This essay examines the causes of government support for European integration. It evaluates several competing theories, both material and ideological. Two dependent variables are examined: government support for European integration in Council of Ministers decisions, and in the 1997 Amsterdam intergovernmental conference. There appear to be sharp differences between the two decision-making fora in the efficacy of predictive variables. In the Council of Ministers, left–right political ideology and financial transfers from the European Union to member states provide the best explanations. In the Amsterdam conference, experience in the Second World War and financial transfers provide the best explanations. This research extends our understanding of why governments choose co-operation within the European Union. It also extends our understanding of the relationship between ideology and integration preferences. Ideology matters not just to parties, but also to governments, which represent both territorial interests and ideologies. There appears to be a linear relationship, whereby left governments are more supportive of integration than right governments.

This article utilizes the statistical analysis of an original dataset of African legislative seat volatility levels and three case studies to demonstrate that the size and configuration of politically salient ethnic groups bear a strong relationship with patterns of legislative seat volatility in Africa. Legislative seat volatility is highest in countries where either no social group is large enough to form a majority on its own, or a majority group contains within itself a second smaller majority group; it is lowest in countries where one, and only one, group forms a majority. In contrast, most standard explanations for volatility, including variations in economic performance, democratic period of origin and democratic duration, do not appear relevant in the African context.

Some scholars use the ‘dynamic representation’ approach to test how much current policy changes reflect past public preferences. This article tests hypotheses derived from this approach in a left–right context for the United Kingdom from 1976 to 2006. This shows that government policy on the left–right scale shifts as public preferences change (‘rational anticipation’). Secondly, a public with right-wing preferences elects the Conservatives, who pursue right-wing policies in office (‘electoral turnover’). However, popular incumbents are less likely to adjust their policy position to the public. The Westminster system is criticized for its weak link between the rulers and the ruled, but dynamic representation on the left–right scale in the United Kingdom seems to have functioned admirably in this period.

Although the selection of candidates for elections to the national parliament is an important part of the political process, there is little writing on the way in which this is carried out in the Republic of Ireland. This no doubt springs largely from parties' reluctance to reveal details of this essentially internal matter. In Duverger's words, ‘parties do not like the odours of the electoral kitchen to spread to the outside world’.

We apply a dynamic perspective to forecasting votes and seats in British elections. Our vote model captures the swing of the electoral pendulum between the two major parties while using prime ministerial approval as the (sole) short-run predictor of vote choice. The seat model incorporates the inertia of the previous seat distribution while translating votes into seats. The models forecast the lead of one major party over the other (percentage for votes and number for seats). The statistical estimation includes data on British elections since 1945, although the test for cycles (swing of the electoral pendulum) goes as far back as 1832. The vote model picks the winner of every one of the 1945–2005 elections (out-of-sample forecasts) and is rarely off by more than 2 percentage points. The seat model does almost as well, rarely missing the seat lead by more than 25.

Geographical mobility is a striking characteristic of modern societies. Since migrants are often faced with social, economic and political changes which may affect their political behaviour, population movement is crucial to an understanding of politics.

Since the seminal studies of Stouffer and McClosky it has become accepted that political elites are markedly more committed to civil liberties and democratic values than is the public at large; so much so that political elites should be recognized, in McClosky's words, as ‘the major repositories of the public conscience and as carriers of the Creed’. The argument of this article is that previous analyses have erred by focusing on the contrast between elites taken as a whole and the mass public. The crucial contrast is not between elites and citizens, but rather between groups of elites that are competing one with another for political power.

Drawing on large-scale surveys of two modern democracies, Canada and the United States, this article demonstrates that differences among elites in support for civil liberties eclipse, both in size and political significance, differences between elites and citizens. The fallacy of democratic elitism, as this study shows, is its indifference to which elites prevail in the electoral competition for power.

Important articles in this Journal by Nownes in 2004 and Nownes and Lipinksi in 2005 demonstrate that ‘population ecology’ approaches are now central to interest group studies. Partly at least this move to study at population level is a consequence of the numbers of such organizations. Party scholars typically deal with far fewer cases and sui generis discussion is more defensible. Ecology seems to offer a ‘handle’ on the thousands of cases that exist in the interest group field. Nownes and Lipinski stressed the importance of environmental factors in determining group populations, and challenged group scholars to address the dynamics among interest group populations. This article argues that animal-based population ecology may be an imperfect analogy to use in making sense of group circumstances. It considers the way groups respond to opportunities and constraints.

