Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.1978820
Xavier Romero‐Vidal
ABSTRACT Despite its crucial role for social scientists, the concept of social class remains elusive and its measurement inconsistent. Building on the class voting literature, this study presents an updated assessment of the explanatory power of vote of objective class indicators (occupation, income and education) and subjective class measures. To do so, it uses three class schemes commonly used in survey questionnaires: two of them refer to the lowest categories as ‘lower’ or ‘working’ class alternatively, while the third one uses a numerical scale. This article scrutinizes (a) the link between objective indicators and subjective class, (b) the association between the two sets of measures and voting behaviour and ideology and (c) the influence of different subjective class measurements on the results. Based on an experimental survey fielded in Catalonia, the results show that different subjective class schemes result in substantially different distributions of class identities. Despite these differences, all subjective class measures appear to be more robustly associated with political preferences and behaviour than objective indicators. Once subjective class is controlled for, the significance of the association between objective indicators and the dependent variable is influenced by the stratifying power of the survey question used to measure class identity.
{"title":"Measuring objective and subjective class: the effects of survey questionnaires on the study of class voting","authors":"Xavier Romero‐Vidal","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.1978820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1978820","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Despite its crucial role for social scientists, the concept of social class remains elusive and its measurement inconsistent. Building on the class voting literature, this study presents an updated assessment of the explanatory power of vote of objective class indicators (occupation, income and education) and subjective class measures. To do so, it uses three class schemes commonly used in survey questionnaires: two of them refer to the lowest categories as ‘lower’ or ‘working’ class alternatively, while the third one uses a numerical scale. This article scrutinizes (a) the link between objective indicators and subjective class, (b) the association between the two sets of measures and voting behaviour and ideology and (c) the influence of different subjective class measurements on the results. Based on an experimental survey fielded in Catalonia, the results show that different subjective class schemes result in substantially different distributions of class identities. Despite these differences, all subjective class measures appear to be more robustly associated with political preferences and behaviour than objective indicators. Once subjective class is controlled for, the significance of the association between objective indicators and the dependent variable is influenced by the stratifying power of the survey question used to measure class identity.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44904859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.1892456
Henrik Serup Christensen, Theodora Järvi, Mikko Mattila, Åsa Schoultz
ABSTRACT Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar for different sources. We study the effects of endorsements from three different sources – family and close friends, networks on social media and Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) – on candidate favorability. We do so with a choice-based conjoint experiment embedded in a survey from Finland (n = 1021), where we also examine differences in effects across political sophistication (political interest, frequency of political discussions, internal political efficacy, party identification, and voting in the last parliamentary election). The results show that endorsements from VAAs and family and friends have positive effects while social media networks do not. We do not find systematic differences in effects across levels of political sophistication no matter how we operationalize it. This shows that it is important to consider the source of an endorsement to appreciate the effect, no matter who is the recipient.
{"title":"How voters choose one out of many: a conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice","authors":"Henrik Serup Christensen, Theodora Järvi, Mikko Mattila, Åsa Schoultz","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.1892456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1892456","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar for different sources. We study the effects of endorsements from three different sources – family and close friends, networks on social media and Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) – on candidate favorability. We do so with a choice-based conjoint experiment embedded in a survey from Finland (n = 1021), where we also examine differences in effects across political sophistication (political interest, frequency of political discussions, internal political efficacy, party identification, and voting in the last parliamentary election). The results show that endorsements from VAAs and family and friends have positive effects while social media networks do not. We do not find systematic differences in effects across levels of political sophistication no matter how we operationalize it. This shows that it is important to consider the source of an endorsement to appreciate the effect, no matter who is the recipient.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1892456","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44693864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2020.1870150
M. Ovádek
ABSTRACT Much of empirical research on European integration relies on data published by European Union (EU) institutions concerning the EU’s laws and policies. However, despite wide disciplinary appeal and increasing regularization of data repositories such as Eur-Lex, researchers have so far not developed a standardized tool for accessing the main EU law databases. This research note presents the benefits of creating an open-source data collection infrastructure that takes advantage of the structured way in which data is published by the EU. I exemplify how software implementing this idea can be used by researchers.
