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| 2. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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Sweden : Biased Debate Participation with Nearly Equal Gender Representation
- 2021
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Ingår i: The Politics of Legislative Debates. - 9780198849063 ; , s. 713-733
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish Riksdag is often regarded as an ideal type for Scandinavian or Nordic parliamentarism. This relates to institutional features and party cohesion, but more often so to descriptive representation in terms of gender—an aspect where Sweden's parliament has consistently occupied the top position among European parliaments during the last decades. However, and despite an unlikely-case-character, previous research has shown that gender biases exist in Nordic parliaments and the Riksdag in particular. This chapter follows this research and evaluates how gender and seniority determine legislators' opportunities to speak in plenary debates. Our results show that the gender biases found in previous research persist to date and extend further to the past. Furthermore, low seniority amplifies the effect of gender; junior female legislators have the slimmest chances to speak in plenary debates.
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| 3. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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The Politics of Legislative Debates : An Introduction
- 2021
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Ingår i: The Politics of Legislative Debates. - : Oxford University Press. - 9780198849063 ; , s. 1-20
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The contribution of this chapter to our volume is fourfold. First, we look at why we should study legislative debates and how scholars may benefit from representation, legislative politics, party politics, and electoral studies by incorporating debates in their analysis. In so doing, we unpack their functions in liberal democracies. Second, the chapter offers a state of the art of the burgeoning field of legislative debates. We focus on the normative scholarly discussion about legislative debates and their importance for deliberation and democratic outputs. In addition, we dwell on Proksch and Slapin's model as a watershed in the empirical study of legislative debates, particularly due to its capacity to travel and its usefulness in understanding how different institutional settings have an impact of speechmaking. Third, the chapter presents the theoretical framework, the key hypotheses guiding the volume, and our empirical approach to legislative debates. Fourth, the chapter concludes with the plan of the book.
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| 6. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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Does European Integration Lead to a 'Presidentialization' of Executive Politics? : Ministerial Selection in Swedish Postwar Cabinets
- 2009
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Ingår i: European Union Politics. - London : SAGE Publications. - 1465-1165 .- 1741-2757. ; 10:2, s. 226-252
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we address recent claims that executive legislative relations in parliamentary democracies are undergoing important changes owing to either a 'presidentialization' or a 'Europeanization' of domestic political systems. Therefore, we test empirically whether parliamentary democracies are indeed experiencing changes in executive-legislative relations and whether these developments can, in part, be explained by an increase in European integration. Using data on ministerial selection in Swedish cabinets during the years 1952-2006, we find that there appears to be a slight tendency towards 'presidentialization', which is indicated by a decrease in ministers with a parliamentary background being appointed, and that there exists some support for the notion that Sweden's political and economic integration into the European Union is part of the explanation for this change.
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| 7. |
- Bäck, Hanna
(författare)
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Explaining Coalitions : Evidence and Lessons From Studying Coalition Formation in Swedish Local Government
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to better understand coalition formation. To date, a vast number of theories have been presented with the goal to explain coalition outcomes. For example, early coalition theories assumed that parties were motivated solely by the goal of attaining the power and prestige that come with being in office, and predicted that minimal winning coalitions would form. Later coalition theories are instead often based on the assumption that parties are interested in implementing a policy program.Three problems with much of the existing coalition research are identified and solved in this study. First, many coalition theories have only been evaluated on the data set of Western European national governments despite the fact that these theories often emerged from consideration of this same data set, which implies that these theories have not been subjected to proper evaluations. In this study, a new data set consisting of a large number of formation opportunities in Swedish local government is used to evaluate coalition theories. Second, few empirical investigations have focused on comparing alternative coalition explanations using careful controls. In this study several different statistical techniques are used to evaluate the relative importance of a number of important coalition variables. Third, coalition researchers have not focused on giving adequate causal explanations to coalition formation in terms of measuring both the causal effects and the causal mechanisms underlying these effects. In this thesis, a large-n statistical study is combined with in-depth case studies, which makes it possible to measure and isolate effects, and to investigate the mechanisms that explain these effects.The analyses performed here indicate that when explaining coalition formation we should take into account that parties are neither pure office-seekers nor pure policy-seekers. Instead, parties are driven by multiple goals. The results also indicate that we should consider that parties are concerned with the effects that coalitional choices may have on future election results. The results found here show that parties should not be treated as unitary actors, and that some parties may be less likely to be in government due to the fact that they use highly democratic decision-making procedures, or because they are highly factionalized. Another conclusion drawn here is that when explaining coalitions, we should consider that the history of interaction between parties matters and that parties are concerned with minimizing the transaction costs with forming a coalition. Many other theories are either backed up or discredited by the evidence.
