Sergiu Gherghina
Biographic Data
| ID | 3682271 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sergiu Gherghina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sergiu |
| FAMILY NAME | Gherghina |
| SIGNATURE | GHERGHINA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 315 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Religious Community, Language and Family: Why the Neo-Protestant Churches in Romania Support Emigration to the US
Existing scholarship has studied the Church’s role in facilitating emigration through providing various forms of assistance. However, there is limited research about the characteristics of the migrants benefiting from such aid, particularly in terms of the combination between social embeddedness and religious devotion. This study addresses this gap by investigating how the Neo-Protestant churches in Romania help in the emigration process, and exp…
Conceptualizing and Measuring Support for Democracy: A New Approach
Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project. We then ask respondents from 19 national sam…
Migrants away from the polls: Explaining the absenteeism of people with sub-Saharan African origins in the 2022 French presidential elections
International audience
First-time voters and electoral campaigns: Explaining online engagement in Romania
This article aims to explain why young people engage politically with their preferred candidates during electoral campaigns. It uses an original survey conducted on first-time voters — as a group of heavy Internet users — in the 2019 Romanian presidential elections to identify determinants of such a behavior. Our statistical analysis argues and tests the explanatory power of three categories of determinants: importance of politics, information, a…
Budgetary Clientelism and Decentralization in Hungary and Romania
The literature on clientelism covers the extent to which public budgets are politicized relative to specific groups of supporters. However, we know little about what drives the discretionary transfers from central to local governments. This article addresses this research gap and analyses the causes for such allocations in two East European countries: Hungary and Romania. The analysis draws on an original dataset that includes the transfers from …
Parliamentarians' Support for Direct and Deliberative Democracy in Europe: An Account of Individual-Level Determinants
The increasing critique of representative democracy and its institutions determined reformers to consider the direct and deliberative processes as potential solutions to bridge the gap between elites and citizens. Substantial research investigates the functioning of these alternative models of democracy, but surprisingly little attention is paid to politicians' perspectives and preferences for these reforms. This article fills this gap through an…
From opposition to government: How populist parties change their political communication in Northern Ireland
Political communication is central to the electoral ascension of populist parties across the world. Several studies investigate how communication is used by populists to gain power, but we know very little about how the communication varies when moving between opposition and government office. The few studies on the topic focus exclusively on right-wing populist parties and neglect left-wing populism. This article addresses this gap in the litera…
Organisational capacity and electoral gains: Why majority parties nominate Roma candidates in local elections
The representation of ethnic minorities is often investigated through the lenses of ethnic parties. Much less attention is paid to how parties belonging to the ethnic majority represent minorities. In particular, we know very little about why such parties nominate ethnic minority candidates on their lists in elections. This article aims to explain this process and focuses on the Roma candidates on ethnic majority party lists in the 2016 local ele…
Faith in a New Party: The Involvement of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the 2020 Election Campaign
The intensity and nature of ties between the Church and political parties was covered by a rich literature. However, we know relatively little about why the Church would support a newly emerged political party formed in a competitive space, in which other parties had in the past enjoyed the Church’s support. This article aims to explain why many members of the Romanian Orthodox Church campaigned for the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) i…
Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe
Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe expands research on democratic innovations by looking specifically at different forms of democratic innovations in Central and Eastern Europe. The book covers direct democracy (referendums in particular), deliberative democracy practices and e-participation – forms which are salient in practice because they match the political realities of our time. Expert contributors show how the recent actio…
Party Leaders in Eastern Europe: Personality, Behavior and Consequences
Who Wishes to Return? Ties to Home Country among the Romanian Migrants
The research focusing on return migration from the perspective of migrants’ relationship with the country of origin has emphasized the emotional and economic ties. Quite often, these ties have been examined separately and there is little indication of what counts more. This article addresses this gap in the literature and analyzes the extent to which the sense of belonging, media consumption, networks of friends, and regular visits in the country…
Prompting Legislative Agreement and Loyalty: What Role for Intra-Party Democracy
Existing research often suggests that a greater degree of internal democracy within parties could weaken party unity. This article tests this assumption and analyses the relationship between degrees of intra-party democracy (IPD) and legislators' attitudes towards party unity. The article uses data collected in the framework of the PartiRep Comparative MP Survey; and of the Political Party Database (PPDB). The study includes 796 parliamentarians …