{"title":"Facilitating access to data on European Union laws","authors":"M. Ovádek","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2020.1870150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2020.1870150","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Much of empirical research on European integration relies on data published by European Union (EU) institutions concerning the EU’s laws and policies. However, despite wide disciplinary appeal and increasing regularization of data repositories such as Eur-Lex, researchers have so far not developed a standardized tool for accessing the main EU law databases. This research note presents the benefits of creating an open-source data collection infrastructure that takes advantage of the structured way in which data is published by the EU. I exemplify how software implementing this idea can be used by researchers.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2474736X.2020.1870150","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43548848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.1934048
F. Maier
ABSTRACT Citizenship is a contested and multifaceted concept. This article introduces a research design to explore individual perspectives on citizenship in Germany. Its emphasis is on capturing broad perspectives on citizenship in a wide array of variations and terms. To achieve this, the article proceeds in two steps: First, a concourse on citizenship is constructed. To populate the concourse, I draw on citizenship theory and the German-speaking Twitter discourse on citizenship. Second, that concourse is used for a further, systematic empirical investigation of perspectives on citizenship in Germany. Results from an online Q-methodological survey with 294 German citizens from autumn 2020 are presented. Four factors emerge from the Q-survey: critical ethno-culturalists, active democrats, liberal democrats, and cosmopolitans. While all associate different concepts of belonging, participation, and equality with citizenship, all four conceptualizations share the view that citizenship is more than a status and connect it to obligation. Obligation takes different forms, namely common tradition, political participation, liberal institutions, and humanist connection. The article combines the most distinctive conflict lines in citizenship studies by drawing on both theoretical and empirical approaches. It thereby contributes a novel methodology and relevant deeper insight into the complexities of citizenship.
{"title":"Citizenship from below: exploring subjective perspectives on German citizenship","authors":"F. Maier","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.1934048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1934048","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Citizenship is a contested and multifaceted concept. This article introduces a research design to explore individual perspectives on citizenship in Germany. Its emphasis is on capturing broad perspectives on citizenship in a wide array of variations and terms. To achieve this, the article proceeds in two steps: First, a concourse on citizenship is constructed. To populate the concourse, I draw on citizenship theory and the German-speaking Twitter discourse on citizenship. Second, that concourse is used for a further, systematic empirical investigation of perspectives on citizenship in Germany. Results from an online Q-methodological survey with 294 German citizens from autumn 2020 are presented. Four factors emerge from the Q-survey: critical ethno-culturalists, active democrats, liberal democrats, and cosmopolitans. While all associate different concepts of belonging, participation, and equality with citizenship, all four conceptualizations share the view that citizenship is more than a status and connect it to obligation. Obligation takes different forms, namely common tradition, political participation, liberal institutions, and humanist connection. The article combines the most distinctive conflict lines in citizenship studies by drawing on both theoretical and empirical approaches. It thereby contributes a novel methodology and relevant deeper insight into the complexities of citizenship.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1934048","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44590592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.1989984
M. Kołczyńska, P. Bürkner
ABSTRACT Social scientists can choose from among multiple quality of governance indicators which use different conceptualizations of governance and its components, rely on different data sources, and employ different aggregation and scaling techniques. Despite all differences, these indicators are commonly found to be strongly correlated, which makes the choice of indicator for a given analysis seem inconsequential. We focus on rule of law indicators to demonstrate that correlations among them are indeed high when comparing across countries or using pooled country-year data sets, but are surprisingly low – sometimes even negative – within countries. Given the increased interest of researchers in longitudinal analyses with country time series, low agreement between country time trends in the rule of law is concerning. We illustrate the problem with an analysis of the effect of rule of law on popular support for democracy, which leads to opposite conclusions depending on which measure of rule of law is used.
