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Filtering data generated by so-called Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) in order to remove entries that exhibit unrealistic behavior (i.e., cannot correspond to a real political view) is of primary importance. If such entries are significantly present in VAA generated datasets, they can render conclusions drawn from VAA data analysis invalid. In this work we investigate approaches that can be used for automating the process of identifying entries that appear to be suspicious in terms of a users' answer patterns. We utilize two unsupervised data mining techniques and compare their performance against a well established psychometric approach. Our results suggest that the performance of data mining approaches is comparable to those drawing on psychometric theory with a fraction of the complexity. More specifically, our simulations show that data mining techniques as well as psychometric approaches can be used to identify truly 'rogue' data (i.e., completely random data injected into the dataset under investigation). However, when analysing real datasets the performance of all approaches dropped considerably. This suggests that 'suspect' entries are neither random nor clustered. This finding poses some limitations on the use of unsupervised techniques, suggesting that the latter can only complement rather than substitute existing methods to identifying suspicious entries.

In recent decades Europe's political landscape has been marked by a notable rise in the use of mechanisms of direct democracy such as the referendum and the citizens' initiative. Our focus in this article is on the national referendums directly connected to the European Union (EU) integration process, a subject which is receiving increasing scholarly attention. Two interrelated questions are asked. First, how do these specific mechanisms of direct democracy interact with the existing federal political institutions of the EU? And, second, how does this affect the institutional stability of the EU polity? In addressing this problematique we undertake a cross-polity comparison of the EU-variant of direct democracy that reveals a range of institutional models and brings to the fore a neglected dimension in the study of EU referendum politics, the role of federal political institutions.

In recent decades Europe's political landscape has been marked by a notable rise in the use of mechanisms of direct democracy such as the referendum and the citizens' initiative. Our focus in this article is on the national referendums directly connected to the European Union (EU) integration process, a subject which is receiving increasing scholarly attention. Two interrelated questions are asked. First, how do these specific mechanisms of direct democracy interact with the existing federal political institutions of the EU? And, second, how does this affect the institutional stability of the EU polity? In addressing this problematique we undertake a cross-polity comparison of the EU-variant of direct democracy that reveals a range of institutional models and brings to the fore a neglected dimension in the study of EU referendum politics, the role of federal political institutions.

In recent decades Europe?s political landscape has been marked by a notable rise in the use of mechanisms of direct democracy such as the referendum and the citizens? initiative. Our focus in this article is on the national referendums that are directly connected to the European Union (EU) integration process. These types of referendums are increasingly recognised by the scholarly community as the source of institutional instability across the wider EU polity. To explain the nature of this empirical puzzle is this article?s main objective. However, instead of pursuing intra-EU comparisons, as does much of the literature, we adopt a comparative perspective on the EU that involves the explicit comparison with other polities. In doing so, we bring to the fore a neglected dimension in the study of EU referendum politics: the operation of federal political institutions. We contend that cross-polity comparison of EU forms of direct democracy with other polities reveal insights that suggest a number of institutional models to overcome the sources of the present instability.

This article introduces Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) as a data-generating tool that can be used to measure the positions of party supporters in multidimensional policy space. It begins with an overview of the state of the art as regards methods for locating parties on a common policy space, in terms of how data are gathered and also in terms of how policy dimensions are identified and measured. We then use a dimension reduction technique to identify latent policy dimensions from a dataset obtained from a VAA carried out in Scotland in 2011. These dimensions are used to map the policy positions of supporters of five Scottish political parties. We argue that this tool allows more leverage on understanding the relative locations of parties 'in the electorate' in multidimensional policy space. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

This article introduces Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) as a data-generating tool that can be used to measure the positions of party supporters in multidimensional policy space. It begins with an overview of the state of the art as regards methods for locating parties on a common policy space, in terms of how data are gathered and also in terms of how policy dimensions are identified and measured. We then use a dimension reduction technique to identify latent policy dimensions from a dataset obtained from a VAA carried out in Scotland in 2011. These dimensions are used to map the policy positions of supporters of five Scottish political parties. We argue that this tool allows more leverage on understanding the relative locations of parties 'in the electorate' in multidimensional policy space.

This article explores the territorial and temporal patterns of EU cohesion policy media coverage. The topic content and tone of news are analysed using topic modelling and sentiment analysis techniques, which are applied to a new corpus of over 4,000 English and Spanish news stories from the period 2010 to 2017 across three territorial levels. In line with our theoretical expectations, we found significant differences in the tone used across territorial levels, with national and transnational levels being more negative than the regional level. While national and transnational media place relatively more emphasis on politicized EU topics, subnational media focus more on substantive policy topics corresponding with EU policy objectives. Furthermore, media reporting on the cohesion policy evolved significantly over time and reacted to external events, such as the euro and migration crises, as well as internal, country-specific events, such as Brexit in the UK and corruption scandals in Spain. However, the tone of cohesion policy news is positive overall suggesting that the media can, in principle, contribute to public support for the policy and the EU more generally.

This article explores the territorial and temporal patterns of EU cohesion policy media coverage. The topic content and tone of news are analysed using topic modelling and sentiment analysis techniques, which are applied to a new corpus of over 4,000 English and Spanish news stories from the period 2010 to 2017 across three territorial levels. In line with our theoretical expectations, we found significant differences in the tone used across territorial levels, with national and transnational levels being more negative than the regional level. While national and transnational media place relatively more emphasis on politicized EU topics, subnational media focus more on substantive policy topics corresponding with EU policy objectives. Furthermore, media reporting on the cohesion policy evolved significantly over time and reacted to external events, such as the euro and migration crises, as well as internal, country-specific events, such as Brexit in the UK and corruption scandals in Spain. However, the tone of cohesion policy news is positive overall suggesting that the media can, in principle, contribute to public support for the policy and the EU more generally.

Despite the global growth in the use of Voter Advice Applications (VAAs), which advise users on how similar their own policy views are to the policy positions of the political parties, there have been few field experiments that isolate the causal effects of VAA use on party support. Nor has there been much investigation of how VAAs may help to ameliorate ethnically based voting divisions by refocusing voter attention on other issues. This article draws on evidence from a field experiment in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland. We find that at the individual level party preferences are somewhat more closely related to voter ideology after the provision of advice. Yet, at the aggregate level, we find no evidence that advice leads to weaker ethno-national structuring of party support. These results suggest that while receiving advice from VAAs has some impact on users' party preferences, there is no observable overall impact on support levels for the ethno-national blocs in Northern Ireland.

Despite the global growth in the use of Voter Advice Applications (VAAs), which advise users on how similar their own policy views are to the policy positions of the political parties, there have been few field experiments that isolate the causal effects of VAA use on party support. Nor has there been much investigation of how VAAs may help to ameliorate ethnically based voting divisions by refocusing voter attention on other issues. This article draws on evidence from a field experiment in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland. We find that at the individual level party preferences are somewhat more closely related to voter ideology after the provision of advice. Yet, at the aggregate level, we find no evidence that advice leads to weaker ethno-national structuring of party support. These results suggest that while receiving advice from VAAs has some impact on users' party preferences, there is no observable overall impact on support levels for the ethno-national blocs in Northern Ireland.