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Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Established vaccine hesitancy measurement instruments, such as the Vaccine Hesitancy Determinants Matrix, are not sufficiently equipped to adequately and consistently measure political and ideological attitudes. Focusing on Germany, which is a particularly interesting case since it witnessed the establishment of the by far most well‐organized and sustained 'anti‐Covid' movement in Europe, this quantitative study explores the impact of political ideology and partisanship on the degree of vaccine hesitancy based on four surveys (February—October 2021) among more than 30,000 individuals. We demonstrate that party affiliation, political ideology and region of residence all impact vaccine hesitancy. In fact, they turn out to have a greater impact than two factors often analysed with respect to vaccine hesitancy: gender and educational background. Further interaction models show that the effect of political ideology on vaccine hesitancy is moderated by age, gender and region of residency. For instance, while the more rightwing a young individual is, the more hesitant they are towards SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccination—for older individuals, this is not the case. Our findings are relevant for future investigators measuring vaccine hesitancy and policy makers contemplating the differential impact of complex public health interventions: as the impact of political and ideological attitudes on vaccine hesitancy are not adequately captured by established vaccine hesitancy measurement instruments, we recommend its modification to include a clear and harmonised definition of the political‐ideological dimension of vaccine hesitancy together with pre‐validated measurement items that improve future studies. In addition, we reason that vaccine hesitancy, while being an outcome of complex socio‐political factors, is in itself an indicator for societal cohesion and anomie, the degree of which is associated with trust in (health) policy makers, (public) health authorities, health service providers, etc. Therefore, we further recommend that vaccine hesitancy questions should be integrated in pertinent national surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective: We analyze whether and how individuals react to information about the adoption of a particular policy, with a focus on the role of conservatism. Methods: We conducted an online survey experiment on support for data retention in Germany. A recent law on this issue allowed us to test the effects of two policy signals, information about the adoption of a new law (law signal) and information that this followed a Constitutional Court decision (law and court signal), on separate groups of respondents. Results: Our results show a positive effect of each policy signal on support for data retention. The effect of the law signal was even slightly stronger for individuals with conservative beliefs. Conclusion: Illustrating how lock‐in effects of policies can work, our study contributes to research on attitudinal policy feedback: creating new legislation also means legitimizing the policy position in question and stating that this norm should be accepted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAAs can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAAs offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAAs furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the effects of physical appearance on electoral outcomes for the 2013 German national elections. We find that a candidate's perceived attractiveness and, to a lesser extent, competence vis-á-vis his or her closest contestant increases the chances of winning a direct mandate, while likability plays a minor role. Additionally, we find the appearance effects to be conditioned by gender, age, and incumbency status. Our study advances existing research in four ways. First, we capture relative differences in appearances, which resembles real-world situations more closely than absolute measures. Second, we proceed beyond a one-dimensional assessment of appearance by simultaneously analyzing attractiveness, competence, and likability, including interactions. Third, the central role of parties in the German mixed electoral system makes an especially tough test for appearance-based effects. Fourth, we use rater response latency to weight our measurement with an assessment of ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the German parliament may force government to publicly answer questions by issuing minor interpellations (kleine Anfragen). We use 3,608 interpellations from the session 2009-13 that have been signed by authoring and supporting members to construct the social network of support relations among members within the three opposition parties. We find that parties differ markedly in terms of internal structure. While social democrats organize hierarchically, Greens cooperate horizontally. The network for socialist Linke in contrast shows signs of homophily and social segregation. Our approach yields a novel perspective on intraparty politics in parliamentary systems which are notoriously difficult to analyze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]