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Modernization signaled the de-alignment of traditional social cleavages in advanced industrial states. Implicit in this is a homogenization of electorates according to post-material, "new politics" values. Although the impact of traditional social cleavages may have weakened, electorates are not de-aligned; the traditional social cleavages remain important divisions which structure the electorate in significant and meaningful ways. This paper focuses on the impact of religious voting relative to the other traditional social bases of politics in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, comparing the modern electorates to the electorates of the early 1960s. Using election survey data and focusing on the social bases of conservative parties' support, the results show that while most of the social bases of electoral support have weakened, religious voting remains significant and has increased in the contexts of the United States and United Kingdom. This suggests that despite the decline in religious attendance, the traditional values shared by religious voters make them a tempting social basis of conservative parties’ voter coalitions, and that this may be occurring beyond these contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the experimental findings of the motivated reasoning literature to numerous election studies in the U.S., Britain, and Germany. Conclusions inform both the information processing and campaign effects literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have examined the economic status of immigrants, most studies of immigration have neglected immigrant opinions. When immigration is addressed at all using survey data, studies almost exclusively focus on native attitudes toward immigration and not on attitudes of immigrants themselves. In this paper, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes toward social spending and redistribution. We employ surveys from Germany and Great Britain that sample a relatively large number of immigrants compared to typical national election surveys. In addressing this potential “opinion gap,” we control for socioeconomic characteristics, such as income and education as well as immigrants’ ability to assimilate into their new country’s labor market by comparing an immigrant’s skill level with his or her actual occupation in the new country. We also include contextual covariates to account for potential network effects. Our statistical analyses use ordered logistical regressions and are fully interactive (following Franzese 1999), consistent with our theoretical expectation that the models’ independent variables affect natives differently than they do immigrants. Once these controls are included, we observe that immigrants are never more likely than natives to favor increases in social spending or to endorse redistributive measures. In instances where we do find a significant opinion gap between natives and immigrants, the latter tend to support more conservative positions, favoring tax cuts at the expense of social spending. While some of our findings are preliminary in nature, they nevertheless represent a significant contribution to the extant literature, which, to our knowledge, does not include comparative studies on the political attitudes of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is considerable agreement that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes, there is less agreement as to exactly how. Scholars have spent a great deal of effort exploring the links between economics and vote choice but have generally ignored the potential that economic perceptions could also affect the likelihood of voter abstention. I explore that possibility in this paper. First, I develop a theory of how economic perceptions affect the likelihood of abstention. I argue that the relevant factors in this relationship are one?s retrospective and prospective judgments of the economy and the ideology of the respondent and government. Hypotheses are generated and tested using national election survey data from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. The results show that economic perceptions have an effect on the likelihood of electoral abstention. This effect is mediated by the ideology of the respondent and party and appears to be weakened in situations of greater coalitional complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies constitutional economics to regional integration in the area of legal integration and tests its predictions against data on citation rates in Irish, British, and German courts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing The Times summaries of Hitler speeches with full texts, and British versus German diplomats accounts of meetings, showed increased implicit British perceptions of threat after vs before the occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discourse and strategies of extreme right parties in four European democracies; France, the UK, Germany and Romania. Using text analysis of party manifestoes, we disctinguish four sub-types of extreme right parties. We show that the extreme right party family can be classified into four distinct types based on the insight into the fundamental ideological core and the style of discourse it espouses. We explore the implications this typology has on party competition and the likely electoral success of the party within its given party system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the economic consequences of diversion of migration flows in the context of the EU Eastern enlargement. We find that the joint GDP of Germany and the UK declines as a result of the migration restrictions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, both the extent and the reasons for corporations to engage in extra-statutory family policies are investigated, looking at the cases of the United Kingdom and Germany. Different perspectives on firm behaviour are tested. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the decline in support for major political parties in Western Europe, specifically, France, the UK, and German, this paper investigates the relationship between citizens, political parties, and the European Union. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of elite alliances on the activity choices of environmental groups in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Relying on a multi-dimensional framework for analyzing social movements with a focus on political opportunity structures, several aspects of elite alliances are analyzed. Results indicate that groups shift tactics in relation to changes in elite alliance structures at the nation state. The degree of green party support, the nature of the party in power and its platform as well as cabinet strength were found to influence activity choices. In addition, it was found that groups often behave counter-intuitively, punishing those allies with whom one would expect they share a common purpose. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issue of political economic change in the European Union through an analysis of the first five years of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Employment in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the world history political powers have formed different alliances in order to realize their military tasks. Since World War II so-called “Atlantic world” have existed. Under the leadership of US his alliance has been one of the most unified and strongest political and military alliances ever. Britain and Germany have been the most significant allies of US. Both countries oftentimes had the same political opinion as US and supported most of the US-lead military actions. However, Germany resolved to oppose US actions in Iraq. Why did it happen? This paper will analyze the reasons that have made Britain and Germany to choose positions completely opposite to each other. It will examine their foreign affairs policy in respect to their national interests and profitability. It will also analyze the degree to which public opinion affected the decision-making process in these countries. The study will try to determine the factors that played the most significant role in effecting German and British foreign policy decision toward Iraq: domestic consequences including public opinion, economic interests, and influence within EU. The study was based on the data from the polls in Britain and Germany and analytical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the choice to engage in coordinated activity and the degree to which the gendered nature of political institutions has an impact on the mobilization strategies of women's groups. In so doing, we explore whether or not the opportunity structure is 'gendered,' producing different outcomes for women's groups than for other social groups. Since we know that coordinated activity can be advantageous for the achievement of group goals, any differences for women's groups are significant. In addition, this study asks if women's groups coordinate activities to advance strategic interests, those that are vested in long-term transformations of gender relations and hierarchies and are concerned with changing the underlying inequities in the prevailing institutional arrangement, or to advance practical interests, those that "do not themselves challenge the prevailing forms of gender subordination…" (Molyneux 1995, 284). This study also asks if the choice to engage in coordinated activities is mediated by issue focus or 'type' of group. Both domestic and transnational/supranational acts of coordination are examined and results focus on the necessity of a feminized interpretation of the POS. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variation in the political and economic features of immigration regimes explains cross-national and subnational differences in the incidence of conflict between immigrants and natives and between immigrants and the state in Germany and Great Britain. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using pilot survey data collected in Britain, Spain, and Germany, we explore the relationships between levels of transnationalism, assimilation and the political attitudes, identities and behaviors of immigrants in these countries. Recently, scholars of immigration have begun to examine the growing phenomenon of transnationalism-or activities that occur on a recurrent basis across national borders (Portes 1999, Foner 2005). These researchers discuss various transnational linkages that immigrants maintain, such as sending remittances, immigrant alliances with home organizations, and attainment of dual nationality. Theories of transnationalism, in contrast to those of assimilation, do not necessarily see civic engagement of immigrants as a zero-sum process in which individuals must choose political allegiance to one country, although there has been little empirical evidence to support this argument. Furthermore, the work on transnationalism does not consider adequately political science theories to understand immigrant political behavior. Political science studies of immigrant participation in the U.S. (Cho 1999, Jones-Correa 1998a, 1998b) have extended the traditional SES model of participation to include indicators of assimilation-e.g. length of time in host country and linguistic skills-but have not considered the role that transnational links might play in levels of political engagement. One implication of assimilation theory is that sociopolitical engagement in the host country comes at the cost of linkages with the home country, but neglects to explore empirically whether this is the case. Thus, we use a cross-national dataset to address the extent to which transnationalism is associated with levels of assimilation, and the relationship between transnationalism and political attitudes, identities, and behaviors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study shows that massive shifts within national budgets occur and considers four sources of these shifts: institutional constraints, attention, partisan preferences, and veto players. The theory is tested via time-series data of four democracies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]