Discrepant Electorates: The Inclusiveness of Electorates and Its Impact on the Representation of Citizens

This article addresses the democratically fundamental question of the inclusiveness of electorates and of its impact on citizens' representation. While the literature has focussed on the congruence between voters and representatives, it has neglected congruence issues between citizens and representatives. The article investigates comparatively this source of newly disenfranchised citizens in a globalised society with increasing mobility. On the one hand, electoral laws vary in their inclusion or exclusion of emigrants and in the right to vote to non-national residents (immigrants). On the other hand, naturalisation laws vary in the maintenance of nationality for nationals abroad (emigrants) and in their inclusion of non-national residents. We illustrate levels of ‘discrepancy' between electorate and citizenship in 22 OECD countries qualitatively, by presenting differences of electoral and nationality laws, and quantitatively, by comparing the size of citizenship with that of the electorate, and the national and resident populations. We show that shifts between political and national communities are primarily due to naturalisation laws and that electoral laws have so far been unable to correct for the discrepanc

The Health–Economy Divide: A Structural Analysis of Sectoral Affectedness and Covid-19 Policy Preferences in Europe

The Covid-19 health emergency and the resulting economic crisis hit European societies asymmetrically, which led to divergent preferences over the policies addressing the emergency. This paper analyses how different economic sectors were affected based on the “essentiality” and “physicality” of their activities, and how the level of affectedness--job losses, furloughs, decreased working hours and salaries--opposed the interests in favour of reopening the economy against the lockdowns dictated by health concerns. We combine a structural approach with an examination of the impact of party identification on citizens’ preferences, and posit that the parties that mobilise groups negatively affected by previous crises take positions toward the economic end of the continuum, in line with the preferences of an electorate that has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Our explanatory models integrate other structural (age, education) and political (trust, attitudes on expertise) factors in an effort to assess if the health–economy divide reordered the European cleavage structure towards material, rather than cultural and post-material, concerns

Discrepant Electorates: The Inclusiveness of Electorates and Its Impact on the Representation of Citizens

Abstract: This paper addresses the democratically fundamental question of the inclusiveness of electorates and of its impact on citizens' representation. While the literature has focussed on the congruence between voters and representatives, it has neglected congruence issues between citizens and representatives. The paper investigates comparatively this bias and source of newly disenfranchised citizens in a globalised society with increasing mobility. On the one hand, electoral laws vary in their inclusion or exclusion of expatriates (emigrants) and in the right to vote to non-national residents (immigrants). On the other hand, naturalisation laws vary in the maintenance of nationality for expatriates and in their inclusion of non-national residents . We illustrate levels of "discrepancy" between electorate and citizenship in 22 OECD countries qualitatively, by presenting differences of electoral and nationality laws, and quantitatively, by comparing the size of citizenship with that of the electorate, and the national and resident populations. We show that shifts between political and national communities are primarily due to naturalisation laws and that electoral laws have so far been unable to correct for the discrepancy.

The health-economy divide : a structural analysis of sectoral affectedness and Covid-19 policy preferences in Europe

Published online: 12 September 2023The Covid-19 health emergency and the resulting economic crisis hit European societies asymmetrically, which led to divergent preferences over the policies addressing the emergency. This paper analyses how different economic sectors were affected based on the “essentiality” and “physicality” of their activities, and how the level of affectedness–job losses, furloughs, decreased working hours and salaries–opposed the interests in favour of reopening the economy against the lockdowns dictated by health concerns. We combine a structural approach with an examination of the impact of party identification on citizens’ preferences, and posit that the parties that mobilise groups negatively affected by previous crises take positions toward the economic end of the continuum, in line with the preferences of an electorate that has been negatively affected by the pandemic. Our explanatory models integrate other structural (age, education) and political (trust, attitudes on expertise) factors in an effort to assess if the health–economy divide reordered the European cleavage structure towards material, rather than cultural and post-material, concerns.Funded by the European Union, Horizon Europe – Research and Innovation Actions, Grant no: 10106082

The evolution of global cleavages : a historical analysis of territorial and functional world alignments based on automated text analysis, 1843−2020

This paper examines the global cleavages that structure world politics from the mid-19th century to the present. It develops the concept of cleavage applied at the global level and measures empirically how territorial divisions give way to the politicization of various types of inequality along functional lines cutting across world regions. Covering over 300,000 articles from The Economist between 1843 and 2020, the analysis applies semi-supervised computational text analysis based on word embeddings to capture the territoriality−functionality continuum in global discourse. This method allows testing the theoretical expectation that the territoriality in the politicization of global divisions has diminished historically. Results reveal a trend toward the de-territorialization since World War II, primarily for cleavages about social and economic inequality. Although spikes of territoriality re-appear during interstate wars throughout the entire period, surges of territoriality are temporary and do not reverse the historical trend towards prevailing cross-territorial divisions

Technocratic attitudes: a citizens’ perspective of expert decision-making

Despite repeated appointments of technocratic governments in Europe and increasing interest in technocracy, there is little knowledge regarding citizens’ attitudes towards technocracy and the idea of governance by unelected experts. This article revisits normative debates and hypothesises that technocracy and democracy stand in a negative relationship in the eyes of European citizens. It tests this alongside a series of hypotheses on technocratic attitudes combining country-level institutional characteristics with individual survey data. While findings confirm that individual beliefs about the merits of democracy influence technocratic attitudes, two additional important factors are also identified: first, levels of trust in current representative political institutions also motivate technocratic preferences; second, historical legacies, in terms of past party-based authoritarian regime experience, can explain significant cross-national variation. The implications of the findings are discussed in the broader context of citizen orientations towards government, elitism and the mounting challenges facing representative democracy

Discrepant Electorates: The Inclusiveness of Electorates and Its Impact on the Representation of Citizens. IHS Policy Series No. 124, July 2011

This paper addresses the democratically fundamental question of the inclusiveness of electorates and of its impact on citizens’ representation. While the literature has focussed on the congruence between voters and representatives, it has neglected congruence issues between citizens and representatives. The paper investigates comparatively this bias and source of newly disenfranchised citizens in a globalised society with increasing mobility. On the one hand, electoral laws vary in their inclusion or exclusion of expatriates (emigrants) and in the right to vote to non-national residents (immigrants). On the other hand, naturalisation laws vary in the maintenance of nationality for expatriates and in their inclusion of non-national residents. We illustrate levels of discrepancy between electorate and citizenship in 22 OECD countries qualitatively, by presenting differences of electoral and nationality laws, and quantitatively, by comparing the size of citizenship with that of the electorate, and the national and resident populations. We show that shifts between political and national communities are primarily due to naturalisation laws and that electoral laws have so far been unable to correct for the discrepancy