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Chapter 8 - The Political System and the Political Community
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 16 February 2021
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- 29 August 2018, pp 121-128
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Summary
Politics, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, is characterised by three things. First, it deals with matters that have to be settled for an entire society, community or group. Second, there is no agreement about what these matters are, or about their desired outcomes. Third, this generates conflict and cooperation, which drive politics. Throughout this book, it has been argued that political conflict and cooperation exists in all kinds of settings, including many that are not associated with the term politics in everyday parlance. Thus, politics exists in countries or states, but also in firms, schools, hospitals, churches, social organisations, and even in families. To avoid having to list repeatedly all these settings of political processes, we use the overarching term political system.
The concept of political system refers to the members, the political actors, institutions, procedures and relations of power and influence that exist in the society, community or group in question. The people in a political system are often referred to as the political community. This is not a ‘random’ collection of individuals, but they are connected, be it only because of their shared existence in the same political system. Often this involves other connections as well, which may consist of more or less shared or linked experiences, identities, knowledge, values and norms. This does not imply that a political community is homogeneous. On the contrary – as is clear from the presence of political conflict. Nor does it imply that everyone shares the same identities and values, but it does imply that these are linked, which may be because they are shared, but a linkage may also exist through an antagonistic relation.
The incomplete fit between political systems and political Communities
One of the most fundamental conflicts in political systems is about what the political community should be and especially who should be included in it.
As an example, let us consider states, which are large, geographically bound political systems. All people living in a state's territory can be considered a political community, but are there any additional characteristics beyond the mere fact that they inhabit the same area and are subject to the same political system? Are they a community, or a nation?
Chapter 2 - Conflict and Cooperation
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 25-42
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Summary
As indicated in Chapter 1, we understand politics as an aspect of conflictual and cooperative interactions between people and groups about matters that must be settled for a society or community. In this chapter, I will elaborate this perspective by examining the concepts of conflict and cooperation, and by analysing the consequence of the existence of many conflicts.
I will start by defining conflict and cooperation in terms of interests or goals on the one hand, and behaviour on the other hand. This leads not only to a definition of these terms, but also to some non-trivial implications about the inferences to be drawn from, for example, the absence of conflict. Having done this, I will continue by developing the argument that conflict (and cooperation) is unavoidable, and that, therefore, so is politics too. A further refinement of our understanding of conflict and cooperation, and thus also of the nature of politics, is introduced by arguing that, although politics is understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, there are nevertheless some instances in which conflict and cooperation are not political in character.
The last part of this chapter discusses the relations between conflict and cooperation, and between different conflicts. The simultaneous existence of multiple conflicts may lead to quite different consequences, depending on how they are related to each other. Conflicts may reinforce each other, or they may be ‘cross-cutting’, and each of these scenarios has quite different consequences for the sustainability of the political system, as well as for the ‘political capital’ that is created by conflict and cooperation.
What is conflict and cooperation?
In everyday language, the terms conflict and cooperation have not only a descriptive meaning, but they also carry evaluative loadings. Conflict is regarded as deplorable, fruitless or bad, and has to be ‘resolved’; cooperation is good, productive and laudable, and should be applauded. In this chapter, and in contrast to common associations in the everyday use of these words, we must distance ourselves from these evaluative loadings. Thus, conflict is not bad per se, nor is cooperation necessarily good. These words are only used to describe relations and interactions in a way that focusses on interests or goals on the one hand, and behaviour on the other.
Bibliography
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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Contents
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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Frontmatter
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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Chapter 7 - The Political Landscape and the Wider Context
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 16 February 2021
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- 29 August 2018, pp 103-120
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Politics does not exist in a vacuum. It has a context which affects and constrains it. This context, and in particular its stable aspects, determines to a large extent our experiences and our thinking, our perceptions of the world, our expectations, and our ideas about ‘normality’. It therefore also affects our norms and values – even if these are not universally shared in a society – and our perceptions of ourselves and of how we differ from others. The context, therefore, constitutes an important foundation for our goals and interests and thus also for relations of conflict and cooperation. It determines to a very large degree the available options for behaviour and choices for actors, and particularly the options that are not open to them. All in all, without an adequate understanding of the context it is impossible to comprehend the political aspects of human behaviour and interactions.