Introduction: Towards a Better Understanding of Parliamentary Unity
The study of parliamentary party unity has followed several lines of enquiry: describing the variation across political actors, contexts and time; comparing the multidimensional and dynamic aspects of parliamentary party unity; explaining it from a rational-institutional perspective with emphasis on macro-level arrangements and individual rational motivations. However, we know relatively little about how party organizations shape parliamentary pa…
What Triggers the Intention to Use the European Citizens’ Initiative? The Role of Benefits, Values and Efficacy
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a European Union instrument that aspires to encourage citizens to participate in EU policy‐making. Although scholarly interest in the ECI is strong, only isolated studies have examined the factors that shape the intention to use it. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining how personal benefits from the EU, value‐based assessments of the EU, and political efficacy (internal and external) m…
Linking Democratic Preferences and Political Participation: Evidence from Germany
An extensive body of literature discusses the disaffection of citizens with representative democracy and highlights increasing citizens’ preferences for political decision-makers beyond elected politicians. But so far, little research has been conducted to analyse the relations between citizens’ respective preferences and their political behaviour. To address this void in the literature, our article investigates the extent to which citizens’ pref…
Rewarding the ‘traitors’? Legislative defection and re-election in Romania
Legislative defection in political systems characterized by party dominance and cartelization is usually seen as damaging the members of parliament's (MPs') careers. Switching legislators does not portray an image of confidence and reliability and the MPs’ re-election is unlikely. Drawing on a dataset that includes all defector MPs in post-communist Romania until 2008, this article indicates that one in five defectors gets re-elected. The quest f…
The MP Renomination Indicator: A Measure of Elite Continuity and its Importance for Legislative Research
The literature on legislatures has devoted extensive space to those Members of Parliament (MPs) who return to parliament. So far, less attention has been paid to the number of incumbents who get renominated, a category that includes also those who fail to gain reelection. To empirically examine how many MPs get renominated, we need an adequate indicator. This article presents a measure for the legislative renomination at a party level. It account…
Introduction: Political Dynamics in Post-Communist Romania
Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe: Enhancing voter loyalty
Introduction : Institutional Determinants of Voter Choice -- Layers and Sources of Electoral Volatility -- Party Organization and Electoral Volatility : An Analytical Model -- Mapping Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe -- The Benefits of Decentralized Candidate Selection -- Loose Mobilizing Networks -- The Continuity of Representation -- A Multivariate Analysis of Electoral Volatility -- Conclusions -- Appendix
Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe
Political parties in post-communist countries have very high levels of electoral volatility. In these environments, political factions fail to establish long-term connections with the electorate and thus regularly rise and fall from the political arena. This book provides an organizational explanation for the variations in party-level electoral volatility. It looks comparatively at 29 political parties in six Central and Eastern European democrac…
Parliamentary sovereignty and international intervention: Elite attitudes in the first Central European legislatures
This article investigates the extent to which post-communist political elites favoured the intervention of external organisations in parliamentary work. It draws on data from a survey of parliamentary elites from the beginning of the transition towards democracy in the four Visegrad countries. The results show a much more complex picture than usually assumed, with important variation both between the four legislatures and within the same parliame…
Determinants of legislative voting loyalty under different electoral systems: Evidence from Romania
Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the change of parliamentary voting behaviour following electoral reforms. But scholars have not analysed whether the mechanisms by which voting loyalty is elicited matter differently in such cases. Our article fills this gap by investigating the individual variation in voting loyalty across two legislative terms, using a sample of 26 high-stakes roll-call votes. Romania constitutes an ideal set…
The Threat of Diversity? Explaining Attitudes towards Ethnic Conflict in Romania
A large body of literature has been devoted to the development of conflicts, their causes, and consequences for politics and society. However, much less attention has been paid to public opinion on the matter. To fill this void in the literature, this article seeks to understand why people consider the existence of several ethnic groups as a source of conflicts. it focuses on Romania -a multiethnic society with experience in interethnic conflicts…
Ethnic Citizenship Regimes: Europeanization, Post-War Migration and Redressing Past Wrongs
Linking Democratic Preferences and Political Participation: Evidence from Germany
An extensive body of literature discusses the disaffection of citizens with representative democracy and highlights increasing citizens’ preferences for political decision-makers beyond elected politicians. But so far, little research has been conducted to analyse the relations between citizens’ respective preferences and their political behaviour. To address this void in the literature, our article investigates the extent to which citizens’ pref…
Practice and payment: Determinants of candidate list position in European Parliament elections
This article fills a gap in the literature by explaining list composition and placement of candidates in closed PR (proportional representation) settings. Focusing on the case of Romania in the European elections of June 2009, we rely on an original data set including the sociodemographics, career history and wealth of all 215 candidates from the Romanian parties’ parliamentary lists. The results of our rank-ordered logistic regression indicate t…
Policy agendas and births and deaths of political parties
The standard model of political party density emphasizing the interaction of social cleavages and district magnitude (M) is incomplete in accounting for number of parties in cases of high values of M in an arbitrary way. We explore an alternative model for such cases emphasizing the slack in the issue agenda available to parties with which to construct viable identities or niches they can employ to mobilize cognitively-limited voters. The model i…
Unpacking LogM: Toward a More General Theory of Party System Density
The standard model of political party system density combines two traditions to explain why some countries have more political parties than others, one tradition that emphasizes social cleavages and another that emphasizes electoral institutions, especially district magnitude. Despite its considerable success, there are several reasons to be less than fully satisfied with the standard model. We examine two of these problems associated with the sc…
Conceptualizing and Measuring Support for Democracy: A New Approach
Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project. We then ask respondents from 19 national sam…
Determinants of legislative voting loyalty under different electoral systems: Evidence from Romania
Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the change of parliamentary voting behaviour following electoral reforms. But scholars have not analysed whether the mechanisms by which voting loyalty is elicited matter differently in such cases. Our article fills this gap by investigating the individual variation in voting loyalty across two legislative terms, using a sample of 26 high-stakes roll-call votes. Romania constitutes an ideal set…
Parliamentarians' Support for Direct and Deliberative Democracy in Europe: An Account of Individual-Level Determinants
The increasing critique of representative democracy and its institutions determined reformers to consider the direct and deliberative processes as potential solutions to bridge the gap between elites and citizens. Substantial research investigates the functioning of these alternative models of democracy, but surprisingly little attention is paid to politicians' perspectives and preferences for these reforms. This article fills this gap through an…
Rewarding the ‘traitors’? Legislative defection and re-election in Romania
Legislative defection in political systems characterized by party dominance and cartelization is usually seen as damaging the members of parliament's (MPs') careers. Switching legislators does not portray an image of confidence and reliability and the MPs’ re-election is unlikely. Drawing on a dataset that includes all defector MPs in post-communist Romania until 2008, this article indicates that one in five defectors gets re-elected. The quest f…
Faith in a New Party: The Involvement of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the 2020 Election Campaign
The intensity and nature of ties between the Church and political parties was covered by a rich literature. However, we know relatively little about why the Church would support a newly emerged political party formed in a competitive space, in which other parties had in the past enjoyed the Church’s support. This article aims to explain why many members of the Romanian Orthodox Church campaigned for the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) i…
One-Shot Party Primaries: The Case of the Romanian Social Democrats
While party primaries for candidate selection gain gradual popularity in established European democracies, they remain rare in Eastern Europe. This article focuses on the Romanian Social Democrats and investigates the reasons why primaries were abandoned after one use. The central argument is that this short lifespan was determined by the absence of relevant short-term benefits. A few pathologies of the primaries led to their failure: contest adm…
When voter loyalty fails: Party performance and corruption in Bulgaria and Romania
This article identifies the determinants of party loyalty while making a distinction between government and opposition voters within an electoral cycle in the two most recent European Union members (Bulgaria and Romania). Both countries are characterized by the perception of widespread corruption and a general distrust of politicians that are likely to hinder the development of strong ties between citizens and parties. We test the explanatory pot…
Where does religion meet democracy? A comparative analysis of attitudes in Europe
Starting from the growing importance of religion for politics, this article tests whether religion in Europe is connected with democratic attitudes. Analyzing and understanding such a relationship is essential for a better understanding of the prospects of present and future democratic consolidation. Our two-step approach aims to assess the variation and causal forces of democratic attitudes in Europe in the light of broader country-level factors…
Where Does the Mechanism Collapse? Understanding the 2008 Romanian Electoral System
Following six rounds of national parliamentary elections disputed under a closed-list PR system, in 2008 Romania adopted an electoral reform. The new system is triple-layered and combines proportional representation with voting in single-member districts. Its first use reveals discrepancies between the logic of proportional representation, for which it was chosen, and the produced results. By focusing on the system's functioning mechanisms, this …
