Political Popularity Research Articles

Modelling Political Popularity: A Correction

SummaryThe paper supplies a missing step in the aggregation argument that was used in our 1997 paper in this journal. We show that monthly poll data representing the average of a sample of voter preferences, evolving in different ways in the face of new information, should follow a fractionally integrated process.

Royalties for Artists Versus Royalties for Authors and Composers

Legislation creating or reinforcing resale royalties for visual artists retains substantial political popularity, particularly in the European Union - despite the often skeptical attitude toward those rights in the economics literature. In this essay, we probe more deeply the affirmative arguments that can be made for a resale royalty right, in either a mandatory or a discretionary form. We also compare the rationale for visual artists' resale royalties with the potential rationales for the now-well-established systems of royalty rights for authors and composers. This comparison has particular interest both because some of the principal arguments made against visual artists' resale royalties also apply to authors' royalties, and because the economic rationale for compensating authors with royalties has itself not been well explored. We also discuss briefly the related subject of display rights for visual artists. We conclude with some general implications for policy.

Disconnect in the Hollow State: The Pivotal Role of Organizational Capacity in Community‐Based Development Organizations

Partnerships between government and community‐based development organizations (CBDOs) have proven to be central to long‐term neighborhood revitalization in many settings. These successes, coupled with the political popularity of community‐driven projects, have stimulated further reliance on this approach. Unfortunately, scant research has been done on the organizational capacity of local community‐based development organizations to administer these projects. It may be that many of them do not have the capacity to do the job.This article examines elements of organizational capacity in CBDOs developing affordable housing in a United States‐Mexico border community. Evidence of capacity was limited, raising serious questions about the implementation of public policy in the hollow state. In their haste to contract with not‐for‐profits to create affordable housing, government officials may not be considering the serious possibility that CBDOs do not have the capacity to deliver services or effectively administer projects over time.

The dynamics of aggregate political popularity: evidence from eight countries

This paper extends previous analyses of aggregate political popularity (partisanship) data by Box-Steffensmeier and Smith (Box-Steffensmeier, J.M., Smith, R.M., 1996. The dynamics of aggregate partisanship. American Political Science Review 90 (September), 567–580) for the US, and Byers et al. (Byers, D., Davidson, J., Peel, D.A., 1997. Modelling political popularity: an analysis of long-range dependence in opinion poll series. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 160, 471–490) for the UK. These studies independently found that the time series of poll ratings are well modelled by fractionally integrated processes. Here, the analysis is conducted for 26 political parties in eight different countries, and the results obtained are on the whole closely in line with the ones cited above. As in the earlier studies, we find in many of our cases that the estimated fractional integration parameter d is close to 0.7. This implies that popularity is highly persistent and a nonstationary process, but that it is also mean-reverting eventually. Most of the time series are also found to be pure fractional noise, effectively uncorrelated after fractional differencing, so that the d parameter alone accounts for the dependence. As well as offering added support for theories of political allegiance based on a certain distribution of the attributes of commitment and pragmatism in the voting population, these findings have important implications for the explanation of political support using time series data.

Foreign Investment and Endogenous Protection with Protectionist Quid Pro Quo

The literature on quid pro quo foreign direct investment describes how unwarranted investment may be undertaken because of the endogeneity of trade policy. The quid pro quo is that foreign producers, who are exporters to the host economy, invest in return for a liberal trade policy. We describe converse circumstances. The nexus between foreign investment and endogeneity of trade policy is implicit (not explicit as in quid pro quo investment), and a government with socially correct objectives (perhaps imposed by international‐agency conditionality) wishes (i) to privatize a domestic firm by sale to a foreign investor who can provide technology improvement for domestic production and (ii) to pursue a liberal trade policy. The government is electorally constrained by needs of political popularity. The outcome is that efficient private investments may not be undertaken—in contrast with the quid pro quo case where inefficient investments are undertaken. While our model is general, the conditions we describe appear to be in particular present in post‐socialist economies. Our model offers a contributing explanation for the slow pace of progress in many such economies, which rely on foreign technological transfer to improve the technology and product quality of post‐socialist industry, but fail to receive the requisite foreign investment despite governments' good intentions.

Conditional fee agreements: the courts and parliament in unison

THE developments noted here show that conditional fee agreements have become a significant, perhaps even the dominant, means of securing access to civil justice. The political popularity of such agreements is not hard to explain. Since 1949, civil legal aid has enabled the less well-off to litigate in the ordinary courts. But it is notorious that many people are excluded from justice, either because they are deterred by the size of the potential contribution to a legally-aided action or because their modest means disentitle them altogether from that system. Furthermore, legal aid is perceived by Treasury officials to be an excessive drain on the fisc.

