National Political Institutions Research Articles

Trust in president – a different case? Individual-level patterns of trust in political executives in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT People seem to trust the president more than other national political institutions. In the context of semi-presidential regimes, it is plausible that the role of the president being “above party politics” is an explanatory factor behind this pattern. This study challenges the argument by analysing the impact of citizens' party preferences and attitudes towards the political system on trust in president in select CEE countries. The results confirm that trust in president is often context specific and cannot be disassociated from partisan factors. In general, similar patterns are found between trust in president and trust in prime minister.

Trust repertoires and the reception of institutional responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Europe: A latent class analysis

This article examines the role of institutional trust in current European societies. Based on a secondary data analysis of Eurobarometer data (response rate 39.6%), it maps institutional trust repertoires and analyzes their consequences for a crisis that disturbed public life immensely in 2020 and 2021—the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to fight this. Methodologically, it applies a multilevel latent class analysis of 18 institutions. Taking inspiration from “cultural backlash” theory, the explanatory analyses incorporate socio-political values and geographical identifications. The results show that there are seven different trust repertoires in the European Union (EU) countries, ranging from 24 percent mostly trustful to 11 percent mostly distrustful. EU Countries can be clustered into four classes, each with specific repertoire distributions. Particularly satisfaction with one’s own life and world developments is associated with higher trust. Compliance with COVID-19 policies is most likely when citizens trust both national political institutions and media institutions; other institutions matter less. Country health expenditure has a limited effect on the reception of COVID-19 policies but does influence membership of trust repertoires.

Bringing geography back in: Borderlands and public support for the European Union

AbstractWhat explains the variation in public support for European integration? While the existing literature has predominantly focused on economic, cultural and political factors, the influence of geography has been largely overlooked. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by examining the impact of residing in the European Union (EU) border regions on voters' perceptions and attitudes towards the EU. Contrary to previous research, our study reveals a remarkable pattern, indicating that individuals living in border regions exhibit a higher propensity to vote for Eurosceptic parties and hold negative views on the EU. Through the utilization of both behavioural and attitudinal indicators in years ranging between 1999 and 2021 and employing statistical matching, our analysis robustly supports this finding. Moreover, we delve into the underlying mechanisms driving these negative attitudes in border regions, highlighting the significance of institutional factors. A mediation analysis reveals an interesting and previously unexplored theoretical twist: We find that residing in a border region is associated with lower trust in national political institutions, which translates into distrust in the EU. These findings suggest that it might be policymakers residing in the capital of the country rather than people on the other side of the border that make borderland inhabitants' attitudes distinctly negative.

Lessons from a Late Adopter: Feminist Advocacy, Democratizing Reforms, and Gender Quotas in Chile

Many Latin American and other Global South countries adopted gender quotas during democratic transitions. What explains late-adopting cases like Chile? We analyze two instances: the 2015–2016 electoral reforms, which finally introduced a 40-percent gender quota, and the 2020–2023 constitutional process, which introduced gender parity. Using a qualitative analysis that draws on 39 elite interviews, we posit that efforts to redesign national political institutions in order to address democratic deficits create transition-like moments. In turn, these moments create windows of opportunity for quota advocates. We show how quota advocates in the parties, congress, and civil society leveraged growing voter discontent to pressure their resistant colleagues and ultimately secure gender quotas (and later gender parity) as part of larger reform efforts. Our analysis of the Chilean case elevates two factors explaining quota adoption: the long arc of democratization and women's role as protagonists in electoral reforms.

Can resource windfalls reduce corruption? The role of term limits

Can resource windfalls reduce corruption? We find that, in democratic regimes with unlimited reelection, the answer is in the affirmative, contrasting a widely held view. The reason is that resource windfalls increase future graft prospects, motivating opportunistic incumbents to postpone their planned embezzlement, which in turn requires them to seek reelection and behave well in order to increase the reelection chances. Term limits mitigate, and may even reverse, this effect by inducing opportunistic incumbents that otherwise would seek reelection to step down. We test the model’s predictions using a panel of U.S. states over the period 1976–2007. Our identification strategy rests on constitutionally-entrenched differences in gubernatorial term limits, and geographically-based cross-state differences in natural resource endowments. Our baseline estimates point at a sizeable impact. We find that a one standard deviation increase in resource windfalls decreases the average corruption level in states with no term limits by 20%, but increases average corruption in states with term limits by 10%. These results suggest that the nature of political institutions is important for understanding the nexus between resource windfalls and corruption.

