Politische Vierteljahresschrift最新文献

The GLES Open Science Challenge 2021 was a pioneering initiative in quantitative political science. Aimed at increasing the adoption of replicable and transparent research practices, it led to this special issue. The project combined the rigor of registered reports-a new publication format in which studies are evaluated prior to data collection/access and analysis-with quantitative political science research in the context of the 2021 German federal election. This special issue, which features the registered reports that resulted from the project, shows that transparent research following open science principles benefits our discipline and substantially contributes to quantitative political science. In this introduction to the special issue, we first elaborate on why more transparent research practices are necessary to guarantee the cumulative progress of scientific knowledge. We then show how registered reports can contribute to increasing the transparency of scientific practices. Next, we discuss the application of open science practices in quantitative political science to date. And finally, we present the process and schedule of the GLES Open Science Challenge and give an overview of the contributions included in this special issue.

Published findings of opinion polls are an important part of the political coverage before elections. Thus, researchers have long investigated whether the perceived popularity of political parties can lead to even more voters following this majority. However, empirical findings on this so-called political bandwagon effect are mixed. In the present paper, we integrate theories from political science and social psychology to explain these inconsistencies through social class as a potential moderating variable. Based on previous findings regarding consumer decisions, we hypothesized that bandwagon effects are greater among voters with lower social class. To investigate this hypothesis, we combined data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) Rolling Cross-Section 2021, which was collected over the 55 days before the 2021 German federal election, with the results of published preelection polls. Using separate multilevel models for each of the parties, we found no evidence for bandwagon effects. Only for the Social Democratic Party were poll results related to voting intentions assessed on the following day, suggesting that polls might have contributed to the party's electoral success. However, there was no evidence for a moderation of bandwagon effects by voters' social class. Accordingly, we could not resolve the mixed findings in this field of research. Our results point to important open questions in research on bandwagon effects in multiparty systems as well as on effects of social class in Germany.

Supplementary information: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00417-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We provide the first systematic research into the origins of subjective freedom of speech in Germany. Relying on the GLES 2021 Cross-Section Pre-Election Survey, which includes a newly designed survey item on subjective freedom of speech, we evaluate a whole range of plausible candidate hypotheses. First, we contribute to cumulative research by testing the explanatory factors in Gibson (1993)-citizens' social class, their political involvement and political preferences, and their personality dispositions-for the German case. Second, we move beyond the state of the art and test three new hypotheses that reflect more recent political developments and arguments in the free speech debate: the role of social media, increasing political and social polarization, and the rise of populism. Importantly, all hypothesis tests reported in this paper have been preregistered prior to data collection. Our results reveal that three explanatory factors are significantly, consistently, and substantively related to subjective free speech in Germany: political preferences, populist attitudes, and identification with the Alternative for Germany party.

Supplementary information: The online version of this article (10.1007/s11615-022-00414-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.