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AbstractDoes a large influx of asylum seekers in the local community lead to a backlash in public opinion towards foreign populations? We assess the effects of asylum seeker presence using original survey and macro‐level municipality data from Austria, exploiting exogenous elements of the placement of asylum seekers on the municipality level. Methodologically, we draw on entropy balancing for causal identification. Our findings are threefold. First, respondents in municipalities receiving asylum seekers report substantially higher exposure on average, but largely without the stronger contact that would allow for meaningful interaction. Second, hostility towards asylum seekers on average increased in areas that housed them. Third, this backlash spilt over: general attitudes towards Muslims and immigrants are less favourable in contexts with local asylum seeker presence, while vote intention for the main anti‐immigration party is higher. Our findings go beyond existing work by examining contact directly as a mechanism, by showing a backlash effect in the medium term, and by focusing on a broad set of attitudinal and behavioural measures. Our results point to a need to design policy interventions that minimise citizen backlash against rapid migration inflows.

Concurrent elections are widely used to increase turnout. We theorize and show empirically how concurrency affects electoral outcomes. First, concurrency increases turnout and thereby the participation of peripheral voters. Second, in combined elections, one electoral arena affects the other. In our case of majoritarian executive elections concurrent to proportional representation (PR) legislative elections, the centripetal tendency of majoritarian elections colors off to the concurrent PR race. Third, concurrency also entails spillovers of the incumbency advantage of executive officeholders to the concurrent legislative race. Drawing on quasi-random variation in local election timing in Germany, we show that concurrency increases turnout as well as council votes for the incumbent mayor?s party and centrist parties more generally, with slightly more pronounced gains for the political left. As a consequence, concurrent elections consolidate party systems and political power by leading to less fragmented municipal councils and more unified local governments.

Ballot position effects have been documented across a variety of political and electoral systems. In general, knowledge of the underlying mechanisms is limited. There is also little research on such effects in preferential-list PR systems, in which parties typically present ranked lists and thus signaling is important. This study addresses both gaps. Theoretically, we formalize four models of voter decision-making: pure appeal-based utility maximization, implying no position effects; rank-taking, where voters take cues from ballot position per se; satisficing, where choice is a function of appeal, but voters consider the options in the order of their appearance; and a hybrid "satisficing-with-rank-taking" variant. From these, we derive differential observable implications. Empirically, we exploit a quasi-experiment, created by the mixed-member electoral system that is used in the state of Bavaria, Germany. Particular electoral rules induce variation in both the observed rank and the set of competitors, and allow for estimating effects at all ranks. We find clear evidence for substantial position effects, which are strongest near the top, but discernible even for the 15th list position. In addition, a candidate's vote increases when the average appeal of higher-placed (but not that of lower-placed) competitors is lower. Overall, the evidence is most compatible with the hybrid satisficing-with-rank-taking model. Ballot position thus affects both judgment and choice of candidates. ; ISSN:0190-9320 ; ISSN:1573-6687

Vastly increased transnational business activity in recent decades has been accompanied by controversy over how to cope with its social and environmental impacts. The most prominent policy response thus far consists of international guidelines. We investigate to what extent and why citizens in a high-income country are willing to restrain companies to improve environmental and social conditions in other countries. Exploiting a real-world referendum in Switzerland, we use choice and vignette experiments with a representative sample of voters (N = 3,010) to study public demand for such regulation. Our results show that citizens prefer strict and unilateral rules (with a substantial variation of preferences by general social and environmental concern) while correctly assessing their consequences. Moreover, exposure to international norms increases demand for regulation. These findings highlight that democratic accountability can be a mechanism that motivates states to contribute to collective goods even if not in their economic interest and that awareness of relevant international norms among citizens can enhance this mechanism.

ZusammenfassungFrauen sind im Bundestag unterrepräsentiert, insbesondere unter Parteien in und rechts der Mitte. Quotenregeln als vieldiskutierte Lösung greifen jedoch stark in die Freiheiten von Parteien, Kandidat*innen und Wähler*innen ein. Die Option offener Wahllisten hingegen findet wenig Aufmerksamkeit, obwohl sie verfassungsrechtliche Grundsatzprobleme vermeiden würde. Wir untersuchen daher, wie viele Wählerinnen und wie viele Wähler – insgesamt und nach Partei – in Deutschland auf offenen Listen für Kandidatinnen stimmen würden. Theoretisch erwarten wir, dass insbesondere Wählerinnen, Wähler*innen linker Parteien und Wähler*innen mit hoher Themensalienz bezüglich Geschlechtergerechtigkeit Präferenzen für Kandidatinnen ausdrücken. Zudem erwarten wir, dass Wähler*innen ungleich besetzte Listen tendenziell in Richtung Parität ausgleichen. Unser Forschungsdesign basiert auf einem Online-Umfrageexperiment ($$N=2640$$

