Publications of Popescu, M.

Tóka G, Popescu M. News Media Partisanship in a Cross-National Perspective. In: “Parties and Partisans: Explaining Continuity and Change in Party Systems” conference at the Juan March Institute, Madrid, Spain, 8-9 February 2013.; 2013.
Tóka G, Popescu M, Millard F. The Impact of Preference Voting Systems on Women’s Representation and the Legitimation of Quota-based Nomination Results. In: Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research in Mainz, Germany, 11-16 March 2013.; 2013.
Tóka G, Popescu M. How Do Media Systems Influence Citizens’ Political Knowledge and the Social Inequalities of Knowledge?. In: Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research in Antwerp, Belgium, 10-15 April 2012.; 2012.
Tóka G, Popescu M. Cross-National Patterns in Political Bias in European News Media. In: Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research in Antwerp, Belgium, 10-15 April 2012.; 2012.
Tóka G, Popescu M, Popa S. The Influence of Democratic Institutions on the Impact of Political Sophistication. In: Joint Session of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research, Munster, Germany, 22-26 March 2010.; 2010.
van der Brug W, Franklin M, Popescu M, Tóka G. Towards a European Electorate. One Electorate or Many? In: Thomassen J, editor. The Legitimacy of the European Union After Enlargement. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2009. p. 65-92.

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.

Popescu M, Tóka G. Districting and Redistricting in Eastern and Central Europe: Regulations and Practices. In: Handley L, Grofman B, editors. Redistricting in comparative perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2008. p. 251-64.

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.

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.

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.

Popescu M, Tóka G. Campaign Effects and Media Monopoly : The 1994 and 1998 Parliamentary Elections in Hungary. In: Farrell DM, Schmitt-Beck R, editors. Do political campaigns matter? : Campaign effects in elections and referendums. London: Routledge; 2002. p. 58-75.