Profiling European Consumers that Engage in Boycotting

Boycotting involves abstention from buying specific products or brands for political, ethical, or ecological reasons. Boycott is usually framed as an expression of political consumerism and has been on the rise. Companies that suffer a boycott may endure severe consequences including long-term damaged brand image and harmed reputation. However, there is still an incomplete picture of the socio-political and demographic profile of boycotters. Most characterizations of political consumers are based on research that combines boycotters and buycotters under a single construct of political consumers, and yet these consumers are driven by different motivations. The objective of this exploratory study is to provide a general characterization of European political consumers that engage in boycotting. The data used was collected between the 25th of May, 2022 and the18th of September, 2022, and was retrieved from the 10th edition (2022) of the European Social Survey. The study employs binary logistic regression to assess the association between boycotting and various potential factors listed in extant literature. Results indicate that boycotting behaviour is affected by age and other life-cycle variables, gender, education, institutional trust, the degree of satisfaction with the political system and the government, the level of trust in information and communication technology, reported self-happiness and self-general health perceptions. In general, the parameters of the models suggest that European consumers that engage in boycotting behaviour tend to be female, young, well-educated, trust on national political institutions and make intensive use of digital media. The conclusions of the empirical study are discussed and interpreted in light of current theories of consumer behaviour that highlight the post-modern, fragmented and globalized characteristics of current western societies. The results of this study enrich the literature on consumer boycotts and confirm the predicting power of various socio-demographic, psychological and attitudinal variables. Avenues for future research are identified together with consideration of the study limitations.

Peripheral Elites in West European Central States’ Apparatus: An Introduction

AbstractThe presence and influence of peripheral elites in national political institutions is frequently handled by the press. But, oddly enough, the lack of a comprehensive vision of this issue tends to feed flashy titles alerting about the influence of some territorial groups in central institutions such as the “Scottish Raj,” the “Tartan mafia,” or the “Cosa Scotia” in London. This article aims to provide a general theoretical framework able to orient those fragmented researches. This literature review was led from May 2018 to June 2020. It presents those results in six sections. The ways in which peripheral elites get access to central institutions are analyzed in the first section. In the second section, we introduce the literature about the presence of peripheral elites in the state apparatus, before stressing the different networks representing the interests of peripheries in the city capitals in section three. Fourth, this article points out the various career orientations of peripheral elected officials. This leads us to question their policy influence in different fields. Lastly, a short section tackles the phobias provoked by the rise of peripheral elites occupying central political positions, before proposing a general framework for orienting future research on this topic.

“Speak English”: A Comment on English Language Instruction in an Era of Neo‐Nationalism

AbstractPrevious research on neo‐nationalism has largely focused on the political arena, analyzing voters, parties, and policies. The scholarship featured in this special issue moves beyond the analysis of neo‐nationalism in contemporary politics to show how the ideology is enacted at the micro level. The stage for these dynamic interactions is educational settings related to the teaching of English. In this article, we comment on this new research that illustrates the variety of ways English language instruction can either advance or combat neo‐nationalism. Despite the diversity of roles that English plays across different geographic and national‐level contexts, this corpus of work makes evident the importance of language in maintaining national group boundaries. Inspired by this knowledge, we use data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) to explore how attitudes about speaking the national language are related to neo‐nationalist stances cross‐nationally. Our findings, which echo the micro‐level evidence presented in the special issue, show that national languages are inextricably linked to the maintenance of national group boundaries and associated with neo‐nationalist concerns about the erosion of national culture, economy, and political institutions due to perceived foreign threats.

From Protesting Against Troika Bailouts to Pro‐EU Governing in Greece and Portugal: Europeanisation and Institutionalisation Processes

AbstractFollowing bailouts by the Troika (EC, ECB and IMF) due to the 2008 global financial crisis, between 2010 and 2013, new anti‐austerity movements, left‐wing parties and trade unions led large mobilisations against austerity policies in Greece and Portugal, with a deep impact in the political landscape of both countries. Besides the relevance of transnational decisions, these mobilisations mostly addressed national political institutions, whereas the governments that emerged from the protest period showed a clear pro‐European stance. Against this background, using two case studies with primary data on anti‐austerity protests and interactions amongst contentious and institutional actors, this article aims to shed light on a relatively unexplored aspect of Europeanisation in the context of the crisis, focusing on the relation between social movements and institutional politics. Explaining the critical pro‐EU positions that have been adopted in Greece and Portugal, it thereby contributes to the related debates on anti‐austerity social movements and their impact in times of crisis.

