| 1. |
- Christensen, Love
(författare)
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Uncertainty and Persuasion. Essays on Behavioral Political Economy
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When voters form their political opinions and decide whom to vote for, they are confronted with at least two types of uncertainty. First, voters cannot be sure what reforms a political party will pursue once in office. Second, the outcomes of political reforms are never perfectly known. How can political actors exploit this uncertainty to persuade voters and to shape public opinion? And how can voters mitigate this uncertainty by making inferences about the likely outcomes of political reforms and the credibility of parties' promises? Across three papers, I show that parties can shape public opinion by influencing voter beliefs about the outcomes of political reforms. However, voters discount both outcome predictions that clash strongly with their prior beliefs and policy changes which they perceive to be motivated by vote-maximizing considerations in contrast to sincere policy considerations. This dissertation shows that changing voter beliefs is an important way to shape public opinion, but that voters' pre-existing beliefs also constrain what politicians can claim without losing their credibility.
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| 2. |
- Frödin Gruneau, Moa, 1985
(författare)
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Mating and Political Inequality
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Political equality is one of the cornerstones of a well-functioning democracy. Yet, very few democracies live up to this ideal. In this dissertation, I show that a central part of human behavior, mating, can help us explain why political inequalities are difficult to change. I provide a theoretical argument of why mating structures and family formation patterns are crucial to our understanding of unequal turnout and unequal political representation. In three different research papers, I study the relationship between mating and political inequality between socioeconomic groups as well as mating and political inequality based on gender. The results show that mating structures are a key aspect when explaining why political inequality is persistent in many democracies. I conclude that mating cannot be overlooked when seeking answers to why political inequalities are difficult to change.
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| 3. |
- Irgil, Ezgi
(författare)
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Everyday Politics of Forced Migration: Refugees, Host Community Members, and the Local Context
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation adds to and broadens the literature on forced migration by explaining how everyday politics influence new social dynamics in cities of arrival. Most of the existing research focuses on the Western context and highlights the cultural differences between the host community members and the refugees who arrive from outside of Europe and North America. To analyse whether these findings are applicable in non–Western contexts, I examine a South–South forced migration context in which both groups share the religion (Islam) but not the language (Turkish vs Arabic) through the case of Çarşamba (a district of the province of Bursa in Turkey). I argue that everyday politics has been overlooked in the literature and explain why everyday politics is important to understand the new social dynamics following a refugee influx that leads to sudden demographic changes. I analyse the dynamics of everyday politics between host community members and refugees and their perceptions of local state authorities through two research streams: local governance and intergroup encounters. I expand these research streams by engaging them with the role of urban public spaces in everyday politics. I theorise that both host community members and refugees engage in micro manifestations of implicit and explicit reactions to sudden demographic change in their everyday lives. I demonstrate this in three different research papers. In the first paper, I study the role of positionality in conducting interviews with host community members as a host community member in a forced migration context. In the second paper, I analyse the relationship between intergroup encounters in urban public spaces. In the third paper, I study local refugee governance practices to analyse their influence on the everyday lives of refugees. I thereby make methodological, theoretical, and conceptual contributions to forced migration studies. The results show that everyday politics is a key aspect in explaining why social conflict is not specific to South–North forced migration contexts and can also be observed in South–South contexts.
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| 4. |
- Jöst, Prisca, 1991
(författare)
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The Political Participation of the Poor: Local Social Context and the Impact of Social Ties on the Political Engagement of Poor Individuals
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research on political participation finds that poor citizens engage less in politics than wealthy citizens. Yet, recent survey evidence also suggests that there is crucial variation in the poor’s level of engagement within the same country and across neighborhoods and villages. However, most of the existing literature falls short in explaining variation between poor citizens living in different communities. Therefore, we still do not fully understand why some poor citizens are more or less likely to participate than others and the extent to which this may be driven by the local social context and, more specifically, the density of social ties in the community. This dissertation aims to fill this gap in the previous literature by providing a theoretical framework to explain political participation by the poor. Acknowledging a wide range of existing research on social context and political behavior, I argue that poor individuals should be more likely to participate in activities based on social interaction between neighbors or when a social norm of compliance exists within the community. The theoretical expectations suggested are in line with previous scholarship showing that poor individuals are more oriented towards others in their local community and act more pro-socially than wealthy individuals. They are also more reliant on social norms of reciprocity and community-help than the wealthy. Empirical evidence from three individual research papers on Tunisia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the UK highlights the importance of community norms and social ties for the poor's political participation. It also suggests that social sanctioning, bandwagoning and solidarity may explain this relationship.
