Independent local lists (ILL) have become an important non-partisan actor in many local elections. However, little is known about which factors explain their electoral success. Drawing on recent contributions regarding the anti-establishment attitudes of many ILL, we argue that the rise of anti-establishment parties, especially the rise of populist radical-right parties, potentially harms the electoral success of ILL. Our main argument is that both actors attract voters that are dissatisfied with established parties. To test this hypothesis, we draw on the case of municipal elections in the German federal state of Lower Saxony. In the election of 2016, the populist radical-right party AfD competed in only a subset of all municipalities, meaning that some voters could cast their vote for the AfD in only some of the municipalities. We use a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the effect of the AfD on independent local list’s vote share and demonstrate that ILL suffered strongly from the entrance of the AfD to the electoral arena. More specifically, our findings demonstrate that the increase in the success of ILL was halted in municipalities in which the AfD competed, while it continued to increase in regions where the AfD was absent. These findings suggest that the increasing success of ILL is due to voters’ dissatisfaction with the established parties and not necessarily due to an increasing interest in local issues.
Has the COVID-19 pandemic caused early shifts in how citizens view constitutional power balances and policy tradeoffs? We conducted two survey experiments among 1192 Germans during the first week of lockdown. In a priming experiment, subjects were cued to think about the COVID-19 lockdown. While not affecting their ‘federal vs. state’ power balance preferences, this increased support for shifting power from parliaments toward governments. In a framing experiment, we traded a maximalist imperative for the state to take all measures to minimize casualties against long-term losses in economic wealth or civic freedoms. Support for this maximalist policy was somewhat lower when traded against freedom losses, but was unchanged among the youngest and oldest respondents. Support was substantially lower when traded against economic losses, especially among young respondents. These results document significant initial switches in mass preferences about democratic governance caused by the pandemic. They may also signal looming generational tensions.
Vaccine hesitancy is one of the major obstacles for successfully combating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve a sufficiently high vaccination rate, calls for compulsory vaccinations have been discussed controversially. This study analyses what drives citizens’ attitudes towards compulsory vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we are interested in the impact of party- and expert cues on public attitudes. We further expect populist attitudes to be an important indicator of the rejection of compulsory vaccination due to their scepticism towards science. To test these expectations, we rely on a cueing experiment conducted on a sample of 2265 German citizens. We test for the effects of in-party and out-party cues as well as public health expert cues. We find evidence for in-party cues, meaning that respondents adjust their position on this issue in the direction of their most preferred party. Similar results can be found for public health expert cues. However, there is no evidence for out-party cues. Further analyses reveal that support for compulsory vaccinations is not affected by left-right placement directly. Instead, only the combination of right-wing attitudes and populism negatively affects support for compulsory vaccination.
Die Verfügbarkeit kommunaler Wahldaten stellt im bundesdeutschen Kontext häufig noch eine Hürde für die empirische Wahl- und Policyforschung dar. Der in diesem Beitrag vorgestellte „NieKom“-Datensatz, bestehend aus einem scientific use file (https://uol.de/polsys/niekom) und einer Online-Informationsplattform (http://srvg03.offis.unioldenburg.de/niekom), möchte dazu beitragen, die kommunale Wahl- und Policyforschung für das Bundesland Niedersachsen auf eine breitere empirische Basis zu stellen und darüber hinaus ein Online-Informationsangebot für die politisch interessierte Öffentlichkeit zu bieten. „NieKom“ ist ein Multi-Panel-Datensatz, in dem erstmalig als Vollerhebung alle Wahlergebnisse aus den niedersächsischen Kommunen für alle relevanten Wahltypen (Gemeinde-, Kreis-, Europa-, Landtags- und Bundestagswahlen) im Zeitraum von 1974 bis 2017 abgebildet sind.
How are parties' ideological positions and levels of populism connected? Existing research either advocates for a U‐shaped relationship between parties' left‐right position and their degree of populism or uses specific dimensions of a two‐dimensional policy space to describe right‐wing populist parties. We provide an integrated perspective to describe parties' degree of populism by arguing that populism is higher when parties put strong emphasis on a collectivist host ideology. This has implications on how these ideologies relate to the two‐dimensional policy space. Combined with salience of policy dimensions, such a perspective allows for a better understanding of the occurrence of populism among right‐ and left‐wing populist parties. Using expert survey data on parties in Europe, we find strong and robust empirical support for the expected patterns.
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