A game of cat and mouse: Human rights protection and the problem of corporate law and power

AbstractHuman rights violations by corporations are widespread and have a broad spectrum: damage to people’s health through pollution, environmental accidents and health and safety failures, forced labour or child labour, underpaid workers, displaced communities, contaminated water sources, use of excessive force, and discrimination, for example by race, gender or sexuality. Corporate violence, resulting from a long history of corporate power and colonialism continues today as corporations have grown into powerful global conglomerates. Through complex and opaque multinational groups and supply chains, use of corporate law concepts such as the corporate veil, as well as other actions such as tax avoidance and lobbying of national and international political institutions, corporate actors remain free to pursue their goals. Despite efforts to combat corporate harm through the development of a business and human rights movement success has been limited and significant gaps remain in the global governance required to ensure protection. This article argues that, similar to a cat and mouse game, corporations find new ways to defend themselves against those seeking to dismantle their power or to prevent human rights infringements. The problem is rooted in structural and systemic inequalities within the international legal framework and in company laws that maintain corporate structures that obstruct the human rights movement’s progress. The current drive towards a more sustainable business agenda requires a just transition, including transformation of global and corporate structures to tackle human rights violations and the inequalities of power and wealth that facilitate such violations.

Determining the credibility of commitments in international climate policy

The Paris Agreement on climate change aims to improve cooperation by allowing governments to set their own commitments. Its success hinges on whether governments and investors believe those national commitments. To assess credibility, we interrogate a large novel sample of climate policy elites with decades of experience and well-placed to evaluate whether nations’ policy pledges are aligned with what they are politically and administratively able to implement. This expert assessment reveals that countries making the boldest pledges are also making the most credible pledges, contrasting theoretical warnings of a trade-off between ambition and credibility. We find that the quality of national political institutions is the largest explanator of the variation in credibility, and Europe’s credibility is exceptionally high. We also find that economic factors, such as the costs and benefits of controlling emissions, are statistically unimportant in explaining the credibility of national pledges to cooperate.

The Counter-Majoritarian Difficulties of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health: Why Overruling Roe Will Diminish American Democracy

This essay claims that overruling Roe will mean more democratic contestation rely on the obviously (in the American context) false assumption that other political institutions are “majoritarian” alternatives to “counter-majoritarian” courts. But the counter-majoritarian aspects of American constitutionalism and politics (including gerrymandering, malapportionment, and other factors that generally lead to the massive over-representation of rural white voters) will generally produce abortion policy outcomes with far less popular support than Roe itself and will also insulate even unpopular abortion restrictions and bans from effective Democratic response. And, of course, the anti-Roe majority on the Court itself reflects national political institutions that do not reflect national majorities. And finally, overruling Roe will lead to an increase rather than a diminution of arbitrary hierarchy and domination while undermining the equal citizenship on which democracy is predicated.

Inching toward Modernity: Industrial Standards and the Fate of the Metric System in the United States

That the United States stands almost alone among nations in its failure to adopt the metric system has long been blamed on conservative, reactionary forces. This paper argues against this interpretation, which passes for conventional wisdom in both academic and popular circles. It instead contends that attacks on the metric system in the late nineteenth and twentieth century originated with progressive engineers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists who had taken the lead in setting the nation's first industrial standards. Far from being backward-looking reactionaries, they enjoyed reputations as cutting-edge leaders in the development of the machine-tool industry, the railroads, and the metal-working industries. Many of them pioneered new methods of management that privileged rationality, efficiency, and systemic approaches; indeed, they strongly influenced the development of what became known as scientific management. These individuals deftly advanced their cause through the nation's political institutions, thwarting the metric cause.

Involvement and Trust in Poland and Bulgaria in Comparison with Other European Societies

A developmental analysis of the two waves: 2008 and 2016 ESS Indicators of social engagement (we mean here organisational engagement) are treated as a measure of the process of social modernisation (Herrmann, 1999, Matei, Apostu, 2012). It is assumed here that higher scores of indicators demonstrate the 'maturity of civil society, the quality of the functioning of democracy and the process of its evolution (Boulding, 2010). The concept of generalised trust and trust in political institutions have a somewhat similar status, and they are treated as indicators of collective capacity and a premise for conclusions about the effectiveness of the development processes (Putnam, 1993, Sonderskov, 2011). The proposed presentation will focus on the changes we were able to register over eight years in Poland and Bulgaria (2008 and 2018) to indicate the position of the societies of these post-communist countries in comparison to other European countries. The main hypotheses would be to verify the relationship between trust indicators and declared involvement in NGO sector organisations as well as basic sociodemographic variables in a temporal perspective. The quantitative analysis will be preceded by a form of qualitative description and interpretation of the existing state of knowledge. ESS data would be used for the analysis, and the basis for inference will be the indices of “generalised trust”, “trust in national political institutions”, and “involvement in NGO” using regression analysis.

