Mikko Mattila
Biographic Data
| ID | 331471 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mikko Mattila |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mikko |
| FAMILY NAME | Mattila |
| SIGNATURE | MATTILA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2289-8486 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
How preferential voting and party ideology shape campaign-focus in proportional electoral systems
While electoral systems shape candidates’ incentives to cultivate personal reputations, institutional rules do not translate mechanically into campaign behaviour. We argue that both electoral institutions and ideological traditions shape campaign strategies: ideological traditions influence both the attractiveness of candidate-centred appeals and how strongly candidates respond to institutional incentives. We present the first large cross-nationa…
Still Out of Touch? Parties and Their Voters on the EU Dimension
Previous research has uncovered a significant mismatch between parties and their voters on the EU dimension, showing that parties across the EU typically support more European integration than their electorates. Yet there are good theoretical reasons to expect that the gap has narrowed over time. The breakthrough of so-called challenger parties means more ideological alternatives, and the multiple crises have resulted in further politicization of…
Poor mental health does not always reduce political participation: Wrong assumption, wrong samples, or wrong measures
Mental health, like physical health, represents an important resource for participating in politics. We bring new insights from six surveys from five different countries (Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States) that combine diversified questions on mental health problems and political participation. Unlike previous research on depression, we find only limited evidence for the Resource Hypothesis that mental health p…
Voting propensity and parental depression
Among the most prevalent and costly of all illnesses worldwide, depression also has substantive consequences for democratic politics, not least because it is associated with lower voting propensity. One of the most reliable predictors of becoming depressed is a family history of depression, an intergenerational link thought to arise through multiple mechanisms that increase a person's cognitive, behavioural and affective disposition towards depre…
Physical health conditions and political participation in Europe: The moderating effects of age
Unequal political participation is widely considered a problem of democratic representation. Citizens with fewer resources typically report lower levels of participation. Lack of good health has been identified as one barrier to participation. However, poor health may have heterogeneous impacts on participation, depending on the type of health issue. Moreover, poor health may affect participation patterns differently, depending on age. Previous r…
In the right place, at the right time: Opportunity structures and candidates’ chances of getting elected for the first time
The foundational principle of representative democracy is that legislative elites can be replaced in elections. Yet, first-time parliamentary entries have received little attention. We present the first systematic attempt to examine the conditions of first-time parliamentary entry in multimember district PR systems. We introduce an overlooked explanatory factor, candidates' short-term opportunity structure. While controlling for personal vote-ear…
When life happens: The Impact of Life Events on Turnout
Habit is among the most influential explanations for why people vote. Scholars have addressed the impact of individual disruptions to habitual voting, but analyses including several life events are rare. We combine two panel surveys, conducted in the UK during 1991-2017, to examine the impact of unemployment, retirement, changes in partnership status, moving and disability on voting. We distinguish between habitual voters, occasional voters and h…
Down But Not Yet Out: Depression, Political Efficacy, and Voting
Depression is one of the most common health problems in the developed world. Previous research has primarily investigated the relationship between depression and voting, largely overlooking its cognitive foundations. We turn to political efficacy as a key political attitude and precondition for political engagement. We build on research into the cognitive aspects of depression to construct arguments linking depression, political efficacy, and vot…
When does ideology matter? Party lists, personal attributes and the effect of ideology on intra‐party success
Choosing a candidate can be difficult in open‐list proportional representation systems, with many candidates on display. Under such circumstances, candidates' personal vote‐earning attributes (PVEAs) become useful for voters since PVEAs function as information shortcuts (heuristics) that reduce the cognitive costs of casting a ballot. However, recent research has demonstrated that more cognitively demanding information, namely candidates' ideolog…
Comparing computational and non-computational methods in party position estimation: Finland, 2003–2019
It is often claimed that computational methods for examining textual data give good enough party position estimates at a fraction of the costs of many non-computational methods. However, the conclusive testing of these claims is still far from fully accomplished. We compare the performance of two computational methods, Wordscores and Wordfish, and four non-computational methods in estimating the political positions of parties in two dimensions, a…
How voters choose one out of many: A conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice
Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar fo…
Finding the One: Ease of Candidate Choices in High Information Open‐List PR Systems
