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Abstract: Abstract Political parties, and especially the ‘party on the ground’ which refers to the party’s members, voters and local sections, have witnessed a decline in Western Europe. This spurred parties to undertake organizational reforms, among others by giving their members a larger say in the selection of electoral candidates and party leaders. At the same time, parties are increasingly embracing the ‘multispeed’ membership model (Scarrow: changing approaches to partisan mobilization, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) involving also non-members in the party’s internal functioning. These different forms of affiliation raise questions about whether and to what extent non-members should have a say in the selection of party candidates for elections. While previous research has mainly focussed on opinions of those who select (party members and voters), this paper studies opinions of those who are selected, i.e. local politicians. We investigate which local politicians are in favour of opening up the candidate selection process to voters Leveraging data from a large-scale survey conducted in Flanders (Belgium) during Spring 2022 (N > 1000), our analysis delves into the complex interplay of ideological factors, notions of democracy and rational considerations driving local politicians’ attitudes towards opening up candidate selection. PubDate: 2024-08-23
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Abstract: Abstract While populism has recently garnered much scholarly attention and media scrutiny, we know little about what citizens think of this phenomenon. We conducted surveys in Canada, the United States, France, and Italy to probe how citizens perceive populism and whether they self-identify as populists or anti-populists. Surprisingly, many respondents do not comprehend the term, equating populism with “being popular” or the “population.” Only a small proportion put forth definitions of populism advanced by academics and associate the term with people-centrism or anti-elitism. The ideational approach and populism’s “thin-centered” nature is lost on the average citizen. Both supporters and critics of populism frequently link it to charismatic leaders, suggesting that defining populism with a focus on leadership resonates more with the public’s perception. Those that self-identify as populists typically equate it with community, democracy, equality, hope, leadership, and giving a voice to the people. However, anti-populists are more critical, likening populism to demagoguery and extremism, and describing populist supporters in derisive terms. PubDate: 2024-08-22
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Abstract: Abstract Contemporary (European) politics is characterised by a strong presence of divisive discourses that pit ‘us’ against ‘them’. The strong presence of such ‘conflict frames’ raises three questions concerning the salience of conflicts in public opinion: (1) Which conflicts are salient among the general public and how do these perceived conflicts relate to each other' (2) How does the perceived level of conflicts (i.e. the salience) relate to preferences in these conflicts' And (3), is the mere salience of social conflicts—distinct from people’s preferences in conflicts—relevant for populist voting' Survey data from the Netherlands from 2020 show that perceptions of conflict are structured along two highly correlated dimensions: a socio-economic dimension and a cultural dimension, and that the salience of conflicts and people’s preferences in these conflicts are only loosely correlated. We also find that generalized conflict thinking moderates the relationship between outgroup attitudes and voting for populist parties. PubDate: 2024-08-12
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Abstract: Abstract There is a wide consensus that Belgian politics used to be structured along class, denominational and linguistic divides during organised modernity. The present study explores whether these political divides – which have primarily been corroborated by analyses on the structural underpinnings of voting behaviour – were also anchored in ideological dissensus among voters; thereby constituting a ‘cleavage’ in the thicker sociological sense. Through harnessing unique post-electoral survey data from 1979, this contribution reconstructs a Belgian ‘political space’ that operationalises the interplay of social, ideological, and political divides. Within this political space, clear traces of the presupposed tripartite cleavage structure are detected in Flanders and Wallonia, even though the ideological conflicts encapsulating these cleavages tend to differ between the two regions. Crucially, the analysis also lays bare the initial signs of a burgeoning cultural cleavage, which, while highly polarising, is not yet electorally structuring. Ultimately, these findings add an empirical basis to classical works on the Belgian cleavage structure. PubDate: 2024-08-12
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Abstract: Abstract Technocracy is seen as a solution to the political challenges of our time by an increasing number of citizens. Using survey data from the World Value Survey, this study confirms the existence of a positive inclination towards experts replacing politicians as policy-makers in both democratic and non-democratic countries. Confirming what we already knew about individual drivers, citizens with low political interest and trust appear to be more supportive of experts in government. Counter-intuitively, a preference for right-wing market capitalism does not affect attitudes towards experts in government. The novelty of this study is that an expert-led model of governance is particularly appealing to citizens who oppose immigration (social conservatism) and, above all, to those who favour social order and control over democracy (authoritarianism). The latter finding holds across continents, highlighting that support for experts in government has common roots among individuals living in very different contexts. Despite this common trend, the cross-continent analyses reveal important divergences from the pooled patterns for other individual-level drivers, calling for further exploration of contextual factors. PubDate: 2024-07-30
