ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7303-2693
Current Organisation
University of Amsterdam
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In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
International Relations | Comparative Government and Politics | Multicultural, Intercultural and Cross-cultural Studies | Political Science
Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society | Political Systems | Public Services Policy Advice and Analysis |
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 16-02-2021
DOI: 10.21203/RS.3.RS-211261/V2
Abstract: The rapidly growing scholarship on the COVID-19 crisis has focused on a variety of macro-level factors to understand government policy responses. The current study addresses an important gap in this line of research by evaluating the extent to which government leaders’ personality traits have led to ergent policy responses during the pandemic. To do so, we use data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker initiative (OxCGRT) to measure differences in both the speed and magnitude of these responses across countries and NEGex, a dataset that maps the personality traits of current heads of government (presidents or prime ministers) in 61 countries. Our results show that personality matters. We find that world leaders scoring high on “plasticity” (extraversion, openness) provide a stronger overall response, as well as a more rapid response in terms of financial relief. Whereas, leaders scoring high on “stability” (conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability) offer both a quicker and stronger financial relief response. Our findings underscore the need to account for the personality of decision-makers when exploring policy decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during other crisis situations.
Publisher: Cogitatio
Date: 30-12-2022
Abstract: This thematic issue deals with the “negative” side of politics, more specifically with dynamics of political aggressiveness and ideological opposition in voters and elites. Why do candidates “go negative” on their rivals? To what extent are voters entrenched into opposing c s parted by political tribalism? And are these dynamics related to the (dark) personality of candidates and the expression of emotions in voters? A series of contributions written by leading and emerging scholars provide novel and groundbreaking empirical evidence along three main lines: (a) the evolution, causes, and consequences of political attacks and incivility by political elites (b) the drivers and dimensions of affective polarization and negative voting in the public and (c) the dynamics of candidate’s personality and perceptions, the affective roots of attitudes and behaviors. This thematic issue aims at setting the stage for a new research agenda on negative politics, able to generate new insights by triangulating evidence and approaches from strands of literature that have mostly evolved on separate tracks.
Publisher: Research Square Platform LLC
Date: 09-02-2021
DOI: 10.21203/RS.3.RS-211261/V1
Abstract: The rapidly growing scholarship on the COVID-19 crisis has focused on a variety of macro-level factors to understand government policy responses. The current study addresses an important gap in this line of research by evaluating the extent to which government leaders’ personality traits have led to ergent policy responses during the pandemic. To do so, we use data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker initiative to measure differences in both the speed and magnitude of these responses across countries and NEGex, a dataset that maps the personality traits of current heads of government (presidents or prime ministers) in 61 countries. Our results show that personality matters. We find that world leaders scoring high on “plasticity” (extraversion, openness) provide a stronger overall response, as well as a more rapid response in terms of financial relief. Whereas, leaders scoring high on “stability” (conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability) offer both a quicker and stronger financial relief response. Our findings underscore the need to account for the personality of decision-makers when exploring policy decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during other crisis situations.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2017
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2022
Publisher: No publisher found
Date: 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 20-07-2017
DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780190677800.001.0001
Abstract: Recent years have seen resurgent interest in the potential capacity of transparency—the public availability of information—to improve democratic governance. Timely, accurate, granular, and freely available information is generally regarded as intrinsically valuable, as well as having many instrumental benefits. In development, transparency and accountability are generally thought to help plug the leaky pipes of corruption and inefficiency, channel public spending more efficiently, and produce better services. In the field of electoral governance, openness about the rules and procedures, outcomes, and decision processes used by electoral authorities is widely assumed to build public trust, improve policymaking, and facilitate accountability. In the age of WikiLeaks, Twitter, and Google, open governance—expanding information and communication—often seems like an unqualified good. Nevertheless, beyond popular buzzword sloganeering, evidence suggests that the impact of transparency on the quality of governance and elections remains mixed. Transparency also has a dark side, threatening trust, privacy, and security. To understand these issues more fully, this book seeks to assess the early-21st-century drive toward open electoral governance and to identify several conditions predicted to determine the success of transparency policies in strengthening electoral integrity. The chapters of this book look at transparency in electoral governance at the international and state levels, as well as within civil society.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2020
