showing 21 related works from this author
The globalisation divide in the public mind: belief systems on globalisation and their electoral consequences
2019
Many studies describe how globalisation—the global integration of the economic, political, and cultural domains of society—transforms party competition in Western Europe. At the citizen level, however, our knowledge about globalisation attitudes and their electoral consequences remains limited. Using data from a large-scale panel survey of the German public, we show that, first, citizens hold stable rather than fluid attitudes towards the concept of globalisation. Second, these attitudes are rather closely related to positions on specific economic, cultural, and political issues that social scientists understand as facets of globalisation but unrelated to positions on traditional redistribu…
Links-autoritäre Bürger bei der Bundestagswahl 2013: Sozialstrukturelle Determinanten und Konsequenzen einer Angebotslücke für Wahlbeteiligung und Re…
2019
Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Gruppe der „links-autoritar“ eingestellten Burger, die okonomisch linke mit soziokulturell autoritaren Sachfragenpositionen kombinieren. Da keine der relevanten deutschen Parteien eine solche Positionierung aufweist, sind links-autoritare Burger von einer Angebotslucke betroffen. Vor diesem Hintergrund fragen wir, erstens, nach der sozialstrukturellen Zusammensetzung der Links-Autoritaren, und, zweitens, nach den Konsequenzen der links-autoritaren Angebotslucke fur die Wahlbeteiligung und politische Unterstutzung dieser Gruppe. Unsere empirischen Analysen basieren auf dem Nachwahlquerschnitt der GLES zur Bundestagswahl 2013. Erstens zeigt sich, dass li…
Left-Authoritarians and Voter Turnout in West European Countries
2017
Parties with a left profile on economic issues and an authoritarian profile on socio-cultural issues have been largely absent from the supply side of the typical post-World-War-II policy space of West European democracies. As a result, citizens with economically left and socio-culturally authoritarian policy positions have faced difficulties in identifying parties that match their preference bundle. Building on previous inquiries into the party preferences of left-authoritarians, this study hypothesizes that the cross-pressures left-authoritarians typically encounter when looking for a party that matches their preferences translate into an overall lower likelihood to turn out to vote in nat…
Vote choices of left-authoritarians: Misperceived congruence and issue salience
2021
Abstract Often lacking parties with a corresponding profile, citizens with economically left and culturally authoritarian, or nationalist, policy orientations face a trade-off between congruence on economic and on cultural issues. How such left-authoritarian voters resolve this trade-off depends on which issues are more salient to them, previous research argues. We extend this line of research by considering the role of (mis-)perceived party positions. Using a survey in the context of the 2017 German election, we show how perceived congruence and issue importance interactively shape the left-authoritarian vote. Our findings indicate that many left-authoritarians vote for a party simply beca…
Intra-party heterogeneity in policy preferences and its effect on issue salience: Developing and applying a measure based on elite survey data
2017
Quantitative research on party politics often has to assume that parties are unitary actors with homogeneous policy preferences simply because intra-party heterogeneity is difficult to measure. This article proposes a measure of preference heterogeneity based on surveys of party elites. We draw on Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS) data from 28 elections in 21 developed democracies to quantify intra-party heterogeneity and validate this measure. The usefulness of the measure is demonstrated by studying the effects of intra-party heterogeneity on issue salience. We find support for the hypothesis that heterogeneity regarding a policy issue tends to be negatively associated with the emphasi…
Testing for a Political Bias in Freedom House Democracy Scores: Are U.S. Friendly States Judged To Be More Democratic?
