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Media malaise or mobilization during repeat elections? Evidence from Israel’s three consecutive rounds of elections (2019–2020)
Abstract
In 2019–2020, Israel went through three consecutive elections in less than a year on grounds of alleged corruption by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his lack of ability to form a coalition. This study aims to contribute to analyses of the media mobilization/malaise effect by examining the impact of such a prolonged period of campaigning on citizens’ political behavior. Thus, we conducted six online surveys using a longitudinal sample of Israeli society before and after each election. The analysis found that, despite participants’ testimonies that they were increasingly “tired of dealing with elections,” there was a significant increase in participants’ reported certainty in their vote, news consumption, participation in online political discussions, and level of political efficacy between the elections. Next, a multivariate analysis aiming to explain variations in voters’ political efficacy found that political trust, participants’ reported certainty about their vote, and political interest all explained high levels of political efficacy. The analysis provides one of the strongest reinforcements to date regarding the validity of political mobilization theory, demonstrating its relevance under challenging conditions. We discuss further implications and generalizability of our findings.
... From 2019 until the end of 2022, Israel was caught up in an unprecedented political crisis: because of political leaders' inability to establish and maintain a stable government, five Knesset elections were held in less than four years. Netanyahu, who repeatedly won most of the mandates, failed to establish a stable coalition (Yarchi and Samuel-Azran, 2023). In the meantime, Bennett and Lapid succeeded in establishing a rotating government, during which Bennett served as prime minister for almost a year, followed by Lapid who served for a similar period of time. ...
Purpose
To explore a potential relationship between politicians’ media background and social media success through an analysis of content and engagement strategies adopted by three consecutive Israeli prime ministers on their official Facebook pages.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed comparative content analysis of a total of 1,242 posts published by three Israeli prime ministers – Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett – on the same official Facebook account, “the Prime Minister of Israel,” during their respective terms. Metrics like engagement rates, content distribution and media type utilization were considered.
Findings
All analyzed prime ministers exhibited consistent messaging strategies, suggesting a standardized approach to digital political communication. However, we found no correlation between a politician’s media background and their success on social media. Instead, decisive determinants of engagement outcomes were factors like longstanding political exposure and familiarity.
Practical implications
The observed uniformity in leaders’ messaging strategies indicates a prevalent standardized approach in digital political communication, revealing potential avenues for innovation and diversification.
Originality/value
This research challenges the prevailing notion that background in media inherently benefits digital political engagement, emphasizing the significance of political experience. The results provide new insights into the evolving landscape of political communication. Using signaling theory to evaluate how digital content reveals leaders’ intentions and credibility, our findings provide new insights into political communication in the digital era.
La comunicación política, indispensable para el funcionamiento de todo sistema político, tiene como finalidad la transmisión e intercambio de contenidos políticos con el objetivo de persuadir al receptor de dicha información. A su vez, los medios de comunicación, tanto tradicionales como digitales, representan plataformas idóneas para la comunicación política. La finalidad del presente estudio fue determinar los efectos que genera el consumo de noticias e información política en medios tradicionales y el consumo de noticias, contenido político e interacción política en redes sociales en las actitudes políticas y la participación política no electoral de la ciudadanía, tomando como referencia las teorías de la movilización política y malestar mediático. La metodología utilizada fue de corte cuantitativo ya que se aplicó una encuesta de opinión. Los resultados más relevantes de la investigación muestran que el consumo de noticias e información política en medios tradicionales tiene un mayor nivel explicativo sobre las actitudes políticas (salvo en el cinismo político que es prácticamente nulo) en contraste con el consumo de noticias, contenido político e interacción política en redes sociales que presentan un mayor nivel explicativo sobre la participación política no electoral. Con relación a lo anterior, se podría indicar que los medios de comunicación tradicionales siguen vigentes al incidir en las actitudes políticas y que las redes sociales tienen un mayor impacto en el comportamiento político no electoral al influir en acciones políticas tradicionales o de protesta. Finalmente, estos resultados aproximan a las teorías de la movilización política.
