Indridi H. Indridason- Ph.D. University of Rochester
- Professor at University of California, Riverside
Indridi H. Indridason
- Ph.D. University of Rochester
- Professor at University of California, Riverside
About
67
Publications
27,269
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,808
Citations
Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2009 - present
January 2007 - December 2008
August 2003 - December 2006
Publications
Publications (67)
A model of policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as delegation between the prime minister and her cabinet ministers is introduced. Cabinet reshuffles can be pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. This work thus explains why prime ministers resort to reshuffles: cabin...
Voters in elections under plurality rule face relatively straightforward incentives. In proportional representation systems, voters face more complex incentives as electoral outcomes don’t translate as directly into policy outcomes as in plurality rule elections. A common approach is to assume electoral outcomes translate into policy as a vote-weig...
Electoral systems have been shown to influence strategic voting and the development of party systems but the focus has rarely been on the strategies that parties adopt to take advantage of the electoral system under which they compete. Electoral pacts form one such strategy. We present a theory about the formation of electoral pacts in majority run...
Icelandic presidential elections are under-studied in the field of political science. We examine the determinants of vote choice in the 2024 Icelandic presidential election and, in particular, whether the election can be characterised as a second- order election, where voters’ views about parliamentary politics are more important than their views o...
Social connections between individuals can profoundly impact their political behavior. A growing body of research on legislative politics examines how spatial proximity to fellow legislators affects voting behavior within the institution. However, studies that examine this question often suffer from a fundamental identification problem in which pro...
What makes people vote for an underdog? The common expectation is that people avoid wasting their vote on a party with a small probability of being elected. Yet, many voters choose to support underdogs and we still understand little about their motivations. We argue that voters gauge the support for their preferred party in the voting population fr...
Parliamentary procedures in the Icelandic Alþingi are comparatively permissive, allowing legislators ample opportunity to address the chamber. There is, however, considerably variance in terms of how extensively legislators use those opportunities and we find, e.g., that opposition status, gender, seniority, and leadership positions within the part...
The chapter surveys coalition formation and coalition governance in Iceland since the 1990s. Coalition politics have been altered in a significant manner during this time period with many of the changes coinciding with the economic crash of 2008. Up to the crises, coalition governance followed a fairly predictable pattern but increased electoral vo...
The existence of a political executive is a key feature of any political system: from eminently democratic regimes to totalitarian dictatorships, and every shade in between. In recent decades the long-term trend of putting constitutional and democratic constraints on the political executive is reversed. In addition to an autocratic turn in some cou...
What explains the type of electoral campaign run by political parties? We provide a new perspective on cam- paigns that focuses on the strategic use of emotive language. We argue that the level of positive sentiment parties adopt in their campaigns depends on their incumbency status, their policy position, and objective economic conditions. We test...
We examine how voters form expectations about the policy positions of coalition
governments. The literature generally assumes that voters believe the influence of
coalition parties on government policy is proportional to the coalition parties’ sizes.
Yet little is known about whether, or how, voters form such expectations. In this
paper, we leverag...
What explains the type of electoral campaign run by political parties? We provide a new perspective on campaigns by focusing on the strategic use of emotive language. We argue that the level of positive sentiment parties adopt in their campaigns depends on their incumbency status, their policy position, and objective economic conditions. We test th...
While elections in closed list proportional representation systems generally provide individual MPs with little incentive to build a personal vote, the use of primaries for the establishment of party lists increases the need of MPs to distinguish themselves from their co-partisans. It has been argued that the importance of the personal vote undermi...
The present paper is concerned with the preconditions for ministerial government in Iceland and the role of parliament in sustaining it. Ministerial government is a form of coalition governance where the division of portfolios between parties functions as the basic mechanism of managing coalitions. Ministers are policy dictators in the sense that t...
The legislative agenda in most parliamentary systems is controlled tightly by the government and bills offered by individual members of parliament have low rates of success. Yet, members of parliament (MPs) do seek to present (private) members’ bills even where the rate of adoption is very low. We argue that members’ bills serve as an electoral con...
Theories of economic voting and electoral accountability suggest that voters punish incumbent governments for poor economic conditions. Incumbents are thus expected to suffer substantially during significant economic crises but its successor in office will face the difficult task of reviving the economy. The economic crisis may, therefore, negative...
Scholars of coalition politics have increasingly begun to focus on conflict within coalitions. Here we examine the role of coalition agreements in managing intracoalitional conflict. We argue that there is a trade-off between making policy agreements at the coalition’s formation (e.g., by making very detailed policy platforms) and postponing the is...
Austerity policies — policies of sharp reductions of a government’s budget deficint involving spending cuts and tax increases — are claimed to boost support for radical political parties. We argue, counter to popular claims, that austerity measures actually reduce support for radical and niche parties. Austerity policies force traditional left-righ...
Candidate selection in proportional representation systems is rarely conducted by primaries. We describe and examine primary elections where primaries have been used extensively to produce party lists. The electoral system employed is unique and provides candidates and voters with distinct incentives for strategic behaviour. The primaries also prov...