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Abstract: Abstract Hate speech psychologically harms its targeted people. It sometimes leads to hate crimes, which threatens social stability and harmony. Counterspeech is a communicative activity refuting hate speech. Scholars disagree on whether counterspeech-making behavior belongs to political participation, and their disagreements influence empirical studies on political participation. This paper uses Hannah Arendt’s conception of politics to investigate the nature of counterspeech-making behavior. It argues that this behavior is a form of political participation because it contains intrinsic political values and politics-oriented instrumental goals. The analysis broadens our knowledge of political participation and deepens our understanding of hate speech and counterspeech. PubDate: 2024-07-29
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Abstract: Abstract Democratic bias in polls reached record highs in recent elections. The Shy Trump Voter Hypothesis claims some voters feel pressure to hide plans to vote for Trump. Despite several scholarly efforts to assess whether shy Trump voters contribute significantly to Democratic bias, the jury is still out. We undertake a thorough investigation using the longstanding, and more general, social desirability framework to consider why some survey subjects might be shy about revealing their support for any candidate. We randomly assign voters to either report the candidate they would SAY they would vote for if they wanted to make the best impression on others or the worst impression. In a new addition to this experiment, we then return to each voter with the opposite condition. Doing so allows us to investigate the causes and consequences of the social pressures voters feel when discussing which candidate they support. We show that the pressures voters feel are a function of the partisan context in which they live and we focus on voters that feel pressure to say they support a candidate other than the candidate of the party with which they identify. Although we demonstrate that cross-pressured partisans are more likely to say they intend to vote for the other party’s candidate than unpressured partisans, they occur on both sides and so polling bias created by them (should they revert to their party’s candidate in the voting booth) is likely reduced in the aggregate. PubDate: 2024-07-29
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Abstract: Abstract What explains the rise of radical right-wing parties in post-socialist Europe' Previous research attributes this phenomenon to the legacies of socialism, emphasizing the macro-socialization processes in education and civil society. This study introduces a novel perspective by highlighting the significance of limited interaction with the non-socialist states, proposing that such interactions could have facilitated micro-socialization processes that counteracted the regime’s indoctrination efforts. By analyzing the effect of cross-border traffic agreements between East and West Germany, it is found that areas with increased Western contact during the socialist era exhibit significantly less support for the radical right thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, employing entropy balancing to adjust for socioeconomic differences in the totalitarian period, this research demonstrates that individuals from these areas are half as likely to support the Alternative for Germany today, compared to a reweighted control group. This research offers a novel mechanism detailing how Western interactions could challenge entrenched socialist legacies, contributing significantly to the discourse on political socialization and the dynamics of political culture in post-socialist Europe. PubDate: 2024-07-26
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Abstract: Abstract Building upon previous literature on political behavior, contentious social movements, and political communication, this paper aims to identify which experiences of political participation are associated with illegal protest. Relying on a two-wave panel dataset from the US, we first provide an overview of the main types of political participatory behavior, including social media political engagement. Later, using cross-sectional, autoregressive and fixed effects OLS regressions, we test the different associations of various forms of participation with illegal protest. Overall, we find frequent voting is negatively related to partaking in illegal protest, while social media political participation is consistently, strongly, and positively related to illegal protest, even accounting for potential endogeneity between illegal protest and social media political participation. Furthermore, frequent voting moderates this latter association, so that the relationship between social media political engagement and illegal protest is stronger for rare voters as opposed to frequent voters. PubDate: 2024-07-03