The idea that the success of media personae in attracting audiences and maintaining their loyalty depends on the creation of a pseudo-friendship, known as para-social relationships, has been a mainstay of mass media research for more than half a century. Expanding the scope of para-social relationship research into the political realm, the notion that political support could be predicted based on the intensity of para-social relationships between voters and political figures was demonstrated in a recent study. The current exploration tests the predictive power of Political Para-Social Relationship (PPSR) in the context of the April and September 2019 Israeli election campaigns. Findings from online panel data (n = 1,061) demonstrate that PPSR toward Netanyahu was a positive predictor of voting for Netanyahu’s Likud party and a negative predictor of voting for opposition leader Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party in both campaigns. The opposite was true for PPSR toward Benny Gantz. The PPSR constructs also predicted shifts in party support from the February to October (post-election) waves of the study, and loyalty toward the parties. In all models, the PPSR constructs were among the strongest predictors of political support.
In Southeast Asian countries, youth political participation tends to decline, and the media are then regarded as ones of the causes of this decline. This is strongly supported by the media perspective. However, it is undeniable that there are contradictions to these views, which bring forth the mobilization perspective. There are also parties who consider that the media have merits in increasing political participation. In this case, communication plays an important role as an analytical tool to determine the effect of online political news consumption on political participation. Political knowledge is used as a mediator in this study. This study was conducted to see the position of Consumption of Online Political News in influencing Political Participation through Political Knowledge among Students. The study employed a quantitative method through questionnaires as an effort to collect and analyze data through regression analysis. Population in this study is Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia's student that used online news portal. The questionnaires were distributed to 100 student respondents. The results of the study show that there is a significant effect of online political news consumption on Indonesian youth's political participation with a direct value 0,719.
Ordinary citizens are increasingly using mobile instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp for politically-related activities. Compared to other ‘semi-public’ online platforms, WhatsApp provides a more intimate and controlled environment in which users can almost simultaneously gather and share news, discuss politics, and mobilize others. Relying on two-wave panel data collected in Spain, USA, and New Zealand, this study examines the mediating role of WhatsApp political discussion in the relationships between different types of news use and various forms of political participation. First, our findings reveal WhatsApp discussion has a positive influence on activism, and a more nuanced effect on conventional participation. Second, results are partially supportive of a fully mediated set of influences between news media and social media news uses and both types of participation via WhatsApp. Finally, the study examines age differential effects between younger (Gen Xers and Millennials) and older (Boomers) age groups.
Voters' punishment of corrupt politicians at the ballot box is oftentimes modest, at best. Recent studies suggest that this modest electoral sanctioning is due to limited corruption information and to the relative weakness of integrity considerations in voting behavior. We demonstrate that anti-corruption measures taken by elite institutions – in this case, the Israeli Supreme Court – in close proximity to an election, can increase electoral sanctioning by enhancing the importance of integrity considerations, holding corruption information fixed. We utilize the variation in incumbent integrity across time and space to identify the effect of an exogenous anti-corruption decision by the Supreme Court on voting (Study 1). We further test this effect in a novel survey experiment, with mayoral performance satisfaction as the dependent variable (Study 2). Both studies demonstrate that judicial bodies have the capacity to influence electoral behavior by enhancing the importance of integrity considerations, holding corruption information constant.
Research on European integration posits that people support and identify with the European Union (EU) by considering its economic benefits. Thus, it is argued that people's sense of identity and their degree of political support for the EU can be explained by estimating the economic prosperity it yields. However, the current paper illustrates that in addition to utilitarian factors, media use can also explain political support for the EU. Thus, to examine this relationship between political support and the media, the study uses the political support framework by David Easton along with the theoretical underpinnings of the media malaise and media mobilization effects. The empirical analysis is conducted on the basis of secondary data obtained through Eurobarometer surveys. Furthermore, to test if the economic factors are a strong predictor of political support, the study assumes that the recent Eurozone crisis has caused a sharp decline in political support. Therefore, it investigates the role of different economic factors and media on political support before and after the crisis. The results indicate that consuming information from the television (TV) does not lead to malaise but rather, that it has a mobilization effect. Furthermore, the results reveal that the respondents' informed-ness and their TV usage for getting information to predict political support better than the economic indicators.