This paper examines the consequences of the collapse of the Icelandic banking system in the fall of 2008 on voters' support for the political parties. The literature on economic voting has demonstrated that voters hold governments accountable for past economic outcomes, and such concerns should be especially salient in times of large-scale economic...
A large literature examines the composition of cabinets in parliamentary systems, but very little attention has been paid to the size of those cabinets. Yet not only is the size of the cabinet related to the division of portfolios that may take place, cabinet size is also related to policy outcomes. In this article, a theory of party size is consid...
The cabinet is a central actor in policy making in parliamentary systems. Yet, relatively little is known about how coalition cabinets operate. The delegation of decision-making authority to ministers invites policy drift, which threatens the cohesiveness of the cabinet's policy programme. Cabinets employ a variety of methods to contain policy drif...
Are the effects of candidate selection through party primaries largely disruptive for political parties or do they have some redeeming features? Icelandic parties have used inclusive nomination procedures since the early 1970s on a scale that is without parallel in other parliamentary democracies. The Icelandic primaries thus offer a unique opportu...
The electoral success of an extremist party usually attracts considerable attention. Yet, they rarely have an opportunity to directly influence policy as they are, more often than not, shut out of the policy-making process by mainstream parties. Extremist parties may, however, influence policy indirectly by inducing mainstream parties to adjust the...
According to Gamson’s Law, the allocation of cabinet portfolios in parliamentary democracies is proportional to the legislative seat shares of the governing parties. However, portfolio allocation departs systematically from perfect proportionality. This paper proposes a theory of portfolio allocation that seeks to explain the variance in proportion...
Forsetakosningar á Íslandi hafa ekki mikið verið rannsakaðar af félagsvísindafólki og lítið er þess vegna vitað um hvaða þaettir hafa áhrif á úrslit þeirra. Forsetakosningarnar 30. júní 2012 voru óvenjulegar annars vegar vegna þess að sitjandi forseti hlaut alvarlegri mótframboð og laegra hlutfall atkvaeða en áður eru daemi um í forsetakosningum á...
Party ideology plays an important role in determining which government coalitions form. Research on coalition formation tends to focus on the ideological distance between coalition parties. However, the distribution of preferences within the coalition, and the legislature, also has implications for which government coalition forms – that is, a part...
The line-item veto has often be heralded as an effective tool in reducing pork barrel spending. A model of veto bargaining over public goods and pork barrel spending in the presence of credit claiming incentives demonstrates that the item veto does not necessarily reduce pork barrel spending and reduces the executive's ability to attain his preferr...
There is a tendency to emphasize the commonalities of politics in the Scandinavian countries, which often are characterized as consensual and deliberative, allowing their parliaments substantial influence in policy-making. Iceland fits this model rather poorly. All the Nordic countries have a mix of Westminster and Madisonian features. Yet, compara...
Party ideology plays an important role in determining which govern-ment coalitions form. Research on coalition formation generally focuses on the ideological leanings of the coalition parties. However, the distribu-tion of preferences within legislatures can also have important implications for which government coalition forms, i.e., a party's will...
Based on recent work that suggests that voters in proportional representation (PR) systems have incentives to cast strategic votes, the authors hypothesize that levels of strategic voting are similar in both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR systems. Comparing vote intentions in majoritarian elections in the United States, Mexico, Britain, and Isra...
The line-item veto has often be heralded as an effective tool in reducing pork barrel spending. A model of veto bargaining over public goods and pork barrel spending in the presence of credit claiming incentives demonstrates that the item veto does not necessarily reduce pork barrel spending and reduces the executive’s ability to attain his preferr...
Abstract in English is unavailable.Fátítt er að prófkjör séu notuð við uppsetningu framboðslista í löndum sem notast við hlutfallskosningakerfi eins og flestir stjórnmálaflokkar á Íslandi gera. Prófkjör eru hins vegar gagnleg til að skoða áhrif ýmissa einkenna frambjóðenda á árangur þeirra í stjórnmálum. Ólíkt almennum kosningum eru einstaklingum g...
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...
The empirical phenomenon termed Gamson's Law is well known but not least be-cause it lacks rm theoretical foundations. In fact, Gamson's Law is a real puzzle as most models of coalition bargaining suggest that bargaining strength should determine the division of portfolios, which, in turn, suggest that portfolios should rarely be allo-cated in prop...
Run-off elections offer certain advantages for the study of political behavior over other electoral systems. This paper exploits the fact that run-off elections resem-ble a natural experiment to study the effects of competitiveness on voter turnout. The literature offers several explanations of the determinants of voter turnout. In run-off election...
Terrorism has been shown to influence domestic politics, for example, by altering the priorities of voters and politicians. This article argues that terrorism has broader political consequences than simply putting national security on the political agenda. In particular, it argues that terrorist activity influences government formation. A number of...
Elections represent a coordination problem for voters and candidates for office. Electoral coordination is also the causal mechanism behind any explanation of the relationship between electoral systems and the number of parties. I present a dynamic model of electoral coordination with candidate exit. The model extends two important results from the...
