Pub Date : 2023-08-09DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000236
Nick Lin, S. Lee
There are potentially multiple sources that make it difficult to compare the typical survey measure of the left-right self-placement cross-nationally. We focus on differential item functioning (DIF) due to the different use of response scales when the left-right is framed as an aggregate dimension of policies. We also examine whether and to what extent ordinary citizens’ use of the scale is cross-nationally comparable. Our goal is twofold. First, we assess the cross-national comparability of the left-right self-placement scale using the anchoring vignette method used in nine European countries. Second, we propose a measure that quantifies the extent of DIF at the country level. Our original survey and other benchmark studies suggest that the size of cross-national DIF (CN-DIF) in citizens' use of a left-right scale is relatively small when the left-right concept is considered in policy terms and when a comparison is made between Western European countries.
{"title":"Anchoring Vignettes as a Diagnostic Tool for Cross-National (in)Comparability of Survey Measures: The Case of Voters’ Left-Right Self-Placement","authors":"Nick Lin, S. Lee","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000236","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 There are potentially multiple sources that make it difficult to compare the typical survey measure of the left-right self-placement cross-nationally. We focus on differential item functioning (DIF) due to the different use of response scales when the left-right is framed as an aggregate dimension of policies. We also examine whether and to what extent ordinary citizens’ use of the scale is cross-nationally comparable. Our goal is twofold. First, we assess the cross-national comparability of the left-right self-placement scale using the anchoring vignette method used in nine European countries. Second, we propose a measure that quantifies the extent of DIF at the country level. Our original survey and other benchmark studies suggest that the size of cross-national DIF (CN-DIF) in citizens' use of a left-right scale is relatively small when the left-right concept is considered in policy terms and when a comparison is made between Western European countries.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45229918","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}
Pub Date : 2023-08-07DOI: 10.1017/s000712342300039x
Ruben Mathisen
Recent studies suggest that public policy in established democracies mainly caters to the interests of the rich and ignores the average citizen when their preferences diverge. I argue that high-income taxation has become a clear illustration of this pattern, and I test the proposition on a least likely case: Norway. I asked Norwegians to design their preferred tax rate structure and matched their answers with registry data on what people at different incomes actually pay in tax. I find that within the top 1 per cent, tax rates are far below (by as much as 23 percentage points) where citizens want them to be. A follow-up survey showed that this divergence is entirely driven by capital incomes being taxed too low. My results suggest that even in a reasonably egalitarian society like Norway, the rich get away with paying considerably less in tax than what people deem fair.
{"title":"Taxing the 1 per cent: Public Opinion vs Public Policy","authors":"Ruben Mathisen","doi":"10.1017/s000712342300039x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s000712342300039x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Recent studies suggest that public policy in established democracies mainly caters to the interests of the rich and ignores the average citizen when their preferences diverge. I argue that high-income taxation has become a clear illustration of this pattern, and I test the proposition on a least likely case: Norway. I asked Norwegians to design their preferred tax rate structure and matched their answers with registry data on what people at different incomes actually pay in tax. I find that within the top 1 per cent, tax rates are far below (by as much as 23 percentage points) where citizens want them to be. A follow-up survey showed that this divergence is entirely driven by capital incomes being taxed too low. My results suggest that even in a reasonably egalitarian society like Norway, the rich get away with paying considerably less in tax than what people deem fair.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49520042","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}
Pub Date : 2023-07-18DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000285
Oliver Rittmann
Through an innovative analysis of audio recordings of plenary speeches, Dietrich, Hayes, and O'Brien (2019) find that women in the U.S. House of Representatives speak with greater emotional intensity about women than other issues. With vocal pitch as a new measure of personal issue commitment, the finding suggests that women legislators' efforts to work on behalf of women result from intrinsic motivation. I ask whether the same is true in an alternative parliamentary setting, the German Bundestag, where personal preferences play a very different role due to strict party discipline. The answer is yes. Analyzing audio and text data from more than 30,000 speeches in the Bundestag between 2011 and 2020, I find that women in the Bundestag address women more frequently and with greater emotional intensity than men. The results suggest that women legislators are more emotionally invested in women-related issues than men.
