John Garry

Extracting policy positions from political texts using words as data

We present a new way of extracting policy positions from political texts that treats texts not as discourses to be understood and interpreted but rather, as data in the form of words. We compare this approach to previous methods of text analysis and use it to replicate published estimates of the policy positions of political parties in Britain and Ireland, on both economic and social policy dimensions. We “export” the method to a non-English-language environment, analyzing the policy positions of German parties, including the PDS as it entered the former West German party system. Finally, we extend its application beyond the analysis of party manifestos, to the estimation of political positions from legislative speeches. Our “language-blind” word scoring technique successfully replicates published policy estimates without the substantial costs of time and labor that these require. Furthermore, unlike in any previous method for extracting policy positions from political texts, we provide uncertainty measures for our estimates, allowing analysts to make informed judgments of the extent to which differences between two estimated policy positions can be viewed as significant or merely as products of measurement error.We thank Raj Chari, Gary King, Michael McDonald, Gail McElroy, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on drafts of this paper.

‘Second-order’ versus ‘Issue-voting’ Effects in EU Referendums Evidence from the Irish Nice Treaty Referendums

Are referendums on EU treaties decided by voters’ attitudes to Europe (the ‘issue-voting’ explanation) or by voters’ attitudes to their national political parties and incumbent national government (the ‘second-order election model’ explanation)? In one scenario, these referendums will approximate to deliberative processes that will be decided by people’s views of the merits of European integration. In the other scenario, they will be plebiscites on the performance of national governments. We test the two competing explanations of the determinants of voting in EU referendums using evidence from the two Irish referendums on the Nice Treaty. We find that the issue-voting model outperforms the second-order model in both referendums. However, we also find that issue-voting was particularly important in the more salient and more intense second referendum. Most strikingly, attitudes to EU enlargement were much stronger predictors of vote at Nice 2 than at Nice 1. This finding about the rise in importance of attitudes to the EU points to the importance of campaigning in EU referendums.

The Macroeconomic Factors Conditioning the Impact of Identity on Attitudes towards the EU

Factors relating to identity and to economics have been shown to be important predictors of attitudes towards the European Union (EU). In this article, we show that the impact of identity is conditional on economic context. First, living in a member state that receives relatively high levels of EU funding acts as a ‘buffer’, diluting the impact of an exclusive national identity on Euroscepticism. Second, living in a relatively wealthy member state, with its associated attractiveness for economic migrants, increases the salience of economic xenophobia as a driver of sceptical attitudes. These results highlight the importance of seeing theories of attitude formation (such as economic and identity theories) not as competitors but rather as complementary, with the predictive strength of one theoretical approach (identity) being a function of system-level variation in factors relating to the other theoretical approach (macro-level economic conditions).

The British Conservative party: Divisions over European policy

This article uses evidence from a survey of Conservative MPs to assess the importance of the divide over European policy in the British Conservative party. One key consequence of the conflict over Europe is its effect on the party leadership. Tensions over EC policy played a very substantial part in Margaret Thatchers downfall and they continue to affect the premiership of her successor, John Major.

What Decided the Election

The purpose of this chapter is to explain why and how the remarkable changes outlined in the previous chapter came about. Why did the voters return an incumbent government for the first time in more than 30 years? What accounts for the reversal that drove Fine Gael back to a level of support not seen by the party since 1948? And why did those voters itching for change shun Labour in favour of the ‘new opposition’ — the Greens, Sinn Fein and the independents?

Emotions and voting in EU referendums

There is an emerging scholarship on the emotional bases of political opinion and behaviour and, in particular, the contrasting implications of two distinct negative emotions – anger and anxiety. I apply the insights in this literature to the previously unresearched realm of the emotional bases of voting in EU referendums. I hypothesise that anxious voters rely on substantive EU issues and angry voters rely on second-order factors relating to domestic politics (partisanship and satisfaction with government). Focusing on the case of Irish voting in the Fiscal Compact referendum, and using data from a representative sample of voters, I find support for the hypotheses and discuss the implications of the findings for our understanding of the emotional conditionality of EU referendum voting.

Inequality, state ownership and the European Union: How economic context and economic ideology shape support for the European Union

This article investigates the extent to which economic ideology affects peoples support for European Union integration and how this is conditioned by economic context. We argue that people on the economic left who live in a country with conditions of high income inequality and little state ownership will support European integration, because more integration would move public policy in a left-wing direction. By contrast, people on the left who live in a country with conditions of low income inequality and widespread public ownership are likely to be eurosceptic, as further integration would result in a more right-wing public policy. We empirically confirm our hypotheses and discuss the implications for European Union democracy.

Attitudes to European Integration: Investigating East–West Heterogeneity

Abstract The study of citizens’ attitudes to the EU is in danger of splintering, with context‐specific transition‐based models being applied in the former communist countries, models that — at face value — have no applicability in the Western states. Using data from the 2004 European Election Study, we test a model of attitude generation that is applicable to the universe of member states but which allows for the strength of attitude determinants to vary across the Eastern and Western contexts. Based on the literature, we suspect that the economic and democratic aspects of the ‘transition’ in eastern Europe will be particularly important in shaping views on the EU in that context. Specifically, we test the following hypotheses: (1) positive retrospective economic evaluations are a stronger determinant of support for integration in the East than in the West, and (2) a positive evaluation of EU democracy relative to one’s own country’s democracy is a stronger determinant of support for integration in the East than in the West. We find strong support for the first hypothesis, but no support for the second.

Are Moderators Moderate?: Testing the ‘Anchoring and Adjustment’ Hypothesis in the Context of Marking Politics Exams

On the basis of an experiment we confirm the hypothesis – derived from the ‘anchoring and adjustment’ heuristic – that the difference that a moderator makes to the grade awarded by a first marker is less than the difference between the grades awarded by two independent (or ‘double-blind’) markers. We suggest that double-blind marking is therefore more objective and reliable than moderator-based marking, although the former clearly has significantly higher administrative costs than the latter.

FIANNA FÁIL ACTIVISTS: COALITION PREFERENCES AND POLICY PRIORITIES

This brief research note reports the results of a survey of Fianna Fáil activists that was designed to explore the relationship between activists’ coalition preferences and their policy priorities. The survey was conducted at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in spring 2002, just prior to the general election which had to be called by June at the latest. At the time of the survey, Fianna Fáil were coming to the end of a five-year coalition government with the Progressive Democrats. The government was widely seen as successful – particularly in terms of overseeing a thriving economy – and attracted very high approval ratings from the public (Garry et al., 2003). The Fianna Fáil leadership strongly advocated a continuation of the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats coalition after the upcoming general election (even to the point of inviting the Progressive Democrats to enter government with Fianna Fáil if the latter had enough seats to rule alone). Fianna Fáil was equally adamant about Sinn Féin. The party was vetoed from consideration as a coalition partner because of continued links to paramiliatrism. Fine Gael – Fianna Fáil’s long standing civil war enemy – was (as ever) also effectively vetoed as a coalition partner. This left the Green Party – about which there was little public comment in relation to possible coalition with Fianna Fáil – and the Labour party, towards which overtures were made by Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern (despite the continued suspicion between the two parties since the acrimonious demise of the Fianna Fáil/Labour 1992–1994 coalition (Garry, 1995)). Most commentators would probably agree that at the time our survey was conducted the Labour party was Fianna Fáil’s second choice for coalition partner after the Progressive Democrats. Next came the Green Party and both Sinn Féin and Fine Gael were – either formally or effectively – vetoed.