Voters, parties and representation in European multicultural democracies

This doctoral dissertation investigates immigrants’ political participation and representation in European democracies. It grounds on the observation that immigration to Europe has increased in the last years changing the ethnic and cultural landscape of the hosting democracies. These social phenomena raise several questions: How does immigration affect electoral democracies? Are immigrant and native voters alike? Or, does immigration emerge as a new social cleavage? Are parties concerned about immigration and open to include immigrant candidates? And, how are immigrants represented in national legislatures? This dissertation is an attempt to provide deep and systematized empirically founded insights on the transformations that national electorates, parties, and political institutions are experiencing in the so-called “age of migration” across Western European democracies

Support for insider parties: The role of political trust in a longitudinal-comparative perspective

European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens’ declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is low across numerous countries. Interestingly, the linkage between political trust and support for insider parties has not been empirically established but deduced from the fact that outsider parties are often supported by dissatisfied citizens. We address this gap adopting both an institutional- and an actor-centered approach by investigating whether trust in parliaments and in parties is associated with the electoral performance of insider parties on the aggregate level. Combining different data sources in a novel way, we apply time-series cross-section models to a dataset containing 30 countries and 137 elections from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that when political trust is low, particularly institutional trust, insider parties receive less electoral support. Hence, we provide empirical evidence that decreasing levels of political trust are the downfall of insider parties, thereby opening a window of opportunity for challenging outsider parties

Voters, parties and representation in European multicultural democracies

This doctoral dissertation investigates immigrants’ political participation and representation in European democracies. It grounds on the observation that immigration to Europe has increased in the last years changing the ethnic and cultural landscape of the hosting democracies. These social phenomena raise several questions: How does immigration affect electoral democracies? Are immigrant and native voters alike? Or, does immigration emerge as a new social cleavage? Are parties concerned about immigration and open to include immigrant candidates? And, how are immigrants represented in national legislatures? This dissertation is an attempt to provide deep and systematized empirically founded insights on the transformations that national electorates, parties, and political institutions are experiencing in the so-called “age of migration” across Western European democracies

State of the world 2017: autocratization and exclusion?

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2018.1479693This article presents evidence of a global trend of autocratization. The most visible feature of democracy – elections – remains strong and is even improving in some places. Autocratization mainly affects non-electoral aspects of democracy such as media freedom, freedom of expression, and the rule of law, yet these in turn threaten to undermine the meaningfulness of elections. While the majority of the world’s population lives under democratic rule, 2.5 billion people were subjected to autocratization in 2017. Last year, democratic qualities were in decline in 24 countries across the world, many of which are populous such as India and the United States. This article also presents evidence testifying that men and wealthy groups tend to have a strong hold on political power in countries where 86% of the world population reside. Further, we show that political exclusion based on socio- economic status in particular is becoming increasingly severe. For instance, the wealthy have gained significantly more power in countries home to 1.9 billion of the world’s population over the past decade

Democracy for All? V-Dem Annual Democracy report 2018

The focus of the V-Dem Annual Democracy report 2018 is "Democracy for All?" for two reasons. First, citizens - not just the territorial unit in which they live - are central to democracy. In addition to the conventional averages across countries, we therefore analyze liberal and electoral democracy across the world weighted by the size of each country's population. This metric captures better how many people in the world enjoy democratic rights and freedoms. Second, even In Democracies, some groups - women, social groups, and the poor - are systematically disadvantaged from access to political power. We therefore analyze political exclusion by gender, social groups, and socio-economic statu

State of the world 2017: autocratization and exclusion?

<p>This article presents evidence of a global trend of autocratization. The most visible feature of democracy – elections – remains strong and is even improving in some places. Autocratization mainly affects non-electoral aspects of democracy such as media freedom, freedom of expression, and the rule of law, yet these in turn threaten to undermine the meaningfulness of elections. While the majority of the world’s population lives under democratic rule, 2.5 billion people were subjected to autocratization in 2017. Last year, democratic qualities were in decline in 24 countries across the world, many of which are populous such as India and the United States. This article also presents evidence testifying that men and wealthy groups tend to have a strong hold on political power in countries where 86% of the world population reside. Further, we show that political exclusion based on socio-economic status in particular is becoming increasingly severe. For instance, the wealthy have gained significantly more power in countries home to 1.9 billion of the world’s population over the past decade.</p

The Crowdsourced Replication Initiative

Crowdsourced Research on Immigration and Social Policy Preference