Suchergebnisse

This paper examines under what conditions it is justifiable that the government takes into account the demands of protesters and whether the terms of procedural-equality in protest participation were met in the 'Pots and Pans' protests in Iceland in 2008–09. The protests were triggered by a financial melt-down in Iceland and did not come to an end until almost all the main demands of the protesters had been met. The main conclusion is that due to the seriousness of the issues which triggered the protests and that those issues were of national concern, together with the large numbers of protesters and wide support for their demands as well as extensive public discussion about the issues of the protests, they were a prime example of a situation when the authorities should consider taking the demands of protesters into account. Furthermore, in this paper it is established that giving in to the demands of the protesters was within the terms of procedural-equality between the protesters and those who did not participate – adding to the justification that, in this case, it was justifiable to defer to the protesters' demands.

This paper focuses on how characteristics of parties and party voters explain the styles of representation emphasised within parties. Styles of representation are defined at the party level as the proportion of representatives within parties who are partisans, delegates or trustees. Each style manifests due to different incentives related to the characteristics of their party and/or their party voters. The findings show that the main explanatory factors for the proportion of partisans are parties' leadership control over nomination and party socialisation. The main determinant for the proportion of trustees is how often parties have been represented in government. For delegates the results are mixed, but it is indicated that a high proportion of party identifiers among party voters is related to a high proportion of delegates within parties.

In this paper, we analyse whether mock elections in Iceland are fulfilling their intended purpose of increasing young voters' participation in politics and other types of political engagement. Mock elections have been carried out in Icelandic upper secondary schools prior to parliamentary elections since 2016 (and prior to the municipal elections in 2018), but there is no peer-reviewed research about whether these elections are followed by an increase in political participation and engagement amongst young people. Socialisation is a key factor in encouraging political participation amongst young voters as the formative years between childhood and adulthood are a key period in forming behaviour and political attitudes. In this paper, we argue that mock elections have a socialisation impact in terms of increasing young people's political awareness and engagement, including electoral participation. Based on the results from a survey sent to four upper secondary schools in Iceland, two where mock elections were held and two where they were not held, we found that mock elections have a negligible link to participation in real elections, whether voting made a difference or whether it was considered a civic duty to vote. Other main results are that in schools with mock elections, students were more politically engaged in terms of how interested they were in politics and the frequency which they discussed politics, both of which have been shown to increase the probability of voter turnout.

In the research presented in this paper, we analyse whether the structure of the political cleavage system in Iceland has changed since 1983, as well as whether the impacts of party-voter linkages and the social structure of the vote have changed between 1983 and 2016/2017. Based on official data and the Icelandic National Election Study (ICENES), we find that the rural-urban cleavage and left-right cleavage, which are reflected in party polarisation on the left-right spectrum, are as important today as previously. Our main results regarding the impacts of party-voter linkages and the social-structure of the vote is that the core bonds of party identification, left-right distances and the social structure of the vote have weakened over time, whereas the impact of party sympathy has become stronger. This, we argue, reflects that while there has been a gradual change in the impact of party-voter linkages and the social structure of the vote, opening up a space for new parties to succeed, the political cleavage system has remained intact. The major change has thus occurred in the bond between voters and parties and not in the structure of party competition in Iceland.

A critical election is generally defined as one in which the decisive results of voting reveal a sharp alternation of pre‐existing cleavage(s) and voting patterns, and the dealignment or realignment made between parties is lasting. A critical election can be caused by various factors and in this article the authors analyse whether the global credit crunch in 2008 set things in motion in Iceland, resulting in the 2009 election as a critical election. In that election, the electoral relevance of voters' psychological attachment to parties and of ideological distances to them weakened, whereas party competence perceptions increased in importance for vote choices. Attachment to parties and ideological distances are factors that are generally stable and change slowly over time, while party competence is influenced by which issues are of importance at the time of the election. This indicates that, in 2009, a restructuring of the determinants of the vote occurred; a pattern of changes that is typical for a critical election. Evidence is found that the importance of party sympathy increases again in the 2013 election, indicating a realignment, rather than a dealignment, occurring in the wake of the 2009 election.

This book examines to what extent politics in Iceland have been transformed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The book focuses on whether the short-term sudden shock caused by the Great Recession has permanently transformed politics, political behaviour and the Icelandic party system or whether its effect was primarily transitory. These questions remain highly relevant to the wider field of political science, as the book examines under what circumstances sudden shocks lead to permanent changes in a political system. As such, the book situates the post-crisis Icelandic case both temporally and comparatively and evaluates to what extent the Iceland experience is reflective of broader patterns found in other Western democracies, particularly those other countries that were also hard hit by the Great Recession (e.g. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy). This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Nordic politics, Icelandic politics and society, electoral studies, political parties and party systems, representative democracy, political behaviour and more broadly to European and comparative politics.

Theories of economic voting and electoral accountability suggest that voters punish incumbent governments for poor economic conditions. Incumbents are thus expected to suffer substantially during significant economic crisis but their successor in office will face the difficult task of reviving the economy. The economic crisis may, therefore, negatively affect government parties in subsequent elections even though the economic conditions may, to a large degree, have been inherited from the previous government. It is argued in this article that economic conditions play an important role in such circumstances as they place specific issues on the agenda, which structure the strategies available to the parties. Therefore, the article studies the 2013 Icelandic parliamentary election in which the incumbent government parties suffered a big loss despite having steered the country through an economic recovery. While perceptions of competence and past performance influenced party support, three specific issues thrust on the agenda by the economic crisis – mortgage relief, Icesave and European Union accession/negotiations – help explain why the centre‐right parties were successful in returning to the cabinet.