Political Losers Research Articles

Identity and Perceptions of Procedural Justice in the Courts in Turkey: Ethnic and Political Factors

Procedural justice, which is about the fairness of procedures that the legal authorities use in their interactions with the public, is an important determinant of people’s general evaluations of these authorities. Based on a nationally representative survey with 1,804 people, this article investigates how socio-political identities such as ethnicity and one’s status as a political winner or loser affect people’s perceptions of procedural justice in the courts in Turkey. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that Kurds and political losers are more likely than Turks and political winners, respectively, to think that the courts in Turkey are not procedurally just. Furthermore, we found that voting for the incumbent party or being an Alevi does not have an effect on Kurds’ perceptions of procedural justice in the courts. We, therefore, argue that ethnicity and being a political winner are two important identity factors that determine people’s perceptions of procedural justice in the courts in Turkey. We concluded that because Kurds and political losers are less likely to identify with the state, they have more negative perceptions of procedural justice in the courts in Turkey.

Electoral integrity matters: how electoral process conditions the relationship between political losing and political trust

This contribution adds a new perspective to the debate on electoral integrity by asking how electoral integrity affects the way in which election results translate into citizen attitudes towards the political system. It introduces a causal mechanism that links political losing to political trust via evaluations of electoral fairness: citizens who voted for the losing camp are more likely to view the electoral process as unfair than citizens who voted for the winning camp, resulting in political distrust. It further suggests that the effects of political losing on political trust depend on the level of electoral integrity. In conditions where the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner, even those who voted for the losing camp have little reason to suspect foul play and therefore political losing should barely affect perceptions of the electoral process. Whenever there are actual indications of electoral malpractice, however, political losers have much more reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process than those who are content with the outcome of the election. The contribution makes use of a unique dataset that ex-post harmonizes survey data from three cross-national survey projects (Asian Barometer Survey, European Social Survey, Latinobarómetro) and macro-level data from the Varieties-of-Democracy Project to cover 45 democracies in Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. Using multi-level modeling, it finds that political losing indeed decreases political trust indirectly via perceptions of electoral fairness. Confirming its key proposition, the empirical analysis shows that political losing has a weaker effect on political trust in countries where electoral integrity is high.

Foreword: The Degradation of American Democracy—and the Court

Foreword: The Degradation of American Democracy—and the Court

Satisfaction with democracy in Turkey: Findings from a national survey

A variety of factors affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Based on Turkey’s political and economic context, as well as the existing literature, this study investigates the effect of four factors on people’s satisfaction with democracy in Turkey: citizens’ conceptualizations of democracy, being a political winner, citizens’ perceptions of electoral integrity, and ethnic identity. Regression analysis of a nationally representative survey reveals that political losers and those with negative perceptions of electoral integrity are less satisfied with democracy in Turkey, while people’s conceptualizations of democracy and ethnic identity do not have an effect on satisfaction with democracy. We conclude that, in Turkey, political polarization and negative perceptions of electoral integrity trigger a decline in citizens’ satisfaction with democracy, which requires the attention of policymakers.

How losers can turn into winners in disputatious public policy: a heuristic for prospective herestheticians

ABSTRACTThe study of heresthetic is a quest to explain how potential political losers might become winners. Local Government amalgamation is invariably a controversial and hotly contested political decision. It thus represents the ideal context to locate a pedagogical discussion regarding how clever herestheticians might act to bring about unlikely political success. Specifically, we extend the heresthetic literature by drawing attention to the costs (opportunity, contingency and legacy costs) inherent to various strategies, the need to carefully evaluate the heresthetic potential of different dimensions according to which amalgamations might be argued, and the importance of ensuring that the rhetorical seasoning is appropriate. This leads us to propose a heuristic that we argue has the potential to turn losers into winners on the vexed matter of local government amalgamations. We conclude by considering the implications of our heuristic for both prospective herestheticians in other public policy areas and for the wider heresthetic research agenda.

The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

AbstractThis paper sheds light on the role played by political parties in influencing policy change, by connecting literature on party competition and agenda-setting and focusing on a single-issue domain, namely decentralization in Italy from 1948 to 2013. The article argues that major decentralist reforms usually followed electoral campaigns in which most parties focused attention on the issue. Such shifts in attention are caused by, among other things, the issue entrepreneurship activity undertaken by individual parties that are trying to influence the party system agenda and obtain electoral, office, or policy advantage. Contrary to the expectations of the issue entrepreneurship model, however, the analyses reveal that the entrepreneurship role on decentralization in Italy was not played by those parties that can be classified as ‘political losers’ in the party system; rather, in the case of the policy of decentralization in Italy, issue entrepreneurship activity is mostly explained by strategic considerations other than purely electoral ones.

Winning hearts & minds (!)

Foreign aid is a policy tool implemented with the purpose of fostering both hard and soft power abroad. Yet, previous research has not probed the effects of US foreign aid on public attitudes toward the US in the recipient countries. In this article, I argue that US foreign aid may actually feed anti-Americanism: aid indirectly creates winners and losers in the recipient countries, such that politically discontented people may blame the US for the survival of the prevailing regime. Drawing on Pew Research for Global Attitudes and on USAID Greenbook datasets, I focus on determining both the conditions under which foreign aid exacerbates anti-Americanism and the type of aid most likely to do this. The findings reveal that political losers of the recipient countries are more likely to express negative attitudes toward the USA as the amount of US aid increases, whereas political winners enjoy the results of US aid and view the USA positively accordingly. Moreover, the effect of US aid on attitudes toward the USA is also conditional on the regime type. While US aid increases the likelihood of anti-American attitudes among the losers in non-democratic countries, it decreases the likelihood of anti-Americanism among the losers in democratic ones. This article has important implications for policy in terms of determining how and to whom to provide aid in the context of the possible ramifications of providing aid at the individual level.

When dimensions collide: The electoral success of issue entrepreneurs

Theories of issue evolution and issue manipulation suggest that ‘political losers’ in the party system can advance their position by introducing a new issue dimension. According to these theories, a strategy of issue entrepreneurship, that is the attempt to restructure political competition by mobilizing a previously non-salient issue dimension, allows political losers to attract new voters and reap electoral gains. In this study, we examine the extent to which these expectations hold by exploring issue entrepreneurial strategies of political parties when applied to the issue of European integration. Using multi-level modelling to analyse European Election Study data, we first show that voters are more likely to cast their ballot for parties that are losers on the extant dimension based on concerns related to European integration. Secondly, a time-series cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that parties that employ an issue entrepreneurial strategy are more successful electorally. Put differently, voters are responsive to the issue entrepreneurial strategies of parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition and electoral behaviour in multi-party systems.

The Politics of Fossil-Fuel Subsidies

Summary: governments spend staggering sums of money subsidizing fossil fuels, with many harmful consequences for public budgets, energy markets, and pollution. While there is widespread agreement among analysts that most of these subsidies serve no legitimate purpose, cutting subsidies has proved extremely difficult. This paper explores the politics of subsidy creation and reform and suggests some strategies for improving the odds that reformers will be politically successful. Subsidies exist often because they are the only reliable mechanism available to governments that are under pressure to provide benefits to politically well-organized groups. Not understanding the political economy of subsidy policies can prevent successful reform, and the report argues that successful subsidy reforms often require broader reforms and improvement in public administration to create mechanisms that can compensate political losers. It is available at: http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/research/political-economy

Israel's 1993 Decision to Make Peace with the PLO or How Political Losers (this Time) Became Winners

AbstractPolitical losers' theory claims that political losers can move to a winning position if they turn the tables and change the situation completely. Our analysis shows that political losers can become winners by maintaining their favored option on the agenda. If the alternatives promoted by the political winners collapse and the losers have access to the winners' agenda, then there can be a situation in which the losers' favored alternative might be adopted. The 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) illustrates this. We show how a team of political losers facilitated an alternative that the political winner – Israel's Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin – eventually had to adopt when his more favored options for negotiations became irrelevant. Thus, this narrative offers a complementary explanation to existing explanations of the Oslo Agreement, applies political losers' theory and provides further insight into the influence of domestic politics on international negotiations.

Structuring the Debate on Consolidation: A Response to Leland and Thurmaier

In their essay “When Efficiency Is Unbelievable: Normative Lessons from 30 Years of City–County Consolidations,” published in the July/August 2005 issue of PAR, Leland and Thurmaier make an important contribution to understanding how city–county consolidation occurs. They revise the widely accepted Rosenbaum and Kammerer model of consolidation and posit that “strong arguments” based on economic development, especially in the absence of organized opposition, led to victory for consolidation advocates. In this response, we argue that efforts to identify a set of arguments or charter provisions that will lead to successful consolidation are misguided. The real story in consolidation campaigns is how participants use heresthetical arguments in an effort to turn their opponents into political losers. What makes arguments strong or weak is not their substantive policy focus, but how they are structured.

