Comparative Cross-National Electoral Research (CCNER)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Exeter
Department Name: Politics
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Banducci S
(2015)
Surveys in Context
in Public Opinion Quarterly
BANDUCCI S
(2016)
Parenthood and the polarisation of political attitudes in Europe
in European Journal of Political Research
Banducci S
(2020)
Gender, austerity, and support for EMU across generations
in Journal of European Integration
Banducci, S
(2016)
Parenthood and the polarisation of political attitudes in Europe
in European Journal of Political Research
Bolleyer N
(2013)
Origins of party formation and new party success in advanced democracies
in European Journal of Political Research
Bolleyer N
(2012)
Towards an organisational perspective on party funding: Explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties
in European Journal of Political Research
Bolleyer N
(2014)
From parliamentary pay to party funding: The acceptability of informal institutions in advanced democracies
in European Journal of Political Research
Bolleyer Nicole (Author)
(2011)
New parties in western democracies - the organizational roots of party sustainability
Caitlin Milazzo (Co-Author)
(2013)
Electoral Competitiveness and Candidate Behavior in Proportional Representation Systems
| Description | This initiative is aimed at generating methodological skills and techniques as well as advancing understanding of the implementation of best practice in cross-national electoral research. The objectives of the CCNER project are to build capacity in the UK for world leading research in comparative cross-national electoral research by: a. Developing methods and techniques for resolving issues associated with the analysis of cross-national data, such as measurement equivalence, data quality in secondary sources, case selection bias, and the multi-level structure of data. b. Developing a training programme that focuses on both methodological and substantive issues that benefits researchers at various stages, but particularly UK-based Ph.D. students and early career scholars. The substantive research question that motivates our programme examines how methodological issues arising from cross-national research have affected the study of electoral competitiveness. We have held a total of ten workshops at both domestic and international venues. Five were specifically organised as training sessions aimed at providing substantive and methodological expertise to Ph.D. students and early career scholars working in cross national electoral research. We have also collected and assembled an extensive range of electoral data from national elections across a range of democracies in order to address a number of substantive questions involving contextual and case selection effects. A number of papers on cross-national electoral research have been presented at professional conferences over the past few years and are now under review or in print. |
| Exploitation Route | Our training workshops have been aimed at introducing post graduates to cutting edge techniques involved with the analysis of cross national electoral data. Topics have included multi-level analysis, bayesian analysis, and case selection techniques. We anticipate that these researchers will incorporate these techniques in their own research. We have also collected and assembled an extensive range of electoral data from national elections across a range of democracies that we hope will provide a useful resource for researchers who are interested in electoral attitudes and behaviour. We hope that this project will encourage others to consider the importance of case selection and contextual effects in electoral research. |
| Sectors | Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/research/projects/ccner/ |
| Description | Our workshops which have been held at a number of venues within the UK and abroad have reached out to young researchers and PhD students based in the UK to undertake research on cross-national methods and electoral competition, as well as facilitating discussion of methods and techniques to resolve the most salient problems in comparative electoral research. The workshops organised by CCNER have encouraged a wide range of people in the UK to undertake research on cross national methods and electoral competition. We have also invited survey practitioners and journalists to participate in our workshops in order to stimulate discussion of the practical challenges in the field and facilitate exchanges between academics and those working in the field. We hope that our focus on cross national methods will also encourage people who work in the field of survey research and in journalism who interpret and report public opinion polls to pay more attention to survey methodology and the importance of spatial context. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Societal |
| Title | District Level Electoral Data for CSES Modules 2 and 3 |
