For many ideologues in Congress, voting against their party when they are in power may be a sound electoral strategy.

In recent years, legislators on both sides of the aisle in Congress have often voted against their own party's legislation when they are in power. But why are some members of Congress disloyal when they have the chance to get things done? Jonathan Slapin and Justin Kirkland argue that this behaviour is a form of grandstanding whereby ideological extremists symbolically ..

When Experts Disagree: Response Aggregation and Its Consequences in Expert Surveys

Political scientists use expert surveys to assess latent features of political actors. Experts, though, are unlikely to be equally informed and assess all actors equally well. The literature acknowledges variance in measurement quality, but pays little attention to the implications of uncertainty for aggregating responses. We discuss the nature of the measurement problem in expert surveys. We then propose methods to assess the ability of experts to judge where actors stand and to aggregate expert responses. We examine the effects of aggregation for a prominent survey in the literature on party politics and EU integration. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate that it is better to aggregate expert responses using the median or modal response, rather than the mean

From polarization of the public to polarization of the electorate: European Parliament elections as the preferred race for ideologues

This study examines the effect of voters’ ideological extremism on turnout in European national and European Parliament elections. Using data from recent European Election Studies, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and other national election studies, we find that, relative to centrists, ideological extremists (measured by self-placement on the left–right scales) are more likely to vote in European Parliament elections (2014 and 2019) but not national elections. We argue that these differences stem from the fact that European Parliament elections are second-order races. The results help to explain why the European Parliament has become more polarized, even in the absence of significant changes in overall attitudes among the European public, and why extreme parties have been more successful in recent European Parliament than national elections

The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals

From text to political positions on foreign aid: analysis of aid mentions in party manifestos from 1960 to 2015

Looking at texts of election manifestos, this paper examines systematic differences among political parties within and across countries in how they position themselves on foreign aid and in how these manifesto pledges translate into commitments to disburse aid. Conventional wisdom suggests that left-leaning parties may be more supportive of foreign aid than rightwing parties, but also that foreign aid may not be sufficiently electorally salient for parties to stake out positions in campaign materials, such as manifestos. We leverage a new data set that codes party positions on foreign aid in election manifestos for 13 donors from 1960 to 2015. We find that parties differ systematically in how they engage with foreign aid. Left-leaning governments are more likely to express positive sentiment vis-à-vis aid than right-leaning governments. We evaluate the effects of positions on aid outcomes and find that positive aid views expressed by the party in government translate into higher aid commitments, though only for left-leaning parties

Assessing the Measurement of Policy Positions in Expert Surveys

Expert surveys provide a common means for assessing parties' policy positions on latent dimensions. These surveys often cover a wide variety of parties and issues, and it is unlikely that experts are able to assess all parties equally well across all issues. While the existing literature using expert surveys acknowledges this fact, insufficient attention has been paid to the variance in the quality of measurement across issues and parties. In this paper, we first discuss the nature of the measurement problem with respect to expert surveys and then propose methods borrowed from the organizational psychology and medical fields to assess the ability of experts to assess where parties stand on particular dimensions. While we apply our technique to one particular study, the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the method can be applied to any expert survey. Finally, we propose a simple non-parametric bootstrapping procedure that allows researchers to assess the effects of expert survey measurement error in analyses that use them

Balancing Competing Demands: Position-Taking and Election Proximity in the European Parliament

Parties value unity, yet, members of parliament face competing demands, giving them incentives to deviate from the party. For members of the European Parliament (MEPs), these competing demands are national party and European party group pressures. Here, we look at how MEPs respond to those competing demands. We examine ideological shifts within a single parliamentary term to assess how European Parliament (EP) election proximity aects party group cohesion. Our formal model of legislative behavior with multiple principals yields the following hypothesis: When EP elections are proximate, national party delegations shift toward national party positions, thus weakening EP party group cohesion. For our empirical test, we analyze roll call data from the fth EP (1999-2004) using Bayesian item response models. We nd signicant movement among national party delegations as EP elections approach, which is consistent with our theoretical model, but surprising given the existing literature on EP elections as second-order contests.

The rhyme and reason of rebel support: exploring European voters’ attitudes toward dissident MPs

Citizens often support politicians who vote against their parties in parliament. They view rebels as offering better representation, appreciate expressive acts, take rebellion as a signal of standing up for constituents, or see rebels as defending their moral convictions. Each explanation has different implications for representation, but they have not yet been tested systematically against one another. We implement survey experiments on nationally representative samples in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy to assess whether voters treat rebellion as a cue for better representation or infer positive character traits implying a valence advantage. Policy congruence does not drive voters’ preference for rebels. However, voters do associate positive traits with rebel MPs, even if they do not feel better represented by them

Ideological Clarity in Multiparty Competition: A New Measure and Test Using Election Manifestos

Parties in advanced democracies take ideological positions as part of electoral competition, but some parties communicate their position more clearly than others. Existing research on democratic party competition has paid much attention to assessing partisan position taking in electoral manifestos, but it has largely overlooked how manifestos reflect the clarity of these positions. This article presents a scaling procedure that better reflects the data-generating process of party manifestos. This new estimator allows us to recover not only positional estimates, but also estimates for the ideological clarity or ambiguity of parties. The study validates its results using Monte Carlo tests, a manifesto-drafting simulation and a human coding exercise. Finally, the article applies the estimator to party manifestos in four multiparty democracies and demonstrates that ambiguity can enhance the appeal of parties with platforms that become more moderate, and lessen the appeal of parties with platforms that become more extreme