Media and campaign effects on vote choice at national elections in Europe : a review of a multilingual research landscape

This article reviews the empirical research literature on campaign and media effects on vote choice at national elections in European countries for the post-World War II period. Particular efforts are undertaken to obtain a comprehensive picture by including publications in many different languages. With regard to the amount of research, but also the topics addressed, the survey reveals considerable differences between countries. Studies of campaign effects have focused on the temporal dynamics of campaigns, on the modes of campaign communications (such as personal contacts at the local level, advertising on TV and in the press or online social media) and on certain aspects of its content. Research on media effects has explored the role of partisan bias and certain topical categories of news (climate of opinion, issue and candidate coverage) as well as specific new media formats, notably televised candidate debates and vote advice applications (VAA). Overall, the review reveals that there is little in the way of an integrated and consolidated body of campaign and media effects research on national elections in Europe. While political communication research increasingly acknowledges the potential importance of news media and political parties’ electioneering for voting behaviour, there appears as of yet to be little convergence regarding approaches and research findings. Particularly striking is the degree to which research questions are guided by national institutional contexts

Economic transition and elections in Poland 1

Poland's economic and political transition, one of the most successful, has depended very heavily on job creation in new firms to replace the jobs lost in the formerly state-owned enterprises. This paper uses survey and aggregate data from three Polish elections to suggest that these de novo firms, the individuals they employ, and the residents in the local areas where they exist become an important constituency supporting pro-reform political parties and constraining the actions of parties less sympathetic to the reforms. The creation of this political constituency helps explain how countries can successfully pursue both economic and political reforms. JEL classification: D72, P26.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72227/1/1468-0351.00139.pd

Stripped of illusions? Exploring system justification processes in Capitalist and post-Communist societies

Sociologists and political scientists have often observed that citizens of Central and Eastern Europe express high levels of disillusionment with their social, economic and political systems, in comparison with citizens of Western capitalist societies. In this review, we analyze system legitimation and delegitimation in post-Communist societies from a social psychological perspective. We draw on system justification theory, which seeks to understand how, when and why people do (and do not) defend, bolster and justify existing social systems. We review some of the major tenets and findings of the theory and compare research on system-justifying beliefs and ideologies in traditionally Capitalist and post-Communist countries to determine: (1) whether there are robust differences in the degree of system justification in post-Communist and Capitalist societies, and (2) the extent to which hypotheses derived from system justification theory receive support in the post-Communist context. To this end, we summarize research findings from over 20 countries and cite previously unpublished data from a public opinion survey conducted in Poland. Our analysis confirms that there are lower levels of system justification in post-Communist countries. At the same time, we find that system justification possesses similar social and psychological antecedents, manifestations and consequences in the two types of societies. We offer potential explanations for these somewhat complicated patterns of results and conclude by addressing implications for theory and research on system justification and system change (or transition)

Romania - Polity Contestation and the Resilience of Mainstream Parties

ERC POLCON project funded

Measuring the structure and stability of opinion in mass publics

This thesis examines the structure and stability of public opinion in a sample of Canadian respondents. The data consist of a three-wave panel of 1790 cases; the interviews were conducted in 1977, 1979 and 1980 as part of the Social Change in Canada project of the Institute for Behavioral Research of York University. In the first part of the thesis various theoretical and methodological issues pertinent to the study of mass political attitudes are discussed and a research strategy is proposed. In the second part, factor analysis is used to extract structural information from the data. It is found that the opinions of English-speaking respondents can be described in terms of four fundamental dimensions which are given the tentative labels of "welfare liberalism," "nostalgic conservatism," "pro-business," and "provincial rights." For French-speaking respondents, two dimensions are found: "welfare liberalism" and "protection of French-Canadian society." Finally, regression analysis is performed on factor-based scales to obtain more information about the opinion structures. The central finding is that it is indeed possible to use mass survey data to identify a simple structure of political beliefs of the Canadian public, and to tie this structure to the political and social makeup of the country.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat