This paper offers additional insights on the interactions between economics and politics in Portugal. We use an unexplored data set consisting of monthly polls on vote intentions for the main political parties in Portugal, since 1986. Results indicate that: (1) socialist governments had less electoral support than social democratic governments; (2) social democratic governments enjoyed a honeym...

This paper examines how three Dutch political parties employ the Internet as a tool to enhance ‘digital democracy’. The potential of digital democracy is considered to be strongest in the sphere of collective action outside the domain of political institutions. In this article, however, attention is given to how institutionalized channels might be supportive of digital democracy. Three componen...

We study incumbency advantage and the electoral returns to pork and patronage over ten legislative periods from 1948 to 1992 for two political parties — the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) — in Italy's lower house of representatives, the Chamber of Deputies. Adapting a regression discontinuity design to Italy's open-list system of proportional representation, we s...

Following the collapse of hither too existing socialism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There was a crisis in socialist economic thought. If we contrast the situation of the 1990s with what had existed 40 years earlier, we see that whilst in the 1950s, socialism and economic planning were almost universally accepted, even by enemies of socialism, as being viable ways to organize an economy,...

Following the collapse of socialism in the late 1980s, Central and Eastern European countries initiated attempts to adopt capitalist economic frameworks and promote entrepreneurship. However, persistent economic difficulties and high levels of unemployment have led to dissatisfaction with political parties favoring capitalism. We integrate identity, institutional, and social movement theories t...

Inclement weather on election day is widely seen to benefit certain political parties at the expense of others. Empirical evidence for this weather-vote share hypothesis is sparse however. We examine the effects of rainfall and temperature on share of the votes of eight political parties that participated in 13 national parliament elections, held in the Netherlands from 1971 to 2010. This paper...

Inclement weather on election day is widely seen to benefit certain political parties at the expense of others. Empirical evidence for this weather-vote share hypothesis is sparse however. We examine the effects of rainfall and temperature on share of the votes of eight political parties that participated in 13 national parliament elections, held in the Netherlands from 1971 to 2010. This paper...