| 1. |
- Bakker, R, et al.
(författare)
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Analyzing the Cross-National Comparability of Party Positions on the Socio-Cultural and EU Dimensions in Europe.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 10:2, s. 408-418
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using survey vignettes and scaling techniques, we estimate common socio-cultural and European integration dimensions for political parties across the member states of the European Union. Previous research shows that party placements on the economic left-right dimension are cross-nationally comparable across the EU; however, the socio-cultural dimension is more complex, with different issues forming the core of the dimension in different countries. The 2014 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey included anchoring vignettes which we use as “bridge votes” to place parties from different countries on a common liberal/authoritarian dimension and a separate common scale for European integration. We estimate the dimensions using the Bayesian Aldrich–McKelvey technique. The resulting scales offer cross-nationally comparable, interval-level measures of a party's socio-cultural and EU ideological positions.
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| 2. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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Commitment Problems in Coalitions : A New Look at the Fiscal Policies Of Multiparty Governments
- 2015
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS. - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 3:1, s. 53-72
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many political scientists and economists have argued that coalition governments tend to accumulate more debt than single-party governments do, but the evidence for this proposition is mixed. This article argues that only some coalition governments are more likely to increase public debt than single-party governments: those in which parties are unable to make credible promises to their partners about future policy. It introduces the concept of 'commitment potential' within coalitions and proposes a way of measuring it. The study evaluates its theoretical claims using data on 20 advanced democracies observed over a period of almost 50 years. It finds that multiparty governments with high commitment potential do not, on average, accumulate more debt than single-party governments, but that governments with low commitment potential do.
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| 3. |
- Dumitrescu, Delia, 1980, et al.
(författare)
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Candidate Confidence and Electoral Appeal: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Nonverbal Confidence on Voter Evaluation
- 2015
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 3:1, s. 43-52
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The nonverbal display of confidence is strongly associated with leadership and power. However, its importance for the persuasiveness of campaign messages has not been explored. How important is showing confidence for a political candidate’s ratings? How does confidence condition the effect of the quality of a candidate’s arguments? This article addresses these questions using an innovative experimental approach that makes it possible to better isolate the impact of the candidate’s nonverbal confidence and the quality of his message. While both of these aspects influence voters’ perceptions of the candidate’s electability and qualifications, the nonverbal dimension matters more when it comes to electability. This research contributes to the study of nonverbal communication in elections by expanding the focus of inquiry beyond the effect of pure emotions (happiness or anger) and facial traits.
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| 4. |
- Fredén, Annika, 1981-, et al.
(författare)
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Betting on the underdog : The influence of social networks on vote choice
- 2022
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press. - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 10:1, s. 198-205
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- People are commonly expected not to waste their vote on parties with small probabilities of being elected. Yet, many end up voting for underdogs. We argue that voters gauge the popular support for their preferred party from their social networks. When social networks function as echo chambers, a feature observed in real-life networks, voters overestimate underdogs’ chances of winning. We conduct voting experiments in which some treatment groups receive signals from a simulated network. We compare the effect of networks with a high degree of homogeneity against random networks. We find that homophilic networks increase the level of support for underdogs, which provides evidence to back up anecdotal claims that echo chambers foster the development of fringe parties.
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| 5. |
- Lindenfors, Patrik, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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Investigating Sequences in Ordinal Data : A New Approach With Adapted Evolutionary Models
- 2018
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 6:3, s. 449-466
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a new approach for studying temporal sequences across ordinal variables. It involves three complementary approaches (frequency tables, transitional graphs, and dependency tables), as well as an established adaptation based on Bayesian dynamical systems, inferring a general system of change. The frequency tables count pairs of values in two variables and transitional graphs depict changes, showing which variable tends to attain high values first. The dependency tables investigate which values of one variable are prerequisites for values in another, as a more direct test of causal hypotheses. We illustrate the proposed approaches by analyzing the V-Dem dataset, and show that changes in electoral democracy are preceded by changes in freedom of expression and access to alternative information.
