Previous research explains the evolution of parties' ideological positions in terms of decision rules that stress the uncertainty of the political environment. The authors extend this research by examining whether parties adjust their ideologies in response to two possible influences: shifts in public opinion, and past election results. Their empirical analyses, which are based on the Comparative Manifesto Project's codings of parties' post-war programmes in eight West European nations, suggest that parties respond to shifts in public opinion, but that these effects are only significant in situations where public opinion is clearly shifting away from the party's policy positions. By contrast, no evidence is found here that parties adjust their ideologies in response to past election results. These findings have important implications for parties' election strategies and for models of political representation.

A raft of new research on the causes and effects of political corruption has emerged in recent years, in tandem with a separate, growing focus on the effects of political institutions on important outcomes such as economic growth, social equality and political stability. Yet we know little about the possible role of different political institutional arrangements on political corruption. This article examines the impact of territorial sovereignty (unitary or federal) and the composition of the executive (parliamentary or presidential) on levels of perceived political corruption cross-nationally. We find that unitary and parliamentary forms of government help reduce levels of corruption. To explain this result, we explore a series of seven potential causal mechanisms that emerge out of the competing centralist and decentralist theoretical paradigms: (1) openness, transparency and information costs, (2) intergovernmental competition, (3) localism, (4) party competition, (5) decision rules, (6) collective action problems, and (7) public administration. Our empirical findings and our analysis of causal mechanisms suggest that centralized constitutions help foster lower levels of political corruption.

With the rise of analytical or positive approaches to the study of politics over the last three decades, the collective action problem has emerged as one of the central concepts in political science. The concept's widespread acceptance as a descriptive and diagnostic tool, however, cannot obscure the fact that its predictions do not always hold. Co-operation sometimes does take place in contexts where, according to the theory, actors should have little incentive to engage in it.

Reif and Schmitt argued that elections to the European Parliament should be understood as second-order national elections, and advanced several predictions about the results of such elections. Those concerning the impact of government status, party size, party character and the national election cycle on electoral performance are examined here using data on four sets of European Parliament elections. In addition, the consequences of European Parliament elections for the next national election are explored. The analysis demonstrates the validity of most of Reif and Schmitt's original propositions, and further refines their analysis of the relationship between European and subsequent national elections. However, all propositions hold much more effectively in countries where alternation in government is the norm, suggesting that the distinction between first-order and second-order elections may not be so clear cut as Reif and Schmitt imagined.

This article employs World Values Survey measures of life satisfaction as though they were direct measures of utility, and uses them to evaluate alternative features and forms of government in large international samples. Life satisfaction is found to be more closely linked to several World Bank measures of the quality of government than to real per capita incomes, in simple correlations and more fully specified models explaining international differences in life satisfaction. Differences in the relative importance of different aspects of good government are tested for, and a hierarchy of preferences that depends on the level of development is found. The ability of governments to provide a trustworthy environment, and to deliver services honestly and efficiently, appears to be of paramount importance for countries with worse governance and lower incomes. The balance changes once acceptable levels of efficiency, trust and incomes are achieved, when more value is attached to building and maintaining the institutions of electoral democracy.

Political protest is seemingly a ubiquitous aspect of politics in advanced industrial societies, and its use may be spreading to less developed nations as well. Our research tests several rival theories of protest activity for citizens across an exceptionally wide range of polities. With data from the 1999–2002 wave of the World Values Survey, we demonstrate that the macro-level context – levels of economic and political development – significantly influences the amount of popular protest. Furthermore, a multi-level model examines how national context interacts with the micro-level predictors of protest activity. The findings indicate that contemporary protest is expanding not because of increasing dissatisfaction with government, but because economic and political development provide the resources for those who have political demands.

We examine the systemic conditions that have influenced the electoral success of parties of the extreme right in West European politics from 1970 through 1990. Empirical estimates based on 103 elections in sixteen countries suggest that electoral and party-system factors interact with each other to generate conditions conducive to these parties. Specifically, increasing electoral thresholds dampen support for the extreme right as the number of parliamentary parties expands. At the same time, multi-partism increasingly fosters parties of the extreme right with rising electoral proportionality. Our analyses also indicate that higher rates of unemployment provide a favourable environment for these political movements. These results suggest that levels of electoral support for the extreme right are sensitive to factors that can be modified through policy instruments.