2012
Several scholars have criticized the Freedom House democracy ratings as being politically biased; do countries indeed incorrectly receive better ratings that have stronger political ties with the United States? Starting from the assumption that other indices of democracy can be used as benchmark data, different estimation strategies are employed to gauge whether differences between a number of alternative indices of democracy and the FH ratings can be explained in a systematic manner by variables that record relationships between the U.S. and the countries under investigation. Differentiating between the period before 1989 and after 1988, I obtain consistent evidence of a substantial bias i…
The consequences of supply gaps in two‐dimensional policy spaces for voter turnout and political support: The case of economically left‐wing and cult…
2019
Parties with left-wing positions on economic issues and right-wing (i.e., authoritarian) positions on cultural issues have been historically largely absent from the supply side of the policy space of Western European democracies. Yet, many citizens hold such left-authoritarian issue attitudes. This article addresses the hypotheses that left-authoritarian citizens are less likely to vote, less satisfied with the democratic process and have lower levels of political trust when there is a left-authoritarian supply gap. Using data for 14 Western European countries from the European Social Survey 2008 in the main analysis, it is shown that left-authoritarians are less likely to vote and exhibit …
Public Spending and Trade Liberalization: The Compensation Hypothesis Revisited
2013
Despite a widespread fascination with the so called compensation hypothesis – i.e. the proposition that governments have to provide insurance against the risks of open markets to make integration into the international economy politically feasible – there appears to exist a complete lack of research where a rather straightforward implication of this theoretical mechanism is concerned, namely that liberalization of the trade regime should become more likely with a larger public sector and more social spending already in place. In this paper, we test this hypothesis that can be regard as a complement to existing research on the compensation hypothesis. We draw on a theoretical model that link…
Die wahrgenommene Entwicklung der sozialen Gerechtigkeit und Wahlentscheidungen bei der Bundestagswahl 2017
2021
Nach der Theorie des okonomischen Wahlens treffen Wahlerinnen und Wahler ihre Wahlentscheidung auf der Basis von Einschatzungen der wirtschaftlichen Lage. Wird die gesamtwirtschaftliche Entwicklung als gut bewertet, werden Regierungsparteien gewahlt, von einer schlechten Bewertung profitieren Oppositionsparteien – so die haufig, auch fur den deutschen, bestatigte Amtsinhaberhypothese. Aus der Makroperspektive scheint diese Amtsinhaberhypothese fur die Bundestagswahl 2017 jedoch nicht zuzutreffen. In dem Beitrag sollen drei Fragen untersucht werden: 1. Welche Sachfragen stehen im Mittelpunkt der Wahlentscheidung bei der Bundestagswahl 2017 und welche Rolle spielt neben der Sozial- und Flucht…
Economic globalisation, the perceived room to manoeuvre of national governments, and electoral participation: Evidence from the 2001 British General …
2016
Recent macro-level research argues that economic globalisation negatively affects electoral turnout by constraining the leeway of national governments and thereby rendering elections less meaningful to voters. This article analyses the link between perceptions of the national government's room to manoeuvre and turnout on the individual level. Drawing on the 2001 British General Election, it is shown that citizens who believe that economic globalisation leaves the national government with less influence on the economy are less likely to report to have voted. Further findings also support the proposed theoretical model according to which room to manoeuvre perceptions affect turnout via views …
Trade shocks and the nationalist backlash in political attitudes: panel data evidence from Great Britain
2021
This article leverages individual-level panel data on nationalist attitudes to contribute to the debate on the (economic) roots of popular opposition to globalization. We propose a ���nationalist backlash��� hypothesis: Individuals living in regions suffering from stronger import competition form more nationalist attitudes as part of a broad counter-reaction to globalization. Analyzing data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), we document not only a decrease in support for EU membership but also a general shift towards more nationalist attitudes among respondents from regions exposed to higher imports from low-wage countries���in particular, China. We thus uncover a direct individ…
Intra-Party Heterogeneity in Policy Preferences and Its Effect on Issue Salience: Evidence from the Comparative Candidates Survey
2016
Quantitative research on the positions of political parties and party competition regularly invokes the assumption that parties are unitary actors with homogenous policy preferences. Drawing on Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS) data from 28 elections in 21 developed democracies, we show that candidates often hold quite heterogeneous issue positions and that the extent of this heterogeneity varies significantly across parties and, most interestingly, even within parties across different issue dimensions. In an effort to explore the implications of such intra-party heterogeneity for party strategy and competition, we argue that intra-party heterogeneity and issue salience go together, becau…
How Electoral Institutions Change the Influence of World Trade Integration on Trade Policies
2014
World integration levels influence opportunity costs of maintaining restrictive national trade policies. In an integrated world, restrictive trade policies are more costly than in a context of low overall levels of world market integration. We argue that policy makers can be expected to react to these varying incentives to liberalize the trade regimes of their countries, yet do so not in a uniform fashion across countries. Rather, the responsiveness to changes in levels of world trade integration is conditional upon the electoral system the country in question employs. This is due to the fact that opportunity cost considerations increase in importance with a) the degree to which policy make…