Elections, the defining feature of representative democracy, are generally considered domestic matters. However, elections are increasingly influenced by and conducted on the international stage, and migrants have become increasingly important political actors in home country elections. This article analyses the relationship between migrants’ remittances and elections in their countries of origin, and argues that migrants’ decisions to remit reflect their home countries’ electoral calendars and political context. An analysis of remittance flows to eighty-one developing countries, 1990–2005, provides systematic evidence for the existence of political remittance cycles. Remittances increase in election years, an effect that is larger the more contested the election and the poorer the home country, suggesting an understudied link between developing countries’ domestic politics and their citizens living abroad.

Scholars and policy makers have displayed a longstanding interest in the politics of economic reform, particularly over the 1990s as former Communist countries struggled to develop market economies. Yet remarkably little systematic research has been conducted on the political economy of commercial reform in the post-Communist world. We argue that the fragmentation of power within post-Communist countries has been a potent force for trade liberalization. In non-democracies where political power is highly concentrated in the hands of a small group of elites, state leaders face few impediments to rent seeking and are well insulated from interests favouring commercial reform. In non-democracies where power is fragmented within the national government, however, new elites with weak ties to the old regime are well placed to use trade liberalization as a weapon against their political opponents. Moreover, the dispersion of power in non-democracies creates space for groups favouring free trade to promote trade liberalization. Finally, in democracies, the dispersion of power within the national government combined with electoral competition creates an especially potent impetus to trade liberalization. To assess these arguments, we analyse the trade policy of post-Communist countries during the period 1990–98. The results support our claims, highlighting the importance of examining institutional differences within as well as across regime types in analyses of economic policy.

This article extends the theory of government agency survival from separation of powers to parliamentary government systems. It evaluates expectations of increased risk to agencies following transitions in government, prime minister or departmental minister, and from incongruence between the originally establishing and currently overseeing political executive. Using survival models for UK executive agencies between 1989 and 2012, the study finds that politics trumps performance. Ministers seek to make their mark by terminating agencies created by previous ministers, which is reinforced by high media attention to the agency. Performance against agency targets is not associated with higher termination risk, and replacement agencies do not perform any better than those that were terminated. Financial autonomy provides some protection for agencies that are less dependent on budgetary appropriations.

Empirical studies of electoral competition and public policy in new democracies have been relatively underdeveloped. This article investigates the election-policy outcome link in a ‘hard case’ setting: South Korea in 1988–97. Contrary to expectations derived from the bureaucratic insulation or fiscal co-ordination argument, this study suggests a systematic impact of electoral competition on levels and distributive patterns of public spending. The analysis finds that levels of government expenditure increased according to the electoral calendar. Also, national subsidies tended to be allocated to ‘swing’ provinces in which electoral contests are competitive. The results of the analysis clearly show that fiscal policies in democratizing Korea are to a significant extent determined by electoral politics.

Religion can be a source of undemocratic attitudes but also a contributor to democratic norms. This article argues that different dimensions of religiosity generate contrasting effects on democratic attitudes through different mechanisms. The private aspect of religious belief is associated with traditional and survival values, which in turn decrease both overt and intrinsic support for democracy. The communal aspect of religious social behaviour increases political interest and trust in institutions, which in turn typically lead to more support for democracy. Results from multilevel path analyses using data from fifty-four countries from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey suggest there is some regularity in mechanisms responsible for the effect of religiosity on democratic support that extend beyond religious denomination.

Elite partisan polarization has been found to have several potentially problematic effects on citizens, such as creating political distrust and different types of polarization among partisans. However, it remains unclear whether these effects are caused by the parties moving apart in terms of issue positions (issue polarization) or by the rise of disrespectful rhetoric (incivility). In the literature, these two dimensions of elite polarization often appear to affect citizens in similar ways, but typical research designs have not been well suited to disentangling their effects. To determine their unique effects, four studies have been conducted using original designs and a mix of experimental and observational data. The results show that issue polarization and incivility have clearly distinct effects. A more uncivil tone lowers political trust, but increasing issue polarization does not. Conversely, only issue polarization creates attitude polarization among partisans. Both aspects of elite polarization create affective polarization.

