scholarly journals Not all social cleavages are the same: On the relationship between religious diversity and party system fragmentation

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Party System ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
National Data ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Social Cleavage ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

AbstractMost studies examining the relationship between social cleavages and party system fragmentation maintain that higher levels of social diversity lead to greater party system fragmentation. However, most aggregate-level studies focus on one type of social cleavage: ethnic diversity. In order to develop a better understanding of how different cleavages impact electoral competition, this article considers another type of social cleavage: religious diversity. Contrary to previous literature, higher levels of religious diversity provide incentives for cross-religious cooperation, which in turn reduces party system fragmentation. Using a cross-national data set of elections from 1946–2011, the results show that, in contrast to most studies examining the effects of social cleavage diversity on the number of parties, higher religious diversity is associated with lower levels of party system fragmentation.

Linkage to the West and Electoral Manipulation

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992092010
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Bílek
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
National Data ◽  
The West ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Taking Action ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
International Linkage ◽  
Cross National

The relationship between linkage to the West and the survival of political regimes has gained increasing attention in recent years. Despite this attention, one aspect of this linkage remains poorly understood, and that is the effect of linkage to the West on electoral manipulation. Scholars have suggested that linkage to the West raises the cost of government abuse because it increases the probability of Western governments taking action in response to reported abuse. This assumption then suggests that incumbents should choose the forms of repression more wisely. Consequently, in cases of the higher level of linkage to the West incumbents are less likely to use the more visible forms of repression and manipulation. I test the aforementioned assumptions on time series, cross-national data set with observations of 147 elections in competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2010. I find that extensive international relations to the West have only minimal and statistically non-significant effect on visible forms of repression and manipulation. These results contribute to our understanding of international linkage as they show that linkage to the West does not provide sufficient protection to opposition leaders and groups.

Crowded Space, Fertile Ground: Party Entry and the Effective Number of Parties

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Kselman ◽  
Eleanor Neff Powell ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Effective Number ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties

This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status quo parties in the party system. This relationship weakens, and eventually disappears, as politicians’ emphasis on “office-seeking” motivations increases relative to their interest in public policy. We test these predictions with both aggregate electoral data in contemporary Europe and a data set on legislative volatility in Turkey, uncovering support for the argument that party system fragmentation should positively affect the likelihood of entry when policy-seeking motivations are relevant, but not otherwise.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Political Protests

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 485-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graig R. Klein ◽  
Patrick M. Regan
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
The State ◽  
Event Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Government Response ◽  
Political Protests ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Responses ◽  
Cross National

AbstractThe links between protests and state responses have taken on increased visibility in light of the Arab Spring movements. But we still have unanswered questions about the relationship between protest behaviors and responses by the state. We frame this in terms of concession and disruption costs. Costs are typically defined as government behaviors that impede dissidents’ capacity for collective action. We change this causal arrow and hypothesize how dissidents can generate costs that structure the government's response to a protest. By disaggregating costs along dimensions of concession and disruption we extend our understanding of protest behaviors and the conditions under which they are more (or less) effective. Utilizing a new cross-national protest-event data set, we test our theoretical expectations against protests from 1990 to 2014 and find that when protesters generate high concession costs, the state responds in a coercive manner. Conversely, high disruption costs encourage the state to accommodate demands. Our research provides substantial insights and inferences about the dynamics of government response to protest.

Census Enumeration and Group Conflict

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan S. Lieberman ◽  
Prerna Singh
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Study Analysis ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Global Data ◽  
Cross National

Does the enumeration of ethnic, racial, and/or religious categories on national household censuses increase the likelihood of conflict? The authors propose a theory of intergroup relations that emphasizes the conflictual effects of institutionalizing boundaries between social identity groups. The article investigates the relationship between counting and various forms of conflict with an original, global data set that classifies the type of enumeration used in more than one thousand census questionnaires in more than 150 countries spanning more than two centuries. Through a series of cross-national statistical analyses, the authors find a robust association between enumeration of ethnic cleavages on the census and various forms of competition and conflict, including violent ethnic civil war. The plausibility of the theory is further demonstrated through case study analysis of religious conflict in India.