This study investigates, over an 18-month period surrounding the 2016 Brexit referendum, the commenting activity of nearly 2 million Facebook users engaging with political news from British media or with the posts of referendum campaigns. We ask whether citizens’ engagement with political news on Facebook motivates their participation with political campaign posts, and we examine whether users commenting on campaign pages trend towards ideologically reinforcing media. Overall, we find comparatively low levels of commenting activity on the official referendum campaigns vis-à-vis the media, and the majority of users (70%) commented only once. Looking at the subset of users commenting on both page types (“cross-posters”), we identify a general spillover effect from media to campaign pages, suggesting a positive correlation between political interest and online participation on Facebook. Reverse spillover occurs immediately around and after the vote, with Remain cross-posters active on the Guardian while Leave cross-posters’ media engagement registers as more diffuse.
This article analyzes the impact of media and campaign exposure on civic engagement in the 2012 Mexican presidential election, by carrying out multivariate statistical analyses of data from a national post-election survey on political culture and citizen practices. The results of the study are more consistent with the mobilization theories than with theories of media malaise.
Keywords: Political communication, election campaigns, media and campaign impact, civic engagement.
Media malaise is one of the most popular and most controversial concepts in political communication research. At its core is the observation that citizens have become more cynical and distrustful of politicians and the political process as a whole and that political participation is on the decline. This is partly blamed on the news media's presentation of politics as a game or contest in which strategy becomes more important than substantial issues. Media malaise theory claims that such coverage results in widespread political cynicism that turns citizens off. This claim has been fiercely contested, with researchers stressing that media might well mobilize citizens politically or arguing that citizens might well become more cynical but not necessarily less engaged. Evidence is mounting to support both sides of the debate, which emphasizes the need to add further nuance and to spell out the exact conditions and processes behind such effects.
News media are an important factor in any democratic society. Research focused on developed democracies has paved the way for analysis in the context of less well-developed democracies. This project endeavors to continue that investigation into whether and how news media consumption affects democratic behavior among individuals in a region comprised of developing democracies: Latin America. Employing rich survey data available from the 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project, traditional analyses are employed to test one of the most basic questions for political communication researchers: Does news media consumption motivate or depress political participation? The results indicate that, on average, news media mobilize political participation, albeit to different degrees per medium and participation type. This seems to happen because those media socialize Latin Americans to value political participation.
This study assesses the electoral impact of charges of corruption on candidates in the U.S. House of Representatives in elections from 1968 to 1978. The assessment includes a consideration of victory or defeat of alleged or convicted corrupt candidates and an examination of the impact of charges of corruption on turnout and percentage of votes polled by accused candidates. While most candidates charged with corruption were reelected, overall they appear to suffer a loss of 6-11 percent from their expected vote. The type of corruption charge is an important determinant of vote loss. Allegations of corruption appear to have little effect on voter turnout.
Social media has skyrocketed to popularity in the past few years. The Arab Spring in 2011 as well as the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns have fueled interest in how social media might affect citizens’ participation in civic and political life. In response, researchers have produced 36 studies assessing the relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life. This manuscript presents the results of a meta-analysis of research on social media use and participation. Overall, the metadata demonstrate a positive relationship between social media use and participation. More than 80% of coefficients are positive. However, questions remain about whether the relationship is causal and transformative. Only half of the coefficients were statistically significant. Studies using panel data are less likely to report positive and statistically significant coefficients between social media use and participation, compared to cross-sectional surveys. The metadata also suggest that social media use has minimal impact on participation in election campaigns.
This study examines the relationship between various forms of media use and political participation. The major argument is that in today’s high-choice media environment, individuals and groups with the highest level of political interest are more likely to develop richer political information repertoires that involve exploiting both digital and traditional ways of searching for political information. Individuals and groups with richer political information repertories can be expected to have higher levels of political knowledge, efficacy, and participation. This article argues further that a clear connection exists between peoples’ informational and participatory repertoires and tests these propositions using a large, heterogeneous sample of the Israeli public during the 2013 election campaign. The analysis supports the claims of this study, with a few intriguing exceptions.
This study, based on a content analysis of television news and survey in eleven nations, explores the split between those who see the media as politically alienating and others who see the media as encouraging greater political involvement. Here, we suggest that both positions are partly right. On the one hand, television news, and in particular public service television news, can be very effective in imparting information about public affairs and promoting a culture of democracy in which news exposure, public affairs knowledge, sense of democratic competence and political interest feed off each other. On the other hand, the views represented in public affairs news are overwhelmingly those of men and elites, which can discourage identification with public life.
