Segnalazione bibliografica. British Journal of Political Science (2011), 41: 287-314 Autori: David Sanders, Harold D. Clarke, Marianne C. Stewart, Paul Whiteley Abstract A six-wave 2005–09 national panel survey conducted in conjunction with the British Election Study provided data for an investigation of sources of stability and change in voters’ party preferences. The authors test competing spatial and valence theories of party choice and investigate the hypothesis that spatial calculations provide cues for making valence judgements. Analyses reveal that valence mechanisms – heuristics based on party leader images, party performance evaluations and mutable partisan attachments – outperform a spatial model in terms of strength of direct effects on party choice....

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. Autore: Timothy Hellwig Comparative Political Studies January 2012 vol. 45 no. 1 91-118 Abstract A positive relationship between economic performance and support for incumbents is routinely taken as evidence that elections work for accountability. Recent investigations into this relationship have examined just how signals from the economy translate into popular support. However, neither selection models nor sanctioning models explicitly incorporate the actions of political elites. This article advances a strategic parties model of economic voting. Political incumbents have incentives to adjust their policy positions in response to economic conditions. When parties advocate distinct positions on economic issues, elections can be understood in...

It is commonplace to see political parties as fundamentally constrained by public opinion. By contrast, this paper argues that party competition amplifies mass ideological polarization over public policy. Specifically, the investigation concerns the relationship between mass-level ideology and ethnic exclusionism (the call for harsh immigration policies). As party competition intensifies, this relationship strengthens. The party competition thesis is tested by performing a comparative study of Denmark and Sweden. Unlike their Danish counterparts, Swedish political parties have, most of the time, refused to take opposed stands on immigration policy. In effect, the empirical data show that the individual-level association between self-reported ideology and ethnic exclusionism is considerably stronger in Denmark than in Sweden. To investigate the party competition effect in depth, both longitudinal analyses and a cross-sectional analysis are performed. Data cover the period 1990-2008.