European Journal of Political Research

STRÖMBÄCK, JESPER; SHEHATA, ADAM

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01913.xpmid: N/A

Being politically interested is one of the most important norms from a democratic perspective, as it is a crucial antecedent for voting, political knowledge, civic and political participation, and attentiveness to political information. However, only limited research has focused on the relationship between media use and political interest, despite the notion that modern politics is mediated politics. Even more important is the fact that the causal relationship between media use and political interest still has not been firmly established. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between news media use and political interest. The results show that there are indeed causal and reciprocal relationships between political interest and attention to political news, and between political interest and exposure to some, but not all, news media. Overall these results lend stronger support to the perspective of media mobilisation theories than media malaise theories.

HOLLI, ANNE MARIA; WASS, HANNA

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01910.xpmid: N/A

In contrast to many other countries, the Finnish open‐list proportional representation (PR) system with its mandatory preferential voting provides an opportunity to study gender‐based voting empirically. Using the 2007 Finnish national election study, the article presents an analysis of the grounds for same‐gender voting, including motivations related to descriptive and substantive dimensions of representation. None of the motivations is able to account men's higher propensity to vote for a candidate of their own gender. The motivations linked to securing the descriptive and substantive representation of one's own gender in politics play a more decisive part on women's vote choice of same‐gender candidates. Voting for a same‐gender candidate is connected to younger age among both women and men, while the propensity to vote for female candidates increases with support for the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Swedish People's Party. Finally, gender, party choice, and descriptive and substantive motivations seem to be related to gender‐based voting for both parliamentary and presidential elections.

WEHNER, JOACHIM

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01914.xpmid: N/A

A central explanation of fiscal performance focuses on the structure of the cabinet. However, the partisan context of cabinet decisions remains under‐explored, the findings are based on small samples and the variables of interest are often poorly operationalised. Using a new dataset of spending ministers and partisan fragmentation in the cabinets of 58 countries between 1975 and 1998, this study finds a strong positive association between the number of spending ministers and budget deficits and expenditures, as well as weaker evidence that these effects increase with partisan fragmentation.

FORTIN, JESSICA

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01911.xpmid: N/A

In an attempt to bring together the research on state capacity, this article proposes a five‐item index to operationalise and measure the concept of state capacity. The index was constructed for 26 post‐communist countries on a yearly basis from their first year of independence from communist rule to 2006. Different states unavoidably display dissimilar levels of aptitude in the different domains of state capacity, but the aggregated index of state capacity presented is high in both validity and reliability. With the help of this index, the starting conditions as well as the evolution of state capacity within the countries included in this study are explored, with three conclusions. First, post‐communist countries emerged displaying very contrasting levels of state capacity. Second, the level of state capacity has remained relatively stable within most countries between 1989–1991 and 2006, which ties in the last conclusion that the initial level of state capacity is the strongest determinant of subsequent levels of state capacity. All three conclusions carry important implications for research using state capacity either as an independent or as a dependent variable.

HOOGHE, LIESBET; BAKKER, RYAN; BRIGEVICH, ANNA; DE VRIES, CATHERINE; EDWARDS, ERICA; MARKS, GARY; ROVNY, JAN; STEENBERGEN, MARCO; VACHUDOVA, MILADA

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01912.xpmid: N/A

This research note reports on the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES), which measure national party positioning on European integration, ideology, and several European Union (EU) and non‐EU policies. The reliability of expert judgments is examined and the CHES data are cross‐validated with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, the 2003 Benoit‐Laver expert survey and the 2002 Rohrschneider‐Whitefield survey. The dataset is available on the CHES website.

doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2010.01932.xpmid: N/A