance, intolerance and support for violence against party supporters. Methodologically, it unpacks the affective component of polarization, testing to what extent the traditional feeling thermometer performs as a predictor of these three potential outcomes. It then tests alternative expectations of the antecedents of such escalation derived from the intergroup emotions’ literature and the study of political radicalization. This is done using a broad range of both established and new survey items fielded in nationally representative panels between May and November 2020 in two contexts that score relatively low (Norway) and high (the United Kingdom) on affective polarization. They reveal that avoidance, intolerance and support for political violence can be validly measured, and are manifest, in these two European countries, but that they are only weakly correlated to mere dislike of the outgroup. Instead, more severe forms of norm-breaking escalation depend on the specific nature of the discrete emotions induced beyond dislike (anger, fear or disgust) and are rooted in factors such as relative deprivation, Manicheanism, and dark personality traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism). We discuss the implications for the way polarization is theorized and measured.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 3","pages":"927-949"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12623","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42364701","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":"Quantifying economic policy: Unsupervised learning on archival evidence from the United Kingdom, 1983–2021","authors":"MIRCEA POPA","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12619","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12619","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The evolution of economic policy in Western countries in the post-1980 era is subject to extensive academic debate, but statistical modelling of its many qualitative aspects can be challenging. I use two sources of textual data from the United Kingdom – policy documents written by executive departments, as well as recently declassified cabinet minutes – together with unsupervised text-as-data methods to examine the evolution of economic policy discourse between 1983 and 2021. The findings challenge the hypothesis of an undifferentiated post-1980 liberal era. Instead, several shifts away from the liberalizing priorities of the 1980s are identified. The first is an increased attention to the public services in the 1990s. The second is a rise of activist approaches focused on state-supported innovation in the 2010s – a claim which has been widely articulated but has not been rigorously tested so far. These discourse-based conclusions are validated through an econometric analysis of detailed spending data.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 2","pages":"750-773"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12619","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41941376","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":"Left behind: Voters’ reactions to local school and hospital closures","authors":"NIELS NYHOLT","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12622","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12622","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Voters in rural and peripheral areas have increasingly turned away from mainstream parties and towards right-wing populist parties. This paper tests the extent to which political decisions with adverse local effects—such as school and hospital closures—can explain this electoral shift. I theorize that political decisions such as these substantiate a perception of a disconnect between “ordinary” people and the politicians in power in day-to-day experiences. Using data on 315 school closures and 30 hospital closures in Denmark from 2005 to 2019 in a generalized difference-in-differences design, I find that mayors lose about 1.6 percentage points of the valid votes in areas where they close a school. Furthermore, I find that right-wing populist parties increase their support in both local and national elections when a local school or hospital is closed. These findings provide insight into the electoral consequences of political decisions with adverse local effects and thus contribute to our understanding of the rise of right-wing populism.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 3","pages":"884-905"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12622","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135875781","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}
MAGNUS LUNDGREN, JONAS TALLBERG, FABIO WASSERFALLEN
{"title":"Differentiated influence by supranational institutions: Evidence from the European Union","authors":"MAGNUS LUNDGREN, JONAS TALLBERG, FABIO WASSERFALLEN","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12620","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12620","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article develops a novel approach for studying the influence of supranational institutions in international cooperation. While earlier research tends to treat member states as a collective yielding influence on supranational institutions, we unpack this collective to explore <i>differentiated</i> supranational influence. To this end, the article makes three contributions. First, it develops a method for measuring differentiated supranational influence that makes it possible to identify which member states give ground when a supranational institution is influential. Second, it theorizes the sources of differentiated supranational influence, arguing that states are more likely to accommodate a supranational institution when they are more dependent on the resources of this institution. Third, it illustrates the usefulness of this approach empirically through an analysis of the influence of the European Commission in European Union bargaining. The analysis suggests that our approach can measure and explain differentiated supranational influence under conditions of both heightened crisis and everyday politics.