Pub Date : 2023-04-26DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000091
Daniel J. Moskowitz, Jon C. Rogowski
Theories of electoral accountability emphasize voters' ability to evaluate individual officeholders, which incentivises officials to demonstrate their quality. Before the Australian ballot was introduced in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, however, most ballot designs constrained voters' ability to distinguish individual candidates. Previous scholarship argues that ballot reform led to the rise of candidate-centred politics and the decline in party influence in the twentieth century. We reassess the evidence for this claim and implement the most comprehensive analysis to date on the secret ballot's effects on outcomes related to distributive politics, legislator effort, and party influence. Using an improved research design, we find scant evidence that ballot reform directly affected legislator behaviour, much less that it transformed political representation. While the Australian ballot may have been a necessary condition for the eventual rise of candidate-centred politics, ballot reform did not by itself reshape American politics.
{"title":"Ballot Reform, the Personal Vote, and Political Representation in the United States","authors":"Daniel J. Moskowitz, Jon C. Rogowski","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000091","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Theories of electoral accountability emphasize voters' ability to evaluate individual officeholders, which incentivises officials to demonstrate their quality. Before the Australian ballot was introduced in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, however, most ballot designs constrained voters' ability to distinguish individual candidates. Previous scholarship argues that ballot reform led to the rise of candidate-centred politics and the decline in party influence in the twentieth century. We reassess the evidence for this claim and implement the most comprehensive analysis to date on the secret ballot's effects on outcomes related to distributive politics, legislator effort, and party influence. Using an improved research design, we find scant evidence that ballot reform directly affected legislator behaviour, much less that it transformed political representation. While the Australian ballot may have been a necessary condition for the eventual rise of candidate-centred politics, ballot reform did not by itself reshape American politics.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49001135","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 : 2023-04-24DOI: 10.1017/s000712342300008x
Patrick W. Kraft, Robert Klemmensen
How do politicians use moral appeals in their rhetoric? Previous research suggests that morality plays an important role in elite communication and that the endorsement of specific values varies systematically across the ideological spectrum. We argue that this view is incomplete since it only focuses on whether certain values are endorsed and not how they are contextualized by politicians. Using a novel sentence embedding approach, we show that although liberal and conservative politicians use the same moral terms, they attach diverging meanings to these values. Accordingly, the politics of morality is not about the promotion of specific moral values per se but, rather, a competition over their respective meaning. Our results highlight that simple dictionary-based methods to measure moral rhetoric may be insufficient since they fail to account for the semantic contexts in which words are used and, therefore, risk overlooking important features of political communication and party competition.
{"title":"Lexical Ambiguity in Political Rhetoric: Why Morality Doesn't Fit in a Bag of Words","authors":"Patrick W. Kraft, Robert Klemmensen","doi":"10.1017/s000712342300008x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s000712342300008x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 How do politicians use moral appeals in their rhetoric? Previous research suggests that morality plays an important role in elite communication and that the endorsement of specific values varies systematically across the ideological spectrum. We argue that this view is incomplete since it only focuses on whether certain values are endorsed and not how they are contextualized by politicians. Using a novel sentence embedding approach, we show that although liberal and conservative politicians use the same moral terms, they attach diverging meanings to these values. Accordingly, the politics of morality is not about the promotion of specific moral values per se but, rather, a competition over their respective meaning. Our results highlight that simple dictionary-based methods to measure moral rhetoric may be insufficient since they fail to account for the semantic contexts in which words are used and, therefore, risk overlooking important features of political communication and party competition.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44834276","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 : 2023-04-24DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000042
Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, A. Bor, Mathias Osmundsen, M. B. Petersen
We live in a world of text. Yet the sheer magnitude of social media data, coupled with a need to measure complex psychological constructs, has made this important source of data difficult to use. Researchers often engage in costly hand coding of thousands of texts using supervised techniques or rely on unsupervised techniques where the measurement of predefined constructs is difficult. We propose a novel approach that we call ‘super-unsupervised’ learning and demonstrate its usefulness by measuring the psychologically complex construct of online political hostility based on a large corpus of tweets. This approach accomplishes the feat by combining the best features of supervised and unsupervised learning techniques: measurements of complex psychological constructs without a single labelled data source. We first outline the approach before conducting a diverse series of tests that include: (i) face validity, (ii) convergent and discriminant validity, (iii) criterion validity, (iv) external validity, and (v) ecological validity.