Vote choice in an open‐list proportional representation (OLPR) electoral system can be considered a complex process. In systems where votes are cast for individual candidates the choice is complicated by the large number of candidates, the two layers of competition involving both individual candidates and parties, and the amount of information required to make an informed choice. Hence, voters are expected to apply strategies to narrow down the p…
Revamping the menu – or just offering what’s in stock? Candidate list volatility in open-list PR systems. Evidence from Finland
Why do parties change candidate lists between elections? Although candidate list volatility is an important indicator of the responsiveness of electoral representation, it has received little attention in research. We offer a critical case study of party list volatility in Finland, using a candidate-centred open-list proportional (PR) electoral system with ideal conditions for ‘ultra-strategic’ party behaviour. Our explorative two-stage research …
Interest through necessity? The impact of personal health on the stability of political interest in the United Kingdom
Interest in politics is a key indicator of citizens’ attitudes towards politics. Scholars disagree whether interest is a stable trait developed during adolescence, or if it changes over the life course. We hypothesise that deteriorating health can destabilise the stable sense of political interest because worsening health makes individuals more dependent on public healthcare and increase their attention to politics. Furthermore, we assume that th…
Breaking a habit: The impact of health on turnout and party choice
Turnout and party choice are widely held to be habitual, but little attention has been paid to factors that disrupt the pattern. Good health is an important determinant of political behaviour and a key component in the quality of life. Based on the developmental theory of turnout, we hypothesize that declining health lowers voting propensity over the life course. We employ issue ownership theory to assume that declining health increases the likel…
Does poor health mobilize people into action? Health, political trust, and participation
Recently, awareness of the importance of health in explaining political participation has grown considerably. Studies have focused on individual participation forms but not on broader participation modes. Furthermore, analyses of the mechanisms explaining the health effects have been lacking. Here, structural equation models are employed to study the relationship between health, political trust, and institutional and non-institutional participati…
Ideological mavericks or party herd? The effect of candidates' ideological positions on intra-party success
Political candidates' ideological positions have been used to explain success in inter-party competition, but little is known about how they impact success in intra-party competition. Here, candidates' positions on the Left-Right and GAL-TAN dimensions are analysed in three Finnish parliamentary elections (2011, 2015, 2019). Candidates' ideological positions are measured in terms of their ideological distance from their own party's median candida…
Does Health Affect Party Identification? Evidence from German Panel Data
Recent research has shown the effect of health on voter turnout, arguing that attenuated health depresses voting. However, we know little about how health is connected to the psychological factors, such as party identification, that precede actual political participation. Employing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that when a person’s health deteriorates, the degree of partisan attachment declines, whereas health improvem…
Do Surveys Overestimate or Underestimate Socioeconomic Differences in Voter Turnout? Evidence from Administrative Registers
Surveys generally overestimate the overall level of voter turnout in elections due to both the misreporting of voting and nonresponse. It is sometimes argued that socioeconomic differences in turnout are exaggerated in surveys because social desirability has a more pronounced effect on eligible voters in more advantaged socioeconomic positions. However, the contribution of nonresponse bias has not been taken into consideration in these assessment…
Sick leave from work and the voting booth? A register-based study on health and turnout
Just sick of it? Health and political trust in Western Europe
This article explores two theoretical possibilities for why personal health may affect political trust: the psychological‐democratic contract theory, and the role of personal experience in opinion formation. It argues that citizens with health impairments are more likely to experience the direct effects of political decisions as they are more dependent on public health services. Negative subjective evaluations of public services can lower trust l…
How voter turnout varies between different chronic conditions? A population-based register study
BACKGROUND: While poor self-rated health is known to decrease an individual's propensity to vote, disaggregation of the components of health on turnout has thus far received only little attention. This study deepens on the understanding of such relationships by examining the association between chronic diseases and voting. METHODS: The study uses an individual-level register-based data set that contains an 11% random sample of the entire electora…
Explaining Social Class Inequality in Voter Turnout: The Contribution of Income and Health
Occupation‐based social class is an important, yet under‐explored, factor in electoral participation. In this article, social class differences in voter turnout over time are measured, and how two other resources – namely income and health – mediate or modify this relationship is analysed. The analysis is based on an individual‐level register‐based 11 percent sample of the entire electorate in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections, and seconda…
Disability, perceived discrimination and political participation
Disability affects the lives of hundreds of millions across the world. People with disabilities often experience discrimination and unequal treatment. Sometimes the mere categorization of people into groups, that is, ‘healthy’ vs. ‘disabled’, is enough to trigger discriminatory behaviour against people with disabilities. Previous studies show that in general disabilities depress political participation. However, the effect of disability-based dis…
