Stefan Dahlberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 265294 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stefan Dahlberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stefan |
| FAMILY NAME | Dahlberg |
| SIGNATURE | DAHLBERG S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7483-9234 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 786 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Right up my alley: Local radical right success, contextual alignment, and immigration attitudes in Sweden
Electoral success of radical right parties is often argued to normalize previously stigmatized anti-immigration attitudes. Yet, it remains unclear whether such normalization reflects genuine within-individual persuasion or shifts in the local climate of political expression. We address this question by linking highly disaggregated district-level vote shares to individual-level panel survey data from Sweden (2018–2022), a period marked by sustaine…
The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies
Affective polarization (or antipathy between supporters of opposing political camps) is considered a threat to societal cohesion and democratic stability worldwide. However, causal evidence of its impact remains scarce, especially outside the United States. Our study examines the individual-level consequences of affective polarization by manipulating it in a survey experiment in nine countries (Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Swede…
Using Multilingual Language Technology to Classify Open-Ended Survey Responses: Conceptions of Democracy in a Cross-Cultural Survey Setting
Recent advancements in language technology have opened new avenues in political science for automating and improving survey data analysis across diverse cultural contexts. This article examines the effectiveness of language models (LMs) in analyzing open-ended survey responses about democracy from ten countries, contrasting these modern tools with traditional survey methodologies. Utilizing a predefined coding scheme and a subset of pre-annotated…
Measuring Happiness and Life Satisfaction amongst Swedish Citizens: An Inquiry into Semantic Equivalence in Comparative Survey Research
A consistent empirical finding is that Scandinavian countries by international standards score steadily high in terms of subjectively reported levels of happiness and life satisfaction. Intrigued by previous findings in Denmark (Lolle and Goul Anderson in Metode Og Forskningsdesign 1:95–119, 2013, in Journal of Happiness Studies 6:1–14)), this paper confirms that this is partly due to language effects. In this paper, Sweden serves as a case study…
The Voter Next Door: Stigma Effects on Advance Voting for Radical Right Parties
Despite the influence of stigmatization on vote choices, little attention has been given to the impact of social stigma on voters’ selection of voting procedures. To bridge this gap, our study focuses on Sweden, where the open-display ballot system at polling stations potentially compromises vote secrecy. Using survey data from the Swedish National Election Studies in 2014 and 2018, we examine the relationship between citizens’ voting procedure c…
Exploring popular conceptions of democracy through media discourse: Analysing Dimensions of Democracy From Online Media Data in 93 Countries Using a Distributional Semantic Model
Survey studies show that popular support for democracy is strong in democratic and non-democratic countries. Naturally, the question is if democracy actually means the same thing in different linguistic, cultural, and political contexts. Mass media is often mentioned as decisive in forming citizens' understandings of democracy, but the media discourse is rarely in focus in comparative studies on popular conceptions of democracy. This article cont…
The stigmatisation effect of the radical right on voters’ assessment of political proposals
Despite the continued electoral progress of the radical right, there are reasons to believe that its full electoral potential has yet to be revealed. Previous research suggests that it suffers from a stigmatisation effect and that many voters will find its proposals less compelling compared to if they were presented by a mainstream party even for policy issues they agree upon. This study employs a unique survey design, with two experiments conduc…
Does Changing an Electoral System to a Mixed System (Really) Affect Voter Turnout and the Party System
In this study the authors aim to add to the understanding of whether, and if so how, a change of electoral system affects factors such as voter turnout and the party system, and the authors' focus has been on changes that result in mixed electoral systems. They used three country cases (Japan, Italy, and New Zealand) to explore patterns in a before-and-after design. The findings suggest that a country cannot expect a significant effect on voter t…
A Distributional Semantic Online Lexicon for Linguistic Explorations of Societies
Linguistic Explorations of Societies (LES) is an interdisciplinary research project with scholars from the fields of political science, computer science, and computational linguistics. The overarching ambition of LES has been to contribute to the survey-based comparative scholarship by compiling and analyzing online text data within and between languages and countries. To this end, the project has developed an online semantic lexicon, which allow…
How the public understands news media trust: An open-ended approach
Despite the central role that ordinary citizens play as ‘trustors’ (i.e. the actor that places trust) in the literature on news media trust, prior quantitative studies have paid little attention to how ordinary citizens understand and define news media trust. Here, trust tends to be studied from a researcher-defined – rather than an audience-defined – perspective. To address this gap, we investigate how the public describes news media trust in th…
A tough trade-off? The asymmetrical impact of populist radical right inclusion on satisfaction with democracy and government
