The Awareness Paradox: (Why) Politicians Overestimate Citizens’ Awareness of Parliamentary Questions and Party Initiatives

Soontjens, Karolin

doi:10.1080/00344893.2020.1785538

Cited by 13 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The study focuses on understanding slum residents' influence over government policies affecting their livelihoods in Ghana, a developing country context. From the primary data, it shows that slums have an adequate understanding of policies, contrary to prior research (Soontjens, 2021). Particularly, education, health and pro-poor were mentioned.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 79%

“…The poor, according to respondents, were characterised by delays in stipend payments to beneficiaries, the need for an overhaul and miscommunication between coordinators and policy handlers. These findings largely depart from Soontjens (2021) study to the effect that policy actors undervalue citizens' knowledge of government policies and programmes. However, it agrees with Jones (2017), who found a mismatch between implemented policy and slum dwellers' daily practices.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 74%

“…Slums have been at the receiving end of governance, yet their foreknowledge of projects and programmes affecting their lives can significantly enhance policy outcomes. Soontjens (2021) reveals that policymakers consider citizens uninformed about government policy initiatives. Policy actors may often underestimate the importance of public understanding of policies within the governance space.…”

Section: Slums' Understanding Of Government Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How do slum dwellers influence policies affecting their lives? Perspectives from Ghanaian slums

Agyabeng¹,

Bawole²,

Ahenkan³

et al. 2023

OHI

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PurposeThe study examined the influence of slums on policies affecting the slums' lives in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews (IDIs) was used to select 24 respondents using purposive and snowball sampling techniques.FindingsThe findings show that slum dwellers have an adequate understanding of policies that affect the dwellers' lives. Furthermore, slum dwellers use statutory, technological, media and right-to-vote-based strategies to influence government policies. This also indicates that implemented policies do not align with realities in the slumsResearch limitations/implicationsThe outcome of this study cannot be generalised to represent the whole population of slums due to the inherent limitations associated with a qualitative designSocial implicationsThis study uncovers context-specific strategies through which slum residents influence policies. The study concedes that policy actors involve the slums in policies that affect their livelihoodsOriginality/valueThe results are unique not only to developing countries, but are also useful to other economies with similar characteristics.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 79%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 74%

Section: Slums' Understanding Of Government Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How do slum dwellers influence policies affecting their lives? Perspectives from Ghanaian slums

Agyabeng¹,

Bawole²,

Ahenkan³

et al. 2023

OHI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Second, parliamentary questions or speeches, previously used as proxies for politicians' issues emphasis, usually do not receive much public attention. In fact, politicians tend to over-estimate the influence of these channels (Soontjens, 2020). Third, politicians can state their policy preferences on social media platforms without institutional restrictions, such as speaker selection or limited speaking time in parliament (Proksch & Slapin, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and Political Agenda Setting

Gilardi

Gessler

Kubli

et al. 2021

Political Communication

151

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What is the role of social media in political agenda setting? Digital platforms have reduced the gatekeeping power of traditional media and, potentially, they have increased the capacity of various kinds of actors to shape the agenda. We study this question in the Swiss context by examining the connections between three agendas: the traditional media agenda, the social media agenda of parties, and the social media agenda of politicians. Specifically, we validate and apply supervised machine learning classifiers to categorize 2.78 million articles published in 84 newspapers, 6,500 tweets posted on official party accounts, and 210,000 tweets posted by politicians on their own accounts from January 2018 until December 2019. We first use the classifier to measure the salience of the four most relevant issues of the period: the environment, Europe, gender equality, and immigration. Then, using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach, we analyze the relationship between the three agendas. Results show that not only do the traditional media agenda, the social media agenda of parties, and the social media agenda of politicians influence one another but, overall, no agenda leads the others more than it is led by them. There is one important exception: for the environment issue, the social media agenda of parties is more predictive of the traditional media agenda than vice-versa. These findings underscore how closely different agendas are tied together, but also show that advocacy campaigns may play an important role in both constraining and enabling parties to push their specific agendas.

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“…A recent study in France shows that only about half of the citizens know the name of their representative (François & Navarro, 2020), which should not come as a surprise given the scant media attention most MPs, and especially backbenchers, receive (Bennett, 1996; Vos, 2014). It is not hard to imagine, then, that voters’ knowledge of individual MPs in party‐centred systems is even poorer, let alone that they would know what these MPs do in parliament (see Soontjens, 2020 for recent evidence on the absence of voter knowledge of parliamentary initiatives). Of course, based on this average score of voter awareness, we cannot claim that politicians believe that a significant proportion of voters is closely following their activities in parliament.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do politicians anticipate voter control? A comparative study of representatives’ accountability beliefs

Soontjens

2021

European J Political Res

Self Cite

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Representation literature is rife with the assumption that politicians are responsive to voter preferences because their re‐election is contingent upon the approval of those voters, approval that can be won by furthering their desires or, similarly, that can be threatened by ignoring their wishes. Hence, scholars argue that the anticipation of electoral accountability by politicians constitutes a crucial guarantor of (policy) responsiveness; as long as politicians believe that voters are aware of what they do and will take it into account on election day, they are expected to work hard at keeping these voters satisfied. If, on the other hand, politicians were to think what they say and do is inconsequential for citizens’ voting behaviour, they may see leeway to ignore their preferences. In this study, we therefore examine whether politicians anticipate electoral accountability in the first place. In particular, we ask 782 Members of Parliament in Belgium, Germany, Canada and Switzerland in a face‐to‐face survey about the anticipation of voter control; whether they believe that voters are aware of their behaviour in parliament and their personal policy positions, are able to evaluate the outcomes of their political work, and, finally, whether this knowledge affects their vote choice. We find that a sizable number of MPs believe that voters are aware of what they do and say and take that into account at the ballot box. Still, this general image of rather strong anticipation of voter control hides considerable variation; politicians in party‐centred systems (in Belgium and some politicians in Germany that are elected on closed party lists), anticipate less voter control compared to politicians in more candidate‐centred systems (Canada and Switzerland). Within these countries, we find that populist politicians are more convinced that voters know about their political actions and take this knowledge into account in elections; it seems that politicians who take pride in being close to voters (and their preferences), also feel more monitored by these voters. Finally, we show that politicians’ views of voter control do not reflect the likelihood that they might be held to account; politicians whose behaviour is more visible and whose policy profile should therefore be better known to voters do not feel the weight of voter control more strongly.

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The Awareness Paradox: (Why) Politicians Overestimate Citizens’ Awareness of Parliamentary Questions and Party Initiatives

Cited by 13 publications

References 29 publications

How do slum dwellers influence policies affecting their lives? Perspectives from Ghanaian slums

How do slum dwellers influence policies affecting their lives? Perspectives from Ghanaian slums

Social Media and Political Agenda Setting

Do politicians anticipate voter control? A comparative study of representatives’ accountability beliefs

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