Ulrik Kjaer
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 391706 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Ulrik Kjaer |
| PRENOMES | Ulrik |
| SOBRENOME | Kjaer |
| ASSINATURA | KJAER U |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Southern Denmark |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9731-692X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 28 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 265 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Gender Fatigue in the Nordics
This article investigates the phenomenon of gender fatigue as a covert form of potential backlash against gender equality in Denmark and Norway—two countries often perceived as frontrunners in gender equality. While overt backlash, involving explicit efforts to roll back equality gains, is rare and lacks mainstream appeal in these countries, more subtle forms of resistance to gender equality can be detected. Based on representative surveys conduc…
How local is decentral politics? Variations in the supply of municipal policies
Local democracy is theoretically based on political parties offering different policies across and within sub-national geographical units. However, local democracy is embedded within a multilevel party and institutional structure that may compromise this endeavour. This study develops three expectations of policy variation: within party variation in political positions across geographical units; differences in policy positions across parties with…
How institutions do (not) contain personalized politics
The Danish general election in 2022 appeared to foster a paradox: the campaign was remarkably personalized, while voters were less likely to vote for an individual candidate compared to the last five elections. Personalization in the campaign did not seem to spill over to voting behaviour. The study argues and shows using register and survey data that institutional barriers limited the direct expression of personalized electoral behaviour, but vo…
Why Norway has more female local councillors than Denmark
The article explores why women are better represented in municipal councils in Norway than in Denmark. This comparative case study offers a most similar systems design, as these two countries are similar on most relevant institutional variables, such as local government systems, electoral systems, party systems and societal gender equality, but they deviate on the dependent variable of women’s representation. Two unique comparative data sets are …
The second-order election model and the performance of political parties in municipal elections
Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better in the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate elec…
The Danish legislators database
Mind the gap, please! Pinpointing the influence of municipal size on local electoral participation
Turnout rates vary between local and national elections. This paper promotes the national–local turnout gap as the best way to pinpoint the local component of voting at local elections. By analysing the national–local turnout gap instead of the raw local turnout rate, one can reduce the potential bias originating from the differences in socio-demographic composition and civic skills existing between municipalities of various sizes. Including data…
Local territorial attachment in times of jurisdictional consolidation
The blame game
Diagnosing women’s under-representation in electoral politics often involves a “blame game,” seeking to identify the primary factor responsible for depressing the share of women among candidates as well as elected officials. The Danish electoral system – in which parties present ordered lists of candidates but voters have the option to cast preference votes that can rearrange the list order – provides an opportunity to assess the relative role of…
The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties
Regional politics is not at the centre of most Danes’ political attention, but at the 2017 regional elections more than 7 in 10 Danes showed up at the polls to vote in the five Danish regions. Although several regional lists and smaller nationwide parties ran at the elections, the established parties already represented in the national parliament conquered all but two of the 205 seats. This is not to say that the voters simply copied their nation…
Political Representation and Geographical Bias in Amalgamated Local Governments
There is a strong tendency across the world to amalgamate political jurisdictions, especially local governments. Merger of jurisdictions entails integration of local interests, and former jurisdictions have to struggle to secure political representation and specific area interests in the new amalgamated jurisdiction. We argue that this struggle is affected by the strength of the centre–periphery dimension of the new amalgamated jurisdiction. When…
Urban Political Leadership and Political Representation
The concepts of political leadership and political representation are applied to urban politics, and based on a case study of four mayors in Denmark, four mayoral representational functions are identified: “representative,” “master of ceremonies,” “local secretary of state,” and “ombudsman.” The four functions separate the mayor from the councillors who act only as representatives. With regard to representational focus (who is represented), the c…
What are the Local Political Costs of Centrally Determined Reforms of Local Government
Taking advantage of a quasi-experimental setting and drawing upon analysis of electoral results and a survey of voters, this article explores the political costs of reform through the example of the 2009 local elections in Denmark. The article finds that the local parties of mayors were punished at the polls for implementing municipal amalgamations decided by the central government. However, the effect on the mayoral parties’ electoral result is …
The Impact of Assembly Size on Representativeness
