The Effects of Political Attitudes on Affective Polarization: Survey Evidence from 165 Elections

How do individual-level political attitudes influence affective polarization on a global scale? This article contributes to the debate on the social distance of party affect by testing a set of hypotheses in 165 elections across the world. With a sample of over 170,000 voters, the results of multilevel mixed-effects regressions demonstrate that ideological radicalism, political knowledge, and external efficacy substantively affect how voters see the main political parties in electoral disputes taking place in 52 countries from 1996 to 2019. Satisfaction with democracy, however, is context-dependent; it positively influences affective polarization only when generalized democratic satisfaction is low. Furthermore, I show that these correlations remain stable regardless of the operationalization of affective polarization—that is, based on two dominant parties and weighted for multiparty competition. These findings provide robust inputs to the study of party preferences and social distance in a cross-national longitudinal perspective.

Populist parties shifting the political discourse? A case study of the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article examines the use of populist discourse in South African politics. We investigate speeches of leaders from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). We find that the EFF consistently employs populist appeals, while both the incumbent ANC and official opposition DA largely refrain. Our longitudinal analysis allows an examination of fluctuation across party leaders and electoral cycles, and illustrates that neither the ANC nor the DA have modified their political discourses in light of a rising populist challenger. However, there is some evidence that the two most dominant parties have reformed their programmatic offerings and behaviour in an attempt to compete with the EFF's popular appeal. The South African case offers important insights into the study of oppositional populism on the African continent, and a window into how major political parties may respond to emerging populist contenders.

Non-Electoral Executive Turnover and Low-Capacity Democracy in Southern Africa

What do non-electoral turnovers tell us about the relationship between elections, executive turnover, and democratisation? Can they contribute to democratisation? To gain insight into these questions, we consider the experiences of Southern Africa. While transfers of executive authority have become commonplace in Southern Africa, they do not necessarily coincide with elections and rarely involve partisan turnover. Neither the mode nor the form of executive turnover corresponds clearly with prior assessments of democracy. This study examines recent non-electoral turnovers in Zimbabwe (November 2017), South Africa (February 2018), and Botswana (April 2018). This research finds that non-electoral transfers of presidential authority in Southern Africa represent efforts by dominant parties to manage factional conflicts and enhance their ability to benefit from incumbency in competitive elections. While non-electoral turnover in executive authority might promote democracy under some conditions, they do more to sustain dominant party rule and a stagnate level of low-capacity democracy.

Political Parties and Electoral Competition

Chapter 5 considers the effect of political mobilization efforts by political parties on the political activity of Latin America’s poorest citizens. Political parties play critical roles in mobilizing citizens in democracies, but we do not understand very well the conditions under which parties will focus their efforts on low-income individuals. This book’s framework emphasizes the organizational capacity and the electoral incentives parties have for mobilizing the poor to better understand who participates and in what kinds of activities. This chapter shows that where parties have greater organizational capacity and stronger linkages to groups in society, and where they face stiff electoral competition, poor people are more politically active, and we see more equal levels of political participation overall. The chapter also shows that dominant parties that win elections by wide margins tend to ignore the poorest citizens, even if they are leftist parties with strong rhetoric around poverty and inclusion.

Voice and Balancing in US Congressional Elections

If the median voter wrote the Constitution, every Tuesday would be Election Day. Consider the case of the United States: Halfway into a presidential term, congressional elections allow the people to adjust the course of federal policy. Two complementary mechanisms describe how this opportunity is embraced by centrists: a direct mechanism, which strengthens the out-party in Congress to “balance” the president’s policy impact, and an indirect mechanism, by which midterm voting serves to “voice” dissatisfaction as a signal to the president. A model of repeated elections unites the two mechanisms: whereas midterm balancing reacts to the preceding presidential election, midterm voice anticipates the following one. Using micro and macro data for all House elections from 1956 through 2018, I show that balancing and voice work hand in hand: it is those voters with both policy incentives who contribute most to the notorious “midterm loss,” and particularly so under circumstances that make balancing more necessary and voice more promising. Yet although policy-oriented behavior typically restrains dominant parties, it may also cushion the fall of unpopular administrations. Centrists can be creative.

Who’s donating? To whom? Why?

This article considers the data on donations to New Zealand political parties collected by the Electoral Commission. The purpose is to address who gets what, and why. Relatively small amounts are donated. A little may buy considerable influence. There is limited evidence of strong upward trends in political donations, suggesting a systemic equilibrium. The plurality of donations is received by unsuccessful parties, suggesting that money is insufficient for political success. Most donations come from individuals (mostly men) or families. Cross-political spectrum donations are mostly from businesses and to the two dominant parties, suggesting that businesses are trying to buy the ear of the major power in government.

Nomination Violence in Uganda’s National Resistance Movement

Institutional explanations of intra-party violence rarely address political economy dynamics shaping the institutions in question, and therefore they fail to understand their emergence and their stability. Specifically, focusing on institutional factors alone does not enable a nuanced understanding of candidate nomination violence and why some constituencies are peaceful while others are violent. This article theorizes nomination violence in dominant-party systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on political settlement theory, it examines the nature of nomination violence in Uganda’s October 2015 National Resistance Movement (NRM) primaries. We argue that the violence is a constitutive part of Uganda’s political settlement under the NRM. Nomination procedures remain weak in order for the NRM ruling elite to include multiple factions that compete for access while being able to intervene in the election process when needed. This means, in turn, that violence tends to become particularly prominent in constituencies characterized by proxy wars, where competition between local candidates is reinforced by a conflict among central-level elites in the president’s inner circle. We call for the proxy war thesis to be tested in case studies of other dominant parties’ nomination processes.

The Performance of Opposition Parties in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: Three Case Studies from the Western Balkans

This article investigates opposition to the competitive authoritarian regimes in Montenegro (1997–2020), North Macedonia (2006–2017), and Serbia (2012–). In each of the three countries, opposition parties face or have faced the challenge of competing on an electoral playing field that is structurally skewed in favour of the incumbent. The articles explore the question in which circumstances opposition parties have been able to contest the dominant parties. In doing so, it focuses on three dimensions, namely the relationship between spatial party competition, different levels of opposition cohesion or fragmentation, as well as extra-institutional strategies of contestation. The country comparison illustrates that party systems with cross-cutting cleavages tend to produce divided patterns of contestation (Montenegro and Serbia), whereas reinforcing cleavages facilitate the coordination among different types of opposition actors (North Macedonia). Finally, large protests, rather than boycotts, prior to elections have been important factors in facilitating opposition cohesion and signalling broad support (Montenegro and North Macedonia).

Beyond the core: Do ethnic parties ‘reach out’ in power-sharing systems?

While power-sharing arrangements are often commended for establishing peaceful relations between major ethnic groups, they are also criticised for excluding ‘Others’. Nevertheless, more complex forms of party competition can emerge in power-sharing systems, including parties representing the dominant communities (‘ethnic parties’) seeking to engage Others (‘non-dominant’ groups). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with parties from Northern Ireland, we examine the extent to which dominant parties reach beyond their core ethnic constituencies, how and why. We consider increasingly salient non-sectarian issues, such as marriage equality and abortion, and explore how ethnic parties have sought to respond to these debates. We consider whether liberal forms of power-sharing influence the willingness of dominant parties to advance inclusion of non-dominant groups. Our findings suggest that under favourable conditions, flexible power-sharing can create space for incremental moves by ethnic parties to reach out to constituencies beyond their core, gradually moving the system towards more inclusive representation.