Re-mapping Equal Protection Jurisprudence: A Legal Geography of Richmond v. Croson

Re-mapping Equal Protection Jurisprudence: A Legal Geography of Richmond v. Croson

Political Losers as a Barrier to Economic Development

Per capita income in many sub-Saharan African countries, such as Chad and Niger, is less than 1/30th of that of the United States. Most economists and social scientists suspect that this is in part due to institutional failures that stop these societies from adopting the best technologies. A particularly interesting historical example comes from the diffusion of railways in the 19th century. While railways are regarded as a key technology driving the Industrial Revolution, there were large lags in their diffusion. For example, in 1850 the United States had 14,518 km of track, Britain 9,797 km, and Germany 5,856 km; in the Russian and Hapsburg empires there were just 501 km and 1,357 kim, respectively (all data from Brian R. Mitchell [1993]). Why do societies, as in this example, fail to adopt the best available technologies? One answer is that existing powerful interest block the introduction of new technologies in order to protect their economic rents, and societies are able to make technological advances only if they can defeat such groups. Economic monopolies may be one example. A monopolist might wish to block the introduction of a new technology by a rival that will capture the market. This idea, which we call the was discussed by Simon Kuznets (1968), developed at length by Joel Mokyr (1990) in the context of technology adoption, and formalized by Per Krusell and Jose-Victor Rios-Rull (1996) and Stephen L. Parente and Edward C. Prescott (1997). Related ideas are widely discussed in the literature on international trade policy with many formal models (e.g., Gene M. Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, 1994). There are problems with this story, however. First, despite the intuitive appeal of the idea, there are relatively few instances where major economic change was blocked by economic losers. Mokyr (1990) emphasizes the attempts of many skilled artisans to block the introduction of new machines. The most famous example is the Luddites, skilled weavers who were thrown out of work by mechanization. Interestingly, however, many of these groups, including the Luddites, were ultimately unable to block economic progress. Equally important, the economic-losers hypothesis relies on the presumption that certain groups have the political power to block innovation. But if so, why not use this power to simply tax the gains generated by the introduction of the new technology? This might be because there are limits on the nature of fiscal instruments, though it seems plausible that groups with sufficient political power to block innovation would be able subsequently to lobby effectively for redistribution. A more important reason, however, may be that the introduction of new technology, and economic change more generally, may simultaneously affect the distribution of political power. We argue that the effect of economic change on political power is a key factor in determining whether technological advances and beneficial economic changes will be blocked. In other words, we propose a political-loser hypothesis. We argue that it is groups whose political power (not economic rents) is eroded who will block technological advances. If agents are economic losers but have no political power, they cannot impede technological progress. If they have and maintain political power (i.e., are not political losers), then they have no incentive to block progress. It is therefore agents who have t Discussant: Gene Grossman, Princeton University.

Party, Ideology, and the Congressional Challenger

Political Science, like Leo Durocher, is not distinguished by an excessive concern with losers.Although the reasons are not difficult to fathom, theories of recruitment and representation which omit systematic examination of those who are rejected, in addition to, those selected, will only imperfectly comprehend the political conditions and consequences this process implies.This study, part of a broader cross-national examination of legislative recruitment, focuses on a largely-ignored but perennial figure among the ranks of American political losers: those candidates who challenge incumbents for seats in the House of Representatives.Few elective institutions in American political life have achieved the degree of stability which since the depression has characterized membership in the House. At no time since 1932 has the percentage of first-term members exceeded 26 percent and in the last 15 years, it has been rare when more than 15 percent of those incumbents who actively sought reelection were defeated. The 1964 election was considered a striking anomaly when “only” 80 percent of the membership returned to the 89th Congress. It is not an exaggeration to concede that, collectively, congressional challengers stand somewhere between the Harold Stassens and Norman Thomases of campaign history in their impressive disregard for the first objective of American major-party politics: winning.

Party, Ideology, and the Congressional Challenger

Political Science, like Leo Durocher, is not distinguished by an excessive concern with losers.Although the reasons are not difficult to fathom, theories of recruitment and representation which omit systematic examination of those who are rejected, in addition to, those selected, will only imperfectly comprehend the political conditions and consequences this process implies.This study, part of a broader cross-national examination of legislative recruitment, focuses on a largely-ignored but perennial figure among the ranks of American political losers: those candidates who challenge incumbents for seats in the House of Representatives.Few elective institutions in American political life have achieved the degree of stability which since the depression has characterized membership in the House. At no time since 1932 has the percentage of first-term members exceeded 26 percent and in the last 15 years, it has been rare when more than 15 percent of those incumbents who actively sought reelection were defeated. The 1964 election was considered a striking anomaly when “only” 80 percent of the membership returned to the 89th Congress. It is not an exaggeration to concede that, collectively, congressional challengers stand somewhere between the Harold Stassens and Norman Thomases of campaign history in their impressive disregard for the first objective of American major-party politics: winning.