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 26-10-2020
DOI: 10.1017/GOV.2018.32
Abstract: Little comparative evidence exists about what causes candidates to use negative c aigning in elections. We introduce an original comparative data set that contains experts’ information about c aigning strategies of 172 candidates competing in 35 national elections worldwide between June 2016 and May 2017. Analyses reveal several trends: incumbents run positive c aigns but are especially likely to attract attacks, candidates far from the ideological centre are more likely to ‘go negative’, candidates tend to attack frontrunners and rivals that are far from them ideologically, but they also engage in a logic of attack reciprocity with selected candidates. The comparative nature of the data also allows us to test whether variations in the context affect the use of c aign negativity we find that the context matters mostly indirectly, by altering the effects of in idual characteristics.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-03-2016
DOI: 10.1111/POPS.12331
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2022
DOI: 10.1057/S41269-021-00222-7
Abstract: A growing body of studies shows that the reasons for competing candidates to “go negative” on their opponents during elections—that is, attacking their opponents instead of promoting their own programs or ideas stem from strategic considerations. Yet, existing research has, at this stage, failed to assess whether candidates’ personality traits also play a role. In this article, we bridge the gap between existing work in political psychology and political communication and study to what extent the personality traits of competing candidates are linked with their use of negative c aigning strategies. We rely on candidate survey data for recent elections in three countries—Germany (2017), Switzerland (2019), and Finland (2019). The data includes self-reported measures for candidates’ “Big Five” personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness) and the the use of attacks towards their opponents during the c aign. Controlling for the usual suspects driving the use of negative c aigning we show that this latter is associated with low agreeableness and (marginally) with high extraversion and low conscientiousness. The role of personality for the focus of an attack (issue vs. character attacks) is somewhat less clear-cut. All in all, kinder and more stable candidates tend to go less negative when they do, they tend to stay away from character-based attacks and somehow focus on issues.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-04-2023
Abstract: Despite decades of research on the nature and characteristics of populism, and on how political actors interpret populist attitudes, the study of how the public identify populist politicians remains a largely unexplored topic. Is populism in the eye of the beholder? What causes voters to perceive a political actor as populist? Is there any systematic heterogeneity in the evaluation of candidates among citizens according to their in idual characteristics? We fill this gap by analysing what characteristics of politicians, and the political statements they make, drive citizens to classify them as populist. Furthermore, we investigate how the cognitive, ideological and attitudinal profiles of citizens shape their perceptions. To this end, we report results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey administered to a nationally representative s le of Italian citizens. Respondents were asked to evaluate different political statements by politicians, of whom we manipulated a variety of relevant attributes (e.g., their ideological profile, gender, previous occupation). Results indicate two clear trends: (i) More than the profile of politicians, what matters for their identification as populist is their rhetoric. (ii) The cognitive (with the partial exception of education) and ideological profiles of respondents are largely inconsequential. At the same time, populist voters are substantively less likely to identify populism as such.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 07-06-2021
Abstract: Much party communication encourages voters to lower issue-related evaluations of rival parties. Yet, studies of such influence are rare. Drawing on research on political parties’ negative c aigning, this article starts to fill this gap. We triangulate evidence from four survey experiments across six issues in Denmark, the US, and Australia, and show that a party’s negative c aigning decreases voters’ evaluations of the target party’s issue-handling competence (i.e. issue ownership), but does not backlash on voters’ evaluations of the sponsor. Such attack on the target party does not have to be tied to a negative policy development like the crime rate to undermine the target party’s competence evaluations. At the same time, a negative policy development only undermines a party’s evaluations when it is accompanied by a rival party’s negative c aigning attack. The implications for party competition and the mass-elite linkage are important.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-09-2022
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211035675
Abstract: Are Eurosceptic parties more likely to run negative, uncivil and emotional c aigns, as it is often intuitively argued? And with what consequences? In this article, we shed light on the effectiveness of these c aign strategies for Eurosceptic parties during the 2019 European elections. We argue that ‘harsher’ c aigns are ‘in character’ for Eurosceptic parties, and are as such more likely to be electorally successful for them. We use data from the 2019 European Parliament Elections Expert Survey, covering 191 unique parties, and show that, indeed, Eurosceptic parties are more likely to c aign in a harsh way, and more likely than Europhile parties to benefit electorally from it. All data and materials are openly available for replication.