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| 5. |
- Kavasoglu, Yaman Berker, 1990
(författare)
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Party Organizations and the Dynamics of Autocratic Rule: Co-optation, Repression, and Regime Change
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is about political parties in autocracies. The recent institutionalist turn in comparative authoritarianism has renewed attention to the role of political parties by highlighting the strategic value of these institutions for autocratic leaders. Scholars suggest that political parties in autocracies enable autocrats to credibly commit to sharing power with or channeling state benefits to political elites and the masses, thereby helping autocrats to mitigate potential elite and mass dissent. Yet, research largely overlooks the issue that not all political parties have organizational features that can help autocrats achieve these objectives. Despite important advancements in the literature, scholars of autocracy have so far paid insufficient attention to the variation in explicit organizational features of political parties. By introducing the most comprehensive data set on party organizations covering more than 600 parties from 134 autocracies between 1970 and 2019, this dissertation addresses this gap. In individual articles, I theorize that the variation in party organizational features shapes autocrats’ incentives and abilities to co-opt support, violently repress opponents, and institute democratizing reforms to maintain themselves in power. Taken together, individual articles demonstrate the importance of focusing on the organizational features of parties to fully understand how parties shape substantial political outcomes in autocracies.
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| 6. |
- Markwat, Niels
(författare)
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Pledge-based accountability: Voter responses to fulfilled and broken election pledges
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Political parties communicate their plans to voters via promises made during election campaigns. While it has been found that governments generally take these promises they make seriously, it has also been established that many voters believe otherwise. Less is known, however, about whether governments are held to account for the extent to which they fulfil their promises. This dissertation examines the effects of broken and fulfilled election pledges on voter evaluations of government performance. The findings challenge the idea that rewards and punishments for election pledge performance are straightforwardly administered by voters, instead emphasising that pledge-based accountability processes are asymmetric and affected by the biases of voters. The main conclusion is that pledge fulfilment is not the procedural value for voters suggested in some classical theoretical contributions. Instead, while most voters find it important that election promises are not broken, they find it even more important that the decisions that are taken align with their own preferences.
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| 7. |
- Oscarsson, Henrik, 1972, et al.
(författare)
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Väljarna och valet 2022
- 2024
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Väljarna och valet 2022 är en samlad analys av det svenska riksdagsvalet 2022. Med utgångspunkt i Valforskningsprogrammets undersökningar studeras de svenska väljarnas upplevelser, överväganden och röstningsmotiv. Boken ger en detaljerad bild av vad som hände under valrörelsen och hur mitten-högerpartierna kunde gå segrande ur ett historiskt jämnt val. I bokens 44 kapitel besvaras en lång rad frågeställningar som bidrar till att sätta in 2022 års val i ett historiskt sammanhang: Hur förändrades väljarnas politiska preferenser under mandatperioden och under valrörelsen? Hur och i vilken utsträckning tog väljarna del av medievalrörelse och partibudskap? När bestämde sig väljarna för hur de skulle rösta? Vilka var de viktigaste frågorna för väljarnas partival? Hur stor betydelse hade partiledarna, statsministerkandidaterna, taktikröstandet, valkompasserna och partiernas kampanjer för valutgången? Gick den svenska valdemokratin stärkt eller försvagad från de allmänna valen i september 2022?
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| 8. |
- Robertson, Felicia
(författare)
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Political Trust – More Personal Than We Thought? Explaining How and When Personality Traits Affect Political Trust.
