Because non-voters are less politically informed than voters, some propose that increasing voter turnout would reduce the quality of information among the active voting population, damaging electoral outcomes. However, the proposed tradeoff between increased participation and informed participation is a false dichotomy. This article demonstrates that political information is endogenous to participation. A field experiment integrates an intensive mobilization treatment into a panel survey conducted before and after a city-wide election. Subjects who were mobilized to vote also became more informed about the content of the election. The results suggest institutions that encourage participation not only increase voter turnout – mobilizing electoral participation also motivates citizens to become more politically informed.

According to what has recently been labeled ‘political realism’ in political theory, ‘political moralists’ such as Rawls and Dworkin misconstrue the political domain by presuming that morality has priority over politics, thus overlooking that the political is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive conditions and normative sources. Political realists argue that this presumption, commonly referred to as the ‘ethics first premise’, has to be abandoned in order to properly theorize a normative conception of political legitimacy. This article critically examines two features of political realism, which so far have received too little systematic philosophical analysis: the political realist critique of political moralism and the challenges facing political realism in its attempt to offer an alternative account of political legitimacy. Two theses are defended. First, to the extent that proponents of political realism wish to hold onto a normative conception of political legitimacy, refuting wholesale the ethics first premise leads to a deadlock, since it throws the baby out with the bathwater by closing the normative space upon which their account of political legitimacy relies. This is called the ‘necessity thesis’: all coherent and plausible conceptions of political legitimacy must hold onto the ethics first premise. Secondly, accepting this premise – and thus defending an ethics first view – does not entail that the political domain must be seen as a subordinate arena for the application of moral principles, that political normativity is reduced to morality or that morality trumps other reasons in political decision making, as claimed by political realists. Rather, the ethics first view is compatible with an autonomous political domain that makes room for an account of political legitimacy that is defined by and substantiated from sources of normativity specifically within the political. This is called the ‘compatibility thesis’.

In a previous article in this Journal entitled ‘Institutions and Environmental Performance in Seventeen Western Democracies’ (29 (1999), 1–31), I argued that neo-corporatist institutions delivered superior environmental performance during the first two decades of the modern environmental era (1970–90).For other work on the same or similar themes, see Detlef Jahn, ‘Environmental Performance and Policy Regimes: Explaining Variation in 18 OECD Countries’, Policy Sciences, 31 (1998), 107–31; Martin Jänicke and Helmut Weidner, eds, National Environmental Policies: A Comparative Study of Capacity-Building (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1997); Markus Crepaz, ‘Explaining National Variations of Air Pollution Levels: Political Institutions and Their Impact on Environmental Policy-Making’, Environmental Politics, 4 (1995), 391–414; Martin Janicke, H. Monch and M. Binder, ‘Ecological Aspects of Structural Change’, Intereconomics, July/August (1993), 159–69; Martin Jänicke, ‘Conditions for Environmental Policy Success’, in M. Jachtenfuchs and M. Strübel, eds, Environmental Policy in Europe (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1992), 71–97; and Martin Jänicke et al., ‘Structural Change and Environmental Impact’, Intereconomics, January/February (1989), 24–35. This note re-examines the thesis using slightly different data from a more recent time period (19807ndash;95). It also controls for some alternative explanations for environmental performance not included in the original article. The results suggest that the beneficial effects of neo-corporatism for environmental performance are robust. In confirming the results from the earlier analysis, this Note demonstrates the effects of neo-corporatism in unexpected policy areas. The positive results for environmental protection suggest that there may be benefits of neo-corporatist institutions in areas beyond those with which they are traditionally associated.

Supporters of the Republican Party have become much more skeptical of the science of climate change since the 1990s. This article argues that out-group cues from Democratic elites caused a backlash that resulted in greater climate skepticism. The authors construct aggregate measures of climate skepticism from nearly 200 public opinion polls at the quarterly level from 2001 to 2014 and at the annual level from 1986 to 2014. They also build time-series measures of possible contributors to climate skepticism using an automated media content analysis. The analyses provide evidence that cues from party elites – especially from Democrats – are associated with aggregate dynamics in climate change skepticism, including among supporters of the Republican Party. The study also involves a party cue survey experiment administered to a sample of 3,000 Americans through Amazon Mechanical Turk to provide more evidence of causality. Together, these results highlight the importance of out-group cue taking and suggest that climate change skepticism should be examined through the lens of elite-led opinion formation.