{"title":"Marketplace of indicators: inconsistencies between country trends of measures of the rule of law","authors":"M. Kołczyńska, P. Bürkner","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.1989984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1989984","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Social scientists can choose from among multiple quality of governance indicators which use different conceptualizations of governance and its components, rely on different data sources, and employ different aggregation and scaling techniques. Despite all differences, these indicators are commonly found to be strongly correlated, which makes the choice of indicator for a given analysis seem inconsequential. We focus on rule of law indicators to demonstrate that correlations among them are indeed high when comparing across countries or using pooled country-year data sets, but are surprisingly low – sometimes even negative – within countries. Given the increased interest of researchers in longitudinal analyses with country time series, low agreement between country time trends in the rule of law is concerning. We illustrate the problem with an analysis of the effect of rule of law on popular support for democracy, which leads to opposite conclusions depending on which measure of rule of law is used.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47779111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018267
Emilien Paulis, Emilie van Haute
ABSTRACT This paper looks at the mobilizing effect of personal networks on the individual propensity to favour some types of political participation over others, in a context of changing participation repertoires. We rely on original egocentric network data gathered via a unique online survey conducted among a quota sample of 2801 Belgian citizens. We show that dominant political behaviour(s) in a network diffuse as byproduct of social proximity and influence: the more someone has been exposed to a certain type of participation in the past, the more this person is likely to be recruited in the same type of participation in the future (engagement), or, if this person was already active, to retain the same participatory behaviour (retention). Moreover, our results point to a cross-over dissuasive effect across types of participation that keeps citizens away from certain participatory behaviours. In particular, exposure to online and instiutionalized participation in their personal network decreases respondents’ likelihood to engage in non-insitutionalized participation. Overall, we stress the added-value of a meso-level approach that embeds citizens in their personal network to understand their participatory choices.
{"title":"You will never participate alone. Personal networks and political participation in Belgium","authors":"Emilien Paulis, Emilie van Haute","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018267","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper looks at the mobilizing effect of personal networks on the individual propensity to favour some types of political participation over others, in a context of changing participation repertoires. We rely on original egocentric network data gathered via a unique online survey conducted among a quota sample of 2801 Belgian citizens. We show that dominant political behaviour(s) in a network diffuse as byproduct of social proximity and influence: the more someone has been exposed to a certain type of participation in the past, the more this person is likely to be recruited in the same type of participation in the future (engagement), or, if this person was already active, to retain the same participatory behaviour (retention). Moreover, our results point to a cross-over dissuasive effect across types of participation that keeps citizens away from certain participatory behaviours. In particular, exposure to online and instiutionalized participation in their personal network decreases respondents’ likelihood to engage in non-insitutionalized participation. Overall, we stress the added-value of a meso-level approach that embeds citizens in their personal network to understand their participatory choices.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48810780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.1957399
Kai M. Thaler
ABSTRACT Military integration seeks to improve counterinsurgency and peacebuilding outcomes by incorporating former rebels into preexisting or new state security forces during or after civil wars. While peacebuilders continue to promote military integration, there is mixed evidence about its effectiveness and the mechanisms through which it affects counterinsurgency and peace duration. One underexplored mechanism is the effect of military integration on intelligence capacity and the information available to security forces. Information is key to successful counterinsurgency and peacebuilding efforts, and I argue that military integration of ex-rebels can improve intelligence capacity by providing gains in knowledge of human and physical geography, access to preexisting social networks and informants, and knowledge of the relative effectiveness of government and rebel tactics. I illustrate these improvements with evidence from conflicts across time and space and brief case narratives from the Philippines, Uganda, and Rwanda. I conclude by discussing policy implications, cases of unsuccessful integration and negative effects on intelligence, and questions for future research on the intelligence aspect of military integration.
