The expanding party universe: Patterns of partisan engagement in Australia and the United Kingdom

Although membership is declining, parties continue to perform roles central to democratic governance in modern societies. Given this seeming paradox, we suggest that partisan identification, in complementing studies of formal membership, is a promising way of assessing the strength of parties’ democratic linkage. Using data from an original survey of voters in Australia and the United Kingdom, we analyse the participatory and demographic profiles of party supporters. We show that there are significant differences between supporters and those not committed to any party, as well as between supporters based on the strength of their party identification, substantiating the idea that parties can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles of increasing engagement but declining representativeness. Stronger supporters are more likely to engage with parties online, volunteer and donate, but are older, more likely to be male and less likely to be foreign-born. Our findings have important implications for democratic practice as parties seek to expand and rejuvenate their networks of affiliates

Online Disinformation Predicts Inaccurate Beliefs About Election Fairness Among Both Winners and Losers

Electoral disinformation is feared to variously undermine democratic trust by inflaming incorrect negative beliefs about the fairness of elections, or to shore up dictators by creating falsely positive ones. Recent studies of political misperceptions, however, suggest that disinformation has at best minimal effects on beliefs. In this article, we investigate the drivers of public perceptions and misperceptions of election fairness. We build on theories of rational belief updating and motivated reasoning, and link public opinion data from 82 national elections with expert survey data on disinformation and de facto electoral integrity. We show that, overall, people arrive at largely accurate perceptions, but that disinformation campaigns are indeed associated with less accurate and more polarized beliefs about election fairness. This contributes a cross-nationally comparative perspective to studies of (dis)information processing and belief updating, as well as attitude formation and trust surrounding highly salient political institutions such as elections.Es wird befürchtet, dass Desinformation bei Wahlen das demokratische Vertrauen untergräbt, indem sie falsche negative Überzeugungen über die Fairness von Wahlen schürt. Neuere Studien über politische Fehleinschätzungen deuten jedoch darauf hin, dass Desinformation bestenfalls minimale Auswirkungen auf die Überzeugungen hat. In diesem Artikel untersuchen die Autor*innen die Triebkräfte der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und Fehlwahrnehmung der Fairness von Wahlen

Does group engagement with members constitute a "beneficial inefficiency"?

This article explores the role of variations in organizational form in explaining levels of group access. Specifically, we test whether group forms incorporating more extensive engagement with members receive policy advantages. We develop and test a account of beneficial inefficiencies. Our account reasons that the costs of inefficient intraorganizational processes and practices associated with enhanced engagement with members are beneficial as they generate crucial “access goods”—specifically encompassing positions—that in turn receive enhanced policy benefits. The costs of intraorganizational practices allowing members to engage more thoroughly in decision making are thus beneficial inefficiencies. We test this proposition using data on the Australian interest group system. Using the tools of cluster analysis, we identify three forms, each varying in respect of the inefficiencies they embody. Our multivariate analysis finds strong support for the account of beneficial inefficiencies: groups with the most inefficient organizational model receiving the greatest policy access.Australian Research Council, Grant/Award Number: (DP140104097

The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative: Investigating Immigration and Social Policy Preferences. Executive Report.

In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of selective model reporting and lack of replicability. The heterogeneity of countries obscures attempts to clearly define data-generating models. P-hacking and HARKing lurk among standard research practices in this area.This project employs crowdsourcing to address these issues. It draws on replication, deliberation, meta-analysis and harnessing the power of many minds at once. The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative carries two main goals, (a) to better investigate the linkage between immigration and social policy preferences across countries, and (b) to develop crowdsourcing as a social science method. The Executive Report provides short reviews of the area of social policy preferences and immigration, and the methods and impetus behind crowdsourcing plus a description of the entire project. Three main areas of findings will appear in three papers, that are registered as PAPs or in process

Replication Data for: "More Bang for the Buck: Media Freedom and Organizational Strategies in the Agenda-Setting of Human Rights Groups"

