Joshua A. Tucker
Books, Journal Articles, Papers Under Review, and Working
Papers
Tucker,
Joshua A., 2006, Regional Economic Voting: Russia,
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Russia, 1990-99,
Available
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hardcover,
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Reviewed in: Perspectives on Politics; Comparative
Political Studies; The Journal of Politics; Foreign Affairs; Slavic
Review; The Russia Review; Canadian Journal of Politics
Abstract: This study demonstrates that in a time of massive change characterized by the emergence of entirely new political systems and a fundamental reorganization of economic life, systematic patterns of economic conditions affecting election results at the aggregate level can in fact be identified during the first decade of postcommunist elections in five postcommunist countries: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Intriguingly, incumbency status is not the best predictor of these effects. Instead, parties that are primarily identified with the “Old Regime” that predated the transition enjoy more electoral success in regions with more economic losers, while “New Regime” parties that are mostly closely identified with the movement away from communism consistently enjoy more electoral support in regions with more economic winners. A variety of theoretical arguments concerning the conditions in which these effects are more or less likely to be present are also proposed and tested. Analysis is conducted using an original data set of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral indicators, and features both broadly based comparative assessments of the findings across all twenty elections as well as more focused case study analyses of pairs of individual elections.
“Disenchanted or
Discerning? Voter Turnout in Post-Communist Countries” with Alexander
Pacek and Grigore Pop-Eleches, forthcoming at The
Abstract: Voter
turnout in post-communist countries has exhibited substantial variability
against a backdrop of economic and political volatility. In this paper, we
consider three explanations for this variation: a “depressing
disenchantment” hypothesis that predicts voters are less likely to vote
in elections when political and economic conditions are worse; a
“motivating disenchantment” hypothesis that predicts voters are
more likely to vote in elections when conditions are worse; and a
“stakes” based hypothesis that predicts voters are more likely to
vote in more important elections. Using an aggregate-level cross-national
time-series data set of 137 presidential and parliamentary elections in
nineteen post-communist countries, we find much stronger empirical support for
the stakes-based approach to explaining variation in voter turnout than we do
for either of the disenchantment-based approaches. Our findings offer a
theoretically integrated picture of voter participation in the post-communist
world, and, more broadly, contribute new insights into political participation
in new democracies.
“Pathways to Partisanship: Evidence from
Russia” with Ted Brader, forthcoming at Post-Soviet Affairs
Abstract: Scholars
focus extraordinary attention on party identification in established democracies,
yet we know little about its origins.
Newly competitive party systems provide an opportunity to observe
individuals as they first acquire partisan orientations. We investigate the development of
partisanship shortly after the advent of multiparty competition in
“Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and the "2nd Wave" of Post-Communist Democratic Revolutions”, Perspectives on Politics, 53(5): 537-553.
Abstract: In countries where citizens have
strong grievances against the regime, attempts to address these grievances in
the course of daily life are likely to entail high costs coupled with very low
chances of success in any meaningful sense; consequently, most citizens will
choose not to challenge the regime, thus reflecting the now well known
collective action problem. When a regime
commits electoral fraud, however, an individual’s calculus regarding
whether to participate in a protest against the regime can be changed
significantly. This argument yields
important implications for how we interpret the wave of “colored
revolutions” that swept through
"Strategic Voting and Information Transmission
in Sequential Elections: Run Boris Run" with Adam
Meirowitz, 2007, The
Abstract: Following the 1995 Russian parliamentary election, it was suggested that Russian voters may have used their votes to send a message to the current Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, who was scheduled to run for re-election six months later. Building on this observation, we consider the incentives for information transmission through strategic voting in systems with sequential elections. We find that when an election for a sufficiently weak institution (usually a parliament) precedes an election for a strong institution (usually a president), in any equilibrium some voters vote against their preferred party in the first election to send a message to candidates in the second election. Following a brief discussion of the intuition underlying this argument, we present a model that allows us to isolate institutional features that affect the prevalence of this type of strategic voting: the relative importance of institutions to voters, the timing of sequential elections and the relative cost of responsiveness by candidates. The paper concludes with suggestions for future empirical tests of the model's implications.
“‘Don’t Knows’ and Public Opinion Towards Economic Reform: Evidence from Russia” with Adam Berinsky, 2006, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 39(1): 73-99.
Abstract: As market reform has spread
throughout the globe, both scholars and policy makers have become increasingly
interested in attempting to measure public opinion towards economic changes.
However, recent research from American politics suggests that special care must
be paid to how surveys treat non-respondents to these types of questions. We
extend this line of inquiry to a well known case of large scale economic
reform,
"Pocketbooks, Politics, and Parties: The 2003 Polish Referendum on EU Membership" with Radoslaw Markowski, 2005, Electoral Studies, 24(3): 409-433
Abstract: We analyze the results
"Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Voting for Ex-Authoritarian Rulers in Russia and Bolivia" with Amber Seligson, 2005, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 13(1): 11-42.