Populist radical right (PRR) parties are increasingly included in coalition governments across Western Europe. How does such inclusion affect satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in these societies? While some citizens will feel democracy has grown more responsive, others will abhor the inclusion of such controversial parties. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) and panel data from the Netherlands, we investigate how nativists’ an…
Democracy in context: Using a distributional semantic model to study differences in the usage of democracy across languages and countries
Cross-cultural survey research rests upon the assumption that if survey features are kept constant, data will remain comparable across languages, cultures and countries. Yet translating concepts across languages, cultures and political contexts is complicated by linguistic, cultural, normative or institutional discrepancies. Such discrepancies are particularly relevant for complex political concepts such as democracy, where the literature on poli…
In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support
It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens a…
Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study
The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Swede…
Gender Differences in Vote Choice: Social Cues and Social Harmony as Heuristics
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 li…
Social identification, in-group integration and voter turnout in three parliamentary elections: An analysis of the Swedish Sámi electorate
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
Socialization or Experience? Institutional Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy among Emigrants in Different Institutional Settings
In this article, we assess the explanatory power of two contrasting theories about the sources of political trust. Using a unique survey of expatriated Swedes together with two cross-country surveys, we investigate how a move from a context of high institutional quality to countries characterized by low institutional quality affects peoples' institutional trust and satisfaction with democracy. Our analyses show that Swedes living in countries wit…
Participation in Indigenous Democracy: Voter Turnout in Sámi Parliamentary Elections in Norway and Sweden
This article compares and analyzes voter turnout in the 2013 elections to the Sámi parliaments in Norway and Sweden, using data from voter surveys. Is voting in these elections motivated by the same factors that explain turnout in national parliamentary elections? First, the study showed that a common election day for national and Sámi elections is an important reason for the higher turnout in Norway. Second, involvement in Sámi society was the m…
The Law of Jante and generalized trust
A widespread cultural phenomenon - and/or individual disposition - is the idea that one should never try to be more, try to be different, or consider oneself more valuable than other people. In Scandinavia this code of modesty is referred to as the 'Jante mentality', in Anglo-Saxon societies the 'tall poppy syndrome', and in Asian cultures 'the nail that stands out gets hammered down'. The study reported here examines how this modesty code relate…
Do Polls Influence Opinions? Investigating Poll Feedback Loops Using the Novel Dynamic Response Feedback Experimental Procedure
Opinion polls may inadvertently affect public opinion, as people may change their attitudes after learning what others think. A disconcerting possibility is that opinion polls have the ability to create information cascades, wherein the majority opinion becomes increasingly larger over time. Testing poll influence on attitudes toward Syrian refugees and mandatory measles vaccination, we field survey experiments on a probability-based online surve…
Adapting to party lines: The Effect of Party Affiliation on Attitudes to Immigration
Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferenc…
The dynamics of the winner–loser gap in satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a Swedish citizen panel
Several studies have demonstrated a gap in support for the political system between electoral winners and losers. This research has generated a large stock of knowledge about the causes and effects of this winner–loser gap. However, we know little about the dynamics of the winner–loser gap over time. Drawing on a unique Swedish panel survey, this study investigates the stability of the winner–loser gap among Swedish voters over an electoral cycle…
Losing Happily? The Mitigating Effect of Democracy and Quality of Government on the Winner–Loser Gap in Political Support
Although a winner–loser gap in political support is present in most democracies, in some countries losers are more content than in others. Earlier research has demonstrated that formal institutional arrangements may affect the size of the gap. In this article, we argue that the quality and performance of institutions are more important than type of institutional arrangements when it comes to the size of the winner–loser gap. A well-functioning de…
Measuring Generalized Trust: An Examination of Question Wording and the Number of Scale Points
Survey institutes recently have changed their measurement of generalized trust from the standard dichotomous scale to an 11-point scale. Additionally, numerous survey institutes use different question wordings: where most rely on the standard, fully balanced question (asking if "most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people"), some use minimally balanced questions, asking only if it is "possible to trust pe…
Democracy and Bureaucracy: How their Quality Matters for Popular Satisfaction
This study focuses on how citizens' satisfaction with democracy is affected by system factors related to the input side of the democratic system, i.e. the electoral dimension, as well as to factors related to the output side, i.e. the quality of government. The study investigates the extent to which different election system characteristics and degrees of policy representation (in terms of ideological congruence between voters and representatives…
Democratic Discontent in Old and New Democracies: Assessing the Importance of Democratic Input and Governmental Output