Recently, scholars tested how digital media use for informational purposes similarly contributes to foster democratic processes and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today's socially-networked-society and the rise of social media applications (i.e., Facebook) new perspectives need to be considered. Based on U.S. national data, results show that after controlling for demographic variables, traditional media use offline and online, political constructs (knowledge and efficacy), and frequency and size of political discussion networks, seeking information via social network sites is a positive and significant predictor of people's social capital and civic and political participatory behaviors, online and offline.
Grounded in Media System Dependency theory, this work investigates the impact of new media on political efficacy. It suggests that dependence on online resources affect s people's perceptions about the democratic potential of the Internet. Using structural equation modeling, the study tests the relationship between political attitudes and the perceived utility of the Web. The analysis employs measures that take into consideration the facilitating role of communication technologies. Results indicate that online political efficacy is associated with individual views about the comprehensiveness and credibility of new media. Efficacy is also linked to the perceived ability of online tools to aid the maintenance of ideologically homogenous social networks. The intensity of Internet dependency relations is found to be predicted by the perceived comprehensiveness – but not credibility – of online news.
Considerable research over the years has been devoted to ascertaining the impact of media use on political cynicism. The impact of the Internet has been difficult to assess because it is not a single monolithic medium. For example, the 2008 presidential campaign was the first presidential campaign in which popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube were widely available to voters. Therefore, the campaign offered the first opportunity to explore the influence of these social media on political cynicism. In this study, we examined whether the use of such social media influenced political cynicism. We also considered the influence of user background characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy, locus of control, political orientation, demographics, and influence of family and friends), motives for using social media for political information, and users’ elaboration on political content. Several individual differences were stronger predictors of political cynicism than was social media use. In fact, social networking use was a negative predictor of political cynicism. Results supported uses and gratifications’ notions that the influence of social media on political cynicism is more attributable to user background and media-use differences than to sheer use of these popular sites.
Some scholars argue that exposure to news media has a negative effect on public trust in government, while others maintain that the relationship between media exposure and political trust is positive and reciprocal. The current study departs from most research in this area by focusing on how both news source and individual characteristics of news consumers moderate the influence of news exposure on political trust. Employing several panel studies from a survey specifically designed to investigate media use and campaign dynamics during the 2000 presidential election, the current study makes several novel contributions to the literature. Specifically, the author finds that the influence of news media on political trust—positive or negative—is dependent on both the news source (i.e., newspaper or television) and individuals’ existing level of political trust. Those with low levels of political trust do not become more or less trusting following news exposure regardless of the news source. However, those with higher levels of political trust become more trusting following exposure to newspapers and less trusting following exposure to television news.
Participation as a key component of democracy has been the focus of considerable research, with the body of scholarship focusing overwhelmingly on voting. However, because political interests and opinions can be conveyed and expressed outside the voting booth, this study examines political activity in a nonelectoral context, specifically, World Trade Organization (WTO) policies and issues as well as the WTO ministerial meeting held in Seattle, Washington, in the fall of 1999. Within this context, this study explores the process of media effects on participation, focusing on knowledge and trust in the organization as intervening variables between attention to WTO news and anticipated behaviors related to the WTO. Survey data collected from 277 adults from the greater Seattle area prior to the WTO meeting were used to test seven hypotheses and address two research questions. Results indicate that newspaper and television reliance had differential effects on knowledge about the WTO and trust in the institution. Moreover, the effects of trust on political behavior were considerably stronger than those of knowledge.
Popular trust in political institutions is vital to democracy, but in post-Communist countries, popular distrust for institutions is widespread, and prospects for generating increased political trust are uncertain given disagreements over its origins. Cultural theories emphasizing exogenous determinants of trust compete with institutional theories emphasizing endogenous influences, and both can be further differentiated into micro and macro variants. Competing hypotheses drawn from these theories are tested using data from 10 post-Communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Aggregate data on economic and political performance are combined with survey data on interpersonal and political trust, political socialization experiences, and individual evaluations of national performance. Results strongly support the superiority of institutional explanations of the origins of political trust, especially micro-level explanations, while providing little support for either micro-cultural or macro-cultural explanations. This encourages cautious optimism about the potential for nurturing popular trust in new democratic institutions.