Government Debt, Budget Surplus, and Popularity of Politicians

This paper sets up a positive model of government behavior to determine the optimal fiscal policy of a politician who aims to reach a certain target level of national debt and remain popular at the same time. We model explicitly the response of the citizens to the fiscal policy set by the politician. To that end, we assume that citizens form an equilibrium acceptance rate of savings and adjust dynamically this savings rate to the currently prevailing levels of government debt and primary surplus. The difference between the equilibrium acceptance rate of savings as formed by the public and the fiscal policy actually chosen by the politician determines the politician popularity. Using the Pontryagin maximum principle, we derive the optimal level of the fiscal policy and investigate its local stability depending on the parameters of the model. We show that cyclical strategies [that is, phases of saving (primary surplus) and spending (primary deficit)], may be optimal.

A day at the zoo: political communication, pigs and popular culture

Current worries about a supposedly increasing popularization of political campaign methods and styles are rooted in the historical oppositions between popular culture and modernism. The folkloric world of popular culture, ruled by coincidence and marked by suspicion and sensation, seems to be thoroughly at odds with the modernist tradition of politics which is distinguished by a belief in rationality, progress and the capacity of people to take control over their own lives. Nevertheless, there are many historical articulations of popular culture and politics which have by definition been contested and controversial. Nowadays, a general fear is that politics is becoming completely popularized, implying among other things an appearance of politicians on popular `platforms', a changed rhetorical style and an adaptation and acknowledgement of popular political themes. In such `moral panics', politicians, academics and journalists alike, firmly blame (commercial) television for such a `refeudalization' of political life and for the increasing numbers of political cynics among citizens. But popular political communication should instead be perceived as a symptom of a crisis in the relation between citizens and their representatives, and as an attempt to restore that relation. Whereas the different social traditions of popular culture and politics will prevent the complete popularization of politics, in the postmodern condition there is a need for a new generation of politicians who are able to reconcile the different requirements of popular culture and representative politics, and who may thus inspire a much needed revived sense of connectedness between citizens and their representatives.

The Politics of Evidence-Based Medicine in the United Kingdom

English Evidence-based medicine, the doctrine that professional clinical practice should be based on sound research evidence about the effectiveness of the procedures used, is now official policy for the National Health Service. Despite its obvious common-sense and political appeal, the policy seems to be based on a number of questionable assumptions about implementation, political popularity and scientific consensus, yet accords in general terms with contemporary developments in modes of controlling organisations.

Modelling Political Popularity: an Analysis of Long-range Dependence in Opinion Poll Series

Modelling Political Popularity: an Analysis of Long-range Dependence in Opinion Poll Series

Modelling Political Popularity: An Analysis of Long-Range Dependence in Opinion Poll Series

Summary A simple model of political popularity, as recorded by opinion polls of voting intentions, is proposed. We show that, as a consequence of aggregating heterogeneous poll responses under certain assumptions about the evolution of individual opinions, the time series of poll data should exhibit long memory characteristics. In an analysis of the monthly Gallup data on party support in the UK, we confirm that the series have long memory and further show them to be virtually pure ‘fractional noise’ processes. An explanation of the latter result is offered. We study the role of economic indicators in predicting swings in support, perform event analyses and use our estimates to generate post-sample forecasts to April 1997.

Econometric estimations of popularity functions: A case study for Austria

In this paper, we investigate the effects of changes in economic conditions on the popularity of political parties in Austria. After a brief description of the Austrian political system, we estimate single equations and simultaneous systems of popularity functions for different parties, based on traditional theoretical foundations. Results show that some effects of economic variables on popularity exist, although they are different between different policy regimes. Traditional popularity functions nevertheless outperform models based on the assumption of voters' rational expectations, which claim that only unexpected changes in economic conditions affect political popularity.

Responding to Juvenile Crime: Lessons Learned

Although the dispositional options for delinquent youths have diversified over the past 20 years, the debate about the most effective treatment of young offenders continues. This article reviews the existing evaluations of various juvenile corrections alternatives. In contrast to the conclusions of scholars in the late 1970s that "nothing worked" in juvenile corrections, Mark Lipsey's 1992 meta-analysis of more than 400 evaluations of juvenile programs reported an average 10% improvement in recidivism rates for all the programs evaluated. Lipsey's meta-analysis found a significant advantage in community-based programs run by private providers compared with large custodial institutions, such as traditional state training schools. The most effective privately run community programs have high levels of intensity and duration, multiple modes of intervention, and a great deal of structure. Nonresidential, dawn-to-dusk educational programs that work with both juveniles and their families are good examples of this type of programming. Boot camps for juvenile offenders have proliferated because of their political popularity. A recent evaluation of eight of these programs showed that four had no effect on recidivism, one resulted in higher recidivism rates, and three showed improvements in some recidivism measures. Probation and diversion, the most common of all juvenile court dispositions, are not effective options for youths with multiple risk factors. Juvenile courts need an array of dispositional options, the ability to monitor program effectiveness, and the flexibility to find the appropriate placement for each juvenile offender.