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 3","pages":"839-861"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12620","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42145042","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":"Punishing the pseudo-opposition: Accountability under a minority government","authors":"IDA B. HJERMITSLEV","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12621","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12621","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Minority governments often rely on the legislative support of parties, which play an ambiguous role in politics: while they are formally part of the opposition, they are simultaneously committed to keeping the government in office and passing its bills. Are these support parties protected from the electoral cost of governing or do voters recognize their responsibility for policy outcomes and hold them accountable? I hypothesize that voters who are dissatisfied with government performance will have less sympathy towards and will be less likely to vote for support parties. Using Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data, I find consistent support for both hypotheses. Voters seem to recognize the connection between support parties and the government and have both an affective and an electoral response to it. While voters dislike support parties more than junior members when they are dissatisfied with government performance, they punish the two types of parties similarly at elections. Support parties are thus in no way exempt from the accountability mechanisms.</p>","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"63 2","pages":"774-786"},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12621","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45313294","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":"Devolution in political and legal practice of modern states","authors":"E. Kochetkov","doi":"10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-53-62","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-53-62","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyzes he specifics of devolutionary processes in modern states. The author defines devolution as the transfer by the central power structures of part of the powers to autonomous territories. Criteria for differentiation of decentralization of power and devolution are singled out. A review of the existing scientific literature on the subject under consideration has shown that there is no consensus among researchers on the nature of the phenomenon of devolution. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that devolution is a product of globalization. Vectors of the implementation of devolution are presented: legislative powers, powers in the field of collecting and spending budget funds, language policy, ethnic policy, foreign policy powers. The systems of distribution of power between the center and regions in Germany, Italy, Spain, Great Britain are analyzed. The author notes the advantages and disadvantages of existing power distribution systems.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81352783","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":"Geopolitical aspect of the strategy of regional spatial development of the Russian Far East","authors":"M. Klicenko, I. Yarulin","doi":"10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-63-73","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-63-73","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the regions, in particular, the Far East, in the geostrategic projects of Russia. In the context of a significant complication of the foreign policy positions of the Russian Federation, the development of a state geopolitical concept that takes into account, in addition to the problems that have become traditional, the complexity of regional issues is of particular importance. In preparing the article, the principles of the system method were mainly used. The macroregions of modern Russia are considered in the unity of geopolitical, geographical, socio-cultural, economic and other determinants. The article discusses the specifics of the Russian Far East and the reasons for the increased interest in it at the present stage. The process of formation of new forms of internal regionalization is not spontaneous. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the ongoing processes of regionalization of both the Russian Federation and the PRC, other neighboring states with taking into account the peculiarities of regional geopolitics. In conclusion, the author substantiates the position that the Far Eastern region is important both in terms of resources and in building a system of national and regional security. The practical and theoretical significance of the work lies in the fact that the macro-region of the Russian Far East acquires strategic importance for the states of the Asia-Pacific region and the Pacific, and, therefore, the identification of their interests and opportunities for cooperation is important for further research and for the development of practical policies at both the federal and regional levels.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90761930","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":"Local self-government in the post-Soviet period: institutional aspects of evolution","authors":"M. Martynov","doi":"10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-17-30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12737/2587-6295-2023-7-2-17-30","url":null,"abstract":"The aim was to study the evolution of the institute of local self-government in the post-Soviet period of Russia's development. The research methods were content analysis of the messages of the President of the Russian Federation and work with archival materials. As a result of the analysis of the selected types of sources, the hypothesis was confirmed that the establishment of local self-government in the mid-1990s in a radical form in the form of separation from the public administration system was situationally political in nature, meeting the interests of the municipal elite. The political force that made the separation of local self-government bodies from the system of state power, the dominant discourse, became the municipal elite. Having provided support to B. in the summer and autumn of 1993. In opposition to Yeltsin with the Supreme Soviet, she received in return the maximum independence on the ground, which was fundamentally important for her in the conditions of unfolding privatization. At the same time, it was protected from control \"from above\" by the status of local self-government, isolated from the state structure, and there could be no control \"from below\", due to the absence of the middle class. The inconsistency of this form of organization of local self-government with the basic socio-economic parameters predetermined the further evolution of this institution in the direction of inclusion in the system of public power and strengthening of state control. Thus, this evolution was not a consequence of the central government's voluntaristic desire to spread authoritarian trends to the lower \"floors\" of management, as foreign authors often write, but a completely natural process. A particular conclusion of a methodological nature is also made that studies of the evolution of local self-government in the post-Soviet period demonstrate the limitations of a institutional approach that absolutizes the role of institutions in solving problems of social development.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80019182","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}