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A substantial body of scholarship highlights the role of core values as elements of liberalism–conservatism. However, researchers have yet to fully appreciate the contribution of premises, or abstract descriptive beliefs. This disjuncture has occurred despite the fact that for centuries, philosophers have used premises about human nature and society to ground their religious, political and economic theories. In the observational and experimental studies described in this article, the authors examine the extent to which such premise disputes stand independently from value conflicts as ideological ingredients. The findings suggest that premises are distinct and meaningful elements of political cognition, analogous in importance to several well-worn values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explain differences in political interest, two strands of literature point to the relevance of either dispositional or situational factors. I remedy this and show how political interest is shaped by the interplay between personality differences and the political environment. Specifically, I demonstrate that people with a stable motivation for engaging with new ideas are more interested in politics when exposed to new political events, e.g. during election campaigns and when unexpected events unfold. The results have implications for our understanding of political inequalities in democratic engagement and shed light on how citizens' interest in politics can be relatively stable over time as well as responsive to the political environment in predictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the importance of the economy change during a government's time in office? Governments arguably become more responsible for current economic conditions as their tenure progresses. This might lead voters to hold experienced governments more accountable for economic conditions. However, voters also accumulate information about governments' competence over time. If voters are Bayesian learners, then this growing stock of information should crowd out the importance of current economic conditions. This article explores these divergent predictions about the relationship between tenure and the economic vote using three datasets. First, using country-level data from a diverse set of elections, the study finds that support for more experienced governments is less dependent on economic growth. Secondly, using individual-level data from sixty election surveys covering ten countries, the article shows that voters' perceptions of the economy have a greater impact on government support when the government is inexperienced. Finally, the article examines a municipal reform in Denmark that assigned some voters to new local incumbents and finds that these voters responded more strongly to the local economy. In conclusion, all three studies point in the same direction: economic voting decreases with time in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autocrats use repression to deter opposition. Are they successful in the long run? The author argues that state repression can have long-lasting alienating effects on citizens' political attitudes and coercive effects on their political behavior. The article evaluates this proposition by studying the long-term effects of state terror during China's Cultural Revolution. It shows that individuals who grew up in localities that were exposed to more state-sponsored violence in the late 1960s are less trusting of national political leaders and more critical of the country's political system today. These anti-regime attitudes are more likely to be passed down to the younger generation if family members discuss politics frequently than if they do not. Yet while state repression has created anti-regime attitudes, it has decreased citizens' contentious behavior. These findings highlight the dilemma that authoritarian rulers face when they seek to consolidate their rule through repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right–left dimension is ubiquitous in politics, but prior perspectives provide conflicting accounts of whether cultural and economic attitudes are typically aligned on this dimension within mass publics around the world. Using survey data from ninety-nine nations, this study finds not only that right–left attitude organization is uncommon, but that it is more common for culturally and economically right-wing attitudes to correlate negatively with each other, an attitude structure reflecting a contrast between desires for cultural and economic protection vs. freedom. This article examines where, among whom and why protection–freedom attitude organization outweighs right–left attitude organization, and discusses the implications for the psychological bases of ideology, quality of democratic representation and the rise of extreme right politics in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some parties are more popular among men, while other parties attract more female voters. This article proposes that these differences can be partially explained by two recurring gender differences in the socio-psychological literature. It argues that men's generally lower sensitivity to social cues makes them more likely to vote for stigmatized and small parties, whereas women's greater concern with social harmony is expected to make them less likely to vote for extreme parties. The models are tested at the individual and party levels using three waves of Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data from twenty-eight countries. Ceteris paribus , men are more likely than women to vote for parties that are socially stigmatized or ideologically extreme. This has consequences for the current understanding of gender gaps in voting, and reiterates that voting has important social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that public opinion regarding the legitimacy of income differences is influenced by actual income inequality. When income differences are perceived to be high, the public thinks of larger income inequality as legitimate. The phenomenon is explained by the system justification motivation and other psychological processes that favor existing social arrangements. Three experiments show that personal experiences of inequality as well as information regarding national-level income inequality can affect which income differences are thought of as legitimate. A fourth experiment shows that the system justification motivation is a cause of this effect. These results can provide an empirical basis for future studies to assume that the public reacts to inequality with adapted expectations, not increased demands for redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compulsory voting is often linked to pro-democracy orientations in the public. However, there is reason to question the strength and universality of this link. Engaging research on the effects of coercion and punishment, this article argues that forced participation inflates the tendency of those with negative orientations towards democracy to see the democratic system as illegitimate, and to be dissatisfied with democracy. The study finds support for these expectations in analyses of three separate cross-national surveys and a natural experiment. Compulsory voting heightens dissatisfaction with democracy within key segments of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contextual theories of political behaviour assert that the contexts in which people live influence their political beliefs and vote choices. Most studies, however, fail to distinguish contextual influence from self-selection of individuals into areas. This article advances understanding of this controversy by tracking the left-right position and party identification of thousands of individuals over an eighteen-year period in England before and after residential moves across areas with different political orientations. There is evidence of both non-random selection into areas and assimilation of new entrants to the majority political orientation. These effects are contingent on the type of area an individual moves into and contextual effects are weak and dominated by the larger effect of self-selection into areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens are now central to national security strategies, yet governments readily admit that little is known about public opinion on security. This article presents a unique and timely examination of public perceptions of security threats. By focusing on the breadth of security threats that citizens identify, their psychological origins, how they vary from personal to global levels, and the relationships between perceptions of threats and other political attitudes and behaviours, the article makes several new contributions to the literature. These include extending the levels at which threats are perceived from the national versus personal dichotomy to a continuum spanning the individual, family, community, nation and globe, and showing the extent to which perceptions of threat at each level have different causes, as well as different effects on political attitudes and behaviour. These findings are also relevant to policy communities’ understanding of what it means for a public to feel secure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What affects who participates in politics? In most studies of political behaviour it is found that individuals with higher education participate to a larger extent in political activities than individuals with lower education. According to conventional wisdom, education is supposed to increases civic skills and political knowledge that functions as the causal mechanisms triggering participation. However, recently a number of studies have started dealing with the question of whether education is a direct cause for political participation or merely works as a proxy for other factors, such as pre-adult socialization or social network centrality. This review article provides an introduction and critical discussion of this debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A six-wave 2005–09 national panel survey conducted in conjunction with the British Election Study provided data for an investigation of sources of stability and change in voters’ party preferences. The authors test competing spatial and valence theories of party choice and investigate the hypothesis that spatial calculations provide cues for making valence judgements. Analyses reveal that valence mechanisms – heuristics based on party leader images, party performance evaluations and mutable partisan attachments – outperform a spatial model in terms of strength of direct effects on party choice. However, spatial effects still have sizeable indirect effects on the vote via their influence on valence judgements. The results of exogeneity tests bolster claims about the flow of influence from spatial calculations to valence judgments to electoral choice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International structures tie the hands of policy makers in the developing world. Dependency on the world economy is blamed for low growth, high volatility and less redistribution of income than average, but the effect of international constraints on mass politics is relatively unknown. This study examines how citizens of developing democracies assign responsibility for policy outcomes. A theory of the distribution of responsibility, combining insights from the political economy of development and the study of mass behaviour, is presented. Evidence from seventeen Latin American countries shows that citizens often blame policy outcomes on international and private-sector actors, to which they, as voters, have no direct recourse. Ties to world markets and the International Monetary Fund, especially foreign debt, shift responsibility towards international actors and tend to exonerate national politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses research on political psychology. The influence of individual personality on political participation is considered. The impact of personality traits including openness to new experiences, gregariousness and personal responsibility is examined in relationship to its effects on political participation in Uruguay and Venezuela. It is argued that it is necessary to consider the impact of personality on political participation in new democracies and other political systems to test the validity of the theory personality has a major effect on political participation.

