Suchergebnisse

Accountability of the representatives to the represented is constrained by the heterogeneity in the issue positions of represented voters. Many gradations of homogeneity and heterogeneity can be distinguished. Accountability is almost trivial in the case of perfect homogeneity in which the represented voters agree on all issues (see Chapter 2). Accountability is relatively easy when the represented voters disagree with each other along one issue dimension, for example the socialeconomic left-right dimension, as was pointed out by Schattschneider (1960). An overarching dimension allows for a transparent political debate with opponents, who get the floor also to reframe their issue positions to increase electoral support. Giving an account of one's issue positions becomes less straightforward but remains still possible in the case of a limited number of independent overarching dimensions, for example an authoritarian-libertarian dimension in addition to a left-right dimension. A limited number of overarching issue dimensions enables the representatives to justify package deals in which political successes on one dimension are claimed in exchange for losses on another dimension. Without overarching issue dimensions in the electorate, there is no easy way to render concrete issues commensurable enough to deliver an account to defend why one would give in on any specific issue. In this chapter on the dimensionality of the European issue space we will encounter another type of heterogeneity that impedes accountability. Europeans do acknowledge basically the same underlying issue dimensions, such as leftright and Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Orthodox. The actual issue positions on these dimensions vary however systematically between Southern European, Northern European and Eastern European countries, which makes it virtually impossible to deliver one European policy that would be agreeable for all. Moreover the overarching issue dimensions depend on each other in different ways in Southern, Eastern and Northern European countries, which results in very different evaluations between countries of coalitions and package deals in which positions on for example the left-right dimension are exchanged for positions on the Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Orthodox dimension. In short, Europeans in Southern, Northern and Eastern European countries differ widely with regard to their evaluation of issue positions and their evaluation of political coalitions and political deals, although they share a common awareness of the underlying political antagonisms. The chapter is based on an assessment of the policy dimensions that underlie the specsfic issue positions of European voters with regard to 28 varied issues. We expect that the policy dimensions within European electorates are still structured by the social cleavages that originally shaped the European party landscapes. The politics of European states are the product of three revolutions: the Reformation and Counter-Reformation consolidating territorial boundaries of European states, the French Revolution causing profound separation of church and state, and finally the Industrial Revolution in which free enterprise (instead of economic protection) and workers' rights were at stake. These revolutions struck countries at different times and under different conditions causing variations among European party systems. For example, Dutch state formation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was shaped by the power struggle between liberal, permissive Protestants and authoritarian, orthodox Calvinists ("rekkelijken" versus "preciezen"). Prolonged state formation in Southern Europe, for example, lead to generally weaker social cleavage articulation due to the overriding salience of the conflict about regime formation (Günther and Montero 2000). In Britain, the early resolution of state formation and the state-church conflict led to the predominance of the class cleavage. In other countries social class also remains important for voting behaviour (Nieuwbeerta 1996; Evans 1999). With the introduction of universal suffrage in the early twentieth century, existing cleavage structures durably froze electoral alignments and party alternatives (Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 50; Krouwel 2012). Hitherto, research into the dimensionality of issue spaces has focused on the dimensions that underlie issue positions of the European political parties, for example starting from expert surveys (Benoit 2006), roll-call votes in the European Parliament (His et al. 2006), party manifesto research (Klingemann et al. 1994; Pennings 2002), or from the media coverage of the issue positions of parties (Kriesi et al. 2006). Research that focused on the policy dimensions that underlie issue positions of European voters has usually started from a small number of issue positions about which questions are asked in national and European election surveys (Klingemann et al. 1994; Van der Brug et al. 2009 (the latter authors employ expert survey data in addition)).

Effects of issues in business news on corporate reputation are often assumed, but less often put to a test. To study these effects, this study combines a recent extension of agenda-setting theory - the second level of agenda setting - with issue ownership theory. A content analysis of business news is linked to a panel survey to measure corporate associations and corporate reputation. The results provide empirical evidence both for the second level of agenda setting and for issue ownership, thereby showing that theories from the field of political communication are valuable for understanding the effects of issues in business news. © 2006 International Communication Association.

This article shows that issue coverage in the media partly explains both the political landslide at the 1994 elections in the Netherlands and the political continuity in the 1994 elections in Germany. Theories of issue voting guided the research. Issue ownership theory maintains that voters will remember which party has the best record of solving problems in emphasized issue areas. Proximity models and directional models suggest that voters' own issue positions will be compared to the perceived issue positions of parties. A longitudinal content analysis of ten newspapers and five television news programmes was performed to ascertain selective issue emphasis and the issue positions attributed to parties. Election outcomes and weekly opinion polls were used to measure the volatility of the vote. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

