Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

Oktay, Sibel

doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12251

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Experimental research from DeScioli and Bokemper (2014) provides some support for this general relationship, while observational studies underscore the correlation between clarity of responsibility and blame attribution (e.g. Oktay, 2018;Wlezien & Soroka, 2011).…”

Section: Public Consultation Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Kevins

Vis

2021

Polit Behav

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Can public consultations—gatherings organised to solicit constituent opinions—reduce the blame attributed to elected representatives whose decisions end up backfiring? Using two pre-registered survey experiments conducted on nationally representative samples of US respondents, we examine whether the effectiveness of consultations as a blame avoidance tool may be shaped by: (1) consultation characteristics, especially regarding whether or not representatives align their policies, either actively or passively, with constituent opinion; and (2) elected representative and constituent characteristics, especially regarding a representative’s gender and constituents’ gender attitudes. Results suggest that public consultations are indeed liable to decrease blame attribution, just so long as constituent opinion is not explicitly opposed to the representative’s decision. Active alignment with constituent opinion, however, does not appear to be a requirement for decreased blame attribution—and effects related to gender and gender attitudes are also largely absent. These findings are important for scholars seeking to better understand blame attribution, clarifying how public consultations might help politicians to pre-empt blame by reducing clarity of responsibility.

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Section: Public Consultation Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Kevins

Vis

2021

Polit Behav

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“…Likewise, Beasley and Kaarbo (2014) show that multi-party coalitions limit voters’ ability to hold specific parties accountable, resulting in more extreme conflict behaviour. Governments with greater parliamentary control yield more moderate foreign policies, whereas coalition governments with divergent ideologies create opportunities for opposition party influence (Oktay, 2018b).…”

Section: Domestic Politics and Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polarisation, accountability, and interstate conflict

Gallop

Greene

2020

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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Voters constrain democratic leaders’ foreign policy decisions. Yet, studies show that elite polarisation restricts the choices available to voters, limiting their ability to punish or reward incumbent governments. Building on a comparative elections and accountability perspective, we hypothesise that the governing context moderates the effectiveness of domestic punishment and reward. The rise of elite polarisation in many democracies undermines voters’ ability to sanction leaders through elections. Linking data on international crises to domestic polarisation, we find that leaders are more likely to be involved in the initiation of inter-state disputes, resulting disputes will be more likely to result in prolonged conflict, and ultimately that foreign policy outcomes exhibit greater variance. Results from our analysis and extensive robustness checks demonstrate evidence that increased dispersion of preferences among key actors can lead to extreme and negative foreign policy outcomes as electoral mechanisms fail to reign in and hold governing parties to account.

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Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany

Groß¹,

Krauss

2019

German Politics

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When analysing coalition agreements, scholars mostly concentrate on those agreements that are written at the national level. However, there is also a considerable amount of coalition agreements that are written at sub-national levels. This paper analyses the commonalities and differences in coalition agreements in the German multi-level system at the national, regional and local level. From a legal jurisdiction perspective, one would expect that there are major differences across political levels in the topics covered in the agreements. From a multi-level governance perspective, however, one would additionally expect that government parties also devote their attention to policy domains that lie outside their realm of legislative decision-making. We take Germany as a prime example for a political system characterized by joint decision-making authorities within cooperative federalism. Combining data from the Political Documents Archive (www.polidoc.net) with newly data from the Local Manifesto Project (LMP; www.localpartymanifestos.de), we analyse nearly 200 coalition agreements at the national, regional and local level in Germany by applying quantitative text analysis techniques. The empirical results show that governing parties mostly talk about the policy areas they are legally responsible for. However, particularly local and regional governing parties also address issues that are primarily part of federal jurisdiction.

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Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

Cited by 6 publications

References 74 publications

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Polarisation, accountability, and interstate conflict

Topic Coverage of Coalition Agreements in Multi-Level Settings: The Case of Germany

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