Democratic Outcomes Research Articles

Inequalities in democratic outcomes among young citizens: the role of access to and participation in democratic activities in school in 15 countries

Inequalities in democratic outcomes among young citizens: the role of access to and participation in democratic activities in school in 15 countries

Losers’ consent and emotions in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum

The willingness of voters on the losing side to accept electoral outcomes – losers’ consent – is essential to democratic legitimacy. This article examines the role of emotions in shaping people’s perceptions of electoral fairness, arguing that voters on the losing side who feel angry are less willing to accept democratic outcomes. This is examined in the context of the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as the 2019 UK general election, using original survey data and an experiment in which specific emotional responses (anger and happiness) are induced to test the causal effect of emotions. The results show that losers who felt angry about an electoral outcome are less likely to accept the legitimacy of the democratic process and that anger has a causal effect in reducing losers’ consent. These findings suggest that politicians may be able to influence voters’ faith in democracy by mobilising emotional responses.

Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion

Open government data (OGD) is believed to enhance democratic outcomes by empowering citizens with the information necessary to participate in meaningful ways. Nonetheless, questions remain about whether OGD is indeed empowering citizens to participate or if the data that governments publish is more reflective of the interests of non-citizen stakeholders. Using the metadata of 2607 publicly available datasets scraped from New York City’s open data portal, this exploratory study employs qualitative content analysis to identify what types of data are published and what the data say about OGD’s potential as a tool for advancing inclusion in democratic processes. The analysis focused particularly on the datasets’ relevance to five particular stakeholder groups: citizens, private sector firms, nonprofits, researchers, and the city’s internal agencies. Findings showed that non-citizen-relevant datasets not only outnumbered citizen-relevant datasets by a large margin but they were also viewed and downloaded at higher rates too. I discuss the implications for inclusion in democratic processes, including power imbalances among OGD user groups, the discretionary power data publishers possess, and, ultimately, whether the types of data cities publish is sufficient for empowering an informed citizenry, as an effective democracy demands.

How Partisanship Matters: A Panel Study on the Democratic Outcomes of Perceived Dirty Campaigning

Uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques are increasingly relevant phenomena in politics. However, it remains unclear how they share an underlying component and how partisanship can influence their associations with democratic outcomes. We introduce the concept of dirty campaigning, which is situated at the intersection of research on negative campaigning and political scandals. Dirty campaigning involves violations of social norms and liberal-democratic values between elite political actors in terms of style and practices, such as uncivil campaigning and deceitful campaign techniques. In a two-wave panel study (<em>N</em> = 634) during the 2021 German federal election campaign, we investigate the associations of perceived dirty campaigning by the least and most favorite party with distrust in politicians, trust in democracy, attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation, as well as perceived harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy. We find that perceived dirty campaigning by the least favorite party increases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy over time. In contrast, perceived dirty campaigning by the most favorite party decreases perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy as well as attitudes toward dirty campaigning regulation over time. Perceptions of harmful consequences of dirty campaigning for democracy increase distrust in politicians over time and vice versa. Our findings suggest that the outcomes of dirty campaigning can depend on partisanship and can have important implications for the quality of democracy.

Fostering learning among women: the democratic outcomes of elaborative primes

ABSTRACT The gender political knowledge gap has proven to be persistent and pervasive. It extends across time, geography, and cultures. When it comes to national politics, women demonstrate lower political knowledge than men, and this has a detrimental effect on a deliberative democracy. The current study employed an elaborative and political socialization theoretical perspective in addressing the gender political knowledge gap. Through an experimental design and structural equation modeling, antecedents and outcomes of political learning for women were investigated. Three conditions were created through exposure to articles before watching a televised presidential debate. Women were either given a motivation prime, which explained how a political issue related specifically to women; an ability prime that provided background information on an issue; or a nonpolitical prime. Both the motivation and ability (through increased elaboration) enhanced learning. The enhanced learning predicted increased intentions to discuss the issue and seek additional issue-relevant information.

Seeing political information online incidentally. Effects of first- and second-level incidental exposure on democratic outcomes

Today, the internet and particularly social media offer lots of opportunities to encounter political information incidentally. Motivated by conflicting findings regarding the effects of incidental exposure (IE) on political outcomes, researchers recently developed new theoretical models. Building on the Political Incidental News Exposure (PINE) model, we distinguish two levels of IE to political information, first-level (i.e., mere scanning of IE content) and second-level (i.e., effortful processing of IE content). In one cross-sectional (N1 = 1660) and three panel surveys (N2 = 450, N3 = 524, N4 = 901), we measure the two levels of IE and investigate their effect on multiple political outcomes. We find null effects on political knowledge for both levels. However, across all three panel studies, second-level IE affects online political participation positively. In Study 4, we find that second-level IE also affects social media use for political information and political expression positively. Implications are discussed.