Recently, Sanders et al. have made the intriguing and counter-intuitive argument that the impact of the Falklands war on Conservative popularity was inconsequential. Their analyses raise important theoretical and methodological issues concerning the time-series analysis of party support. This present article contends that the stepwise regression procedures employed by Sanders et al. are misleading, particularly when predictor variables are highly intercorrelated. Box-Jenkins analyses demonstrate that the Falklands strongly influenced Conservative support, net of the effects of macroeconomic conditions and personal economic expectations. The significance of the latter variable in the models confirms Sanders et al.'s argument about the role of subjective economic variables in party popularity functions. Non-economic variables are also relevant, however, and popularity functions that model them correctly will enhance our understanding of both the economics and the politics of party support.

While gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general inferences. Exploiting quantitative and qualitative data from Malawi, the authors demonstrate that matrilineality's success in improving outcomes for women lies in its ability to sustain more progressive norms about the role of women in society. It sets individual expectations about the gendered beliefs and behaviors of other households in the community, and in a predictable way through the intergenerational transmission of the practice. The study tests and finds evidence against two competing explanations: that matrilineality works through its conferral of material resources alone, or by increasing education for girls.

Formal models of voting usually assume that political agents, whether parties or candidates, attempt to maximize expected vote shares. ‘Stochastic’ models typically derive the ‘mean voter theorem’ that each agent will adopt a ‘convergent’ policy strategy at the mean of the electoral distribution. In this article, it is argued that this conclusion is contradicted by empirical evidence. Estimates of vote intentions require ‘valence’ terms. The valence of each party derives from the average weight, given by members of the electorate, in judging the overall competence or ‘quality’ of the particular party leader. In empirical models, a party's valence is independent of current policy declarations and can be shown to be statistically significant in the estimation. It is shown here that the addition of valence gives a very strong Bayes factor over an electoral model without valence. The formal model is analysed and shown to be classified by a ‘convergence’ coefficient, defined in terms of the parameters of the empirical model. This coefficient gives necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence. When the necessary condition fails, as it does in these empirical studies with valence, then the convergent equilibrium fails to exist. The empirical evidence is consistent with a formal stochastic model of voting in which there are multiple local Nash equilibria to the vote-maximizing electoral game. Simulation techniques based on the parameters of the empirical model have been used to obtain these local equilibria, which are determined by the principal component of the electoral distribution. Low valence parties, in equilibrium, will tend to adopt positions at the electoral periphery. High valence parties will contest the electoral centre, but will not, in fact, position themselves at the electoral mean. Survey data from Israel for the elections of 1988, 1992 and 1996 are used to compute the parameters of the empirical model and to illustrate the dependence of equilibria on the electoral principal components. The vote maximizing equilibria do not perfectly coincide with the actual party positions. This divergence may be accounted for by more refined models that either (i) include activism or (ii) consider strategic party considerations over post-election coalition bargaining.

In contests for the presidential nominations from the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, the duration of candidacies determines both the winning candidate (i.e., the one who outlasts his or her opponents) and the amount of intraparty conflict before the nomination is bestowed. This article analyses how strategic considerations lead some candidates to exit the race more quickly than others. Factors which could shape such strategic considerations include initial candidate assets and characteristics (national poll standings, fund-raising totals and occupational background), initial contest outcomes (Iowa and New Hampshire) and structural variables (proportional representation delegate distribution rules, party, front-loaded calendar). Results from a duration model indicate that poll standings, money (in a curvilinear pattern), New Hampshire and Iowa results, occupational backgrounds and the front-loading of the primary calendar shaped the length of candidacies for presidential contestants from 1980 to 2004. Candidates lacking in initial assets or early victories leave the nomination race in a process most resembling a game of attrition.

A number of writers have drawn upon the republican tradition in political thought to criticize liberals like Rawls and Dworkin for neglecting the importance of public service and civic virtue. In this article, I present and evaluate one version of this critique, which can be found in recent work by Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor. I argue that their critique, which I term ‘instrumental republicanism’, is caught on the horns of a dilemma. Depending on how the critique is formulated, either there is no interesting disagreement between liberals and republicans, or there is, but not one which should concern liberals. Either way, instrumental republicanism cannot be said to offer an improvement on the liberal attitudes towards public service and civic virtue.

