Christopher Carman

The Process is the Reality: Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Participatory Democracy

To (re)connect and (re-)engage citizens with their governing institutions, many advanced industrial democracies have adopted innovative reforms designed to ‘transform’ the way citizens interact with public institutions. This article assesses the extent to which the Scottish Parliaments petitioning system, a reform designed to connect the Scottish public with its parliament, influences broader trust in the political system. Using structural equations to model data from a survey of Scottish Parliament petitioners, the article finds that process evaluations far exceed outcome evaluations in influencing petitioner trust in political institutions. Hence simply adopting reforms that allow for ‘civic engagement’ is not enough to improve public support for the political system. Great care must be taken in adopting transformative reforms to ensure that those members of the public who do choose to ‘engage’ with political institutions see procedures as fair and politically neutral.

The Spirit of Capitalism? Religious Doctrine, Values, and Economic Attitude Constructs

This article examines the relationship between conservative Protestant doctrine and economic policy attitudes. Building upon Webers (1930) classic (and controversial) thesis that Calvinist thought inspired the “capitalist spirit,” we posit that the individualistic theology of fundamentalists, evangelicals, and charismatics often engenders political preferences for individualistic economic policies. We test this hypothesis by (1) performing a series of cross-sectional ordered probit analyses to understand the independent degree of association between doctrinal belief and economic attitudes toward taxing, spending, and the role of government, (2) creating and testing a structural equation model to assess various hypothesized paths of influence, and finally, (3) using 1994–96 NES panel data to assess the degree to which changes in an individuals doctrinal beliefs produce changes in his or her economic attitudes. Results lend substantial support to the efficacy of Webers thesis, and point to religious belief as one exogenous agent of core political values.

Assessing preferences for political representation in the US

Abstract While much of the extant research on political representation focuses on congruence issues and elite perceptions of their representational roles, little has been done to examine how members of the general public think about representational relationship. Often, constituents are assumed to be passive actors in the representational process. This paper advances the argument that individuals have preferences over how tightly bound elected representatives should be to constituent policy preferences and that these preferences are contextual, varying by the degree to which constituents perceive that their representative shares characteristics similar to those of the individual. Two data sources are used to verify this argument: (1) the 1978 ANES and (2) data collected for Congress’ Obey Commission, 1976–1977. These data provide evidence that public representational preferences have a systematic component. Most significantly, the study finds that members of minority groups have contextually derived preferences for political representation.

Public preferences for parliamentary representation in the UK: an overlooked link?

Representation, both as a normative concept and a political process, has generated a rich literature across several national contexts. To develop our understanding of representational systems, scholars tend to assess the degree of policy congruence between parliamentarians and constituents as well as the role orientations adopted by elected parliamentarians and legislators. This paper contends that in order to have a complete understanding of representational systems, we must consider not only the representational roles adopted by parliamentarians, but also the publics’ preferences regarding parliamentary representation. Specifically, I posit that individuals have attitudes about the type and degree of relationship that they believe should exist between elected parliamentarians, parties and constituents. Using data from a 2003 survey of the British public, I test the related hypotheses that individuals have meaningful and predictable preferences for the representational relationship they share with their members of parliament (MPs) and that these representational preferences in turn influence how individuals evaluate MPs. Finding support for both hypotheses, I argue that developing an understanding of normative public preferences for political representation is an important and overlooked component in advancing models of public support of both elected officials and governing institutions.

The dimensionality of the Scottish political space Results from an experiment on the 2011 Holyrood elections

This article introduces Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) as a data-generating tool that can be used to measure the positions of party supporters in multidimensional policy space. It begins with an overview of the state of the art as regards methods for locating parties on a common policy space, in terms of how data are gathered and also in terms of how policy dimensions are identified and measured. We then use a dimension reduction technique to identify latent policy dimensions from a dataset obtained from a VAA carried out in Scotland in 2011. These dimensions are used to map the policy positions of supporters of five Scottish political parties. We argue that this tool allows more leverage on understanding the relative locations of parties ‘in the electorate’ in multidimensional policy space.

