1,720,960 research outputs found
Do voters support democracy at all costs? Input and output legitimacy in Australia and the United Kingdom
No full textAre voters willing to sacrifice democracy if they get everything else they want from their political leaders? Recent trends towards illiberalism in established democracies have called into question voters’ commitment to democratic values in the face of competing incentives like partisan identities and policy rewards. This article investigates whether voters tolerate breaches of democratic norms (input legitimacy) in the face of policy congruence with a potential leader (output legitimacy). Utilising a conjoint experiment fielded in Australia and the United Kingdom, we find that voters value both types of legitimacy but are prepared to forgo democratic governance (input legitimacy) for high levels of policy congruence (output legitimacy). This research contributes to the growing literature on democratic resilience and authoritarian leadership styles within democracies, showing that there is a danger of citizens trading away democratic principles even in seemingly stable and unchallenged democratic countries.</p
Using survey experiments for construct validation: “strong leader” questions and support for authoritarian leadership
No full textSurvey experiments are an increasingly popular tool for causal inference in political science. We argue that an under-utilized application for survey experiments is nomological/construct validation, where researchers evaluate whether indicators really measure systematized concepts. We demonstrate this approach by examining respondents’ preferences for autocratic leadership by asking whether those that say they want strong leaders who bend the rules or ignore parliament and elections really want undemocratic leadership in the context of an experimental task. While approaches that measure construct validity with observational data support the validity of these measures, our experimental data tell a different story. We find that respondents–even those who indicate a preference for “strong” leaders in survey questions–are less likely to choose hypothetical candidates who ignore democratic institutions and refuse to compromise with other parties. Our study contributes to the literatures on survey measurement and support for democracy and authoritarian values in established democracies.</p
White Identity, Political Elites and Political Behaviour in Canada
No full textSSHRC IDG awarded 2022: This research will identify (1) how white identity activation affects people’s political attitudes and behaviours; (2) which actors activate white identity, and how this can be mitigated; and (3) the mechanisms through which white identity activation takes place. We will conduct a mixedmethod study involving survey experiments and focus groups in Canada. Combining these two methods will allow for a deeper understanding of white identity activation at both the individual and group levels. The survey component of the project will use online experiments to identify (A) how white identity activation affects people’s attitudes towards policies that promote diversity, such as official multiculturalism and immigration; (B) whether politicians or interest groups most strongly activate white identity, and whether social desirability norms can mitigate this; and (C) how emotions and other attitudes mediate white identity activation. The focus groups will expose participants to similar tests as the surveys, but in a communal environment
Party Switching in the Canadian House of Commons
No full textThis thesis seeks to explain the phenomenon of party switching (or floor-crossing) in the understudied case of the Canadian House of Commons. It uses Müller and Strøm’s “Policy, Office or Votes?” framework at the individual level of analysis and a mixed methods approach that combines document analysis and econometrics to assess the effects of individual and institutional variables on the decision to switch parties. The results inform a wider discussion regarding individual political behavior as well as the role, influence and evolution of political parties in the Canadian state. The research demonstrates that the electorate is adept at recognizing opportunism and tends to respect MPs who switch parties on principle while punishing those that switch for more self-centered reasons
Alberta in transition: assessing gaps between public opinion and political culture
No full textSSHRC IG awarded 2023: A gulf has emerged between who Albertans are as individuals, and who they see themselves to be as a community. When asked which values animate provincial politics, most Albertans continue to describe the dominance of "wild west" notions like populism, western alienation, settler colonialism, frontier masculinity, bootstrap individualism, and the primacy of prosperity. In short, their perception of the typical Albertan remains static, gendered, and rooted in a "cowboy" past. When asked about their own political preferences, however, the average Albertan is far less conservative than this persona portrays. Albertans tend to be centrist, even progressive, when it comes to social issues like health care and inclusion. And socio-demographically, the province has shifted even further away from this "cowboy" image, becoming one of Canada's most urbanized and ethnically-diverse provinces. We will deploy a new series of panel surveys to determine whether Albertans are as alienated, conservative, individualistic, and populist as common wisdom suggests, while tracking individual-level changes throughout the early-post-pandemic period
Not All Experience is Created Equal: MP Career Typologies and Ministerial Appointments in the Canadian House of Commons, 1968-2015
Full text linkWhile there is widespread agreement in the ministerial promotion and resignation literature that experience matters, experience has typically been defined as the length of time a legislator has worked in politics or served in a legislature. This approach fails to account for the different kinds of experience legislators accumulate as they progress through their political careers prior to appointment to cabinet. We demonstrate how researchers can use sequence and cluster analysis to obtain a more complete understanding of ministerial appointment. We identify four data-driven archetypes of political careers in Canada for the period 1968-2015. We find that MPs with diverse political careers are more likely to be appointed to cabinet, while MPs with opposition experience are more successful than MPs with government experience. We also find that parliamentary secretary is not necessarily a stepping stone to a full cabinet position, calling into question traditional conceptions of parliamentary politics as a "ladder"
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
