Modern democratic theory stresses the need for citizens to be able to think in abstract ways about political objects and the political system. The underlying assumption is that those with a richer guiding conceptual framework participate more, monitor and process fresh stimuli in a more systematic fashion, and are less bewildered by a complicated political environment. These are generally conceded to be good qualities for the citizen and the state. To observe that women have a less developed sense of ideological sophistication is to conclude that their political lives are at least different, if not indeed more impoverished.

This article examines whether voters’ use of the internet as a source of political news affects the extent to which they are certain of their vote choice in national-level elections. It employs data pertaining to the 2011 general election in Ireland, linking geographical information on broadband coverage with individual-level public opinion data from the 2011 Irish National Election Study. The resultant dataset allows the adoption of a quasi-experimental approach in our examination of the effects of online political newsgathering on voters’ electoral uncertainty. Implementing instrumental variables, the study finds consistent evidence of a causal relationship between the use of the internet as a source of political information and increased levels of political uncertainty among voters, ceteris paribus. These findings are robust to a range of model specifications and alternative operationalizations of dependent and independent variables.

Both the classical Romans and the classical Fascists of Mussolini referred to the Mediterranean as Mare Nostrum, ‘our sea’. The rugged peninsula of Italy cuts the sea in half, making Italy, at least by geography, a Mediterranean country. At the same time, it is a European country, a central actor in the long history of both the Mediterranean and Europe. When the center of Europe gravitated toward that sea, the peninsula was near the center of the world and Italy was a major link between Europe and the Middle East, North Africa, and the Moslem world. As the focus of Europe moved north and west, Italy became more marginal; but as a Catholic country it remained oriented largely to Europe. The Christian and Moslem sides of the Mediterranean developed in different directions.

In Part III of A Theory of Justice John Rawls asks whether we can show that the disposition to act justly is congruent with the good of the agent who cultivates it. His answer to the problem of congruence has been widely criticized, and Rawls himself now seems to think that this part of A Theory of Justice is defective because the Kantian interpretation implies a comprehensive conception of the good. This article questions that conclusion, and aims to show how the analogy between love and justice can be developed in a way which ensures congruence without implying comprehensiveness. The case of love provides a sense in which our good is neither a function of immediate desires, nor something entirely independent of desire. By showing how congruence is possible it answers the motivational question which lies at the heart of Part III and also promises a richer understanding of what is involved in cultivating the disposition to justice.

When one political party gains control of American national governing institutions, it increases the prospects of enacting its policy agenda. Faced with this partisan misalignment, the authors expect state governments controlled by the national out-party to respond to the national partisan context with more state policy activism. The study examines changes in state policy liberalism from 1974 to 2019, and finds that both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states have pushed policy further in their preferred ideological directions when the opposing party has greater partisan control over the national policy agenda in Washington. It also identifies differences between the two parties. While the effect of Republican control modestly increases as Democrats gain power at the national level, Democratic-controlled states have shown dramatically larger shifts in policy liberalism during periods of Republican national control. This arrangement, however, appears to be a contemporary one, emerging in the more polarized political environment since the mid-1990s.

Realist and liberal theories of international politics both assume that the essential parameters of international politics are fixed, though they differ as to the character of these parameters. We deploy decision psychology and discourse analysis to show how the seemingly limited choices of actors can and do affect these parameters. Thus realism and liberalism are poor guides to action, for they rest on empirical misconception and faulty logic. Intelligent international action is reflexive in that it attends to the world that actions help constitute, as well as take effect within. We show how actors can and do engage in reflexive action, and how they might do so more consciously and effectively. There are substantial implications for how states and other actors ought to behave in the post-Cold War world.

This article considers the role of principles in perceptions of what constitutes acceptable rhetoric in election campaigns. Previous research suggests that citizens use principles of what is an acceptable attack in campaigns when evaluating charges and countercharges, while acknowledging that under some circumstances citizens accept rhetoric that would seem to breach their principles. This research has not adequately considered how partisanship can affect a respondent's proclivity to call upon principles in assessing campaign rhetoric. This article draws on three original surveys to test competing models of the role of partisanship and finds robust results in support of a strong partisan bias. It concludes that it is not that citizens are resilient to violations of their principles, but that nearly the opposite is the case: citizens’ sensitivity to attacks on their preferred candidate leads them to take a very partial view of when to apply their principles faithfully to a judgment and when not to.