{"title":"Legislators' Emotional Engagement with Women's Issues: Gendered Patterns of Vocal Pitch in the German Bundestag","authors":"Oliver Rittmann","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000285","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Through an innovative analysis of audio recordings of plenary speeches, Dietrich, Hayes, and O'Brien (2019) find that women in the U.S. House of Representatives speak with greater emotional intensity about women than other issues. With vocal pitch as a new measure of personal issue commitment, the finding suggests that women legislators' efforts to work on behalf of women result from intrinsic motivation. I ask whether the same is true in an alternative parliamentary setting, the German Bundestag, where personal preferences play a very different role due to strict party discipline. The answer is yes. Analyzing audio and text data from more than 30,000 speeches in the Bundestag between 2011 and 2020, I find that women in the Bundestag address women more frequently and with greater emotional intensity than men. The results suggest that women legislators are more emotionally invested in women-related issues than men.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45334830","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}
Pub Date : 2023-07-12DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000108
Shane Martin, C. McClean, Kaare W. Strøm
Members of some legislatures enjoy long political careers, whereas elsewhere turnover is rampant. This variation is consequential since high-incumbency assemblies may facilitate legislative expertise at the expense of social representation. We explore cross-national differences in re-election (incumbency) rates by identifying ‘supply’ conditions such as legislative resources that benefit incumbents as well as ‘demand’ conditions such as political corruption that affect voters' willingness to re-elect incumbents. We hypothesize that legislative perquisites help incumbents win re-election, but only if there is relatively high public confidence in politics, as reflected in low corruption levels. We tested our argument using OLS and instrumental variable regression and new global data on sixty-eight democracies (2000–18) covering 288 elections and over 55,000 legislators. We found that legislative resources help incumbents get re-elected only under relatively low levels of political corruption. In contrast, under severe corruption, such resources can depress re-election rates.
{"title":"Legislative Resources, Corruption, and Incumbency","authors":"Shane Martin, C. McClean, Kaare W. Strøm","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000108","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Members of some legislatures enjoy long political careers, whereas elsewhere turnover is rampant. This variation is consequential since high-incumbency assemblies may facilitate legislative expertise at the expense of social representation. We explore cross-national differences in re-election (incumbency) rates by identifying ‘supply’ conditions such as legislative resources that benefit incumbents as well as ‘demand’ conditions such as political corruption that affect voters' willingness to re-elect incumbents. We hypothesize that legislative perquisites help incumbents win re-election, but only if there is relatively high public confidence in politics, as reflected in low corruption levels. We tested our argument using OLS and instrumental variable regression and new global data on sixty-eight democracies (2000–18) covering 288 elections and over 55,000 legislators. We found that legislative resources help incumbents get re-elected only under relatively low levels of political corruption. In contrast, under severe corruption, such resources can depress re-election rates.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47055651","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}
Pub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000169
Bruno Castanho Silva, Lennart Schürmann, Sven-Oliver Proksch
It is well known that politicians speak differently when campaigning. The shadow of elections may affect candidates' change in tone during campaigns. However, to date, we lack a systematic study of the changes in communication patterns between campaign and non-campaign periods. In this study, we examine the sentiment expressed in 4.3 million tweets posted by members of national parliaments in the EU27 from 2018 to 2020. Our results show that (1) the opposition, even populists and Eurosceptics, send more positive messages during campaigns, (2) parties trailing in the polls communicate more negatively, and (3) that the changes are similar in national and European elections. These findings show the need to look beyond campaign times to understand parties' appeals and highlight the promises of social media data to move beyond traditional analyses of manifestos and speeches.
{"title":"Modulation of Democracy: Partisan Communication During and After Election Campaigns","authors":"Bruno Castanho Silva, Lennart Schürmann, Sven-Oliver Proksch","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000169","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It is well known that politicians speak differently when campaigning. The shadow of elections may affect candidates' change in tone during campaigns. However, to date, we lack a systematic study of the changes in communication patterns between campaign and non-campaign periods. In this study, we examine the sentiment expressed in 4.3 million tweets posted by members of national parliaments in the EU27 from 2018 to 2020. Our results show that (1) the opposition, even populists and Eurosceptics, send more positive messages during campaigns, (2) parties trailing in the polls communicate more negatively, and (3) that the changes are similar in national and European elections. These findings show the need to look beyond campaign times to understand parties' appeals and highlight the promises of social media data to move beyond traditional analyses of manifestos and speeches.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56878421","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}
Pub Date : 2023-07-06DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000200
T. N. Fjørtoft
In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non-majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable.
{"title":"Inductive Risk and the Legitimacy of Non-Majoritarian Institutions","authors":"T. N. Fjørtoft","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000200","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non-majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48053618","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}
Pub Date : 2023-06-29DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000273
A. Bengtson, Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen
This article investigates the hitherto under-examined relations between affirmative action, paternalism, and respect. We provide three main arguments. First, we argue that affirmative action initiatives are typically paternalistic and thus disrespectful towards intended beneficiaries who oppose them. Second, we argue that not introducing affirmative action can be disrespectful towards these potential beneficiaries because such inaction involves a failure to recognize their moral worth adequately. Third, we argue that the paternalistic disrespect involved in affirmative action is alleviated when the potential beneficiaries' preferences against such initiatives are adaptive. We conclude that, although there is a relevant sense in which paternalistic affirmative action is disrespectful, it may be more disrespectful not to pursue such policies.
