scholarly journals Love, convenience, or respectability? Understanding the alliances of the Five Star Movement in the European Parliament

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edoardo Bressanelli ◽  
Margherita de Candia
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
National Level ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Strategic Objectives ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Liberal Group ◽  
Five Star Movement

The Five Star Movement (M5S) formed the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group when it first elected its members in the European Parliament (EP) in 2014. Two and a half years later, the M5S sought, without success, to leave the Eurosceptics and join the Liberal group. This attempted a change of transnational affiliation is puzzling: why has the M5S tried to leave the Eurosceptic group to ally with the most Europhile group in the EP? How could this U-turn be explained? Relying on several different data – the EUANDI party data set, official EP data, and original interviews with members of the EP – this article provides a systematic answer to these questions. We test three general hypotheses on group membership in the EP, using the M5S as a case study. We show that neither policy congruence nor the pursuit of office fully explains the M5S’s observed or attempted alliances. We suggest, instead, that ‘domestic politics’ is the key driver of the M5S’s behaviour in the EP. Political group membership is functional to the Movement’s strategic objectives at home. This article shows that national-level explanations of transnational affiliation need to be given more consideration, and highlights the ‘second-order’ importance of the EU arena with respect to ‘first-order’ national strategic objectives.

Discursive construction of an anti-immigration Europe by a Sweden Democrat in the European Parliament

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-439
Author(s):  
Kamber Güler
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Power ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Group

Discourses are mostly used by the elites as a means of controlling public discourse and hence, the public mind. In this way, they try to legitimate their ideology, values and norms in the society, which may result in social power abuse, dominance or inequality. The role of a critical discourse analyst is to understand and expose such abuses and inequalities. To this end, this paper is aimed at understanding and exposing the discursive construction of an anti-immigration Europe by the elites in the European Parliament (EP), through the example of Kristina Winberg, a member of the Sweden Democrats political party in Sweden and the political group of Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy in the EP. In the theoretical and methodological framework, the premises and strategies of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach of critical discourse analysis make it possible to achieve the aim of the paper.

Competing Principals and Non-Vote Decisions in the European Parliament

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-185
Author(s):  
Nuria Font
Keyword(s):  
European Parliament ◽  
Future Research ◽  
National Party ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Vote Outcome ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Competing Demands

Abstract This article analyses the effects of competing principals on legislators’ decisions not to vote in the European Parliament. We argue that Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are likely to decide not to vote to avoid defecting from either the national party or the European political group when both political principals disagree. Moreover, the article demonstrates that competing demands between principals interact with the expected closeness of a vote. MEPs are more likely to opt for not voting when they have few chances to influence the vote outcome and are torn between the two main principals. Based on a novel data set on individual votes in the 2009–2014 term, this article demonstrates that competing demands moderate the effect of the expected vote closeness on non-vote decisions and highlights the need to incorporate this type of legislative non-response in future research.

scholarly journals Calling referendums on domestic policies: how political elites and citizens differ

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergiu Gherghina ◽  
Nanuli Silagadze
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Institutional Variables ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Neighboring Country ◽  
Domestic Policies

AbstractMost national level referendums in Europe since 1793 are initiated either by political elites or by citizens. It remains unclear why these two types of initiators call for referendums. This article aims to explain under what circumstances political elites and citizens call referendums on domestic policies. The analysis is conducted at country level using an original data set that covers 461 national level referendums in Europe between 1793 and 2019. It tests the influence of four institutional variables that in theory are expected to have a divergent effect for the two types of initiators. The experience with direct democracy increases the likelihood to have referendums called by elites and reduces the incidence of citizen-initiated referendums. More authoritarian countries and longer time passed from referendums in a neighboring country explain why political elites initiate referendums. Coalition governments are more prone to citizen-initiated referendums on domestic policies compared to single-party governments.

scholarly journals When do parties put Europe in the centre? Evidence from the 2019 European Parliament election campaign

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110083
Author(s):  
Michaela Maier ◽  
Carlos Jalali ◽  
Jürgen Maier ◽  
Alessandro Nai ◽  
Sebastian Stier
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
National Level ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Integrated Model ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Media ◽  
Opposition Parties