One of the complaints most frequently raised against modern empirical political science is that it overemphasizes political inputs (such as voting behavior) and pays insufficient attention to political outputs (such as allocation of resources). In response to this complaint, a number of political scientists in recent years have focused their attention on the question of whether variations in political inputs are much related to variations in outputs. A considerable literature has grown up around this question, particularly focusing on relationships between variations in electoral competitiveness and variations in public spending patterns across a range of different political systems. Because they are different yet comparable, American states have been the setting for much of this research. In addition to the state policy outputs literature, investigations have been undertaken of variations in outputs among differing jurisdictions within a metropolitan area and between variations in outputs and differing types of city organizational structure. The focus of the research reported on here is somewhat different. Rather than looking at variations between political systems, we focus here on variations within political systems. Without dealing with all of the literature alluded to above, and the myriad criticisms that each attempt has spawned, it seems fair to say that the general conclusion of most researchers has been that political characteristics account for little of the variation in output between political systems, and that variation in levels of wealth is usually a far more powerful predictor. Such a conclusion, however, does not relate to the possible impact of politics on allocational decisions within a single jurisdiction. While the City

Although research on the welfare state is fundamentally comparative and cross-national, empirical observation of the peculiarities of the American case has structured much of the thinking on the subject. Explaining variations in welfare state policy usually begins with the identification of cross-national variations in the initiation, scope or size of national social service programs such as social security, workman's compensation, unemployment insurance, national medical care and public housing. The coverage of the programs that have been established, the number of programs and the size of the benefits distributed are typically found to be smaller in the United States than in other industrialized democracies. The relative lateness of the United States' adoption of major social welfare programs, along with the low percentage of either Gross National Product or government revenue expended in social service programs, constitutes clear evidence that the welfare state is a function of more than the level of national economic development. To the extent that welfare state research devotes itself to explaining the extreme variations represented by American policy performance, its theory often derives from interpretations made of corresponding peculiarities of American popular ideology, social structure, political institutions and history. As a consequence, explaining the welfare state often depends on how one explains America.

This article seeks to show that the rights which protect people's autonomy should be entrenched in the constitution of a democratic state. It is firmly located in egalitarian liberal tradition, as it takes for valid the following claims: (1) people have a fundamental interest in autonomy; (2) people have rights that their interest in autonomy, and the interests to which it gives rise, be protected and promoted; (3) people's respective interests in autonomy must be protected equally. The argument for a bill of rights unfolds as follows: first, it is argued that we have autonomy-protecting rights not only against private individuals but also against the state, and the meaning of having such rights against the state is explained; then it is shown that it is legitimate to turn certain autonomy-protecting moral rights into legal rights, and that doing so in the case of the rights we have against the state amounts to turning them into constitutional rights; lastly, two objections to the argument deployed earlier are countered.

Scholars often observe that the foreign policies of states are not made in a vacuum but rather are determined or moulded to a significant degree by the external and internal actions of rivals. Domestic unrest is often considered a potential impetus for changing strategic behaviour. Leaders may be tempted to employ force externally to divert attention away from domestic unrest. The intended result is a ‘rally round the flag’ effect that culminates in higher approval/support for the executive as citizens forget about domestic problems and pay attention to a common adversary. One implication of this sort of ‘diversion’ is that potential scapegoats might employ strategic behaviour to avoid becoming a diversionary target. In other words, when they witness domestic unrest in a rival state, they worry that the rival may lash out at them and thus engage in ‘strategic avoidance’.

Conversely, strategic behaviour may lead to a greater chance that the potential ‘diverter’ will itself be targeted for hostile behaviour. Erstwhile scapegoats may view periods of social unrest such as elections, domestic political protests or unstable cabinet structures in the other country as convenient and favourable times to escalate hostility. Such situations are viewed as opportunities that are ripe for exploitation.

Alastair Smith's work has been extended to both the US case and a comparative cross-national study. Our purpose here is to extend this line of inquiry by looking at a region of the world locked in a long-term hostile relationship; namely, the Middle East. Our approach builds upon previous research that addresses the strategic interaction of enduring rivals.