The context is for most people (political actors and non-actors alike – see Chapter 4) something beyond their control, at least in the short run. It embodies many of the structural power relations discussed in Chapter 6. This does not imply that the context is unalterable, as is amply illustrated by the historical developments of societies. But many of those changes occur gradually, and not necessarily as an intended consequence of conscious human actions.
This chapter distinguishes two components of the context: the ‘political landscape’ on the one hand, and the ‘wider context’ on the other. The political landscape is very directly related to ongoing political processes; that is, to conflict and cooperation about matters that have to be settled for a society or a community (see Chapter 1). It consists of the institutions and ‘rules of the game’ that organise and structure political processes. The wider context relates to other aspects of human behaviour and interaction such as those in the economic or social sphere, and to non-human aspects such as the physical world, the climate, eco-systems and so on. The demarcation between the political landscape and the wider context is sometimes blurred, and often of little relevance for individual people (particularly if they are not part of a political elite), since both provide opportunities and constraints for the realisation of goals, for conflict and cooperation, and for what to do.
Chapter 4 - Political Actors
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 55-70
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Summary
This chapter addresses one of the essential questions introduced in Chapter 3: who are the actors in political conflict and cooperation? This requires a focus on different kinds of actors, on the differences between the goals and interests that they pursue, and on their resources. It also requires a reflection on how the behaviour of political actors is to be interpreted: whether as choices, or as determined by the circumstances in which actors find themselves.
Varieties of actors
As already discussed in Chapter 3, the question ‘who are the actors?’ does not require a list of names. Instead it requires a description of actors in terms of characteristics. Among the most fundamental characteristics are two distinctions that classify actors into different ‘kinds’. These are the distinction between individual, collective and institutional actors, and the distinction between elites and non-elites. The importance of these two distinctions is that the different kinds of actors that are distinguished in this way generally also differ in other characteristics, such as their goals, their position in a power structure, the resources that they have at their disposal, and so on. In addition to a description of the (kinds of) actors involved in political conflict, we also need to know how they are related to each other. Who are on the same side in a conflict, and who are not? Who is dependent on others, who is more powerful, and so on. These questions about relationships between actors will be discussed in the context of the characterisation of conflicts, later in this chapter.
Individual, collective and institutional actors
Although the term actor can easily be interpreted as relating to individuals of flesh and blood, not all actors are individual persons. Of course, many political actors are individual people who pursue goals that they care about. The smaller the scale of the political system we look at (the society or group for which something must be settled about which there are conflictual views), the more that we see that individuals are the relevant actors. Conflicts in a local organisation about membership fees (and how to use them), for example, are a case in point.
The Essence of Politics
- Cees van der Eijk
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 16 February 2021
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- 29 August 2018
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What is politics about? At its core, politics is about resolving matters that are contested in a society or group. It exists not only within and between states, but also within religious institutions, sports organisations, commercial enterprises, schools and social organisations. Politics is driven by conflict, but also by cooperation. To understand politics, we must ask specific ('key') questions about the nature of political conflict, about persons, groups and institutions that are involved, about their resources, and about the wider context that both constrains and provides opportunities for all. It also requires an understanding of concepts such as power, influence and political community, and, of course, of the terms politics, conflict and cooperation. This book is about the 'essence' of politics, which is introduced by way of key questions and concepts that are indispensable for understanding politics in many different settings.
Preface
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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Summary
In 2001 I wrote a precursor of this book, titled De Kern van de Politiek, published by Het Spinhuis in Amsterdam. It aimed to be a conceptual introduction to political science, for use in undergraduate teaching. It has been extremely gratifying to see that it served its purpose well, as it has been used ever since at several universities.
