Young voters and their "never Tory" mindset: the making of a Labour generation?

The last general election brought a number of new voters into the electorate, especially younger ones who having voted for the first time, are more likely to turn out in future contests. Anja Neundorf and Thomas J. Scotto argue that although Labour cannot take their support for granted, for many of them the Conservative option is permanently off the menu

Getting tough with the dragon? The comparative correlates of foreign policy attitudes toward China in the United States and UK

A large body of research suggests mass publics are capable of thinking coherently about international relations. We extend this body of research to show that domain relevant postures – in our case, more abstract beliefs about foreign policy – are related to how tough of a line representative samples of US and UK respondents want their governments to take toward China. More specifically, we utilize a unique comparative survey of American and British foreign policy attitudes to show broad support for toughness toward China. Beliefs about the use of the military and attitudes regarding globalization help explain preferences for tough economic and military policies toward China. In the two countries, the relationship between general foreign policy outlooks and the positions citizens take is robust to the addition of a general mediator that controls for the general affect those surveyed have toward China. Finally, the strength of the relationship between these abstract postures and specific preferences for a China policy are different across the countries

In Canada’s snap election, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals were both victims and beneficiaries of the COVID-19 crisis

Last month, Canada held its second election in less than two years as Liberal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau sought a new mandate during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Trudeau’s gamble that Canadians would reward his party for its handling of the pandemic did not pay off, and he now still leads a minority government. Using new survey data, Harold Clarke, Thomas J. Scotto and Marianne C. Stewart find that while Canadian voters did approve of the government’s pandemic response, concerns about its handling of the economy and inflation deprived the Liberal party of an election majority

The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: comparing the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts

Populist referendum : Was 'Brexit' an expression of nativist and anti-elitist sentiment?

Was the outcome of the United Kingdom’s ‘Brexit’ referendum to leave the European Union a visible and consequential manifestation of right-wing populism? After all, skepticism in the UK towards the EU predates the recent rise of European right wing populism. Original survey data show, however, that the interaction of nativist sentiment and anti-elitist attitudes, the cocktail of right-wing populism, led to widespread support for Brexit, even while controlling for other factors. Although hostility to immigrants was an important factor, nativists were particularly prone to vote ‘leave’; if they also did not trust political elites, a crucial element of populism. Further underscoring this explanation is the conditional effect of anti-elite sentiment. The relationship between anti-elite sentiment and support for leaving the EU only exists among those with high nativist sentiment; among those low in nativist sentiment, anti-elite feelings did not increase support for Brexit

We spend how much? Misperceptions, innumeracy, and support for the foreign aid in the United States and Great Britain

Majorities of citizens in high-income countries often oppose foreign aid spending. One popular explanation is that the public overestimates the percentage and amount of taxpayer funds that goes toward overseas aid. Does expressing aid flows in dollar and/or percentage terms shift public opinion toward aid? We report the results of an experiment examining differences in support for aid spending as a function of the information American and British respondents receive about foreign aid spending. In both nations, providing respondents with information about foreign aid spending as a percentage of the national budget significantly reduces support for cuts. The findings suggest that support for aid can be increased, but significant opposition to aid spending remains

The motherhood penalties : insights from women in UK academia

We use an original survey of academic women in the UK to investigate different dimensions of the motherhood penalty. Being a mother has no effect on salaries, but still slows down career progression even in such a high-skilled sector. Motherhood has an ambivalent impact on women’s perception of their working environment: improving satisfaction, but reducing perception of salary fairness relative to men. Our paper also explores how different policies can mitigate the motherhood penalties. We find that more generous maternity provisions are associated with higher salary, potentially because generosity reduces the crowding out of research activity. Better availability of childcare and an even distribution of responsibilities within the household correlate positively with earnings. Our findings also highlight the importance of a supportive work environment for mothers’ career and well-being at the workplace. Taken together, these findings suggest the necessity of a multi-faceted policy response to the motherhood penalties

Motherhood in academia : a novel dataset with an application to maternity leave uptake

Legislation over the past two decades enhanced the availability and quantity of statutory maternity leave in the United Kingdom. In high-skilled sectors, many employers top up this maternity leave in an effort to retain and develop the careers of women. As leave provision became more generous, debates emerged as to the role, if any, these enhanced benefits have in retaining women in high status occupation and facilitating their career growth. Further, individual situations and employment status may prevent women from taking advantage of enhanced benefits. This paper presents findings from a comprehensive survey of thousands of women in the UK Higher Education sector and documents how the lives of academic mothers changed over the past quarter century. Contract status and the partner’s participation in parenting has significant effects on the types of maternity leave taken. We reflect on these findings and discuss future research in the area of labour market equity and productivity the availability of this comprehensive quantitative survey of academic women can facilitate

Alternative Measures of Political Efficacy : The Quest for Cross-Cultural Invariance With Ordinally Scaled Survey Items

In this paper, we examine the measurement of citizens’ beliefs that politicians and political systems are responsive (external efficacy) and that citizens see themselves sufficiently skilled to participate in politics (internal efficacy). This paper demonstrates techniques that allow researchers to establish the cross-context validity of conceptually important ordinal scales. In so doing, we show an alternative set of efficacy indicators to those commonly appearing on cross-national surveys to be more promising from a validity standpoint. Through detailed discussion and application of multi-group analysis for ordinal measures, we demonstrate that a measurement model linking latent internal and external efficacy factors performs well in configural and parameter invariance testing when applied to representative samples of respondents in the United States and Great Britain. With near full invariance achieved, differences in latent variable means are meaningful and British respondents are shown to have lower levels of both forms of efficacy than their American counterparts. We argue that this technique may be particularly valuable for scholars who wish to establish the suitability of ordinal scales for direct comparison across nations or cultures

Prudence, Principle and Minimal Heuristics: British Public Opinion toward the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan and Libya

Research Highlights and Abstract This article shows: Clear pluralities of British survey respondents opposed their nation's military interventions in Afghanistan and Libya. Opposition to involvement in the conflicts mostly a function of the costs the missions would impose on the nation and concerns about the morality of the missions. Attitudes towards the parties and their leaders are weak predictors of the respondents' attitudes towards involving the nation's military in the conflict. Survey experiment reveals the positions leaders and parties took on sending additional British troops into Afghanistan did not prime support or opposition to such a ‘surge’. Scholarship is divided on the primary drivers of public support for the use of military force. This article addresses this controversy by comparing three competing models of British public opinion towards the use of military force in Afghanistan and Libya. Analyses of national survey data demonstrate that cost-benefit calculations and normative considerations have sizable effects, but leader images and other heuristics have very limited explanatory power. These results are buttressed by experimental evidence showing that leader cues have negligible impacts on attitudes towards participation in a military ‘surge’ in Afghanistan. The minimal role heuristics played in motivating citizen support and opposition to the conflicts in these two countries contrast with their significant relationship to citizen attitudes towards the British intervention in Iraq. These conflicting results suggest that the strength of leader and partisan cues may be animated by the intensity of inter-elite conflict over British involvement in military interventions. </jats:p