Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review最新文献

{"title":"Explaining Conspiracy Beliefs and Scepticism around the COVID-19 Pandemic.","authors":"Kostas Gemenis","doi":"10.1111/spsr.12467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12467","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Public opinion on COVID-19 provides new empirical evidence for the debate on the ideological contours of conspiracy theories. I report findings from a web survey in Greece where participants were recruited via paid advertising on Facebook and the study sample was adjusted for age, gender, education, domicile, and region of residence using a nationally representative reference sample. I find that beliefs about conspiracy theories are more correlated than the values associated with established political ideologies, and that conspiracy beliefs and scepticism about the pandemic are best explained by belief in unrelated political and medical conspiracy theories. No other demographic or attitudinal variable has such a strong influence, and the results are robust to different statistical specifications. In comparison, the effect of ideology measured by left-right self-placement is rather negligible and further moderated by trust in government. The results have implications for the strategies aimed at fighting disinformation during public health emergencies.</p>","PeriodicalId":93813,"journal":{"name":"Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review","volume":"27 2","pages":"229-242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/spsr.12467","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40667695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Covid-19 - A Political Science Perspective.","authors":"Martino Maggetti,&nbsp;Iris Meyer,&nbsp;Anke Tresch","doi":"10.1111/spsr.12468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12468","url":null,"abstract":"The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly increased the use of knowledge and scientific expertise in policymaking. Governments around the world have relied on epidemiologists and virologists to formulate their non-pharmaceutical responses (e.g., lockdowns) to the massive public health crisis, and to devise and implement their health care and vaccination strategies. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is also a public policy matter. The public health crisis exacerbates economic inequalities, creates new social cleavages, affects party politics and public support for the government, and the stability of the political system. Political science can enhance our understanding of the political, social, and economic implications of the pandemic, and inform policymakers on a large variety of key issues, including the performance of public health systems, the role played by the main political actors in different countries, the evolution of public (dis)satisfaction with governments’ handling of the crisis, and the unfolding of international cooperation in the management of the crisis. So as to stimulate reflection and take stock of ongoing research, we released a call for contributions for the current Swiss Political Science Review (SPSR) special issue on Covid19 – A Political Science Perspective in September 2020. The call has met an extraordinary success. We received 107 proposals – a number which testifies to the interest and necessity of such an initiative – among which we selected the finest, most pertinent, and most feasible in the short time frame at disposal, while also trying to cover a broad range of topics. The selected format of shorter research notes has been instrumental in ensuring a speedy peer review process and timely publication – also thanks to our external reviewers, who agreed upon and have made themselves available for the accelerated review procedure. The contributions to this special issue point to a number of key insights. Taken together, they depict the outbreak of Covid-19 as a critical juncture that confronted policy-makers with a “super-wicked problem” emerging in a situation of highest uncertainty. Policy responses have frequently been conceived and implemented with an experimental character and have produced a number of unintended consequences. First, various contributions concentrate on the determinants of policy responses to the public health crisis. They have shown how the type and scope of policy responses to the Covid-19 crisis have been affected by policy dynamics and institutional factors. The role of social media has been portrayed as central for shaping the public debate and the spread of (dis)information in the wake of the emergency (Gemenis; Gilardi et al.), especially in a context where policy frames decisively affect citizens’ attitudes and preferences for containment strategies and risk management programmes (Olmastroni et al.). Against this background, independent regulators have become central for the governance of t","PeriodicalId":93813,"journal":{"name":"Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review","volume":"27 2","pages":"227-228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/spsr.12468","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40668711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pandemic and Partisan Polarisation: Voter Evaluation of UK Government Handling During Covid-19.","authors":"Tim Vlandas, Margaryta Klymak","doi":"10.1111/spsr.12457","DOIUrl":"10.1111/spsr.12457","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What is the effect of pandemics on partisan perceptions of government competence? Taking the case of Covid-19 in the UK, we explore how voters' assessments of the government's handling of the economy and health were affected by four events: the first UK Covid-19 death; the national lockdown; Boris Johnson's hospitalisation; and Cummings' scandal. Using a large representative weekly survey in the last year totalling over around 30'000 respondents, our results show that Labour voters had the worst assessments of government handling. The first death deteriorated perceptions of government handling of health among both Labour and Conservative voters, while Boris Johnson's hospitalisation improved perceptions among most voters. Lockdown improved the perception of health handling but at the cost of more negative perceptions of its handling of the economy. The Cummings scandal had a negative effect on perceptions of government handling of economy but surprisingly improved perceptions of its handling of health.</p>","PeriodicalId":93813,"journal":{"name":"Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review","volume":"27 2","pages":"325-338"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8242772/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40667696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social Media and Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Switzerland.","authors":"Fabrizio Gilardi, Theresa Gessler, Maël Kubli, Stefan Müller","doi":"10.1111/spsr.12458","DOIUrl":"10.1111/spsr.12458","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We study the role of social media in debates regarding two policy responses to COVID-19 in Switzerland: face-mask rules and contact-tracing apps. We use a dictionary classifier to categorize 612'177 tweets by parties, politicians, and the public as well as 441'458 articles published in 76 newspapers between February and August 2020. We distinguish between \"problem\" (COVID-19) and \"solutions\" (face masks and contact-tracing apps) and, using a vector autoregression approach, we analyze the relationship between their salience on social and traditional media, as well as among different groups on social media. We find that overall attention to COVID-19 was not driven by endogenous dynamics between the different actors. By contrast, the debate on face masks was led by the attentive public and by politicians, whereas parties and newspapers followed. The results illustrate how social media challenge the capacity of party and media elites to craft a consensus regarding the appropriateness of different measures as responses to a major crisis.</p>","PeriodicalId":93813,"journal":{"name":"Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft = Revue suisse de science politique = Swiss political science review","volume":"27 2","pages":"243-256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8242806/pdf/SPSR-27-243.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40668709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}