Segnalazione bibliografica. American Political Science Review 01 August 2011 105: 496-515 Autore: John G. Bullock Abstract An enduring concern about democracies is that citizens conform too readily to the policy views of elites in their own parties, even to the point of ignoring other information about the policies in question. This article presents two experiments that undermine this concern, at least under one important condition. People rarely possess even a modicum of information about policies; but when they do, their attitudes seem to be affected at least as much by that information as by cues from party elites. The experiments also measure the extent...

D’ALIMONTE, R. D. R. (2011). La formazione elettorale dei governi. In S. Fabbrini, V. Lippolis, & G. M. Salerno (Eds.), Governare le democrazie. Esecutivi, leader e sfide (pp. 55–74). napoli: CASA EDITRICE DOTT. EUGENIO JOVENE S.R.L.

What sustains stability in legislative party systems between elections? This question commands attention given the potential for change highlighted in recent work on legislative party switching. In addressing the question, this article echoes a prominent theme in research on legislatures, parties, and party systems: the importance of the party label. The novelty here is the treatment of the individual legislator’s need for manifest loyalty to the status quo party label as the chief constraint that deters incumbents from switching and underpins stability in legislative party systems. Our theory focuses on the value of stable party affiliations to voters and thus to incumbents as well. We extract testable implications and assess hypotheses against an original cross-national dataset of over 4,300 monthly observations of MP behavior in 116 legislative terms. We find that the temporal proximity to elections deters MPs’ moves. This electoral deterrent acquires particular force under candidate-centered electoral systems