Abstract: What could be motivating voters in
some emerging democracies to vote for leaders who have proven themselves to be
skilled at violating human rights, repressing civil liberties, and ruling
without democratic institutions? We test hypotheses related to this
question by using a least-similar-systems design in which we search for common
predictors of vote choice in presidential elections from two countries that
differ in their past and current political and economic situations:
"Learning from Terrorist Markets" with Adam Meirowitz, Perspectives on Politics, Vol.2, No.2 (2004) 331-6.
"Transitional Winners and Losers: Attitudes Toward EU Membership in Post-Communist Countries," with Alexander Pacek and Adam Berinsky, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No.3 (2002, 557-571)
Abstract: We present a model of citizen support for EU membership designed explicitly for post-communist countries. We posit that membership in the EU can function as an implicit guarantee that the economic reforms undertaken since the end of communism will not be reversed. On this basis, we predict that “winners” who have benefited from the transition, are more likely to support EU membership for their country than “losers” who have been hurt by the transition. We also predict that supporters of the free market will be more likely to support EU membership than those who oppose the free market. We test these propositions using survey data from ten post-communist countries that have applied for membership in the EU and find strong support for our hypotheses. The article concludes by speculating about the role attitudes towards EU membership may play in the development of partisan preferences.
Click here for supplemental tables mentioned on p.565.
"The First Decade of Post-Communist Elections and Voting: What Have We Studied, and How Have We Studied It?" Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 5 (2002) 271-304.
Abstract: This review assesses the state of the newly emerging field of the study of post-communist elections and voting by developing a database of 101 articles on the topic that have appeared in 16 leading academic journals (8 general political science journals and 8 post-communist area studies journals) between 1990 and 2000. The database is then used to make inferences concerning both what is being studied by scholars and how it is being studied. It systematically assesses which countries have been analyzed, the types of elections examined, the prevalence of comparative analysis, the division between quantitative and qualitative research, and the types of data used in quantitative studies. It then turns to substantive questions, examining both how scholars have explained post-communist election results and voting decisions, and what they have used these elections to explain.
“An Easy and Accurate Regression Model for Multiparty Electoral Data” with Michael Tomz and Jason Wittenberg, Political Analysis, Vol. 10, No.1 (2002) 66-83.
Abstract: Katz and King (1999) propose a new statistical model for multiparty election data. They argue that ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is inappropriate when the dependent variable measures the share of the vote going to each party, and they recommend a superior technique. Regrettably, the Katz-King model requires a high level of statistical expertise and is computationally impractical for more than three political parties. We offer a sophisticated yet convenient alternative that utilizes seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). The SUR procedure is nearly as easy to use as OLS, yet performs as well as Katz-King model in predicting the distribution of votes and the composition of parliament. Moreover, the SUR scales easily to an arbitrarily large number of parties. The model has been incorporated into Clarify, a statistical suite that is available for free on the Internet.
"Economic Conditions and the Vote for Incumbent Parties in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic from 1990-1996," Post Soviet Affairs, Vol.17, No.4 (2001) 309-331.
Abstract: I employ regional electoral,
economic and demographic data across several transition countries --
Click here to download the omitted Appendix on Coding of Incumbent Parties that is discussed on p.315-6 of the text.
"The Emergence of Mass Partisanship in Russia, 1993-96" with Ted Brader, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No.1 (2001) 69-83.
Abstract: Previous studies of
"Walking the Tightrope: An Exploration of the Political Culture Concept and its Applications for Foreign Policy Analysis," Paradigms: The Kent Journal of International Relations, Vol.9, No.1 (1995) 37-61.
Abstract: I develop the outlines of a model of political culture which can be used to as a tool of foreign policy analysis. I first examine the various attempts that have been made to define political culture generally, and explores some of the ways in which the concept has been applied. I then move the concept of political culture for the domestic sphere into the realm of foreign policy analysis by developing a "political culture of foreign policy" that aims to combine both objective classifications and subjective approaches.
NOTE: Articles should be downloaded for personal use only.
Conventional vs. Transitional Economic Voting:
Evidence from
We provide the
first systematic test at the micro-level contrasting the predictions of a
standard incumbency-based model of economic voting ( “Conventional
Economic Voting”) in the postcommunist context with a Transitional
Economic Voting model focusing on particular “types” of parties. We
do so by analyzing party preferences across the three most recent Polish
parliamentary elections. Our findings present a nuanced picture that suggest
multiple paths for economic influences on voting in the post-communist context.