Organisational capacity and electoral gains: Why majority parties nominate Roma candidates in local elections
The representation of ethnic minorities is often investigated through the lenses of ethnic parties. Much less attention is paid to how parties belonging to the ethnic majority represent minorities. In particular, we know very little about why such parties nominate ethnic minority candidates on their lists in elections. This article aims to explain this process and focuses on the Roma candidates on ethnic majority party lists in the 2016 local ele…
Prompting Legislative Agreement and Loyalty: What Role for Intra-Party Democracy
Existing research often suggests that a greater degree of internal democracy within parties could weaken party unity. This article tests this assumption and analyses the relationship between degrees of intra-party democracy (IPD) and legislators' attitudes towards party unity. The article uses data collected in the framework of the PartiRep Comparative MP Survey; and of the Political Party Database (PPDB). The study includes 796 parliamentarians …
Budgetary Clientelism and Decentralization in Hungary and Romania
The literature on clientelism covers the extent to which public budgets are politicized relative to specific groups of supporters. However, we know little about what drives the discretionary transfers from central to local governments. This article addresses this research gap and analyses the causes for such allocations in two East European countries: Hungary and Romania. The analysis draws on an original dataset that includes the transfers from …
Introduction: Towards a Better Understanding of Parliamentary Unity
The study of parliamentary party unity has followed several lines of enquiry: describing the variation across political actors, contexts and time; comparing the multidimensional and dynamic aspects of parliamentary party unity; explaining it from a rational-institutional perspective with emphasis on macro-level arrangements and individual rational motivations. However, we know relatively little about how party organizations shape parliamentary pa…
What Triggers the Intention to Use the European Citizens’ Initiative? The Role of Benefits, Values and Efficacy
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a European Union instrument that aspires to encourage citizens to participate in EU policy‐making. Although scholarly interest in the ECI is strong, only isolated studies have examined the factors that shape the intention to use it. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining how personal benefits from the EU, value‐based assessments of the EU, and political efficacy (internal and external) m…
Does government performance matter? Electoral support for incumbents in six post-communist countries
For two decades, the Central and Eastern European party politics has been characterized by the widespread inability of parties to secure stable political support (reflected in high levels of electoral volatility) to allow their presence in government for consecutive terms. This paper investigates the factors that trigger support for incumbent parties in post-communist countries. In doing so, it examines the effect of individual evaluations at the…
Who Wishes to Return? Ties to Home Country among the Romanian Migrants
The research focusing on return migration from the perspective of migrants’ relationship with the country of origin has emphasized the emotional and economic ties. Quite often, these ties have been examined separately and there is little indication of what counts more. This article addresses this gap in the literature and analyzes the extent to which the sense of belonging, media consumption, networks of friends, and regular visits in the country…
Electoral Reform –Cui Bono? Attitudes of Romanian MPs to the Electoral System Change
Drawing on an original parliamentary survey, an analysis is undertaken of what motivates MPs elected in a closed proportional representation (PR) setting to consider changing this electoral system. Moves in this direction are quite rare and for this reason a case study of Romanian parliamentarians is proposed. Bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques are used to assess the impact of both power maximisation incentives and values. The main…
MPs' Role Orientations in Newly Emerged Democratic Legislatures
Understanding the behaviour of the elected representatives at the beginning of the transition period in former Communist countries provides an insight into some of the first freely elected parliaments after decades of authoritarianism. The role perception grasps the essence of how MPs position themselves in their decision-making process in a fuzzy institutional setting. By relying on the sole established institutions for that period (that is, pol…
Migrants away from the polls: Explaining the absenteeism of people with sub-Saharan African origins in the 2022 French presidential elections
International audience
The MP Renomination Indicator: A Measure of Elite Continuity and its Importance for Legislative Research
The literature on legislatures has devoted extensive space to those Members of Parliament (MPs) who return to parliament. So far, less attention has been paid to the number of incumbents who get renominated, a category that includes also those who fail to gain reelection. To empirically examine how many MPs get renominated, we need an adequate indicator. This article presents a measure for the legislative renomination at a party level. It account…
From opposition to government: How populist parties change their political communication in Northern Ireland