This article explains the positions taken by national political parties on the issue of European integration over the period 1984–96. Based on the theory of party systems developed by Lipset and Rokkan, we develop a cleavage account of party response to new political issues. We hypothesize that European integration is assimilated into pre-existing ideologies of party leaders, activists and constituencies that reflect long-standing commitments on fundamental domestic issues.

The theme of strong and weak states has recently figured largely in comparative political economy. However, significant variation across sectors in single countries in the degree to which the state is able and willing to intervene in the economy has led to calls for a disaggregated view of the state, with more attention devoted to the different levels – micro, meso, macro – at which the state confronts the economy. The concepts of strength and weakness must pay much greater attention to specific bureaucratic arrangements and the relationships with key societal actors which, in company with bureaucratic agencies, form the core of ‘policy networks’ at the sectoral level. The article uses the concepts of state capacity and societal mobilization to identify six ideal typical policy networks at the sectoral level. It elaborates on the organizational logic associated with these policy networks by examining them in conjunction with industrial policy. After distinguishing between two approaches to industrial policy – anticipatory and reactive – it shows how different policy networks emerge to support alternative approaches and how a disjunction between networks and approaches can produce policy failure.

How cohesive are political parties in the European Parliament? What coalitions form and why? The answers to these questions are central for understanding the impact of the European Parliament on European Union policies. These questions are also central in the study of legislative behaviour in general. We collected the total population of roll-call votes in the European Parliament, from the first elections in 1979 to the end of 2001 (over 11,500 votes). The data show growing party cohesion despite growing internal national and ideological diversity within the European party groups. We also find that the distance between parties on the left-right dimension is the strongest predictor of coalition patterns. We conclude that increased power of the European Parliament has meant increased power for the transnational parties, via increased internal party cohesion and inter-party competition.

This article attempts to reformulate and resuscitate the seemingly prosaic methodological task of description, which is often derided in favour of causal analysis. First, the problem of definition is addressed: what does this category of analysis (‘description’) refer to? Secondly, a taxonomy of descriptive arguments is offered, emphasizing the diversity contained within this genre of empirical analysis. Thirdly, the demise of description within political science is charted over the past century, with comparisons to other disciplines. Fourthly, it is argued that the task of description ought to be approached independently, not merely as a handmaiden of causal theories. Fifthly, the methodological difficulties of descriptive inference are addressed. Finally, fruitful research areas within the rubric of description are reviewed.

The two most influential traditions of contemporary theorizing about democracy, social choice theory and deliberative democracy are generally thought to be at loggerheads, in that one demonstrates the impossibility, instability or meaninglessness of the rational collective outcomes sought by the other. We argue that the two traditions can be reconciled. After expounding the central Arrow and Gibbard–Satterthwaite impossibility results, we reassess their implications, identifying the conditions under which meaningful democratic decision making is possible. We argue that deliberation can promote these conditions, and hence that social choice theory suggests not that democratic decision making is impossible, but rather that democracy must have a deliberative aspect.

Scholarly research has demonstrated rather conclusively that American political elites have undergone a marked partisan polarization over the past thirty years. There is less agreement, however, as to whether the American electorate is polarized. This review article evaluates the evidence, causes and consequences of polarization on both the elite and mass levels. A marked difference between the two is found. Elites are polarized by almost any definition, although this state of affairs is quite common historically. In contrast, mass attitudes are now better sorted by party, but generally not polarized. While it is unclear whether this potentially troubling disconnect between centrist mass attitudes and extreme elite preferences has negative policy consequences, it appears that the super-majoritarian nature of the US Senate serves as a bulwark against policy outcomes that are more ideologically extreme than the public would prefer. Moreover, a public more centrist than those who represent it has also at times exerted a moderating influence on recent policies.