This is in part due to what we feel is an important novel contribution of the
paper, which is our use of longer, “transitional” economic
evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the
collapse of communism?) in our analyses, in addition to conventional short-term
retrospective evaluations (“do you feel the economy has improved or in
the past 12 months”?). We do find clear evidence of support for the
Conventional Economic Voting approach, but this evidence is limited to a specific
set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied:
short-term retrospective evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. The
Transitional Model, on the other hand, is strongly supported by the presence of
relationships between longer term transitional retrospective evaluations across
a range of parties. Moreover, we even find
some support for the Transitional Model in predicting the effect of
short term economic evaluations. In particular, a number of reformist
(“New Regime”) parties are preferred by people who think the
economy has been improving in the past 12 months, a finding that is largely at
odds with incumbency-centered models of economic voting.
Euroskepticism
and the Emergence of Political Parties in
Abstract: One of the most interesting features
of the 2003 Polish referendum on EU membership was the strong link between
voting behavior in the 2003 referendum and voting behavior in the 2001 Polish
parliamentary election. In this manuscript, we test two competing mechanisms
that could account for this finding: a responsible party model, whereby
citizens’ attitudes toward EU membership would have been driven by their
preferred party’s position on the issue; and a more Downsian model,
whereby the existence of an unrepresented Polish Euroskeptic electorate could
have driven the success of two new Euroskeptic parties in the 2001
parliamentary elections. Drawing upon data from the 1997, 2001, and 2005 Polish
National Election Studies, we find much stronger empirical support for the
Downsian story. Additionally, we find evidence that Euroskepticism continued to
play an important role in determining support for these two parties beyond the
2001 election. In doing so, can contribute both to understanding a particularly
complex period of time in Polish political development specifically, as well as
to more broadbased questions such as the role played by issues related to the
EU in domestic politics and the emergence of new political parties.
Which Way is the
Abstract: In this
paper, we document a hitherto unrecognized “micro-macro paradox” of
EU accession in post-communist countries: on the micro-level, economic
prosperity increases the likelihood of supporting EU membership; while on the
macro-level, economic prosperity decreases aggregate levels of support for EU
membership. To do so, we first present evidence demonstrating that economic
winners were consistently more likely to support EU membership than economic
losers across five years (1995, 1996, 2001, 2002, 2003) and ten countries
(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria,
Romania, and the Czech Republic). We then demonstrate that across this same set
of countries we are unable to find a systematic corresponding link between aggregate
level measures of economic prosperity and aggregate levels of support for EU
membership. Moreover, in almost every
analysis where we can find a consistent pattern, it is in the opposite
direction: less economic success translates into higher levels of aggregate
support for EU membership. Our explanation for the micro-macro paradox of EU
accession builds off of previous work by one of the authors (Tucker et al.
2002) suggesting that for citizens in post-communist countries the EU
represents a guarantee that the economic reforms will continue. However, we
argue here that there may be other meanings for EU membership as well and that
the relative salience of these different meanings may in particular be
conditional on the passage of time and on a country’s likelihood of
joining the EU. We then demonstrate how this more nuanced approach to the
meaning of EU membership in the post communist context both explains the
original paradox and test the extent to which additional observable
implications of the argument are supported by the data.
Key Words: European
Union, EU, Post-communist countries, Public-Opinion Formation, Micro-Macro
Paradox, Red State – Blue State Paradox, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic,
Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria
New Approaches to
Electoral Volatility: Evidence from Postcommunist Countries (with
Eleanor Powell), Download in .pdf format.
Abstract: The
development of a stable party system is considered an essential element of a
consolidated democracy. Party system
stability has been most frequently measured in terms of electoral volatility,
which attempts to capture the stability of the electorate’s preferences
across elections. The traditional
measure of party stability, Pedersen’s Index of Volatility, however,
includes both volatility among stable parties and volatility created by party
entry and exit without distinguishing between the two. When both types of volatility are likely to
be present, e.g. especially in newer democracies, this is potentially troubling
because we expect different factors to be causing the two different types of
volatility. More fundamentally, we argue
that volatility caused by entry and exit is primarily a function of elite decision making – in terms
of whether or not a new party is formed – while volatility across
existing parties is primarily a function of voter
decision making. To address these
concerns, we separate these different components of volatility into their
constituent parts, creating a Type A Volatility measure that captures
volatility from party entry and exit and a Type B Volatility measure that
captures volatility among stable parties that contest both elections. We then separately test hypotheses specific
to both Type A and Type B volatility using data from 80 elections across 21
postcommunist countries. We report three
primary findings. First, the majority of
electoral volatility in postcommunist countries is of the Type A variety,
stemming from the entry and exit of political parties into the electoral arena,
and has been declining over time.
