Segnalazione bibliografica. American Political Science Review 01 August 2011 105: 530-551 Autori: Boris Shor; Nolan McCarty Abstract The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual decision-makers have made a key contribution to this success. Spatial models have been estimated for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. Yet one potentially fruitful laboratory for testing spatial theories, the individual U.S. states, has remained relatively unexploited, for two reasons. First, state legislative...

Segnalazione bibliografica. British Journal of Political Science (2011), 41: 363-387 Autore: Philipp Rehm Abstract Why has the American political landscape grown more partisan since the 1970s? This article provides a novel account of the determinants of partisanship. The author argues that partisanship is not only shaped by the traditionally suggested socio-economic factors, but also by the uncertainty of future income (risk exposure): rich individuals facing a high degree of risk exposure (or poor people facing low risk exposure) are ‘cross-pressured’; while their income suggests that they should identify with the Republicans, their income prospects make them sympathize with the Democrats. These two traits have overlapped increasingly since the 1970s. Those...

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autore: Jason Ross Arnold Acta Politica 47, 67-90 (January 2012) Abstract Social scientists have demonstrated how transparency and democratic accountability can help control political corruption. Whereas this research has had much to say about how an open media environment produces constraints on politicians, the problem of how a politically ignorant public can enforce accountability has received much less attention. In this article, I argue that effective citizen monitoring of government officials depends on accurate corruption perceptions, which depends on the degree to which citizens are politically informed. An analysis of 10 Latin American countries with varied levels of corruption shows that...

Segnalazione bibliografica. West European Politics, Volume 34, Number 5, 1 September 2011 , pp. 1070-1091(22) Autore: Pontus Odmalm Abstract Why is `the immigration issue' rarely polemical for the Swedish mainstream when it divides parties across Europe? Several factors suggest fertile ground for conflict, yet parties hesitate to capitalise on anti-immigration cues. Based on interviews with Swedish MPs, the article discusses two interlinked issues. First, immigration crystallises conflicting ideological streams: market liberalism vs. value conservatism (for the centre-right) and international solidarity vs. welfare...

Two new studies challenge the prevailing consensus that proportional representation (PR) systems produce greater ideological congruence between governments and their citizens than majoritarian ones. This has led to what has become known as the ‘ideological congruence controversy’. G. Bingham Powell claims to resolve this controversy in favour of PR systems. Specifically, he argues that the results from the two new studies are based on an anomalous decade and that PR systems generally do produce greater government congruence. In addition, he also asserts that PR systems exhibit less variability in government congruence. In this article, the empirical evidence for these two claims is re-evaluated using exactly the same data as employed by Powell. The analysis indicates that although PR systems produce better and more consistent representation in the legislature, they do not hold an advantage when it comes to representation at the governmental level.