Abstract in English is unavailable.Í þessari grein er tekist á við spurninguna um hlutfallslegt vægi stjórnsækni og stefnufestu hjá íslenskum stjórnmálaflokkum. Við myndun samsteypustjórna þurfa flokkar oft að meta kosti þess að komast í stjórnaraðstöðu á móti því að gefa eftir einhver stefnumál sín. Rannsóknir benda til þess að íslenskir stjórnmál...
I present a model of electoral competition under systems of proportional representation. The model demonstrates that the results of existing models are driven by an implausible assumption about the way electoral outcomes translate into policy outcomes (seat-weighted ideal policies). Even slight modifications that account for the majoritarian aspect...
In many countries, elections produce coalition governments. Downs points out that in such cases the rational voter needs to determine what coalitions are possible, i.e. to ascertain their probability and to anticipate the policy compromises that they entail. Downs adds that this may be too complex a task and concludes that 'most voters do not vote...
Abstract in English is unavailable.Fylgi flokka í kosningum og skoðanakönnunum er jafnan reiknað í prósentum af gildum atkvæðum. Þegar upp er staðið er það hins vegar fulltrúafjöldinn sem skiptir mestu máli, enda byggir meirihlutamyndun á honum. Þessi grein fjallar um tengsl atkvæðahlutfalls og fulltrúafjölda, einkum í tengslum við íslenskar sveita...
Despite their political prominence, cabinet reshuffles have not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. We provide a theory of cabinet reshuffles that emphasizes both systematic and time-varying causes. In particular, we argue that prime ministers employ cabinet reshuffles to retain power in the face of both intraparty and electoral challeng...
In September 1864, the Association Internationale pour le Progrès des Sciences Sociales met in Amsterdam to examine the system of proportional representation (PR) which had just been proposed by Thomas Hare. The meeting signalled a growing interest in systems of PR across the more democratic nations of the world – some of which had already begun ex...
Despite their political prominence cabinet reshuffles have not attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. We use repeated events duration models to examine the timing of cabinet shuffles in parliamentary systems. We provide a theory of cabinet reshuffles that emphasizes both systematic and time-varying causes of cabinet reshuffles. In particula...
In 2003, Israeli voters went to the polls to cast a single vote for a party-list running for the 16 th Knesset. After the election, a majority of those elected to the Knesset would decide who was going to be the Prime Minister and the governing coalition. In 2003, no party realistically expected to govern alone after the election: some coalition of...
We model policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as a game of delegation between the prime minister and his cabinet ministers. We show that cabinet reshu#es can be a pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency-loss which occurs due to the di#erent preferences of the actors. Furthermore, when certain conditions are meet cabinet reshu#es ha...
We model policy implementation in a parliamentary democracy as a game of del-egation between the prime minister and his cabinet ministers. We show that cabinet reshuffles can be a pursued as a strategy to reduce the agency-loss which occurs due to the different preferences of the actors. Furthermore, when certain conditions are meet cabinet reshuff...
In this paper I model party cohesion and dissent in parliamentary systems from an informational perspective. Why dissent occurs in parliamentary systems is somewhat puzzling as the legislators rely on their party label for reelection. At the same time the party's reputation for cohesion has been documented to be a valuable electoral asset. Hence, b...
This paper serves a dual purpose. First, it considers the effects clientelism has on coalition politics through the inflated importance of the particularistic benefits the executive office offers. The patterns of coalition politics in the Nordic countries are compared to offer preliminary evidence in support of the theory. Secondly, it provides det...
Previous studies of nursing home markets have assumed that a nursing home's market is coincident with the boundaries of the county in which it is located. We test this assumption by using the zip code of residence for Medicare beneficiaries admitted into a nursing home in New York state in the periods 1992-93 and 1996-97. We find that nursing homes...
We present a theory of campaign spending in elections. In our model we show that in the absence of competitive electoral pressure the timing of campaign spending will simply on the relative benefits of spending money early vs. late in the campaign. When the candidate have to compete for funds, and their ability to raise funds depends on their stand...
To answer two related questions: (1) Do managed care organizations (MCOs) in New York State (NYS) consider quality when they choose cardiac surgeons? (2) Do they use information about risk-adjusted mortality rates (RAMR) provided in the New York State Cardiac Surgery Reports?
(1) Telephone interviews with and contracting data from the majority of M...
Abstract will be provided by author.
The literature on negative campaigning has primarily focused on electoral contests between two candidates for a single office. In multiparty contests the candidates, or parties, face more options, i.e., they not only decide whether to 'go negative' but also which candidate (or candidates) are their target. We propose a spatial model of negative cam...
Candidate selection in proportional representation systems is rarely con-ducted by primaries. We describe and examine primary elections in Iceland where a number of parties, over a number of elections, have employed pri-maries to produce list for proportional representation effects. There is a substantial literature on the effect of gender on candi...
In this paper I use insights from bargaining theory to study delays in the formation of government coalitions and, in particular, how the politicians' relative preferences over policy and oce inuence bargaining duration. I argue that cross-national incentives to pursue particularistic policies induce politicians willingness to accept policy comprom...
Typescript (photocopy). Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Political Science, 2001. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references.
