scholarly journals Partisan bias in politicians’ perception of scandals

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882199802
Author(s):  
Nanna Lauritz Schönhage ◽  
Benny Geys
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
National Party ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Negative View ◽  
Local Politicians ◽  
Local Impact ◽  
Local Councillors ◽  
Local Party

Do politicians perceive scandals differently when they implicate members of their own party rather than another party? We address this question using a between-subject survey experiment, whereby we randomly assign UK local councillors (N = 2133) to vignettes describing a major national-level scandal in their own party versus another party. Our results show that local politicians perceive a significantly larger impact of this national scandal on the national party image when it concerns their own party (relative to another party). When evaluating the same scandal’s impact on the local party image, no similar effect is observed. This suggests that local politicians tone down the local impact of a national scandal more when thinking about their own party. We suggest this derives from a form of motivated reasoning whereby politicians selectively focus on information allowing a more negative view of direct electoral opponents. These findings arise independent of the type of scandal under consideration.

scholarly journals Afiliasi Partai Aceh Ke Partai Nasional (Studi Kasus: Keikutsertaan Kader Partai Aceh Dalam Partai Nasional Pada Pemilu Legislatif DPR RI 2019)

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Rahmad Saputra ◽  
Muradi Muradi ◽  
Leo Agustino
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Local Party

The purpose of this study is to look at how the relationship between local parties and national parties has not been revealed publicly, analyze the objectives of Aceh Party affiliation with national parties in the 2019 legislative elections and Analyze what strategies Aceh parties play in affiliating with national parties in the 2019 legislative elections. This study uses a qualitative approach with descriptive methods. Data collection techniques to be carried out in this study consisted of semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentation studies to find out the purpose of the political affiliation of Aceh party cadres to national parties. Through this research, it was found that the Aceh Party continues to strive to consistently fight for the interests of Aceh, especially in the issue of special autonomy that has not yet been realized. Then the Aceh Party as a local party that won the General Election in Aceh since 2009 has continued to try to maintain the acquisition of seats and expand the interests of the party, especially at the national level by placing its cadres in the national party.

Dilemmas of Distrust: Conspiracy Beliefs, Elite Rhetoric, and Motivated Reasoning

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110345
Author(s):  
Scott Radnitz
Keyword(s):  
Relative Weight ◽  
State Level ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
The Individual

Conspiracy theories are playing an increasingly prominent role worldwide in both political rhetoric and popular belief. Previous research has emphasized the individual-level factors behind conspiracy belief but paid less attention to the role of elite framing, while focusing mostly on domestic political contexts. This study assesses the relative weight of official conspiracy claims and motivated biases in producing conspiracy beliefs, in two countries where identities other than partisanship are salient: Georgia and Kazakhstan. I report the results of a survey experiment that depicts a possible conspiracy and varies the content of official claims and relevant contextual details. The results show that motivated reasoning stemming from state-level geopolitical identities is strongly associated with higher conspiracy belief, whereas official claims have little effect on people’s perceptions of conspiracy. Respondents who exhibit higher conspiracy ideation are more likely to perceive a conspiracy but do not weight motivated biases or official claims differently from people with lower conspiratorial predispositions. The findings indicate the importance of (geopolitical) identities in shaping conspiracy beliefs and highlight some of the constraints facing elites who seek to benefit from the use of conspiracy claims.

scholarly journals Why Do Policymakers Support Administrative Burdens? The Roles of Deservingness, Political Ideology, and Personal Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Baekgaard ◽  
Donald P Moynihan ◽  
Mette Kjærgaard Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Local Politicians

Abstract Administrative burdens affect peoples’ experience of public administration but there is, to date, limited evidence to as why policymakers are willing to accept and impose burdens. To address this gap, we draw from the policy design and administrative burden literatures to develop the concept of burden tolerance—the willingness of policymakers and people more generally to passively allow or actively impose state actions that result in others experiencing administrative burdens. Drawing on a survey experiment and observational data with Danish local politicians in a social welfare setting, we find that more right-wing politicians are more tolerant of burdens, but politicians are less willing to impose burdens on a welfare claimant perceived as being more deserving. Politicians with a personal experience of receiving welfare benefits themselves are less tolerant of burdens, while information about the psychological costs experienced by claimants did not reduce burden tolerance.

Experience in Choices for Decommissioning the Dounreay Site

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Catlow
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Local Population ◽  
National Level ◽  
Great Length ◽  
Green Party ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scottish National Party ◽  
The People ◽  
Nuclear Site ◽  
Local Politicians

The paper describes the public participation from the viewpoint of a stakeholder and member of the public. The dialogue between various members of the Dounreay Stakeholders Committee vary widely and do not always seem to represent the views of the wider public. Whilst great care has been taken to select various options for the ultimate condition of the Dounreay site and these have been discussed at great length and the preferred option selected by consensus, there still appears to be some conflict within the local community. It is probable that if the local population had to vote on the options for the future of the Dounreay nuclear site the outcome would be vastly different from that of the Stakeholders Committee. Whilst the politicians have been elected by the people, they represent a distinctly anti-nuclear view (even to the extent of decommissioning) whereas many local people (especially the workers on the Dounreay site) would prefer to see a continuation of nuclear activity at Dounreay. The problem is not only with local politicians but at national level in Scotland itself where the Scottish National Party has formed a coalition with the Green Party on condition all nuclear activities are phased out.

scholarly journals What Does It Take to Get Elected in a Post-Communist Democracy?

