What accounts for the differences in how Catalonia and South Tyrol respond to immigration in both discourse and legislation? To answer this question, this chapter uses Mill’s method of difference to identify the political economy of... more
What accounts for the differences in how Catalonia and South Tyrol respond to immigration in both discourse and legislation? To answer this question, this chapter uses Mill’s method of difference to identify the political economy of internal migration as the antecedent of an ideational legacy, which drives the observed differences in the two regions’ contemporary politics of migration. Both Catalonia and South Tyrol had already lived through large-scale internal migration by the early 2000s—but under very different economic circumstances. Reconstructing internal migration processes between 1920 and 1970 reveals crucial differences in the social status of migrants and autochthons in South Tyrol relative to Catalonia. These match the differences observed in their contemporary political responses to international migration. The chapter then probes the validity of this historical explanation against alternative economic and institutional explanations.
Research Interests:
As Europe’s parties realign around a new, transnational cleavage, this article turns back to a historical case in which national identity conflicts also coincided with profound economic transformation: multinational and industrializing... more
As Europe’s parties realign around a new, transnational cleavage, this article turns back to a historical case in which national identity conflicts also coincided with profound economic transformation: multinational and industrializing Imperial Austria. While Austria is an important case for Lipset and Rokkan’s classic cleavage theory, they overlooked the long evolution of its party system pre-WWI. This paper introduces the Habsburg Manifesto Dataset (HMD), demonstrating its usefulness by tracking the formation of Imperial Austrian party system cleavages under universal manhood suffrage. Based on the qualitative content analysis of historical electoral manifestos, HMD measures the policy offers and group appeals made by Imperial Austria’s German and Czech parties. This allows testing Lipset and Rokkan’s claims by applying contemporary methodologies to a case that was effectively excluded from their original analysis. Doing so reveals a surprising degree of structure: parties consist...
Research Interests:
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation’s... more
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation’s political and cultural status and the socio-economic status of its median member. Drawing on several original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was declining, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics of nationalism, class, and status are closely intertwined.
Research Interests:
In this book, Christina Zuber outlines a theory of ideational policy stabilization to explain stable policy choices despite changing incentives. Historical legacies are frequently invoked in popular and academic accounts of the politics... more
In this book, Christina Zuber outlines a theory of ideational policy stabilization to explain stable policy choices despite changing incentives. Historical legacies are frequently invoked in popular and academic accounts of the politics of migration, but the mechanisms of transmission are left underspecified. This work contributes to research on migration and to theories of public policy by arguing that the missing link between past events and present choices is ideational: initially a historical constellation of interests leads actors to defend policy ideas that match the historical environment, but over time, ideas can detach themselves from interests and stabilize into societal dispositions (shared values and identities). This occurs if elites build a discursive consensus around a policy idea, and if bureaucrats develop concomitant policy practices. The book's empirical section analyses ideational stabilization in Catalonia (Spain), which takes an inclusive approach to immigration, and in South Tyrol (Italy), where immigration is framed as a threat. The comparison shows that these differences can be explained by the political economy of historical industrialization and internal migration. Catalans were in the driving seat of industrialization, receiving unskilled migrant workers from the rest of Spain to boost their own economy. South Tyroleans, on the other hand, were in the passenger seat, perceiving incoming Italians as colonizers. Over time, socioeconomic conditions changed, and internal migration was replaced with international migration. Yet with historical ideas having stabilized into dispositions, political and administrative elites continued to understand immigration through the now-obsolete perspective of economic opportunity in Catalonia and ethnic competition in South Tyrol.
Research Interests:
This chapter develops a theory of ideational policy stabilization that applies to the particular subset of policy choices that cannot be explained using present institutional and economic incentives, but that appear instead to match the... more
This chapter develops a theory of ideational policy stabilization that applies to the particular subset of policy choices that cannot be explained using present institutional and economic incentives, but that appear instead to match the incentives of a historical event or period. The chapter first builds the micro-foundation for the theory by drawing on Chong’s model of choice as a result of incentives and dispositions: incentives—the costs and benefits associated with each possible outcome of the choice situation—interact with our dispositions, which are more general orientations shaped by values, norms, and social identities. From the perspective of a single choice situation, discursive ideas can only influence choice by heightening the salience of some incentives over others, or by heightening the salience of some dispositions over others. In the long run, however, ideas can change the very repertoire of societal dispositions that can be activated in relation to a policy problem....
