Comment l'agenda médiatique influence celui des parlementaires

Les parlementaires utilisent les médias pour s’informer sur les besoins de la société et pour obtenir des informations nécessaires à l’exercice de leurs fonctions législative et de contrôle. À l’inverse, ils se servent des médias pour rendre visibles leurs activités et convaincre l’opinion publique. Une étude menée pour le compte du Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique (FNS) s’est intéressée aux interactions entre agendas médiatique et parlementaire. Elle suggère, avec d’autres, que les médias influencent davantage les parlementaires qu’inversement. L’intensité varie toutefois selon le pays, le type de parti, l’enjeu et l’activité parlementaire

Changing Religiosity, Changing Politics? The Influence of "Belonging” and "Believing” on Political Attitudes in Switzerland

Starting from theories of secularization and of religious individualization, we propose a two-dimensional typology of religiosity and test its impact on political attitudes. Unlike classic conceptions of religiosity used in political studies, our typology simultaneously accounts for an individual's sense of belonging to the church (institutional dimension) and his/her personal religious beliefs (spiritual dimension). Our analysis, based on data from the World Values Survey in Switzerland (1989-2007), shows two main results. First, next to evidence of religious decline, we also find evidence of religious change with an increase in the number of people who "believe without belonging.” Second, non-religious individuals and individuals who believe without belonging are significantly more permissive on issues of cultural liberalism than followers of institutionalized forms of religiosit

The media is becoming increasingly independent from politics in Switzerland

The agenda setting power of the mass media has significant influence over the political process in European countries. Anke Tresch, Pascal Sciarini and Frédéric Varone assess the relationship between the media and policy-makers’ issue attention in the four phases of the law-making process in Switzerland. They find that although the media do not always give priority to the same issues as policy-makers, when looking at the referendum phase of the law-making process, media and policy makers’ priorities are aligned. However, this strong alignment becomes weaker over time. This, they argue, is a sign of the media’s growing independence from politics

Tailored negativity. Campaign consultants, candidate personality, and attack politics

To what extent are negative election campaigns “tailored” to the personality of the candidates? And with what electoral consequences? In this article we tackle these questions by focusing on the 2019 Swiss federal election. We estimate the presence of negativity as a function of the personality profile of competing candidates (Big Five) and the presence of professional consultants. Analyses based on data from a candidate survey (Selects 2019) suggest that campaign consultants are likely to take stock of the character of their candidate, and tailor the content of their campaigns accordingly - more aggressive for more energetic candidates (higher plasticity) and for less stable candidates (lower stability). These results, we argue, support our central claim that the role of consultants is to provide the most adequate campaign for the candidate they are promoting (“tailoring hypothesis”). We fail however to find any convincing evidence that such tailoring is electorally successful

The political agenda-setting power of the media: The Europeanisation nexus

Previous studies have demonstrated that the extent to which media coverage influences the issue priorities of policy-makers is contingent on the type of issues, media, and political agendas. This article contributes to this literature by elaborating on a factor that has been surprisingly neglected so far: the domestic or Europeanised character of the political issue covered in the news. Empirically, we apply time-series cross-section analyses to a dataset on media and parliamentary agendas during the years 1995-2003 in Switzerland. We find that the media's political agenda-setting power mainly stems from news coverage of domestic issues. News on Europeanised issues have a weak impact on so-called symbolic parliamentary agendas, and no impact at all on the more substantial parliamentary agendas that may initiate decision-making processes

Cost efficiency of incentives in mature probability-based online panels

Little is known about the trade-off between response rates and sample selection on the one hand and costs of different incentives on the other hand in mature online panel surveys. In wave 5 of the Panel Survey of the Swiss Election Study (Selects), a conditional CHF 20 (cash) is used for the politically least interested, while the remaining sample is randomized in two incentive groups: a conditional CHF 10 (cash) and a lottery (5x300 CHF). In the two experimental groups, there are only small differences regarding sample composition, and response rates are only slightly higher in the more expensive cash group. Given that costs are significantly lower in the lottery group, we conclude that it may be possible to save costs on incentives in a mature panel

L’évolution des identifications partisanes en Suisse 1971-2019

L’évolution des identifications partisanes en Suisse 1971-2019 PDF Print N°34, Juillet 2023 Anke Tresch (FORS & Université de Lausanne), Line Rennwald (FORS & Université de Lausanne), Lukas Lauener (FORS), July 3, 2023 How to cite this article: Tresch, A., Rennwald, L., & Lauener, L. (2023). L’évolution des identifications partisanes en Suisse 1971-2019. Social Change in Switzerland, N°34. doi: 10.22019/SC-2023-00003 DOI:10.22019/SC-2023-00003 Copyright: © the authors 2023. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons License Résumé L’identification partisane sert de repère lors de l'assimilation d'informations politiques et influence la décision électorale en faveur du parti dont on se sent proche. Cette étude examine l'évolution des identifications partisanes au cours des quatre dernières décennies en Suisse. Elle montre que la proportion de personnes qui se sentent proches d'un parti a pratiquement été divisée par deux entre 1971 et 1999, puis s'est maintenue à un niveau bas, autour de 30 %. Alors que les personnes proches d’un parti donnent majoritairement leur voix à leur parti préféré, la décision électorale des personnes sans attachement partisan est plus hétérogène. En raison de leur nombre croissant, les personnes sans attachement partisan - celles qui ne se sentent proches d'aucun parti ou ne s’identifient à aucun parti - sont devenues plus importantes pour la force électorale des partis par rapport aux années 1970. En plus des partis non gouvernementaux, l'UDC (Union démocratique du centre) a obtenu des résultats supérieurs auprès des personnes sans attaches partisanes depuis 1999. Les personnes ne s’identifiant à aucun parti sont plus souvent de sexe féminin, plus jeunes, sans affiliation religieuse, sans diplôme universitaire et ont des revenus plus faibles. Politiquement, elles se distinguent par leur scepticisme à l'égard de l'UE et leur opposition à une augmentation des dépenses sociales

Introduction to the Special Issue “The 2015 Swiss National Elections”

This special issue brings together a large variety of contributions dealing with partychoice, political attitudes and the dynamics of electoral campaigns in Switzerland. Theintroduction places the contributions in the broader framework of current debates in theinternational literature and highlights substantial and methodological innovations. The articles inthis volume address central issues of the literature dealing with the two-dimensional structure ofpolitical competition, take up key questions of the dynamics of election campaigns, and finallyecho a large interest for the topic of populism, not only on the side of the parties but also on theside of the voters. The introduction also underlines the new and innovative ways in which thearticles link the different datasets together in order to address substantial questions on thecomplexity of the environment in which voters form their choice and political parties operateduring an election campaign

Position, Competence, and Commitment. Three Dimensions of Issue Voting.

We investigate the impact of three issue-related party perceptions on people’s vote choices. The positional dimension of issue voting holds that voters are more likely to prefer parties whose policy positions on issues come close to their own policy preferences. The competence dimension of issue voting implies that voters are more inclined to cast their ballot for parties that they see as more competent to tackle policy issues. The commitment dimension means that voters are more likely to prefer parties that they perceive as more committed to specific issues. Leveraging data from Belgium’s two largest regions (Flanders and Wallonia), we find that all dimensions exert an effect on electoral choice: position has the strongest effect, followed by competence and commitment