Money Makes theEUGo Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in theCouncil ofMinisters
Many examinations of the dimensions of conflict in theEuropeanUnionCouncil ofMinisters focus on the ideological roots of contestation in theEU. This article examines the extent to which structural attributes of theMember States explain the conflict within theCouncil ofMinisters in general as well as in selected policy domains (agriculture, fisheries, environment, economic affairs). Drawing on the political economy literature of legislative decisi…
Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and ‘Stealth’ Democracy in Finland
In this article support for direct democracy and for stealth democracy in Finland is analysed. Stealth democracy represents a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the representative form of today's democracy. The authors found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. Additionally, they found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability o…
Why Unanimity in the Council: A Roll Call Analysis of Council Voting
This article examines whether data on the voting patterns in the Council of Ministers lend support to the hypotheses that can be derived from some recent rational choice models of decision-making in the European Union. The findings show major discrepancies between the predictions of these spatial models and the empirical observations. Unanimous decision-making is much more frequent than one would expect from these influential contributions. Our e…
Contested decisions: Empirical analysis of voting in the European Union Council of Ministers
This article analyses voting records of the European Union's (EU) Council of Ministers. Governments’ voting patterns are assumed to be partly affected by national‐level factors and partly by EU‐level factors. The results support the view that the political space of the EU is defined by two dimensions: the traditional left‐right dimension, and the independence versus integration dimension. In general, left‐wing governments tend to vote less agains…
Cautious Voters -Supportive Parties: Opinion Congruence between Voters and Parties on the EU Dimension
This article analyses party-voter congruence on European integration matters in the EU member states. Drawing on existing research, we put forward eight hypotheses which are tested with data from the EES2004 survey. We show that parties are closer to their voters on the left/right dimension than on the EU dimension. Parties are also more supportive of European integration than are their voters. Party system characteristics (number of parties, ide…
Money Makes theEUGo Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in theCouncil ofMinisters
Many examinations of the dimensions of conflict in theEuropeanUnionCouncil ofMinisters focus on the ideological roots of contestation in theEU. This article examines the extent to which structural attributes of theMember States explain the conflict within theCouncil ofMinisters in general as well as in selected policy domains (agriculture, fisheries, environment, economic affairs). Drawing on the political economy literature of legislative decisi…
Why bother? Determinants of turnout in the European elections
Healthy voting: The effect of self-reported health on turnout in 30 countries
Drifting Further Apart: National Parties and their Electorates on the EU Dimension
Whether parties are representative of their voters over the EU is a key concern in modern European governance. Using European Election Studies data, this article compares opinion congruence between parties and their electorates on the EU dimension in 2004 and 2009 and examines, at the levels of both member states and individual parties, which factors explain variation in opinion congruence between parties and their supporters over integration. Th…
Voting in the Council of the European Union after the 2004 Enlargement: A Comparison of Old and New Member States
This article explores voting patterns in the Council of the European Union between May 2004 and the end of December 2006, studying the full set of voting records for this institution. It analyses government vote choices in the Council on the basis of ordered logistic regression analysis, explaining the propensity of European Union (EU) Member States to vote 'yes', abstain from voting or vote 'no'. The article explains voting behaviour in the Coun…
Disability, perceived discrimination and political participation
Disability affects the lives of hundreds of millions across the world. People with disabilities often experience discrimination and unequal treatment. Sometimes the mere categorization of people into groups, that is, ‘healthy’ vs. ‘disabled’, is enough to trigger discriminatory behaviour against people with disabilities. Previous studies show that in general disabilities depress political participation. However, the effect of disability-based dis…
Roll call analysis of voting in the European Union Council of Ministers after the 2004 enlargement
Voting and coalitions in the Council of Ministers in the enlarged European Union are analysed for the period during which the EU had 25 Member States, based on Council's roll call records. In terms of frequency of voting in the Council, the new EU Member States did not differ from their older counterparts in any significant way. However, enlargement has had an impact on the Council interaction. A spatial roll call model shows that the Council's p…
Does winning pay? Electoral success and government formation in 15 West European countries
Government formation is guided by several principles such as majority, plurality and electoral gain. According to the principle of electoral gain, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, with parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse conformity with this principle in 15 West European countries with multiparty coalition governments between 1945 and 1999. With the exception of the lar…