Electoral poachers? an assessment of shadowing behaviour in the Scottish parliament

The mixed member electoral system used for the Scottish Parliament has produced two kinds of parliamentarians – those elected to represent constituencies (constituency members) and those elected to represent regions (list members). This system has created the possibility that list members might shadow constituency members with the intention of contesting the constituency seat in the next election. One manifestation of this is where list members locate their offices. Existing research on the shadowing of constituency members by list members has focused on the opinions of samples of members. In this paper we measure the behaviour of all members to examine the question of whether, how, and why list members shadow constituency members through the location of their offices. Among a number of findings, we provide evidence that list members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are significantly more likely to locate offices in most marginal constituencies, suggesting that electoral poaching is a feature of the system.

Political Geography, Church Attendance, and Mass Preferences Regarding Democratic Representation

Abstract The extent to which elected officials are chosen to either lead their constituents, on the one hand, or follow their wishes, on the other, is one of the foundational questions that republican forms of government must consider. Contemporary research, however, has thus far offered little analysis of the manner and extent to which mass public preferences vary on this dimension. In this article, we present an analysis that clusters respondents to a large N survey according to the dominant political subculture in which they reside. Our analysis finds that individuals residing in “moralistic” states who are heavily immersed in community churches tend to hold “trustee” oriented representational preferences, while people in individualistic states tend toward a preference for “delegates”.

Brokering interests: the use of market-based policies by interest groups

Objective. This article begins the process of broadly evaluating the role of nongovernmental actors in regulatory markets by specifically examining environmental groups’ use of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) market established by Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. This research posits that the use of nonexclusionary markets in environmental quality regulation allows interest groups a nonpareil opportunity to seek to directly affect policy outcomes. Methods. This article uses two forms of analysis. The first part of the article provides a qualitative analysis of the motives of interest groups that use incentive-based policies in an attempt to achieve their desired policy outcomes. The last section of the article uses empirical data from the Environmental Protection Agencys Allowance Tracking System to evaluate interest groups’ use of market-based policies. Results. The use of market-based mechanisms in public policies offers interest groups a new form of participation in the policy process, yet it seems that only “new” groups are willing to enter the market. Further, I find that though the participating groups may not be able to affect the relative price of allowances (as they claim they will), they nonetheless are able to reduce the absolute number of allowances available. Finally, using market-based policies to achieve their preferred outcomes may be a “rational” decision for groups in that the “return” on their investment may indeed be quite high. Conclusions. One aspect of pollution markets is clear—they do create an interesting new mechanism of public activism for groups that wish to protect the environment but do not want to “lobby or litigate.” By purchasing pollution allowances groups attempt to directly affect environmental policy outputs without entering the policy cycle as it has been previously understood. As market-based policies are employed more broadly, opportunities accorded to environmental groups for active involvement in seeking to limit ambient pollutants, as well as the groups’ potential impact, may only expand.

COPING WITH COALITIONS? SCOTTISH VOTERS UNDER A PROPORTIONAL SYSTEM

It is clear that coalition governments are likely to become a fact of political life in Scotland. In this paper we use data from the 2007 Scottish Election Study to examine how well the Scottish public understands these governing arrangements and whether they are developing stable and consistent attitudes towards coalitions in general. The results suggest that, while currently there is considerable confusion, Scottish voters are slowly learning to cope with coalitions.

Parties and Leaders

Although the Scottish Parliament has often been presented as a form of ‘new politics’, it is essentially a Westminster-style Parliament (Mitchell 2010b). Its electoral system is its most obvious distinguishing feature but in terms of the classic functions of parliaments (Copeland and Patterson 1994: 154), Holyrood is part of the Westminster family. This is evident in its linkage function, the relationship between the electorate and the government – in choosing the legislative branch, Scottish voters also (indirectly) choose the executive branch.