Choosing the number of seats in a legislature is a balancing act between efficiency and representativeness. This article focuses on representativeness and hypothesises that the larger the assembly, the higher the vote-seat proportionality, the higher the number of parties represented, and the higher the representation of otherwise under-represented groups. An approach using simulations of elections is introduced and applied in testing the hypothe…
Presidentialisation of Parliamentary Systems? Frontrunner Concentration in Danish Local Elections
A trend of presidentialisation of non-presidential political systems has been identified and discussed in the literature. However, a central aspect of the process, increasingly leadership-focused voting behaviour, is only rudimentarily studied. We assess whether frontrunners have become more important in elections in a non-presidential multiparty system. We develop three measures to assess the electoral frontrunner concentration and study actual …
Local Political Leadership
In this article, local political leadership is modelled as circulation of political capital. Based on intensive case studies of the political leadership performance of four mayors in Denmark, this article asks why the concept of political capital, introduced to local government studies in 1961 by Banfield, has in many ways sunk into oblivion. This article resuscitates the concept of political capital, using it to generate a general theory of loca…
The Gendered Division of Labor in Assignments to Political Committees
The literature on the descriptive representation of women in parliaments is voluminous, and most studies focus on different levels of women's representation across legislatures (e.g., Krook 2010; Matland 1998; Paxton 1997; Reynolds 1999; Siaroff 2000). The number of women in parliaments is counted across the globe, and explanations as to what facilitates and hinders the election of female politicians are sought. At a macro level, PR systems, high…
Vital Democracy
Frank Hendriks Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-957278-6 Once again a new book on democracy has been published, and the obvious question is: why do we need yet another book on t
The Depth of Parliamentary Elite Circulation
This article argues that studies of parliamentary elite circulation should not focus exclusively on raw turnover rates, which pertain mostly to the entry and exit of new members of parliament. Studies should also pay attention to the circulation that goes on below the surface, i.e., circulation of long-standing and senior MPs - what might be termed the 'depth' of parliamentary elite circulation. I develop an analytical tool for measuring the dept…
Local Party System Nationalisation
Udgivelsesdato: June 2010
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
Party politicisation of local councils
Local government party systems are not necessarily copies of the national party system. In many countries, local party systems have come to resemble the national one more and more – a process Rokkan termed ‘party politicisation’. The traditional expectation has been that the take‐over of local politics by political parties, through a gradual process of societal modernisation, would eventually be complete. More recently, however, it has been sugge…
Split‐ticket Voting in Times of Sub‐national Government Reorganisation
Local government amalgamations may have unintended consequences on electoral behaviour. Using the most recent local elections in Denmark as its case, this article demonstrates that inter‐level split‐ticket voting between three levels (national, regional and local) decreased slightly from 2001 to 2005 – that is, simultaneously with the implementation of a major reform, where many municipalities and all the counties were amalgamated. These amalgama…
The Mayor’s Political Career
From time to time the claim is made that 'politicians are all the same' — not least when politicians are lambasted in the aftermath of unpopular decisions or actions. The differences between the various individuals who make up the political elite are claimed to be minor compared to the differences between persons belonging to the upper strata of the hierarchy of formal political power and the mundane rest of the population. Even scholars often st…
The decreasing number of candidates at Danish local elections
While the qualitative dimension of local political recruitment is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature, little attention has been paid to the quantitative aspect, i.e., how many candidates run for local elections. Using Danish local politics as a case study, this analysis of election report data demonstrates that the political parties show substantial rational actor behaviour when deciding the number of candidates to be put forwa…
Local Party System Nationalisation
Udgivelsesdato: June 2010
Political Representation and Geographical Bias in Amalgamated Local Governments
There is a strong tendency across the world to amalgamate political jurisdictions, especially local governments. Merger of jurisdictions entails integration of local interests, and former jurisdictions have to struggle to secure political representation and specific area interests in the new amalgamated jurisdiction. We argue that this struggle is affected by the strength of the centre–periphery dimension of the new amalgamated jurisdiction. When…
The Gendered Division of Labor in Assignments to Political Committees
The literature on the descriptive representation of women in parliaments is voluminous, and most studies focus on different levels of women's representation across legislatures (e.g., Krook 2010; Matland 1998; Paxton 1997; Reynolds 1999; Siaroff 2000). The number of women in parliaments is counted across the globe, and explanations as to what facilitates and hinders the election of female politicians are sought. At a macro level, PR systems, high…
