Ethnicity, voter alignment and political party affiliation - an African case: Zambia

Ethnicity, Voter Alignment and an African Case: Zambia

The cleavage model, ethnicity and voter alignment in Africa: Conceptual and methodological problems revisited

Recent research on political parties and ethnicity has challenged the conventional wisdom about ethnicity as the major factor that explains voter alignment in Africa. The paper maintains that the cleavage model, although modified to include ethnicity, still provides heuristically the best foundation for the explanation of party formation and voting behaviour in Africa. It points out that inconc...

Political Leaders: the Personalization of Prime Ministers and the Connection to Party affiliation in Swedish News Coverage

Journalists not only represent political leaders in terms of their policies and political competence. The personalities and private lives of leaders have also become an important component in mediated stories and narratives crucial for voter identification and interest. This chapter explores how the Swedish press reports on prime ministers’ social backgrounds, personal appearance and leadership...

Political Ideology and Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward Depression: The Swedish Case

Background Stigmatizing attitudes toward persons with mental disorders is a well-established and global phenomenon often leading to discrimination and social exclusion. Although previous research in the United States showed that conservative ideology has been related to stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders, there is reason to believe that this mechanism plays a different role in...

A Bayesian Model of Single Party Dominance

Motivated by the South African case, in this paper I present a new theory explaining the maintenance of single-party dominance in socially heterogeneous countries. The theory explores how citizens' beliefs about a dominant party structure both voter behavior and the electoral strategies of incumbent and opposition parties. Employing a two-part stylized formal model, I hypothesize that variation...