A basic question in the analysis of the economic voting of the individual is whether the decision to vote for the government is sociotropic or determined by the pocketbook? It is sociotropic if the voter considers the whole of the economy. It is pocketbook voting if people look at their personal economic circumstances. The question has remained at the centre of research in economic voting since it was first raised by Kinder and Kiewiet in 1979. Over the years, it has generated a sizeable number of empirical studies, mostly based on American data, as well as a fair share of disagreement. From a theoretical viewpoint it is not obvious whether economic man is a sociotropic or a pocketbook voter. There is a strong argument for both assumptions: (α) the pro-pocketbook argument suggests that homo economicus pursues his own interest or that of his household, and votes with his pocketbook; (β) the proto-sociotropic argument suggests that voters consider what governments try to accomplish. They do not try to steer the economy of any individual, but the economy of the country.The word sociotropic literally means society-directed. The corresponding concept for self-directed would be egotropic, as we write in other papers. The Editor has resolved that this is not in the dictionary. Moreover, several writers prefer the term egocentric. This is too loaded with other meanings for our taste. So we shall use the term pocketbook voting in the present Note.Donald R. Kinder and D. Roderick Kiewiet, ‘Economic Discontent and Political Behavior: The Role of Personal Grievances and Collective Economic Judgements in Congressional Voting’, American Journal of Political Science, 23 (1979), 495–527, and ‘Sociotropic Politics’, British Journal of Political Science, 11 (1981), 129–61. See further the cross-national study by Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Economics and Elections (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988, 1990), and the surveys by Peter Nannestad and Martin Paldam, ‘The VP-Function. A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years’, Public Choice, 79 (1994), 213–45; and Douglas A. Hibbs, Solidarity or Egoism? (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1993). These recent surveys allow us to restrict these references to a minimum.

While studies of the motives for intentional insurgent violence against civilians are now common, relatively little academic research has focused on the impact of victimization on conflict processes or war outcomes. This article addresses this gap in the literature. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of civilian victimization on bargaining between the regime and insurgents during a civil war. A curvilinear relationship between the level of civilian victimization used by insurgents and the likelihood that conflict ends in negotiated settlement is posited. The probability of settlement is highest for groups that engage in a moderate level of civilian killing but declines at particularly high levels. A competing risk analysis using monthly conflict data on African civil wars between 1989 and 2010 supports this argument.

Is foreign aid an effective instrument of soft power? Does it generate affinity for donor countries and the values they espouse? This article answers these questions in the context of Chinese aid to Africa and the competing aid regime of the United States. The study combines data on thirty-eight African countries from Afrobarometer, AidData, and the Aid Information Management Systems of African finance and planning ministries. The authors use spatial difference-in-differences to isolate the causal effects of Chinese and US aid. The study finds that Chinese aid to Africa does not increase (and may in fact reduce) beneficiaries’ support for China. By contrast, US aid appears to increase support for the United States and to strengthen recipients’ commitment to liberal democratic values, such as the belief in the importance of elections. Chinese aid does not appear to weaken this commitment, and may strengthen it. The study also finds that Chinese aid increases support for the UK, France and other former colonial powers. These findings advance our understanding of the conditions under which competing aid regimes generate soft power and facilitate the transmission of political principles and ideals.

Human rights have long been a direct or indirect substantive topic in modern political science and, in particular, the study of human rights represents an important nexus between traditional concerns within comparative politics and those in international relations. On the one hand, comparative politics has traditionally been concerned with the functions, determinants and outcomes of different political regimes, political institutions, political culture, the relationship between states and citizens (protest and repression, social mobilization and citizenship rights, voting, elections and party systems), and large social processes such as social and political revolutions, democratization and the domestic effects of and responses to globalization. On the other hand, international relations has concentrated on the inter-state dynamics of war, peace and security; international trade, finance and development; the growth and role of international organizations; the proliferation and effectiveness of international regimes and foreign policy analysis. More recently, attention has focused on the interplay between domestic and international politics in examining the ways in which domestic political arrangements may have an impact on the international behaviour of states. The now famous notion of the ‘two-level’ game has been instructive for scholars examining the constraint of democratic institutions on state behaviour, while the large literature on the ‘democratic’ and ‘Kantian’ peace has used the tools of modern political science to examine the degree to which democracy and other ‘liberal’ variables have an inhibiting effect on the likelihood of interstate violence.

