The Impact of Everyday Political Talk on Political Knowledge and Voting Correctly.
First presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology at Sciences Po in Paris, France, 9-12 July 2008
Persistent Political Divides, Electoral Volatility and Citizen Involvement: The Freezing Hypotheses in the 2004 European Election
Planned publication date October 2010
Persistent Political Divides, Electoral Volatility and Citizen Involvement: The Freezing Hypotheses in the 2004 European Election
forthcoming May 2010
Public Television, Private Television and Citizens’ Political Knowledge
Paper prepared for presentation at the 2009 EPCR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Lisbon, Portugal, 15-19 April 2009.
The Impact of Cleavages on Political Participation and Electoral Volatility
Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, 4-6 June 2008.
The Impact of Media and Party Systems on the Making of Informed Election Outcomes
Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, 4-6 June 2008.Also presented at the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Montreal, Quebec, 22-26 May 2008. Winner of the Best Paper in Political Communication Award.
Citizen Information, Election Outcomes and Good Governance
This paper provides a new empirical test of the common sense proposition that a better informed electorate helps producing greater collective welfare. The innovation lies in an arguably more adequate measurement of both the independent and the dependent variable than those found in previous studies. The data come from the cross-national post-election surveys of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project plusWorld Bank data on the quality of governance across the globe. The findings show some significant effects of citizens ability to emulate fully informed choices on the quality of governance after the elections in question. However, the effect only materializes over multiple elections, and may not extend to all aspects of good governance.
One Electorate or Many? Voting Behavior in New and Established Democracies in Europe
We investigate differences in the factors influencing citizens’ votes between elections conducted in established and new democracies using data collected at the 2004 European Parliament elections, comparing 7 former communist countries with 13 established democracies. Despite contrary expectations in some of the extant literature, voters in ‘new’ democracies make their political choices in ways that are very similar to the decision processes found in more established democracies. The only systematic difference is that voters in post-communist countries are somewhat less likely to make use of ideological location as a cue to the policy orientations of political parties. Perhaps in compensation, somewhat greater relative use in those countries is made of cues from social structure (particularly religion) and from issues.
Volby do Evropského parlamentu 2004
The 2004 Elections to the European Parliament : Parties and Voting Behaviour in Cross-national Comparison.
Information Effects on Vote Choices in European Elections
Paper from the academic workshop held May 11-13, 2006 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies
We examine two sources of political inequalities that seem inevitable in elections, supposedly the most egalitarian and most fundamental of modern democratic processes. The first stems from the fact that not everyone is equally likely to vote, and the second from unequal political information levels, which may make some groups of citizens better able than others to express their political preferences in the vote. We use survey data from two economically less advanced new democracies to empirically assess the degree to which inequalities of turnout and political information level may influence election outcomes. Our statistical analysis relies on simulation methods developed by Bartels (1996) and Citrin, Schickler, and Sides (2003). For the first time in the literature, we provide separate estimates of how equally large increases in everyone's knowledge and how a complete equalization of knowledge level across social groups may affect election outcomes. Our results show that election outcomes in Romania and Moldova may be a little different if citizens were much better informed. However, we find no change in the outcomes as a result of an equalization of turnout and information level across social groups. Thus, elections in the two countries aggregate citizen preferences probably imperfectly, but in a definitely egalitarian way.
A 2004. évi európai parlamenti választások : pártok és szavazói magatartás nemzetközi összehasonlításban
The 2004 Elections to the European Parliament : Parties and Voting Behaviour in Cross-national Comparison.
Values and the Legacy of Communism: Comparisons between Eastern and Western Mass Publics
Paper presented at the 38th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, 16-19 November 2006.
Political Knowledge and Voter Inequality
Paper presented at the Department of Political Science, New York University, NY, 13 November 2006.
The Functions of Political Discussion and its Impact on Political Awareness
Paper presented at the workshop on The Role of Political Discussion in Modern Democracies in a Comparative Perspective at the 2006 Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research in Nicosia, Cyprus, 25-30 April 2006
The Impact of Turnout on Election Outcomes in a Cross-national Perspective
Paper presented at the panel on Comparative European Political Behavior at the 14th International Conference of Europeanists organized by the Council for European Studies in Chicago, IL, 11-13 March 2004.
The Impact of Cross-Cutting Cleavages on Citizens’ Political Involvement
Paper presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association at Philadelphia, 27-31 August 2003.
The Impact of Cleavage Mobilization on Citizens’ Political Involvement
Paper presented at the Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research at Edinburgh, 28 March – 2 April 2003.
Media Effects in Campaigns in Elections in East Central Europe.
Paper presented at the 8th International Conference of the Italian Election Studies Association, Venice International University, Italy, 18-20 December 2003.
Campaign Effects in East Central Europe: Examples from Recent Elections
Paper presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association at Philadelphia, 27-31 August 2003.
Can Voters be Equal? A Cross-National Analysis, 1
Also presented at the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Plenary Conference at the Aronsborg Conference Center, Stockholm, Sweden, 2-4 October 2003.
Negative Information and Citizens’ Political Involvement
Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops at Turin, Italy, 22-27 March 2002.
Do Some Party Systems Make Equal Votes Unequal? A Comparison of Old and New Democracies.
Paper presented at the Conference on Re-Thinking Democracy in the New Millennium, organized by the University of Houston, Texas, 16-19 February 2000
The Hierarchy of Issue Domains in Inter-Party Relations in East Central Europe with a Directional Model of Coalition Formation
Paper presented at the 94th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, Massachusetts, 3-6 September 1998.
The Mobilisation of Social Cleavages in Hungary in a Comparative Perspective
Paper presented at the international seminar on the "Evolution of Political Orientations in Post-communist Societies", Samara, Russia, 7-9 November 1997.