Lingering Memories of the Past? The Ideological Behaviour of Immigrants Socialised in Authoritarian Regimes

How does the political socialisation in authoritarian regimes affect the political behaviour of immigrants in democracies? The political past of immigrants is often overlooked when assessing their behaviour, although experiences with politics can differ substantially. In this paper, I suggest that immigrants socialised in left-wing authoritarian regimes avoid the political left and support right of centre parties, while immigrants socialised in right-wing authoritarian regimes do not translate anti-right biases into host country politics. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and V-Dem while applying Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM), I find a bias against the political left for immigrants socialised in left-wing authoritarian regimes compared to their democratic counterparts. Immigrants socialised in right-wing authoritarian regimes also express a bias against the political left, but only if the country has a longer communist past, otherwise no substantial differences appear. These results have important implications for how authoritarianism shapes political behaviour in a different context

The effect of televised candidate debates on the support for political parties

During campaigns for legislative elections, a large portion of the general public follows televised debates between the front-running candidates. How can the candidates use the public interest in the debates to increase the support for their party? In this article, we argue that especially challenger candidates can improve the public perception of their valence qualities, such as personal integrity, leadership, and competence, and can - as a result - raise the support of their party. We expect that the perceived policy stances of the candidates matter less. Building on televised debate experiments during the German Federal Elections of 2009 and 2013, we analyse the effect of the debates on party vote and in how far this relationship is mediated by changes in valence and policy evaluations of the candidates. Results show that changes of candidate valence, but not changes in policy perceptions, of the social-democratic front-running candidates mediate the vote intention for the party. Respondents who perceived the candidates more competent, empathetic and have integrity as a result of the debate are more likely to vote for the candidate's party. Our analysis further reveals, however, that this valence effect is not long-lasting and does not carry-over to vote intention briefly before the election