This article explores how citizens’ legitimacy perceptions are affected when decision makers deviate from the recommendations of a deliberative mini‐public (DMP), and what can be done to mitigate negative consequences. The results of a preregistered vignette experiment in Belgium (N = 2659) support our two main expectations. First, citizens’ legitimacy perceptions decrease when politicians do not follow the outcome of a DMP. Second, when politicians communicate responsively about this – meaning that they show respect for the recommendations and publicly justify why they deviated from them – legitimacy perceptions substantially increase, generally reaching the level of those cases where recommendations are followed. Diving deeper into this result also shows that for this effect to occur, citizens must find the provided reasoning valid and acceptable. Finally, the results hold among both policy winners and policy losers. These findings have implications for the literature on democratic innovations, empirical legitimacy, and political representation, but also for policymakers striving to combine arrangements of public participation that go beyond triviality, with political responsibility for the whole, and sustained mechanisms for accountability.
{"title":"When deliberative mini‐publics’ outcomes and political decisions clash: Examining how responsive communication influences legitimacy perceptions","authors":"Ine Goovaerts, Jenny de Fine Licht, Sofie Marien","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12711","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how citizens’ legitimacy perceptions are affected when decision makers deviate from the recommendations of a deliberative mini‐public (DMP), and what can be done to mitigate negative consequences. The results of a preregistered vignette experiment in Belgium (N = 2659) support our two main expectations. First, citizens’ legitimacy perceptions decrease when politicians do not follow the outcome of a DMP. Second, when politicians communicate responsively about this – meaning that they show respect for the recommendations and publicly justify why they deviated from them – legitimacy perceptions substantially increase, generally reaching the level of those cases where recommendations are followed. Diving deeper into this result also shows that for this effect to occur, citizens must find the provided reasoning valid and acceptable. Finally, the results hold among both policy winners and policy losers. These findings have implications for the literature on democratic innovations, empirical legitimacy, and political representation, but also for policymakers striving to combine arrangements of public participation that go beyond triviality, with political responsibility for the whole, and sustained mechanisms for accountability.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141801671","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}
Populism research has found much scholarly and public attention alike in recent years. Most research has focused on how populism can be defined, assessed or even measured. Even though there are emerging studies on populist messages, few of them have paid attention on causally identifying ways in which discourse can affect support for populist actors. This article positions itself within this gap and aims to answer which discursive elements make (non‐)populist messages appealing to varying groups of people. To answer this research question, I conducted a novel survey experiment on vote choice in Germany from December 2020 to January 2021 with N = 3325. Respondents were asked to choose between two candidate statements that displayed varying discursive elements. Thus, the experiment causally tested whether people‐centric rhetoric, blame attributive languages or populist style focusing on language complexity drive the populist vote. Results show that a neutral form of blame attribution, namely towards politicians, had the highest probability of driving vote choice, irrespective of respondents' underlying ideological preferences or populist attitudes. Simple language nearly always has a negative effect on vote choice, whereas people‐centrism adds a positive touch. These results show that there may be an increasing dissatisfaction with democracy that is voiced by blaming political elites for the malfunctioning of society.
{"title":"Let's talk populist? A survey experiment on effects of (non‐) populist discourse on vote choice","authors":"Rebecca C. Kittel","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12710","url":null,"abstract":"Populism research has found much scholarly and public attention alike in recent years. Most research has focused on how populism can be defined, assessed or even measured. Even though there are emerging studies on populist messages, few of them have paid attention on causally identifying ways in which discourse can affect support for populist actors. This article positions itself within this gap and aims to answer which discursive elements make (non‐)populist messages appealing to varying groups of people. To answer this research question, I conducted a novel survey experiment on vote choice in Germany from December 2020 to January 2021 with N = 3325. Respondents were asked to choose between two candidate statements that displayed varying discursive elements. Thus, the experiment causally tested whether people‐centric rhetoric, blame attributive languages or populist style focusing on language complexity drive the populist vote. Results show that a neutral form of blame attribution, namely towards politicians, had the highest probability of driving vote choice, irrespective of respondents' underlying ideological preferences or populist attitudes. Simple language nearly always has a negative effect on vote choice, whereas people‐centrism adds a positive touch. These results show that there may be an increasing dissatisfaction with democracy that is voiced by blaming political elites for the malfunctioning of society.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141810931","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}
Jeanne Marlier, M. Kaltenegger, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
Many voters support the inclusion of technocrats in government. Yet we know very little about why technocrats are considered more appealing than traditional party representatives. In particular, it is unclear which advantages and disadvantages voters attach to the defining traits of technocratic ministers: party independence and expertise. We engage with this question drawing on a pre‐registered survey experiment in Austria. We examine how manipulating ministers' party affiliation and expertise affects voters' perceptions of their issue competence and bargaining competence. Findings indicate that voters ascribe lower levels of issue competence to partisan ministers than to non‐partisan ministers, notwithstanding their actual expertise, and that ministers' partisanship shrinks the positive effect of expertise on perceived issue competence. However, this ‘partisanship penalty’ disappears for supporters of the minister's party. Moreover, voters perceive partisanship as an advantageous trait with regard to a minister's bargaining competence. While voters like technocrats for their expertise and independence from party politics, our findings reveal nuanced perceptions, with voters still recognizing distinct advantages in being represented by party politicians.