We develop an aggregate model of the presidential vote based on the appropriation of political as well as economic information by a rational voter. We argue that, depending on historical context, information about political corruption is relevant to individual, and hence aggregate, vote choice. In preindustrial, community-oriented machine politics, the rational voter exchanged votes for particularistic benefits. As the social and political perspective shifted to a universalistic standard, information about corruption has become for him or her one of the criteria by which to evaluate the performance of the incumbent party. By including information about corruption alongside information about the economy, our model significantly improves upon conventional economic voting models in explaining post-New Deal presidential election outcomes.
This paper examines electoral accountability after the 2009-10 UK expenses scandal. Existing research shows that Members of Parliament (MPs) implicated in the scandal fared only marginally worse in the election than non-implicated colleagues. This lack of electoral accountability for misconduct could have arisen either because voters did not know about their representative's wrongdoing or because they chose not to electorally sanction them. We combine panel survey data with new measures of MP implication in the expenses scandal to test where electoral accountability failed. We find that MP implication influenced voter perceptions of wrongdoing more than expected. In contrast, constituents were only marginally less likely to vote for MPs who were implicated in the scandal. Electoral accountability may therefore be constrained even when information about representative misconduct is easily available and clearly influences voter perceptions.
This study explicates the indirect process through which news media use influences political participation. Specifically, it investigates the role of political knowledge and efficacy as mediators between communication and online/offline political participation within the framework of an O-S-R-O-R (Orientation-Stimulus-Reasoning-Orientation-Response) model of communication effects. Results from structural equation modeling analysis support the idea that political knowledge and efficacy function as significant mediators. In addition, results expound the increasing importance of the Internet in facilitating political participation. Implications of findings, limitations of this study, and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Why do some citizens vote while others do not? Why does less than half of the American voting public routinely show up at the polls? Why is it that the vast majority of political issues affecting our day-to-day lives fail to generate either public interest or understanding? These questions have troubled political scientists for decades. Here, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella provide the first conclusive evidence to date that it is indeed the manner in which the print and broadcast media cover political events and issues that fuels voter non-participation. This book illustrates precisely how the media’s heavy focus on the game of politics, rather than on its substance, starts a “spiral of cynicism” that directly causes an erosion of citizen interest and, ultimately, citizen participation. Having observed voters who watched and read different sets of reports—some saturated in strategy talk, others focused on the real issues—the authors show decisive links between the way in which the media covers campaigns’ and voters’ levels of cynicism and participation. By closely monitoring media coverage among sample audiences for both the recent mayoral race in Philadelphia and the national health care reform debate, the authors confront issues concerning the effects of issue-based and competitive-based political coverage. Finally, they address the question repeatedly asked by news editors, “Will the public read or watch an alternative media coverage that has more substance? ” The answer their findings so clearly reveal is “yes.” Spiral of Cynicism is a pioneering work that will urge the media to take a close look at how it covers political events and issues, as well as its degree of culpability in current voter dissatisfaction, cynicism, and non-participation. For, in these pages, a possible cure to such ills is just what Jamieson and Cappella have to offer. Moreover, their work is likely to redefine the terms of the very debate on how politics should be covered in the future.
Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)‐invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi‐experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust‐inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent‐triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust‐inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May‐led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left‐wing or non‐Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.
The literature dealing with undecided voters – a growing group of citizens in many democracies that can determine who wins in election campaigns – suggests two very different profiles. The first approach describes undecided voters as being generally uninformed about politics, while the second sees undecideds as sophisticated citizens who follow a campaign closely before making their final voting decision. The current study tries to make sense of this contrast, while examining differences between sophisticated and less sophisticated undecideds (their level of sophistication was based on their political interest and knowledge). Using two panel surveys, conducted before and after the April 2019 elections in Israel (N = 1427; N = 912), we examine a number of hypotheses about differences in terms of the undecided citizens' demographic backgrounds, how they search for political information during the election campaign, how they come to make their final decisions, and whether they ended up voting. The findings indicate that the typical sophisticated undecided voter is a citizen from a more privileged social background, exhibits greater trust in traditional media, consumes more news to follow the campaign (from various traditional news outlets and social media), is more likely to carry out online discussions about the elections, is more likely to base his or her decision on policy issues, is more likely to debate between parties within the same ideological camp (internal floater), and more likely to vote than less sophisticated undecided voters. Our typology, which makes a distinction between sophisticated and less sophisticated undecided voters, as well as these findings (and the comparison to the committed voters), can help political scientists and practitioners widen their understanding regarding this important group of voters in todays' complex political reality.
