Hermann Schmitt, Paolo Segatti and Cees van der Eijk (eds.)
ECPR Press / Rowman & Littlefield, 2021
28 novembre 2022
14.30 -17.30
Luogo: Sala Lauree, via Conservatorio 7, Università di Milano
Workshop organizzato dal laboratorio spsTREND
PROGRAMMA DELLA GIORNATA
14.30-14:45 Welcoming remarks
Cristiano Vezzoni, University of Milan and spsTREND Coordinator
14.45-15.45 Session 1 – The book as seen by the authors
Paolo Segatti, University of Milan
Hermann Schmitt, University of Mannheim (DE)
Cees van der Eijk, University of Nottingham (UK)
Discussant: Nicola Maggini, University of Milan
15:45-16:00 Coffee break
16.00-17.15 Session 2 – Round table with the authors
“Consequences of context: challenges in understanding how citizens make their contextualised political choices”
Chair: Francesco Zucchini, University of Milan
Eftichia Teperoglou, University of Thessaloniki (GR)
Eva Önnudóttir, University of Iceland (IS)
Vincenzo Emanuele, LUISS Rome
José Ramon Montero, Autonomous University Madrid (ES)
17.15-17.30 Concluding remarks and salute
José Ramon Montero, Autonomous University Madrid (ES)
17:30-18:00 Small Aperitivo
Summary of the book
The book presents the most systematic and consistent study to date of the ‘consequences of context’ for the process through which citizens decide on their electoral behaviour. It derives contextual variation from cross-national and within-country comparisons. The contextual dimensions investigated pertain to the political, economic and social domains, and their impact is investigated on the factors that drive citizens’ decision to participate in an election and on their subsequent decision of which party to vote for. The book thus focuses not on whether people vote and for which party, but instead on more fundamental questions about contextual effects on the determinants of electoral participation and the vote. The analyses are based on an integrated database of national election studies conducted in European countries and utilises an innovative multi-level logistic regression methodology. This methodology, elaborated in detail early on and subsequently applied in each of the following chapters, identifies the moderating effect, or the “consequences”, of altogether nine classes of different context conditions on individual level determinants of electoral participation and party choice.
Book review
“ […] The thesis put forward in the book is that the key micro-foundations of voting (social background characteristics, sociopsychological attitudes, political inclinations and preferences about policy issues) tend to be the same everywhere. Yet, their relative importance varies across space and time. Clearly, the idea that context matters is not new. However, the novelty of this research (and hence its merits) concerns the variety of contextual characteristics considered, the type of contextual effect analysed and how the comparability problem of vote choice is addressed and solved. […] the book is highly recommended to all those who have an interest in electoral behaviour and in comparative politics more broadly. Indeed, the originality and breadth of the findings, the sound analytical framework and the rigorous methodology of this research can open the way to many other enquiries about the influence of context on both electoral participation and party choice. In this regard, this book represents the first, comprehensive overview of contextual moderation effects and, at the same time, it is the first step in the development of what could be called a meta-theory of electoral behaviour, in which the different existing approaches are considered as complementary rather than rivals. This attests to the ultimate, important value of Consequences of context.”
Estratti tratti dalla BOOK REVIEW effettuata da Nicola Maggini per Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica”, pp. 1-3 (2022). Il testo completo della recensione si può trovare qui.
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash