Partisan Influence Research Articles

The Moderating Role of Affective Polarization on Party Cues: The Case of the Prostitution Ban

Affective polarization is a recent yet widespread phenomenon in democracies that significantly impacts various aspects of politics. In this paper, we argue that it can also shape citizens’ political beliefs through party cues. Using a panel survey experiment in Spain, we examine the extent to which partisan signals influence citizens’ attitudes toward a non-party- branded issue, specifically the ban on prostitution, and how affective polarization moderates this effect. Our results underscore the role of affective polarization in moderating the influence of partisan cues, particularly among highly polarized individuals. These findings highlight the capacity of affective polarization not only to deepen political divisions but also to expand the scope of partisan influence to non-politicized and neutral issues, offering new insights into its potential impact on attitude formation and decision-making.

Partisan Influences in Dutch Politics

Abstract We investigate whether and how partisan politics played a role in the Netherlands. To do so, we review existing literature and prepare descriptive statistics from recent datasets. We focus on two related questions: (i) Are there effects of partisan politics in the Netherlands in the past 60 years? (ii) Do developments in party and voter behavior influence the relevance of partisan influences for Dutch governance? As we find that there is only limited existing research on partisan politics in the Dutch context, we empirically explore the relationship between government ideology and typical, country-level partisan outcome variables. We find mixed evidence for partisan policymaking in the Netherlands. Some findings are in line with partisan theory, some are counter-indicative. Exploring the role of party and voter movements, we document a shifting political landscape in which the potential for traditional partisan influences has become smaller.

Political Partisanship and Economic Outcomes: Canada, 1870–2020

Abstract This paper examines the role of partisanship at the provincial and federal levels in relation to the functioning of the Canadian economy. At the provincial level (1976–2019), we find no evidence of a traditional partisan effect but do find evidence weakly consistent with a rational partisan cycle a′ la Alesina. At the federal level (1870–2020), we also find no evidence consistent with a distinctive expansion in output arising when the government is controlled by the left-leaning (Liberal) political party although we again find evidence of a weak rational partisan effect. The former result is reinforced by finding the absence of evidence of partisan changes in federal spending and/or taxation. But while the data do not support a theory of left-right partisan policy over the entire post-Confederation (1867) period of Canada’s history, the data do support distinctive periods of partisan influence on aggregate output. The first is consistent with Sir John A. MacDonald’s post-Confederation conservative government’s adoption of a policy of nation-building based on the railway, immigration, and tariffs. The second is the period between 1885 and 1933 where traditional left-right partisanship is evident and the third is the period following the Great Depression where a distinction between the outcomes arising under left- versus right-leaning parties is no longer apparent.

Rumours. Who believes them?

PurposeWhile psychology, sociology and communications studies hypothesise a range of independent variables that might impact on individuals’ acceptance or rejection of rumours, almost all studies of the phenomenon have taken place in environments featuring notable, and sometimes very deep, partisan divisions, making it almost impossible to isolate the impact of partisan influences on views on different rumour subjects. This study aims to remove the possibility of partisan influences on readers of internet rumours by testing the impact of independent demographic variables in China, a one-party state with no overt partisan divisions. The study provides an opportunity to strip away the influence of ideology and see whether this factor may have coloured previous studies on susceptibility to believe rumours.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study was used to examine belief in false and true online rumours in a non-partisan environment. A large sample group was presented with rumours across four subject areas and respondents’ conclusions and demographic information was then subject to logistic regression analysis to identify relationships between factors and ability to identify the veracity of online rumours.FindingsUnexpectedly, the regression analysis revealed no statistically significant nexus between many independent demographic variables and patterns of believing or disbelieving rumours. In other cases, a statistically significant relationship was revealed, but only to a limited degree. The results suggest that once the role of partisanship in explaining the proliferation of and belief in false rumours and the ability to identify true ones is removed from consideration, no other independent variables enjoy convincing links with rumour belief.Originality/valueThe study tests in China, a jurisdiction featuring a non-partisan environment, the impact of independent variables on media users’ belief in a wide range of rumours.

Control pliers in principal‐agent relations: An investigation of hardship commissions in the German asylum administration

AbstractThere is a remarkable gap in research regarding principal‐centred analyses of control means towards—in a formal sense—rather weak independent administrative actors as agents. Therefore, the paper develops a theoretical notion to link means of ex ante and ex post control and applies it to the (re‐)actions of ministries vis à vis hardship commissions in the German Länder by asking: How does the super‐ordinated ministry (principal) try to control the hardship commission (agent) and with what effect? The theoretical framework is based on principal‐agent theory and argues that the respective relationship is best understood by a notion of control pliers which interlinks the principal's preferences, its means of ex ante and ex post control and the agent's output. We hereby draw on partisan and organization theory. The overall research design of the paper is confirmatory and the focus on the federal states allows to control most of the external variance. We use descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling for path analysis to investigate the ex ante and ex post elements of the control pliers. Our empirical analysis is based on the output of 12 hardship commissions for the period of 2005–2017. Our results show that ex post control seems to matter more than ex ante control, but also that the effects of both may be characterized as interdependent. Furthermore, we show that partisan influence seems to matter more than organizational factors considering the output of the agent but that most can be won by combining the two approaches.

Putting partisan influence into political context: How initial policy popularity and party attachment shape the effect of party cues

Parties and their actions almost always shape the preferences, attitudes, and behaviour of their voters. However, does partisan influence over public opinion apply to all policy proposals regardless of their initial popularity and to all voters regardless of their degree of partisan attachment? This question is addressed in the real-world context of Finland, where the government enacted two reforms at the same time: an initially popular reform extending the age of compulsory education, and an initially unpopular removal of the ‘retirement tube’ for older laid-off workers. An original panel survey asked respondents about their attitudes before and after the government actions, finding that while voters of government parties increasingly tended to support the enacted policies, the magnitude of opinion change depended on voters’ initial policy preferences and party attachment. Strong party attachment led to government voters increasing their support for a reform that they initially opposed. In contrast, those with weaker partisan attachments tended to alter their preferences for an initially popular reform. These findings are relevant for understanding partisan influence over public opinion in a broader political context.

In science we trust? Public trust in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections and accepting anthropogenic climate change.

One barrier to action on climate change is public trust in climate science, and projections made by climate scientists. However, climate science projections are rarely measured in public surveys. We designed survey questions based on two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections regarding global warming and coral reef decline. We gauge Australians' trust in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, and explore how trust in climate science is associated with accepting anthropogenic climate change. A slim majority of Australian adults trust Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, with trust correlated positively with accepting anthropogenic climate change. While partisan divisions are extant in accepting anthropogenic climate change, partisan influences are attenuated substantially after controlling for trust in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, as trust in climate science mediates the influence of partisanship on the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. A minority of those who accept anthropogenic climate change have low trust in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, viewing scientists' computer models as unreliable, or believing climate scientists benefit from overstating the impact of climate change.

Republička izborna komisija kao četvrta grana vlasti - izazovi i perspektive

This paper analyzes the current status of the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK) and emphasizes the need for change so as to transform it from an existing partisan body with weak capacities into a more neutral, stronger, and more independent institution. Based on solutions from comparative practices, several measures that can be taken on this path are proposed. Firstly, it is necessary to change the current method of electing RIK members in order to reduce partisan influence on this body. Additionally, extending the term of office for RIK members is required to ensure greater independence of RIK from the current configuration of political forces and provide the opportunity for fundamental and concrete steps towards improving the electoral process. Activities related to elections, currently carried out by several other bodies in addition to RIK, should be centralized and entrusted to a professional electoral administration in order to eliminate unnecessary communication between RIK and these bodies. This would make the entire process of organizing and monitoring elections more simpler and coherent. Implementing these solutions could lead to RIK becoming a game changer in contexts of weakened institutional capacities and a limited number of external factors that can influence the improvement of the democratic process, contributing to freer and fairer elections.

The Trudeau government and GIC appointments in Canada

PurposeAccording to the traditional view of public administration, a critical component of good policy formulation is the provision of frank and fearless advice to elected decision-makers. This advice can be provided by permanent public officials or by the people selected by the elected governments to fill key and continuing posts. However, there are major questions as to whether new Governor-in-Council (GIC) appointment processes rooted in new public governance (NPG) are yielding the expected results promised, such as less partisanism, as a consideration for appointment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a mixed methods approach to examine the GIC process as it is used in Canada. In using these methods, the authors employed interviews with senior officials, governmental documents review and expert validation interviews to triangulate its main findings.FindingsThe paper uses the case of the revised appointment process for GIC appointments in Canada and suggests that the new arrangements do not deliver on merit-based criteria that ensures independence is protected between political executive and senior bureaucratic officials. Although new processes may be more open and transparent than past processes, the paper suggests that such processes are more susceptible to partisan influence under the guise of being merit-based.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to one country context, Canada. As such, it will be necessary to expand this to other Westminster countries. Testing whether manifestations of new public governance in appointment processes elsewhere will be important to validate whether Canada is unique or not.Practical implicationsThe authors are left to wonder if this innovation of merit-based appointments in the new administrative state is obscuring the lines of accountability and whether it forms the basis for good policy advice despite promises to the contrary.Social implicationsTrust in the government is affected by decisions behind closed doors. They appear partisan, even when they may not be. Process matters if only to highlight increased value placed on meritorious appointments.Originality/valuePrevious studies on GIC appointments have generally been to explore representation as a value. That is, studies have questioned whether diversity is maintained, for example. However, few studies have explored appointment processes using institutional approaches to examine whether reforms to such processes have respected key principles, such as merit and accountability.

Uma análise do perfil dos secretários de saúde: interfaces entre saúde e os processos político-eleitorais

ABSTRACT The present paper aims to systematize information on health leaders inserted in state and municipal governments, to reflect on technical, academic and political influences in shaping their trajectories, seeking to contribute to the design an overview of Unified Health System (SUS) management at subnational bodies. The study is supported by research from secondary sources, including official databases, government portals and commercial news. Information from the secretaries of the 26 states and their capitals, in addition to the Federal District, in office in May 2021, was processed, generating 53 resumes, that were categorized as specialists (79%), health professionals (75%), career politicians (25%) and businesspeople (19%). Despite the significant partisan influence, a process of formation of bureaucratic cadres by the parties was found, beyond the electoral dispute. Of the thirteen career politicians identified, eleven were also typified by the analysis as ‘specialized’, questioning senses about the opposition between ‘technical’ versus ‘political’ profiles, suggesting the relevance of the intersections of trajectories. An exceptionality of technical insulation of health was not confirmed. Thus, the image that political party forces are antagonistic to academic training and experience in public administration is unrealistic, suggesting that health is simultaneously specialized and politicized.

RELIGIOUS VOTING IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: TESTING ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

Scholars of American electoral politics have documented the recent partisan realignment of religious groups. Indeed, careful analysts often find that religious variables are better predictors of partisan choice than classic socioeconomic divisions. Still, there has been relatively little effort to put this religious realignment in both theoretical and historical perspective. In this article, we update our previous work on the historical evolution of religious partisanship, demonstrating the continued relevance of ethnocultural (or ethnoreligious) theory, utilized by political historians, and restructuring theory, an important sociological perspective. Both viewpoints help us understand presidential elections since the 1930s, as we demonstrate with data from a wide range of surveys. After utilizing the 2020 Cooperative Election Study to examine the contemporary voting of ethnoreligious groups in greater detail, we test the impact of religious variables controlling for other demographic, attitudinal, and partisan influences and find that religious identities and orientations often retain independent influence even under stringent controls for other factors shaping the presidential vote.

Ten critical years of Turkish civil–military relations (2007–2017)

This paper analyses 10 critical years of civil–military relations in Turkey by investigating a possible civilianisation and the growing AK Party influence in the military. As has been discussed by Turkish experts via a plethora of works, there have been unprecedented developments in Turkish civil–military relations during the AK Party's administration. Yet, recent events—namely, the 15 July attempted coup, the institutional and legal changes instigated during the ensuing state of emergency and President Erdoğan's questionable position as both the AK Party leader and commander‐in‐chief—require us to reconsider the current status of civil–military relations. This paper first analyses the relevant theoretical debates in the literature. Second, it briefly summarises key events from the AK Party era. Thereafter, the paper analyses the so‐called Fethullah Gülen incident. Lastly, the paper analyses the institutional amendments regarding civil–military relations, examining whether there is an increasingly partisan influence over the military.

Party Messaging in the U.S. House of Representatives

Both Congressional parties compete to promote their own reputations while damaging the opposition party’s brand. This behavior affects both policy-making agendas and the party members’ communications with the media and constituents. While there has been ample study of partisan influence on legislative agenda-setting and roll call voting behavior, much less is known about the parties’ efforts to shape the public debate. This paper analyzes two strategic decisions of parties: the timing of collective efforts to influence the public policy debate and the substantive content of these “party messaging” events. These dynamics are analyzed using a unique dataset of 50,195 one-minute speeches delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2016. We find a pattern of strategic matching—both parties are more likely to engage in concurrent messaging efforts, often on the same issue.

Partisan Politics and Public Education: Finding the Formula for (Electoral) Success

AbstractDo state politicians reward school districts that vote in favor of the party in power more than school districts that vote in favor of the opposing party? With large shares of money at the state level to transfer to local governments and the ability to target core voters, it would seem likely that politicians would take advantage of the ability to distribute education funds. However, in understanding how states distribute education funds, little emphasis is given to partisan influences, particularly the congruence between local school districts and the state level. To test this, I collected data at the precinct level within each state and, using mapping software, spatially joined precinct boundaries to school district boundaries. Once this relationship was established, I aggregated precinct-level information to school districts to understand the partisan voting patterns within each school district for elections from 2000 to 2010. This article finds evidence that funding formulas are susceptible to political influence and that parties are able to influence the geographic distribution of education funds to core voters.

Does Ability Contribute to Partisan Bias?: Evaluating Scientific Research about Political Topics

ABSTRACT The influence of goals unrelated to accuracy – such as maintaining beliefs and attitudes consistent with one’s political identity – may undermine objective processing, enabling people to construct defenses for their own predispositions. A two-wave study is employed involving undergraduates who experienced gains in scientific reasoning ability to explore the influence of ability on reasoning about social scientific messages that reflects positively or negatively on affiliates of the two major U.S. political parties. Results suggest that although ability contributes to distinguishing strong from weak arguments, there is no evidence that ability either enhances or decreases partisan influences on research evaluation.

Politicizing What’s News: How Partisan Media Bias Occurs in News Production

ABSTRACT Notions of partisan media bias and ideological influences on the news have become much more prevalent since Gans wrote Deciding What’s News. We propose a framework to explain what partisan media bias is and how it operates. We argue that partisan bias occurs in two ways. First, editorial decisions influence the share of positive, neutral and negative content types, i.e., description bias. Second, partisan bias happens through production tools that emphasize or deemphasize the content of articles keeping it aligned with an outlet’s news ideology. We conducted our study on the historic 2011 Occupy protest movement in Israel using 1837 news items from the six largest newspapers. We found that reporting was slanted to align with outlets’ news ideology and that several production mechanisms were involved. Specifically, we found that front-page headlines, the sizing of articles, accompanying visuals, and protestors’ perspectives were consistently and strategically employed. Our study concludes by considering its implications for researching partisan media bias and protest coverage.

How Partisanship Influences What Congress Says Online and How They Say It

We investigate the influence of partisanship on congressional communication by analyzing 180,000 press releases issued by members of Congress (MCs) between 2005 and 2019. Specifically, we examine whether partisan factors such as party control of the White House and/or Congress influence the tone used by MCs and whether MCs are more likely to focus on issues that their respective party owns. Our analyses include the use of multiple OLS models, the machine learning approach gradient boosting, and Grimmer’s topical modeling software “expAgenda.” We find that (1) partisanship influences the tone MCs use when communicating online; and (2) MCs are unable to prioritize discussing issues that their respective party own but devote slightly greater attention to their party’s issues than MCs from the opposite party. Our study ultimately finds strong evidence of partisan influence in the way MCs design their press releases and has important implications for online congressional communication.

Análisis del presupuesto aprobado y del gasto ejercido, 2001-2017. El caso del Ramo 33

Algunas investigaciones han mostrado que el gobierno federal gasta más de lo establecido en el presupuesto de egresos. En el caso de las trasferencias federales, la evidencia aún es escasa. Por lo tanto, los objetivos de esta investigación son mostrar datos sobre la diferencia entre el presupuesto y el gasto ejercido del Ramo 33 en el periodo 2001-2017; destacar cómo se distribuye entre los estados; y determinar si la alineación partidista vertical incide en su repartición. Mediante un análisis de tipo panel, los resultados muestran que hay un sobreejercicio del gasto del Ramo 33, pero la alineación partidista vertical no tiene un efecto en él. En suma, no hay una influencia partidista en la distribución de estos recursos.

Partisan influence on social and labor market policies in the Silver Age of welfare state retrenchment: evidences from 19 OECD countries

Are governing parties able to shape social and labor market policies according to their ideological positions or are they overwhelmed by socio-economic and institutional constraints? The paper answers this crucial question by developing a comparative study on 19 OECD countries from 1985 to 2011. It investigates whether the location of governments on a continuous left–right scale affects four measures of welfare state generosity: namely, public spending in social policies, in active and passive labor market policies and the level of unemployment insurance replacement rate. The results obtained through an error correction model show that governing parties are unable to affect social and labor market policies in the short-run, when economic dynamics prevail. However, in the long-run, partisanship gains relevance: when the government coalition moves to the right, there is a negative impact on all the measures of welfare state generosity.

Follow the (ISSUE) Leader? The Leader-Led Nexus Revisited

AbstractPublic opinion scholars have long debated the relationship between policy preferences, electoral candidates, and voters. While some argue that voters’ positions on the issues of the day affect the positions candidates take, others argue that relationship runs the other way. Gabriel Lenz’s 2012 book on the leader-led nexus provides an original design and provocative conclusions in a comparative context, though some have criticized the author’s findings (see, for instance, Matthews 2017). This article makes use of a multiwave voting advice application (VAA) panel dataset collected in the Canadian province of Quebec to test the generalizability of some of Lenz’s fundamental conclusions. Our results show that the influence of leaders on voters may be less important—or even reversed—where issues at stake are easy for voters to understand. The results offer evidence of issue priming and partisan influence; as well, the effect of leader influence on voters’ issue positions can vary by age group.