Till Weber

Campaign Effects and Second-Order Cycles

Second-order elections theory explains cyclical losses by national government parties in elections to the European Parliament (EP) through strategic protest voting owing to performance deficits in policy-making. This paper confronts the conventional bottom-up view with a top-down approach to second-order elections. Ultimately, the electoral cycle is driven not by instrumental voting behaviour but by party strategies oriented towards governmental power in the member states of the European Union. Based on survey data from the European Election Studies of 1999 and 2004, firstorder campaign mobilization is shown to determine the prospects of government parties in second-order elections. Mobilization itself depends on the quality of spatial representation in terms of distinct programmatic alternatives, which governments are unable to provide during the midterm. Although this process can be traced on the left—right dimension, parties prevent it with regard to integration issues by systematic demobilization. After all, EP elections are still second order, but first-order politics exert their influence through cyclical campaign mobilization and not through strategic protest voting.

Issue Yield: A Model of Party Strategy in Multidimensional Space

Parties in pluralist democracies face numerous contentious issues, but most models of electoral competition assume a simple, often one-dimensional structure. We develop a new, inherently multidimensional model of party strategy in which parties compete by emphasizing policy issues. Issue emphasis is informed by two distinct goals: mobilizing the partys core voters and broadening the support base. Accommodating these goals dissolves the position-valence dichotomy through a focus on policies that unite the party internally while also attracting support from the electorate at large. We define issue yield as the capacity of an issue to reconcile these criteria, and then operationalize it as a simple index. Results of multilevel regressions combining population survey data and party manifesto scores from the 2009 European Election Study demonstrate that issue yield governs party strategy across different political contexts.

A bottleneck model of e-voting: Why technology fails to boost turnout:

Recent years have seen increasing interest in internet voting in theory and practice. Proponents hope that modernizing the electoral process will boost turnout. Less optimistic scholars object that the new technology merely perpetuates existing patterns of participation. This study aims to arbitrate the controversy. New survey data from the 2007 general election in Estonia allow us to predict the usage of e-voting and its impact on electoral participation. We find that e-voting mostly affects ‘peripheral’ citizens (in a demographic and political sense), but only few of these citizens vote online in the first place. Conversely, the impact on typical e-voters is low. This ‘bottleneck’ effect explains why e-voting has failed to boost turnout but also points to a role in reducing political inequality.

Cross-Cutting Issues and Party Strategy in the European Union

Has European integration affected national electoral politics beyond the margins? Experts describe its main impact as empowerment of radical voices. Mainstream parties avoid European Union (EU) issues that divide their left-or right-based organizations; extreme parties attack the EU and the center’s silence. But EU issues also generate important dynamics inside mainstream parties. The authors theorize cross-cutting EU issues as an example of a general model of cross-issue interference. Two mechanisms of interference alter party strategizing. When electoral victories have strengthened leaders, cross-cutting issues produce muffling of more recently emerged issues. Divided parties cling to left—right issues and suppress fights over integration. But interference also runs the other way. When leadership is weak, muffling fails and challengers aggravate dissent. Internal fights on newer (EU) issues affect the selection of leadership on older (left—right) issues, generating displacement from electorally competitive positions. The authors document these mechanisms and their generality with mixed methods: pan-European panel analysis and interview-based accounts.

Party Government and Administrative Reform: Evidence From the German Länder:

Administrative reorganization has become widespread practice in modern democracies. Various case studies highlight the relevance of political ideology for bureaucratic contraction, others the role of socioeconomic pressure and institutional constraints. We examine these explanations in a study of the German Länder, which have substantially contracted their bureaucracies since the 1990s. Quantitative analysis of a novel data set of 479 ministerial departments in 13 Länder over two decades suggests that the ideological complexion of governments is a stronger predictor of administrative reform than socioeconomic pressure or institutional constraints. Moreover, interaction models show how socioeconomic and institutional variables condition the effect of ideology.