{"title":"Military integration and intelligence capacity: informational effects of incorporating former rebels","authors":"Kai M. Thaler","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.1957399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1957399","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Military integration seeks to improve counterinsurgency and peacebuilding outcomes by incorporating former rebels into preexisting or new state security forces during or after civil wars. While peacebuilders continue to promote military integration, there is mixed evidence about its effectiveness and the mechanisms through which it affects counterinsurgency and peace duration. One underexplored mechanism is the effect of military integration on intelligence capacity and the information available to security forces. Information is key to successful counterinsurgency and peacebuilding efforts, and I argue that military integration of ex-rebels can improve intelligence capacity by providing gains in knowledge of human and physical geography, access to preexisting social networks and informants, and knowledge of the relative effectiveness of government and rebel tactics. I illustrate these improvements with evidence from conflicts across time and space and brief case narratives from the Philippines, Uganda, and Rwanda. I conclude by discussing policy implications, cases of unsuccessful integration and negative effects on intelligence, and questions for future research on the intelligence aspect of military integration.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1957399","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44596330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2020.1868946
Louise Knops
ABSTRACT The dramatic impacts of climate change have pushed thousands of young activists to shout out their indignation. These mobilizations have become the symbol of our ‘tipping era’: a clash of worlds between attachments to modernity and attempts to become ‘terrestrial’ (Latour, 2018) to stay within ecological boundaries. In this field, there has been an increasing body of theoretical work but empirical research is still in its infancy, providing little evidence of this ongoing struggle and what we can learn from the young activists’ indignation. This article responds to this gap by exploring the case of Youth for Climate (YfC), the Belgian branch of the Fridays for Future movement. In particular, I show how their indignation, expressed in a narrative form, is pivotal to understand the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary within the movement. Based on survey data, participant observations and focus groups, I conduct a two-level analysis. First, I find that the YfC indignation produces three inter-related stories: of unworthy politics, economic abuse and human survival. Second, I reveal how the affectivity of these stories articulates the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary: from hope in the existing political institutions which anchors them in the modern imaginary, to compassion and fear which open a more terrestrial imaginary of collapse. Together, rather than mere competition, these stories reveal an ongoing oscillation and intersection between the modern and the terrestrial.
{"title":"Stuck between the modern and the terrestrial: the indignation of the youth for climate movement","authors":"Louise Knops","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2020.1868946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2020.1868946","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The dramatic impacts of climate change have pushed thousands of young activists to shout out their indignation. These mobilizations have become the symbol of our ‘tipping era’: a clash of worlds between attachments to modernity and attempts to become ‘terrestrial’ (Latour, 2018) to stay within ecological boundaries. In this field, there has been an increasing body of theoretical work but empirical research is still in its infancy, providing little evidence of this ongoing struggle and what we can learn from the young activists’ indignation. This article responds to this gap by exploring the case of Youth for Climate (YfC), the Belgian branch of the Fridays for Future movement. In particular, I show how their indignation, expressed in a narrative form, is pivotal to understand the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary within the movement. Based on survey data, participant observations and focus groups, I conduct a two-level analysis. First, I find that the YfC indignation produces three inter-related stories: of unworthy politics, economic abuse and human survival. Second, I reveal how the affectivity of these stories articulates the competition between the modern and the terrestrial imaginary: from hope in the existing political institutions which anchors them in the modern imaginary, to compassion and fear which open a more terrestrial imaginary of collapse. Together, rather than mere competition, these stories reveal an ongoing oscillation and intersection between the modern and the terrestrial.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/2474736X.2020.1868946","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45316218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.2012086
J. Bongers, Lynn Hillary, G. Wieman
ABSTRACT The story of European Integration has often been told as that of an ‘ever closer union’. This narrative has rightly attracted criticism over the years. However, it is worth exploring through which practices this ‘ever closer union’ is pursued, because these practices go to the heart of what the European Union is. Existing concepts used to interpret cooperation in the European Union, like harmonization, are unfulfilling, as they are used in different ways depending on the field in which they are applied. Currently, common ground and conceptual clarity are lacking. In an attempt to provide the kind of simplicity that facilitates cross-disciplinary analysis, we introduce the concept of aligning rulesets, a five-level framework for studying international cooperation (differentiating between (1) full alignment, (2) methods-based alignment, (3) ends-based alignment, (4) principles-based alignment and (5) no alignment). After introducing our framework, we demonstrate its applicability in the domains of statistical measurement, the responsibility for asylum applications, and the COVID-19 vaccine purchasing policy.