What remains of the popularity function? The case of Austria

In this paper, the effects of changes in economic conditions on the popularity of political parties in Austria are investigated. According to the traditional theory of the popularity function, economic variables such as the rate of unemployment, the rate of inflation, and the growth rate of real disposable income exert direct influence upon voters' evaluations of political parties. Estimations of such popularity functions for Austria show that some effects of this kind can be found, but they seem to be unstable over time. On the other hand, models of political popularity based on the assumption of voters' rational expectations predict that only unexpected changes in economic conditions affect political popularity. One of these models seems to have favorable predictive properties for Austria.

Reckoning with Reagan: America and Its President in the 1980s.

At the height of Ronald Reagan's popularity in July 1986, Time magazine wrote glowingly of how he had found America's sweet spot. Reagan seemed a magician who carries a bright, ideal America like a holograph in his mind and projects its image in the air. Not since the rhapsody about Camelot that surrounded John F. Kennedy in the wake of his assassination had a president been spoken of so reverently. Reagan pledged to bring Americans a little good news and during the next eight years, through recession and recovery, cold war and detente, success and scandal Reagan forged a powerful bond with the public. His popularity appeared so unrelated to actual achievements and so undiminished by failure that Colorado Representative Pat Schroeder dubbed him the Teflon president. Providing a brief but comprehensive and non-polemical overview of what exactly took place during the Reagan years, Michael Schaller presents a lively account of the Reagan presidency, weighing the president's great personal and political popularity against the effects of his economic, social, diplomatic, and strategic decisions. Much more than an account of Reagan the man, Schaller offers us a fascinating evaluation of the Reagan phenomenon, providing an accessible introduction for Americans struggling to understand the illusory and actual impact of the Reagan administration on the 1980s and on years to come.

Is political popularity a random walk?

This paper tets for nonstationarity in the political popularity of UK parties and governments within the context of an economic model which predicts that party support is an ARIMA (0, 1, 1) process. The hypothesis is rejected for the government's popularity but the results for individual party support are less clear out.

Economic performance and political popularity in the Republic of Ireland

This paper develops a model of discrete choice to analyse the choice of voters among a number of political parties. It then applies the model to an empirical analysis of the relationship between a government's economic performance and its political popularity for the Republic of Ireland over the period 1974–1987. Within this general statement the paper makes three contributions. First, it sheds light on a hitherto unknown phenomenon — namely the nature of the relation between economic performance and political popularity in Ireland. Second, it does this within the context of analysing the reactions of different types of voters viz. voters of all social classes and then of social classes ABC1 and C2DE. Third, the empirical work is grounded firmly in a choice theoretic model involving optimal choices between discrete alternatives.

Dynamic optimization of political popularity in an empirical macroeconomic model

We estimate a political popularity function for Israel, taking account of the effects of institutional and political changes on the structure of the function, and then use this function, in conjunction with a simple macroeconomic model of the Israeli economy, to calculate dynamic macroeconomic strategies which would have maximized the political popularity of three previous Israeli governments. We conclude that the dominant strategy was always to keep unemployment at the natural rate, but that this strategy was optimally combined with either rising inflation close to elections (for the earlier governments) or with near-zero inflation throughout the term (for later governments).

Back to the Market

The recent explosion of interest in privatisation and deregulation is not a purely Thatcherite or eveni purely British phenomenon. This paper outlines the measures carried out or currenitly planned in a number of leading economies, examines the econiomic rationale for these policies and relates this to their political popularity. The discussion is linked to a reconsideration of earlier accounts of the expansion of the State's involvement in the economy (particularly the received account of the history of nationalisation). It also looks forward; is the current episode merely a temporary reversal of the State's expanding role in the economy, or is the movement back towards the Market a more fundamental one?

An alternative approach to explaining political popularity

Previous empirical work on the relationship between political popularity and economic events has either not attempted to model the alternative policies of the different parties, or has modelled them in a rather simplistic manner. It has also typically assumed that voters are backward-looking in contrast to recent work on expectations theory. An approach is outlined which is based on a forward-looking comparison of the parties and incorporates the effect of news. An alternative derivation relying on the evaluation of the stock of goodwill built up for each party is also suggested. Empirical evidence from the Gallup opinion poll provides some support for these hypotheses.