Populist ideology and emotions are being increasingly adopted by political leaders as communicative tools to drive attention and gain consent. Populism appears to be intimately related to emotions ...due to its own emotional charge when appealing to the people or blaming 'others'. Analysing the Facebook timelines of Italy's main political leaders during the 2018 general election campaign, we found that only negative emotions are associated to populist ideology although they are less frequently adopted by leaders. Emotional appeals, especially negative ones, emerged as a more successful strategy for triggering users' interactions and reactions than populist ideology. Going negative appears to be the best strategy for gaining visibility on Facebook. Quite unexpectedly, love reactions are influenced by blaming the 'dangerous others', while angry reactions are not affected by the presence of populist references. Our results lead us to hypothesise that when emotions run high, populist ideology takes a slight step back.
Participation in legislative debates is among the most visible activities of members of parliament (MPs), yet debates remain an understudied form of legislative behavior. This study introduces a ...comparative theory of legislative speech with two major implications. First, party rules for debates are endogenous to strategic considerations and will favor either party leadership control or backbencher MP exposure. Second, in some systems, backbenchers will receive less time on the floor as their ideological distance to the party leadership increases. This leads to speeches that do not reflect true party cohesion. Where party reputation matters less for reelection, leaders allow dissidents to express their views on the floor. We demonstrate the implications of our model for different political systems and present evidence using speech data from Germany and the United Kingdom.
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el efecto de los candidatos en el voto de las elecciones autonómicas de 2007 y 2011 en una serie de comunidades autónomas encuadradas en el denominado modelo ...dominante de competición, caracterizado por el predominio absoluto de los partidos de ámbito estatal en todas las convocatorias electorales: Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Comunidad de Madrid, Comunidad Valenciana, Extremadura, La Rioja y Región de Murcia. La mayor parte de los estudios realizados en España destacan el fuerte peso que tienen en el comportamiento electoral la ideología o la identificación partidista, en tanto que la influencia de los candidatos autonómicos no ha sido analizada con detalle. Sin embargo, este estudio evidencia, a través de una serie de regresiones logísticas, que la aprobación de los líderes autonómicos sí constituye uno de los factores más determinantes en la decisión de voto.
Purpose This study examines the effect of female governors (gender effect) on environmental performance in terms of state-level carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in United States. ...Design/methodology/approach The study used annual data from 1970 to 2020 to investigate the relationship between female political leadership and state-level CO2 emissions. Hypothesis was tested through ordinary least squares regression (OLS). The results of the study were also validated using propensity score matching and a difference-in-difference approach. Findings This study provides empirical insights into the relationship between female political leadership and state-level CO2 emissions. The findings indicate that female governors have a significant negative impact on state-level CO2 emissions per capita. These results suggest that female political leadership is associated with a reduction in CO2 emissions per capita at the state level. The results also show that states under the leadership of female governors experience lower levels of CO2 emissions than those with male governors, indicating female leadership’s potential to promote environmental sustainability. Practical implications The findings of this study have practical implications for policymakers, government officials, and other stakeholders involved in the formulation of strategies to promote environmental sustainability. This study highlights the significant role that female political leader play in mitigating CO2 emissions at the state level. It suggests that promoting female in political leadership positions can lead to more environmentally conscious policy decisions and actions, resulting in reduced CO2 emissions per capita. Policymakers should actively encourage women’s participation in leadership roles to utilize their potential contributions to advancing sustainability goals. Furthermore, organizations that focus on environmental issues should prioritize supporting and promoting female leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to environmental sustainability. Ultimately, this study highlights the need for female in political leadership as a potential strategy to address environmental challenges and advance a more sustainable future. Originality/value This study pioneers research on the links between female political leadership and state-level CO2 emissions. This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the potential role of female political leaders in promoting environmental sustainability. Overall, this study enriches the social role and upper echelons theories literature through empirical evidence.
•Political divisions over policy options create barriers to addressing global warming.•Australian voters respond to the position of political leaders on climate change policy.•When leaders diverge, ...voter polarization increases, with leader consensus, polarization decreases.•Agreement between party leaders may help overcome gridlock on climate policy.
Is public opinion on global climate change stable, with voters holding deeply rooted attitudes that guide them to consistent policy positions? Or is public opinion malleable, with voters adjusting their environmental positions when they learn about the positions of political leaders? To explore whether leaders can influence mass opinion on climate change, we conduct a pair of survey experiments in Australia. Emissions trading plans and renewable energy targets have been central issues in Australian politics over the last decade, with the members of the major parties deeply polarized on these issues. Our experiments reveal that survey respondents take different positions on climate change policy when they learn what positions leaders hold. When respondents learn that leaders take divergent positions on addressing climate change, they become more polarized along party lines. But when leaders converge on a policy proposal, they also bring those who follow them into closer agreement, providing evidence that partisan polarization at the mass level can be overcome when leaders come together on environmental policies.
Municipal elections have traditionally been conceptualized as subordinate to the national political situation, and thus considered second-order elections. However, voters could take into account ...national, regional or specifically local factors in determining their vote in these elections.
Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the electoral impact of these factors through political leadership. Thus, using binary logistic regression, we examine and confirm the impact of national, regional and local leaders in the municipal vote in the Autonomous Region of Andalusia.
The results show that local candidates have a greater impact on municipal elections than national and regional leaders, so local elections have their own autonomy.
Leaders face multiple threats to their political survival. In addition to surviving the threats to tenure from within the existing political systems, which is modeled using Bueno de Mesquita and ...colleagues' (2003) selectorate theory, leaders risk being deposed through revolutions and coups. To ameliorate the threat of revolution, leaders can either increase public goods provisions to buy off potential revolutionaries or contract the provision of those public goods, such as freedom of assembly, transparency, and free press, which enable revolutionaries to coordinate. Which response a leader chooses depends upon existing institutions and the structure of government finances. These factors also affect the likelihood and direction of institutional change. Tests of leader survival indicate that revolutionary threats increase the likelihood of deposition for nondemocratic leaders. Leaders with access to resources such as foreign aid or natural resource rents are best equipped to survive these threats and avoid the occurrence of these threats in the first place.
The German federal election 2021 was remarkable partly because the incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel, albeit still popular, was not running for re-election and did not figure prominently in the ...campaign. Drawing on the literatures on incumbency advantage, cost of ruling, and candidate-centered voting, we analyze whether an outgoing incumbent might still have an effect on voters’ attitudes and behavior. We distinguish two phenomena: First, we expect the effects of outgoing incumbents on electoral behavior to wash off during campaigns, as voters get more informed and adjust to new candidates. Second, if the incumbent’s successor as front-runner of their party manages to link themselves to their predecessor, the incumbent’s reputation might rub off on the new candidate, possibly indirectly enhancing electoral fortunes of the party. We examine the dynamics of these phenomena using data from the panel and RCS components of the German Longitudinal Election Study and a large-scale survey experiment.
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