In common with most other mass democratic parties the Conservative party has a large group of active members who sustain the party over time. A model is developed to explain variations in activism within the party, which takes account of the ‘paradox of participation’. The results, based on the first national random sample survey of Conservative party members, show that activism is motivated by three classes of factors. Activism is motivated, firstly, by a variety of selective incentives, such as ambitions for elective office. It is motivated, secondly, by a desire for the party to achieve policy goals. These are ‘collective goods’, which are subject to the problem of free-riding. However, since activists can influence policy outcomes, via their contacts with party leaders, they have high levels of personal efficacy and a direct incentive to participate, which can override the paradox of participation. Finally, activism is motivated by expressive concerns, as measured by the strength of the respondent's partisanship, a motivation for involvement which lies outside a narrowly cast rational choice model of political participation.

In districts where only one seat is contested, the electoral formula (plurality or majority) should be a major determinant of the number of parties that receive votes. Specifically, plurality rule should generate two-party competition while other institutional arrangements should generate electoral fragmentation. Yet tests of these propositions using district-level data have focused on a limited number of cases; they rarely contrast different electoral systems and have reached mixed conclusions. This study analyses district-level data from 6,745 single-member district election contests from 53 democratic countries to test the evidence for Duverger's Law and Hypothesis. Double-ballot majoritarian systems have large numbers of candidates, as predicted, but while the average outcome under plurality rule is generally consistent with two-party competition, it is not perfectly so. The two largest parties typically dominate the districts (generally receiving more than 90 per cent of the vote), and there is very little support for parties finishing fourth or worse. Yet third-place parties do not completely disappear, and ethnic divisions shape party fragmentation levels, even under plurality rule. Finally, institutional rules that generate multiparty systems elsewhere in the country increase electoral fragmentation in single-member plurality districts.

This book review examines the theory of populism advanced by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in Cultural Backlash. The authors offer a distinct explanation of the rise of authoritarian populism in advanced democracies. As societies become more liberal over time, older, more conservative cohorts feel under threat of losing majority status and allegedly turn towards authoritarian-populist parties that promise to stop the tide of liberalism. However, this theory of populism finds little empirical support. In contrast to what the authors argue, there is no polarization of attitudes between younger and older cohorts, and younger cohorts are more likely to vote for authoritarian-populist parties. To substantiate this claim, I replicate many of the analyses in Cultural Backlash and add additional ones with the newest wave of the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. I conclude by observing that while the cultural backlash theory of populism does not hold, this does not invalidate cultural approaches more generally.

Why has the American political landscape grown more partisan since the 1970s? This article provides a novel account of the determinants of partisanship. The author argues that partisanship is not only shaped by the traditionally suggested socio-economic factors, but also by the uncertainty of future income (risk exposure): rich individuals facing a high degree of risk exposure (or poor people facing low risk exposure) are ‘cross-pressured’; while their income suggests that they should identify with the Republicans, their income prospects make them sympathize with the Democrats. These two traits have overlapped increasingly since the 1970s. Those with lower incomes tend to be also those with higher risk exposure (risk inequality increased). This has led to a sorting of the American electorate: more citizens have become ‘natural’ partisans.

In their article ‘Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election’, Niemi, Whitten and Franklin claim that in the 1987 general election ‘about one in every six voters … had tactical considerations in mind in deciding whom to vote for’. As they point out, this figure is far higher than Heath et al.'s estimate of 6.5 per cent of major party voters having ‘a tactical motivation for their vote’. It is also far higher than estimates obtained by other analyses of the 1987 election using aggregate data. In this Note we point to methodological weaknesses in Niemi, Whitten and Franklin's article which indicate that their estimate is unlikely to be a valid measure of tactical voting, at least of the concept as customarily understood by political scientists. Indeed, when looked at carefully, the evidence they present to support their expanded estimate of tactical voting serves only to re-affirm the original claims of Heath and his colleagues and the other conservative estimates of the prevalence of tactical voting.

How do domestic and global factors shape governments’ capacity to issue debt in primary capital markets? Consistent with the ‘democratic advantage’, we identify domestic institutional mechanisms, including executive constraints and policy transparency, that facilitate debt issuance rather than electoral events. Most importantly, we argue that the democratic advantage is contingent: investors’ attention to domestic politics varies with conditions in global capital markets. When global financial liquidity is low, investors are risk-averse, and political risk constrains governments’ capacity to borrow. But when global markets are flush, investors are risk-tolerant and less sensitive to political risk. We support our argument with new data on 245,000 government bond issues in primary capital markets – the point at which governments’ costs of market access matter most – for 131 sovereign issuers (1990–2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of systemic factors, which are under-appreciated in much ‘open economy politics’ research, in determining access to capital markets.