Conducting quantitative studies with the participation of political elites: best practices for designing the study and soliciting the participation of political elites

Conducting quantitative research (e.g., surveys, a large number of interviews, experiments) with the participation of political elites is typically challenging. Given that a population of political elites is typically small by definition, a particular challenge is obtaining a sufficiently high number of observations and, thus, a certain response rate. This paper focuses on two questions related to this challenge: (1) What are best practices for designing the study? And (2) what are best practices for soliciting the participation of political elites? To arrive at these best practices, we (a) examine which factors explain the variation in response rates across surveys within and between large-scale, multi-wave survey projects by statistically analyzing a newly compiled dataset of 342 political elite surveys from eight projects, spanning 30 years and 58 countries, (b) integrate the typically scattered findings from the existing literature and (c) discuss results from an original expert survey among researchers with experience with such research (n = 23). By compiling a comprehensive list of best practices, systematically testing some widely held believes about response rates and by providing benchmarks for response rates depending on country, survey mode and elite type, we aim to facilitate future studies where participation of political elites is required. This will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of political elites’ opinions, information processing and decision making and thereby of the functioning of representative democracies

The “qualitative” in qualitative comparative analysis (QCA): research moves, case-intimacy and face-to-face interviews

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) includes two main components: QCA “as a research approach” and QCA “as a method”. In this study, we focus on the former and, by means of the “interpretive spiral”, we critically look at the research process of QCA. We show how QCA as a research approach is composed of (1) an “analytical move”, where cases, conditions and outcome(s) are conceptualised in terms of sets, and (2) a “membership move”, where set membership values are qualitatively assigned by the researcher (i.e. calibration). Moreover, we show that QCA scholars have not sufficiently acknowledged the data generation process as a constituent research phase (or “move”) for the performance of QCA. This is particularly relevant when qualitative data–e.g. interviews, focus groups, documents–are used for subsequent analysis and calibration (i.e. analytical and membership moves). We call the qualitative data collection process “relational move” because, for data gathering, researchers establish the social relation “interview” with the study participants. By using examples from our own research, we show how a dialogical interviewing style can help researchers gain the in-depth knowledge necessary to meaningfully represent qualitative data into set membership values for QCA, hence improving our ability to account for the “qualitative” in QCA

Different Ways of Promoting Working Time Reduction: A Comparative Analysis of Actors, Motives, Forms, and Approaches in Germany, Ireland, and Spain

Working time reduction (WTR) is back on the agenda, but there is no systematic knowledge of key actors in the WTR debate, their motives, the forms of WTR advocated, and their approach. Therefore, this article examines the promotion of WTR in Germany, Spain, and Ireland, countries with different industrial relations regimes. The comparative qualitative content analysis shows that WTR’s promotion varies: it is an individual worker issue in Germany, a political initiative in Spain, and a social campaign in Ireland. The primary motive is workers’ well-being, with additional emphases on economic, environmental, and societal aspects. These findings have implications for WTR’s future prospects

In “A League of Their Own?”: Judgment and Decision Making By Politicians and Non-politicians

Are there systematic differences between the behaviour of politicians – such as ministers, members of parliament or elected municipal council members – and that of ‘the rest of us’? Are politicians in a ‘league of their own’ in terms of how they take decisions and make judgements? In the existing literature, there is no overriding consensus or clear majority of findings on these questions. We add to this literature by leveraging results from an experiment with two samples: (1) Dutch locally elected politicians (n = 211) and (2) students (n = 260). The experiment examined whether these two groups displayed biases related to the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic – two so-called general purpose heuristics – and whether they displayed the reflection effect. Our findings demonstrate that politicians’ judgements and decisions are largely similar to those of the rest of us, indicating that there is little evidence of an elite-public gap in this respect. Under specific circumstances, however, politicians do differ in their judgement and decision making. These differences may have consequences for the functioning of representative democracy and for policy making. It is especially noteworthy that in this study political experience or expertise did not reduce decision-making biases

Heuristics and policy responsiveness: a research agenda

Theories of policy responsiveness assume that political decision-makers can rationally interpret information about voters’ likely reactions, but can we be sure of this? Political decision-makers face considerable time and information constraints, which are the optimal conditions for displaying decision-making biases—deviations from comprehensive rationality. Recent research has shown that when evaluating policies, political decision-makers display biases related to heuristics—cognitive rules of thumb that facilitate judgments and decision-making—when evaluating policies. It is thus likely that they also rely on heuristics in other situations, such as when forming judgments of voters’ likely reactions. But what types of heuristics do political decision-makers use in such judgments, and do these heuristics contribute to misjudgements of voters’ reactions? Existing research does not answer these crucial questions. To address this lacuna, we first present illustrative evidence of how biases related to heuristics contributed to misjudgements about voters’ reactions in two policy decisions by UK governments. Then, we use this evidence to develop a research agenda that aims to further our understanding of when political decision-makers rely on heuristics and the effects thereof. Such an agenda will contribute to the literature on policy responsiveness

Do Public Consultations Reduce Blame Attribution? The Impact of Consultation Characteristics, Gender, and Gender Attitudes

Can public consultations—gatherings organised to solicit constituent opinions—reduce the blame attributed to elected representatives whose decisions end up backfiring? Using two pre-registered survey experiments conducted on nationally representative samples of US respondents, we examine whether the effectiveness of consultations as a blame avoidance tool may be shaped by: (1) consultation characteristics, especially regarding whether or not representatives align their policies, either actively or passively, with constituent opinion; and (2) elected representative and constituent characteristics, especially regarding a representative’s gender and constituents’ gender attitudes. Results suggest that public consultations are indeed liable to decrease blame attribution, just so long as constituent opinion is not explicitly opposed to the representative’s decision. Active alignment with constituent opinion, however, does not appear to be a requirement for decreased blame attribution—and effects related to gender and gender attitudes are also largely absent. These findings are important for scholars seeking to better understand blame attribution, clarifying how public consultations might help politicians to pre-empt blame by reducing clarity of responsibility

Why governing parties change their platforms more frequently than those in opposition

Following an election, are parties that enter government more likely to alter their electoral platform than parties in opposition? Gijs Schumacher, Marc van de Wardt, Barbara Vis and Michael Baggesen Klitgaard present findings from data on party programmes going back to 1945. Their research indicates that, contrary to expectations, parties in government are more likely to alter their programme than parties in opposition, but that this effect depends on the extent to which parties aspire to hold office in the next election

The “qualitative” in qualitative comparative analysis (QCA): Research moves, case-intimacy and face-to-face interviews

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) includes two main components: QCA “as a research approach” and QCA “as a method”. In this study, we focus on the former and, by means of the “interpretive spiral”, we critically look at the research process of QCA. We show how QCA as a research approach is composed of (1) an “analytical move”, where cases, conditions and outcome(s) are conceptualised in terms of sets, and (2) a “membership move”, where set membership values are qualitatively assigned by the researcher (i.e. calibration). Moreover, we show that QCA scholars have not sufficiently acknowledged the data generation process as a constituent research phase (or “move”) for the performance of QCA. This is particularly relevant when qualitative data–e.g. interviews, focus groups, documents–are used for subsequent analysis and calibration (i.e. analytical and membership moves). We call the qualitative data collection process “relational move” because, for data gathering, researchers establish the social relation “interview” with the study participants. By using examples from our own research, we show how a dialogical interviewing style can help researchers gain the in-depth knowledge necessary to meaningfully represent qualitative data into set membership values for QCA, hence improving our ability to account for the “qualitative” in QCA