Although the phenomenon of dissatisfied democrats has been frequently discussed in the literature, it has not often been empirically investigated. This article sets out to analyse the discrepancy between the strong support for democratic principles and the widespread discontent with the way democracy works. Drawing on earlier research on the sources of political support, using data from a wide range of democracies, the relevance of two contrastin…
The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: Examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe
In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—t…
The dynamics of the winner–loser gap in satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a Swedish citizen panel
Several studies have demonstrated a gap in support for the political system between electoral winners and losers. This research has generated a large stock of knowledge about the causes and effects of this winner–loser gap. However, we know little about the dynamics of the winner–loser gap over time. Drawing on a unique Swedish panel survey, this study investigates the stability of the winner–loser gap among Swedish voters over an electoral cycle…
Adapting to party lines: The Effect of Party Affiliation on Attitudes to Immigration
Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferenc…
Measuring Generalized Trust: An Examination of Question Wording and the Number of Scale Points
Survey institutes recently have changed their measurement of generalized trust from the standard dichotomous scale to an 11-point scale. Additionally, numerous survey institutes use different question wordings: where most rely on the standard, fully balanced question (asking if "most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people"), some use minimally balanced questions, asking only if it is "possible to trust pe…
Does context matter - The impact of electoral systems, political parties and individual characteristics on voters' perceptions of party positions
Gender Differences in Vote Choice: Social Cues and Social Harmony as Heuristics
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 li…
A tough trade-off? The asymmetrical impact of populist radical right inclusion on satisfaction with democracy and government
Populist radical right (PRR) parties are increasingly included in coalition governments across Western Europe. How does such inclusion affect satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in these societies? While some citizens will feel democracy has grown more responsive, others will abhor the inclusion of such controversial parties. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) and panel data from the Netherlands, we investigate how nativists’ an…
Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study
The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Swede…
Political parties and perceptual agreement: The influence of party related factors on voters' perceptions in proportional electoral systems
Changing Issue Ownership through Policy Communication
Issue ownership has been an important concept in the analysis of party competition for several decades. Traditionally, issue ownership has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties are advantaged by different political issues. However, several recent studies have reported change in voters' perceptions of parties' issue ownership. To investigate the changeability of issue ownership and how it can be altered, this article investigates the …
In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support
It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens a…
How the public understands news media trust: An open-ended approach
Despite the central role that ordinary citizens play as ‘trustors’ (i.e. the actor that places trust) in the literature on news media trust, prior quantitative studies have paid little attention to how ordinary citizens understand and define news media trust. Here, trust tends to be studied from a researcher-defined – rather than an audience-defined – perspective. To address this gap, we investigate how the public describes news media trust in th…
Socialization or Experience? Institutional Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy among Emigrants in Different Institutional Settings
In this article, we assess the explanatory power of two contrasting theories about the sources of political trust. Using a unique survey of expatriated Swedes together with two cross-country surveys, we investigate how a move from a context of high institutional quality to countries characterized by low institutional quality affects peoples' institutional trust and satisfaction with democracy. Our analyses show that Swedes living in countries wit…
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
The stigmatisation effect of the radical right on voters’ assessment of political proposals
Despite the continued electoral progress of the radical right, there are reasons to believe that its full electoral potential has yet to be revealed. Previous research suggests that it suffers from a stigmatisation effect and that many voters will find its proposals less compelling compared to if they were presented by a mainstream party even for policy issues they agree upon. This study employs a unique survey design, with two experiments conduc…
Changes and Fluctuations in Issue Ownership: The Case of Sweden, 1979–2010
Issue ownership (IO) has been an important concept in the analysis of party behaviour, party strategy and party competition for several decades. More recently, it has also been of growing interest for research on voting behaviour. Traditionally, IO has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties have different issue profiles and are advantaged by different political issues or issue‐areas. Recently, however, many studies have reported chang…
Left-right ideology as an inferential device in multiparty systems: Can citizens overcome low information by imputing parties' policy positions
Can electors combat corruption? Institutional arrangements and citizen behaviour