Аналіз класичних та сучасних підходів до визначення структури політичної ідентичності

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of determining the structural components of political identity. The analysis of the basic approaches and models in which various elements of political identity are allocated is carried out: classical approaches that consider party identity as the basis of political identity; electoral behavioral, communication and self-identification, within which political identity is connected with electoral choice, the nature of interaction in the social environment of voters; crisis identity models in which political identity is formed and regulated under the influence of reference groups; system-hierarchical, within which political identity is determined by value-ideological orientations or dominants in the political ideas of citizens. It is established that the main structural elements of political identity are: socio-status characteristics; assessments of the economic and political situation; party preferences; dispositions on specific political and socio-economic issues; assessments of personal qualities of political leaders; long-term expectations from parties and candidates. The main factors that should be taken into account in the analysis of political identity are determined: socio-cultural (caused by social differentiation of the population); institutional (formal and informal norms, the nature of political institutions); ideological (ideologues that affect the party-ideological identification of the population); socio-demographic (age, sex, region of residence, socio-professional affiliation); cultural and civilizational (value orientations, geopolitical orientations, confessional affiliation); activity-behavioral (political activity and political participation).

Arrived in Power, and Yet Still Disgruntled? How Government Inclusion Moderates ‘Protest Voting’ for Far-Right Populist Parties in Europe

AbstractWhile debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research on these parties predominantly focuses on Western countries. Addressing this remarkable gap, this article revisits the ‘protest voting’ explanation for electoral support for the far right. Using European Social Survey data (2002–16) from 22 countries, we show that political dissatisfaction is a stronger explanatory factor when far-right parties are in opposition, but is a less important determinant of electoral support when they are in government. Previous findings based on Western Europe – which similarly showed that the anti-elite hypothesis is less relevant when far-right parties join government coalitions – travel well to post-communist European countries. In Hungary and Poland, we even find that far-right voters have become less distrustful of national political institutions than the rest of the electorate. Our conclusion implies that anti-elite populism is context-dependent and has limited use for understanding successes of leaders such as Wilders, Salvini and Orbán.

Varieties of climate governance: the emergence and functioning of climate institutions

ABSTRACT How do states respond to the challenge of climate governance? The Paris Agreement has led to heightened interest in domestic climate policies, but attention to underlying national climate institutional architectures has lagged behind. This literature gap deserves to be addressed, because climate change brings considerable governance challenges. Drawing on a collection of country studies, this paper outlines a framework to explain the path-dependent emergence of climate institutions, based on the interplay of national political institutions, international drivers, and bureaucratic structures. The resultant institutional forms suggest four varieties of climate governance, based on the extent of political polarisation and the narrative around climate politics in the country. The functioning of existing climate institutions indicates they have so far played a modest role in addressing climate governance challenges, but also illustrates their importance in structuring climate politics and outcomes, suggesting a substantial agenda for future research.

Climate Emergency: International and National Political Institutions Misfit-for-Purpose

Climate Emergency: International and National Political Institutions Misfit-for-Purpose

Post-Truth Politics, Digital Media, and the Politicization of the Global Compact for Migration

The debate over the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in late 2018 showcases the crucial role of digital and, in particular, social media as vehicles of disinformation that populist actors can exploit in an effort to create resentment and fear in the public sphere. While mainstream political actors and legacy media initially did not address the issue, right-wing populist actors claimed ownership by framing (presumably <em>obligatory</em>) mass immigration as a matter of social, cultural, economic, and not least political risk, and created an image of political and cultural elites conspiring to keep the issue out of the public sphere. Initially advanced via digital and social media, such frames resonated sufficiently strongly in civil society to politicize the GCM in various national public spheres. In this article, these dynamics are explored by comparing the politicization of the GCM in three EU member states, namely Germany, Austria, and Sweden. Using a process-tracing design, the article (a) identifies the key actors in the process, (b) analyzes how the issue emerged in social and other digital media and travelled from digital media into mainstream mass media discourse, and finally (c) draws comparative conclusions from the three analyzed cases. Particular emphasis is placed on the frames used by right-wing populist actors, how these frames resonated in the wider public sphere and thereby generated communicative power against the GCM, ultimately forcing the issue onto the agenda of national public spheres and political institutions.

Foreign aid projects and trust in political institutions

AbstractDo foreign aid projects undermine citizens' trust in local and national political institutions? Drawing on institutional theories of political trust, I hypothesize that foreign aid projects reduce trust in political institutions by lowering citizens' perceptions of government performance and raising perceptions of corruption. To analyze the impact of aid projects on trust, this article utilizes geolocated survey data on citizens' trust in political institutions from Afrobarometer Rounds 2–5 (2003–2012) and data on the location of foreign aid projects from AidData's Aid Information Management Systems datasets for Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. Using a spatial difference‐in‐difference strategy, the empirical results find that active aid projects are on average associated with decreased trust in the president, parliament, and local government council. An exploratory sectoral analysis suggests that the negative average treatment effect is driven by projects in the transportation, agriculture, education, and civil society sectors.