Second, variation in Type A volatility is a function of both
institutional factors (largely through electoral thresholds and a growing
understanding of the meaning of these thresholds) and sociodemographic conditions,
but does not appear to react to short-term economic shocks. Third, Type B volatility has actually
increased slightly over time, but does not seem to be systematically predicted
by any of our theoretically relevant variables.
Theses results should be of interest to students of voting behavior
generally, those that study electoral volatility in particular, analysts of
political behavior in postcommunist countries, and scholars interested in the
growing application of multi-level models in the study of comparative politics.
Key Words: Voting, Elections,
Electoral Volatility, Pedersen’s Index, post-communist countries,
political behavior, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia
Reflective and
Unreflective Partisans? Experimental
Evidence on the Links between Information, Opinion, and Party Identification (with Ted
Brader) (Download in
.pdf format): NEW VERSION *MAY 2008*
We carry out a series of original
experiments in three post-communist countries:
Subjective vs. Objective
Proximity in
While
theoretical questions concerning the nature of political representation have
long fascinated political scientists of all stripes, the empirical study of
political representation has almost exclusively featured studies of stable,
established democracies (Miller and Stokes 1963; Barnes 1977; Dalton 1985;
Converse and Pierce 1986; Powell 1989).
Moreover, left largely unexplored – despite its role as an
underlying motivating feature of the whole enterprise – has been the
manner in which representation affects the political attitudes and behavior of
members of the electorate. We take up precisely this question as we
concurrently shift the focus of our study to one of Europe’s most
important new democracies:
People
Power or a One-Shot Deal? The Legacy of the Colored Revolutions Considered from
a Collective Action Framework (Download in.pdf format)
In the
first half of the first decade of the 21st century, a number of
countries that had by and large failed to establish viable democratic governments
in the original period of post-communist transitions ten years earlier suddenly
rose up to demand democratic accountability following a series of fraudulent
elections. Scholars of course took
notice, with a flurry of articles appeared with the goal of trying to explain
how and why the “Colored Revolutions” took place. Left relatively unexplored, however, was the
legacy of the Colored Revolutions for the future of political protest for the
countries in which they had occurred. In
this paper, I take up precisely this question.
More specifically, I lay out two possible legacies of the Colored
Revolutions. The most intuitive
expectation would be one that highlights citizens’ discovery of their own
“people power”, leading us to expect to see protests again in the
future when democratic development is threatened by corrupt or inept
leaders. Surprisingly, though, when we
consider in sufficient detail the micro-level motivation of protestors that
took to the streets in the original Colored Revolutions, a paradox emerges: to
the extent that the need for a second “Colored Revolution” might
emerge in a country, it will simultaneously call into question whether the
gains from the original Colored Revolution was worth the cost paid by the people
who participated in it. In order to do
this, I draw upon a framework that I have presented in detail elsewhere that
suggests one way to think about the Colored Revolutions is in terms of the
collective action problem faced by citizens who are confronted by an abusive or
unrestrained regime (Tucker 2007).
Red, Brown, and Regional
Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary,
Abstract: The vast majority of all work on
economic voting has focused on the question of who benefits when economic
conditions are better. For multiparty democracies, though, the question
of who is likely to benefit when economic conditions are worse is equally, if
not more, important. Using an original data set of regional level
economic, demographic, and electoral variables, I explore this question using
cross-regional variation in election results in 19 national presidential and
parliamentary elections from
It’s Nothing
Personal? The Appeal of Party Leaders and the Development of Partisanship
in
Abstract: One of the most common assumptions
about
Transitional Economic
Voting: Economic Conditions and Election Results in
Abstract: This is a working paper I prepared while writing my book Regional Economic Voting that highlighted one of the principal findings of the book. It is a useful way to get a quick sense of one of the arguments in the book, but it does not contain the final versions of the results that are presented in the book, nor does it go into nearly the level of detail on either the theory or the methodology as the book does. For this reason, this paper is no longer available for citation -- anyone wishing to cite findings in the paper should refer to the book instead for the final versions of these analyses and cite the book. I am leaving the paper on my website, however, for those who would like a quick overview of the argument and findings.
In the paper, I present two
models for predicting the effect of cross-regional variation of economic
conditions on cross-regional variation in election results in post-communist
countries. The Referendum Model predicts that Incumbent parties
will perform better in areas of the country with better economic conditions,
while the Transition Model predicts that New Regime parties will perform
better in areas of the country where the economy is stronger and Old Regime parties
will perform better where the economy is weaker. Using an original data
set of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral variables, I
demonstrate that across 20 national presidential and parliamentary elections
from
If you wish to get in touch with me,
you can email me at joshua.tucker_at_nyu.edu
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