{"title":"Why do people like technocrats?","authors":"Jeanne Marlier, M. Kaltenegger, Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12709","url":null,"abstract":"Many voters support the inclusion of technocrats in government. Yet we know very little about why technocrats are considered more appealing than traditional party representatives. In particular, it is unclear which advantages and disadvantages voters attach to the defining traits of technocratic ministers: party independence and expertise. We engage with this question drawing on a pre‐registered survey experiment in Austria. We examine how manipulating ministers' party affiliation and expertise affects voters' perceptions of their issue competence and bargaining competence. Findings indicate that voters ascribe lower levels of issue competence to partisan ministers than to non‐partisan ministers, notwithstanding their actual expertise, and that ministers' partisanship shrinks the positive effect of expertise on perceived issue competence. However, this ‘partisanship penalty’ disappears for supporters of the minister's party. Moreover, voters perceive partisanship as an advantageous trait with regard to a minister's bargaining competence. While voters like technocrats for their expertise and independence from party politics, our findings reveal nuanced perceptions, with voters still recognizing distinct advantages in being represented by party politicians.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141812099","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}
<p>Guinaudeau, B., & Guinaudeau, I. (2023). (When) do electoral mandates set the agenda? Government capacity and mandate responsiveness in Germany<i>. European Journal of Political Research, 62</i>(4), 1212–1234. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12557</p><p>Page 1226, the following comment on Model 5 is incorrect: ‘The interaction term is not significant, suggesting that Bundesrat control does not significantly affect mandate responsiveness’. The interaction term is in fact significant and negative. This should have read: ‘Surprisingly, the negative and significant interaction effect suggests that having a majority in the Bundesrat even goes hand in hand with lower levels of mandate responsiveness’.</p><p>Still on page 1226, the number of the model in the following sentence is wrong: ‘The constitutive term for platform priorities in Model 7 shows that their relationship with legislative subjects is significant for areas immune to any Europeanization…’ Europeanization is analysed in Model 8 and not in Model 7. Therefore, the correction is: ‘The constitutive term for platform priorities in Model 8 shows that their relationship with legislative subjects is significant for areas immune to any Europeanization…’</p><p>Page 1228, a whole paragraph went lost in the finalization process. This paragraph was initially located between the second paragraph (‘Our findings also confirm the conditioning impact of budget conditions. The constitutive term for platform priorities shows that for a positive budget balance their impact on legislation is significant. The marginal effects displayed in Figure 4 show this is no longer the case when the account balance gets negative, however, as in the period from the early 1990s to the early 2000s’.) and the third one (‘This first empirical account of how mandate responsiveness is constrained by vertical and operational capacity generally supports the concerns that the relationship between electoral and legislative priorities relies on a certain level of national sovereignty and favourable budget conditions. When these conditions are not met, electoral and legislative priorities appear to be statistically disconnected from each other’.). The lost paragraph needs to be reinserted: ‘‘Finally, we examine how public pressure circumscribes the government's ability to focus lawmaking on mandate priorities. The marginal effects presented in Figure 5, based on Model 10, confirm the intuition that while popular governments enjoy comfortable latitude, unpopular governments face more difficulties in legislating on mandate priorities. We knew from past studies that popularity crises prompt them to tackle problems that are most salient among voters (e.g. Bernardi, 2020) and that this diverts executives away from their “owned” issues (Green & Jennings, 2019). These new findings reveal that this has important implications for mandate responsiveness as well: government have reasons to respond to salient public priorities, no mat
{"title":"Correction to (When) do electoral mandates set the agenda? Government capacity and mandate responsiveness in Germany","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12681","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1475-6765.12681","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Guinaudeau, B., & Guinaudeau, I. (2023). (When) do electoral mandates set the agenda? Government capacity and mandate responsiveness in Germany<i>. European Journal of Political Research, 62</i>(4), 1212–1234. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12557</p><p>Page 1226, the following comment on Model 5 is incorrect: ‘The interaction term is not significant, suggesting that Bundesrat control does not significantly affect mandate responsiveness’. The interaction term is in fact significant and negative. This should have read: ‘Surprisingly, the negative and significant interaction effect suggests that having a majority in the Bundesrat even goes hand in hand with lower levels of mandate responsiveness’.