Political communication is central to the electoral ascension of populist parties across the world. Several studies investigate how communication is used by populists to gain power, but we know very little about how the communication varies when moving between opposition and government office. The few studies on the topic focus exclusively on right-wing populist parties and neglect left-wing populism. This article addresses this gap in the litera…
Practice and payment: Determinants of candidate list position in European Parliament elections
This article fills a gap in the literature by explaining list composition and placement of candidates in closed PR (proportional representation) settings. Focusing on the case of Romania in the European elections of June 2009, we rely on an original data set including the sociodemographics, career history and wealth of all 215 candidates from the Romanian parties’ parliamentary lists. The results of our rank-ordered logistic regression indicate t…
Unpacking LogM: Toward a More General Theory of Party System Density
The standard model of political party system density combines two traditions to explain why some countries have more political parties than others, one tradition that emphasizes social cleavages and another that emphasizes electoral institutions, especially district magnitude. Despite its considerable success, there are several reasons to be less than fully satisfied with the standard model. We examine two of these problems associated with the sc…
Foreign Interventions in Ethnic Conflicts by Robert Nalbandov: Book Reviews
MPs' Role Orientations in Newly Emerged Democratic Legislatures
Understanding the behaviour of the elected representatives at the beginning of the transition period in former Communist countries provides an insight into some of the first freely elected parliaments after decades of authoritarianism. The role perception grasps the essence of how MPs position themselves in their decision-making process in a fuzzy institutional setting. By relying on the sole established institutions for that period (that is, pol…
Does government performance matter? Electoral support for incumbents in six post-communist countries
For two decades, the Central and Eastern European party politics has been characterized by the widespread inability of parties to secure stable political support (reflected in high levels of electoral volatility) to allow their presence in government for consecutive terms. This paper investigates the factors that trigger support for incumbent parties in post-communist countries. In doing so, it examines the effect of individual evaluations at the…
Where does religion meet democracy? A comparative analysis of attitudes in Europe
Starting from the growing importance of religion for politics, this article tests whether religion in Europe is connected with democratic attitudes. Analyzing and understanding such a relationship is essential for a better understanding of the prospects of present and future democratic consolidation. Our two-step approach aims to assess the variation and causal forces of democratic attitudes in Europe in the light of broader country-level factors…
Where Does the Mechanism Collapse? Understanding the 2008 Romanian Electoral System
Following six rounds of national parliamentary elections disputed under a closed-list PR system, in 2008 Romania adopted an electoral reform. The new system is triple-layered and combines proportional representation with voting in single-member districts. Its first use reveals discrepancies between the logic of proportional representation, for which it was chosen, and the produced results. By focusing on the system's functioning mechanisms, this …
When voter loyalty fails: Party performance and corruption in Bulgaria and Romania
This article identifies the determinants of party loyalty while making a distinction between government and opposition voters within an electoral cycle in the two most recent European Union members (Bulgaria and Romania). Both countries are characterized by the perception of widespread corruption and a general distrust of politicians that are likely to hinder the development of strong ties between citizens and parties. We test the explanatory pot…
Ethnic Citizenship Regimes: Europeanization, Post-War Migration and Redressing Past Wrongs
Defeating authoritarian leaders in postcommunist countries
Defeating authoritarian leaders in postcommunist countries." East European Politics, 30(1), pp. 148–149
One-Shot Party Primaries: The Case of the Romanian Social Democrats
While party primaries for candidate selection gain gradual popularity in established European democracies, they remain rare in Eastern Europe. This article focuses on the Romanian Social Democrats and investigates the reasons why primaries were abandoned after one use. The central argument is that this short lifespan was determined by the absence of relevant short-term benefits. A few pathologies of the primaries led to their failure: contest adm…
Policy agendas and births and deaths of political parties
The standard model of political party density emphasizing the interaction of social cleavages and district magnitude (M) is incomplete in accounting for number of parties in cases of high values of M in an arbitrary way. We explore an alternative model for such cases emphasizing the slack in the issue agenda available to parties with which to construct viable identities or niches they can employ to mobilize cognitively-limited voters. The model i…
Electoral Reform –Cui Bono? Attitudes of Romanian MPs to the Electoral System Change
Drawing on an original parliamentary survey, an analysis is undertaken of what motivates MPs elected in a closed proportional representation (PR) setting to consider changing this electoral system. Moves in this direction are quite rare and for this reason a case study of Romanian parliamentarians is proposed. Bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques are used to assess the impact of both power maximisation incentives and values. The main…
Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe: Enhancing voter loyalty