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
Party politicisation of local councils
Local government party systems are not necessarily copies of the national party system. In many countries, local party systems have come to resemble the national one more and more – a process Rokkan termed ‘party politicisation’. The traditional expectation has been that the take‐over of local politics by political parties, through a gradual process of societal modernisation, would eventually be complete. More recently, however, it has been sugge…
The Impact of Assembly Size on Representativeness
Choosing the number of seats in a legislature is a balancing act between efficiency and representativeness. This article focuses on representativeness and hypothesises that the larger the assembly, the higher the vote-seat proportionality, the higher the number of parties represented, and the higher the representation of otherwise under-represented groups. An approach using simulations of elections is introduced and applied in testing the hypothe…
The decreasing number of candidates at Danish local elections
While the qualitative dimension of local political recruitment is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature, little attention has been paid to the quantitative aspect, i.e., how many candidates run for local elections. Using Danish local politics as a case study, this analysis of election report data demonstrates that the political parties show substantial rational actor behaviour when deciding the number of candidates to be put forwa…
Local Political Leadership
In this article, local political leadership is modelled as circulation of political capital. Based on intensive case studies of the political leadership performance of four mayors in Denmark, this article asks why the concept of political capital, introduced to local government studies in 1961 by Banfield, has in many ways sunk into oblivion. This article resuscitates the concept of political capital, using it to generate a general theory of loca…
Mind the gap, please! Pinpointing the influence of municipal size on local electoral participation
Turnout rates vary between local and national elections. This paper promotes the national–local turnout gap as the best way to pinpoint the local component of voting at local elections. By analysing the national–local turnout gap instead of the raw local turnout rate, one can reduce the potential bias originating from the differences in socio-demographic composition and civic skills existing between municipalities of various sizes. Including data…
The blame game
Diagnosing women’s under-representation in electoral politics often involves a “blame game,” seeking to identify the primary factor responsible for depressing the share of women among candidates as well as elected officials. The Danish electoral system – in which parties present ordered lists of candidates but voters have the option to cast preference votes that can rearrange the list order – provides an opportunity to assess the relative role of…
Are Danes More Inclined to Ticket Splitting than the Swedes and the English?1
The first ever simultaneous general and local elections in Denmark (November 2001) allow for a comparison of Danish voters’ inclination towards inter-level ticket splitting with similar phenomena in Sweden and England. Inter-level split-ticket voting occurs when voters cast their vote on two different parties in the two different (but simultaneous) elections; this happened far more often in Denmark in 2001 than in the two other countries. One hyp…
Split‐ticket Voting in Times of Sub‐national Government Reorganisation
Local government amalgamations may have unintended consequences on electoral behaviour. Using the most recent local elections in Denmark as its case, this article demonstrates that inter‐level split‐ticket voting between three levels (national, regional and local) decreased slightly from 2001 to 2005 – that is, simultaneously with the implementation of a major reform, where many municipalities and all the counties were amalgamated. These amalgama…
Urban Political Leadership and Political Representation
The concepts of political leadership and political representation are applied to urban politics, and based on a case study of four mayors in Denmark, four mayoral representational functions are identified: “representative,” “master of ceremonies,” “local secretary of state,” and “ombudsman.” The four functions separate the mayor from the councillors who act only as representatives. With regard to representational focus (who is represented), the c…
The second-order election model and the performance of political parties in municipal elections
Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better in the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate elec…
Why Norway has more female local councillors than Denmark
The article explores why women are better represented in municipal councils in Norway than in Denmark. This comparative case study offers a most similar systems design, as these two countries are similar on most relevant institutional variables, such as local government systems, electoral systems, party systems and societal gender equality, but they deviate on the dependent variable of women’s representation. Two unique comparative data sets are …
Local territorial attachment in times of jurisdictional consolidation
What are the Local Political Costs of Centrally Determined Reforms of Local Government
Taking advantage of a quasi-experimental setting and drawing upon analysis of electoral results and a survey of voters, this article explores the political costs of reform through the example of the 2009 local elections in Denmark. The article finds that the local parties of mayors were punished at the polls for implementing municipal amalgamations decided by the central government. However, the effect on the mayoral parties’ electoral result is …
The Depth of Parliamentary Elite Circulation