Rich and poor: How political governance crises have affected the relationship between diamond exports and economic growth in the Central African Republic

AbstractThis article examines the role played by political governance crises in the relationship between diamond exports and economic growth in the Central African Republic over the period 1978 to 2010. We used changes in constitution and government and politico‐military crises (including tensions, violence, and politically motivated protests) as proxies for a political governance crisis. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model and Bound Test for cointegration are employed to establish short‐run and long‐term relationships. The results show different impacts of the proxy of political governance crises in the relationship between diamond exports and economic growth. We argue that, in a bid to ensure that diamonds fuel economic growth, improving governance of the mining sector and the political governance environment must become a core priority of the country's development strategy.Related ArticlesAntwi‐Boateng, Osman, and Mamudu Abunga Akudugu. 2020. “Golden Migrants: The Rise and Impact of Illegal Chinese Small‐Scale Mining in Ghana.” Politics & Policy 48(1): 135–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12342.Pelizzo, Riccardo. 2020. “Good Governance and Party System Change.” Politics & Policy 48(2): 265–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12347.Tusalem, Rollin F. 2016. “The Effect of Historical Pact Making and Civic Associations on Democratic Outcomes.” Politics & Policy 44(4): 712–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12166.

Oil “Rents” and Political Development: What Do We Really Know About the Curse of Natural Resources?

Research on the political implications of oil wealth is now over two decades old, and yet still unresolved. Despite many advances in this literature, a core concept—resource rents—remains under-theorized, and even less well measured. This mis-measurement, we contend, has direct and significant consequences for theoretical findings on the resource curse. Although rents refer to excessive profits, analyses to date have not directly or indirectly focused on the profitability of oil extraction; instead they rely more often on estimates of gross receipts or exports of natural resources. The largely untested assumption that oil sales consistently produce enormous profits has been the bridge used to treat these as measures of rents, even as the empirical foundations for this claim are shaky. In contrast, we measure the difficulty of oil production using data from over 3800 major oil fields around the globe between 1980 and 2012 to more accurately estimate the income generated by oil production and to calibrate its rent-generating potential using important correlates of its cost of production. The results show that where oil’s cost of production is low, and its profitability high, pernicious regime outcomes are observed in keeping with resource curse claims. However, as production shifts to more challenging sources, oil production loses this association and may well at the extremes be associated with modestly more democratic outcomes. In other words, it is only “easy oil” that may be a curse for democratic development.

The ‘forever war’ on red tape and the struggle to improve regulation

AbstractSince the 1970s, Australian governments have sought to reduce regulatory burdens, particularly on business, subject regulation to rigorous cost–benefit analysis and constrain both the stock and flow of new regulation. Yet, however, measured, regulation continues to grow, frequently in response to community demand. In this article, we interrogate both the more extreme claims of the anti‐regulation advocates and the alleged successes of anti‐red tape initiatives, identifying a critical clash of values over the role of the state and the appropriate relationship between government, business and the community. We conclude by arguing that to deliver desirable societal, economic and democratic outcomes, we need to acknowledge regulation as an asset, professionalise its workforce and more actively assert its public value.

Shared cultural ancestry predicts the global diffusion of democracy.

Understanding global variation in democratic outcomes is critical to efforts to promote and sustain democracy today. Here, we use data on the democratic status of 221 modern and historical nations stretching back up to 200 years to show that, particularly over the last 50 years, nations with shared linguistic and, more recently, religious ancestry have more similar democratic outcomes. We also find evidence that for most of the last 50 years the democratic trajectory of a nation can be predicted by the democratic status of its linguistic and, less clearly, religious relatives, years and even decades earlier. These results are broadly consistent across three democracy indicators (Polity 5, Vanhanen's Index of Democracy, and Freedom in the World) and are not explained by geographical proximity or current shared language or religion. Our findings suggest that deep cultural ancestry remains an important force shaping the fortunes of modern nations, at least in part because democratic norms, institutions, and the factors that support them are more likely to diffuse between close cultural relatives.

Re-democratization in Chile: Is the “New” Democracy Better than the “Old”?

ABSTRACT Much of the literature on democratic transitions has focused on the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, but few studies have examined how democracies that re-emerged compare to those that existed in the past. Examining the Chilean case, this study explores the degree to which the “new” democracy has recovered its former strength, posing a similar question for other Latin American countries. It considers the conceptualization of quality of democracy that underpins this controversy and explores the methodological challenges of intertemporal comparison, which may be relevant for other cases that have experienced periods of authoritarian rule and process of re-democratization. We find that, overall, democracy in the contemporary period is more robust. Yet, to an important extent, indices’ different understandings of the concept of the quality of democracy are relevant in terms of the degree to which they emphasize procedural aspects versus democratic outcomes.