This article investigates the interactions between democracy, political stability and economic growth. Two aspects of the study differentiate it from previous research. First, a simultaneous approach is adopted which combines the study of economic growth and political stability with that of economic growth and democracy. Secondly, a distinction is made between types of political instability, because different kinds of government change have different effects on economic growth and democracy. This analysis employs three-stage least-squares estimation, and utilizes aggregate data covering ninety-six countries from 1960 to 1980. The results indicate that democracy has a positive indirect effect upon growth through its impacts on the probabilities of both regime change and constitutional government change from one ruling party to another. In addition, the evidence indicates that the two kinds of political change mentioned above have significant and opposite effects on growth; that growth has a negative effect on regime change and a positive effect on the probability of the ruling party remaining in power; and that long-run economic growth tends to exert a positive effect upon democracy.

Advocates of proportional representation (PR) often cite its potential for increasing citizen involvement in politics as one of PR's fundamental advantages over plurality or first-past-the-post systems. The assumption is that plurality electoral systems distort the translation of votes into seats, discouraging and alienating small party supporters and other political minorities. In contrast, PR systems are believed to provide greater opportunities for representation which are assumed to instil greater efficacy and increase participation. We examine this theory linking institutions to electoral participation across a diverse set of countries using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Using a multi-level approach we find evidence consistent with the expectations about the negative influence of disproportional systems on political minorities. Voters are also likely to have stronger partisan preferences in PR systems, which enhances political efficacy and increases voter participation. The effects of PR, however, are not all positive; broad coalitions, which are likely to be a feature of these systems, reduce political efficacy.

The institutional turn in comparative authoritarianism has generated wide interest. This article reviews three prominent books on authoritarian institutions and their central theoretical propositions about the origins, functions and effects of dominant party institutions on authoritarian rule. Two critical perspectives on political institutions, one based on rationalist theories of institutional design and the other based on a social conflict theory of political economy, suggest that authoritarian institutions are epiphenomenal on more fundamental political, social and/or economic relations. Such approaches have been largely ignored in this recent literature, but each calls into question the theoretical and empirical claims that form the basis of institutionalist approaches to authoritarian rule. A central implication of this article is that authoritarian institutions cannot be studied separately from the concrete problems of redistribution and policy making that motivate regime behavior.

This article uses data from the Citizen Participation Study – a large-scale survey of the voluntary activity of the American public designed to oversample African-Americans and Latinos as well as political activists – to inquire about the extent and sources of differences in levels of political activity among African-Americans, Latinos and Anglo-Whites. Considering a variety of political acts, we find that, in the aggregate, African-Americans are slightly, and Latinos are substantially, less active than Anglo-Whites. However, the resources that facilitate participation – some of which, for example, education, are related to social class and others of which, for example, religious preference and activity are associated with race or ethnicity – are distributed very unevenly across the three groups, with Latinos at a particular disadvantage. After accounting for differences in politically relevant resources, there is no significant difference among the three groups in political participation.

misunderstanding the regulatory state?

In the last quarter of the twentieth century something transformed government across the advanced capitalist world, and a large amount of comparative political enquiry is now concerned with pinning a convincing label on that transformation. Of the many candidates the subject of this review article has proved especially popular. As I will show, a regulatory state is now commonly said to exist in a wide range of geographical and institutional settings: writers speak of a regulatory state in the United States and in Britain; of the European regulatory state; and even of refinements like ‘a regulatory state inside the state’.

A well-functioning democracy requires a degree of mutual respect and a willingness to talk across political divides. Yet numerous studies have shown that many electorates are polarized along partisan lines, with animosity towards the partisan out-group. This article further develops the idea of affective polarization, not by partisanship, but instead by identification with opinion-based groups. Examining social identities formed during Britain's 2016 referendum on European Union membership, the study uses surveys and experiments to measure the intensity of partisan and Brexit-related affective polarization. The results show that Brexit identities are prevalent, felt to be personally important and cut across traditional party lines. These identities generate affective polarization as intense as that of partisanship in terms of stereotyping, prejudice and various evaluative biases, convincingly demonstrating that affective polarization can emerge from identities beyond partisanship.

This research Note has two complementary theoretical objectives. First, we shall attempt to place the form of interest representation and the involvement of interest groups in policy formation known as corporatism – or as democratic, societal, liberal or neo-corporatism – in a broader political context: is corporatism systematically linked with other democratic institutions and processes? Secondly, we shall try to fill a gap in the theory of consensus democracy. This theory holds that types of party, electoral, executive and legislative systems occur in distinct clusters, but it fails to link interest group systems to these clusters.