Suchergebnisse

This paper brings theoretical and empirical contributions to the scholarship on dimensions of politics in Europe. On the theoretical side it emphasizes the differences between Western and Eastern countries; we argue that while in Western Europe the main dimension of political conflict is the economic left-right, in Eastern Europe the main dimension is more likely to encompass cultural issues associated primarily with what in the Western literature is known as the secondary, social left-right. We trace the origin of the difference to the 1990s when parties in Eastern Europe chose to emphasize cultural issues to appeal to an electorate unfamiliar with capitalist economics and dissatisfied with the economic left associated with Communism and the economic right associated with painful reforms. To test this assertion we apply the Optimal Classification vote scaling method to an original dataset of over 24,000 votes from 22 European parliaments; the statistical tests support the hypothesis.

AbstractThis article looks at the relationship between the political affiliation of local leaders and the distribution of government funds with the help of a new dataset on local elections from 18 European countries between 2000 and 2013. It finds that central governments are more likely to target regions with high density of local councils affiliated with the parties in government only under certain institutional arrangements. The relationship exists where local councils enjoy little power and thus are less able to claim credit for the funds independent of the central government. The relationship is also present where local leaders are involved in the selection of candidates for national office.

I reassess the argument by Tavits and Letki (2009) that in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s left-leaning governments were less likely to spend than right-leaning governments. I argue that the findings are most likely driven by time bias in their manifesto-based measurement of ideology. Starting in the mid-nineties, governments became artificially leftist, thus, the robustness of the relationship proposed by Tavits and Letki may be questioned. When adjusted for time bias, ideology does not influence spending in Eastern Europe. These findings have important consequences on the established literature linking ideology and spending. The findings also suggest that although manifesto-based measures of ideology have become widely used in time-series analyses, ideology scores at different times may not be comparable without adjustments.

This article analyzes the impact of electoral rules on legislators' rate of vote defection from their party position in legislatures while accounting for how party‐leadership strength mediates this impact. To this end it looks at the effect of the 2008 Romanian electoral reform. The reform shifted the electoral system from a closed‐list proportional representation to one in which all candidates run in single‐member districts. The analysis finds that because party leaders have maintained their leverage intact, the impact of the reform was minimal, with legislators being more likely to defect in less important votes only, in which party leaders allow defection. Also, after the reform legislators are more likely to use other means to impress their voters, such as legislative initiation and cabinet questioning. These forms of behavior are more accepted by party leaders.

This article is concerned with what determines a government's choice of pension reform. It starts from an argument by Myles and Pierson that claims that the newer pension systems are able to privatize whereas the older, matured systems faced with the double payment problem tend to adopt notional defined contributions (NDC) accounts. This argument is retested with in-depth qualitative analysis of the pension reforms in Latvia and Poland. The analysis brings three main contributions. First, it shows that within the matured camp the double payment problem is visible at different degrees. The systems with little visibility, although mature, can still privatize. Second, it shows that the NDC option is fit to deal with more urgent fiscal problems, whereas the privatization option is fit for long-term demographic problems. Third, the analysis finds that the two options in Myles and Pierson's argument can be used by governments symbiotically.