| Description | Data Procedures There are two types of data that are available for analysis; an aggregate file with district level data, and a file where district level data have been merged back with the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). The following CSES datasets were used to produce this derivative work: • CSES MODULE 2 FULL RELEASE [dataset]. June 27, 2007 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module2.2007-06-27 • CSES MODULE 3 FULL RELEASE [dataset]. March 27, 2013 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module3.2013-03-27 See www.cses.org for full information on the project and original codebooks, which are not reproduced in their entirety here. To construct the datasets we created an aggregate data file from the district level data included in Modules 2 and 3 of the CSES. We then supplemented district level data that was missing in the CSES, particularly turnout and party vote share data, with data from other sources including the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA: Kollman, Hicken et al. 2014) and national election bodies. Data from other sources was re-formatted to facilitate compatibility with the CSES. Unfortunately it was not possible to source turnout and party vote share data for all elections that were missing district level data in the CSES, so there remains some missing data. The district level data was then merged back with the CSES, so these data files have more data on turnout and party vote share at the district level than what was originally included in the CSES, to better facilitate multi-level analysis with the CSES data. In addition to adding district level data that was missing from the CSES, the aggregate file was also supplemented with data for districts that were not included in the CSES - to facilitate comparison between CSES and non CSES districts in the aggregate level file. About the Datasets There are four datasets saved in STATA format: 1. CCNER_District2.dta 2. CCNER_District3.dta 3. CCNER_Merged2.dta 4. CCNER_Merged3.dta 1. CCNER_District2 includes district level electoral data for all countries in CSESII for which there are district identifiers (variable B2031). The dataset includes district level data on party vote share, turnout, and in some cases - the number of seats, the number of candidates or the number of party lists. Existing data already included in the CSES was supplemented with data from other sources, in particular from the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (Kollman, Hicken et al. 2014). Data for electoral districts not included in the CSES were added to this file, to facilitate comparison of CSES and non-CSES districts, within CSES elections. 2. CCNER_Merged2 combines CSESII with the district level data above, enabling a multi-level analysis of electoral competition and turnout. This dataset contains the same variables and cases as CSESII, with the addition of district level data which was missing for some countries in the CSESII. 3. CCNER_District3 includes district level electoral data for all countries in CSESIII for which there are district identifiers (variable C2031). The dataset includes district level data on party vote share, turnout, and in some cases - the number of seats, the number of candidates or the number of party lists. Existing data already included in the CSES was supplemented with data from other sources, in particular from the Constituency-Level Elections Archive (Kollman, Hicken et al. 2014). Data for electoral districts not included in the CSES were added to this file, to facilitate comparison of CSES and non-CSES districts, within CSES elections. 4. CCNER_Merged3 combines CSESIII with the district level data above, enabling a multi-level" analysis of electoral competition and turnout. This dataset contains the same variables and cases as CSESIII, with the addition of district level data which was missing for some countries in the CSESIII. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | These data allow researchers to examine how electoral outcomes affect political attitudes and behaviour across a large and diverse range of countries with different electoral systems. |
| URL | http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Analysis of Cross National Electoral Data (Belfast) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | The workshop consists of two overview lecturers by leading scholars in the area of cross-national electoral and party research, Prof. David Farrell (University College, Dublin) and Prof. Ian McAllister (Australian National University) and the presentation of research projects and papers by a select group of Ph.D. students from universities in the UK that responded to our call. We advertised widely using a range of communication strategies including email sent to every department in the UK with a postgraduate programme, postings on listserves such as EPOP, PSA, Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI), political science deadlines group on facebook, ECPR standing groups on political parties and the standing group on public opinion and voting behaviour in a comparative perspective, and the ELECDEM (Training Network in Electoral Democracy) website. The overview lectures dealt with basic methodological challenges, related to data access, data quality in secondary sources, problems of case selection and issues related to multilevel data structure, which provide a basis to develop best practices in cross-national electoral research that can provide guidance for Ph.D. students and junior scholars and will be further developed in our future workshops. The lectures were followed by a Q&A round in which students can discuss issues emerging from their own research Ph.D. researchers from the UK were able to lay the groundwork for developing collaborative partnerships with international researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| URL | http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/research/projects/ccner/workshops/analysisofcrossnationa... |