Studies interested in the cross‐national levels of corruption have concluded that specific institutional characteristics drive the aggregate variation. In countries with high institutional clarity and plurality electoral systems, corruption tends to be lower since increased voter monitoring and clarity of responsibility incentivise politicians to deliver virtuous policies. However, the underlying accountability mechanism has never been tested at …
The Law of Jante and generalized trust
A widespread cultural phenomenon - and/or individual disposition - is the idea that one should never try to be more, try to be different, or consider oneself more valuable than other people. In Scandinavia this code of modesty is referred to as the 'Jante mentality', in Anglo-Saxon societies the 'tall poppy syndrome', and in Asian cultures 'the nail that stands out gets hammered down'. The study reported here examines how this modesty code relate…
Participation in Indigenous Democracy: Voter Turnout in Sámi Parliamentary Elections in Norway and Sweden
This article compares and analyzes voter turnout in the 2013 elections to the Sámi parliaments in Norway and Sweden, using data from voter surveys. Is voting in these elections motivated by the same factors that explain turnout in national parliamentary elections? First, the study showed that a common election day for national and Sámi elections is an important reason for the higher turnout in Norway. Second, involvement in Sámi society was the m…
Social identification, in-group integration and voter turnout in three parliamentary elections: An analysis of the Swedish Sámi electorate
Different Surveys, Different Results? A Comparison of Two Surveys on the 2009 European Parliamentary Election
The European Election Survey (EES) is carried out in all member states at the time of each European Parliament election. The mode of data collection (mainly telephone interviews) and the sampling procedure (achieving 1,000 interviews in each country) raise doubts about the data quality. Until now knowledge has been lacking about the extent to which the mode of data collection and the sampling procedure bias the results. In one European country an…
Does Changing an Electoral System to a Mixed System (Really) Affect Voter Turnout and the Party System
In this study the authors aim to add to the understanding of whether, and if so how, a change of electoral system affects factors such as voter turnout and the party system, and the authors' focus has been on changes that result in mixed electoral systems. They used three country cases (Japan, Italy, and New Zealand) to explore patterns in a before-and-after design. The findings suggest that a country cannot expect a significant effect on voter t…
Political parties and perceptual agreement: The influence of party related factors on voters' perceptions in proportional electoral systems
Different Surveys, Different Results? A Comparison of Two Surveys on the 2009 European Parliamentary Election
The European Election Survey (EES) is carried out in all member states at the time of each European Parliament election. The mode of data collection (mainly telephone interviews) and the sampling procedure (achieving 1,000 interviews in each country) raise doubts about the data quality. Until now knowledge has been lacking about the extent to which the mode of data collection and the sampling procedure bias the results. In one European country an…
Does context matter - The impact of electoral systems, political parties and individual characteristics on voters' perceptions of party positions
Democracy and Bureaucracy: How their Quality Matters for Popular Satisfaction
This study focuses on how citizens' satisfaction with democracy is affected by system factors related to the input side of the democratic system, i.e. the electoral dimension, as well as to factors related to the output side, i.e. the quality of government. The study investigates the extent to which different election system characteristics and degrees of policy representation (in terms of ideological congruence between voters and representatives…
The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: Examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe
In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—t…
Changing Issue Ownership through Policy Communication
Issue ownership has been an important concept in the analysis of party competition for several decades. Traditionally, issue ownership has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties are advantaged by different political issues. However, several recent studies have reported change in voters' perceptions of parties' issue ownership. To investigate the changeability of issue ownership and how it can be altered, this article investigates the …
Changes and Fluctuations in Issue Ownership: The Case of Sweden, 1979–2010
Issue ownership (IO) has been an important concept in the analysis of party behaviour, party strategy and party competition for several decades. More recently, it has also been of growing interest for research on voting behaviour. Traditionally, IO has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties have different issue profiles and are advantaged by different political issues or issue‐areas. Recently, however, many studies have reported chang…
Democratic Discontent in Old and New Democracies: Assessing the Importance of Democratic Input and Governmental Output
Although the phenomenon of dissatisfied democrats has been frequently discussed in the literature, it has not often been empirically investigated. This article sets out to analyse the discrepancy between the strong support for democratic principles and the widespread discontent with the way democracy works. Drawing on earlier research on the sources of political support, using data from a wide range of democracies, the relevance of two contrastin…
Group Gender Composition and Tolerance of Immigrants' Rights
Research has shown that women on average express more positive attitudes towards out-groups than men. We hypothesize that, because of differences in the social climate that this gender gap produces, people who spend more time in female-dominated groups are likely to develop more positive attitudes towards out-groups than people who spend more time in groups that are dominated by men. We corroborate our argument with evidence from two unique Swedi…
