Are you attending the 2017 general conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Oslo during September 6 – 9? If so, you may be interested to attend one or more of the below presentations, panels and poster sessions which make use of CSES data.
If you are making a presentation which makes use of CSES data and it does not appear here, please let us know via email to: [email protected]
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
Panel: Measuring Rising Forms of Political Participation
Thursday September 7, 11:00 am, Building BL27 Georg Sverdrups hus Room: GS 2531
Presentation: Mapping Online Political Participation Across Europe: A Comparative Study of How and why Europeans Get Engaged on the Internet
Wiebke Drews, European University Institute
Modern democracies are faced with stagnant or even decreasing levels of political participation, yet the advent of the Internet, and more specifically of social media, nurtured hopes about a revival of political activism because they decrease transaction and participation costs. The paper is a comparative study of how Europeans participate on the Internet by investigating different forms of engagement (quality) and their frequency (quantity). Moreover, it explains cross-national diversity by connecting micro-level aspects of resources and demographics with macro-level institutional factors.
Panel: Expressing Dissatisfaction
Thursday September 7, 3:50 pm, BL20 Helga Engs hus Room: HE U35
Presentation: Don’t Forget the Supply Side: Dissatisfaction, Volatility, and the Anti-Establishment Vote
Remko Voogd, University of Amsterdam; Ruth Dassonneville, University of Montreal
This paper connects three very pronounced developments that have been taking place in most Western Democracies over the last decades: ‘increasing distrust in political actors’, ‘rising electoral volatility’ and ‘growing support for anti-establishment parties’. Empirically it has been observed that political disaffection motivates voters to increasingly start to switch their voting choices. At the same time, dissatisfied voters are also said to be the most likely voters of anti-establishment parties in whom they find a voice against the established political forces whom they distrust. While there is some general evidence for both propositions on the individual level, we argue that they might also be contradictory under certain supply side conditions.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
Panel: Partisanship, Membership and Activism
Friday September 8, 11:00 am, BL20 Helga Engs hus Room: HE U30
Presentation: Partisans in Institutional Context: Institutional Constraints on Policy Change and Mass Partisanship
Hyeonho Hahm, University of Mannheim
This article examines the link between citizens’ partisanship and the institutional context that constrains potential policy changes. Combining institutional and behavioral theories, I argue that as the institutional constraints on policy change increase, the political party in power is less likely to matter in determining policy outcomes, and therefore individuals are less likely to become partisans.
Panel: Populist Attitudes and Voting Behavior
Friday September 8, 2:00pm, BL20 Helga Engs hus Room: HE U35
Presentation: A Cross-national Comparison of Eight Populist Attitudes Scales
Levente Littvay, Central European University; Bruno Castanho e Silva, Central European University
Political events of recent years have brought attention to studying the charm of populism. Many have tried to explain its appeal at the individual level by conceptualizing populism as an attitude, and using batteries of survey questions to measure it. In order to provide valid substantive answers it is essential to check whether and which of these scales actually work in capturing this attitude. This paper is the first attempt at comparing various currently published or used populism scales in comparative perspective. We test the psychometric properties and the cross-national validity of eight batteries of populism items. Our results indicate that some widely used batteries might overestimate levels of populist attitudes and fail to capture the full breadth of the concept.
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9, 2017
Panel: The Bases for Voting Decisions: Policy Issues, Social Identities, and Partisan Loyalties
Saturday September 9, 2:00 pm, BL07 P.A. Munchs hus Room: PAM SEM1
Presentation: Voters’ Reactions to Parties’ Position-Movements. Switching parties means Acknowledgement
Kathrin Busch, GESIS Leibniz
Spatial theory would predict voters to react to parties’ position switches on the left-right axis, with ‘partisan sorting’: either follow the party with adjusting their own left-right position, or vote for a different party in the succeeding election. However, this ‘partisan sorting’ does not take place as citizens do not react on a significant level to changes in parties’ policy positions as represented in election campaigns. The research paper aims at solving this puzzle. I argue that pure spatial modeling cannot account for voters’ reactions to policy change because voting is not a purely rational activity.
Panel: The Bases for Voting Decisions: Policy Issues, Social Identities, and Partisan Loyalties
Saturday September 9, 2:00 pm, BL07 P.A. Munchs hus Room: PAM SEM1
Presentation: Contamination in Reverse: The Pandora’s Box of Partisanship and Economic Voting during the Global Financial Crisis
Stephen Quinlan
“You live or die as a government in the economic field” opined former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. And while many studies of voter behaviour validate the idea of economic voting (e.g.: Lewis-Beck & Stegmaier 2013), the main critique remains that economic perceptions are highly contaminated by partisanship bias (e.g.: van der Brug, van der Eijk, & Franklin 2007) and thus economic assessments do not have any independent effect of their own. In this paper, we challenge the view that economic perceptions are endogenous and therefore subject to partisanship bias.
Panel: The Bases for Voting Decisions: Policy Issues, Social Identities, and Partisan Loyalties
2:00 pm, BL07 P.A. Munchs hus Room: PAM SEM1
Presentation: It’s the Social Identities and Partisan Loyalties, Stupid? The Bases for Vote Choice in Europe
Ruth Dassonneville, University of Montreal; Hanna Wass, University of Helsinki
In their recent book entitled “Democracy for Realists”, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that the functioning of representative democracies does not align well with the democratic ideal. We analyze the extent to which Achen and Bartel’s observation is applicable to contexts with different historical, institutional and cultural characteristics. We first compare the views on public expenditure between supporters of different parties. Subsequently, we investigate the role of these preferences vis-à-vis social identities in accounting for party choice.