Recently the demand increased for an English-language edition, which is provided by this book. It has the same aspiration as the original Dutch text: to provide an introduction to the conceptual underpinnings of political analysis. The themes, ideas and arguments remain the same, but the book has changed in detail. Chapter 4 of the original Dutch version has been expanded into two separate chapters in the current version. Minor changes have been made with respect to emphases, references and illustrations.
I owe debts of gratitude to various people. I happily acknowledge the encouragement given by Philip van Praag and Wouter van der Brug, colleagues at the University of Amsterdam; without their support this book would not have been written. Sue Pryce, my colleague at the University of Nottingham, commented on large parts of the text, which was extremely helpful. Annabelle de Heus, PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham, provided all kinds of practical support that allowed me to focus on the writing of the text. Finally, I am extremely grateful to Rene Bailey, who edited the manuscript (and identified a variety of minor infelicities for correction), managing to turn it into proper English while respecting my personal style.
I hope that this little book will be as useful an introduction to political science as its Dutch precursor has evidently been.
Dedication
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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Chapter 1 - What is Politics?
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 9-24
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Summary
This chapter examines what we mean when referring to ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. This is an initial discussion in which terms and concepts are used that will themselves be discussed in more depth in subsequent chapters.
I will present and discuss here a number of descriptions and definitions from authors who have occupied themselves with the question of what it is that characterises politics. When comparing their work, we learn that, despite important differences, these descriptions also have a lot in common. This leads to the conclusion that what politics is can be reasonably well described by a set of characteristics, none of which is always required, which can be combined in different ways, and which jointly are still not always sufficient to capture all the associations and connotations that the term ‘politics’ evokes.
The comparison and discussion drawn from existing efforts to define politics also show that it is impossible to formulate a single all-encompassing definition that will always be satisfactory. The reason for this is that the concept of politics is a ‘contested’ concept, as are other concepts which are often used in its definition. At the end of this chapter we will therefore investigate the character of such concepts and learn that the process by which they acquire a (sometimes dominant) meaning is itself part of what we call politics.
Definitions of politics
A review of the literature reveals an enormous number of definitions and descriptions of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, but fortunately many of these are variants of a much smaller number of perspectives. The two most important of these are the aspect perspective and the domain perspective of politics. The first conceives politics as an aspect of virtually all kinds of human behaviour and human interactions. The second does not do so and instead regards politics as only existing in a specific, demarcated sphere of human relations. Other definitions of politics also exist that do not fit within either of these two general perspectives, the most influential of which we will also review.
The aspect perspective on politics
The aspect perspective on politics holds that ‘politics’ is one of the aspects of human relations and interactions in all different domains of life.
Chapter 3 - Key Questions
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 43-54
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In Chapters 1 and 2 I explained how we distinguish ‘politics’ from other human activities and interactions. As indicated in Chapter 1, the character of this concept makes it impossible to define it exhaustively and without any ambiguity. One might therefore wonder what the point is of trying to define the term if its definition cannot be expected to be entirely clear-cut or uncontested. The reason for doing so is that in order to understand political phenomena one has to address a set of ‘key’ questions. These questions are not pertinent for understanding other phenomena, such as those with a predominantly economic, psychological or legal character, for example. This chapter therefore briefly presents these questions, which are essential for comprehending political matters, while later chapters deal with them in more detail.
The reason for considering these questions to be ‘key’ is that they are used, implicitly or explicitly, by political analysts of very different theoretical backgrounds. There is evidently, and despite differences about how to distinguish the ‘political’ from other matters, broad agreement that these questions must be taken up when dealing with politics. This reflects, as mentioned in Chapter 1, that such theoretical, conceptual and paradigmatic disagreements are far from absolute, and that theorists largely agree on how to distinguish between political and other matters.