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| 6. |
- Persson, Mikael J, 1980
(författare)
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Does Survey Participation Increase Voter Turnout? Re-examining the Hawthorne Effect in the Swedish National Election Studies
- 2014
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 2:2, s. 297-307
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A Hawthorne effect found in election studies is that pre-election survey participation increases voter turnout. Using the Swedish National Election Studies, Granberg and Holmberg (1992) showed evidence in support of this effect. However, their findings have been criticized and more recent studies have failed to find any treatment effect of pre-election survey participation (cf. Mann 2005). This study re-examines an updated version of Granberg and Holmberg's time-series cumulative data file covering eight additional election studies (for a total of 14 election studies from 1960 to 2010). These studies have an experimental component, since half of the sample was randomly assigned to be interviewed before the election and the other half after the election. By comparing validated turnout in the pre-election sample with the post-election sample, it is possible to estimate the causal effect of survey participation on voter turnout. The results show that participating in the pre-election survey indeed has a significant and positive effect on voter turnout. Moreover, this article evaluates whether the treatment effect is unevenly distributed in the population. Results show that citizens with a low propensity to vote are more affected by taking part in election studies than citizens with a high propensity to vote. The study also estimates the long-term effects of survey participation. Results show that participating in an election survey can have significant effects on voter turnout several years later.
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| 7. |
- Sigman, Rachel, et al.
(författare)
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Democracy for All: Conceptualizing and Measuring Egalitarian Democracy
- 2019
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 7:3, s. 595-612
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although equality figures prominently in many foundational theories of democracy, liberal and electoral conceptions of democracy have dominated empirical political science research on topics like political regimes, democratization and democratic survival. This paper develops the concept of egalitarian democracy as a regime that provides de facto protection of rights and freedoms equally across the population, distributes resources in a way that enables meaningful political participation for all citizens and fosters an environment in which all individuals and social groups can influence political and governing processes. Using new indicators from the Varieties of Democracy project, the paper develops and presents measures of these important concepts, demonstrates their relationship to existing measures, and illustrates their utility for advancing the study of democracy in ways that more fully embrace the richness of democratic theory.
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| 8. |
- Snyder, Jr., James M., et al.
(författare)
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Partisan Imbalance in Regression Discontinuity Studies Based on Electoral Thresholds
- 2015
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS. - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 3:2, s. 169-186
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many articles use regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) that exploit the discontinuity in “close” election outcomes to identify various political and economic outcomes of interest. One of the most important types of diagnostic tests in an RDD is checking for balance in observable variables within the window on either side of the threshold. Finding an imbalance raises concerns that an unobservable variable may exist that affects whether a case ends up above or below the threshold and also directly affects the dependent variable of interest. This article shows that imbalance in RDDs exploiting close elections are likely to arise even in the absence of any type of strategic sorting. Imbalance may arise simply due to variation in the underlying distribution of partisanship in the electorate across constituencies. Using both simulated and actual election data, the study demonstrates that the imbalances driven by partisanship can be large in practice. It then shows that although this causes a bias for the most naive RDDs, the problem can be corrected with commonly used RDDs such as the inclusion of a local linear control function.
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| 9. |
- Walther, Daniel, et al.
(författare)
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Government instability and the state
- 2019
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press. - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 7:3, s. 579-594
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Government instability (cabinet duration) is an important feature of parliamentary democracy. Over time, the research on cabinet duration has improved in technical and theoretical sophistication. However, we note that little attention has been paid to the relationship between governments and the state itself. Our main hypothesis is that state capacity, e.g., factors such as state bureaucratic effectiveness and law and order, shape how easy it is for governments to implement the new policy and thus how well they can achieve policy objectives. We also argue that when state capacity is low, the ability to adequately respond to external shocks goes down, and instability increases. When testing this empirically we find that low state capacity does indeed help us predict an increased risk for early termination—in particular, whether the government ends through a replacement (but not by an early election). Using interaction effects, we also demonstrate that the effect of external shocks, such as an increase in unemployment, is conditional on state capacity. An increase in unemployment only has a significant effect on cabinet stability when state capacity is low, suggesting that the cabinet’s (in)ability to address the economic problems is an important factor for understating cabinet durability.
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| 10. |
- Wilson, Matthew C., et al.
(författare)
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Episodes of liberalization in autocracies: a new approach to quantitatively studying democratization
- 2023
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Ingår i: Political Science Research and Methods. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 2049-8470 .- 2049-8489. ; 11:3, s. 501-520
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on the comparative case-study and large-N literature, it outlines an episode approach that identifies the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, traces its progression, and classifies episodes as successful versus different types of failing outcomes, thus avoiding potentially fallacious assumptions of unit homogeneity. We provide a description and analysis of all 383 liberalization episodes from 1900 to 2019, offering new insights on democratic "waves". We also demonstrate the value of this approach by showing that while several established covariates are valuable for predicting the ultimate outcomes, none explain the onset of a period of liberalization.
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