Research Interests:
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the... more
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation's political and cultural status and the socio-economic status of its median member. Drawing on several extensive, original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was facing decline, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics ...
This are the replication data and file for the article "Decentralisation and secessionism in party competition. A comparative analysis of Eastern and Western Europe".
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish the so-called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from noncausal relationships. We argue that social scientists should be aware of truth... more
Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish the so-called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from noncausal relationships. We argue that social scientists should be aware of truth conditions of causal claims because they imply which method of causal inference can establish whether a specific claim holds true. A survey of social scientists shows that this is worth emphasizing because many respondents have unclear concepts of causation and link methods to philosophical criteria in an incoherent way. We link five major theories of causation to major small and large- n methods of causal inference to provide clear guidelines to researchers and improve dialogue across methods. While most theories can be linked to more than one method, we argue that structural counterfactual theories are most useful for the social sciences since they require neither social and natural laws nor physical processes to assess causal claims.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Datasets in the field of ethnic politics still tend to treat ethnonational groups as unitary actors and do not differentiate between the positions of the organizations representing these groups. Datasets in the field of party politics... more
Datasets in the field of ethnic politics still tend to treat ethnonational groups as unitary actors and do not differentiate between the positions of the organizations representing these groups. Datasets in the field of party politics differentiate between the positions of political parties, yet fail convincingly to conceptualize an ethnonational dimension of competition. This Research Note presents EPAC, a new dataset on Ethnonationalism in Party Competition that seeks to fill this gap. Based on an expert survey, EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the ethnonational positions of 210 political parties in 22 multinational European democracies. The conceptualization of an ethnonational dimension of competition underlying the dataset is introduced and a series of validity and reliability tests performed. Test results show that EPAC provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension that can serve as an empirical base for study of the causes and effe...
Research Interests:
The outbidding model of ethnic politics focuses on party competition in an ethnically perfectly segmented electoral market where no party appeals to voters across the ethnic divide. The power sharing model retains this assumption, yet... more
The outbidding model of ethnic politics focuses on party competition in an ethnically perfectly segmented electoral market where no party appeals to voters across the ethnic divide. The power sharing model retains this assumption, yet tries to prevent outbidding through moderation-inducing institutional design. Empirically, imperfectly segmented electoral markets and variance of ethnic party strategies beyond radical outbidding have been observed. To provide a stepping stone towards a more complete theory of ethnic party competition, this article introduces the notion of nested competition, defined as party competition in an imperfectly segmented market where some — but not all — parties make offers across ethnic divides and where competition in intra-ethnic arenas is nested within an inter-ethnic arena of party competition. The notion of nested competition helps explain why ethnic outbidding is not omnipresent in contemporary multi-ethnic democracies. A moderate position on the eth...
Research Interests:
This article introduces two advanced analytical strategies for analyzing contextual-level outcomes in multilevel models: the multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. Since these strategies are seldom used in comparative survey research,... more
This article introduces two advanced analytical strategies for analyzing contextual-level outcomes in multilevel models: the multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. Since these strategies are seldom used in comparative survey research, we first discuss their methodological and statistical advantages over the more commonly applied approach of group mean aggregation. We then illustrate these advantages in an empirical analysis of the effect of citizens' support for democratic values at the individual level on a contextual-level outcome – the persistence of democracy – drawing on data from the World Values Survey and the Quality of Government project. Whereas we found no significant effect of support for democratic values in the model using simple group mean aggregation, citizens' support for democratic values was a significant predictor of democracies' estimated survival rate when applying latent aggregation in multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. The article corrob...