Before discussing these key questions, a few cautionary remarks must be made. First, these questions do not exhaust what one needs to know about political phenomena, either in their specificity or in general. On the contrary, analysts ask all kinds of additional questions, some of which they also consider to be of key importance. Yet there is less agreement about these additional questions, and some of them are clearly tied to the specific theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives embraced by the analysts in question. In other words, the key questions presented here constitute a kind of common denominator, and need in every concrete application to be supplemented by other ones. A second remark is that the various questions cannot be answered satisfactorily in isolation. They are interconnected, which implies that each one affects how we answer the other ones. It also implies that addressing them will often require several turns, until the answers to all of them are satisfactory.
Chapter 6 - Political Power
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 85-102
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Power is one of the key concepts in the study of politics. For some authors it is even an indispensable part of their conception of politics (see Chapter 1). Yet the term is not used in the same way by different authors, which is not merely because of their different definitions, but because ‘power’ is a contested concept1 that defies full and unambiguous definition. The problem is made worse even because of the close connection between the concept of power and other concepts – first and foremost influence – which are also understood differently across the literature.
This chapter therefore focusses first on the conceptual problems that are encountered when trying to clarify the term power. This leads to a definition of power as used in this book. This definition does not pretend, or even aspire, to resolve existing conceptual disagreement, but it does aim to explicate the considerations on which it is based, and to clarify the difference, as well as the link between the concepts of power and influence. This chapter then continues with a brief discussion about different approaches to studying power empirically. It concludes with a renewed reflection on the key question about political power that was first introduced in Chapter 3.
Power as a concept
One of the reasons for terminological and conceptual confusion with respect to power is that not all authors distinguish explicitly between different matters that are linked to each other and to the core of their conceptualisations of power. This chapter tries to reduce this confusion by distinguishing these matters analytically, which can sometimes be simply accomplished by combining the word ‘power’ with another noun, such as ‘power structure’, ‘power base’, and so on. A second factor that contributes to conceptual and terminological confusion is that many descriptions and illustrative examples are formulated in terms of individuals or small groups – as in ‘someone has power over someone else if ….’ – and then proceed to use the concept in large-scale contexts which cannot adequately be reduced to the behaviour or interactions among a small number of people. It is well-known in the social sciences that what holds at the level of individuals and small groups does not hold for large groups or entire societies.
Chapter 5 - Political Conflicts
- Cees van der Eijk
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- The Essence of Politics
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- 29 August 2018, pp 71-84
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Summary
The variety of topics that lie at the heart of political conflicts is virtually infinite. Any analysis of real-world conflicts therefore needs to start by identifying and studying its concrete subject matter. However, a more general understanding of political conflicts requires a focus on their characteristics, which are the aspects of their identity that can be used to describe every imaginable conflict, and this may help to recognise similarities in the factors underlying their origin, evolution and dynamics.
Which characteristics are useful in this respect can only be established by empirically driven theoretical analysis. This chapter focusses on a small number of such aspects of conflicts that have been demonstrated to be relevant for a wide variety of seemingly quite different concrete situations. The first of these concerns what is at stake for the conflicting parties, which can be specified in several ways. Other important characteristics of conflicts that will be discussed in this chapter relate to the actors involved in the conflict, its history, and its connections to other conflicts.
Before turning to these characteristics, a cautionary remark has to be reiterated that was made earlier in Chapter 2. The terms conflict and cooperation are used here in a neutral sense, in contrast to many evaluative connotations of these terms in everyday language. Conflict is not necessarily bad, or regrettable, and cooperation is not necessarily to be applauded. How one would evaluate specific conflictual or cooperative relationships depends on one's norms and values and on the goals or interests one pursues, and all of these are different across people. Moreover, there is also a philosophical tradition – known as agonism – that points to the positive consequences of some kinds of political conflict. The underlying idea is that truth and understanding require the acknowledgement of, and intellectual contestation between inevitably incompatible interests and viewpoints, rather than their negation or obfuscation.
What is at stake?
What is at stake in conflicts affects the motivations of those actively involved and how determinedly they will pursue their cause. It therefore also impacts upon the dynamics between the conflicting parties, and on the possibilities for arriving at some kind of resolution. This ‘what is at stake’ aspect of conflicts has different aspects of its own that are not fully independent of each other.