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| 8. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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Explaining Modes of Participation : A Dynamic Test of Alternative Rational Choice Models
- 2011
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Political Studies. - : Wiley. - 0080-6757 .- 1467-9477. ; 34:1, s. 74-97
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rational choice accounts of political participation identify two major solutions to “the paradox of participation” — collective incentives and selective incentives. Prior findings regarding the viability of these solutions are seemingly inconclusive and contradictory. In our view, one important reason for this is that the applicability of these solutions varies across participatory modes. In this paper, we make a first attempt to develop a theoretical answer to the question of why this may be the case. We then test our predictions across four different modes of participation, using longitudinal data that eliminate or reduce the biases inherent in cross-sectional designs. Our results show different types of incentives to strike with distinctly variable force across different modes of participation. Most importantly, we find that whereas electoral modes of participation (voting and party activity) are affected by selective incentives only, the non-electoral modes (contacting and manifestations) are the consequence of both collective and selective incentives.
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| 9. |
- Dumont, Patrick, et al.
(författare)
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Why so few, and why so late? : Green parties and the question of governmental participation
- 2006
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Ingår i: European Journal of Political Research. - Univ Luxembourg, L-1511 Luxembourg, Luxembourg. Catholic Univ Louvain, B-3000 Louvain, Belgium. Uppsala Univ, Uppsala, Sweden. : WILEY. - 0304-4130 .- 1475-6765. ; 45, s. S35-S67
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Green parties have been represented in the parliaments of European Union countries since 1981, but it was not until recently that a few have entered national governments. Using a data set comprised of 51 government formation opportunities (where the Greens were represented in parliament), the authors of this article show that the parties involved in these bargaining situations are more office-oriented than earlier studies had found. As Green parties are seen to be less office-seeking than other parties, this general tendency for office-seeking behaviour in government formation may partly account for the scarcity of Greens in government. Furthermore, a number of hypotheses derived from theories that account for the specific nature of Green parties in terms of their office-, policy- and vote-seeking orientations are tested. It is found that Greens participate in government when they have lost votes in at least one election, when the main party of the left identifies them as a clear electoral threat and when the policy distance between the Greens and either the formateur party or the main left party is small (the latter condition must be accompanied by a substantial proportion of seats for the Green party in parliament). As most of these simultaneous conditions only materialized recently, and in a few countries, it is argued that this analysis, which is the first comparative and multivariate test focused on this question, explains the scarcity and the delay of Green governmental participation.
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| 10. |
- Lewin, Leif, 1941-, et al.
(författare)
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A kinder, gentler democracy : The consensus model and Swedish disability politics
- 2008
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Political Studies. - : Wiley. - 0080-6757 .- 1467-9477. ; 31:3, s. 291-310
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Arend Lijphart’s seminal consensus model of democracy does not only try to explain how democracy actually works. It also purports to be a ‘kinder, gentler’ form of democracy with regard to e.g. unemployment, disability, illness and old age. So far, this conjecture has not been brought to a systematic test which is the purpose of this article. We look into the consequences for one of the areas Lijphart singles out: disability. Does consensus democracy promote a more generous policy towards disabled people than majoritarian democracy? We transfer Lijphart’s theory to municipality level. In Sweden, disability care is namely the responsibility for the municipalities, which are comparatively large and independent and with the right to tax their citizens; they are like small nation-states. There is, however, a considerable variation in disability support between them. Some give ten times as much support than others. Is it those governed according to the consensus model? Our approach helps controlling for the variation in political and cultural context and expands the number of observations. The statistical comparison of Swedish municipalities does not, however, lend any confirmation of the famous theory. Instead, there are reasons to doubt that consensus democracy promotes more generous policies.
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