Research Interests: Computer Science, Political Science, Multi-level Analysis, Survey Research, Democracy, and 15 moreComparative Research, Multilevel modelling, Data, Aggregation, Demokratie, Politikwissenschaft, Political Stability, Multilevel Analysis, Political Values, Value Orientation, democratic stability, sampling error, contextual level outcomes, transformational mechanisms, and Daten
Regional and Federal Studies’ 30th anniversary offers an opportunity to take stock of the state of the discipline and of the journal. We make four claims. First, the multi-level nature of the political world has intensified in the last 30... more
Regional and Federal Studies’ 30th anniversary offers an opportunity to take stock of the state of the discipline and of the journal. We make four claims. First, the multi-level nature of the political world has intensified in the last 30 years. Second, the approaches to studying this changing world have evolved through a quantitative and comparative turn. Regional and Federal Studies has embraced these developments whilst remaining faithful to its tradition of rich conceptual and case-study work. Third, the journal has contributed to the ‘territorialization’ of mainstream political science as many fields of study have gradually recognized the limitations of national- or single-level analyses. Finally, the journal itself has diversified in terms of approaches, methods, geographical coverage, and gender balance of author profiles, although we recognize there is more to do. We view further comparative research on the Global South as a particularly important research avenue.
Research Interests:
How do minority regions in multi-national states respond to immigration? Do they use regional policy-making competencies to foster the inclusion of immigrants, or to tighten the boundaries of belonging exclusively around the minority?... more
How do minority regions in multi-national states respond to immigration? Do they use regional policy-making competencies to foster the inclusion of immigrants, or to tighten the boundaries of belonging exclusively around the minority? This paper answers these questions through a comparison of the immigrant integration laws of Catalonia (Spain) and South Tyrol (Italy). Qualitative content analysis of the laws shows that both regions place most emphasis on helping immigrants to become equal members of the society in the socio-economic dimension. Only the South Tyrolean law then adds also some restrictions. By contrast, South Tyrol is more flexible when it comes to cultural integration granting immigrants free choice of whether to integrate into the German or the Italian language, or both, while the Catalan law prioritises integration into Catalan culture. The paper links these differences to the dominant political dividing lines in regional party competition before the adoption of eac...
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supplyside explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation's... more
How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supplyside explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation's political and cultural status and the socioeconomic status of its median member. Drawing on several original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was declining, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics of nationalism, class, and status are closely intertwined.
Research Interests:
Ethnic outbidding' captures a type of electoral competition in which parties that champion the interests of ethnic groups contest each other by adopting ever more radical positions on ethnic issues. Yet, despite the fact that many of the... more
Ethnic outbidding' captures a type of electoral competition in which parties that champion the interests of ethnic groups contest each other by adopting ever more radical positions on ethnic issues. Yet, despite the fact that many of the world's plural societies have both, significant ethnic parties and federal institutions, we do not yet know how federalism affects the likelihood of ethnic outbidding. This contribution develops some theoretical expectations about the relationship between federalism and ethnic outbidding, and discusses what kind of evidence we would need in order to test whether they hold true.
Research Interests:
This article introduces two advanced analytical strategies for analyzing contextual-level outcomes in multilevel models: the multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. Since these strategies are seldom used in comparative survey research,... more
This article introduces two advanced analytical strategies for analyzing contextual-level outcomes in multilevel models: the multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. Since these strategies are seldom used in comparative survey research, we first discuss their method- ological and statistical advantages over the more commonly applied approach of group mean aggregation. We then illustrate these advantages in an empirical analysis of the ef- fect of citizens' support for democratic values at the individual level on a contextual-level outcome – the persistence of democracy – drawing on data from the World Values Survey and the Quality of Government project. Whereas we found no significant effect of support for democratic values in the model using simple group mean aggregation, citizens' support for democratic values was a significant predictor of democracies' estimated survival rate when applying latent aggregation in multilevel SEM and the two-step approach. The article corroborates previous concerns with simple aggregation and demonstrates how researchers can improve the validity of their analyses of contextual-level outcomes by using alternative strategies of aggregation.
Research Interests:
This Special Issue aims to (1) theorise party strategies in multi-dimensional policy spaces; and (2) apply the theory to party competition in multinational democracies characterised by a salient territorial dimension alongside a more... more
This Special Issue aims to (1) theorise party strategies in multi-dimensional policy spaces; and (2) apply the theory to party competition in multinational democracies characterised by a salient territorial dimension alongside a more established economic dimension. The introductory article brings together recent contributions treating spatial and salience theories as compatible and policy spaces as two-dimensional to propose four party strategies that can be ranked from one- to two-dimensional competitive behaviour: uni-dimensionality, blurring, subsuming, and two- dimensionality. The remaining contributions operationalise these strategies and draw on a variety of data sources ranging from manifestos to parliamentary bill proposals and expert surveys to describe when and explore why parties use these strategies in competition, focusing on patterns of party competition in multinational democracies, selected as typical cases of multi-dimensional competition.