Studies investigating the agenda-setting of human rights groups disagree on both their prospects of garnering political attention, and the factors that help them in that quest. This study makes the argument that we need to take account of both macro-institutional opportunity structures and actor-level strategies in order to gain a more complete understanding of the group-media interface. Specifically, it posits that the urgency of social problems only drives media attention toward groups if a country’s media landscape is sufficiently free, and that within these institutional constraints, groups themselves can enhance their media access by providing newsmakers with information subsidies. These claims are substantiated by way of a novel cross-nationally comparative data set of more than 1,000 domestic election monitoring and advocacy organizations. Findings show that media attention is structurally limited by the degree to which the news media serve as an open arena, and that even in countries with a free press, few groups achieve media access. At the same time, the most successful groups are not necessarily the most resourceful ones. Rather, strategic choices to invest in media effort, narrow policy engagement, and professionalization substitute for scarce resources, thereby giving groups “more bang for their buck.” The results clarify the causal mechanisms behind the dominance of resource-rich groups on the media agenda and reinforce calls for more globally comparative research into media agenda-setting

Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, (PEI-7.0)

This dataset by the Electoral Integrity Project evaluates the quality of elections held around the world. Based on a rolling survey collecting the views of election experts, this research provides independent and reliable evidence to compare whether countries meet international standards of electoral integrity. PEI-7.0 cumulative release covers 336 national parliamentary and presidential contests held worldwide in 166 countries from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2018. For each contest, 40 election experts receive an electronic invitation to fill the survey. The survey includes assessments from 3,821 election experts, with a mean response rate of 28%. The study collects 49 indicators to compare elections. These indicators are clustered to evaluate eleven stages in the electoral cycle as well as generating an overall summary Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) 100-point index and comparative ranking. The datasets are available for analysis at three levels: COUNTRY-level (166 observations); ELECTION-level (336 observations), and also EXPERT-level (3,821 observations). Each dataset can be downloaded in STATA, SPSS, CSV and EXCEL formats

Replication Data for: "Does group engagement with members constitute a “beneficial inefficiency”?"

This article explores the role of variations in organizational form in explaining levels of group access. Specifically, we test whether group forms incorporating more extensive engagement with members receive policy advantages. We develop and test a account of beneficial inefficiencies. Our account reasons that the costs of inefficient intra-organizational processes and practices associated with enhanced engagement with members are beneficial as they generate crucial “access goods” — specifically encompassing positions — that in turn receive enhanced policy benefits. The costs of intra-organizational practices allowing members to engage more thoroughly in decision making are thus beneficial inefficiencies. We test this proposition using data on the Australian interest group system. Using the tools of cluster analysis, we identify three forms, each varying in respect of the inefficiencies they embody. Our multivariate analysis finds strong support for the account of beneficial inefficiencies: groups with the most inefficient organizational model receiving the greatest policy access

Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, (PEI-5.0)

This data-set by the Electoral Integrity Project evaluates the quality of elections held around the world. Based on a rolling survey collecting the views of election experts, this research provides independent and reliable evidence to compare whether countries meet international standards of electoral integrity. PEI-5.0 cumulative release covers 241 national parliamentary and presidential contests held worldwide in 158 countries from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2016. For each contest, 40 election experts receive an electronic invitation to fill the survey. The survey includes assessments from 2,709 election experts, with a mean response rate of 28%. The study collects 49 indicators to compare elections. These indicators are clustered to evaluate eleven stages in the electoral cycle as well as generating an overall summary Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) 100-point index and comparative ranking. The datasets are available for analysis at three levels: COUNTRY-level (158 observations); ELECTION-level (241 observations), and also EXPERT-level (2,709 observations). Each dataset can be downloaded in STATA, SPSS, CSV and EXCEL formats

Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, (PEI-5.5)

This dataset by the Electoral Integrity Project evaluates the quality of elections held around the world. Based on a rolling survey collecting the views of election experts, this research provides independent and reliable evidence to compare whether countries meet international standards of electoral integrity. PEI-5.5 cumulative release covers 260 national parliamentary and presidential contests held worldwide in 161 countries from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2017. For each contest, 40 election experts receive an electronic invitation to fill the survey. The survey includes assessments from 2,961 election experts, with a mean response rate of 28%. The study collects 49 indicators to compare elections. These indicators are clustered to evaluate eleven stages in the electoral cycle as well as generating an overall summary Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) 100-point index and comparative ranking. The datasets are available for analysis at three levels: COUNTRY-level (161 observations); ELECTION-level (260 observations), and also EXPERT-level (2,961 observations). Each dataset can be downloaded in STATA, SPSS, CSV and EXCEL formats