Henrik Oscarsson

Direct democracy is popular. Across the world referendums and citizeninitiatives are an increasingly important means of enacting or preventinglegislation. This book argues and demonstrates why campaigns in refer-endums are important and how they matter for changes inpublic opin-ion, political participation, and voters’ choice to say Yes or No. In areferendum campaign, in contrast to a general election campaign wherepolitical parties provide relatively clear-cut information cues for voters,the information cues from political parties are often ambiguous. For exam-ple, parties may be internally divided over the referendum issue, politi-cal parties from opposite sides of the ideological left–right spectrum mayform unusual coalitions in referendums, and referendums may also giverise to new parties or movements and thereby reshaping the party sys-tem (de Vreese and Semetko, 2004; de Vreese, 2006).In addition, despite the apparent simplistic nature of the referendumvote (Yes/in favour or N...

Life after “The New Moderate Party”? The purpose of this article is to contribute with explanations regarding the election result of the Moderate Party in 2014 . The Moderate Party received 23 . 3 percent of the votes compared to 30 . 1 in the election 2010 . We use media coverage, party internal documents and voter surveys to investigate why the Moderate Party suffered such a large election defeat. The analyses are structured to track politically relevant developments in three arenas: the electoral, the party internal and the parliamentary arena. In the electoral arena the Moderate Party lost many of its voters to the Sweden Democrats mainly due to the party’s positions on immigration issues. There was also a significant voter loss to the Social Democrats. In the party internal arena we see organizational confusion and bad planning during 2011 . The Moderate Party made significant ideological changes before 2006 , but the ideological development stagnated after 2010 . A further con...

In many respects, Election Day is the most important day in an electoral democracy. Not only does it symbolize the essence of democracy: that each and every person has one and just one vote, equal for all (Dahl 1998). Election Day is also the day when the people, as a collective, decides the distribution of political power and hence exert its collective influence on policy-making during the upcoming term. In most established democracies, elections are furthermore still the most significant collective events in society.

Consideration set models of party choice (CSM) present an intriguing remedy to the many challenges of analyzing a highly individualized voting behavior in multi-party systems. The point of origin is that voters search for and utilize different kinds of political cues and information depending on the size and content of their consideration sets. A CSM approach allows us to isolate the impact of various factors at various stages in the decision process, i.e. the consideration set formation process and the final party choice. This paper introduces and discusses the main concepts of the CSM approach, identifies the fundamental challenges in measurement and estimation, and provides an empirical example using a specially designed seven-wave campaign panel covering the Swedish national election 2014.

Abstract Contemporary research on electoral integrity has focused on the functioning, evaluation, and legitimacy of electoral processes in emerging democracies. By contrast, this study investigates whether a failed election in a well-established democracy can affect individuals' evaluations of the electoral management body, the Election Authority, and whether those evaluations affect satisfaction with democracy. Using the case of a Swedish regional election in 2010 that had to be rerun due to procedural mistakes in the vote handling, we found that, in the short term, individuals’ confidence in the Election Authority was reduced after it was announced that the election had to be rerun because of the mistakes. Subsequently, this decreased confidence was strongly associated with less satisfaction with democracy at the regional and national level. As good news for the authority, after a successful rerun election, confidence rebounded to the levels prior to the failed election.

et typiska grundantagandet i socialisationsforskningen är att våra grund läg- gande värde ring ar cementeras i tidiga år, främst genom socia li sa tion - det vill säga so cia la inlärningsprocesser - i familjen. Efter en viss tidpunkt, som infaller olika för olika värden, är san no lik heten li ten att djupare lig gan de vär de ring ar för ändras sena re i livet. Som en logisk följd av detta antagande kan alla eventuella vär de rings för skjut ning ar i sam hället förstås som gene ra tions effekter. Värderingar förändras i unge fär samma takt som äldre gene ra tio ner ersätts av nya. Efter som vär deringar for mas i unga år och därefter inte för änd ras är det därmed möj ligt att genom särskilda studier av ung doms ge ne rationen för utsäga vad som kom mer att vara morgondagens värde ring ar (Andersson, Fürth & Holmberg 1993; Inglehart 1977; Mannheim 1952; Westholm 1991). Men även om grundläggande värderingar är stabila orienteringar be hö ver det inte nödvändigtvis innebära att de ...

Stefan Dahlberg, Ph. D-student. Göteborg University. stefan.dahlberg@pol.gu.se +46 (0)31 773 46 86 Henrik Oscarsson, Associate Professor. Göteborg University. henrik.oscarsson@pol.gu .se +46 (0)31 773 46 66 Daniel Berlin, Ph. D-student. Göteborg University. Daniel.berlin@ ...

the UK and the US. Overall however, in line with the main theme of the work, Vaccari insists that valid cross-national explanations for political engagement are rare, and different variables will rather produce different effects in different contexts (with, for example, ‘reformist’ type voters more represented online in Anglo Saxon countries and ‘protest’ type voters more represented in the Mediterranean). In summary, Vaccari’s work is an impressive contribution to the literature on the internet and politics, which injects a much-needed comparative perspective into a body of work which has been overwhelmingly dominated by perspectives from Anglo-American academia. The approach is not perfect: as Vaccari admits, the party-centric focus ignores a range of other less official forums where innovation may occur; and we are also left wondering about the impact of social media whose massification falls slightly outside the timescale of Vaccari’s study. But the narrow focus also simplifies and strengthens the comparative aspect of the work. He combines a great deal of information into a single comprehensible whole, and tackles differences between countries with a skilled and nuanced understanding of a range of political systems. The work is recommended to anyone with an interest in how development in digital technology is driving changes in the political process.

