The Impact of Party Competition on the Individual Vote Decision: The Case of Extreme Right Parties

Since the early 1980s, Western Europe has witnessed the rising success of niche parties and a simultaneous decline in the vote share of mainstream parties. While for one group of these niche parties, namely the left-libertarian and green parties, this success is commonly explained by the rise of a ‘new politics’ or ‘post-materialist’ dimension, the causes for the emergence of Extreme Right Parties (ERPs) are still disputed. The continuous electoral support for ERPs at the national, regional and local level was unexpected and has induced a great deal of scientific attention and effort to explain the different fortunes of these parties at the polls. Previous research on the factors influencing the electoral success of ERPs has emphasized the importance of voter characteristics and party competition for the electoral fortunes of ERPs. With regard to the first, ERP voters have been found to share common policy preferences and are related to distinct socio-economic groups. With regard to party competition, scholars have pointed to the role of the electoral programmatic of ERPs as well as their mainstream competitors for the electoral support of ERPs. While existing studies come to the overall conclusion that both voter preferences and patterns of party competition do influence the electoral fortunes of ERPs, the question of how party competition influences the vote decision for an ERP is still a matter of academic dispute. The single contributions of this dissertation contribute to the existing literature on the impact of party competition on the vote decision for an ERP by (1) focusing on the interplay between the political preferences of ERP voters and party competition, (2) applying a two-dimensional approach to the political opportunity structure of ERPs, and (3) incorporating the findings into a formal theory on how party competition influences the decision of individual voters, be they ERP voters or supporters of any other party in Western Europe

Party Competition and Vote Choice

Analyzing the relationships between political parties and voters is one of the central topics of political science. Parties are expected either to be responsive to the demands of their voters or are presumed to have the power to influence voting decisions by structuring the political discourse and thereby competition regarding political issues. These two aspects are covered in the literature by research on the way parties present themselves and by electoral research, respectively. Focusing on the latter, this state-of-the-art article reviews how recent publications have analyzed the impact of party competition (macro level) on vote choice (individual level). It does so by introducing the most prominent theories of voting and party competition, summarizing the most recent results and pointing to potential problems for international comparisons such as methodological choices and different approaches to the measurement of party positions. ZusammenfassungDie Analyse der Beziehungen zwischen politischen Parteien und Wahlern ist eines der zentralen Themen der Politikwissenschaft. Hinsichtlich der Parteien wird davon ausgegangen, dass sie sich entweder responsiv gegenuber den Forderungen ihrer Wahler zeigen oder aber die Macht haben, deren Wahlentscheidung zu beeinflussen, indem sie den politischen Diskurs und damit den Wettbewerb um politische Themen strukturieren. Diese beiden Aspekte werden zum einen in der Parteien-, zum anderen in der Wahlforschung behandelt. Mit Blick auf Letztere wird in diesem State-of-the-Art-Artikel dargestellt, wie neuere Veroffentlichungen die Auswirkungen des Parteienwettbewerbs (Makroebene) auf die Wahlentscheidung (Individualebene) analysieren. Dies geschieht durch eine Einfuhrung in die wichtigsten Theorien zur Wahlentscheidung und zum Parteienwettbewerb, auf deren Grundlage eine Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse neuerer, quantitativer Studien erfolgt. Potenzielle Probleme fur den internationalen Vergleich werden hierbei ebenso erortert wie wichtige methodische Neuerungen und die verschiedenen verfugbaren Ansatze zur Messung von Parteienpositionen

A New Electorate? Explaining the Party Preferences of Immigrant-Origin Voters at the 2017 Bundestag Election

Immigrants now constitute a sizeable and rapidly growing group among many Western countries' electorates, but analyses of their party preferences remain limited. Theoretically, immigrants' party preferences might be explained with both standard electoral theories and immigrant-specific approaches. In this article, we rigorously test both perspectives against each other using the most recent data from Germany. Applying the Michigan model, with its three central explanatory variables – party identification, issue orientations and candidate evaluations – to the party preferences of immigrant-origin and native voters, we find that this standard model can explain both groups well. In contrast, we find no direct effects of the most prominent immigrant-specific variables, and neither do these meaningfully moderate the Michigan variables. However, we find strong formative effects on the presence of political attitudes and beliefs: immigrants with a longer time spent in Germany, a stronger German identity and less experience of discrimination report significantly fewer item non-responses for the Michigan model's main explanatory variables

Improve hip fracture outcome in the elderly patient (iHOPE): a study protocol for a pragmatic, multicentre randomised controlled trial to test the efficacy of spinal versus general anaesthesia

Introduction Hip fracture surgery is associated with high in-hospital and 30-day mortality rates and serious adverse patient outcomes. Evidence from randomised controlled trials regarding effectiveness of spinal versus general anaesthesia on patient-centred outcomes after hip fracture surgery is sparse. Methods and analysis The iHOPE study is a pragmatic national, multicentre, randomised controlled, open-label clinical trial with a two-arm parallel group design. In total, 1032 patients with hip fracture (>65 years) will be randomised in an intended 1: 1 allocation ratio to receive spinal anaesthesia (n=516) or general anaesthesia (n=516). Outcome assessment will occur in a blinded manner after hospital discharge and inhospital. The primary endpoint will be assessed by telephone interview and comprises the time to the first occurring event of the binary composite outcome of all-cause mortality or new-onset serious cardiac and pulmonary complications within 30 postoperative days. In-hospital secondary endpoints, assessed via in-person interviews and medical record review, include mortality, perioperative adverse events, delirium, satisfaction, walking independently, length of hospital stay and discharge destination. Telephone interviews will be performed for long-term endpoints (all-cause mortality, independence in walking, chronic pain, ability to return home cognitive function and overall health and disability) at postoperative day 30 +/- 3, 180 +/- 45 and 365 +/- 60. Ethics and dissemination iHOPE has been approved by the leading Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of the RWTH Aachen University on 14 March 2018 (EK 022/18). Approval from all other involved local Ethical Committees was subsequently requested and obtained. Study started in April 2018 with a total recruitment period of 24 months. iHOPE will be disseminated via presentations at national and international scientific meetings or conferences and publication in peer-reviewed international scientific journals

