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A vast literature suggests that voters in new democracies ‘sell’ their vote to patrons providing private or small-scale club goods, or, alternatively, that such goods are distributed along ethnic lines to reinforce ethnic voting. In either case the outcome is undermining democratic accountability. This study finds that citizens in one new democracy – Ghana – expect (and get) the patronage but at the same time engage in economic voting. Eighty-five percent of citizens first and foremost expect their legislators to supply private or small-scale ‘club’ goods. This acts as a strong incentive for politicians to actually supply such goods, which is confirmed by participants’ observational data and more than 250 interviews conducted by the author. Despite this, citizens do not vote based on how well or how poorly incumbent MPs provide clientelistic goods. A multivariate analysis reveals that voting for the opposition or the incumbent is determined by evaluations of the state of the national economy and of the government’s policies. What the literature has portrayed as an ‘either-or’ is ‘both’, and this is perfectly rational: Extract as much as one can in terms of private and small club goods but vote based on economic factors. The literature suggests that clientelism dominates elections in newer democracies and thus undermines democracy. The findings from this study suggest that while distribution of clientelistic goods is common, this does not necessarily undermine the mechanism of democratic accountability in elections.

To cite the article: Trastulli F (2022) More Left or Left No More? An In-depth Analysis of Western European Social Democratic Parties' Emphasis on Traditional Economic Left Goals (1944–2021). Front. Polit. Sci. 4:873948. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2022.873948. The article is open access and can be accessed here. Trastulli FPS 06/2022Download Abstract The ideological evolution of Western European social democratic parties has received considerable scholarly attention over the decades. The most widespread view concerns the alleged programmatic moderation and convergence with the mainstream right of this...

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autori: Brad Verhulst, Lindon J. Eaves, Peter K. Hatemi American Journal of Political Science 56(1), 34-51 (January 2012) Abstract The assumption in the personality and politics literature is that a person's personality motivates them to develop certain political attitudes later in life. This assumption is founded on the simple correlation between the two constructs and the observation that personality traits are genetically influenced and develop in infancy, whereas political preferences develop later in life. Work in psychology, behavioral genetics, and recently political science, however, has demonstrated that political preferences also develop in childhood and are equally influenced by genetic factors. These findings cast...

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autori: Kosuke Imai e Dustin Tingley American Journal of Political Science 56(1), 218-236 (January 2012) Abstract Empirical testing of competing theories lies at the heart of social science research. We demonstrate that a well-known class of statistical models, called finite mixture models, provides an effective way of rival theory testing. In the proposed framework, each observation is assumed to be generated either from a statistical model implied by one of the competing theories or more generally from a weighted combination of multiple statistical models under consideration. Researchers can then estimate the probability that a specific observation is consistent with each rival theory....

Aldo Paparo, Challenger’s delight: The results of the 2018 Italian general election, Italian Political Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 63–81. ABSTRACT The results of the 2018 general election were shocking. Although the main competitors were the same as in 2013 (the centre-right coalition, the centre-left coalition, and the Movimento 5 Stelle), great uncertainty sur-rounded the electoral outcome because of the application of a new electoral system, and polls data indicating the competitiveness of the multiple political formations and the high number of undecided voters. For the first time in Western European history, a successful debutant managed not to lose votes in...