Down But Not Yet Out: Depression, Political Efficacy, and Voting
Depression is one of the most common health problems in the developed world. Previous research has primarily investigated the relationship between depression and voting, largely overlooking its cognitive foundations. We turn to political efficacy as a key political attitude and precondition for political engagement. We build on research into the cognitive aspects of depression to construct arguments linking depression, political efficacy, and vot…
Just sick of it? Health and political trust in Western Europe
This article explores two theoretical possibilities for why personal health may affect political trust: the psychological‐democratic contract theory, and the role of personal experience in opinion formation. It argues that citizens with health impairments are more likely to experience the direct effects of political decisions as they are more dependent on public health services. Negative subjective evaluations of public services can lower trust l…
Do Surveys Overestimate or Underestimate Socioeconomic Differences in Voter Turnout? Evidence from Administrative Registers
Surveys generally overestimate the overall level of voter turnout in elections due to both the misreporting of voting and nonresponse. It is sometimes argued that socioeconomic differences in turnout are exaggerated in surveys because social desirability has a more pronounced effect on eligible voters in more advantaged socioeconomic positions. However, the contribution of nonresponse bias has not been taken into consideration in these assessment…
Does poor health mobilize people into action? Health, political trust, and participation
Recently, awareness of the importance of health in explaining political participation has grown considerably. Studies have focused on individual participation forms but not on broader participation modes. Furthermore, analyses of the mechanisms explaining the health effects have been lacking. Here, structural equation models are employed to study the relationship between health, political trust, and institutional and non-institutional participati…
Personality and Turnout: Results from the Finnish Longitudinal Studies
Scholars in the field of electoral participation have for long been aware that turnout is strongly connected to sociopsychological variables such as religiosity, party identification, political interest and sense of political efficacy. The impact of personality characteristics has remained largely unexplored until recently. Based on the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS, original N = 369), this article analy…
Breaking a habit: The impact of health on turnout and party choice
Turnout and party choice are widely held to be habitual, but little attention has been paid to factors that disrupt the pattern. Good health is an important determinant of political behaviour and a key component in the quality of life. Based on the developmental theory of turnout, we hypothesize that declining health lowers voting propensity over the life course. We employ issue ownership theory to assume that declining health increases the likel…
Fiscal transfers and redistribution in the European Union: Do Smaller Member States Get More Than Their Share
In this article redistribution in the EU and fiscal transfers between member states are analysed. Which countries are beneficiaries, which are contributors, and what factors affect countries' net fiscal balances? Fiscal transfers among EU member states are partially explained by differences in the countries' economic prosperity, as well as by institutional features that favour smaller EU members. The budget is redistributive both on the revenue a…
Ideological mavericks or party herd? The effect of candidates' ideological positions on intra-party success
Political candidates' ideological positions have been used to explain success in inter-party competition, but little is known about how they impact success in intra-party competition. Here, candidates' positions on the Left-Right and GAL-TAN dimensions are analysed in three Finnish parliamentary elections (2011, 2015, 2019). Candidates' ideological positions are measured in terms of their ideological distance from their own party's median candida…
How voter turnout varies between different chronic conditions? A population-based register study
BACKGROUND: While poor self-rated health is known to decrease an individual's propensity to vote, disaggregation of the components of health on turnout has thus far received only little attention. This study deepens on the understanding of such relationships by examining the association between chronic diseases and voting. METHODS: The study uses an individual-level register-based data set that contains an 11% random sample of the entire electora…
How voters choose one out of many: A conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice
Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar fo…
Explaining Social Class Inequality in Voter Turnout: The Contribution of Income and Health
Occupation‐based social class is an important, yet under‐explored, factor in electoral participation. In this article, social class differences in voter turnout over time are measured, and how two other resources – namely income and health – mediate or modify this relationship is analysed. The analysis is based on an individual‐level register‐based 11 percent sample of the entire electorate in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary elections, and seconda…
The Politics of Competitive Tendering: Political Orientation and Attitudes towards Contracting Out among Finnish Local Politicians
Using survey data on Finnish local politicians (n = 364) we examine the extent to which political orientation affects attitudes towards and perceptions of competitive tendering in social and health service provision. Expectation of cost benefits turns out to be the most important factor accounting for willingness to increase the usage of competitive tendering. The perceived positive impact of tendering on local democracy is also related to local …