The distinct media repertoire of young adults in the digital age, especially their increasing ability to bypass the news media, inspires a wealth of research. While previous studies have focused on social- and content-related motivations to avoid the news, we have yet to fully understand the interplay of such motivations with material, technology-related considerations. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with Israeli young adults, this paper explores the varied motivations of young audiences to avoid the news through a texto-material conceptualization of news avoidance as directed at both contents and objects. An inductive-qualitative analysis of young adults' media consumption narratives identified three main dimensions: content, medium, and user-oriented news avoidance. The study demonstrates the material aspects of both deliberate and unintentional news avoidance, and how they relate to content-oriented considerations. Furthermore, the Israeli socio-political context reveals that in times of crisis, these motivations are shared by both heavy and light news consumers. Taken together, the different avoidance motivations and practices identified in this study provide an analytical framework to further understand news avoidance and design differentiated strategies to address young adults' disengagement from news.
This paper concerns the relationship between voters and corrupt politicians. An explanation is suggested for why voters would discount even credible information that a candidate is corrupt. Then the results of an experiment designed to test a necessary condition in this explanation are reported. The principal implication of this exploratory study is that corrupt elected officials are immune from electoral reprisal because voters rather easily trade off the information that a candidate is corrupt in return for other things they value in the candidate.
In some democracies, the ruling party can strategically call a ‘snap’ (or ‘early’) election before the end of its mandate in order to maximise its chances of re-election. Little is known on the consequences of calling such an election. In this article, we contribute to this literature by analysing whether snap elections affect citizens’ voting behaviour. Does being angry at the decision of the incumbent government have an impact on citizens’ decision to vote or not to vote and/or their vote choice calculus? To answer these questions, we make use of two different and independently conducted surveys in Canada during a snap election. We do not find evidence that calling an early election reduces citizens’ likelihood to vote. However, when they do decide to vote, citizens that resent the decision to call an early election are substantially more likely to punish the incumbent government.
Opportunistic incumbent behavior to gain electoral advantage flies in the face of democratic accountability and should elicit voter disapproval. Yet incumbents routinely behave opportunistically. This observation is puzzling. We address this puzzle by offering the first systematic, individual-level analysis of voter reactions to opportunism. We combine four original surveys with embedded experiments and focus on a common form of opportunism in parliamentary systems— opportunistic election timing to favorable economic conditions. We find that opportunism negatively affects support for the incumbent because it engenders voter concern about the incumbent’s future performance and raises significant concerns about procedural fairness. However, under good economic performance, which often triggers electoral opportunism, voters are still more likely to support than oppose the incumbent despite their negative reaction to opportunism. © 2018 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
Democratic elections have been assumed to play a crucial role in curbing corruption among public officials. Voters, due to their general distaste for corruption, are expected to sanction politicians who misuse public office for private gains. Yet, empirical evidence to date is mixed, and it often suggests that the electoral punishment of corruption is rather mild. Recently, political scientists have made great strides in understanding why corruption might be tolerated by voters. In this review, we identify three key stages—information acquisition, blame attribution, and behavioral response—that underlie a retrospective vote based on corruption. A breakdown of one or more of these stages may lead to a lack of electoral punishment of corruption. We also outline some areas for future progress, particularly highlighting the importance of voter coordination for understanding the extent to which corruption is punished at the ballot box.
Influential scholars have argued that frequent elections lead to voter fatigue and can therefore be directly responsible for low turnout in countries characterized by frequent contests. However, other theories predict that frequent elections can even increase turnout. The existing empirical evidence is problematic as it simply correlates election frequency with turnout. By contrast, I exploit a natural experiment in the German state of Hesse, where voters from different municipalities faced the same electoral contest but experienced different election frequency, due to the staggered timing of some local elections. I find that when two elections are scheduled within a relatively short period of time, voter turnout at the later election is significantly reduced. This effect is stronger when the election is deemed less important in the eyes of the voters. Election frequency thus might also partly explain the wide turnout gap between first- and second-order elections, as suggested by Lijphart (1997).