This article argues that studies of parliamentary elite circulation should not focus exclusively on raw turnover rates, which pertain mostly to the entry and exit of new members of parliament. Studies should also pay attention to the circulation that goes on below the surface, i.e., circulation of long-standing and senior MPs - what might be termed the 'depth' of parliamentary elite circulation. I develop an analytical tool for measuring the dept…
How institutions do (not) contain personalized politics
The Danish general election in 2022 appeared to foster a paradox: the campaign was remarkably personalized, while voters were less likely to vote for an individual candidate compared to the last five elections. Personalization in the campaign did not seem to spill over to voting behaviour. The study argues and shows using register and survey data that institutional barriers limited the direct expression of personalized electoral behaviour, but vo…
The Danish legislators database
Institutions Matter – Even in the Long Run. Representation, Residence Requirements, and Parachutage in Norway and Denmark
Kvinder i kommunalpolitik - er grænsen nået
Selvom kvinder udgør mindre end 30 procent af kommunal politikere er en stigning i kvindeandelen ikke længere en selvfølge. Hvorfor er situationen sådan? Og skal vi anlægge et pessimistisk eller et mere fortrøstningsfuldt syn på sagen
Institutions Matter – Even in the Long Run. Representation, Residence Requirements, and Parachutage in Norway and Denmark
Are Danes More Inclined to Ticket Splitting than the Swedes and the English?1
The first ever simultaneous general and local elections in Denmark (November 2001) allow for a comparison of Danish voters’ inclination towards inter-level ticket splitting with similar phenomena in Sweden and England. Inter-level split-ticket voting occurs when voters cast their vote on two different parties in the two different (but simultaneous) elections; this happened far more often in Denmark in 2001 than in the two other countries. One hyp…
The Mayor’s Political Career
From time to time the claim is made that 'politicians are all the same' — not least when politicians are lambasted in the aftermath of unpopular decisions or actions. The differences between the various individuals who make up the political elite are claimed to be minor compared to the differences between persons belonging to the upper strata of the hierarchy of formal political power and the mundane rest of the population. Even scholars often st…
The decreasing number of candidates at Danish local elections
While the qualitative dimension of local political recruitment is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature, little attention has been paid to the quantitative aspect, i.e., how many candidates run for local elections. Using Danish local politics as a case study, this analysis of election report data demonstrates that the political parties show substantial rational actor behaviour when deciding the number of candidates to be put forwa…
Split‐ticket Voting in Times of Sub‐national Government Reorganisation
Local government amalgamations may have unintended consequences on electoral behaviour. Using the most recent local elections in Denmark as its case, this article demonstrates that inter‐level split‐ticket voting between three levels (national, regional and local) decreased slightly from 2001 to 2005 – that is, simultaneously with the implementation of a major reform, where many municipalities and all the counties were amalgamated. These amalgama…
Local Party System Nationalisation
Udgivelsesdato: June 2010
Municipal Amalgamations and the Democratic Functioning of Local Councils
This article discusses the effects of the structural reform in Denmark in 2007 – where a large number of municipalities were amalgamated – on local councillors' influence on decisions taken in the local political realm. The analysis uses data from two large surveys, a pre-reform survey (2003) and a post-reform survey (2009). The analysis shows that the amalgamations have led to an increase in the perceived influence of leading councillors vis-à-v…
Party politicisation of local councils
Local government party systems are not necessarily copies of the national party system. In many countries, local party systems have come to resemble the national one more and more – a process Rokkan termed ‘party politicisation’. The traditional expectation has been that the take‐over of local politics by political parties, through a gradual process of societal modernisation, would eventually be complete. More recently, however, it has been sugge…
The Depth of Parliamentary Elite Circulation
This article argues that studies of parliamentary elite circulation should not focus exclusively on raw turnover rates, which pertain mostly to the entry and exit of new members of parliament. Studies should also pay attention to the circulation that goes on below the surface, i.e., circulation of long-standing and senior MPs - what might be termed the 'depth' of parliamentary elite circulation. I develop an analytical tool for measuring the dept…
The Gendered Division of Labor in Assignments to Political Committees
The literature on the descriptive representation of women in parliaments is voluminous, and most studies focus on different levels of women's representation across legislatures (e.g., Krook 2010; Matland 1998; Paxton 1997; Reynolds 1999; Siaroff 2000). The number of women in parliaments is counted across the globe, and explanations as to what facilitates and hinders the election of female politicians are sought. At a macro level, PR systems, high…
Vital Democracy
Frank Hendriks Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-957278-6 Once again a new book on democracy has been published, and the obvious question is: why do we need yet another book on t
Presidentialisation of Parliamentary Systems? Frontrunner Concentration in Danish Local Elections