{"title":"Affirmative Action, Paternalism, and Respect","authors":"A. Bengtson, Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000273","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article investigates the hitherto under-examined relations between affirmative action, paternalism, and respect. We provide three main arguments. First, we argue that affirmative action initiatives are typically paternalistic and thus disrespectful towards intended beneficiaries who oppose them. Second, we argue that not introducing affirmative action can be disrespectful towards these potential beneficiaries because such inaction involves a failure to recognize their moral worth adequately. Third, we argue that the paternalistic disrespect involved in affirmative action is alleviated when the potential beneficiaries' preferences against such initiatives are adaptive. We conclude that, although there is a relevant sense in which paternalistic affirmative action is disrespectful, it may be more disrespectful not to pursue such policies.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48168241","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}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000224
Rachel M. Blum, Mike Cowburn
The contemporary Republican Party has been the site of asymmetric partisan entrenchment and factional infighting. We test whether factional pressure from a far-right faction (the Tea Party) exacerbated the party's rightward movement with a granular analysis of Republican factionalism at the congressional district level. We develop a measure of local factionalism using novel datasets of activist presence and primary contests. Then, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis to assess whether local factionalism in the Tea Party era heightened Republican partisanship and legislative extremism at the district level. We find that districts that experienced factional pressure moved rightward on both measures. These findings help clarify how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and support a focus on the role of party factions in fomenting partisan conflict.
{"title":"How Local Factions Pressure Parties: Activist Groups and Primary Contests in the Tea Party Era","authors":"Rachel M. Blum, Mike Cowburn","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000224","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The contemporary Republican Party has been the site of asymmetric partisan entrenchment and factional infighting. We test whether factional pressure from a far-right faction (the Tea Party) exacerbated the party's rightward movement with a granular analysis of Republican factionalism at the congressional district level. We develop a measure of local factionalism using novel datasets of activist presence and primary contests. Then, we conduct a difference-in-differences analysis to assess whether local factionalism in the Tea Party era heightened Republican partisanship and legislative extremism at the district level. We find that districts that experienced factional pressure moved rightward on both measures. These findings help clarify how the Tea Party captured the Republican Party and support a focus on the role of party factions in fomenting partisan conflict.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43514640","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}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000133
Allison P. Anoll, A. Engelhardt
That black and white Americans disagree about the carceral state is well established; why this is the case is much less clear. Drawing on group hierarchy theory and the state's role in perpetuating group subordination/domination, we theorize that differences in socialization and contact during emergent adulthood produce divergent priors for racial groups and gender subgroups within race. These different starting points shape how people integrate new information from recent contact into their belief systems. Using a survey of over 11,000 respondents, we find that, instead of all groups integrating information the same way, recent direct contact contributes most to negative attitudes among groups whose contact with government agents is least negatively valenced. While interactions with the American carceral state divide opinions considerably among white Americans and women, adulthood contact for black Americans, especially black men, appears to be but ‘a drop in the ocean’ of political life.
{"title":"A Drop in the Ocean: How Priors Anchor Attitudes Toward the American Carceral State","authors":"Allison P. Anoll, A. Engelhardt","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000133","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 That black and white Americans disagree about the carceral state is well established; why this is the case is much less clear. Drawing on group hierarchy theory and the state's role in perpetuating group subordination/domination, we theorize that differences in socialization and contact during emergent adulthood produce divergent priors for racial groups and gender subgroups within race. These different starting points shape how people integrate new information from recent contact into their belief systems. Using a survey of over 11,000 respondents, we find that, instead of all groups integrating information the same way, recent direct contact contributes most to negative attitudes among groups whose contact with government agents is least negatively valenced. While interactions with the American carceral state divide opinions considerably among white Americans and women, adulthood contact for black Americans, especially black men, appears to be but ‘a drop in the ocean’ of political life.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43815065","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}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000121
Leonardo Carella, Andrew C. Eggers
Who gets represented in legislatures, and how does this depend on electoral institutions? Others have asked this question from the perspective of gender, race, and class. We focus on space, asking whether MPs disproportionately come from some places rather than others and how this depends on electoral rules. Using data on over 13,000 legislators in sixty-two democracies, we developed a new measure to determine whether the spatial distribution of MP birthplaces matched the spatial distribution of the citizens they represented. Contrary to received wisdom, single-member district systems do not have more geographically representative parliaments than multi-member district systems, while mixed-member systems perform significantly better than both. We attribute the higher spatial representativeness of mixed-member systems to the contamination effects in their single-member tier. We present evidence for this explanation from a within-country analysis of elections in Italy, the UK, and Germany.
{"title":"Electoral Systems and Geographic Representation","authors":"Leonardo Carella, Andrew C. Eggers","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000121","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Who gets represented in legislatures, and how does this depend on electoral institutions? Others have asked this question from the perspective of gender, race, and class. We focus on space, asking whether MPs disproportionately come from some places rather than others and how this depends on electoral rules. Using data on over 13,000 legislators in sixty-two democracies, we developed a new measure to determine whether the spatial distribution of MP birthplaces matched the spatial distribution of the citizens they represented. Contrary to received wisdom, single-member district systems do not have more geographically representative parliaments than multi-member district systems, while mixed-member systems perform significantly better than both. We attribute the higher spatial representativeness of mixed-member systems to the contamination effects in their single-member tier. We present evidence for this explanation from a within-country analysis of elections in Italy, the UK, and Germany.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46575798","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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