This article discusses the accuracy and sources of economic assessments in three ways. First, following the rational expectations literature in economics, a large sample of countries over a long time period permits tests of the unbiasedness implication of the rational expectations hypotheses (REH), revealing much variation in the accuracy of expectations and the nature of the biases in expectations. Secondly, a theory of expectation formation encompassing the unbiasedness prediction of the REH and setting out the conditions under which economic expectations should be too optimistic or too pessimistic is elucidated. Zaller's theory of political attitude formation allows the identification of variables conditioning the accuracy of expectations across contexts, drawing a link between the thinking of political scientists and economists about expectation formation. Finally, the theoretical argument that political context impacts the accuracy of average expectations is tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a multi-level modelling approach to estimate the effect of ethnic diversity on measures of generalized and strategic trust using data from a new survey in Britain with a sample size approaching 25,000 individuals. In addition to the ethnic diversity of neighbourhoods, we incorporate a range of indicators of the socio-economic characteristics of individuals and the areas in which they live. Our results show no effect of ethnic diversity on generalized trust. There is a statistically significant association between diversity and a measure of strategic trust, but in substantive terms, the effect is trivial and dwarfed by the effects of economic deprivation and the social connectedness of individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peter Jones's article, 'Making Sense of Political Toleration', aims to set out a neutralist theory of toleration. This reply does not tackle that claim directly. Instead, I assess his attempt to deal with one line of objection to this theory, and the analysis of toleration that Jones mobilizes in its support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compulsory voting is sometimes thought to be justified in democracies because it promotes high levels of voting and mitigates inequalities of turnout amongst social groups. Proponents of compulsory voting also argue that it helps to prevent the free-riding of non-voters on voters. This article casts a sceptical eye on both arguments. Democratic citizens do not have a duty to promote their self-interest, and their duties to others do not generally require them to vote, or to attend the polls. So, while people are sometimes morally obliged to vote, and to vote one way rather than another, legal compulsion to vote or to turn out is generally unjustified and inconsistent with democratic government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are voters sophisticated? Rational choice theories of voting assume they are. Students of voting behaviour are more doubtful. This article examines voting in a particularly demanding setting: direct democratic elections in which two competing proposals are on the ballot. It develops a spatial model of voting and proposal qualification with competing proposals. If voters are naïve, then competing proposals can be used to block the direct democratic route to change, but, if voters vote strategically, competing proposals can bring outcomes closer to the median voter. Voting intention data from California polls provide evidence that some votes are cast strategically even in these demanding circumstances. However, the level of strategic voting appears to be affected by the nature of the election campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variance in how citizens interact with the political world constitutes one of many classes of individual difference. Understanding the antecedents of this variance is the central objective for students of political behaviour, and researchers draw on numerous factors in addressing this task. Unfortunately, one potentially vital factor, personality, has received only sporadic attention in recent decades. Neglect of personality was understandable for many years, as psychological research on personality failed to produce concise taxonomies applicable to the study of politics. As the present analysis demonstrates, however, this situation has changed. Research on personality has gained new footing with the emergence of a series of five-factor models, and these frameworks hold great potential for the study of political behaviour. This thesis is advanced in a two-part analysis. First, we outline how and why our understanding of citizen politics may be improved through application of five-factor models of personality. In doing so, we focus on the components of one specific taxonomy, the Big Five lexical model. Secondly, using three datasets, we explore the link between the Big Five personality factors and a wide array of political attitudes and behaviours. Results reveal that all facets of personality captured by the Big Five framework matter for citizen politics, and that personality effects operate on virtually all aspects of political behaviour. These findings demonstrate the insight that can emerge with further application of broad-scale models of personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the contextual effects of social class on the 1983 Conservative vote in Great Britain. Implication of class composition of a locality for the voting behavior of similar people; Analysis on causal mechanisms depending on partisan bias; Processes contributing to the development of a partisan reinforcement effect.