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siim Trumm
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Party Organisation ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
Local Party

The literature on post-communist democracies has traditionally suggested that organisational strength is considerably less important for electoral success than extensive media-based campaigns. Recent studies on party-level electoral dynamics, however, indicate that this might not be the case any longer. Building on these insights, this study goes beyond the party-level analyses of electoral success and failure by focusing on the electoral fortunes of individual candidates in a post-communist democracy. Using original data from the 2011 Estonian Candidate Survey, this article looks at the comparative impact of candidates’ campaign spending and the strength of their local party organisation, alongside other potentially relevant characteristics, on their likelihood of getting elected and vote share. The findings suggest that candidates’ electoral performance in Estonia is still first and foremost shaped by their own campaign spending. In addition, I find evidence that candidates fare better if they have prior local-level and national-level political experience, conduct more personalised campaigns, and are positioned higher up on their party’s district-level list.

Delinking National and Local Party Systems: New Parties in Japanese Local Elections

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Victor Leonard Hijino
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
National Level ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Intraparty Conflict ◽  
Local Party

Broader structural developments in Japan in the past two decades—decline of clientelist practices, partisan de-alignment, and decentralization—have dissolved traditionally close ties between national and local party systems, creating an environment conducive to the emergence of local parties. In this context, popular chief executives in four regions launched new parties. I trace how these parties emerged and how national parties reacted to them, from the appearance of the new-party leaders to the 2011 local elections. In comparing the four cases, two factors appear to shape their trajectories: the urbanness of their electoral environments and the responses of the two national parties at the local and the national level. In dealing with the new challengers, both the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan experienced considerable intraparty conflict and defections, indicating a process of delinking between national and local party systems.

scholarly journals Ideological Asymmetries in Motivated Reasoning and the Mechanisms of Attitude Polarization: A Two-Wave Survey Experiment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Morisi ◽  
Matthew H. Goldberg ◽  
John Jost
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Social Conformity ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Attitude Polarization ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Balanced Information ◽  
The U.S

Are there specific motives that lead individuals to become extreme in their political attitudes after exposure to information? Can these motives explain recent evidence that attitude polariza-tion occurs more on the conservative than the liberal side? We propose that two mechanisms, related to relational motives to engage in social conformity and epistemic motives to reduce uncertainty, might contribute to answering these questions. We used experimental manipula-tions to induce relational and epistemic motives in a two-wave survey experiment, in which we exposed participants to balanced information pertaining highly salient political issues in the U.S. Our results suggest that relational motives to maintain homogenous social networks are highly pertinent to how people, especially political conservatives, process information and make up their minds about important social and political issues. When exposed to social cues indicating where liberals and conservatives stand on specific issues, the two groups became fur-ther apart in their attitudes. Furthermore, we observed that, in the presence of social cues, con-servatives were more likely to develop extreme attitudes than liberals, triggering asymmetric polarization. Contrary to our predictions, however, we did not obtain consistent evidence of in-creased ideological polarization when epistemic motives to reduce uncertainty were present, although we found that conservatives (and not liberals) displayed a stronger confirmation bias in the evaluation of political arguments when uncertainty was high (compared to low).

scholarly journals Directional motives and different priors are observationally equivalent

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew T. Little
Keyword(s):  
Observational Studies ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Diagnostic Value ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Dynamic Setting ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Fully Bayesian ◽  
Practical Implications

Many experimental and observational studies use the way that subjects respond to information as evidence that partisan bias or directional motives influence (or do not influence) political beliefs. For a natural and tractable formulation belief formation with both accuracy and directional motives, this is not possible. Any subject influenced by directional motives has a "Fully Bayesian Equivalent" with identical beliefs upon observing any signal. As a result, comparing how individuals or groups with different partisanship or priors respond to information has no diagnostic value in detecting motivated reasoning, even in a multivariate or dynamic setting. Conversely, providing a ``Bayesian rationalization'' consistent with a pattern of updating is not meaningful evidence for a lack of directional motives. These results have theoretical implications for the convergence of beliefs among those with directional motives and practical implications for empirical studies that aim to detect directional motives.

What Does It Take to Fight Fake News? Testing the Influence of Political Knowledge, Media Literacy, and General Trust on Motivated Reasoning

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
Aleš Kudrnáč
Keyword(s):  
Media Literacy ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
General Trust ◽  
Literacy Training ◽  
Nationally Representative

This study explores youth accuracy judgments of disinformative and nondisinformative claims. Analyses are based on a nationally representative youth (16–20 years old) survey experiment conducted in the Czech Republic in 2017. When they were exposed to posts regarding refugee crisis, young people were asked to judge the accuracy of the statements accompanying the posts. Motivated reasoning of youth depended primarily on the alignment with the posts and the ideology of participants. Results of this research suggest that motivated reasoning works differently for liberals and conservatives. Perceived amount of media literacy training does not seem to affect directional motivation. General trust works as moderator of motivated reasoning and, in combination with ideology, appears to be important for understanding directional motivation when exposed to disinformation.

Multiple conceptions of sustainable urban water systems: problem or asset?

Water Policy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrika Palme
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
National Level ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Urban Water Systems ◽  
Local Politicians ◽  
Sustainability Challenges

This paper examines various conceptions that researchers and practitioners in the sector have about sustainable urban water systems, to discern what these conceptions are and whether they are complementary or divergent. The study is based on a literature review and field studies, including semi-structured interviews. The results show that the conceptions held by the various actors are largely complementary, the most important divergence between them concerning time. The time perspective of local politicians is shorter than that of researchers and practitioners. A long-term perspective needs to be reinforced in decision making and planning to encourage research and development (R&D) for both technology and organizational structures to be better able to meet the sustainability challenges that urban water systems face. This reinforcement partly concerns fostering better understanding between different groups of actors, for example, through the joint (re)development of visions of and strategies for sustainable development, but also concerns clarifying at the national level how R&D in the Swedish water sector should be organized and financed.

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