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Acknowledging the role played by character valence issues in affecting parties' fortunes, several recent papers have investigated the possible intentional use of such issues in electoral contests. A corollary of this line of research has focused on identifying conditions under which parties are expected to invest more in valence campaigning. In this article, we focus on the role played by parties' relative ideological positions in a multiparty setting. We identify the existence of an inverse relationship between the distance of a party from its ideologically adjacent competitors and its incentive to campaign on character valence issues. However, the extent of this relationship can be conditional on institutional and electoral factors. We test these hypotheses by focusing on the emphasis a party places in its electoral manifestos on the specific character valence issue of corruption. Statistical results largely confirm our hypotheses.

During its nearly fifty years of history, the First Italian Republic has been characterised by the highest rate of cabinet turnover in Western Europe. There are several convincing explanations for this exceptional feature; nevertheless, merely looking at the average figure risks overlooking the variety in the Italian government experience. Focusing on the spatial determinants of Italian cabinet duration shows that the presence of a core party has a positive, albeit conditional, impact on government duration, largely depending on the degree of intra-cabinet conflict. Moreover, whenever the core is absent, the inability of cabinets to change the status quo appears to lengthen, rather than shorten, their duration. This outcome appears in line with works stressing the substantial policy immobilism of Italian governments throughout most of the postwar period. The analysis relies on a new dataset based on a coding of the investiture debates of all the Italian cabinets. This allows one to track the evolution of parties' preferences in a policy space that can change between (rather than only across) elections. The results show the importance of in-depth case studies to better analyse some puzzles within the cabinet duration literature that might otherwise be averaged out in large-N comparative analysis. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractWithin a one-dimensional spatial framework, we deduce that parties' incentives 'to go negative', by blaming alleged insufficiencies of the rival concerning commonly shared values, increase with their ideological proximity. We test our hypothesis by considering the long period of no-cabinet alternation that characterized both Italy and Japan. In particular, we focus on the (spatial) incentives of the Italian Communist Party and of the Japanese Socialist Party to emphasize on a particular topic related to negative campaigning, i.e. political corruption issues. The status of the perennial opposition held by both parties, together with the existence of several political corruption scandals during the period considered, makes the Italian and the Japanese political systems particularly apt to test our hypothesis. The results, based on data derived from electoral programs, support our theoretical insights.

Expert surveys have become increasingly popular among political scientists. One of the problems of using surveys (of any sort) to estimate party positions is that respondents can be influenced by their subjective political views. As a consequence, experts may give biased responses, and such (ideological) bias may affect certain parties more than others. In this paper, we use the latest expert survey of Benoit and Laver (2006) to unfold the ideal points of the respondents to the survey. By employing the estimated ideal points, we show that in almost 16 percent of the cases analyzed, there is evidence of an ideological bias in the experts' placements of parties along the left-right dimension, especially among right-wing parties (but not necessarily extreme-right parties). We examine two methods designed to generate less biased estimates. The first one is directly based on a regression technique, while the second is based on the negligibility of ideological bias in experts' answers to more specific policy questions. The paper concludes by examining the consequences of these findings for empirical research. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Expert surveys have become increasingly popular among political scientists. One of the problems of using surveys (of any sort) to estimate party positions is that respondents can be influenced by their subjective political views. As a consequence, experts may give biased responses, and such (ideological) bias may affect certain parties more than others. In this paper, we use the latest expert survey of Benoit and Laver (2006) to unfold the ideal points of the respondents to the survey. By employing the estimated ideal points, we show that in almost 16 percent of the cases analyzed, there is evidence of an ideological bias in the experts' placements of parties along the left—right dimension, especially among right-wing parties (but not necessarily extreme-right parties). We examine two methods designed to generate less biased estimates. The first one is directly based on a regression technique, while the second is based on the negligibility of ideological bias in experts' answers to more specific policy questions. The paper concludes by examining the consequences of these findings for empirical research.

After defining deliberation as a form of public discussion central to the functioning of deliberative democracy, E. Noelle-Neumann's (1984) theory of the spiral of silence is outlined & applied in modeling deliberation processes. A formal model of public deliberation is elaborated & tested on two hypothetical groups defending & advancing arguments in support of their political/ideological viewpoint. Statistical formulas for computing the probabilistic distribution of motivations to speak out are developed, & monological & pluralistic equilibriums are described as stable & unstable, respectively; the motivational transformations necessary to produce a stable pluralistic equilibrium are considered & several such outcomes are modeled. The theoretical & applicational aspects of the model proposed are discussed, outlining three strategies, & their underlying procedural rules, leading to a stable equilibrium in a multilateral exchange of views & arguments during deliberation. Figures, References. Z. Dubiel

IntroduzioneL'importanza dei problemi legati all'azione collettiva — e più in generale alla cooperazione — per lo studio della politica non può essere trascurata. In effetti, è difficile trovare un'area della vita sociale in cui siano assenti. Alcuni di questi problemi trovano delle soluzioni; molti altri no. A questo riguardo, si è spesso fatto uso del dilemma del prigioniero, in cui la defezione domina indipendentemente dalle decisioni attese da parte dei singoli attori. Sebbene tuttavia tale modello fornisca importanti spunti per comprendere le complesse dinamiche legate a un'interazione tra più individui, tende a sottovalutare il ruolo delle aspettative, con conseguenze rilevanti sia da un punto di vista teorico che di policy making.

The importance for political studies of the problems related to collective action &, more generally, to cooperation cannot be neglected. Some of these problems find a solution; others do not. This article is related to the growing literature about social capital. It shows that social capital (ie, institutionalized expectations of cooperation) can help to explain the institutional performance of a microfinance program in Ethiopia. In this regard, it is assumed that the rate of repayment for different credit groups is influenced by their ability to lower the transaction costs of supplying a collective good (an efficient regime). The channels through which the social capital is hypothesized to be working are addressed from both a theoretical & an empirical point of view. The consequences of these findings in terms of both politics & policies for development, especially in the rural areas of less developed countries, are assessed. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 62 References. Adapted from the source document.