| Description | Causes and Consequences of Electoral Competition (APSA, Chicago) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | A panel was organised by CCNER at the Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) which is the leading organisation for the study of political science and serves more than 15,000 members in over 80 countries. The annual meeting is the largest annual gathering of political scientists. Five papers were presented that examined how electoral competition is affected by different institutional arrangements and how electoral competitiveness affects elite and mass behavior. The panel sparked questions and discussion. We have received requests for papers and are in the process of looking for a venue to publish the papers together as part of a symposium. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/research/projects/ccner/workshops/causesandconsequenceso... |
| Description | Conducting Cross-Cultural Survey Research (Exeter) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Introduction to Issues and Analysis of Cross-National Surveys We organised a training session at the University of Exeter about the challenges in the use of cross-national survey data and methods that can be applied on the same day of the launch of the Q-STEP (a pivotal new programme designed to improve quantitative social science training). Post graduate students learned about advances in methodology and the application of cross national surveys in electoral research. This workshop aimed to cover key topics such as survey quality (comparability, translation), sampling and questionnaire design, data processing and statistical adjustment (i.e. survey weights). The session sought to identify the challenges of this type of empirical research, discuss examples in social sciences and provide tools examining data from large N comparative data sets across cultures. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/research/projects/ccner/workshops/conductingcross-cultur... |
| Description | Cross-National Electoral Research and Electoral Competition (Southern California) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | We discussed theoretical concepts and the analysis of data in preparation of a possible special issue or edited volume. Faculty from the University of California, Irvine and University of Luxembourg attended the event. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | From Valence to Positional Issues : Is Globalisation the Cause? (London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Recent research suggests that globalisation is likely to be a factor that undermines the salience of the left-right economic dimension for individual voting decisions. Part of this research further suggests that voters compensate by weighting more their attitudes on non-economic ideological dimensions or their partisanship. But there is an alternative plausible explanation: where voting on economic or positional issues is reduced, this will be replaced by 'valence' issues: evaluations of party performance and competence primarily but not exclusively expressed around leadership preferences. Moreover, the claim that the effects of ideology are reduced by globalisation is still contestable. We explore our hypothesis with data from Module 3 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Findings suggest that in more globalised positional elements of party competition are strongly enhanced, while valence elements are enhanced only weakly (if at all). This will be a chapter in an edited volume on Globalisation published by Oxford University Press (2016). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| URL | http://www.jackvowlesdomain.co.uk/Globalisation_Workshop_2.htm |
| Description | Information and Electoral Competition Workshop for Journal Special Issue |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | The purpose of the workshop was to exchange ideas, present papers and understand the research papers of others in order to inform feedback. The workshop, with presentations on 6 papers, was intended to improve understanding of other;s thinking in oder to improve the research of the group and present a themed issue of a journals. The discussion sparked debate on the following issues: 1) information effects induced by electoral campaigns and news media; 2) hho voters differ in their exposure to campaign and media effects and that they possess different characteristics leading to unequal information effects and unequal levels of information. After the workshop, written feedback was sent to all participants. Revised manuscripts from the paper givers were received in March and April. We submitted the special issue manuscripts to Acta Politica on 2 may, 2015. We are now awaiting the reviews and decision of the editors. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Methodological Challenges in Cross-National Research (EPOP, Lancaster) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | This workshop was directed towards postgraduate students and younger scholars who conduct cross-national research in the area of electoral studies and comparative party politics, with a particular focus on electoral competitiveness and its impact on public confidence, media coverage, political attitudes, and voter turnout. In the first session, participants attended presentations on core methodological issues by Professor Paul Kellstedt (Texas A&M) and Dr Dan Stevens (Exeter). In the second session, participants were given the opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from Kelldstedt and Stevens in the area of comparative politics. We received positive feedback from participants. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/research/projects/ccner/workshops/methodologicalissues/ |