Countering Disinformation Influences in the National Space of the Republic of Poland

The body of the article goes on to disclose the problem of the impact of digital technologies and media on democracy, its grounds and values. The author addresses the problem of the broad using of cutting-edge technology in Poland by those in power, serving their goals and posing a clear threat to democratic outcomes, in particular during the election campaigns. Furthermore, the author states that through advanced technological capacity and the use of highly targeted behavior modification techniques, different governmental institutions have been applying new and more-sophisticated forms of propaganda and disinformation enabling deepfakes, trolls, bots – artificial intelligence technology and other malicious software so that to refine and shape public opinion with an easy reach and power. In this context, the findings of the research, conducted in Poland and the EU, on the threats of hostile social manipulation and disinformation in the information space are significant, whereas the poll results testify to the Poles’ concerns about who is supposed to be in control of efficient debunking ‘fake news’ as well as their aspirations to be internet-literate in terms of deepfakes. The author concludes by arguing that well-informed societies are more resistant to being encroached and manipulated, and a quick and effective joint reply to potential threats requires strategic mass communication. The researcher emphasizes that recently in Poland Mass Communication have launched fact-checking services, in particular several Polish fact-checking projects set up designing websites that provide fact-checking. Regrettably, so far none of the Polish platforms has been involved in closer international cooperation in the framework of the European initiatives. Several landmark studies observed that Poland has also failed to create a common front in countering disinformation even during the elections. Each organization works according to its own vision of solving the problem. However, in recent years in Poland there has been a tendency of developing the government agencies’ capacity to strengthen their response to the threats of disinformation and manipulation: namely, the state key institutions for cyber security successfully implemented their cooperation and coordination initiatives.

Economic security & the regulation of gig work in California: From AB5 to Proposition 22

Employment is the primary legal and political means to address economic inequality in the United States. With the evisceration of the welfare state, employment is also key to democratic outcomes. Despite this, self-employed work deployed by labour platforms like Uber has grown in recent years. What can we learn from worker demands and recent regulatory attempts to clarify and extend who is covered by employment protections? Based on a decade of legal and ethnographic research in the state of California, I situate the legal and regulatory history of labour platform work in the context of platform workers’ experiences and responses to the insecurities and poverty promulgated by their putative status as independent contractors. In highlighting this history, I argue that self-organised labour platform workers were critical to the passage of a state law (AB5) that would have forced companies to treat them as employees—with access to predictable living wages, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and health insurance, among other safety net protections. Finally, I show how, leveraging tremendous structural and instrumental power, the major labour platform companies, in the middle of the global Coronavirus pandemic, sponsored a successful referendum on AB5, and lay out the anti-democratic implications of the referendum's passage.

The Democratic Cost of Consecutive Re-election and Presidential Term-Limit Evasion in Latin America

AbstractDespite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizontal accountability. A synthetic control method is employed to account for the effect of term-limit reforms, and time-series cross-section models for modelling the association with the re-election rule. Both vertical and horizontal accountability as well as the quality of democracy are eroded by term-limit evasion reforms in most countries and strengthened in none between 1990 and 2018. Allowing presidents to run for re-election – relative to term-limited ones – is consistently associated with weak democratic outcomes.

Close but not too close: opposition network strategy and democratization in Zambia

ABSTRACT Current literature finds that democratization is most likely when opposition social movements have initiated a political transition. Yet little work has disaggregated bottom-up transitions to suggest when this effect obtains. This article examines a case not widely known in the social movements’ literature: the 1991 political transition in Zambia. It proposes a novel theoretical avenue to help explain this case’s incomplete democratic transition. The piece re-conceptualizes the opposition movement as a multi-organizational actor network. I argue that opposition movements face strong incentives to unify through either centralizing around a single organization or creating a dense network of multiple, overlapping connections. The strategy they pursue affects the transitional political landscape. Highly centralized opposition networks are likely to lead to less democratic outcomes while dense decentralized networks will have more democratic outcomes. I find that high centralization by the opposition in Zambia undermined political accountability during the transition and limited Zambia’s democratic progress.

Citizens and the legitimacy outcomes of collaborative governance: An administrative burden perspective

ABSTRACT Is collaborative governance ‘democracy-enhancing’ and does it generate legitimacy? Drawing from the literatures on administrative burden and policy feedback and a positive approach to legitimacy, this theoretical article studies how the institutional design of collaborative governance impacts on the legitimacy citizens grant the state and the bureaucracy. It argues that three legitimacy-enhancing effects based on targeting, deliberation and exposure are likely, providing that a specific set of institutional features is present. This article invites scholars and practitioners to reflect not only on the direct consequences of collaborative governance but also on its broader democratic outcomes.