Comparative analyses of party policy diffusion are only just emerging. To better understand the conditions under which diffusion occurs, this article argues that three heuristics – availability, representativeness and anchoring – shape parties' efforts to gather information (from elsewhere), leading to differing diffusion effects. The study operationalizes the outcome as textual similarity of party manifestos in nineteen Western democracies from 1960 to 2016, applying a text-as-data approach and machine translation. Analyzing dyads, it assesses how commonalities and sender/receiver attributes impact diffusion. It finds that there is little room for cross-border diffusion as successful parties stick to their old program. Beyond the still-prevailing domestic context, ‘learning from cultural reference groups’ in a region is most important. In addition, diffusion appears within EP factions and transnational party organizations independently of the success/loss of the sender. The analysis thus sheds light on (un-)favorable conditions for party policy diffusion and paves the way for future studies applying machine translation and quantitative text analyses.

Siblings are a potentially important source of political socialization. Influence is common, especially among younger siblings and those close in age, who tend to interact most frequently. This suggests that the positions of an individual's next-older sibling will hold particular sway. In policy questions with a gender gap, then, those whose immediately older sibling is a sister will be more likely to absorb the typically female preference; those born after a brother, the male preference. Evidence from the United States shows that this pattern holds for general left–right orientation as well as for the preferred balance between public and private sectors. Just as American women are more likely to lean left and to see government intervention positively, so are Americans whose next-older sibling is female.

No event in recent times was more unexpected than the assassination of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, shortly before midnight on 28 February 1986. The murder sent a shock wave throughout the Western world, especially, of course, among Swedish citizens. By noon the next day, virtually all Swedes had learned about his death. People in Sweden displayed their emotions publicly in an unprecedented manner. Church attendance, which had dwindled for decades, suddenly, albeit temporarily, soared.

The purpose of this brief note has been to test the behavioural postulates of the neighbourhood effect. The results do not support the construction that minority voters are converted to the majority view by local information flows. These findings suggest the model of the neighbourhood effect needs to be amended and that alternative explanations of the polarization trends need to be examined more closely.

Elections to the Irish presidency belong to the category of those in which hardly any political power is involved. In elections such as this one, according to second-order election theory, voter behaviour reflects mainly preferences in the first-order political arena, where actual policy is made. This theory fails, however, to explain voter preferences in the 1997 Irish presidential elections. An alternative perspective of a popularity contest, suggesting that voters' preferences are largely unconnected to their political opinions, and generally idiosyncratic in nature, also fails to fit the evidence. Nevertheless, the information, framing and priming that voters were subjected to during the 1997 campaign are shown here to result in the development of a significant unidimensional cognitive and preferential ordering of the candidates.

What motivates citizens to vote or abstain from voting? What determines vote choice? Models of turnout predominantly focus on a series of factors that affect perceptions of the benefits and costs of voting. The economy's influence on those perceptions has gone largely undeveloped. Models of vote choice routinely account for economic influences while ignoring turnout. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the role of the economy as mobilizer and demobilizer. I argue that the economy has an impact on turnout decisions and that its impact is asymmetric. All else equal, the incumbent party is able to mobilize more supporters, relative to the non-incumbent party, in good economic times and more supporters are demobilized in adverse economic times. However, Democrats and Republicans are not sensitive to the same elements of economic performance. This is in part a function of the way in which the economy influences perceptions of the closeness of the impending election and of the candidates and their parties. Analysis of pooled data from ANES surveys for the twelve presidential elections from 1956 to 2000 confirms the validity of these arguments.

This article seeks to shed light on the scarcity of public child daycare provision in Britain. Following a brief account of the development of policy since the Second World War, it notes the institutional and discursive fragmentation of the process through which child-care policy has been resolved. However, it concentrates on the way that process has been shaped by the intersection of two variables, the type of issue constituted by child care and the British national policy-making style. It argues that public child-care provision is both a ‘redistributive’ issue, and as such particularly unappealing to recent Conservative governments, and an issue that concerns the family, invoking an ‘ideology of motherhood’. Moreover, national policy style has entailed a reluctance to intervene either in the labour market or in the ‘private’ family sphere. This combination of issue type and policy-making tradition has conspired to marginalize child care on the national policy agenda.