7 - Elections, Cleavages and Voting Behaviour: From Stability to Volatility
- Edited by Philip van Praag
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- Political Science and Changing Politics
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 12 December 2020
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- 31 October 2017, pp 137-162
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Summary
Introduction
In the pillarized Dutch society, election results were once very predictable. In the 1950s, a gain of two or three seats was celebrated as a resounding victory. Many people voted their entire lives for the party that represented the pillar they belonged to (see also Chapter 5). The shares of seats in parliament were therefore highly stable. The three major Christian parties, the Catholic People's Party, the Christian Historical Union and the Anti-Revolutionary Party, which later merged into Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the labour Party (PvdA) and the liberal VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) received between them more than 80 percent of the votes. From the middle of the 1960s, this began to change. Electoral swings were increasing, and over the last two decades we have seen more and more fragmentation of in the Dutch party-political landscape. After the 2017 elections, at least four parties were needed to form a coalition that had a majority in the Lower House of Parliament.
The results of those elections highlighted major changes, in particular because of the losses sustained by the two ruling parties, the VVD (8 seats lost) and the PvdA (that lost 29 seats). This was not the first election in which there were important electoral shifts. In 1994, the CDA lost 20 seats and D66 won 12. In 2002, the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), the new party of the assassinated politician Pim Fortuyn, entered the Lower House with 26 seats. The PvdA lost 22 seats; the VVD, 14. It is no longer that surprising if a large gain for a party is followed at the next election by a big loss. While the fluctuations in electoral results in the Netherlands are quite considerable, this rise in instability is an international phenomenon. To an important degree, the higher fluctuations go hand in hand with the emergence of new parties, especially environmental and anti-immigration parties, and the declining support for Christian Democratic and social-democratic parties. Major electoral changes are taking place not only in many Western European countries, but elsewhere as well, like in Australia and Canada.
In this chapter, we will look first of all at the function of elections in a democratic system.
10 - The Electoral Consequences of Low Turnout in European Parliament Elections
- Edited by Martin Rosema, Bas Denters, Kees Aarts
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- How Democracy Works
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- Amsterdam University Press
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- 22 January 2021
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- 15 July 2012, pp 183-198
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Introduction
SINCE THEIR FIRST OCCURRENCE IN 1979 THE DIRECT ELECTIONS of the European Parliament (EP) have been characterized by low turnout, and 2009 reaffirmed this pattern. The lowest levels of turnout in 2009, 20 percent or less, were registered in Slovakia and Lithuania. In other countries turnout reached higher levels, with rates of over 90 percent in Belgium and Luxembourg (where voting is compulsory), and (for non-compulsory voting countries) highest rates of 79 percent in Malta and 65 percent in Italy. But, irrespective of the actual levels, in all countries – including those with compulsory voting – turnout was lower, and often by large margins than what one would normally find in their national first-order elections – which could be parliamentary or presidential. This is true without exception for all countries, and it has been the case without exception in all EP elections since the first one in 1979. Averaged across all member states, turnout is just under two thirds of what was registered in the most recent national general election before the 2009 EP elections. Obviously, there is some variation in this ratio, and in some countries – the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia – EP turnout dropped to less than half the rate in national elections.
The low levels of turnout in EP elections have given rise to a number of concerns, which have been persistent elements in public debate and scholarly research since 1979. Most of these relate to the causes of low turnout, while the consequences of low turnout have received less attention (but, see references in footnote 3). It is upon the latter that we focus in this chapter. More in particular we examine the consequences of low turnout for electoral representation. It has frequently been hypothesized that some parties benefit from low turnout because their own followers are loyal and active, and therefore turn out in above-average rates, thus yielding larger vote shares than would be the case at higher levels of turnout. By the same logic, parties would suffer from low levels of turnout if their followers would tend to abstain in above-average numbers.