Government Formation in the Nordic Countries: The Electoral Connection
Government formation is guided by several principles, such as majority, plurality and electoral principles. According to the electoral principle, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse the fulfilment of this principle in the five Nordic countries. In Denmark, Finland and Iceland the majority of governments contained parties that both won an…
The Vicious Circle of Cutback Policies: Citizens' Attitudes Toward Cutbacks in Finnish Welfare Services
In most western countries, public services have been the target of cur‐backs during the past few years. It is often argued that support for a strong welfare slate has declined. In this article, attitudes towards public services in Finland are examined. Factors affecting the willingness to accept cuts were studied using a structural equation model and correspondence analysis. The analysis revealed that piecemeal deterioration in public services ca…
Hierarchy or Competition: The Interest Representation Network of Organized Labour in Finnish Social and Health Policy Making
In this article the network of interest representation of Finnish labour organizations in the social and health policy domain was analysed More precisely the research question was whether the interest representation follows the hierarchical or the competitive model of interest channelling The first model shared many features of the corporatist theory of interest representation The competition model was derived more from pluralist policy-making th…
Economic Changes and Government Popularity in Scandinavian Countries
The study of government popularity functions has been popular among political scientists since the pioneering work of the early 1970s. Most of the studies have concentrated on data from the United States or from Great Britain. The reason for this has probably been the availability of data over long periods of time in these countries, and the fact that in two-party systems the effects of economic changes on government popularity seem to be stronge…
The politics of scarcity: Social welfare and health care cutbacks in Finland, 1991–1995
This article analyses cutbacks in Finnish social and health care programmes. Eight hypotheses were formulated and then tested with empirical cutback data from 1991–95. The analysis showed that strictly administrative programmes and those focused on marginal groups were more likely to be cut more than other programs. These results partially endorse to the ‘vote‐maximising politician’ and the ‘blame‐avoidance’ hypotheses. Political decision‐makers …
From Qualified Majority to Simple Majority: The Effects of the 1992 Change in the Finnish Constitution
This paper analyzes the consequences of the 1992 change in the voting rule in the Finnish Parliament. Before this reform, one third of all Parliament members could delay a law proposal for reconsideration by the Parliament. This rule was abolished in 1992 which meant that the Finnish Parliament finally adopted a simple majority rule to decide on new legislation. The empirical part of this article analyzes the effects of the reform on the parliame…
Why Unanimity in the Council: A Roll Call Analysis of Council Voting
This article examines whether data on the voting patterns in the Council of Ministers lend support to the hypotheses that can be derived from some recent rational choice models of decision-making in the European Union. The findings show major discrepancies between the predictions of these spatial models and the empirical observations. Unanimous decision-making is much more frequent than one would expect from these influential contributions. Our e…
The Hard Business of Balancing Budgets: A Study of Public Finances in Seventeen OECD Countries
During the past two decades growing public sectors and simultaneous slow economic growth have highlighted the role of deficit management as a central part of economic policies in modern democracies. Both economists and political scientists have emphasized the role of political institutions in public financial policies. This study contributes to this growing body of research by showing that: (1) during election years public deficits increase becau…
Government Formation in the Nordic Countries: The Electoral Connection
Government formation is guided by several principles, such as majority, plurality and electoral principles. According to the electoral principle, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse the fulfilment of this principle in the five Nordic countries. In Denmark, Finland and Iceland the majority of governments contained parties that both won an…
Why bother? Determinants of turnout in the European elections
Contested decisions: Empirical analysis of voting in the European Union Council of Ministers
This article analyses voting records of the European Union's (EU) Council of Ministers. Governments’ voting patterns are assumed to be partly affected by national‐level factors and partly by EU‐level factors. The results support the view that the political space of the EU is defined by two dimensions: the traditional left‐right dimension, and the independence versus integration dimension. In general, left‐wing governments tend to vote less agains…
Does winning pay? Electoral success and government formation in 15 West European countries
Government formation is guided by several principles such as majority, plurality and electoral gain. According to the principle of electoral gain, parties that increase their share of seats in the elections should form the government, with parties that lose seats joining the opposition. We analyse conformity with this principle in 15 West European countries with multiparty coalition governments between 1945 and 1999. With the exception of the lar…
Fiscal transfers and redistribution in the European Union: Do Smaller Member States Get More Than Their Share
