Final Exam Readings

Question 1

Norris ‘Classifying Electoral Rules’

Answer 1

Classifying Electoral Rules and their ideal types in democracies; goes over principles of majoritarian and pr systems alike

Question 2

Schaffner ‘Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President’

Answer 2

Outlines how social cleavages shape voting patterns; finds that voters that backed Trump in the 2016 election were more inclined to do so based on racist and sexist ideologies

Question 3

Downs ‘An Economic Theory of Democracy’

Answer 3

Outlines the mechanisms for the spatial model of voting and produces the idea that voters only seek to maximize their utility and that political candidates only seek reelection

Question 4

Rabinowitz ‘A Directional Theory of Issue Voting’

Answer 4

Provides a counterexample to Down’s theory that states that voters have an emotional attachment to voting and voting cannot solely be an act of maximizing utility; introduces idea of “region of acceptability”

Question 5

Powell ‘A Cross National Analysis of Economic Voting’

Answer 5

Outlines how economic voting plays out in contemporary democracies; emphasis on clarity of responsibility and how unemployment/inflation affect left and right wing parties

Question 6

Lewis Beck/Steigmaier ‘Economic Models of Voting’

Answer 6

Provides definitions for retrospective/prospective and sociotropic/pocketbook voting; finds different patterns of economic voting in different regions

Question 7

Klasnja/Tucker ‘The Economy, Corruption, and the vote’

Answer 7

Seeks to find a relationship between corruption and economic voting; finds that in low corruption countries, sociotropic voting is more common and in high corruption countries, pocketbook voting is more common

Question 8

Cox ‘Making Votes Count’

Answer 8

Provides a contradiction to Duvegers law, finding that Duvergers law really only holds at the district level; provides the M+1 theory, which states that the number of viable political candidates are based on the district magnitude +1

Question 9

Kedar ‘When Moderate Voters Prefer Extreme Parties’

Answer 9

Gives an example of strategic voting to influence policy in parliamentary democracies; assumes that voters are more inclined to vote for parties that support the coalition formation that they want

Question 10

Lupu/Reidl ‘Political Parties and Uncertainty in Developing Democracies’

Answer 10

Emphasizes the role of uncertainty in shaping party systems in democracies; identifies 3 types of uncertainty , regime uncertainty, economic uncertainty, and institutional uncertainty

Question 11

Dalton ‘Partisanship and Electoral Behavior’

Answer 11

Outlines the role of partisanship in predicting electoral behavior; introduces the concept of ‘party dealignment’, which is when individuals become increasingly frustrated with their parties initiatives and consequently begin to dealign with their chosen political party

Question 12

Brader/Tucker/Duell ‘Which Parties can Lead Opinion?’

Answer 12

Outlines the role of political cues in shaping party identity; finds that party cues have significant effects on the opinions of partisans

Question 13

Merolla ‘Can Canadians take a Hint’

Answer 13

Describes the relationship between political parties and informational shortcuts

Question 14

Chandra ‘What is Ethnicity and why does it Matter?’

Answer 14

Provides a definition for ethnicity that is rooted in descent based attributes; describes the role of constrained change (descent based attributes are difficult to change in the short term) and visibility (descent based attributes are extremely challenging to disguise).

Question 15

‘The Republics of Former Yugoslavia’

Answer 15

Provides a case study example of how ethnic conflict shaped political culture in former Yugoslavia; describes both primordial and instrumental examples of ethnic conflict and how political actors used ethnic conflict to further their political objectives.

Question 16

Tucker ‘Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action, and Post-Communist Colored Revolutions’

Answer 16

Seeks to prove a relationship between electoral fraud and political protests; finds that electoral fraud (when citizens have a disagreement with the regime) changed the incentives and increased political protest in several nations throughout Eastern Europe.

Question 17

Kuran ‘Now Out or Never’

Answer 17

Outlines a theory for how individuals decide to protest; gives the example of the ‘tipping point model’ which suggests that individuals are all assigned a number 0-100 to dictate how likely they are to protest, and how these values snowball into a full on protest movement.

Question 18

Metzger/Tucker ‘Social Media and EuroMaidan’

Answer 18

Outlines the relationship between social media and protests; finds that digital networks have altered protests due to how they spread information and how durable the networks themselves are

Question 19

Gidron ‘American Affective Polarization in a Comparative Perspective’

Answer 19

Describes the role of affective polarization in the United States; finds that polarization in the US is not at unusual levels, but affective polarization is far more extreme than in comparable developed democracies.

Question 20

McCoy ‘What Happens when Democracies Become Perniculously Polarized’

Answer 20

Outlines polarization in the United States over time; find that the United States has a far more expansive history of polarization than other democracies and suggests that the US change to a PR/rank choice voting system to limit this.

Question 21

Guess ‘Less Than you Think’

Answer 21

Seeks to find how greatly citizens are exposed to fake information; finds that citizens are exposed to misinformation and rates less than anticipated, but that older Americans are far more likely to spread misinformation.

Question 22

Tucker ‘From Liberation to Turmoil’

Answer 22

Identifies several ideal types of technology and how they are used in the media; gives examples of liberation technology, repressive technology, and tumultuous technology and how they are used to liberate or repress citizen access to information.