N
=
2640

) mit einer quotenrepräsentativen Stichprobe der deutschen Wahlbevölkerung. Befragte wählten zwischen Listen der im Bundestag vertretenen Parteien, mit je vier fiktiven Kandidat*innen. Der Frauenanteil auf jeder Liste variierte zufällig zwischen 25 und 75 %, ebenso ob Listen geschlossen oder offen präsentiert wurden. Wir zeigen, dass Wähler wie Wählerinnen das Kandidat*innengeschlecht gemäß oben genannter theoretischer Erwartungen in ihre Wahlentscheidung einfließen lassen. Unsere Ergebnisse lassen damit vermuten, dass Kandidatinnen aufgrund ihres Geschlechts wohl insgesamt kaum benachteiligt würden, es aber Subgruppen in der Bevölkerung gibt, die sich bewusst für männliche Politiker entscheiden (Wähler der FDP, Wählerinnen der AfD). Insgesamt zeigt unser Beitrag, dass offene Listenwahlsysteme es Wähler*innen nicht nur ermöglichen, ihre Präferenzstimme im Sinne von Geschlechterrepräsentation einzusetzen, sondern dass Wähler*innen diese Möglichkeit auch nutzen. Hervorzuheben ist dabei auch die Tendenz, dass Wähler*innen über Parteielektorate hinweg ungleiche Listenvorschläge der Selektorate ausbalancieren. Die Debatte zur Reform des Wahlrechts sollte einer Einführung offener Listen deshalb mehr Beachtung schenken.

AbstractVastly increased transnational business activity in recent decades has been accompanied by controversy over how to cope with its social and environmental impacts. The most prominent policy response thus far consists of international guidelines. We investigate to what extent and why citizens in a high-income country are willing to restrain companies to improve environmental and social conditions in other countries. Exploiting a real-world referendum in Switzerland, we use choice and vignette experiments with a representative sample of voters (N = 3,010) to study public demand for such regulation. Our results show that citizens prefer strict and unilateral rules (with a substantial variation of preferences by general social and environmental concern) while correctly assessing their consequences. Moreover, exposure to international norms increases demand for regulation. These findings highlight that democratic accountability can be a mechanism that motivates states to contribute to collective goods even if not in their economic interest and that awareness of relevant international norms among citizens can enhance this mechanism.

AbstractIn open‐list proportional representation systems, choosing candidates based on issue proximity can improve policy congruence. However, in practice, voters may not know enough about individual candidates to do so. Hence, we examine whether voters infer individual positions from cues provided on ballots, namely age and residence. Studying the Swiss parliamentary elections of 2019, we focus on environmental policy, both a very salient issue and featuring considerable intra‐party heterogeneity of positions. We combine comprehensive candidate data with a representative voter survey and conduct a survey‐embedded experiment (N = 10,758). We find that citizens have indeed little knowledge of candidate positions. However, ballot cues predict policy differences among candidates within parties only to a limited extent, and the experiment does not suggest that voters use ballot information to predict positions directly. Instead, as suggested by additional analyses, citizens may perceive candidates who resemble their own sociodemographic profile as having positions closer to their own.

Environmental policy is touching on ever more aspects of corporate and individual behavior, and there is much debate over what combinations of top-down (government-imposed) and bottom-up (voluntary private sector) measures to use. In democratic societies, citizens' preferences over such combinations are crucial because they shape the political mandates based on which policymakers act. We argue that policy designs that involve private-public co-regulation receive more citizen support if they are based on inclusive decision-making, use strong transparency and monitoring mechanisms, and include a trigger for government intervention in case of ineffectiveness. Survey experiments in Switzerland (N = 1941) provide strong support for these arguments. Our research demonstrates that differences in co-regulation design have major implications for public support. Another key finding is that there seems to be a contradiction between inclusiveness and democratic accountability for policy outcomes. The findings are surprisingly consistent across two very different green economy issues we focus on empirically (decarbonization of finance, pesticides). This suggests that our study design offers a useful template for research that explores public opinion on green economy policy designs for other issues and in other countries. ; ISSN:0959-3780 ; ISSN:1872-9495

Environmental policy is touching on ever more aspects of corporate and individual behavior, and there is much debate over what combinations of top-down (government-imposed) and bottom-up (voluntary private sector) measures to use. In democratic societies, citizens' preferences over such combinations are crucial because they shape the political mandates based on which policymakers act. We argue that policy designs that involve private-public co-regulation receive more citizen support if they are based on inclusive decision-making, use strong transparency and monitoring mechanisms, and include a trigger for government intervention in case of ineffectiveness. Survey experiments in Switzerland (N = 1941) provide strong support for these arguments. Our research demonstrates that differences in co-regulation design have major implications for public support. Another key finding is that there seems to be a contradiction between inclusiveness and democratic accountability for policy outcomes. The findings are surprisingly consistent across two very different green economy issues we focus on empirically (decarbonization of finance, pesticides). This suggests that our study design offers a useful template for research that explores public opinion on green economy policy designs for other issues and in other countries.