</p><p>Still on page 1226, the number of the model in the following sentence is wrong: ‘The constitutive term for platform priorities in Model 7 shows that their relationship with legislative subjects is significant for areas immune to any Europeanization…’ Europeanization is analysed in Model 8 and not in Model 7. Therefore, the correction is: ‘The constitutive term for platform priorities in Model 8 shows that their relationship with legislative subjects is significant for areas immune to any Europeanization…’</p><p>Page 1228, a whole paragraph went lost in the finalization process. This paragraph was initially located between the second paragraph (‘Our findings also confirm the conditioning impact of budget conditions. The constitutive term for platform priorities shows that for a positive budget balance their impact on legislation is significant. The marginal effects displayed in Figure 4 show this is no longer the case when the account balance gets negative, however, as in the period from the early 1990s to the early 2000s’.) and the third one (‘This first empirical account of how mandate responsiveness is constrained by vertical and operational capacity generally supports the concerns that the relationship between electoral and legislative priorities relies on a certain level of national sovereignty and favourable budget conditions. When these conditions are not met, electoral and legislative priorities appear to be statistically disconnected from each other’.). The lost paragraph needs to be reinserted: ‘‘Finally, we examine how public pressure circumscribes the government's ability to focus lawmaking on mandate priorities. The marginal effects presented in Figure 5, based on Model 10, confirm the intuition that while popular governments enjoy comfortable latitude, unpopular governments face more difficulties in legislating on mandate priorities. We knew from past studies that popularity crises prompt them to tackle problems that are most salient among voters (e.g. Bernardi, 2020) and that this diverts executives away from their “owned” issues (Green & Jennings, 2019). These new findings reveal that this has important implications for mandate responsiveness as well: government have reasons to respond to salient public priorities, no mat","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12681","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141696823","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}
While representing the next generation of democratic citizens, research on process preferences of adolescents is in its infancy. To analyse what institutional designs adolescents favour, we conducted a conjoint experiment with a unique, representative sample of 1,970 German pupils between the age of 14–17. We find that adolescents in general are ‘status quo’– democrats, preferring a parliament (representing the central institution of the existing representative system) to alternative institutions, namely citizen forums and an assertive leader. However, support for the status quo comes with several qualifications, namely expert input, slow and considerate political processes and a final referendum. Furthermore, we find differences between subgroups, whereby dissatisfied adolescents are more open to citizen forums and an assertive leader than satisfied adolescents. By contrast, more sophisticated adolescents have stronger preferences for the parliament as the main institution. Overall, our results suggest that a major overhaul of the democratic infrastructure does not seem to be a priority for the next generation of citizens, although there is some desire for innovation, namely the ‘blending’ of representative institutions with more citizen participation.
{"title":"‘Stick to the status quo’? A conjoint experiment with German adolescents on democratic designs","authors":"Vanessa Schwaiger, Andre Bächtiger","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12697","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12697","url":null,"abstract":"While representing the next generation of democratic citizens, research on process preferences of adolescents is in its infancy. To analyse what institutional designs adolescents favour, we conducted a conjoint experiment with a unique, representative sample of 1,970 German pupils between the age of 14–17. We find that adolescents in general are ‘status quo’– democrats, preferring a parliament (representing the central institution of the existing representative system) to alternative institutions, namely citizen forums and an assertive leader. However, support for the status quo comes with several qualifications, namely expert input, slow and considerate political processes and a final referendum. Furthermore, we find differences between subgroups, whereby dissatisfied adolescents are more open to citizen forums and an assertive leader than satisfied adolescents. By contrast, more sophisticated adolescents have stronger preferences for the parliament as the main institution. Overall, our results suggest that a major overhaul of the democratic infrastructure does not seem to be a priority for the next generation of citizens, although there is some desire for innovation, namely the ‘blending’ of representative institutions with more citizen participation.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141106257","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}
S. Rojon, Paulina K. Pankowska, D. Vittori, E. Paulis
Most studies of political participation have either focused on specific political behaviours or combined several behaviours into additive scales of institutional versus non‐institutional participation. Through a multi‐group latent class analysis of participation in 15 different political actions, conducted among citizens from four Western European countries, we identified five empirically grounded participant types that differ in their political engagement, socio‐demographic characteristics and political attitudes: ‘voter specialists’, ‘expressive voters’, ‘online participants’, ‘all‐round activists’ and ‘inactives’. While the same participant types were identified in all four countries, the proportion of citizens assigned to each type varies across countries. Our results challenge the claim that some citizens specialize in protest politics at the expense of electoral politics. Furthermore, our typological approach challenges previous findings on the individual characteristics associated with political (in)action.
{"title":"Comparing political participation profiles in four Western European countries","authors":"S. Rojon, Paulina K. Pankowska, D. Vittori, E. Paulis","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12695","url":null,"abstract":"Most studies of political participation have either focused on specific political behaviours or combined several behaviours into additive scales of institutional versus non‐institutional participation. Through a multi‐group latent class analysis of participation in 15 different political actions, conducted among citizens from four Western European countries, we identified five empirically grounded participant types that differ in their political engagement, socio‐demographic characteristics and political attitudes: ‘voter specialists’, ‘expressive voters’, ‘online participants’, ‘all‐round activists’ and ‘inactives’. While the same participant types were identified in all four countries, the proportion of citizens assigned to each type varies across countries. Our results challenge the claim that some citizens specialize in protest politics at the expense of electoral politics. Furthermore, our typological approach challenges previous findings on the individual characteristics associated with political (in)action.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141109265","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}
Systemic congruence between the whole legislature and the whole electorate (‘many‐to‐many’, or sociotropic congruence) should be the benchmark to evaluate a democratic system. Yet, most studies link shifts in democratic preferences to individual‐level representation (‘many‐to‐one’, or egocentric incongruence), since individual‐level representation failures should be more salient and visible for individual citizens. We argue that the sociotropic incongruence hypothesis has not been appropriately tested to date, because the measure does not vary at individual level in observational data. Using an experiment conducted in France, we manipulate various sociotropic (in)congruence scenarios at the individual level. In addition to the incongruence hypotheses, our original experiment tests whether offering expertise‐based justifications to incongruence attenuates the backlash against representatives. We find that, even when giving sociotropic incongruence a fair test, egocentric incongruence still consistently shapes democratic preferences, while the effect of sociotropic incongruence remains negligible. Furthermore, we find that narratives rooted in expertise claims do not attenuate the effect of representation failure on backlash against representative democracy: they exacerbate it.
{"title":"Vox populi, vox dei? The effect of sociotropic and egocentric incongruence on democratic preferences","authors":"MIRIAM SORACE, DIANE BOLET","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12689","url":null,"abstract":"Systemic congruence between the whole legislature and the whole electorate (‘many‐to‐many’, or sociotropic congruence) should be the benchmark to evaluate a democratic system. Yet, most studies link shifts in democratic preferences to individual‐level representation (‘many‐to‐one’, or egocentric incongruence), since individual‐level representation failures should be more salient and visible for individual citizens. We argue that the sociotropic incongruence hypothesis has not been appropriately tested to date, because the measure does not vary at individual level in observational data. Using an experiment conducted in France, we manipulate various sociotropic (in)congruence scenarios at the individual level. In addition to the incongruence hypotheses, our original experiment tests whether offering expertise‐based justifications to incongruence attenuates the backlash against representatives. We find that, even when giving sociotropic incongruence a fair test, egocentric incongruence still consistently shapes democratic preferences, while the effect of sociotropic incongruence remains negligible. Furthermore, we find that narratives rooted in expertise claims do not attenuate the effect of representation failure on backlash against representative democracy: they exacerbate it.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140971432","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}
The climate crisis looms but support for fuel taxation is low. How to boost support? The obvious way is to make the connection to the climate crisis explicit. Many observers fear, however, that policy myopia renders this strategy ineffective: As the consequences of the climate crisis are long‐term and insecure, people are loath to pay for costly countermeasures in the short term. We look at policy distraction as a second potential drag. We argue that climate crisis‐induced support for fuel taxation can also be undermined by other salient events which divert attention. To test our argument, we conduct a large‐scale survey experiment with more than 21,000 respondents in 17 European countries. Our results show that a simple climate crisis prime raises support for fuel taxation by 12 percentage points. The effect decreases but remains substantial when stressing the long time horizon of the climate crisis. It almost disappears when other current crises (COVID‐19 and Russian military aggression) are mentioned. Thus, distraction by concurrent events is a serious impediment to mobilising support for fuel taxation.