From Public Participation to Constitutional Legitimacy: Evidence from Tunisia

Does public participation in constitution-making processes enhance constitutional legitimacy? Using an original public opinion survey conducted in Tunisia shortly after the adoption of the 2014 Constitution, this article examines whether public participation in constitution-making activities enhances perceived constitutional legitimacy. The results show that participants are more likely to support the constitution and its institutions than non-participants. We argue that participation increases constitutional literacy among the general public and this increased knowledge impacts the respondents’ perception of the constitution. The empirical findings confirm normative assumptions of participatory model of the democratic theory and suggest that inclusive and participatory constitutional reform processes, in contrast to an elitist approach, are more likely to yield democratic constitutional outcomes which are supported by larger segments of the society.

The Democracy to Come? An Enquiry Into the Vision of Blockchain-Powered E-Voting Start-Ups

This research sets out to analyze the message promoted by start-up enterprises that apply blockchain technologies for the purpose of e-voting [blockchain-powered e-voting (BPE)], and their perceived effects of this technological solution on democratic outcomes. Employing Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA), I examined the written output of seven BPE start-ups (Agora, DemocracyEarth, Follow My Vote, Polys, Voatz, Votem, and VoteWatcher), as displayed in their websites. The close attention of CDA to power relations brought out relevant topics of discussion for analysis. Notably, these included: voting as an expression of democracy; technological determinism; individual versus communitarian understandings of democracy; the prominence of neoliberalism and the economic sphere; and technological literacy. Findings from the literature suggest that the assumptions of BPE start-ups about a blockchain-powered democracy diverge from widely accepted understandings of democracy. BPE start-ups envision a democracy determined by positions and institutions of power, by the technologically able, and by economic interests. This research argues that this conception of democracy disempowers voters from any form of decision-making regarding how democracy is run beyond their expression in the form of a vote decided by these established powers. The widespread addresses to existing elites to enable BPE, as well as what is left unsaid about community, collective rights and the not so technologically literate population, imply that BPE developers display concern for one particular expression among the many diverse and heterogeneous understandings of democracy, while disregarding outstanding privacy, security and accountability concerns associated to implementations of the technology for BPE. This work is a contribution to much needed research on technology and democracy’s deepening intersections, at a time of rapid technological innovation and turbulent democratic scepticism.

Decentralization as a Strategy to Scale Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration: An Indian Perspective on Institutional Challenges

Many countries grapple with the intractable problem of formalizing tenure security. The concept of ‘fit-for-purpose land administration’ (FFPLA) offers a way forward by advocating a shift towards a more flexible, pragmatic and inclusive approach for land rights recording. Inherently, the process and outcome of implementing FFPLA will have significant socio-political ramifications but these have not received much attention in the literature; additionally, few papers have considered this in the context of decentralization, an endorsed strategy for implementing FFPLA. This paper contributes to this gap by critically analyzing three land formalization initiatives in India which have employed flexible recording approaches and where decentralization is used to scale implementation. The cases show how quickly decentralization can kickstart implementation at scale via collaborations with local governing bodies and partnerships with non-state actors. An institutionalist approach highlights ensuing political contests between new and traditional land actors that inhibit political authority, and the challenges of coordinating a network of public and private actors without clear formal collaborative governance structures to ensure democratic outcomes. In doing so, we contribute to governance knowledge around FFPLA implementation so that it is ‘fit-for-people’ and better able to support policies and processes to secure land rights at scale.

Unpacking the democratic affordances of CrowdLaw concept and practice: ‘It feels like being part of the game’

This research draws on the CrowdLaw concept and the affordances framework to inquire how Senador Virtual, a technological innovation in the Chilean Senate, could contribute to creating more democratic processes and outcomes, and consequently, whether the platform promoted or enabled more equality in decision-making processes and better citizen engagement. Based on a mixed-methods approach of statistical analysis, interviews, and a digital ethnography, we studied the 16-year-old web platform. Our research shows that the platform gave rise to five latent democratic affordances which are not always fully leveraged. Of these, three had already been discussed within the CrowdLaw literature: (1) capture a variety of viewpoints; (2) generate insights that illuminate the lawmaking process; and (3) serve as a device for communication between citizens and senators. Notwithstanding, we also found two additional affordances not normally attributed to CrowdLaw: (4) create a civilized public forum; and (5) foster civility among the users that engage with it. We suggest that in order for these affordances to be fully leveraged, the CrowdLaw process must be designed to complement traditional lawmaking processes, including a reliable methodology for processing citizen input. Only when the above is accomplished, will this technological facilitator produce actual democratic outcomes.