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The effect of antiparty sentiment on voting behavior is examined comparatively using recent individual-level electoral survey data from Canada, Britain, and Australia. The author distinguishes two dimensions of antipartyism: the rejection of traditional major-party alternatives (specific antiparty sentiment) and of political parties per se (generalized antiparty sentiment). He argues that disaffected voters in these countries are attracted to third or minor parties and support them to voice antiparty sentiments. The results show that in general, third parties benefit from specific antiparty sentiment at the mass level. The rejection of party politics per se, in contrast, brings citizens to abstain, unless some third parties—antiparty parties such as the Reform Party in Canada and One Nation in Australia—electorally mobilize generalized antiparty feelings. The results also indicate that compulsory voting in Australia affects disaffected voters' behavior; in particular, those who reject all party alternatives would be more likely to abstain if they had the choice.

Despite controversial debates about the social acceptability of its nationalist program, the rightwing populist AfD has recently entered all state parliaments as well as the federal parliament in Germany. Although professed AfD voters faced a likely risk of social stigmatization, electoral support followed a clear upward trend. In order to explain these dynamics, we analyze the impact of information shocks with respect to aggregate-level AfD support on individual party choices. Unexpectedly high aggregate support for a populist party may indicate a higher social acceptance of its platform and reduce the social desirability bias in self-reported party preferences. Consequently, the likelihood to reveal an AfD preference increases. We test this mechanism in an event-study approach, exploiting quasi-random variation in survey interviews conducted closely around German state elections. We define election information shocks as deviations of actual AfD vote shares from pre-election polls and link these to the individual disposition to report an AfD preference in subsequent survey interviews. Our results suggest that exposure to higher-than expected AfD support significantly increases the individual probability to report an AfD vote intention by up to 3 percentage points.

This paper investigates the effect of aggregate-level information shocks regarding support for a populist right-wing party on the individual disposition to report a respective political preference in survey interviews. Despite controversial debates about the social acceptability of its nationalist and xenophobic program, the German AfD has succeeded to enter the state parliaments as well as the federal parliament in the wake of steadily growing support among the electorate. We apply an event-study approach which links election information shocks provided by official results of state-level elections in Germany and the individual disposition to report an AfD preference. Exploiting quasi-random variation in survey interviews conducted closely around state elections, we show that individual exposure to positive election information shocks significantly increases the probability of reporting an AfD vote intention by around 5 percentage points.

Europe has been marked by many profound changes since the 1980s. Among those prominently discussed in the political economy literature are the massive decline in trade union membership, the alarming rise in income inequality, and the increasingly disproportionate distribution of labor market risks. This thesis combines these issues and explores how unionization relates to income and risk inequality by investigating the roles of trade unions and trade union membership in the political arena: One article analyzes if and how unions represent high-risk individuals in the legislative arena by lobbying for labor market outsiders in dualization reforms; three articles examine how union membership shapes electoral demand for policies alleviating income and labor market risk inequality and electoral support for left-wing parties in pursuit of such policies. In doing so, this thesis contributes to our understanding of solidarity in the context of inequality and how union decline might fuel inequality.

In democratic Africa, where ethnicity is a key driver of vote choice, politicians must attract voters across ethnic lines. This article explores one way politicians can do this: by appealing to a coethnic bond through their spouse. We propose that cross-ethnic spouses can help candidates send credible signals of coalition building before an election. We test this argument with a survey experiment in Benin, where President Yayi has married across ethnic lines. Our results confirm that priming the first lady's ethnicity increases support for President Yayi among her coethnics. We generalize these results by combining new data on leader-spouse ethnicity with Afrobarometer survey data. Our results suggest that cross-ethnic marriages are one tool leaders can use to shore up support in multiethnic elections.

AbstractUK broadcasters came under fire for the amount of airtime UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage received after the party won the most votes in the 2014 EU election. Our content analysis of television news during the 2009 and 2014 campaigns found little bias in terms of soundbites, but in the more recent election Farage visually appeared in coverage to a greater degree than other party leaders. Moreover, two core UKIP policies—being in or out of Europe and immigration—dominated coverage in 2014. We suggest the 'UKIP factor' and the media's fascination with Nigel Farage help explain why the 2014 campaign was more visible on television news than was the case in 2009 and was largely reported through a Westminster prism. Although television news bulletins attempt to impartially report elections, the 2014 campaign agenda was largely contested on UKIP's ideological terrain and the party's electoral fortunes.

The study of political parties in the parliamentary arena in Indonesia is in its infancy. This has led to various assumptions about the way parties act in the House of People's Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, or DPR) that are based on scanty evidence and are heavily influenced by hostile attitudes to the DPR common in the media and the NGO community. The paper argues that, contrary to assertions that central party leaders exercise strict discipline over their members in parliament, coordination between party and caucuses, or fraksi, is weak, inconsistent and ad hoc. The paper concludes that this situation is facilitated by the eschewing of public votes through the process of decision making by 'consensus', a practice that is actually a vote by fraksi leaders to the exclusion of ordinary members.

AbstractIn May 2012, political scientists learned of efforts by representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to eliminate political science funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget. The American Political Science Association (APSA) was caught off-guard, and concerned political scientists scrambled to contact their representatives and urge the amendment's defeat. Flake's initial effort to cut funds overall from the NSF was defeated, but a second measure, specifically to keep the NSF from funding political science, passed only hours later. This was the second time in three years that legislators targeted the NSF Political Science Program. Although these measures have been sponsored and widely supported by Republicans, some Democrats have supported these measures as well. This article examines the vote on the Flake Amendment to understand why individual representatives voted for or against cutting NSF funding for political science research.

Identifying a valid indicator of the electoral barrier is an important concern in many research projects, and Lijphart's Effective Threshold is undoubtedly one of the more popular choices [Lijphart, A., 1994. Electoral Systems and Party Systems - a Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990. Oxford University Press, Oxford.]. Taagepera has demonstrated that it does not measure what it claims to, however, and has instead suggested the Nationwide Threshold of Representation [Taagepera, R., 2002. Nationwide threshold of representation. Electoral Studies 21, 383-401.]. The problem is that the latter assigns lower thresholds to plurality-majoritarian systems than most PR systems, thus contradicting other standard indicators of the electoral barrier. The arguments and methods involved in national level threshold estimation are therefore subjected to close examination and two main conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the method for centre estimation (using the geometric mean) suggested by Taagepera contains methodological errors that undermine its validity. Secondly, predicting the probability of winning 'a seat' with a given vote share is not feasible at the national level as is the case at the district level. Moreover, it is inadequate to capture the electoral barrier of concern to most research projects. To capture this barrier, we must now compare what is required to obtain proportional representation under different rules. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]