The Forgotten Side of Partisanship: Negative Party Identification in Four Anglo-American Democracies

Early studies of electoral behavior proposed that party identification could be negative as well as positive. Over time, though, the concept became mostly understood as a positive construct. The few studies that took negative identification into account tended to portray it as a marginal factor that went “hand-in-hand” with positive preferences. Recent scholarship in psychology reaffirms, however, that negative evaluations are not simply the bipolar opposite of positive ones. This article considers negative party identification from this standpoint, and evaluates its impact in recent national elections in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Our findings highlight the autonomous power of negative partisanship. They indicate as well that ideology has an influence on both positive and negative partisan identification

Foreign policy beliefs and support for Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party

Similar to other recent Canadian elections, foreign policy did not feature prominently in the 2011 federal election campaign. In fact, many doubt Canadian public opinion on international affairs is linked to the actions taken by recent Governments. In this paper, we examine Canadian public opinion toward a range of foreign policy issues and argue that the survey questions measure two latent dimensions —militarism and internationalism. Our survey evidence indicates the existence of an “issue public” which is prepared to endorse military action and is skeptical of human rights and overseas aid programs, and this group is far more supportive of Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative Party than other Canadians. The absence of an elite discussion, either among politicians or between media elites, about the direction of Canadian foreign policy does not prevent the Canadian voter from thinking coherently about questions pertaining to this issue domain and employing these beliefs to support or oppose political parties and their leaders

Gendered Frontlines: British Press Coverage of Servicewomen Killed in Iraq

The press plays a crucial role in image formation and information provision about female soldiers who die on battlefields. This article demonstrates how the UK press coverage of the death of four British service women stripped them of their identity as soldiers and minimised their accomplishments and level of military participation. It analyses how media discourse of war and military practices converged to reinforce cultural assumptions of war. The article argues that the nuanced coverage of the four women who died in Iraq within one year was a result of gendered mediation, which accentuated the femininity and masculinity dichotomy associated with the military; and underscored the gendered nature of war. The study shows that the gendering of the death of the women reinforced the entrenched marginalisation of women in war narratives

The political resocialization of immigrants: Resistance or lifelong learning?

Theories of political socialization contain competing expectations about immigrants' potential for political resocialization. Premigration beliefs and actions may be resistant to change, exposure to the new political system may facilitate adaptation, or immigrants may find ways to transfer beliefs and behaviors from one political system to another. This analysis empirically tests these three alternative theories of resocialization. The results indicate that both transfer and exposure matter; there is little evidence that premigration beliefs and actions are resistant to change. Moreover, how immigrants adapt depends on which orientation or behavior is being considered and on what kind of political environments migrants come from

Assessing the psychological and mechanical impact of electoral rules: A quasi-experiment

The paper assesses the influence of electoral rules on vote choice and election outcomes using a quasi-experiment conducted during a recent Canadian provincial election. Respondents were invited to vote under three voting systems (first past the post, alternative voting and proportional representation) and to answer a short questionnaire. We examine how the distribution of votes and seats is affected, and we ascertain how much of the total difference is due to psychological and mechanical effects. We find that a PR system would have increased legislative fractionalization by the equivalent of one effective party and that the mechanical effect is much more important than the psychological effect. As for AV, its mechanical and psychological effects act in opposite directions