Introduction : Institutional Determinants of Voter Choice -- Layers and Sources of Electoral Volatility -- Party Organization and Electoral Volatility : An Analytical Model -- Mapping Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe -- The Benefits of Decentralized Candidate Selection -- Loose Mobilizing Networks -- The Continuity of Representation -- A Multivariate Analysis of Electoral Volatility -- Conclusions -- Appendix
Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe
Political parties in post-communist countries have very high levels of electoral volatility. In these environments, political factions fail to establish long-term connections with the electorate and thus regularly rise and fall from the political arena. This book provides an organizational explanation for the variations in party-level electoral volatility. It looks comparatively at 29 political parties in six Central and Eastern European democrac…
Parliamentary sovereignty and international intervention: Elite attitudes in the first Central European legislatures
This article investigates the extent to which post-communist political elites favoured the intervention of external organisations in parliamentary work. It draws on data from a survey of parliamentary elites from the beginning of the transition towards democracy in the four Visegrad countries. The results show a much more complex picture than usually assumed, with important variation both between the four legislatures and within the same parliame…
Determinants of legislative voting loyalty under different electoral systems: Evidence from Romania
Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the change of parliamentary voting behaviour following electoral reforms. But scholars have not analysed whether the mechanisms by which voting loyalty is elicited matter differently in such cases. Our article fills this gap by investigating the individual variation in voting loyalty across two legislative terms, using a sample of 26 high-stakes roll-call votes. Romania constitutes an ideal set…
The Threat of Diversity? Explaining Attitudes towards Ethnic Conflict in Romania
A large body of literature has been devoted to the development of conflicts, their causes, and consequences for politics and society. However, much less attention has been paid to public opinion on the matter. To fill this void in the literature, this article seeks to understand why people consider the existence of several ethnic groups as a source of conflicts. it focuses on Romania -a multiethnic society with experience in interethnic conflicts…
The MP Renomination Indicator: A Measure of Elite Continuity and its Importance for Legislative Research
The literature on legislatures has devoted extensive space to those Members of Parliament (MPs) who return to parliament. So far, less attention has been paid to the number of incumbents who get renominated, a category that includes also those who fail to gain reelection. To empirically examine how many MPs get renominated, we need an adequate indicator. This article presents a measure for the legislative renomination at a party level. It account…
Introduction: Political Dynamics in Post-Communist Romania
Rewarding the ‘traitors’? Legislative defection and re-election in Romania
Legislative defection in political systems characterized by party dominance and cartelization is usually seen as damaging the members of parliament's (MPs') careers. Switching legislators does not portray an image of confidence and reliability and the MPs’ re-election is unlikely. Drawing on a dataset that includes all defector MPs in post-communist Romania until 2008, this article indicates that one in five defectors gets re-elected. The quest f…
Linking Democratic Preferences and Political Participation: Evidence from Germany
An extensive body of literature discusses the disaffection of citizens with representative democracy and highlights increasing citizens’ preferences for political decision-makers beyond elected politicians. But so far, little research has been conducted to analyse the relations between citizens’ respective preferences and their political behaviour. To address this void in the literature, our article investigates the extent to which citizens’ pref…
What Triggers the Intention to Use the European Citizens’ Initiative? The Role of Benefits, Values and Efficacy
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a European Union instrument that aspires to encourage citizens to participate in EU policy‐making. Although scholarly interest in the ECI is strong, only isolated studies have examined the factors that shape the intention to use it. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining how personal benefits from the EU, value‐based assessments of the EU, and political efficacy (internal and external) m…
Prompting Legislative Agreement and Loyalty: What Role for Intra-Party Democracy
Existing research often suggests that a greater degree of internal democracy within parties could weaken party unity. This article tests this assumption and analyses the relationship between degrees of intra-party democracy (IPD) and legislators' attitudes towards party unity. The article uses data collected in the framework of the PartiRep Comparative MP Survey; and of the Political Party Database (PPDB). The study includes 796 parliamentarians …
Introduction: Towards a Better Understanding of Parliamentary Unity
The study of parliamentary party unity has followed several lines of enquiry: describing the variation across political actors, contexts and time; comparing the multidimensional and dynamic aspects of parliamentary party unity; explaining it from a rational-institutional perspective with emphasis on macro-level arrangements and individual rational motivations. However, we know relatively little about how party organizations shape parliamentary pa…
Political science (35 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (31 works) · Law (26 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (22 works) · Economics (20 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Democracy (16 works) · Public Administration (12 works)