Failed expectations: Quality of government and support for populist parties in Europe

Agerberg, Mattias

doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12203

Cited by 45 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Dahlberg and Holmberg (2014) argue that citizens' evaluation of how democracy works is substantially more affected by the presence of effective, impartial and professional governmental institutions than by things like ideological congruence between voters and representatives and different electoral system characteristics. Research also shows that corruption perceptions can affect external political efficacy (Kostadinova 2009), voter turnout (Stockemer et al 2013), and vote choice (Agerberg 2017). What implications does this research have for the relationship between education and political behavior?…”

Section: Corruption and Education In Democraciesmentioning

confidence: 82%

The Curse of Knowledge? Education, Corruption, and Politics

Agerberg

2018

Polit Behav

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Education has consistently been found to be positively related to political participation, electoral turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes and opinions. Previous research has, however, not sufficiently acknowledged the large existing between-and within-country variations in institutional quality when studying this relationship. This study asks the question: how do highly educated, well-informed, and critical citizens react to a political system with low-quality institutions; a system with high levels of corruption? Researchers have in recent years started to acknowledge corruption as a relevant factor in explaining democratic attitudes and behavior. However, how corruption interacts with individual characteristics in shaping political behavior is largely unexplored in the literature. This paper focuses on the interaction between corruption and education with regard to different political attitudes and democratic behavior. Using both individual-and country-level data from 31 democracies the results show that corruption thwarts many of the positive effects of education with regard to politics: The results indicate that when corruption is high, educated and politically sophisticated citizens are as likely as low-educated citizens to feel resignation with regard to formal political institutions. This, in turn, is likely to affect patterns of political participation among these citizens.

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Section: Corruption and Education In Democraciesmentioning

confidence: 82%

The Curse of Knowledge? Education, Corruption, and Politics

Agerberg

2018

Polit Behav

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“…Most of the world's countries suffer from corruption and poor quality of government (albeit, of course, to different degrees). 1 My main claim in this dissertation is that this matters for political life and for political behavior among citizens, in ways previously overlooked. As illustrated in the Brazilian example above, big corruption scandals can change the logic of politics and erode peoples' trust in politicians and the political system.…”

Section: Sammanfattning På Svenskamentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In this dissertation I identify three themes, based on a broad reading of previous research, that may serve as a point of departure for researchers thinking about the relationship between corruption/quality of government (QoG) and political behavior. The themes are, in brief: (1) corruption is something that people are deeply concerned about, (2) corruption and QoG shape the relationship between the individual and the state, (3) corruption and QoG affect citizens' belief about the capacity of the democratic state. The insights underlying these themes are under-appreciated in the political behavior-literature and have only recently started to become acknowledged as significant factors shaping indi-1 INTRODUCTION viduals' political thinking.…”

Section: Sammanfattning På Svenskamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Lesser Evil? Corruption Voting and the Importance of Clean Alternatives

Agerberg

2019

Comparative Political Studies

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Surveys show that citizens in all parts of the world have a strong distaste for corruption. At the same time, and contrary to the predictions of democratic theory, politicians involved in the most glaring abuse of public office often continue to receive electoral support. Using an original survey experiment conducted in Spain, this article explores a previously understudied aspect of this apparent paradox: the importance of viable and clean political alternatives. The results suggest that voters do punish political corruption when a clean alternative exists, even when the corrupt candidate is very appealing in other respects. However, when only given corrupt alternatives, respondents become much more likely to tolerate a candidate accused of corruption—even when given a convenient “no-choice” option. I discuss how these results can help us understand corruption voting and why some societies seem to be stuck in a high-corruption equilibrium.

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“…If economic pessimism is associated with a preference for dominant behaviour, as this research suggests, this may help us understand why voters in beleaguered economies (or economic sectors) sometimes find dominant and/or populist candidates appealing (Agerberg 2017). This relationship may be further intensified if additional sources of negative sentiment are present in the electorate, which could also increase the appeal of dominant leaders.…”

Section: It Is Clear That Yes and No Voters Believed Strikingly Diffementioning

confidence: 95%

Leadership perception in candidate faces: Scotland's unionists prefer dominant leaders, and so do nationalists – but only if they are economic pessimists

Knowles¹,

Little²

2019

Scottish Affairs

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Voters rely on many cues to make decisions about who to vote for, and the appearance of a potential leader can play an important part in this decision-making process. When choosing leaders, it is thought that voters make ‘fit-to-task’ voting decisions, for example, exhibiting a preference for masculine-looking leaders in hypothetical wartime scenarios, when masculine behavioural characteristics would be most valued. Here, we examine face preferences within a sample of Scottish voters during the campaign for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Subjects were presented with masculinised and feminised versions of faces in a forced-choice experimental task to select their preferred face in a hypothetical national election. No voters (those who voted to maintain the Union) chose more masculine-faced hypothetical leaders than Yes voters (those who voted in favour of an independent Scotland); effect sizes observed were medium. Within Yes voters, economic concern was related to a preference for masculine faces, but for No voters, economic outlook did not relate to face preferences. These findings underscore the importance of real-world socio-political contexts in psychology research, particularly that concerning the public perception of different leadership prototypes. Implications in the current Scottish context are discussed.

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Failed expectations: Quality of government and support for populist parties in Europe

Cited by 45 publications

References 57 publications

The Curse of Knowledge? Education, Corruption, and Politics

The Curse of Knowledge? Education, Corruption, and Politics

The Lesser Evil? Corruption Voting and the Importance of Clean Alternatives

Leadership perception in candidate faces: Scotland's unionists prefer dominant leaders, and so do nationalists – but only if they are economic pessimists

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