Welfare cuts – how framing influences support

Talking about economic reform, Jean-Claude Juncker once remarked: “We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it”. That politicians get punished for welfare cutbacks used to be a truism in politics and academia. A couple of years later, we are not so sure anymore. Here, Paul Marx and Gijs Schumacher outline how important framing policy is, and how undecided voters might be more easily swayed by particular messages to support welfare cuts

The Effect of Economic Change and Elite Framing on Economic Preferences: A Survey Experiment

An unresolved question in political science is how economic downturns affect citizens' economic left-right preferences. Existing observational studies fail to isolate the effect of economic conditions and the effect of elite framing of these conditions. We therefore designed a survey experiment to evaluate how economic change in conjunction with different elite frames impact on citizens' preferences for economic policies. We hypothesise and demonstrate that the effects of these frames differ by income group and partisanship. Our survey experiment carried out in the UK demonstrates that poor economic prospects motivate support for unemployment benefits vis-à-vis deficit reduction. Emphasis on government debt and deficits increases support for the latter policy option. Also, we find support for the hypothesis that partisans are less responsive to the economy than independents

Staying loyal or leaving the party? How open and extrovert personality traits help explain vote switching

Why are some citizens more likely to change their vote choice? Bert Bakker, Robert Klemmensen, Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard and Gijs Schumacher show that vote switching is associated with citizen’s personality traits. Looking at UK and Denmark, they find that openness helps explain vote switching in both countries. In Denmark having a more extrovert personality is associated with party loyalty, but this does not hold for the UK

Why governing parties change their platforms more frequently than those in opposition

Following an election, are parties that enter government more likely to alter their electoral platform than parties in opposition? Gijs Schumacher, Marc van de Wardt, Barbara Vis and Michael Baggesen Klitgaard present findings from data on party programmes going back to 1945. Their research indicates that, contrary to expectations, parties in government are more likely to alter their programme than parties in opposition, but that this effect depends on the extent to which parties aspire to hold office in the next election

Mapping the populist mind: A network approach to integrate sociological and psychological models of the populist radical right

Who supports the populist radical right (PRR)? And under what circumstances? We theorize that social status-related envy (SSRE) is the construct that integrates personality- and grievance-based theories of PRR support. To assess our theory, we estimate psychological network models on German survey data to map the complex relationships between PRR support, Big Five personality traits, facets of narcissism, political attitudes, and multiple constructs measuring objective and subjective social status. Our findings confirm previous studies detecting two routes to PRR support: a disagreeable and an authoritarian one. The Bifurcated Model of Status-Deprived Narcissistic Right-Wing Populism claims that SSRE is the distant predictor of PRR support and the two constructs are connected by two pathways. The middle-class route is characterized by disagreeable narcissism (Rivalry) and nativism, while the lower-class route by Neuroticism (potentially Vulnerable Narcissism) and authoritarian right-wing populism. Moreover, we find preliminary support for our expectation that PRR voting is explained by the activation of narcissistic traits by SSRE

Donald Trump’s support comes from two distinct groups:authoritarians who oppose immigration and anti-establishmentvoters

Are Donald Trump’s supporters authoritarian, anti-establishment, or both? In new research into who supports The Donald, Bert Bakker, Matthijs Rooduijn and Gijs Schumacher find that Trump’s supporters are those who score low on the personality trait of agreeableness (they are more likely to support politicians who criticize the establishment), and those who are more authoritarian (they are more likely to vote for politicians who push for more restrictive immigration policies). They also find that Trump’s authoritarian supporters are likely to support other Republicans who are restrictive on the issue of immigration, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, while the low agreeable are dismissive of such establishment figures

Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data

This article addresses the variation of anti-corruption and anti-elite salience in party positioning across Europe. It demonstrates that while anti-corruption salience is primarily related to the (regional) context in which a party operates, anti-elite salience is primarily a function of party ideology. Extreme left and extreme conservative (TAN) parties are significantly more likely to emphasize anti-elite views. Through its use of the new 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey wave, this article also introduces the dataset

Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

Spintronics, or spin electronics, involves the study of active control and manipulation of spin degrees of freedom in solid-state systems. This article reviews the current status of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. The primary focus is on the basic physical principles underlying the generation of carrier spin polarization, spin dynamics, and spin-polarized transport in semiconductors and metals. Spin transport differs from charge transport in that spin is a nonconserved quantity in solids due to spin-orbit and hyperfine coupling. The authors discuss in detail spin decoherence mechanisms in metals and semiconductors. Various theories of spin injection and spin-polarized transport are applied to hybrid structures relevant to spin-based devices and fundamental studies of materials properties. Experimental work is reviewed with the emphasis on projected applications, in which external electric and magnetic fields and illumination by light will be used to control spin and charge dynamics to create new functionalities not feasible or ineffective with conventional electronics.Comment: invited review, 36 figures, 900+ references; minor stylistic changes from the published versio