Attitudes towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the European Union: The treaty partner heuristic and issue attention
2018
Why has the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partisanship met with strong public resistance among some Europeans and in some European Union member states, but not in others? This article argues that one important perspective to explain the pattern of support for TTIP is the role of heuristic opinion formation and issue attention. Analysing multiple waves of Eurobarometer data, I find that views of the two treaty partners, the US and the European Union, shape attitudes towards TTIP and that the largely post-materialist concerns over TTIP resonated specifically in those European countries whose citizens’ attention was less focused on economic issues. In showing how opinions towards concret…
Where Democrats Disagree: Citizens’ Normative Conceptions of Democracy
2017
While support for the essential norms of liberal electoral democracy is high in almost all developed democracies, there is arguably also a gap between democratic aspirations and democratic practice, leading to dissatisfaction among citizens. We argue that citizens may hold very different normative conceptions of democracy which are equally compatible with support for liberal democracy, but lead to different expectations where institutional design and democratic practice are concerned. Satisfaction with democracy may thus depend on congruence between such normative conceptions and institutionally entrenched norms. Drawing on survey data from Germany with a comprehensive item battery on attit…
Comparing Freedom House Democracy Scores to Alternative Indices and Testing for Political Bias: Are US Allies Rated as More Democratic by Freedom Hou…
2014
AbstractSeveral scholars have criticized the Freedom House democracy ratings as being politically biased. Do countries indeed incorrectly receive better ratings that have stronger political ties with the United States? This article tests whether differences between a number of alternative indices of democracy and the FH ratings can be explained in a systematic manner by variables that record relationships between the US and the countries under investigation. Differentiating between the periods before 1988 and after 1989, strong and consistent evidence of a substantial bias in the FH ratings is obtained for the former period. For the latter period, the estimates are less consistent, but stil…
Economic globalization and voter turnout in established democracies
2010
This paper asks whether international economic integration negatively affects electoral turnout. The theoretical model builds on the premise that economic integration constrains the ability of national governments to shape outcomes. Citizens are conscious of such constraints and take them into account when considering the costs and benefits of casting a vote in national elections. The result is a lower inclination to vote under conditions of high economic integration. Consequently, aggregate turnout is lower the more internationally integrated a national economy is. Analysis of aggregate data for parliamentary elections in 23 OECD democracies over the period 1965–2006 robustly supports this…
The Electoral Effects of Offshoring-Induced Mass-Layoffs: Germany in Comparative Perspective
2012
How does globalization’s impact on the labor market affect political preferences? This study takes up the strategy of a recent contribution (Margalit 2011a) and studies the local electoral effects of regional job losses due to offshoring. By applying the analytical strategy to German national elections in 2005 and 2009, it studies whether and how the finding on U.S. presidential elections travels to other contexts. Theoretically, the contribution adds a perspective suggested by previous research on the individual level political consequences of the globalization-labor market link that addresses the likely social policy preferences of globalization’s losers. Preliminary empirical results ind…
What explains ‘generosity’ in the public financing of high-tech drugs? An empirical investigation of 25 OECD countries and 11 controversial drugs
2014
In times of increasing cost pressures, public healthcare systems in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries face the question of whether and to which extent new high-tech drugs are to be financed within their public healthcare systems. Systematic empirical research that explains across-country variation in these decisions is, however, almost non-existent. We analyse an original dataset that contains coverage decisions for 11 controversial drugs in 25 OECD countries using multilevel modelling. Our results indicate that the ‘generosity’ with which controversial new drugs are publicly financed is unrelated to a country’s wealth and general expenditure levels fo…
Public Support for TTIP in EU Countries: What Determines Trade Policy Preferences in a Salient Real-World Case?
2016
Attitudes towards international economic integration are usually measured via survey questions on preferences for free trade in general, arguably in contexts of low salience of international economic integration in the public mind. Drawing on three recent rounds of Eurobarometer surveys that contain information on citizens’ attitudes towards a free trade and investment agreement between the EU and the USA, this paper seizes the opportunity to re-examine individual-level preferences towards international economic integration with regard to a specific real-world case of relatively high political salience, i.e. TTIP. While past research has explained preferences towards trade primarily via mod…
Economic Globalization, Perceptions of the Room to Maneuver of National Governments and Individual Electoral Participation
2013
Recent macro-level research argues that economic globalisation has negative consequences for electoral turnout as globalisation would constrain the leeway of national governments and thereby render elections less meaningful to voters. This article constitutes the first attempt to analyse the link between perceptions of the national government’s room to manoeuvre and turnout on the individual level: Do individual perceptions that national governments enjoy less leeway under economic globalisation lead to a lower individual inclination to vote? The paper draws on the case of UK’s General Election in 2001 and, thus, a context in which the idea of a constraining effect of globalisation was made…