Research Interests:
This special issue provides the first internationally comparative analysis of regional immigrant integration policies. The introduction defines socioeconomic, cultural-religious and legal-political domains of integration, expecting... more
This special issue provides the first internationally comparative analysis of regional immigrant integration policies. The introduction defines socioeconomic, cultural-religious and legal-political domains of integration, expecting regions to be most active policy-makers in the first. Regional politics drives policy orientations: leftist regions develop more inclusive policies than their right-wing counterparts, and Rokkan regions with strong regionalist parties adopt more assimilationist policies than ordinary regions. Through policy feedback, regional policies also influence immigrants' political integration, shaping their prospects of becoming 'regional citizens'. Six empirical contributions assess these arguments for five federations (Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, United States and Canada) and two quasi-federal systems (Italy and Spain).
KEYWORD immigrant integration policy; citizenship; decentralization; party politics; Europe; North America
KEYWORD immigrant integration policy; citizenship; decentralization; party politics; Europe; North America
Research Interests:
Parties Post-Yug provides data on parties, elections and governments in the Yugoslav successor states between 1990 and 2017, enabling systematic research on party politics in countries that have so far often been excluded from comparative... more
Parties Post-Yug provides data on parties, elections and governments in the Yugoslav successor states between 1990 and 2017, enabling systematic research on party politics in countries that have so far often been excluded from comparative work due to data limitations.
The data is available from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WWHXDY and was collected in collaboration with Nikola Todorić and Holger Döring. The data follows the structure of the ParlGov-dataset (Döring and Manow 2018). It consists of three separate tables with information about election results, cabinet composition and party leaders.
Todorić, Nikola; Döring, Holger; Zuber, Christina, 2018, "Parties-PostYug", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WWHXDY, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:dkfn4zkZeFCdIU/oIZ9GOA== [fileUNF]
The data is available from https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WWHXDY and was collected in collaboration with Nikola Todorić and Holger Döring. The data follows the structure of the ParlGov-dataset (Döring and Manow 2018). It consists of three separate tables with information about election results, cabinet composition and party leaders.
Todorić, Nikola; Döring, Holger; Zuber, Christina, 2018, "Parties-PostYug", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WWHXDY, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:dkfn4zkZeFCdIU/oIZ9GOA== [fileUNF]
Research Interests:
Whereas Western European governments have devolved political authority to minority regions, governments in Eastern Europe have shied away from using decentralisation to accommodate national minorities. This article assesses how these... more
Whereas Western European governments have devolved political authority to minority regions, governments in Eastern Europe have shied away from using decentralisation to accommodate national minorities. This article assesses how these differences affect the secessionism of minority parties. The theoretical section argues that both programmatic accommodation (i.e. when governments adopt positions in favour of decentralisation) and institutional accommodation (i.e. when governments create regions that correspond to the settlement areas of minority groups and transfer authority to the regional level) increase the likelihood that minority parties adopt secessionist positions. Regression analyses of 83 European minority parties show that a higher level of programmatic and institutional accommodation is indeed associated with a higher likelihood of secessionism. However, increases in programmatic accommodation between 2011 and 2017 in fact decrease the likelihood that minority parties turn secessionist when using the method of first differences. Future research should therefore collect panel data on minority parties' positions.
Research Interests:
This research note presents EPAC 2017, a dataset resulting from the second round of an expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition. EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the positions of (ethno-) national and mainstream parties... more
This research note presents EPAC 2017, a dataset resulting from the second round of an expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition. EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the positions of (ethno-) national and mainstream parties on an ethnonational (also often referred to as "territorial" or "centre-periphery") dimension, as well as other important dimensions of political competition. The 2017 edition covers 222 political parties in 22 multinational European countries. The research note presents the main survey items and performs a series of validity and reliability tests on the data. Results show that EPAC provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension. A short analysis of party system changes in Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the opportunities of combining the 2011 and 2017 editions. The combined dataset allows studying the mobilisation of the centre-periphery cleavage in party competition across Eastern and Western Europe and over time.