{"title":"The climate crisis, policy distraction and support for fuel taxation","authors":"Philipp Genschel, Julian Limberg, Laura Seelkopf","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12687","url":null,"abstract":"The climate crisis looms but support for fuel taxation is low. How to boost support? The obvious way is to make the connection to the climate crisis explicit. Many observers fear, however, that policy myopia renders this strategy ineffective: As the consequences of the climate crisis are long‐term and insecure, people are loath to pay for costly countermeasures in the short term. We look at policy distraction as a second potential drag. We argue that climate crisis‐induced support for fuel taxation can also be undermined by other salient events which divert attention. To test our argument, we conduct a large‐scale survey experiment with more than 21,000 respondents in 17 European countries. Our results show that a simple climate crisis prime raises support for fuel taxation by 12 percentage points. The effect decreases but remains substantial when stressing the long time horizon of the climate crisis. It almost disappears when other current crises (COVID‐19 and Russian military aggression) are mentioned. Thus, distraction by concurrent events is a serious impediment to mobilising support for fuel taxation.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140972748","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}
WOUTER SCHAKEL, MARKUS BAUMANN, DIANE BOLET, ROSIE CAMPBELL, TOM LOUWERSE, THOMAS ZITTEL
A growing body of literature investigates whether legislators show biases in their constituency communication contingent upon constituent traits. However, we know little about whether and how findings of unequal responsiveness generalize across countries (beyond the United States) and across different traits. We address both issues using a pre‐registered comparative field experiment conducted in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in which fictitious citizens (varied by ethnicity, social class and partisan affiliation) inquired about legislators’ policy priorities regarding the COVID‐19 pandemic. Our pooled analysis reveals that co‐partisanship and class both increase the responsiveness of legislators while we find no effect for ethnicity. The effect sizes we find are small, but comparable to earlier studies and also noteworthy in view of our hard test design. Our exploratory analyses further corroborate the lack of discrimination against ethnic minority constituents in showing no intersectionality effects, that is, interactions between ethnic‐minority and low‐class identities. This exploratory step also addresses the country specific differences that we find. We speculate about plausible underlying party system effects that we, however, cannot substantiate due to statistical limitations. This important issue requires further attention in future research.
{"title":"How political and social constituent traits affect the responsiveness of legislators: A Comparative Field Experiment","authors":"WOUTER SCHAKEL, MARKUS BAUMANN, DIANE BOLET, ROSIE CAMPBELL, TOM LOUWERSE, THOMAS ZITTEL","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12688","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of literature investigates whether legislators show biases in their constituency communication contingent upon constituent traits. However, we know little about whether and how findings of unequal responsiveness generalize across countries (beyond the United States) and across different traits. We address both issues using a pre‐registered comparative field experiment conducted in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in which fictitious citizens (varied by ethnicity, social class and partisan affiliation) inquired about legislators’ policy priorities regarding the COVID‐19 pandemic. Our pooled analysis reveals that co‐partisanship and class both increase the responsiveness of legislators while we find no effect for ethnicity. The effect sizes we find are small, but comparable to earlier studies and also noteworthy in view of our hard test design. Our exploratory analyses further corroborate the lack of discrimination against ethnic minority constituents in showing no intersectionality effects, that is, interactions between ethnic‐minority and low‐class identities. This exploratory step also addresses the country specific differences that we find. We speculate about plausible underlying party system effects that we, however, cannot substantiate due to statistical limitations. This important issue requires further attention in future research.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140975287","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}
While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growth strategies citizens prefer and (3) what shapes their preferences. We address these questions through a new survey of public opinion in Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom, which exemplify different economic models. We find that preferences for growth strategies are consistent with other policy preferences and are meaningfully structured by class, retirement status, and to a lesser extent, sector of employment. At the same time, differences across class and sector are small, and a large majority of respondents across countries favour wage‐led growth. This hints at a possible ‘representation gap’ since this growth strategy is in crisis everywhere.
{"title":"Preferences for growth strategies in advanced democracies: A new ‘representation gap’?","authors":"Lucio Baccaro, B. Bremer, Erik Neimanns","doi":"10.1111/1475-6765.12686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12686","url":null,"abstract":"While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growth strategies citizens prefer and (3) what shapes their preferences. We address these questions through a new survey of public opinion in Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom, which exemplify different economic models. We find that preferences for growth strategies are consistent with other policy preferences and are meaningfully structured by class, retirement status, and to a lesser extent, sector of employment. At the same time, differences across class and sector are small, and a large majority of respondents across countries favour wage‐led growth. This hints at a possible ‘representation gap’ since this growth strategy is in crisis everywhere.","PeriodicalId":48273,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Political Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140991464","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}
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