The analysis of the causes of political support for political institutions has been focused either on one-case studies that stress the relevance of individual variables or cross-national studies that stress the role of institutions. In this article, the authors suggest that to understand the logic of political support, it is necessary to combine both types of explanations. Using evidence from 17 European countries of the 2002 to 2003 European Social Survey data set, the authors show that the effect of the performance of the institution on political support is higher in majoritarian democracies, where the attribution of responsibility for policy outcomes is clear, than in proportional democracies. They also show that the effect of ideology on political support depends on the type of democracy: Those citizens ideologically far from the government will show higher levels of political support in proportional democracies than in majoritarian ones.
Volume 6 explores the role of scientists in the science-policy dialogue. It provides an overview of the most important elements of the Swiss political system. It outlines the general structure and law-making process and discusses how scientific experts are able to exert influence on political processes and decisions. In contrast to political systems, where the only official political participation of citizens is the election of representatives, Switzerland has a political system of direct democracy, which means that people decide directly on many policies by regular referendums.
'Eine Voraussetzung für den Bestand repräsentativer Demokratien ist, dass die Bürger den politischen Institutionen ein gewisses Maß an Vertrauen entgegenbringen. Nach Easton (1965) ist das Konzept des politischen Vertrauens in dem Konzept der politischen Unterstützung zu verorten. 30 Jahre später kommt mit Putnam (1993) ein zweiter theoretischer Strang auf, der politisches Vertrauen als zentralen Bestandteil von Sozialkapital betrachtet. Das Ziel des Beitrags besteht darin, zu klären, welche Rolle das Institutionenvertrauen im Zusammenhang mit dem Unterstützungskonzept Eastons einerseits sowie dem Sozialkapitalansatz Putnams andererseits spielt. Die Analysen, die für die Länder Deutschland, Schweiz, Norwegen, Schweden, Spanien und die USA durchgeführt werden, basieren auf Daten der dritten Welle des World Values Surveys (1995-97). Als Untersuchungsergebnis lässt sich festhalten, dass eine generalisierte Dimension des Institutionenvertrauens in der Bevölkerung besteht, die die Verortung in Eastons Konzept politischer Unterstützung rechtfertigt. Bei einer Differenzierung des Vertrauens der Bürger zu Institutionen des Rechtsstaats (Polizei, Justiz) und des Parteienstaats (Parlament, Parteien, Regierung) zeigt sich jedoch, dass Putnams Sozialkapitalkonzept ebenso einen relevanten Erklärungsbeitrag leistet.' (Autorenreferat)
Formulation of a possible partial theory of support is addressed. The writings of T. Parsons provide a coherent set of theoretical statements about support, & examination of his ideas can identify certain problems on the way to a possible theory. But Parsons confines political support to the relationship between the leadership of a political system & its constituency or public; the conceptualization is linked essentially to electoral support for a leadership & its policies, & the analysis is hereby limited to democratic systems. Such a treatment of political support is wholly within the prevailing focus of most political inquiry into the "allocative" area of politics, or that dealing with conflict over particular policies & their implementation. The distinction here is in contrast with research into "systemic" politics, or inquiry into the general properties of a political system that identify & distinguish it as such. By focusing on allocative politics alone, a narrowing of the scope of political support is likely to occur. There needs to be a theoretical awareness not only of the leadership of the authorities, but also of the regime & the political community as objects of political support. The failure of Parsons to separate these objects of support underscores a major consequence of his & like perspectives; political support as a concept is defined through very few dimensions, such as electoral participation or legitimacy. Legitimacy is but one dimension of political support; among others are trust, loyalty, & confidence. Support may be multidimensional in character, positive or negative, overt or covert, specific or diffuse. A partial theory of political support would further define & assess these properties of support & their appropriate indicators. Four alternative theoretical models need to be considered: the summative, saliency, sequential, & combinatorial models. The context in which political support has heretofore been considered has been preservationist, directed at how objects of the political system manage to maintain a certain level of support. A substantially different & more comprehensive perspective on support is revealed when we reverse the question & ask "How does change occur?" Modified AA.
Theories of the behavioral consequences of political support coincide in the prediction that political support will correlate positively with indices of conventional behavior, negatively with indices of unconventional behavior. Survey data drawn from three communities in the Federal Republic of Germany show that an index of support for the structure of political authority is negatively correlated both with an index of actual participation in aggressive political behavior and with an index of participation in conventional electoral/pressure-group politics. Since the political behavior indices are themselves positively correlated, it is useful to construct a typology which differentiates between "pure" types – no participation, participation only in conventional, participation only in aggressive – and "mixed" types – participation in conventional and moderately aggressive, participation in conventional and highly aggressive. When the relationship between political support and the political-action type index is examined, it turns out that two of the types are associated with medium political support, while four of them occur at low support. To achieve more accurate explanation of types of political behavior, a model for prediction of each action type is proposed, taking into account interaction between political support, sense of personal political influence, and belief in the efficacy of past collective political aggression. The test of the model yields positive results, suggesting that it represents a fruitful beginning toward development of a theory of behavioral consequences of political support.
This paper studies political support in advanced industrial democracies. Our goal is to determine how citizens in these nations judge the democratic process today. Is there a popular "crisis of democracy'? This paper first provides a framework for assessing public support for democratic politics in advanced industrial democracies. Then, we demonstrate a broad decline in support for politicians, parties, and political institutions across these nations. However, democratic values and community support have not declined significantly. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for politics in advanced industrial democracies.
THREE HYPOTHESES ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICAL PERFORMANCE (SPECIFIC SUPPORT) AND ATTITUDE ABOUT THE POLITICAL SYSTEM (DIFFUSE SUPPORT) ARE INVESTIGATED. DATA ARE FROM A STUDY DONE IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY IN 1974 1976. SUPPORT IS FOUND FOR A SOCIAL LEARNING HYPOTHESIS, PREDICTING THAT SYSTEM SUPPORT WILL RESPOND TO DIFFERENTIAL SATISFACTION WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF AN INCUMBENT GROUP.
We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program the Uruguayan PANES on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, we find that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government (relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and for those near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in political economy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasing government political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.
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We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program – the Uruguayan PANES – on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, we find that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government (relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and for those near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in political economy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasing government political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.
Même si, au cours de la dernière décade, de très nombreux travaux empiriques ont porté sur les problèmes relatifs au soutient politique, les approches théoriques susceptibles d'engendrer par la suite des théories partielles du soutient ont été relativement rares, et cela en dépit du fait que cette notion ait depuis toujours perméabilisé la recherche en politique. L'auteur examine ici les idées de Parsons concernant le support politique dans l'espoir qu'une meilleure compréhension des problèmes non encore résolus permettra de procéder plus rapidement et plus sûrement à l'élaboration d'une théorie valable à ce sujet.
Three hypotheses about the relationship between political performance (specific support) and attitude about the political system (diffuse support) are investigated. Data are from a two-wave panel study carried out during 1974–1976 in the Federal Republic of Germany. No support is found for an Independence hypothesis, which predicts that because system support is acquired during an early age it will be resistant to change during adulthood. The results indicate that the relationship between performance evaluation and system attitude is complex. Support is found for (1) a Social Learning hypothesis, which predicts that system support will respond to differential satisfaction with the performance of an incumbent administration, and (2) a Structuring hypothesis, which predicts that system attitude will influence one's evaluation of the performance of an incumbent administration. It is therefore not possible to rule out reciprocal causation between performance evaluation and system attitude, suggesting that unidirectional causal models are likely to misspecify the true relationship.
