Why automated coding of party positions from manifestos may produce misleading conclusions in political research

One of the more challenging tasks in political research is to produce reliable information on how political parties compare with one another on key issues like their approach to the economy or immigration. As Didier Ruedin writes, some researchers have sought to perform this task using automated methods that classify a party's approach to an issue by scanning the content of their manifesto. However, he illustrates that while such methods can be efficient in terms of the time taken to carry out the research, they can often produce misleading conclusions

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: African Migrants in the Spotlight

This thematic issue examines questions of decision-making under limited (and contradictory) information, focusing on migration decisions. Migrants are far from a homogenous population, but they commonly use narratives as heuristics. We observe much agency among migrants to pursue migration plans, with migration decisions best understood as chains of multiple decisions rather than simple push-pull or two-step models

The Representation of Women in National Parliaments: A Cross-national Comparison

Women's representation in national parliaments is examined using a large cross-national sample. Initially, the article seems to confirm previous findings that the electoral formula and quotas are good predictors for the proportion of women in parliament. In line with some recent contributions, this article finds that the proportion of women in parliament is explicable in terms of culture—particularly attitudes towards women as political leaders. It appears that regional differences reflect differences in attitudes relevant to women's political representation. Drawing on recent developments on gender quotas and insights on the influence of attitudes on gender representation, in this article, quotas and measured attitudes are considered at the same time. Once controlling for regional or cultural differences, the provision of voluntary party quotas does not appear to be significant at the national level. The results are tested for robustness over time, and using a subsample of OECD countries. This article provides further evidence for a strong association between cultural factors and the proportion of women in parliamen

Why don’t immigrants vote more?

There are relatively few cases where non-citizen immigrants can vote in municipal elections, but where they can participation tends to be low. Didier Ruedin assesses the case of Geneva, where he finds that, even accounting for social origin, engagement, civic integration and socialisation, there is a gap in participation that needs further explanation

How one gesture curbed ethnic discrimination

Members of ethnic and racial minorities across North America and Europe continue to face discrimination, for instance, when applying for jobs or seeking housing. Such unequal treatment can occur because societies categorize people into groups along social, cultural, or ethnic and racial lines that seemingly rationalize differential treatment. Research suggests that it may take generations for such differences to decline, if they change at all. Here, we show that a single gesture by international soccer players at the World Cup 2018 – followed by an extensive public debate – led to a measurable and lasting decline in discrimination. Immediately after the galvanizing event, invitation rates to view apartments increased by 6 percentage points for the migrant group represented by the players, while responses to the native population did not change noticeably. We demonstrate that anti-immigrant behaviour can disband rapidly when the public receives messages challenging the nature of ethnic and racial categories while sharing a common cause

Migration debates in the political party arena during the Covid-19 pandemic in Austria

Published online: 23 December 2023The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the economic contribution of migrant workers in maintaining essential services and access to goods. This new perspective on migrants as essential workers raised expectations in migration studies that it could reinvigorate an inclusive setting in terms of migration debates and policies. Building on this potential, we examine migration debates in the political party arena with a focus on centrist parties. The analysis focuses on Austria, a country with a high dependence on migrant labor in key sectors and a long-standing contestation of migration across the political party spectrum. Drawing on an analysis of parliamentary contributions and press releases by the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) during the pandemic, the study finds that the debates did not change fundamentally. Whilst external shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic have a limited potential to reverse the focus on unwanted migration in European party politics, crises can lead the political center to reemphasize bifurcation strategies in response to shifts in public discourse, as this study of the Austrian case during the pandemic suggests.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Wiley Transformative Agreement (2020-2023)