Publisher: SPIE
Date: 30-04-2010
DOI: 10.1117/12.855119
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 27-07-2023
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-03-2023
Abstract: Which candidates are more likely to go negative, and under which conditions? We analyze self-reported survey data from candidates having run in the 2017 German federal election for the main parties. More specifically, we test a comprehensive set of factors supposed to drive the use of (a) negative c aigning in general, (b) policy attacks, and (c) character attacks. Our results show that for all three versions of negative c aigning the political profile of candidates is most important, followed by personality traits, perceived c aign dynamics, social profile, and available c aign resources. Within these categories, five factors are important across the board: members of the governing parties are less likely to attack, ‘extreme ideology’ of the candidate fuels the use of attack politics, candidates who believe that the media can persuade voters attack more often, disagreeable candidates tend to go negative, and male candidates are more likely to attack than females.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-12-2023
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
Date: 20-12-2018
DOI: 10.5194/BG-2018-502
Abstract: Abstract. In response to a warming climate, temperature extremes are changing in many regions of the world. Therefore, understanding how the fluxes of sensible heat, latent heat and net ecosystem exchange respond and contribute to these changes is important. We examined 216 sites from the open access Tier 1 FLUXNET2015 and Free-Fair-Use La Thuile datasets, focussing only on observed (non-gap filled) data periods. We examined the availability of sensible heat, latent heat and net ecosystem exchange observations coincident in time with measured temperature for all temperatures, and separately for the upper and lower tail of the temperature distribution and expressed this availability as a measurement ratio. We showed that the measurement ratios for both sensible and latent heat fluxes are generally lower (0.79 and 0.73 respectively) than for temperature, and the measurement ratio of net ecosystem exchange measurements are appreciably lower (0.42). However, sites do exist with a high proportion of measured sensible and latent heat fluxes, mostly over the United States, Europe and Australia. Few sites have a high proportion of measured fluxes at the lower tail of the temperature distribution over very cold regions (e.g. Alaska, Russia) and at the upper tail in many warm regions (e.g. Central America and the majority of the Mediterranean region), and many of the world’s coldest and hottest regions are not represented in the freely available FLUXNET data at all (e.g. India, the Gulf States, Greenland and Antarctica). However, some sites do provide measured fluxes at extreme temperatures suggesting an opportunity for the FLUXNET community to share strategies to increase measurement availability at the tails of the temperature distribution. We also highlight a wide discrepancy between the measurement ratios across FLUXNET sites that is not related to the actual temperature or rainfall regimes at the site, which we cannot explain. Our analysis provides guidance to help select eddy covariance sites for researchers interested in exploring responses to temperature extremes.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-04-2015
DOI: 10.1111/SSQU.12154
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 26-07-2022
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1111/SPSR.12016
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-09-2022
Abstract: There is little comparative research on what causes candidates in elections across the world to ‘go negative’ on their rivals – mainly because of the scarcity of large-scale datasets. In this article, we present new evidence covering over 80 recent national elections across the world (2016–2018), in which more than 400 candidates competed. For the first time in a large-scale comparative setting, we show that, ceteris paribus, negativity is more likely for challengers, extreme candidates, and right-wing candidates. Women are not more (or less) likely to go negative on their rivals than their male counterparts, but we find that higher numbers of female MPs in the country reduces negativity overall. Furthermore, women tend to go less negative in proportional systems and more negative in majoritarian systems. Finally, negativity is especially low for candidates on the left in countries with high female representation, and higher for candidates on the right in countries with proportional representation (PR).
