Political Trust and Job Insecurity in 18 European Polities

Several decades of trust research has confirmed that difficult national economic conditions help explain citizens’ low levels of political trust. But research points to a much less important role for personal economic factors. The latter finding, it is argued here, is a result of flawed survey questions and model misspecification. We actually know very little about the precise economic concerns that may generate low levels of trust and about the mechanisms via which they do so, resulting in a rather thin causal story. This paper seeks to address this lacuna, focusing on an issue of increasing importance in advanced economies: job insecurity. Using individual-level data from 18 European polities at two different time points, the paper finds that job insecurity generates lower levels of trust in politicians, political parties and political institutions and lower levels of satisfaction with democratic performance. Importantly, job insecurity’s effect does not diminish as one moves from specific to more diffuse objects of political trust, as previous research suggests it should. The paper also finds that the effect of job insecurity is exacerbated if citizens have negative perceptions of the performance of the wider economy. Finally, and drawing on the occupational psychology literature, the paper proposes a novel causal mechanism to link job insecurity to political trust. The intuition is that job insecurity violates a ‘psychologicaldemocratic’ trust contract between workers and the state. The mechanism is consistent with the observed results. The paper thus contributes to both the empirical and theoretical debates on the linkages between political trust and economic performance

Language in international business: a review and agenda for future research

A fast growing number of studies demonstrates that language diversity influences almost all management decisions in modern multinational corporations. Whereas no doubt remains about the practical importance of language, the empirical investigation and theoretical conceptualization of its complex and multifaceted effects still presents a substantial challenge. To summarize and evaluate the current state of the literature in a coherent picture informing future research, we systematically review 264 articles on language in international business. We scrutinize the geographic distributions of data, evaluate the field’s achievements to date in terms of theories and methodologies, and summarize core findings by individual, group, firm, and country levels of analysis. For each of these dimensions, we then put forward a future research agenda. We encourage scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to draw on, integrate, and test a variety of theories from disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to gain a more profound understanding of language in international business. We advocate more multi-level studies and cross-national research collaborations and suggest greater attention to potential new data sources and means of analysis

Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making

The globalisation of trade affects land use, food production and environmentsaround the world. In principle, globalisation can maximise productivity andefficiency if competition prompts specialisation on the basis of productive capacity.In reality, however, such specialisation is often constrained by practical or politicalbarriers, including those intended to ensure national or regional food security.These are likely to produce globally sub-optimal distributions of land uses. Bothoutcomes are subject to the responses of individual land managers to economicand environmental stimuli, and these responses are known to be variable and often(economically) irrational. We investigate the consequences of stylised food securitypolicies and globalisation of agricultural markets on land use patterns under avariety of modelled forms of land manager behaviour, including variation inproduction levels, tenacity, land use intensity and multi-functionality. We find that asystem entirely dedicated to regional food security is inferior to an entirelyglobalised system in terms of overall production levels, but that several forms ofbehaviour limit the difference between the two, and that variations in land useintensity and functionality can substantially increase the provision of food and otherecosystem services in both cases. We also find emergent behaviour that results inthe abandonment of productive land, the slowing of rates of land use change andthe fragmentation or, conversely, concentration of land uses following changes indemand levels

Australian Election Study, 1987

SPSS Portable 1,080 KB; Stata v.8 1,041 KB; Stata v.7 1,040 KB; Nesstar Publisher 1,091 KB; DIF 1,114 KB; DBase 1,038 KB; Textfile 1,037 KB; Delimited 1,056 KB; SAS 1,046 KB; Comma Separated Value file 1,057 KB .The Australian Election Study (AES) is a survey designed to collect data for academic research on Australian public opinion and behaviour during federal elections. All the studies are national, post-election self-completion (mail-in, mail-out) surveys with the sample drawn randomly from the electoral register. The 1987 study had two goals. The first was to continue the broad line of enquiry established by the 1967 and 1979 Australian National Political Attitudes surveys so that patterns of stability and change in the political attitudes and behaviour of the Australian electorate could be traced over two decades. The second was to assess the electoral impact of forces specific to the 1987 election in order better to understand its outcome. For 1987, the total sample was 3,061. Of those sampled, 156 moved/gone away and 1,080 were refusals/non-responses. There were 1,825 valid responses giving an effective response of 62.8. The survey instrument consisted of 6 sections totalling 90 questions. Section A: The Federal Election included 18 questions on media coverage of the 1987 election and previous voting record/preferences. Section B: Political Leaders included 7 questions about party leader preferences and reasons for preferences. Section C: Election Issues included 26 questions about the economy and non-economic issues including defence, mining, health, ties to the UK and USA, the flag, law and order, migration and immigrants, Australian aborigines, censorship, unions, homosexuality, and gender equality. Section D: Social and Political Goals included 8 questions about the effectiveness of government and how the country should be governed. Section E: Education and Work included 11 questions about educational qualifications/background and work experience. Section F: Personal Background included 20 questions about birthplace and family background, place of residence, and work and religious affiliations. A systematic random sample of 2762 cases covering all States and Territories except South Australia was provided by the Australian Electoral Office from its computerised electoral roll. A supplementary sample of 299 cases was selected manually from the alphabetical list of electors in South Australia by microfiche. Respondents are mailed on the Monday following the federal election (which is held on a Saturday). The survey remained in the field for about 8 weeks; the bulk of the responses were received following Waves 1 and 2. Wave 1 Questionnaire, letter Week 1 Wave 2 Thank you/reminder postcard Week 2 Wave 3 Questionnaire, letter Week 5 Wave 4 Final letter, Week 7 In the 1987 survey, the fourth and final wave elicited comparatively few extra responses and was not considered cost-effective; it has not been used in the post-1987 surveys. Some of the information above was taken from the 1987 questionnaire and the following book: Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark. 2007. Trends in Australian Political Opinion: Results from the Australian Election Study, 1987-2004. Canberra: Australian Social Science Data Archive. The data is available in a variety of formats including SPSS Portable, Stata v.8, Stata v.7, Nesstar Publisher, NSDstat, DIF, DBase, Textfile, Delimited, SAS and Comma Separated Value file. The data can be downloaded in a zipped folder together with documentation in pdf or xml format