Research Interests:
How do sub-state regions respond to immigration and what drives their policy choices? Combining the cross-national literature on citizenship and integration policy with the literature on immigration federalism, it is hypothesized that... more
How do sub-state regions respond to immigration and what drives their policy choices? Combining the cross-national literature on citizenship and integration policy with the literature on immigration federalism, it is hypothesized that sub-state nationalism and multilevel party politics explain why some regions formulate more restrictive immigrant integration policies than others. Analyzing integration laws of German, Italian and Spanish regions demonstrates that socioeconomically inclusive measures dominate, regardless of national context. Where restrictive provisions occur at all, they are associated with minority nationalism and the strength of anti-immigrant parties, while leftist regions facing right-wing national governments tend to adopt more inclusive policies.
Research Interests:
Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish so called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from non-causal relationships. We argue that social scientists should be aware of truth... more
Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish so called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from non-causal relationships. We argue that social scientists should be aware of truth conditions of causal claims because they imply which method of causal inference can establish whether a specific claim holds true. A survey of social scientists shows that this is worth emphasizing because many respondents have unclear concepts of causation and link methods to philosophical criteria in an incoherent way. We link five major theories of causation to major small and large-n methods of causal inference to provide clear guidelines to researchers and improve dialogue across methods. While most theories can be linked to more than one method, we argue that structural counterfactual theories are most useful for the social sciences since they require neither social and natural laws nor physical processes to assess causal claims.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The outbidding model of ethnic party competition predicts that ethnic parties adopt radical strategies to maximize support among voters of an ethnic group. In contrast, this article argues that ethnic parties have a wider range of... more
The outbidding model of ethnic party competition predicts that ethnic parties adopt radical strategies to maximize support among voters of an ethnic group. In contrast, this article argues that ethnic parties have a wider range of strategies at their disposal. Integrating recent findings, ethnic party strategies are defined by the criteria of appeal and policy position as ‘static bidding‘, ‘ethnic underbidding‘, ‘ethnic outbidding‘, ‘lateral bidding‘, ‘lateral underbidding’ and ‘lateral outbidding‘. Empirically, a comparison of strategies adopted by ethnic parties competing for votes of the Hungarian and Bosniak minorities in Serbia shows variance of strategies within and across groups despite an environment conducive to outbidding and while holding institutional context factors constant. Factors causing this variance are explored through content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with ethnic party elites. An explanation that links strategies to parties’ goals and the incentives of the structure of intra- and inter-ethnic competition is suggested for further research.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Pirate Parties are suggesting a solution to citizens’ dissatisfaction with representative democracy that seeks to remedy the system from within. By combining direct democratic participation with a highly flexible model of representation,... more
Pirate Parties are suggesting a solution to citizens’ dissatisfaction with representative democracy that seeks to remedy the system from within. By combining direct democratic participation with a highly flexible model of representation, liquid democracy promises the best of both worlds: Citizens can freely choose to either vote directly on individual policy- issues, or to delegate their votes to competent representatives who vote on their behalf. This delegation is policy-area specific and can be retracted instantly. So far, democratic theory has neglected this model of democratic decision-making. This article fills this gap. We first define the basic model of liquid democracy. We then defend two theses: First, liquid democracy mobilizes more political expertise than purely representative democracy; second, liquid democracy is more egalitarian than the latter. We draw on social epistemology, arguments from collective intelligence, and empirical research on voter competence to argue that we can expect ordinary citizens to master their tasks in a liquid democracy. Finally, we discuss two problems affecting the basic model of liquid democracy: a problem of unequal voting power, and a problem of policy-inconsistency. They can be addressed by combining liquid democracy with a trustee model of representation, requiring decision-makers to adhere to deliberative norms, and balancing liquid decision-making in legislatures with an executive that reviews the formal feasibility of policies and moderates package deals between proposals from different policy areas.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... 1University of Cologne, Germany Corresponding Author: Christina Isabel Zuber, University of Cologne, Seminar für Politische Wissenschaft, Gottfried-Keller ... they introduce and the mechanisms through which they function is still... more
... 1University of Cologne, Germany Corresponding Author: Christina Isabel Zuber, University of Cologne, Seminar für Politische Wissenschaft, Gottfried-Keller ... they introduce and the mechanisms through which they function is still wholly insufficient (Congleton, Kyriacou, & Bacaria ...