In cross-national research on party systems, the empirical units of analysis are often assumed to be self-evident, which can be conducive to misleading research results. This problem is particularly important with regard to party system classification, for which a methodologically rigorous approach to the units of analysis is needed. This article proposes a set of operational criteria for identifying elements that qualify for inclusion within the universe of democratic party systems among individual election outcomes and country-specific sequences of elections. On this basis, I introduce additional criteria for distinguishing between party systems and party non-systems, and among party systems evolving within the same nation-state settings. By applying these criteria to a set of 1502 national legislative elections held in the world’s democracies from 1792 to 2009, the article identifies 162 units that can be entered into a classification of the world’s democratic party systems and 21 party non-systems.

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autori: Luigi Curini, Willy Jou e Vincenzo Memoli British Journal of Political Science April 2012 42 : pp 241-261 Abstract Previous authors have found greater political support among electoral winners than losers, but they define winners and losers at a single time point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that neglects possible variations within each group. This study considers both the past history of winning or losing and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a political support indicator – satisfaction with democracy. (https://blogs.20minutos.es/) Using a multilevel model covering thirty-one countries, the authors show that the relationship between winner/loser status...

Segnalazione bibliografica. European Journal of Political Research, 08/07/11 Autore: Will Jennings Abstract This article develops the reward-punishment issue model of voting using a newly collated aggregate measure of issue competence in Britain between 1971 and 1997, revealing systematic differences between governing and opposition parties in the way citizens' evaluations of party competence are related to vote intention. Using monthly Gallup ‘best party to handle the most important problem’ and vote intention data, time series Granger-causation tests give support to a classic issue reward-punishment model for incumbents. However, for opposition parties this reward-punishment model does not hold: macro-issue competence evaluations are Granger-caused by...

Mughan, A. (2013). Kees Aarts, Andre Blais and Hermann Schmitt, Political leaders and democratic elections, reviewed by Anthony Mughan. Party Politics, 19(4), 683–684. http://doi.org/10.1177/1354068813485781 Vai al sito web

Segnalazione bibliografica. European Journal of Political Research, online version Autore: Markus Wagner Abstract Parties have an incentive to take up extreme positions in order to achieve policy differentiation and issue ownership, and it would make sense for a party to stress these positions as well. These incentives are not the same for all issues and all parties but may be modified by other strategic conditions: party size, party system size, positional distinctiveness and systemic salience. Using manifesto-based measures of salience and expert assessments of party positions, the findings in this article are that parties emphasise extreme positions if, first, they are relatively small...