IRBs and Best Practices for Ethical Data Sharing

Materials associated with 2017-07-30 sessio

Retrotransposons Are the Major Contributors to the Expansion of the Drosophila ananassae Muller F Element

The discordance between genome size and the complexity of eukaryotes can partly be attributed to differences in repeat density. The Muller F element (∼5.2 Mb) is the smallest chromosome in Drosophila melanogaster, but it is substantially larger (>18.7 Mb) in D. ananassae. To identify the major contributors to the expansion of the F element and to assess their impact, we improved the genome sequence and annotated the genes in a 1.4-Mb region of the D. ananassae F element, and a 1.7-Mb region from the D element for comparison. We find that transposons (particularly LTR and LINE retrotransposons) are major contributors to this expansion (78.6%), while Wolbachia sequences integrated into the D. ananassae genome are minor contributors (0.02%). Both D. melanogaster and D. ananassae F-element genes exhibit distinct characteristics compared to D-element genes (e.g., larger coding spans, larger introns, more coding exons, and lower codon bias), but these differences are exaggerated in D. ananassae. Compared to D. melanogaster, the codon bias observed in D. ananassae F-element genes can primarily be attributed to mutational biases instead of selection. The 5′ ends of F-element genes in both species are enriched in dimethylation of lysine 4 on histone 3 (H3K4me2), while the coding spans are enriched in H3K9me2. Despite differences in repeat density and gene characteristics, D. ananassae F-element genes show a similar range of expression levels compared to genes in euchromatic domains. This study improves our understanding of how transposons can affect genome size and how genes can function within highly repetitive domains

Expression quantitative trait locus fine mapping of the 17q12–21 asthma locus in African American children: a genetic association and gene expression study

Background: African ancestry is associated with a higher prevalence and greater severity of asthma than European ancestries, yet genetic studies of the most common locus associated with childhood-onset asthma, 17q12–21, in African Americans have been inconclusive. The aim of this study was to leverage both the phenotyping of the Children's Respiratory and Environmental Workgroup (CREW) birth cohort consortium, and the reduced linkage disequilibrium in African Americans, to fine map the 17q12–21 locus. Methods: We first did a genetic association study and meta-analysis using 17q12–21 tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for childhood-onset asthma in 1613 European American and 870 African American children from the CREW consortium. Nine tag SNPs were selected based on linkage disequilibrium patterns at 17q12–21 and their association with asthma, considering the effect allele under an additive model (0, 1, or 2 effect alleles). Results were meta-analysed with publicly available summary data from the EVE consortium (on 4303 European American and 3034 African American individuals) for seven of the nine SNPs of interest. Subsequently, we tested for expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) among the SNPs associated with childhood-onset asthma and the expression of 17q12–21 genes in resting peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 85 African American CREW children and in upper airway epithelial cells from 246 African American CREW children; and in lower airway epithelial cells from 44 European American and 72 African American adults from a case-control study of asthma genetic risk in Chicago (IL, USA). Findings: 17q12–21 SNPs were broadly associated with asthma in European Americans. Only two SNPs (rs2305480 in gasdermin-B [GSDMB] and rs8076131 in ORMDL sphingolipid biosynthesis regulator 3 [ORMDL3]) were associated with asthma in African Americans, at a Bonferroni-corrected threshold of p<0·0055 (for rs2305480_G, odds ratio [OR] 1·36 [95% CI 1·12–1·65], p=0·0014; and for rs8076131_A, OR 1·37 [1·13–1·67], p=0·0010). In upper airway epithelial cells from African American children, genotype at rs2305480 was the most significant eQTL for GSDMB (eQTL effect size [β] 1·35 [95% CI 1·25–1·46], p<0·0001), and to a lesser extent showed an eQTL effect for post-GPI attachment to proteins phospholipase 3 (β 1·15 [1·08–1·22], p<0·0001). No SNPs were eQTLs for ORMDL3. By contrast, in PBMCs, the five core SNPs were associated only with expression of GSDMB and ORMDL3. Genotype at rs12936231 (in zona pellucida binding protein 2) showed the strongest associations across both genes (for GSDMB, eQTLβ 1·24 [1·15–1·32], p<0·0001; and for ORMDL3 (β 1·19 [1·12–1·24], p<0·0001). The eQTL effects of rs2305480 on GSDMB expression were replicated in lower airway cells from African American adults (β 1·29 [1·15–1·44], p<0·0001). Interpretation: Our study suggests that SNPs regulating GSDMB expression in airway epithelial cells have a major role in childhood-onset asthma, whereas SNPs regulating the expression levels of 17q12–21 genes in resting blood cells are not central to asthma risk. Our genetic and gene expression data in African Americans and European Americans indicated GSDMB to be the leading candidate gene at this important asthma locus.6 month embargo; published: 01 May 2020This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]