The Economy and the Vote
- Economic Conditions and Elections in Fifteen Countries
- Wouter van der Brug, Cees van der EijK, Mark Franklin
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- 18 December 2009
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- 30 April 2007
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Economic conditions are said to affect election outcomes, but past research has produced unstable and contradictory findings. This book argues that these problems are caused by the failure to take account of electoral competition between parties. A research strategy to correct this problem is designed and applied to investigate effects of economic conditions on (individual) voter choices and (aggregate) election outcomes over 42 elections in 15 countries. It shows that economic conditions exert small effects on individual party preferences, which can have large consequences for election outcomes. In countries where responsibility for economic policy is clear, voters vote retrospectively and reward or punish incumbent parties - although in coalition systems smaller government parties often gain at the expense of the largest party when economic conditions deteriorate. Where clarity of responsibility for economic policy is less clear, voters vote more prospectively on the basis of expected party policies.
Index
- Wouter van der Brug, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Cees van der EijK, University of Nottingham, Mark Franklin, European University Institute, Florence
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- The Economy and the Vote
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- 18 December 2009
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- 30 April 2007, pp 229-234
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2 - Party Choice as a Two-Stage Process
- Wouter van der Brug, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Cees van der EijK, University of Nottingham, Mark Franklin, European University Institute, Florence
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- The Economy and the Vote
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- 18 December 2009
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- 30 April 2007, pp 31-53
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Summary
In the Introduction to this volume, we reported that instabilities in the results of past studies have led researchers to call for a methodological fix – a “trick” that would give stability to their findings. We believe that one way to find this trick is to employ an approach that solves the various problems outlined in Chapter 1. Whether such an approach would be the required trick – the ideal approach that would yield stable findings – remains to be seen. By addressing the problems we have enumerated, however, we will take a major step in the right direction. On the basis of our discussion of these problems, and summarizing the conclusions we reached in Chapter 1, we can reiterate some of the properties that an ideal approach would have.
The first property of an ideal approach is that it should allow us to combine information from different countries in a single dataset that contains data at the level of individual respondents. Such a dataset would permit us to use objective national economic indicators to measure economic conditions. In order to obtain sufficient variance in economic conditions for reliable effects to be measured, the number of different elections needs to be quite large. How many elections we need to study in order to acquire adequate variation in economic conditions is not something that can be definitively stated.
4 - Effects of the Economy on Party Support
- Wouter van der Brug, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Cees van der EijK, University of Nottingham, Mark Franklin, European University Institute, Florence
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- The Economy and the Vote
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- 18 December 2009
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- 30 April 2007, pp 82-116
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In this chapter, we will develop and test a model of the effect of objective economic circumstances on individual-level support for political parties. Most of the evidence previously found for effects of the objective state of the economy on party support has been found at the aggregate level (e.g., Hibbs 1977; Tufte 1978; Chrystal and Alt 1981; Fair 1988; Lewis-Beck 1988; Markus 1988, 1992; Erikson 1989; Clarke and Whiteley 1990; Mackuen, Erikson, and Stimson 1992; Powell and Whitten 1993; Price and Sanders 1993; Clarke and Stewart, 1995; Norpoth 1996; Sanders 1996; Clarke, Stewart, and Whiteley 1998; Whitten and Palmer 1999; Campbell and Garand 2000). It has been suggested (e.g., Jacobson 1983; Lewis-Beck 1988: 29–31) that these results may have reflected the ecological fallacy first identified by Robinson (1950), making it problematic to draw inferences from aggregate data about the behavior of individuals. More to the point, in our opinion, even assuming that effects found at the aggregate level are not spurious, aggregate analyses do not allow us to assess the importance of economic circumstances relative to other considerations that affect individuals' electoral choices, such as ideological predispositions or issue preferences, and give us no way of knowing under what circumstances these other considerations might trump the effects of economic conditions.
We will start by replicating with our data models of economic voting used in aggregate analyses, in which party choice is typically predicted only by the previous vote share of government parties (to control for time-serial dependencies) and by interactions of a government party dummy variable with measures of the state of the economy.