Comments on an article regarding causal modelling of voting in Great Britain. Use of panel survey in exploring changes in voting behavior of residents; Details on the stability-instability of voting attitudes; Existence of individual-level inconsistency within aggregate inconsistency.

Investigates the effect of social class on voting behavior and political party identification. Account on the versions of the Goldthorpe class schema; Comparison between working class and middle class identification; Advantages of using the Cambridge scale in analyzing social interactions; Consideration on hierarchical position as most important aspect of class.

Examines hypotheses about the source of political values in post-Soviet societies, particularly in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania. Surveys of mass opinions conducted in the three countries from 1990 to 1992; Historically derived political culture; Regime indoctrination; Effects of societal indoctrination.

The article outlines the images, or perceptions, of the natural environment held by Soviet officials and by the public using a political psychology approach. It examines the ideology, government actions, and writings of specialists to determine the range of environmental images in the Soviet Union. It presents tentative observations on the public's image of the environment derived from letters to the press, underground literature and other sources. A perspective dominant in Soviet society is distinguished with an alternative paradigm advocated by Soviet environmentalists are also discussed.

The article examines the extent of non-behavioralist interpretations of urban politics that have been applied successfully in empirical contexts in Great Britain. The results are not entirely satisfactory, as the notion of structure tends not to be clearly operationalized and it is merged with national influences. In addition, it does not specify how these influences differ from more behavioralist and interest-group accounts. Nevertheless, it implies that the approaches employed are empirically grounded, structuralist-based accounts of urban politics. It assesses that its advantages provide propositions for the identification of objective interests by applying object cost-benefit analyses to public policies.

Through a re-assessment of some of the writings of David Easton, this article offers a new account of where 'systems theory' in political scence went wrong. It is argued that one cannot consistently view the political system as an aspect of the social system distinguished by the authoritative nature of its allocations and also think that it is authoritative if it enjoys popular support. The confusion of authority, support and stability is discussed and some of its sources identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of political intolerance in the U.S. It refers to the political intolerance as one's decision to put up with something one disagrees with. It attempts to link repressive public policy with public opinion of intolerance. It suggests that policy gets affected by intolerant opinion when a consensus is reached on the targets of intolerance that are appropriate. It informs that people may have different likes and dislikes of political groups but they would agree that several groups deserve repression even those that are disliked.

This second article asks what it means to be independent in the contemporary United States. Four different meanings are hypothesized: (1) negative feelings about major political parties and partisanship; (2) positive identification with ideals of independence, especially individualistic autonomy; (3) neutrality or indifference because of no detectable party differences of significance; (4) a self-perceived pattern of variability in partisan behaviour. These four attitudinal dimensions are supported empirically via principal components analysis using both national and Wisconsin data. The four dimensions of independence attitudes show varied patterns of association with general indices of Independence self-classification, relevant political attitudes and behaviours, and various antecedents such as age and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]