Losing Happily? The Mitigating Effect of Democracy and Quality of Government on the Winner–Loser Gap in Political Support
Although a winner–loser gap in political support is present in most democracies, in some countries losers are more content than in others. Earlier research has demonstrated that formal institutional arrangements may affect the size of the gap. In this article, we argue that the quality and performance of institutions are more important than type of institutional arrangements when it comes to the size of the winner–loser gap. A well-functioning de…
Measuring Generalized Trust: An Examination of Question Wording and the Number of Scale Points
Survey institutes recently have changed their measurement of generalized trust from the standard dichotomous scale to an 11-point scale. Additionally, numerous survey institutes use different question wordings: where most rely on the standard, fully balanced question (asking if "most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people"), some use minimally balanced questions, asking only if it is "possible to trust pe…
Can electors combat corruption? Institutional arrangements and citizen behaviour
Studies interested in the cross‐national levels of corruption have concluded that specific institutional characteristics drive the aggregate variation. In countries with high institutional clarity and plurality electoral systems, corruption tends to be lower since increased voter monitoring and clarity of responsibility incentivise politicians to deliver virtuous policies. However, the underlying accountability mechanism has never been tested at …
Left-right ideology as an inferential device in multiparty systems: Can citizens overcome low information by imputing parties' policy positions
Do Polls Influence Opinions? Investigating Poll Feedback Loops Using the Novel Dynamic Response Feedback Experimental Procedure
Opinion polls may inadvertently affect public opinion, as people may change their attitudes after learning what others think. A disconcerting possibility is that opinion polls have the ability to create information cascades, wherein the majority opinion becomes increasingly larger over time. Testing poll influence on attitudes toward Syrian refugees and mandatory measles vaccination, we field survey experiments on a probability-based online surve…
Adapting to party lines: The Effect of Party Affiliation on Attitudes to Immigration
Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferenc…
The dynamics of the winner–loser gap in satisfaction with democracy: Evidence from a Swedish citizen panel
Several studies have demonstrated a gap in support for the political system between electoral winners and losers. This research has generated a large stock of knowledge about the causes and effects of this winner–loser gap. However, we know little about the dynamics of the winner–loser gap over time. Drawing on a unique Swedish panel survey, this study investigates the stability of the winner–loser gap among Swedish voters over an electoral cycle…
Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries
Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper…
Socialization or Experience? Institutional Trust and Satisfaction with Democracy among Emigrants in Different Institutional Settings
In this article, we assess the explanatory power of two contrasting theories about the sources of political trust. Using a unique survey of expatriated Swedes together with two cross-country surveys, we investigate how a move from a context of high institutional quality to countries characterized by low institutional quality affects peoples' institutional trust and satisfaction with democracy. Our analyses show that Swedes living in countries wit…
Participation in Indigenous Democracy: Voter Turnout in Sámi Parliamentary Elections in Norway and Sweden
This article compares and analyzes voter turnout in the 2013 elections to the Sámi parliaments in Norway and Sweden, using data from voter surveys. Is voting in these elections motivated by the same factors that explain turnout in national parliamentary elections? First, the study showed that a common election day for national and Sámi elections is an important reason for the higher turnout in Norway. Second, involvement in Sámi society was the m…
The Law of Jante and generalized trust
A widespread cultural phenomenon - and/or individual disposition - is the idea that one should never try to be more, try to be different, or consider oneself more valuable than other people. In Scandinavia this code of modesty is referred to as the 'Jante mentality', in Anglo-Saxon societies the 'tall poppy syndrome', and in Asian cultures 'the nail that stands out gets hammered down'. The study reported here examines how this modesty code relate…
Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study
The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Swede…
Gender Differences in Vote Choice: Social Cues and Social Harmony as Heuristics
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 li…
Social identification, in-group integration and voter turnout in three parliamentary elections: An analysis of the Swedish Sámi electorate
Democracy in context: Using a distributional semantic model to study differences in the usage of democracy across languages and countries
Cross-cultural survey research rests upon the assumption that if survey features are kept constant, data will remain comparable across languages, cultures and countries. Yet translating concepts across languages, cultures and political contexts is complicated by linguistic, cultural, normative or institutional discrepancies. Such discrepancies are particularly relevant for complex political concepts such as democracy, where the literature on poli…
In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support
It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens a…
Political science (31 works) · Politics (30 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (25 works) · Law (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Economics (20 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Social Media and Politics (17 works) · Democracy (15 works)