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Abstract: Abstract The political interest of men rises faster than that of women during late adolescence and early adulthood in Britain (Fraile and Sánchez-Vítores in Polit Psychol 41(1):89–106, 2020). This paper analyses whether factors relating to education, the assumption of adult roles and family background can explain this growing disparity. We use panel data of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and Understanding Society (USoc) to examine these factors. Education turns out to be the only factor that is related to different growth trajectories of political interest between men and women. Women with lower levels of education or vocational qualifications show stable or declining levels of political interest while all other categories show rising levels of interest between ages 16 and 30. Education can, however, only partially account for the rising gender gap. Variables representing the attainment of adult roles, such as occupational status, marital status and household composition, and variables capturing family socialisation are not linked to the growing disparity of political interest between men and women. Most of this gap thus remains unexplained. PubDate: 2024-07-03
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Abstract: Abstract This article uses Swedish register data to study the labour market experiences of radical right-wing candidates standing in local elections. We look at different measures of economic insecurity (labour market participation trajectories, experience of unemployment in social networks and relative growth in the number of jobs for foreign-born workers vis-a-vis natives) and examine whether they are predictors of candidates running for the Sweden Democrats, the main radical right-wing party in Sweden, as opposed to running for mainstream political parties. We find that the labour market trajectories of such candidates are markedly different from those of mainstream party candidates. Those with turbulent or out-of-labour market trajectories are much more likely to run for the Sweden Democrats, as opposed to other parties. The same is also true for candidates embedded in social networks with higher levels of unemployment, while working in a high-skilled industry markedly lowers the probability of running for the Sweden Democrats, especially for male candidates with low educational attainment. We find mixed results for the ethnic threat hypothesis. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract How does elite polarization impact citizens’ political support' While elite polarization generally has a negative connotation, we argue that it is crucial to distinguish its potential manifestations. The present study analyzes the impact of perceived elite polarization on political support by disentangling the effects of elite incivility from those of ideological polarization, and, additionally, by analyzing different dimensions of ideological polarization (i.e., along a general left–right, economic, and cultural dimension). Using survey data from the Dutch Parliamentary Election Survey 2021, we find that perceived incivility has a negative impact on political support. In contrast, perceived left–right polarization and economic issue polarization have a positive effect on political support, while cultural polarization has no effect. These findings show that elite polarization can convey both perceptions of conflict and choice to citizens, and that its impact on political support crucially depends on the dimension of polarization under study. Our study thereby refines our knowledge of the attitudinal consequences of elite polarization. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract Previous research demonstrated that voters for the Dutch radical right party PVV were the most stable voters among the highly volatile electorate. However, since 2017 two new radical right parties have successfully entered the Dutch Parliament: Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21, conceivably at the expense of the PVV. The success of these new parties is puzzling, because there does not seem to be much room for new parties campaigning on a highly similar platform. In our paper, we use LISS panel data to study the determinants of vote switching patterns between four subsequent elections from 2017 to 2021. We find that the surprise victory of the new far right in 2019 can be explained by its ability to attract both former PVV voters as well as voters new to the far right. Since then, FvD has lost many of its supporters again, but these voters have mostly switched to other far-right parties, meaning the far-right support base has become fragmented, yet enlarged. This suggests that when provided with viable alternatives, radical right voters are as volatile as other voter groups. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract This article examines the gap between the political engagement of Dutch citizens with an racialized immigrant background and those without one. Analyzing the effect of perceived cultural and religious inclusion and exclusion, we look into what citizens with an immigrant background make of politics—measured in what we call the evaluation gap—and their actual electoral behavior—measured in what we call the participation gap. Drawing from the 2021 Dutch Parliamentary Election Study and the 2021 Dutch Ethnic Minority Election Study, we include a uniquely broad range of immigrant backgrounds in our analysis. This combination of studies lets us transcend typical migrant/non-migrant dichotomies and include smaller, often understudied immigrant groups. Our analyses reveal that the evaluation gap is most pronounced for the largest, most-frequently studied immigrant groups, while the participation gap is most pronounced among commonly overlooked groups. Embeddedness in religious communities does not correlate with the evaluation gap though it does seem to suppress a deeper participation gap. Perceived discrimination, including in the form of underrepresentation, mobilizes citizens with an immigrant background, which obscures an underlying participation gap while also partly explaining the evaluation gap. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract Associative issue ownership (AIO) has proven its value in describing issue competition and explaining voting behavior. Yet, it is unclear whether and to what extent AIO also differentiates parties and influences vote choice in highly fragmented, multiparty systems. In such a context, parties must differentiate from many electoral competitors, which makes AIO worth pursuing. At the same time, obtaining unequivocal ownership may be a very difficult endeavor in the face of so many rivals. This paper aims to assess these questions empirically by employing the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study 2021 on a system with 17 elected parties (ENPP = 8). At the aggregate level, we find unequivocal issue ownership for 4 of the 14 issues under study. AIO of most other issues is contested, either by parties with very similar policy positions (within-block competition) or by parties with opposing positions (between-block competition). A final set of issues remain unclaimed. At the individual level, perceptions of issue ownership explain the composition of voters’ party consideration sets (pre-elections) and their actual vote choice (post-elections). These impacts are stronger when voters associate the party with an issue they find important. We conclude that AIO perceptions are an important factor to consider when studying party dynamics and voting behavior in a context of highly fragmented multipartyism. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract While a large and growing body of work has explored the effects of minority representation, Europe’s oldest minority has been overlooked. Previous studies have shown that social exclusion and abstention rates in districts with a high Romani population are inflated (Carmona in Sociol Hist 10(1):174–205, 2019). Still, no individual data has ever been used to understand Romanies’ participation in politics. Combining a pool of datasets covering Romanies in Spain with district and municipal level data, we comprehensively study Romanies’ turnout. Controlling for several individual and district variables, we find that Romanies vote less, are less interested, and think that elections are less useful than the rest of the Spaniards. Our results suggest that socialization plays a role. Both living in a Romani district and following evangelism affect the reasons given by Romanies to never participate in politics: while those who live in Romani districts declare to abstain because of thinking that elections are useless, those who live in non-Romani neighborhoods declare to abstain because they are non-interested in politics. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract Political opponents are often divided not only in their attitudes (i.e., ideological polarization) and their feelings toward each other (i.e., affective polarization), but also in their factual perceptions of reality (i.e., factual belief polarization). This paper describes factual belief polarization in the Netherlands around three core issues. Furthermore, this paper examines who are most susceptible to this type of polarization. Analyses on the 2021 Dutch Parliamentary Election Study reveal that citizens hold different perceptions than their political opponents about income inequality, immigration, and climate change. This type of polarization is strongest among citizens who have hostile feelings toward their political opponents and, paradoxically, among those who are highly educated and interested in politics. Trust in epistemic authorities did not mitigate factual belief polarization, perhaps because this trust has itself become politicized. These findings underline that factual belief polarization constitutes a core pillar of political polarization, alongside ideological and affective polarization. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract Are the leaders of independent agencies independent in practice' Are the independence requirements set out in legislation a guarantee of de facto independence' This paper reveals the relationship between de iure independence and de facto independence of independent agencies through two dimensions: political affinity and political vulnerability of their leaders. Our analysis reveals how the de iure independence of an agency affects the probability that agency heads will have connections to political parties and whether their mandates will end prematurely in a period of political transition, i.e., when a new government takes office. It also determines whether the biographical profile of agency heads (PhD degree, bureaucratic background, and political affiliation) can influence their security of tenure when governments change, and hence their independence. This is supported by an empirical evaluation of independent authorities in the Czech Republic between 1993 and 2021. PubDate: 2024-07-01
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Abstract: Abstract In this introduction to the special issue ‘Extremes and divides in electoral politics, the 2021 Dutch parliamentary elections in particular’ four core elements are included. First, we discuss the rationale behind the special issue: answering calls for building bridges between related research literatures on the politics of divided and extremes. We do so by bringing together studies on the different manifestations thereof for the 2021 Dutch parliamentary elections, all (partly) using the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. Second, we provide a case background to the Netherlands and these elections and discuss how this case sheds light on the larger population of cases. Third, we provide more detailed information on the dataset, also discussing how it can be merged with different data sources, which facilitates bridge building, as done by multiple contributions to this special issue. Fourth and last, we provide a synopsis of the contributions, dividing them in studies focusing on voting behavior and on attitudes regarding the fundaments of democratic politics. Based on each study’s results, we also formulate avenues for new studies, underscoring our aim to facilitate the building of bridges between literatures on extremes and divides in politics. PubDate: 2024-06-06 DOI: 10.1057/s41269-024-00346-6
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