{"title":"‘Super-Unsupervised’ Classification for Labelling Text: Online Political Hostility as an Illustration","authors":"Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, A. Bor, Mathias Osmundsen, M. B. Petersen","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000042","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We live in a world of text. Yet the sheer magnitude of social media data, coupled with a need to measure complex psychological constructs, has made this important source of data difficult to use. Researchers often engage in costly hand coding of thousands of texts using supervised techniques or rely on unsupervised techniques where the measurement of predefined constructs is difficult. We propose a novel approach that we call ‘super-unsupervised’ learning and demonstrate its usefulness by measuring the psychologically complex construct of online political hostility based on a large corpus of tweets. This approach accomplishes the feat by combining the best features of supervised and unsupervised learning techniques: measurements of complex psychological constructs without a single labelled data source. We first outline the approach before conducting a diverse series of tests that include: (i) face validity, (ii) convergent and discriminant validity, (iii) criterion validity, (iv) external validity, and (v) ecological validity.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45732354","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 : 2023-04-20DOI: 10.1017/S0007123423000017
Natália S. Bueno, Cesar Zucco, Felipe Nunes
Abstract We investigated both the direct and indirect political dividends of public policies by examining Minha Casa, Minha Vida, a housing programme in Brazil that selects its beneficiaries by lottery. We surveyed the lottery participants and found that the winners were not more likely to support the incumbent politicians. Non-beneficiaries, a much larger group, were aware of the programme and thought well of it while the beneficiaries' responses to the programme were sometimes underwhelming. However, politicians considered the programme to be an electoral asset, and a difference-in-differences analysis of electoral results leveraging the roll-out of the programme across municipalities found that presidential and mayoral incumbent candidates performed better in localities that had implemented MCMV. Overall, when the beneficiaries formed a relatively small group, the benefits were conspicuous and the programme's objectives were widely supported. Government programmes can create electoral payoffs independently of how programmes are perceived or experienced by beneficiaries.
{"title":"What You See and What You Get: Direct and Indirect Political Dividends of Public Policies","authors":"Natália S. Bueno, Cesar Zucco, Felipe Nunes","doi":"10.1017/S0007123423000017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We investigated both the direct and indirect political dividends of public policies by examining Minha Casa, Minha Vida, a housing programme in Brazil that selects its beneficiaries by lottery. We surveyed the lottery participants and found that the winners were not more likely to support the incumbent politicians. Non-beneficiaries, a much larger group, were aware of the programme and thought well of it while the beneficiaries' responses to the programme were sometimes underwhelming. However, politicians considered the programme to be an electoral asset, and a difference-in-differences analysis of electoral results leveraging the roll-out of the programme across municipalities found that presidential and mayoral incumbent candidates performed better in localities that had implemented MCMV. Overall, when the beneficiaries formed a relatively small group, the benefits were conspicuous and the programme's objectives were widely supported. Government programmes can create electoral payoffs independently of how programmes are perceived or experienced by beneficiaries.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48929284","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 : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1017/s0007123422000758
J. Lindvall, David Rueda, Haoyu Zhai
Political parties face a crucial trade-off between electoral and partisan goals: should they put electoral goals first, pursuing the policies they think will win them the most votes in the next election, or should they put partisan goals first, pursuing the policies their members, activists, and most loyal voters prefer? In this paper we argue that main political parties make different choices depending on the information environment they are in. They have strong incentives to follow the median voter when the median voter's position is well known, but when there is more uncertainty they have strong incentives to adopt policies they prefer for partisan reasons, since uncertainty makes party leaders more willing to bet that the party's preferred policies are also vote winners. We develop an empirical analysis of how the main parties on the left and the right in twenty democracies have changed their platforms from election to election since the 1960s.
{"title":"When Parties Move to the Middle: The Role of Uncertainty","authors":"J. Lindvall, David Rueda, Haoyu Zhai","doi":"10.1017/s0007123422000758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123422000758","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Political parties face a crucial trade-off between electoral and partisan goals: should they put electoral goals first, pursuing the policies they think will win them the most votes in the next election, or should they put partisan goals first, pursuing the policies their members, activists, and most loyal voters prefer? In this paper we argue that main political parties make different choices depending on the information environment they are in. They have strong incentives to follow the median voter when the median voter's position is well known, but when there is more uncertainty they have strong incentives to adopt policies they prefer for partisan reasons, since uncertainty makes party leaders more willing to bet that the party's preferred policies are also vote winners. We develop an empirical analysis of how the main parties on the left and the right in twenty democracies have changed their platforms from election to election since the 1960s.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42906277","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 : 2023-04-14DOI: 10.1017/s0007123422000734
Evelyne Hübscher, Thomas Sattler, Markus Wagner
Abstract In recent decades, governments in many Western democracies have shown a remarkable consensus in pursuing fiscal austerity measures during periods of strained public finances. In this article, we show that these decisions have consequences for political polarization. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity measures increase both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream parties, thereby boosting party system polarization. A detailed analysis of selected austerity episodes also shows that new, small and radical parties benefit most from austerity policies. Finally, survey experiments with a total of 8,800 respondents in Germany, Portugal, Spain and the UK indicate that the effects of austerity on polarization are particularly pronounced when the mainstream right and left parties both stand for fiscal restraint. Austerity is a substantial cause of political polarization and hence political instability in industrialized democracies.