A trend of presidentialisation of non-presidential political systems has been identified and discussed in the literature. However, a central aspect of the process, increasingly leadership-focused voting behaviour, is only rudimentarily studied. We assess whether frontrunners have become more important in elections in a non-presidential multiparty system. We develop three measures to assess the electoral frontrunner concentration and study actual …
Local Political Leadership
In this article, local political leadership is modelled as circulation of political capital. Based on intensive case studies of the political leadership performance of four mayors in Denmark, this article asks why the concept of political capital, introduced to local government studies in 1961 by Banfield, has in many ways sunk into oblivion. This article resuscitates the concept of political capital, using it to generate a general theory of loca…
The Impact of Assembly Size on Representativeness
Choosing the number of seats in a legislature is a balancing act between efficiency and representativeness. This article focuses on representativeness and hypothesises that the larger the assembly, the higher the vote-seat proportionality, the higher the number of parties represented, and the higher the representation of otherwise under-represented groups. An approach using simulations of elections is introduced and applied in testing the hypothe…
Urban Political Leadership and Political Representation
The concepts of political leadership and political representation are applied to urban politics, and based on a case study of four mayors in Denmark, four mayoral representational functions are identified: “representative,” “master of ceremonies,” “local secretary of state,” and “ombudsman.” The four functions separate the mayor from the councillors who act only as representatives. With regard to representational focus (who is represented), the c…
What are the Local Political Costs of Centrally Determined Reforms of Local Government
Taking advantage of a quasi-experimental setting and drawing upon analysis of electoral results and a survey of voters, this article explores the political costs of reform through the example of the 2009 local elections in Denmark. The article finds that the local parties of mayors were punished at the polls for implementing municipal amalgamations decided by the central government. However, the effect on the mayoral parties’ electoral result is …
Political Representation and Geographical Bias in Amalgamated Local Governments
There is a strong tendency across the world to amalgamate political jurisdictions, especially local governments. Merger of jurisdictions entails integration of local interests, and former jurisdictions have to struggle to secure political representation and specific area interests in the new amalgamated jurisdiction. We argue that this struggle is affected by the strength of the centre–periphery dimension of the new amalgamated jurisdiction. When…
The blame game
Diagnosing women’s under-representation in electoral politics often involves a “blame game,” seeking to identify the primary factor responsible for depressing the share of women among candidates as well as elected officials. The Danish electoral system – in which parties present ordered lists of candidates but voters have the option to cast preference votes that can rearrange the list order – provides an opportunity to assess the relative role of…
The 2017 Danish regional elections and the victorious parliamentary parties
Regional politics is not at the centre of most Danes’ political attention, but at the 2017 regional elections more than 7 in 10 Danes showed up at the polls to vote in the five Danish regions. Although several regional lists and smaller nationwide parties ran at the elections, the established parties already represented in the national parliament conquered all but two of the 205 seats. This is not to say that the voters simply copied their nation…
Local territorial attachment in times of jurisdictional consolidation
Mind the gap, please! Pinpointing the influence of municipal size on local electoral participation
Turnout rates vary between local and national elections. This paper promotes the national–local turnout gap as the best way to pinpoint the local component of voting at local elections. By analysing the national–local turnout gap instead of the raw local turnout rate, one can reduce the potential bias originating from the differences in socio-demographic composition and civic skills existing between municipalities of various sizes. Including data…
Why Norway has more female local councillors than Denmark
The article explores why women are better represented in municipal councils in Norway than in Denmark. This comparative case study offers a most similar systems design, as these two countries are similar on most relevant institutional variables, such as local government systems, electoral systems, party systems and societal gender equality, but they deviate on the dependent variable of women’s representation. Two unique comparative data sets are …
The second-order election model and the performance of political parties in municipal elections
Elections at the municipal level are often treated as second-order elections (SOE), subordinate to the national electoral arena in a manner similar to the European elections. The original SOE model expects incumbent national parties to perform worse, while predicting smaller and ideologically extreme parties to perform better in the second-order electoral arena compared to the first-order (national) one. Based on a dataset covering aggregate elec…
The Danish legislators database
Political science (26 obras) · Law (22 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Politics (20 obras) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (18 obras) · Economics (16 obras) · Public Administration (14 obras) · Political economy (13 obras) · Public Administration (13 obras) · Computer Science (10 obras)