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2023
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-08-2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 17-12-2021
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211055676
Abstract: Negativity in election c aign matters. To what extent can the content of social media posts provide a reliable indicator of candidates' c aign negativity? We introduce and critically assess an automated classification procedure that we trained to annotate more than 16,000 tweets of candidates competing in the 2018 Senate Midterms. The algorithm is able to identify the presence of political attacks (both in general, and specifically for character and policy attacks) and incivility. Due to the novel nature of the instrument, the article discusses the external and convergent validity of these measures. Results suggest that automated classifications are able to provide reliable measurements of c aign negativity. Triangulations with independent data show that our automatic classification is strongly associated with the experts’ perceptions of the candidates’ c aign. Furthermore, variations in our measures of negativity can be explained by theoretically relevant factors at the candidate and context levels (e.g., incumbency status and candidate gender) theoretically meaningful trends are also found when replicating the analysis using tweets for the 2020 Senate election, coded using the automated classifier developed for 2018. The implications of such results for the automated coding of c aign negativity in social media are discussed.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-11-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2014
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-10-2021
Abstract: We test how in idual differences moderate the attitudinal effects of attack politics in two online experiments among US respondents, surveyed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( N = 1,408 and N = 1,081). Study 1 tests the moderating effect of personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad) on the effectiveness of character vs. policy attacks. Study 2 investigates the difference between civil and uncivil attacks and explores the moderating effect of Big Five, Dark Triad, tolerance to negativity and conflict avoidance. Results suggest that the effects of negativity and incivility are not uniform across all respondents. For instance, evaluations of the sponsor are more negative after exposure to negative messages for respondents high in conflict avoidance respondents high in psychopathy are more likely to have a more negative opinion of the target after being exposed to character attacks, whereas incivility worsen the perception of the target for in iduals low in conflict avoidance and agreeableness. Harsher c aigns, in other terms, work particularly well for some – and are particularly rejected by others. The implications of these trends are discussed.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-09-2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 17-06-2022
DOI: 10.1177/10659129211023590
Abstract: Research on the effectiveness of negative c aigning offers mixed results. Negative messages can sometimes work to depress candidate evaluations, but they can also backfire against the attacker. In this article, we examine how humor can help mitigate the unintended effects of negative c aigning using data from three experimental studies in the United States and the Netherlands. Our results show that (1) political attacks combined with “other-deprecatory humor” (i.e., jokes against the opponents) are less likely to backfire against the attacker and can even increase positive evaluations of this latter—especially when the attack is perceived as amusing. At the same time and contrary to what we expected, (2) humor does not blunt the attack: humorous attacks are not less effective against the target than serious attacks. All in all, these results suggest that humor can be a good strategy for political attacks: jokes reduce harmful backlash effects against the attacker, and humoros attacks remain just as effective as humorless ones. When in doubt, be funny. All data and materials are openly available for replication.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-05-2022
DOI: 10.1111/SPSR.12525
Abstract: To what extent are negative election c aigns “tailored” to the personality of the candidates? And with what electoral consequences? In this article we tackle these questions by focusing on the 2019 Swiss federal election. We estimate the presence of negativity as a function of the personality profile of competing candidates (Big Five) and the presence of professional consultants. Analyses based on data from a candidate survey (Selects 2019) suggest that c aign consultants are likely to take stock of the character of their candidate, and tailor the content of their c aigns accordingly ‐ more aggressive for more energetic candidates (higher plasticity) and for less stable candidates (lower stability). These results, we argue, support our central claim that the role of consultants is to provide the most adequate c aign for the candidate they are promoting (“tailoring hypothesis”). We fail however to find any convincing evidence that such tailoring is electorally successful.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 21-05-2020