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Political trust is crucial for a well-functioning society. Yet few countries enjoy the benefits of high political trust. This makes people wonder how trust in institutions is built. While trust in political institutions is considered to be an individual's evaluation of institutional performance, individuals within the same country make very different assessments. In this dissertation, I show that personality traits, that are genetic and socialized at an early age, can help explain why individuals' trust assessments differ. As personality traits reflect individuals' behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns, I argue that traits affect political trust in three ways, directly through our general tendencies, indirectly through how we process information and experiences, or how we interact with institutions. In three research papers, I study the relationship between personality traits and political trust in different political contexts, using different measurements of personality traits, political institutions, and institutional experiences. The results show that personality traits contribute to explaining why individuals' levels of trust in the same institutions differ. I conclude that personality traits are an important explanation for how political trust is formed and need to be considered when studying how trust changes over time.
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| 9. |
- Sychowiec, Maciej
(författare)
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What explains the credit ratings in economically advanced democracies? Unpacking the role of political stability through ideology, corruption, and transparency
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are often referred to in the literature as the “gatekeepers” of the international credit market. Their assessments may determine a government’s ability to finance its budget since good credit ratings allow governments to borrow money on more favorable terms. Several studies have emphasized that democracies receive better access to the credit market than autocracies, and many scholars have attempted to explain this advantage in terms of institutional constraints, veto players, or electoral punishment. However, the global financial crisis (2007–2008) has shown that economically advanced democracies are not immune to debt crises. Thus, the decision-making mechanisms in democratic countries do not always signal the predictability of debt repayment to CRAs. This leads to the following question: What explains the variation in credit ratings among economically advanced democracies? While economic factors are typically seen as the most central determinants of credit ratings, this dissertation suggests that a government’s political ideology and institutional quality also influence credit ratings, since CRAs can be expected to value political stability. This dissertation investigates three factors that may have implications for CRAs’ perception of political stability: political ideology, corruption, and transparency. This dissertation presents that TAN-leaning governments (Traditionalist–Authoritarian–Nationalist) receive lower credit ratings on average compared to GAL-leaning governments (Green–Alternative–Liberal) and thus shows that the socio-cultural dimension of political ideology may matter for CRAs. Furthermore, both corruption or transparency can have implications for credit ratings, but not necessarily in the same way across all contexts. At the subnational level, federal transfers can allow relatively corrupt states to retain good credit ratings, despite the negative consequences of corruption more broadly. Finally, the extent to which government transparency and media freedom can improve credit ratings may depend on if available information fuel domestic pressures from interest groups or mass protests, as they can be considered as a threat to political stability in the eyes of CRAs.
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| 10. |
- Tannenberg, Marcus, 1987
(författare)
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Towards Legitimacy as Congruence: Regimes' Menus of Legitimation and Citizens’ Appetites
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Legitimacy is one of the most crucial concepts in political science. It concerns how authority can be exercised in ways that those subjected to it willingly accept, something that all rulers desire. It is also one of the most contested concepts in the field, largely due to the difficulty of measurement. In this dissertation, I lay the foundations for a novel understanding of legitimacy, as the congruence between rulers' legitimation claims – their menus of legitimation – and the values and preferences – the appetites – of their citizens. In four separate research papers, I show the importance and utility of this approach. I provide empirical evidence that existing measures of legitimacy and its neighboring concepts, such as trust and popular support, suffer from a substantial autocratic bias. Self- censorship in autocratic countries results in inflated regime-friendly evaluations com- pared to in democracies. I conceptualize and develop measures of the most typical legitimation claims that rulers provide as justifications for why they are entitled to rule. I then match this expert coded data with global public opinion data to create measures of congruence between menus and appetites across five dimensions. Legitimacy as congruence provides a relational and multidimensional understanding of legitimacy, aligning the concept and its measurement. I show the value of this new measure in predicting outcomes for which the literature has strong theoretical expectations. I conclude that existing approaches to measuring legitimacy are flawed for the comparison across regime types, and that conceptualizing and operationalizing legitimacy as congruence provide an avenue to move the field forward.
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