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 Autori: Sarah Botterman, Marc Hooghe Acta Politica 47, 1-17 (January 2012) Abstract In this article, we investigate the impact of religious involvement on voting preference for the Christian Democratic party in Belgium. Although religious involvement is declining in Western European democracies, there is still significant evidence for the influence of religion on voting behaviour. We examine the relationship between individual religiosity, community religious involvement and vote preference for the Christian Democratic party in Belgium in 2009. The results show that a Catholic denomination is the most important predictor for vote preference for the Christian Democratic party, followed by church...

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autore: Ruth Dassonneville Acta Politica 47, 18-41 (January 2012) Abstract In this article, we investigate voter volatility and analyse the causes and motives of switching vote intentions. We test two main sets of variables linked to volatility in literature; political sophistication and political disaffection. Results show that voters with low levels of political efficacy tend to switch more often, both within a campaign and between elections. In the analysis, we differentiate between campaign volatility and inter-election volatility, and by doing so show that the dynamics of a campaign have a profound impact on volatility. The campaign period is when the lowly...

Segnalazione bibliografica Autore: Peter Selb European Journal of Political Research, December 2011 Abstract How quickly, to what extent and under what conditions do voters and elites adapt to new electoral institutions in order to not waste their votes and effort on hopeless competitors? A latent-curve model of strategic adaptation is developed and fitted to district-level election data from Spain. The extent of strategic adaptation is generally found to vary with the strength of the electoral system. However, grave ethnic tensions are demonstrated to seriously retard adaptation even under favourable institutional conditions. Full Text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.02049.x/abstract

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autori: Richard S. Katz, Peter Mair Party Politics January 2012 vol. 18 no. 1 107-111 Abstract A recurring problem in comparative politics is determining the extent to which models derived in one setting can be transferred directly to other settings. The original cartel party thesis was meant to account for developments that were beginning to be observed in the established democracies of western Europe in the 1990s. Many of the contemporary conditions that appeared to be driving those developments are to be found in other places, but of course preceded by quite different historical trajectories. The articles on parties and interest...