This article analyzes the dynamics of the 2015 Israeli elections by examining the movement of votes within ideological blocs and the manifestation of multiple identities in the electoral campaigns. The premature collapse of Netanyahu’s government led Israel to general elections only two years and two months after the previous elections. The elections were portrayed as a horse race between the Likud and the Zionist Union. Indeed, both parties gained some support in comparison to the previous elections, yet almost all of their electoral gains were from parties in their own bloc. The politics of multiple identities steered these two parties to appeal to voters within their blocs, and also clearly defined the borders of these blocs. An exception was the new centrist Kulanu, which succeeded in capturing the strategic pivotal position. Likud’s clear-cut “victory” over the Zionist Union led Kulanu to join the Likud’s right-wing religious coalition.
This study explores the effect of opportunistic election timing on the incumbent's electoral performance. While the existing literature leads to contradictory predictions about the ability of incumbent governments to benefit from strategically timed elections. We advance the theoretical debate by presenting the first cross-national comparative analysis of this question, drawing on an original data set of 318 parliamentary elections in 27 Eastern and Western European countries. In order to identify the effect of opportunistic election calling, we rely on instrumental variable regression. The results demonstrate that opportunistic election calling generates a vote share bonus for the incumbent of about 5 percentage points and is thereby likely to affect electoral accountability. © 2016 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on ‘democratic deficits’, reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.
This article explores Facebook unfriending during the Israel–Gaza conflict of 2014. We suggest that politically motivated unfriending is a new kind of political gesture. We present an analysis of a survey of 1,013 Jewish Israeli Facebook users. A total of 16% of users unfriended or unfollowed a Facebook friend during the fighting. Unfriending was more prevalent among more ideologically extreme and more politically active Facebook users. Weak ties were most likely to be broken, and respondents mostly unfriended people because they took offense at what they had posted or disagreed with it. Although social network sites may expose people to diverse opinions, precisely by virtue of the many weak ties users have on them, our findings show these ties to be susceptible to dissolution.
Television journalism can produce significant changes in opinions about basic American institutions and may also foster political malaise. Laboratory investigation revealed that the CBS documentary, “The Selling of the Pentagon,” convinced viewers that the military participated more in national politics and misled the public more about Vietnam than these viewers had previously believed. The program also caused a significant decrease in political efficacy among all our groups. This finding led to correlational research to determine if exposure to television news is also associated with lower levels of efficacy.
SRC survey data suggest that reliance upon television news programs is associated with feelings of inefficacy and political self-doubt. These data also indicate that reliance upon television news fosters political cynicism and distrust, political instability, and frustration with civil rights. Holding constant the level of education or income of these respondents does not appreciably alter these relationships.
In short, the two sets of data imply that the networks helped to create Scammon's Social Issue and that video journalism fostered public support for George Wallace.
While there have been numerous empirical studies of the causal determinants of voting behavior and other acts of political participation, political scientists have virtually ignored the consequences of such activity for the individual. Recent democratic theory asserts that participation should have significant individual-level effects, a hypothesis which is empirically tested in this paper. The effects of electoral and campaign participation on political efficacy are estimated in the context of a nonrecursive longitudinal model using the SRC 1972-1974-1976 panel study. It is found that these forms of participation exert positive impact mainly on the "external" or system responsiveness dimension of efficacy, and that these effects hold after controlling for educational attainment. These findings illustrate that engaging in political action does influence certain political attitudes, a fact which should be taken into account through reciprocal effects models of political attitude and behavior. The specific effect of participation on "external" efficacy also has important system-level consequences, as electoral and campaign acts influence the distribution of support for the regime or regime norms.
