infonet-economy

Members of Parliament (MPs) request policy evaluations and use the resultant findings to inform law-making and hold the government to account. Since most elected representatives have developed strong ties to interest groups, one might wonder whether these privileged relationships influence MPs' parliamentary behavior. This study investigates how MPs' affiliations to groups…

Whereas some recent studies underline interest groups’ strategy to specialize in certain venues when lobbying, we investigate under which conditions groups develop a multi-venue strategy. This study examines and compares groups' advocacy activities during three issues that were each debated in California and Switzerland. Empirical evidence shows that the policy issue at stake…

The European Union is in a state of emergency. The crisis it is facing today is a global one, rather than merely sector-specific as in the past. It therefore requires a global response, in other words at a political level. This is the central message conveyed by this selection of texts. Having presented some of the main challenges, both internal and external, with which the Union is…

Contents 1-­ A summary of the main argument. 2-­ Two comparative tables of different (integration) regimes for third States. 3-­ A list of 12 common misconceptions on the Swiss-­EU agreement. 1-­ Summary Main argument : Swiss-­EU bilateral agreements are the worst form of EU agreement with (close) third countries, except for all the others.-­ This assertion is based on the assumption…

Measuring the polarization of legislators and parties is a key step in understanding how politics develops over time. But in parliamentary systems—where ideological positions estimated from roll calls may not be informative—producing valid estimates is extremely challenging. We suggest a new measurement strategy that makes innovative use of the "accuracy" of machine…

This article investigates the involvement of alternative action organizations in three forms of political advocacy in an attempt to gauge their degree of politicization. These forms can be understood as representing three different ways of making political claims: by raising public awareness with respect to a given cause or issue, by trying to influence the policy maker through “…

This article presents an explanation for the success of the right in the 2015 Swiss parliamentary election based on the spatial model of voting. Since there is no party combining economically left with culturally authoritarian policy stances, voters with that preference combination face a difficult electoral choice. We show that they are more likely to abstain, and that those voters…

Previous studies have found that left-wing and libertarian individuals are more likely to engage in extra-institutional political activism. However, due to a lack of suitable data, studies to date have not analysed the relative influence of economic redistributive and social libertarian values for the intensity of protest participation. By analysing data from a unique cross-national…