Pascal D. König

The dark side of the German ‘welcome culture’: investigating the causes behind attacks on refugees in 2015

Abstract In 2015, Germany experienced a record high influx of refugees – and received international praise for its ‘welcome culture’. At the same time, however, attacks on refugees rose to an alarming level. This article describes the distribution of these attacks and probes their causes, using detailed socioeconomic and political data while modelling a hierarchical data structure. Controlling for further relevant factors taken from the extant literature, the analysis first tests whether the strength of extreme right political parties plays a role and, second, it models a contagion effect, taking into account spatial as well as temporal proximity. The findings suggest that the strength of right-wing parties in a district considerably boosts the probability of attacks on refugees in that area. They also corroborate the idea of behavioural contagion. The set of social-structural variables employed as controls yielded only limited explanatory power.

Die Links-Rechts-Positionierung der Parteien bei den Bundestagswahlen 2005 bis 2013: Eine empirische Analyse anhand des Wahl-O-Mat

Der Beitrag beschreibt das deutsche Parteiensystem zur Bundestagswahl 2013 anhand der programmatischen Positionen auf einer einzelnen (Links-Rechts-)Achse und vergleicht diese mit den Positionen zu den beiden vorausgegangenen Bundestagswahlen. Zu diesem Zweck zieht die Analyse die Informationen aus dem Wahl-O-Mat heran. Mittels Skalierung werden daraus die relativen Ahnlichkeiten und Positionierungen der Parteien gewonnen, per Clusteranalyse wird spezifischer gepruft, welche Gruppierungen oder Lager sich auf der Basis der verwendeten Daten ergeben. Weiterhin werden die extrahierten Positionen mit den Daten des Comparative Manifesto Project sowie mit der Selbstverortung der Anhanger und Wahler der Parteien verglichen. Die Auswertung der Wahl-O-Mat-Daten suggeriert eine geringfugige Annaherung zwischen den beiden Volksparteien zur Wahl von 2013, allerdings bleibt die bekannte Struktur von zwei Lagern deutlich bestehen, insbesondere nachdem die Piraten 2013 im Vergleich zu 2009 weiter links verortet werden und weil die AfD sehr nahe an der Union und klar im burgerlichen Lager liegt. Die Befunde sprechen uberdies insgesamt nach wie vor fur die Brauchbarkeit einer einfachen Links-Rechts-Achse im bundesdeutschen Kontext.

Communicating austerity measures during times of crisis: A comparative empirical analysis of four heads of government:

This article develops a coherent framework for analyzing policy communication; Conceptualizes how policy communication can be understood as a function of contextual factors; Empirically maps the policy communication of four political leaders. Points to the importance of political competition and welfare culture for systematic variation in policy communication. To what extent are political leaders’ policy communications shaped by the context in which they act? This article addresses this so far largely disregarded question by means of a systematic comparison of broader communication profiles. Based on a content analysis, it empirically maps how Mario Monti, Mariano Rajoy, Enda Kenny and David Cameron communicated austerity policies, which meant considerable cuts in the welfare state, during the European debt crisis. The findings suggest that a lower degree of political competition manifests in political leaders’ communication in terms of a more consensual stance. The evidence is also partly in line with the assumption that liberal welfare culture allows for a policy communication that is more strongly based on norm- and value-based justifications. Surprisingly, the expectation that the crisis condition led to a stronger emphasis on the costs/risks of the status quo is not borne out in the data.

Unpopular Policies and the Imperative of Justification: Putting the Monti Government’s Reform Communication in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract Governments’ policy organization and communication, treated as an independent variable, has been shown to increase the public endorsement of unpopular reforms and to help to avoid blame. This study aims to shed further light on such strategic action from a largely neglected angle. It considers reform communication as a dependent variable and makes the case that the content of this communication does not so much depend upon blame avoidance motives but is primarily a function of contextual factors conditioning the limits and resources for a convincing communication. Using the Italian Monti government as a case where blame avoidance can be expected to be least likely, the analysis nonetheless shows clear features that resemble blame avoidance strategies for this case, namely a pronounced risk framing and justifications based on political cooperation. This communication can however, it is argued, be made plausible in light of political-institutional, political-cultural and economic circumstances.

Estimating the Conflict Dimensionality in the German Länder from Vote Advice Applications, 2014–2017

Abstract Building on the spatial model of party competition, we investigate the structure of political conflict in German subnational politics. Little research has examined the conflict dimensionality at the Länder level. Moreover, the few studies which have done so predominantly rely on a deductive approach that pre-structures the conflict space using presumed conflict dimensions. In this paper, we put these dimensionality assumptions to the test with an inductive approach that capitalizes on parties’ preference expressions in vote advice applications. We circumvent the common concern that data from vote advice applications is too sparse for assessing political conflict structures by estimating a space that bridges multiple elections. Unlike previous research, we find that political conflict is defined by a comprehensive left-right dimension and a secondary dimension separating mainstream parties from fringe competitors. This anti-establishment dimension is characterized by diverging preferences over democratic institutions and policies considered consensual among the political mainstream.