Koalitionsstrukturen und Koalitionsstabilität in Mittel- und Osteuropa: Ein internationaler Vergleich

Die politische Systemtransformation in Mittel- und Osteuropa (MOE), die vor knapp zwanzig Jahren mit der Einrichtung des Runden Tisches in Polen begann, gilt allgemein als Erfolgsgeschichte (Ismayr 2009; Merkel in diesem Band). Auch wenn die meisten GUSStaaten die „Grauzone“ zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie nie verlassen haben und teils zu offen autoritaren Regimen zuruckgekehrt sind, gehoren inzwischen nicht weniger als zehn ex-sozialistische Lander der Europaischen Union (EU) an, deren Mitgliedschaft eine vollstandig etablierte Demokratie voraussetzt (Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV); zwei weitere MOE-Staaten, Kroatien und Mazedonien, werden von der EU als Beitrittskandidaten gefuhrt.

Synergy in Spatial Models of Voting: How Critical Cases Show That Proximity, Direction and Discounting Are Friends, Not Foes

Abstract The spatial theory of elections is widely used to examine how party policy is linked to voter preferences. Three classic models – proximity, direction and discounting – lay claim to the nature of this link, but their predictions of voting behavior are almost identical. I resolve the problem by decomposing 28 multi-party systems into about 1 million party triplets. This allows me to isolate “critical cases” where model predictions diverge. The combinatorial approach reveals a degree of collinearity between models that may surprise even longtime experts in the field. But while collinearity is a nuisance for scholars, it is a blessing for voters. I find disproportionately strong policy voting when all predictions agree, indicating that there is synergy between the three spatial logics. A selection effect can be excluded using propensity-score matching. These findings suggest that concurrence of proximity, directional and discounting elements in the vote function is inherent to electoral competition.

Does ostracism affect party support? Comparative lessons and experimental evidence:

The success of anti-immigration parties (AIPs) in many European democracies poses a strategic problem for established actors: Immediate policy impact of AIPs can be averted by ostracizing them (i.e. refusing any cooperation), but this strategy may sway public opinion further in their favour. A comparative review shows large variation in the electoral trajectories of ostracized parties. We therefore propose a model of the context conditions that shape the repercussions of ostracism in public opinion. Under conditions that suggest substantial policy impact of an AIP were it to join a coalition government, ostracism should decrease the party’s electoral support. Vice versa, if context suggests strong “signaling” potential of an AIP if in opposition, ostracism should increase its support. To avoid apparent endogeneity of political context and party competition, the model is tested with a survey-embedded experiment on a representative sample from the Netherlands. Results confirm that ostracism is a double-edged strategy.

Information Behavior and Political Preferences

This article shows that citizens consider policy positions for the formation of their political preferences when they actively seek and find high-quality information, while they dismiss passively acquired and low-quality information. The study develops an extended theory of information and political preferences that incorporates the process of information acquisition and its connection with information quality. A novel experimental design separates the effects on political preferences due to information behavior as an activity from those due to selective exposure to information. The study applies this design in a laboratory experiment with a diverse group of participants using the example of issue voting and European integration in the context of the 2014 European Parliament elections.

The Company Makes the Feast. Party Constellations, Campaign Context and Issue Voting in Multi-party Systems

Political parties in multi-party systems find themselves in varying patterns of agreement and disagreement over contested issues with their competitors. This article investigates the cross-pressures on voting behavior emanating from constellations of party conflict that contradict voters’ preferences. We argue that the campaign context is a key moderator of citizens’ responses to this type of cross-pressure: Before the beginning of an election campaign, voters are more likely to process information about inconvenient party constellations and adjust their preferences. During an ongoing campaign, however, voters will discard such issue information in favor of pre-established preferences. We find support for our theory in an experimental study about issue conflict over the scope of European integration and voting behavior in Germany, on the occasion of the elections to the European Parliament in May 2014.