ABSTRACT This article asks if, when, and why different groups of voters behave differently in the wake of economic downturns. We examine two Swedish elections (1994 and 2010) that were held just after two deep recessions (the financial crisis of 1991-1993 and the 2008-2009 Great Recession). We find that group differences were much larger in 2010 than they were in 1994. After the 1991-1993 recession, the government's electoral support declined across the board. In 2010, there were large differences between voters with low economic status (who were unlikely to support the government) and voters with high economic status (who were likely to do so). Our findings suggest that group differences in electoral behavior after an economic downturn depend on contextual differences across elections. We argue that future research should pay close attention to the magnitude of economic shocks, the development of asset prices (especially real estate), and changes in social policy.

The aim of this article is to analyse attitudes towards news on old and new platforms. Our study used two types of independent variable: generation, which – along with age – is one of the most important factors explaining news media practices; and news consumption, which is strongly related to attitudes. We utilised a national mail survey of 3000 people in the Swedish population (aged 16–85) to conduct the study. The response rate in the 2010 study was a little over 60 per cent, and the survey gives a significant picture of news attitudes in the population. The findings generally show a strong degree of support for traditional news media such as television and printed newspapers. However, this support is far stronger among the older generations than the younger – who, to a larger extent, express support for other forms of news distribution, in particular the internet and social media networks.

... Naghmeh Nasiritousi The Quality of Government Institute Department of Political Science University of Gothenburg naghmeh.nasiritousi@pol.gu.se ... The corresponding figures for public employees are about the same (17 percent), and for the category bu-sinessmen somewhat ...

F å betvivlar idag det normativa idealet om fullt informerade och förnufts­s­tyrda s­amhälls­medborgare. kapabla och kunniga medborgare betraktas­ s­om en grund­ föruts­ättning för att en demokrati s­kall kunna fungera effektivt. Ju mer politis­kt kunniga och s­ofis­tikerade medborgarna är des­to bättre ans­es­ de kunna fullgöra s­ina plikter i den repres­entativa valdemokratin: att i s­amband med regelbundet återkom­ mande val ge mandat och att utkräva ans­var av s­ina valda repres­entanter. Fors­kning om s­vens­ka folkets­ politis­ka kuns­kaper är en växande genre s­om tilldrar s­ig s­tort intres­s­e. syftet med analys­erna i det här kapitlet är att utveckla ett nytt mått på politis­k kuns­kap utifrån ett frågebatteri om partiledarkännedom. syftet är ocks­å att unders­öka vilka individfaktorer s­om är betydels­efulla för att generera poli­ tis­kt kunniga medborgare. Huvuddelen av den politis­ka information s­om kommer medborgarna till del inhämtas­ från mas­s­medier. särs­kild uppmärks­amhet kommer därför att ägnas­ åt medborgarnas­ kons­umtion av nyheter: leder ökad nyhets­kon­ s­umtion till bättre politis­ka kuns­kaper? Svenska folkets politiska kunskaper Frågan om hur politis­kt kunniga s­vens­ka väljare egentligen är går inte att bes­vara på ett enkelt s­ätt. Tidigare s­tudier av politis­ka kuns­kaper har kons­taterat att s­vens­­ ka väljare är duktiga på att känna till partiers­ s­tåndpunkter i s­akfrågor. när det gäller att placera ut partier på rimliga s­ätt längs­ olika konfliktdimens­ioner s­om t ex väns­ter­högerdimens­ionen eller eMU­dimens­ionen tillhör de s­vens­ka väljarna världs­eliten (Holmberg & Os­cars­s­on 2004). sämre s­tällt är det med de väljarkun­ s­kaper s­om är en föruts­ättning för att valmans­kåren effektivt s­kall kunna utkräva politis­kt ans­var i efterhand – exempelvis­ är det endas­t hälften av väljarna s­om kände till att vi hade en s­ocialdemokratis­k enpartiregering under perioden 2002­ 2006. när det gäller kuns­kap om hur det politis­ka s­ys­temet fungerar – s­om t ex vem s­om är s­tats­minis­ter eller hur många ledamöter s­om s­itter i parlamentet – ans­es­ s­vens­karna vara vas­s­are än nordamerikans­ka och s­ydeuropeis­ka väljare, även om internationella s­tudier fortfarande lider av jämförbarhets­problem (Milner 2002). Precis­ s­om i många andra länder exis­terar i valmans­kåren en betydande variation i politis­k kuns­kap. samtidigt är variationen mellan de mins­t och mes­t kunniga min­ dre i sverige än i andra länder. Och s­nittmäs­s­igt ligger sverige allts­å hyggligt till när det gäller politis­ka kuns­kaper.