Cross-National Examination of the Relationship Between Gender Equality and Female Homicide and Rape Victimization

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122095428
Author(s):  
Don Soo Chon ◽  
Janice E. Clifford
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Data Set ◽  
National Examination ◽  
Reporting Behaviors ◽  
Police Reporting ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

This study is the first cross-national work to examine the impact of gender equality on both female homicide and rape victimization. The data set from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was analyzed for 70 countries. Several gender equality measures were significantly and positively related to rape victimization, but were mostly not significant to female homicide. Findings for rape victimization were consistent with the backlash hypothesis, but such findings may be related to the limitations of police rape rates, such as different legal definitions and police-reporting behaviors across countries.

scholarly journals The Asymmetrical Effects of Economic Development on Consumption-based and Production-based Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1990 to 2014

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 237802311877362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaorui Huang ◽  
Andrew K. Jorgenson
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Domestic Product ◽  
Anthropogenic Emissions ◽  
National Data ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cross National

The authors examine the potentially asymmetrical relationship between economic development and consumption-based and production-based CO2 emissions. They decompose economic development into economic expansions and contractions, measured separately as increases and decreases in gross domestic product per capita, and examine their unique effects on emissions. Analyzing cross-national data from 1990 to 2014, the authors find no statistical evidence of asymmetry for the overall sample. However, for a sample restricted to nations with populations larger than 10 million, the authors observe a contraction-leaning asymmetry whereby the effects of economic contraction on both emissions outcomes are larger in magnitude than the effects of economic expansion. This difference in magnitude is more pronounced for consumption-based emissions than for production-based emissions. The authors provide tentative explanations for the variations in results across the different samples and emissions measures and underscore the need for more nuanced research and deeper theorization on potential asymmetry in the relationship between economic development and anthropogenic emissions.

The Comparative Analysis of Coalition Formation and Duration: Distinguishing Between-Country and Within-Country Effect

1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
System Level ◽  
National Data ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Minimal Winning Coalitions ◽  
Cross National

Dodd is generally credited with providing clear empirical support for the proposition that, in the period after the Second World War, minimal winning coalitions in European party governments will tend to last longer in office than non-minimal winning coalitions. There has been a considerable body of research on this and related questions. Dodd, as well as most other authors treating cabinet coalition formation, has attempted to model features of cabinet formation such as cabinet duration or cabinet type (e.g. minimal winning v. minority government v. oversized coalitions) largely or entirely using data pooled from all cabinets in each of a number of different countries over some considerable time period. One difficulty with this method is that system-level variables (such as number of parties, or the presence of large anti-system parties), which might be able to explain aggregate-level between-county variations in cabinet type or cabinet durability, are not likely to be the same variables that are useful in explaining within-country differences. A second difficulty is that certain system-level characteristics such as effective number of parties or number of cleavage dimensions are highly correlated with both cabinet type and cabinet duration and, as a consequence, these variables are highly correlated with one another when pooled cross-national data are used. Thus, if the analyst is not very careful, results of pooled cross-national data may lead to mistakes about causal structure and a confusion of within-country and between-country effects.

Translating Social Cleavages into Party Systems: The Significance of New Democracies

2002 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Zielinski
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Social Cleavage

This article focuses on new democracies in Eastern Europe and addresses two questions about the translation of social cleavages into political oppositions. The first question concerns the translation of preexisting cleavages: does the evolution of new party systems influence the politicization of social conflicts? The second question concerns the translation of new social cleavages, that is, cleavages that emerge once a party system freezes: can a new social cleavage be politicized? To answer these questions, the article integrates a formalization of social cleavage theory with a game-theoretic model of a new party system. The first result is that translation of preexisting cleavages depends on which parties survive the early rounds of electoral competition. In fact, depending on which parties survive, the axis of political conflict can shift by 90 degrees. This implies that party systems in new democracies should be seen as important founding moments, during which political actors determine the long-term axes of political conflict. The second result is that once a party system freezes, the politicization of a new social cleavage is difficult. Indeed, it is possible that a new social cleavage will remain politically dormant. In the context of Eastern Europe, this result suggests that political salience of class conflict is likely to be low because competitive elections and political parties predate the entrenchment of propertyowning classes.

scholarly journals The effects of district magnitude and social diversity on party system fragmentation in majoritarian systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-326
Author(s):  
Christopher D Raymond
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Social Diversity ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
District Magnitude ◽  
National Model ◽  
National Models ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

Cross-national models of party system fragmentation hold that social diversity and district magnitude interact: higher levels of district magnitude allow for greater expression of social diversity that leads to higher levels of party system fragmentation. Most models, however, ignore differences between majoritarian and proportional electoral rules, which may significantly alter the impact of district magnitude, as well as the way in which district magnitude impacts the translation of social cleavages into party system fragmentation. Examining the case of Singapore suggests majoritarian multimember districts limit party system fragmentation, particularly by reducing the degree to which ethnic and religious diversity are translated into political parties. Applying these insights to a standard cross-national model of party system fragmentation, the results suggest that majoritarian multimember districts produce lower levels of party system fragmentation than proportional multimember districts.

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