A historical sketch is presented of how the relationship between Dutch political parties & newspapers has changed since the 1950s, when both relied on support from narrowly defined social class & religious groups. Depillarization & the emergence of a large segment of the electorate with variable party allegiance led to the independence of newspapers from political parties. Despite the diminished influence of newspapers on voting behavior during the 1980s, favorable newspaper comments toward a specific party correlate positively with a higher share of party voters among subscribers. It is concluded that, in contrast to the earlier situation, parties now are dependent on newspapers. 9 Tables, 1 Figure, 20 References. M. Meeks

The European elections in 2014 were the first to be held after a long period in which EU-related news was prominent in the media. They were held after years of daily news about the euro crisis and after months of news about the popular uprising in the Ukraine against president Yanukovych, who had refused to sign the association agreement with the EU. This could have invited political parties to overcome the usual problem of low salience of EU issues by strongly profiling themselves on EU issues. Turnout at the 2014 EU elections, however, remained low, hinting that parties were unable to convert the attention for European issues into enthusiasm for their party at the European elections. This paper asks how vote choice was influenced by party campaigning on EU related issues. A news effects analysis based on a content analysis of Dutch newspapers and television, and on a panel survey among Dutch voters revealed that EU issues func-tioned as wedge issues: the more strongly parties were associated in the news with the euro crisis and the Ukraine, the less they succeeded in mobilizing voters.

The aim of this study is to assess the relative strength of the reciprocal causal relationships between the political agenda (the party agenda), the mass media agenda and the public agenda. Although the research literature is rather confusing and inconclusive, three causal patterns have often been suggested. The economic theory of representative democracy ('public choice' theory) assumes bottom-up agenda-setting. The political agenda is assumed to respond to the public agenda. However, theories on political communication suggest top-down agenda-setting. The political agenda would set the media agenda, which in turn would set the public agenda. The central tenet of mediacracy theory is the proposition that the media agenda sets both the public agenda and the political agenda. This article uses data on economic issues in the Netherlands in the period 1980-1986 and linear structural equations models to test these three causal patterns. The results warrant both bottom-up and top-down agenda-setting, but the mediacracy model is rejected. The conclusion should be that the economic theory of democracy, which prevails in the political science journals, has to incorporate findings from political communication research. (European Journal of Political Research / AuD)

Written for students and researchers in political science comparative politics and sociology, this text offers a comprehensive introduction to methods and statistics in research in political science.

An approach to the content analysis of evaluative discourse is proposed that is based on identification of meaning objects -- including actors, empirical variables, attributes, norms & values, & abstract philosophical entities -- & of two place predicates -- ie, verbal statements about the relation between one meaning object & another. This relation is interpreted in graph theoretical terms. This technique is applied to political texts & demonstrated to generate reliable content analyses. 11 Diagrams, 1 Appendix, 13 References. Modified HA

Data from the 1977 national election survey of Dutch voters are used to test a hypothetico-deductive model of party preference formation, based on the supposition that voters tend to express a preference for the parties with which their views on a particular set of issues are most consistent. The parties examined are the PvdA (Labor), CDA (Christian Democratic), & VVD (Conservative-Liberal). Multiple-regression analysis allows explanation of about 40% of differences in party preference between voters on the basis of voters' stands on issues. Comparison of voters' stands & perceived party stands appears to predict expressed party preference adequately in 69% of cases. These results give support for the view that human behavior is not blindly mechanistic, but involves some minimal level of reflection. Consideration of methodological problems leads to the conclusion that relatively simple models resting on clear theoretical assumptions are preferable to more sophisticated models, which have less solid theoretical foundations & do not gain in explanatory or predictive power. 11 Tables, 1 Graph, Appendix. Modified HA.

Different "paradigmatic" approaches to explain news effects on voting may supplement each other, because their starting points are based on different news types in political campaign news: news on issue positions of parties, news on real-world developments, news on support or criticism for parties, and news on success and failure of parties. Daily content analysis data and a weekly multiwave panel survey from the 2003 election campaign in the Netherlands are used for a simultaneous test. A logistic regression analysis demonstrates that the paradigmatic approaches supplement each other. The data reveal a huge impact of the news from a campaigner's point of view in spite of a huge variety in responses to the news at the level of individual respondents. © 2007 International Communication Association.

Recent studies show that using Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) affects party preferences of voters, and hence leads to party switching. Party switching is a necessary but insufficient condition for volatility (a net switch of voters to other parties) and fragmentation (more parties gaining seats) at the aggregate level of electoral constituencies. The research question addressed here is whether the availability of VAAs in electoral constituencies weakens or strengthens trends towards greater volatility and fragmentation as observed in western democracies in the last decades. The data come from 380 Dutch municipalities during the 2014 Dutch municipal council elections. In 133 of them a VAA was available. Using a moderated mediation model that controls for the municipal self-selection of a VAA, we find that a VAA by itself leads to higher levels of volatility and fragmentation. However, VAA availability has a dampening effect in municipal constituencies with characteristics (e.g. population size, ethnic diversity, young average age) that would otherwise make them more susceptible and prone to volatility and fragmentation.