Suchergebnisse

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory.

This working paper investigates public policies that precede the rise of populism. A mixedmethod research design is applied: on the one hand, we use data from international surveys and databanks to explore the policy–populism nexus from a comparative European perspective. On the other hand, country case studies have been prepared to understand the country-specific historical and socio-economic features of populism and its potential policy roots. Four countries were selected as national case studies: two EU member states (Greece and Hungary) because of a strong, long-term support of populist parties; one EU member state (Lithuania), where support of populist parties remain moderate, although historical and socio-economic features suggest a likely rise of populism; and one country (Turkey) that exhibits the potential hybridization tendencies of populism and the role of policies in the shift from democratic towards authoritarian regimes. We found that the content of policies were weak predictors of the rise of populism. Country-specific measures were more important predictors than policy ideas. At the same time, our results demonstrate that the lack of activation policies may be a strong predictor of welfare populist attitudes of citizens, and the exclusion of a significant proportion of young people from the labour market clearly feeds populist attitudes. Another important finding is that crisis management policies matter, but not the socio-economic crisis in itself: the management of crisis by non-elected policy experts, through technocratic governance methods, will likely trigger populism. This is particularly true in societies where political polarization is high

The 2006 midterm has undercut some familiar assertions about contemporary electoral politics. Political analysts seem to have overstated Republican advantages in several areas: voter turnout, campaign finance, congressional apportionment, party unity, and social issues. The GOP's loss is the discipline's gain, as the election raises good questions for scholarly research. Adapted from the source document.

IN CROATIAN: U radu se, na temelju podataka prikupljenih u istraživanjima koja je u osam vremenskih točaka u proteklih dvadeset godina na reprezentativnom uzorku hrvatskih građana proveo Fakultet političkih znanosti, analizira stanje institucionalnog povjerenja u Hrvatskoj. Oslanjajući se na teorijske koncepte Davida Eastona i Pippe Norris te uvažavajući prethodne studije o institucionalnom povjerenju u Hrvatskoj, rad donosi i neke nove elemente. Dok većina prethodnih radova obuhvaća najviše tri točke mjerenja u kratkom vremenskom rasponu i analizi latentne strukture institucionalnog povjerenja pristupa kroz eksploratorni pristup, ovaj se rad temelji na analizi osam vremenskih točaka i analizira prikladnost postojećih teorijskih modela. Usto, analiza fluktuacija u razinama institucionalnog povjerenja temelji se na utvrđivanju invarijantnosti mjerenja, što je važan metodološki doprinos rada. Osnovni rezultati studije mogu se podijeliti u tri grupe. Prvo, na deskriptivnoj razini utvrdili smo da je povjerenje građana u pojedine institucije najčešće ispod srednje vrijednosti na ljestvici od 1 do 5, osim u slučajevima vojske i policije. Drugo, analiza pokazuje da hrvatski građani razlikuju dva tipa institucionalnog povjerenja – povjerenje u predstavničke institucije i povjerenje u institucije sigurnosti. Treće, analiza je pokazala kako se u razdoblju od 1999. do 2020. povjerenje građana u predstavničke institucije smanjilo, dok je povjerenje u institucije sigurnosti ostalo izrazito stabilno. Na temelju toga moguće je izvesti dva važna zaključka. Ponajprije, korištenje invarijantnosti mjerenja trebalo bi postati standardom za buduća istraživanja povjerenja u kojima se uspoređuju različite vremenske točke. Potom, niska razina povjerenja u predstavničke institucije sugerira otuđenost građana od tih institucija i predstavlja problem funkcioniranju predstavničke demokracije u Hrvatskoj. --- IN ENGLISH: This paper analyses the state of institutional trust (IT) in Croatia based on data collected by the Faculty of Political ...