Election campaigns are more than simple competitions for votes; they also represent an opportunity for voters to become politically knowledgeable and engaged. Using a large-scale Web panel (N ≈ 5,000), we track the development of political knowledge, internal efficacy, and external efficacy among voters during the 2011 Danish parliamentary election campaign. Over the course of the campaign, the electorate’s political knowledge increases, and these gains are found across genders, generations, and educational groups, narrowing the knowledge gap within the electorate. Furthermore, internal and external efficacy increase over the course of the campaign, with gains found across different demographic groups, particularly narrowing the gaps in internal efficacy. The news media play a crucial role, as increased knowledge and efficacy are partly driven by media use, although tabloids actually decrease external efficacy. The findings suggest that positive campaign effects are universal across various media and party systems.
While officials involved in graft, bribery, extortion, nepotism, or patronage typically like keeping their deeds private, the fact that corruption can have serious effects in democracies is no secret. Numerous scholars have brought to light the impact of corruption on a range of economic and political outcomes. One outcome that has received less attention, however, is voter turnout. Do high levels of corruption push electorates to avoid the polls or to turn out in larger numbers? Though of great consequence to the corruption and voter-turnout literature, few scholars in either area have tackled this question and none has done so in a broad sample of democracies. This article engages in this endeavor through an analysis of the broadest possible sample of democratic states. Through instrumental variable regression we find that as corruption increases the percentage of voters who go to the polls decreases.
Content analyses have documented media negativity toward democratic institutions, and survey data have confirmed increasingly negative perceptions of these institutions. This study examines the impact of various media on confidence in democratic institutions — the Office of the Presidency, Congress, the criminal court system, the news media, the police, and the public school system. After accounting for the impact of respondent demographics, knowledge (expertise), and political partisanship, the results revealed limited influence of media use on perceptions of these institutions. Contrary to expectations, television news viewing predicted positively to perceptions of the news media and public schools, and newspaper reading was associated with favorable evaluations of the criminal court system and schools. Significant interaction effects were found for the news media and public schools, with listening to political talk radio eliciting lower levels of confidence among stronger Republican partisans. The only negative main effect found was that of non‐traditional news sources (television tabloids, television entertainment talk shows and television political talk shows) on perceptions of the police.
A random telephone survey (N=582) of Washington state voters conducted in November 1994 examines relationships among mass media use, specific aspects of political disaffection, political efficacy and participation. Results suggest that negativism toward media campaign coverage reduces media use and that cynicism toward the political system reduces political efficacy. Negativism and media use also are negatively related to cynicism. Contrary to concerns expressed by some scholars and journalists concerning the negative impact of superficial media coverage on political participation, however, mass media use positively predicts voting behavior. In addition, negativism toward campaign tactics appears unrelated to political participation.
The concept of `videomalaise' was first used in America in the 1970s to describe the dual phenomenon of a loss of trust in political institutions and individuals' increasing reliance on television as a means of obtaining political information. Could it be that the particular features of political programming caused political malaise? Using West German survey data, the research presented here tests the validity of the videomalaise thesis. No connection was found between political malaise and the contents of political programming which leads to the conclusion that the videomalaise thesis is unwarranted. Instead, political alienation and low participation are related to the use made of entertainment content in both television and the press.
This study examines the relationships of exposure and attention to various news media, including the Internet, with information learned about the issue positions of candidates George Bush and John Kerry, interest in the 2004 election campaign, and intention to vote among a random sample of adult residents of Indiana who were interviewed by telephone in October 2004. The results are compared with our previous studies of the 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000 U.S. presidential elections. In general, our studies suggest that attention to television news, televised debates, and now Internet news are important predictors, or at least correlates, of voter learning of candidate issue positions and voter interest in the election campaigns. These findings contradict the hypothesis that increased news media use leads to increased voter apathy and alienation from the political process.
This research examines the effects of election calendars and ballot forms on voter turnout. The ballot attractiveness hypothesis predicts that concurrent senatorial and gubernatorial races on a presidential-year ballot increase the likelihood that citizens will vote. The evidence in 1980 is that this hypothesis is true with respect to gubernatorial elections. The election frequency hypothesis predicts that the more frequently elections are scheduled, the less likely it is that citizens will vote in any of them. Presidential and state primaries are a major source of frequent elections. In 1980, presidential primaries, in particular those instituted since 1968, did depress turnout. Runoff primaries depressed turnout as well. State primaries held separately from presidential primaries did not depress turnout by an additional significant amount. These findings are based on validated turnout in the 1980 CPS Election Study.