The study of human rights within modern political science fits neatly into these disciplinary developments. The history of human rights is one of the increasing internationalization of an idea that has traditionally been defended nationally.

By the standard of most European parliaments, levels of party voting in the United States Congress are relatively low. Nevertheless, party voting does occur in the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the American context, a party vote occurs when majorities of the two congressional parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, oppose one another. The authors construct measurements of levels of party voting in Congress in the years after the Second World War. They then develop a model to test the effects of a number of independent variables that influence fluctuations in party voting levels over time. The study models the time series for party voting and demonstrates striking differences between the House and Senate in the correlates of partisan cleavage.

Studies on what causes a state to democratize have focused on economic, social, and international factors. Many of them argue that higher levels of education should promote democracy. However, few articulate clearly how education affects democratization, and fewer still attempt to test the supposed link across time and space. This article fills that gap by considering how different levels of education influence democratization, and the conditions under which education is most likely to promote democracy. Analyses of eighty-five authoritarian spells from 1970 to 2008 find that higher levels of mass, primary, and tertiary education are robustly associated with democratization. Secondary analyses indicate that education is most effective in promoting democratization when both males and females are educated. An illustration from Tunisia follows.

Can the positive impact of non-partisan ‘Get Out the Vote’ (GOTV) campaigns be generalized to a variety of institutional and cultural contexts? Gerber, Green and colleagues tested for the effects of these campaigns in a series of pioneering field experiments, which show that a face-to-face contact from a non-partisan source, carried out by a field force calling at the homes of citizens seeking to persuade them to vote, can increase voter turnout. Further experiments find that telephoning has an impact ranging from ineffective to positive, depending on the nature of the call; and there are positive, if weaker, results for other forms of intervention, such as door postings and leafleting; none for e-mail; and weakly positive or null impacts from rote telephoning. Many of these results derive from single cases or from a limited number of research sites; however, the culmination of these findings allows political scientists to be confident of the impact and hierarchy of these interventions. Although GOTV studies of this kind cannot adjudicate authoritatively on theories of mobilization, the difference in impact between the types of intervention, in particular the greater success of personalized messages, implies that it is the personal and face-to-face basis of influence that has an effect, rather than the types of message received and the simple provision of information.

So far most of this kind of research has been carried out in the United States, which means that, even with its variety of groups and locations, the range of variation in the institutional frameworks and social conditions is limited to the one-country case.

Much scholarship concerning human rights international nongovernmental organizations (HR-INGOs) focuses on the central role they play within transnational advocacy networks. Despite this theoretical focus on networks, there has been scant empirical attention on the characteristics of the HR-INGO network or on whether the network characteristics of a HR-INGO matter for its advocacy output. Introducing a new relational dataset on 681 HR-INGOs, this article finds that the HR-INGO network is somewhat like a public good and that the organizations who utilize it benefit in terms of their international advocacy output. Other findings focus on how the structural characteristics of organizations can influence their propensity to connect to each other and how ‘free-riding’ can limit the benefits organizations receive from the network.

This paper sets out to consider two related questions: the significance of elections in single-party systems in underdeveloped countries, and the kind of study which political scientists have made of such elections.1

Democracy is frequently framed as a distributional game. Much of the evidence supporting this possibility rests on the World Bank’s 1996 ‘high-quality’ inequality dataset. Using the updated and revised ‘high-quality’ dataset of 2007, this article revisits those results. Using the same country sample, more years and similar specifications to previous studies, as well as a larger country sample with more appropriate statistical models, we find no relationship between democracy/civil liberties and aggregate measures of economic inequality. Whether, and how, democracy decreases economic inequality remains an open question.

The absence of strategic voting in new democracies represents a potential threat to democratic consolidation because it could inhibit the development of a stable party system. Yet can we expect that citizens in new democracies have developed the skills associated with strategic voting in democratic elections? Based on evidence from Hungary, a post-communist democracy, this article suggests that citizens in new democracies respond to strategic voting situations in a fashion consistent with conventional theories of strategic voting. Analysis of Hungarian voting statistics over the past three national elections indicates that voters, consistent with strategic voting theories, vigorously penalized smaller parties thereby contributing to the rapid decline in the number of effective parties competing in Hungarian elections. We argue that strategic voting occurs in two stages: (1) recognition of a ‘wasted-vote’ situation and (2) strategic response to that situation.