{"title":"Does Austerity Cause Polarization?","authors":"Evelyne Hübscher, Thomas Sattler, Markus Wagner","doi":"10.1017/s0007123422000734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123422000734","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent decades, governments in many Western democracies have shown a remarkable consensus in pursuing fiscal austerity measures during periods of strained public finances. In this article, we show that these decisions have consequences for political polarization. Our macro-level analysis of 166 elections since 1980 finds that austerity measures increase both electoral abstention and votes for non-mainstream parties, thereby boosting party system polarization. A detailed analysis of selected austerity episodes also shows that new, small and radical parties benefit most from austerity policies. Finally, survey experiments with a total of 8,800 respondents in Germany, Portugal, Spain and the UK indicate that the effects of austerity on polarization are particularly pronounced when the mainstream right and left parties both stand for fiscal restraint. Austerity is a substantial cause of political polarization and hence political instability in industrialized democracies.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134999072","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 : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000066
Mikael Persson, A. Sundell
Several recent studies have found unequal policy responsiveness, meaning that the policy preferences of high-income citizens are better reflected in implemented policies than the policy preferences of low-income citizens. This has been found mainly in a few studies from the US and a small number of single-country studies from Western Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative studies that stake out the terrain across a broader group of countries. We analyze survey data on the policy preferences of about 3,000 policy proposals from thirty European countries over nearly forty years, combined with information on whether each policy proposal was implemented or not. The results from the cross-country data confirm the general pattern from previous studies that policies supported by the rich are more likely to be implemented than those supported by the poor. We also test four explanations commonly found in the literature: whether unequal responsiveness is exacerbated by (a) high economic inequality, (b) the absence of campaign finance regulations, (c) low union density, and (d) low voter turnout.
{"title":"The Rich Have a Slight Edge: Evidence from Comparative Data on Income-Based Inequality in Policy Congruence","authors":"Mikael Persson, A. Sundell","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000066","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Several recent studies have found unequal policy responsiveness, meaning that the policy preferences of high-income citizens are better reflected in implemented policies than the policy preferences of low-income citizens. This has been found mainly in a few studies from the US and a small number of single-country studies from Western Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative studies that stake out the terrain across a broader group of countries. We analyze survey data on the policy preferences of about 3,000 policy proposals from thirty European countries over nearly forty years, combined with information on whether each policy proposal was implemented or not. The results from the cross-country data confirm the general pattern from previous studies that policies supported by the rich are more likely to be implemented than those supported by the poor. We also test four explanations commonly found in the literature: whether unequal responsiveness is exacerbated by (a) high economic inequality, (b) the absence of campaign finance regulations, (c) low union density, and (d) low voter turnout.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46917862","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 : 2023-04-05DOI: 10.1017/S000712342200076X
K. Fischer, Ananish Chaudhuri, Q. Atkinson
Abstract Political conservatives' opposition to COVID-19 restrictions is puzzling given the well-documented links between conservatism and conformity, threat sensitivity, and pathogen aversion. We propose a resolution based on the Dual Foundations Theory of ideology, which holds that ideology comprises two dimensions, one reflecting trade-offs between threat-driven conformity and individualism, and another reflecting trade-offs between empathy-driven cooperation and competition. We test predictions derived from this theory in a UK sample using individuals' responses to COVID-19 and widely-used measures of the two dimensions – ‘right-wing authoritarianism’ (RWA) and ‘social dominance orientation’ (SDO), respectively. Consistent with our predictions, we show that RWA, but not SDO, increased following the pandemic and that high-RWA conservatives do display more concerned, conformist, pro-lockdown attitudes, while high-SDO conservatives display less empathic, cooperative attitudes and are anti-lockdown. This helps explain paradoxical prior results and highlights how a focus on unidimensional ideology can mask divergent motives across the ideological landscape.
{"title":"Dual Evolutionary Foundations of Political Ideology Predict Divergent Responses to COVID-19","authors":"K. Fischer, Ananish Chaudhuri, Q. Atkinson","doi":"10.1017/S000712342200076X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S000712342200076X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Political conservatives' opposition to COVID-19 restrictions is puzzling given the well-documented links between conservatism and conformity, threat sensitivity, and pathogen aversion. We propose a resolution based on the Dual Foundations Theory of ideology, which holds that ideology comprises two dimensions, one reflecting trade-offs between threat-driven conformity and individualism, and another reflecting trade-offs between empathy-driven cooperation and competition. We test predictions derived from this theory in a UK sample using individuals' responses to COVID-19 and widely-used measures of the two dimensions – ‘right-wing authoritarianism’ (RWA) and ‘social dominance orientation’ (SDO), respectively. Consistent with our predictions, we show that RWA, but not SDO, increased following the pandemic and that high-RWA conservatives do display more concerned, conformist, pro-lockdown attitudes, while high-SDO conservatives display less empathic, cooperative attitudes and are anti-lockdown. This helps explain paradoxical prior results and highlights how a focus on unidimensional ideology can mask divergent motives across the ideological landscape.","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46335552","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 : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000029
{"title":"JPS volume 53 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43562897","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 : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s0007123423000030
{"title":"JPS volume 53 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0007123423000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123423000030","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48301,"journal":{"name":"British Journal of Political Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48138049","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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