Political Attitudes and Party Preferences
This is a study that looks into how ideology and party preferences are interlinked, with an emphasis on questions about political affect. We are interested in how people feel about the major political parties of their country. Additionally, we are interested in the difference between young and old voters. We examine three countries, Greece, Romania, and Spain.
Researchers:
- Prof. Elias Dinas, EUI
- Dr Ksenia Northmore-Ball, QMUL
- Mr. Haoyu Zhai, EUI (research associate)
German Political Identity
This is a study of attitudes among the German public on a range of cultural, economic, and political topics. We are interested in how attitudes have shifted across generations and age-cohorts. Additionally, we are interested in differences between eastern and western Germany.
Researchers:
- Prof. Elias Dinas, EUI
- Prof. Vasiliki Fouka, Stanford
- Prof. Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard & WZB
Elite Cues and Norm Change
A growing literature looks at how the electoral success of anti-systemic politicias can lead to the erosion of established political norms, such those related to outgroup attitudes or democratic beliefs. Less is known about the role of mainstream politicians in this process. We look at the case of the mainstream right in Germany, the CDU, to see how references against immigrants can change beliefs about the appropriateness of public expressing anti-immigrant attitudes. The project builds on two survey experiments to test the role of elite cues on norm erosion and change in Germany.
Researchers:
- Mr. John Chua, Oxford
- Prof. Elias Dinas, EUI
- Dr. Vicente Valentim, Oxford
- Prof. Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard & WZB
Number of Parties and Quality of Democracy
Is the quality of democracy undermined or enhanced by party-system fragmentation? Addressing this question would help us better assess normative claims about electoral reforms. Yet, doing so is difficult because of endogeneity issues: party systems are endogenous to many other dynamics in a polity. We overcome this problem by putting forward an instrument for the number of parties in a system, based on the level of fragmentation added by parties that narrowly make it to parliament. We then test the effect of party-system fragmentation on the quality of democracy, drawing upon a large battery of outcomes. Running against previous literature, we find that a higher number of parties leads to more fractionalized gov- ernments, but has no impact on other democratic outcomes. Subsample analyses do suggest that fragmentation may have some effect in contexts of very high polarization, but we find no effect in other theoretically mean- ingful subsamples. Our results suggest that party-system fragmentation may have less normative implications than previously assumed.
Researchers:
- Prof. Elias Dinas, EUI
- Dr. Vicente Valentim, Oxford
Interrupted Continuities: Local History and Support for the Radical Right
A common, if implicit, assumption in the literature of historical legacies is that these follow a consistent pattern, either remaining constant or decaying over time. We propose an alternative, non-monotone, trajec- tory, whereby exogenous shocks can re-activate the signalling capacity of local history. We apply this theory of ‘interrupted continuities’ to explain the time-varying legacy of the Greek civil-war on the vote for the radical right. We argue that in contributing to the disintegration of the settled party structure, the 2009 economic crisis allowed past trauma to escape the fringes of local memory and regain political salience. Employing a within-province, cross-village research design, we show that anti-communism rooted in the civil-war predicts radical right support after, but not before, the crisis. In showing that a trauma’s political decay is not evidence of its healing, this study underlines the need for more robust justification when researchers select the historical timepoints under scrutiny.
Researchers:
- Prof. Elias Dinas, EUI
- Mrs. Elli Palaiologou, Oxford