European elections have been described as second-order phenomena for voters, the media, but also parties. Yet, since 2009, there exists evidence that not only voters, but also political parties assign increasing significance to European elections. While initially ‘issue entrepreneurs’ were held responsible for this development, the latest campaigns have raised the question of whether mainstream parties are finally also campaigning on European issues. In this article, we examine European Union (EU) salience in the 2019 European Parliament (EP) campaigns of government and opposition parties and the predictors of their strategic behaviours. We test the relevance of factors derived from the selective emphasis and the co-orientation approach within an integrated model of strategic campaign communication based on expert evaluations of 191 parties in 28 EU member states. Results show that the traditional expectation that government parties silence EU issues does not hold anymore; instead, the average EU salience of government and opposition parties is similar on the national level. The strongest predictors for a party’s decision to campaign on EU issues are the co-orientation towards the campaign agendas of competing parties, and party’s EU position.

New Evidence on Eastern Europe's Pollution Progress

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew E Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Sulfur Dioxide ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
National Level ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Local Public Good ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Good Improvement ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract Under communism, Eastern Europe's cities were significantly more polluted than their Western European counterparts. An unintended consequence of communism's decline is to improve urban environmental quality. This paper uses several new data sets to measure these gains. National level data are used to document the extent of convergence across nations in sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions. Based on a panel data set from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, ambient sulfur dioxide levels have fallen both because of composition and technique effects. The incidence of this local public good improvement is analyzed.

On en sont les partis politiques, au lendemain du 8 octobre 2000?

Res Publica ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-587
Author(s):  
William Fraeys
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Municipal Elections ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Green Parties ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Liberal Group ◽  
Regional Elections ◽  
Walloon Region

On October 8th 2000 municipal elections were held in Belgium to renew the local councils which had been elected in 1994. In the Walloon region and in Flanders in addition provincial elections were organised.  The aim of the article is to try and measure globally where the political forces stand after these elections and among others to assess whether significant swings have take place since june 13th, 1999, when the latest parliamentary and regional elections took place.  On the basis of an estimation of the global results in the municipal elections of the various parties in the Walloon region, in Flanders and in Brussels, backed up by the actual results of the provincial elections, one can say that the liberal group bas strengthened its first position.The Christian democrats, who make up the second most important political group and the Socialists, who rank third, have regained a large part of the losses they incurred onjune 13th, 1999.Although improving their results in comparison with 1994, the Green parties lost again part of their advance they registered in the parliamentary and regional elections and which had probably been boosted by the dioxin crisis.The frenchspeaking far right practically disappears, whereas the Vlaams Blok obtained an average of 15 % of the Flemish electorate in the municipal and provincial elections, a level which it had reached in the 1999 parliamentary elections.

scholarly journals Impact of socio-economic inequity in access to maternal health benefits in India: Evidence from Janani Suraksha Yojana using NFHS data

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. e0247935
Author(s):  
Prem Shankar Mishra ◽  
Karthick Veerapandian ◽  
Prashant Kumar Choudhary
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Health ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
National Level ◽  
Health Benefits ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Positive Sign ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Janani Suraksha Yojana ◽  
The Government

Background Caste plays a significant role in Indian society and it influences women to health care access in the community. The implementation of the maternal health benefits scheme in India is biased due to caste identity. In this context, the paper investigates access to Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) among social groups to establish that caste still plays a pivotal role in Indian society. Also, this paper aims to quantify the discrimination against Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) in accessing JSY. Methods This paper uses a national-level data set of both NFHS-3 (2005–06) and NFHS-4 (2015–16). Both descriptive statistics and the Fairlie decomposition econometric model have been used to measure the explained and unexplained differences in access to JSY between SCs/STs and non-SCs/STs groups. Results Overall, the total coverage of JSY in India is still, 36.4%. Further, it is found that 72% of access to JSY is explained by endowment variables. The remaining unexplained percentage (28%) indicates that there is caste discrimination (inequity associated social-discrimination) against SCs/STs in access to JSY. The highest difference (54%) between SCs/STs and non-SCs/STs in access to JSY comes from the wealth quintile, with the positive sign indicating that the gap between the two social groups is widening. Discussion and conclusion It is necessary for the government to implement a better way to counter the caste-based discrimination in access to maternal health benefits scheme. In this regard, ASHA and Anganwadi workers must be trained to reduce the influence of dominant caste groups as well as they must be recruited from the same community to identify the right beneficiaries of JSY and in order to reduce inequity associated with social-discrimination.

