European Journal of Political Research最新文献

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.

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.

Perceptions that others will contribute their fair share are fundamental to the legitimacy of the political system. To better understand how these perceptions take shape beyond the influence of political narratives and socializations, this paper investigates the role of the formative personal experiences of benefit recipiency and income changes in explaining views on welfare abuse as well as tax evasion. Theoretically, both increasing identification or ‘othering’ could occur when these experiences lead to new group adherence. To test this empirically, three-wave Norwegian panel data (2014–2017) are analysed. Within- as well as between-group analyses show that becoming dependent on benefits leads to lower perceptions of welfare abuse, while positive income changes prompt higher perceptions of tax evasion, albeit mostly among those with lower income levels. Overall, this article shows that formative personal experiences affect views that are fundamental to the perceived fairness, legitimacy and sustainability of the social and political system.

Immigration is a hot topic in Europe, but research on the media effects on public attention to immigration remains limited. We examine how media coverage affects the degree of importance attached to immigration in seven Western European Union member states. Data come from an extensive analysis of claims in printed newspapers, and the Eurobarometer (2002–2009). The continuous sample of news coverage is aggregated into a biannual panel, and we relate these data to citizens’ perceptions of the most important issues in their country 6 months later (lagged). The public consider immigration more important than other policy-related issues when there is an increase in the volume of news and more political claims on the topic in the media. The media environment appears to be an exogenous actor that can have agenda-setting effects on public concern about immigration. Our results highlight limitations of both the ‘policy-gap’ thesis and thermostatic models of policy making.

When individuals are confronted with information about why and where gender quotas should apply, does it affect their attitudes? A growing literature argues that information affects opinions on gender equality, but so far there is more consensus on who supports such policies than on what type of information convinces those on the fence. Using a survey experiment fielded among Norwegian citizens and elected representatives, we examine the potential of new rationales and different areas of application to find out what makes (some) people more supportive of gender quotas. Overall, we find that citizens are more affected by moral arguments than elected representatives. Among citizens, we find that emphasizing women's distinct insights boosts support among those with less fixed opinions, and that a talent framing hinting at women as an untapped resource might cause the opposite reaction. Representatives are affected by information about where gender quotas apply, as they are particularly sensitive to information on gender quotas in politics. Quite unexpectedly, we find that those on the right are more supportive of gender quotas in the leadership of religious institutions than elsewhere, and that this seems to be driven at least partly by scepticism against migrants.

Almost all anti-corruption drives contain an awareness raising element. However, recent research reveals that anti-corruption awareness raising messages can backfire by triggering a sense that corruption is too big of a problem to tackle, thus encouraging resignation rather than resistance. We advance this literature by exploring another potential unintended impact. Corruption scandals have played a prominent role in the rise of many populist leaders, who claim to challenge ‘the corrupt status quo’. We test whether anti-corruption messages that call attention to the problem unintentionally help to foster populist attitudes through an original survey experiment in Albania. Breaking new ground by testing messages based on descriptive (how the world is) and injunctive (how people want it to be) norms, we find that while the latter has no effect, exposure to the former – which is more common in contemporary anti-corruption campaigns – is associated with greater agreement with populist sentiments and beliefs.

Does candidate gender matter for vote choice? Whereas experimental research suggests an average preference for female candidates, observational studies tend to find null effects. In this note, we address the recent debate on how to measure voter preferences on the aggregate and the individual level. We argue that candidate gender preferences exist, but that whether and when they are revealed varies between and within voters. Drawing on an observational design and using data from over 500,000 individual ballots in Lithuanian elections, we employ multilevel regression and exponential random graph models to show how voters' candidate gender preferences are distributed across the electorate and how they vary in size and direction. We find that about half of all voters prefer either male or female candidates. Whereas preference for male candidates tends to be revealed in the first and second preference votes, preference for female candidates is first revealed in lower preference votes. Our results help explain contradictory findings in the literature and illustrate how observational data and methods can be used to assess voter preferences within electorates.

Party competition sometimes resembles an auction, where parties seek to ‘buy’ elections through promises of economic largesse. In this article, I argue that whether parties engage in this practice will depend on political circumstances, such as the level of ideological competition. Incentives to promise more to voters will also vary depending on a party's electoral prospects: for parties that expect a significant level of government responsibility, promising too much is a risky strategy. I test these arguments by focusing on the spending commitments in party manifestos from 20 countries over the period 1945–2017. In line with expectations, parties tend to make more expansionary election pledges when ideological competition is more muted. In addition, left-wing parties’ spending commitments are found to be influenced by their projected seat shares (based on opinion polls from before the start of the election campaign) relative to their competitors. Specifically, the stronger a left-wing party's electoral prospects, the more fiscally conservative it tends to be, and vice versa.

Coalition policymaking concerns not only who decides what in which jurisdiction but also when, how speedy and in what rhythm. Due to the limited time budget and shadow of future elections, parties in charge of respective ministerial portfolios have to strategically organize their policy agendas to trade off between policy and electoral incentives in the face of coalition partners who monitor and control ministerial autonomy. However, despite the burgeoning literature on coalition governance, the temporal dimension of ministerial agenda control is less well understood. I advance this research by proposing a model to directly account for the influence of time budgets on timing decisions of ministers in policy initiation. In this model, I distinguish between different timing strategies of policy initiation a ministerial party may possibly adopt and identify in equilibrium a conditional postponing strategy by which ministers facing high scrutiny of coalition partners will postpone bill initiation till the end of the term. The empirical examination lends support to my argument and further demonstrates that the timing strategy of ministers can also be influenced by coalition conflict and policy saliency of bills.

Threat language is an important, albeit ambivalent, element of political crisis communication. It raises public awareness and enhances compliance with emergency measures, but, if overused, it also carries the risk of making governments appear overwhelmed by a crisis. Research on political communication during the COVID-19 pandemic has so far only produced very limited insights into the use of threat language by governments. To address this gap in the literature, our article analyses which factors influence the likelihood of threat language in the crisis communication of governments. We argue that individual-level factors (politician vs. non-politician and gender) shape the odds of including threat language and that contextual factors (time and subject area) determine the probability with which speakers employ this communication tool.

Based on a unique dataset of 1108 press conferences with 433 speakers in 17 OECD countries and three US states, we demonstrate that men are slightly more prone to employ threat language than women. The most important determinant of its use, however, is the subject area that speakers are addressing. In particular, in the context of the health system and public management, speeches are likely to be associated with risks, dangers, and threats. Overall, our findings imply that crisis communication across countries is not as diverse as indicated by previous literature. Once countries are facing a comparable challenge, political actors largely communicate in a similar manner.