Segnalazione bibliografica. American Journal of Political Science (April 2011), Vol. 55, N. 2: pp. 307-325 Autori: Kim L. Fridkin, Patrick Kenney Abstract Do negative advertisements lower voters' evaluations of the targeted candidate? We theorize that there is much to be gained by examining the variance in the content and tone of negative campaign messages and the variance in voters' sensitivity to negative political rhetoric. We employ data from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to investigate the impact of negative campaigning in U.S. Senate campaigns. We sampled 1,045 respondents in 21 of the 28 U.S. Senate races featuring a majority party incumbent and challenger....

Segnalazione bibliografica. American Political Science Review (2011), 105: 79-99 Autori: Vincenzo Galasso, Tommaso Nannicini Abstract Is electoral competition good for political selection? To address this issue, we introduce a theoretical model where ideological parties select and allocate high-valence (experts) and low-valence (party loyalists) candidates into electoral districts. Voters care about a national policy (e.g., party ideology) and the valence of their district's candidates. High-valence candidates are more costly for the parties to recruit. We show that parties compete by selecting and allocating good politicians to the most contestable districts. Empirical evidence on Italian members of parliament confirms this prediction: politicians with higher...

Empirical election studies conclude that party elites' images with respect to competence, integrity and party unity – attributes that we label character-based valence – affect their electoral support (Stone and Simas, 2010). We compile observations of media reports pertaining to governing party elites' character-based valence attributes, and we relate the content of these reports to mass support for the governing parties. We present pooled, time-series, analyses of party support and valence-related media reports in six European polities which suggest that these reports exert powerful electoral effects during election campaigns but little effect during off-election periods. This finding, which we label the Election Period Valence Effect, is consistent with previous work concluding that citizens are also more attentive to policy-based considerations and to national economic conditions around the time of elections. These findings have implications for political representation and for understanding election outcomes.

While Carmines and Stimson's work on issue evolutions has prompted research showing the dynamics and effects of new party alignments on abortion, religion, gender and cultural issues, this research has all centred on the United States. This article examines issue evolution in Britain. Using evidence on the timing of changes in elite positions from Comparative Manifestos Group data, and survey data on public attitudes to the European Union with a longer historical sweep than heretofore, the article finds strong evidence that the European issue has followed an issue evolution path, though with distinct dynamics contingent on the pace of elite re-positioning. Thus, this article extends the theory of issue evolution to a parliamentary political system and demonstrates the responsiveness of the public to elite cues, while also providing additional insights from a unique case in which elites have staked out distinct positions not once, but twice.

CHIARAMONTE, A. C. A. (2011). Recensione del volume: P. Bellucci e P. Segatti (a cura di), Votare in Italia: 1968-2008. Dall’appartenenza alla scelta, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010. RASSEGNA ITALIANA DI SOCIOLOGIA, 51, 703–704.