scholarly journals Homelessness and health needs in Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiao Song ◽  
Charlotte Grey ◽  
Louise Woodfine ◽  
Alisha Davies
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Substance Misuse ◽  
National Level ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Mental Wellbeing ◽  
Study Cohort ◽  
Homeless Individual ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Routinely Collected Health Data ◽  
And Control

Background Public Health Wales developed its long-term strategy with the purpose of ‘Working to Achieve a Healthier Future for Wales’. This study is motivated by one of the strategic priorities, ‘Influencing the wider determinants of health’ with an emphasis on homelessness prevention. Main AimTo understand health needs of homeless health service users from routinely collected health data in Wales. To quantify the corresponding differences from general population. MethodsScoping work has completed collaborating with academic researchers, third sectors, clinical professionals, Office for National Statistics, and housing stats of Welsh Government. To construct study cohort, we will perform linkage exercise among Annual District Death Extract, Emergency Department Data Set, Outpatient Dataset for Wales, Patient Episode Database for Wales, Substance Misuse Data Set and Welsh Longitudinal General Practice dataset (from 2007 to 2018) stored in Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. Study cohort includes all patients with an indication (i.e. clinical codes) of homelessness in their registration information and/or health records. We propose to adapt propensity score matching to construct matched case and control groups. This method will assign each homeless individual to individual without homeless flag with same or similar propensity score. We will then proceed to test for the significance of the homelessness and each health and wellbeing indicators (i.e. physical health, mental wellbeing and substance misuse) in the presence of confounders, and estimate the effects of homelessness on these indicators. ResultsThis study will demonstrate how linked data provide a more comprehensive review of the health needs of a vulnerable population, the homeless groups in Wales, and be able to explore changes over time. ConclusionThe relationship between homelessness and health issues is bi-directional. Findings from this study will have implications for health, housing, social, and homelessness policy at both local and national level; as well as contributing to the ability to providing tailored health services to targeted homeless populations groups.

A time-based method for defining associations using photo-identification

Behaviour ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 154 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 1029-1050 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.R. Johnston ◽  
W. Rayment ◽  
E. Slooten ◽  
S.M. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Tursiops Truncatus ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Bottlenose Dolphins ◽  
Digital Photography ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Association Analyses ◽  
Photo Identification

Photo-identification is an invaluable method for documenting associations. Based on the assumption that individuals photographed close together in time are physically close in space, the metadata associated with digital photography offers an opportunity to base association analyses on time between images. This was tested via analysis of associations within a population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. We compared the widely used group-membership method and an alternative time-based method. Overall social structures between methods were similar; high degrees of association among all individuals and little support for sub-groups. Results also indicated an increase in the precision of pairwise indices for the time-based method. This study validated the approach of using time as a basis for analyses of associations. Importantly, this method can be retrospectively applied to any photo-ID data set in which images of uniquely identifiable individuals are time-stamped by the camera.

scholarly journals The Political Economy of Bilateral Bailouts

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina J. Schneider ◽  
Jennifer L. Tobin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Trade Offs

AbstractIMF loans during times of financial crisis often occur in conjunction with bilateral financial rescues. These bilateral bailouts are substantial in size and a central component of international cooperation during financial crises. We analyze the political economy of bilateral bailouts and study the trade-offs that potential creditor governments experience when other countries find themselves in financial distress. Creditor governments want to stabilize crisis countries by providing additional liquidity, particularly if the crisis country is economically or politically important to them, but they are constrained by domestic politics. Politicians aim to balance these countervailing pressures. They provide bailouts when their own economy is exposed to negative spillover effects and when the crisis country is important for geostrategic, military, or political reasons. Domestic economic and political constraints, on the other hand, limit their ability to bail out other countries. We test our hypotheses using an original data set on bilateral bailouts by the G7 countries to countries that experienced financial crises between 1975 and 2010. The findings of our statistical analysis support our theoretical argument and contribute to a deeper understanding of international cooperation's complex structure during financial crises.

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