{"title":"Aligning rulesets: understanding cooperation in the European Union","authors":"J. Bongers, Lynn Hillary, G. Wieman","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.2012086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.2012086","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The story of European Integration has often been told as that of an ‘ever closer union’. This narrative has rightly attracted criticism over the years. However, it is worth exploring through which practices this ‘ever closer union’ is pursued, because these practices go to the heart of what the European Union is. Existing concepts used to interpret cooperation in the European Union, like harmonization, are unfulfilling, as they are used in different ways depending on the field in which they are applied. Currently, common ground and conceptual clarity are lacking. In an attempt to provide the kind of simplicity that facilitates cross-disciplinary analysis, we introduce the concept of aligning rulesets, a five-level framework for studying international cooperation (differentiating between (1) full alignment, (2) methods-based alignment, (3) ends-based alignment, (4) principles-based alignment and (5) no alignment). After introducing our framework, we demonstrate its applicability in the domains of statistical measurement, the responsibility for asylum applications, and the COVID-19 vaccine purchasing policy.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47997034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018266
T. N. Fjørtoft, Asimina Michailidou
ABSTRACT How is the power of independent agencies legitimized? This is a central question in modern democratic societies. Earlier research has privileged technical expertise as the predominant source of legitimacy for such agencies. While recent contributions have challenged this assumption, we have seen few attempts to systematically analyze the conditions under which different sources of legitimacy are established in public discourse. We address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework of four legitimation arguments and test their prevalence through an empirical analysis of the public legitimation of EU agencies. We hypothesize that the prevalence of each argument depends on characteristics of the agency, especially its scientific ‘hardness’ and its public salience. We test our hypotheses in three steps. We first combine automated text classification and qualitative content analysis to analyze Swedish news media coverage of three EU agencies, 2005–2019. In a third step, we quantitatively analyze aggregated data on the Swedish news coverage of all EU agencies 2005–2019. We find more technical-expertise discourse in coverage of hard-science agencies, and more political-control discourse where agencies are ‘softer’ or more salient. Our findings are therefore relevant for ongoing normative and empirical discussions on the legitimacy of independent agencies.
{"title":"Beyond expertise: the public construction of legitimacy for EU agencies","authors":"T. N. Fjørtoft, Asimina Michailidou","doi":"10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.2018266","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How is the power of independent agencies legitimized? This is a central question in modern democratic societies. Earlier research has privileged technical expertise as the predominant source of legitimacy for such agencies. While recent contributions have challenged this assumption, we have seen few attempts to systematically analyze the conditions under which different sources of legitimacy are established in public discourse. We address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework of four legitimation arguments and test their prevalence through an empirical analysis of the public legitimation of EU agencies. We hypothesize that the prevalence of each argument depends on characteristics of the agency, especially its scientific ‘hardness’ and its public salience. We test our hypotheses in three steps. We first combine automated text classification and qualitative content analysis to analyze Swedish news media coverage of three EU agencies, 2005–2019. In a third step, we quantitatively analyze aggregated data on the Swedish news coverage of all EU agencies 2005–2019. We find more technical-expertise discourse in coverage of hard-science agencies, and more political-control discourse where agencies are ‘softer’ or more salient. Our findings are therefore relevant for ongoing normative and empirical discussions on the legitimacy of independent agencies.","PeriodicalId":20269,"journal":{"name":"Political Research Exchange","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47997662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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