Abstract: We argue that, above and beyond the usual suspects, some c aign strategies are more successful in attracting media coverage. We specifically focus on two elements of c aign content: the tone of the c aign (i.e., whether or not to go “negative” on opponents) and the use of emotional appeals (fear and enthusiasm messages). We argue that both negativity and emotions matter for media coverage. We rely on an original comparative data set about the c aign strategies of 507 candidates having competed in 107 elections in 89 countries worldwide between 2016 and 2019. The data set is based on a survey distributed to s les of national and international experts. Confirming our expectations, the analyses reveal that candidates using a more negative tone and, especially, candidates making a greater use of emotional appeals receive a greater media coverage the effect of emotional appeals dwarfs all other drivers of media coverage. Our analyses also show that media coverage is significantly higher for candidates who go negative and use fear appeals, and when candidates go positive and use enthusiasm appeals. Finally, media coverage is significantly greater for candidates who go negative in countries where the media system has a marked preference for infotainment and sensationalism.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-10-2014
DOI: 10.1111/SPSR.12126
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-05-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2022
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-04-2015
DOI: 10.1111/SPSR.12167
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 29-04-2023
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X231173917
Abstract: Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research on attitudes towards the use of torture on suspected terrorists has become common. However, despite acknowledging the identity-rooted relationship between threat and out-group hostility, the possible relationship between identity attachment and attitudes towards torture has been under-explored. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study, the results of the present study further the understanding of the relationship between identity and support for torture. Two main findings are supported: 1) greater attachment to American Identity increases support for the torture of suspected terrorists, and 2) the perceived threat of terrorism partially mediates the relationship between attachment to the American Identity and attitudes towards torture. Ultimately, the study demonstrates, high attachment to American Identity and the 9/11-generated discursive construction of terrorists as threatening this identity is associated with in iduals’ attitudes towards torture.
Publisher: No publisher found
Date: 2009
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 28-09-2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-05-2012
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-06-2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2018
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 17-01-2013
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 20-07-2017
DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780190677800.003.0010
Abstract: This chapter analyzes the quality of election coverage by the traditional news media. It describes a hierarchical model of influences that is expected to shape the fairness of election coverage. These operate at three levels: the political and social structure, the media market, and the journalistic culture. The chapter shows that the fairness of election coverage is lower when the content of information is distorted by pressures from exogenous actors such as politicians and pressure groups, when the media market faces a hypercommercialization, and when journalists see their role redefined toward infotainment journalism that creates the conditions for a strong shift toward soft news. On the other hand, the quality of elections coverage by traditional news media is higher when media outlets are dispersed across multiple and competitive institutions, which promotes inclusiveness and sets up safeguards against the emergence of media oligopolies.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 31-01-2018
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 10-12-2021
Abstract: Democrats and Republicans have ergent views about Trump’s personality. Are these perceptions stable over time? We describe the evolution of Trump’s perceived personality (Big Five and Dark Triad) between November 2018 and May 2020 by comparing four s les of American respondents (Mechanical Turk). Trump’s perceived personality is on average extremely stable. Liberals have a much more critical perception of Trump than conservatives. Yet, strong Republicans have an increasingly more negative perception over the time—perhaps because the scandals that have marred the Trump presidency are at odds with conservative “moral foundations.” We also detected a potential demobilization trend for strong Republicans the more they perceive the president negatively, the lower their likelihood to turn out. The electoral implications of these trends are important.
Publisher: Cogitatio
Date: 05-03-2020
Abstract: We usually reject information from sources we dislike. But what if those same sources explicitly disagree with that information? Are we more likely to be persuaded by information that is opposed by someone we dislike? We present results from an experimental study with a convenience s le of 199 Dutch students. Respondents were exposed to counter-attitudinal information on climate change in an attempt to generate persuasion, and in a second time exposed to a tweet from the current US president, Donald J. Trump, as a positive or negative endorsement of the counter-attitudinal. Results show that positive endorsements reduce the persuasive power of counter-attitudinal information, whereas negative endorsements (marginally) increase its persuasive power. These results have important implications in today’s politics, where “disliked” figures—most of the time referred to as “populists”—play an increasingly central role in framing the terms of the debate on the most salient issues.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Date: 2009
Start Date: 06-2012
End Date: 12-2018
Amount: $2,635,728.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
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