In this article redistribution in the EU and fiscal transfers between member states are analysed. Which countries are beneficiaries, which are contributors, and what factors affect countries' net fiscal balances? Fiscal transfers among EU member states are partially explained by differences in the countries' economic prosperity, as well as by institutional features that favour smaller EU members. The budget is redistributive both on the revenue a…
Cautious Voters -Supportive Parties: Opinion Congruence between Voters and Parties on the EU Dimension
This article analyses party-voter congruence on European integration matters in the EU member states. Drawing on existing research, we put forward eight hypotheses which are tested with data from the EES2004 survey. We show that parties are closer to their voters on the left/right dimension than on the EU dimension. Parties are also more supportive of European integration than are their voters. Party system characteristics (number of parties, ide…
From consensus to competition? Ideological alternatives on the EU dimension
Revue des revues: On trouvera sous cette rubrique les sommaires les plus récents des grandes revues internationales de science politique
Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. Distribution lectronique Cairn.info pour Presses de Sciences Po. La reproduction ou reprsentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorise que dans les limites des conditions gnrales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas chant, des conditions gnrales de la licence souscrite par votre tablissement. Toute autre reproduction ou reprsentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque …
Roll call analysis of voting in the European Union Council of Ministers after the 2004 enlargement
Voting and coalitions in the Council of Ministers in the enlarged European Union are analysed for the period during which the EU had 25 Member States, based on Council's roll call records. In terms of frequency of voting in the Council, the new EU Member States did not differ from their older counterparts in any significant way. However, enlargement has had an impact on the Council interaction. A spatial roll call model shows that the Council's p…
Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and ‘Stealth’ Democracy in Finland
In this article support for direct democracy and for stealth democracy in Finland is analysed. Stealth democracy represents a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the representative form of today's democracy. The authors found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. Additionally, they found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability o…
The Politics of Competitive Tendering: Political Orientation and Attitudes towards Contracting Out among Finnish Local Politicians
Using survey data on Finnish local politicians (n = 364) we examine the extent to which political orientation affects attitudes towards and perceptions of competitive tendering in social and health service provision. Expectation of cost benefits turns out to be the most important factor accounting for willingness to increase the usage of competitive tendering. The perceived positive impact of tendering on local democracy is also related to local …
Voting in the Council of the European Union after the 2004 Enlargement: A Comparison of Old and New Member States
This article explores voting patterns in the Council of the European Union between May 2004 and the end of December 2006, studying the full set of voting records for this institution. It analyses government vote choices in the Council on the basis of ordered logistic regression analysis, explaining the propensity of European Union (EU) Member States to vote 'yes', abstain from voting or vote 'no'. The article explains voting behaviour in the Coun…
Personality and Turnout: Results from the Finnish Longitudinal Studies
Scholars in the field of electoral participation have for long been aware that turnout is strongly connected to sociopsychological variables such as religiosity, party identification, political interest and sense of political efficacy. The impact of personality characteristics has remained largely unexplored until recently. Based on the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS, original N = 369), this article analy…
Drifting Further Apart: National Parties and their Electorates on the EU Dimension
Whether parties are representative of their voters over the EU is a key concern in modern European governance. Using European Election Studies data, this article compares opinion congruence between parties and their electorates on the EU dimension in 2004 and 2009 and examines, at the levels of both member states and individual parties, which factors explain variation in opinion congruence between parties and their supporters over integration. Th…
Resolving controversies with DEU data
Healthy voting: The effect of self-reported health on turnout in 30 countries
Money Makes theEUGo Round: The Objective Foundations of Conflict in theCouncil ofMinisters
Many examinations of the dimensions of conflict in theEuropeanUnionCouncil ofMinisters focus on the ideological roots of contestation in theEU. This article examines the extent to which structural attributes of theMember States explain the conflict within theCouncil ofMinisters in general as well as in selected policy domains (agriculture, fisheries, environment, economic affairs). Drawing on the political economy literature of legislative decisi…
How voter turnout varies between different chronic conditions? A population-based register study
BACKGROUND: While poor self-rated health is known to decrease an individual's propensity to vote, disaggregation of the components of health on turnout has thus far received only little attention. This study deepens on the understanding of such relationships by examining the association between chronic diseases and voting. METHODS: The study uses an individual-level register-based data set that contains an 11% random sample of the entire electora…
Political science (45 works) · Politics (38 works) · Economics (35 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (34 works) · Law (33 works) · Law (33 works) · Voting (24 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (14 works)