We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to politics. Based on 425 roll calls between 2005 and 2014 in the US House of Representatives, we show that representatives are more likely to vote...

We investigate the role of public attention in determining the effect that campaign contributions by interest groups have on legislators' policy positions. We exploit the shock in public attention induced by the Internet service blackout of January 2012 that increased the salience of the...

In a world of increasing complexity, politicians have only limited information about the relationship of policies and the outcomes. They often make use of simplified heuristics, i.e. policy beliefs. Hence, an influence opportunity for interest groups occurs: informational lobbying. It...

Asymmetric information between voters and legislative representatives poses a major challenge to the functioning of representative democracy. We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve long-term campaign donors instead of constituents during times of low media attention to...

Part I. The Context Structures and the Policy-Specific Debates: 1. Introduction: shaping the debate on unemployment and the labor market Hanspeter Kriesi, Laurent Bernhard, Flavia Fossati and Regula Hanggli; 2. Theoretical framework: production of policy-specific political communication Regula...

In this paper, we take up the burgeoning debate about the underrepresentation of the working class in politics. In the literature section we discuss theories of group representation and look at recent empirical studies of responsiveness that have begun to disaggregate public opinion by...

Public investment, for instance in infrastructure, has been constantly decreasing for four decades. New research by RWI for 13 OECD-countries shows: this development significantly correlates with population aging. Senior citizens do not value future payoffs of infrastructure projects and other...

"Ouvrage clé permettant de comprendre le rôle politique des fondations subventionnaires, le présent collectif est la première grande synthèse de l’histoire de la philanthropie canadienne et québécoise. Dès le début du XXe siècle, la dimension sociopolitique des organisations...

This article examines expert knowledge utilization in public policy processes. We study how much expert knowledge is employed and the extent to which decision-makers deliberate on the information provided by the experts, under various conditions of political disputes and public attention. We...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848 - 2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848-2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer...

The thesis that European integration has become "politicised" has prompted a major debate in comparative political science and research on the EU. This debate nevertheless remains inconclusive with regard to links between the objects and thematic focal points of EU controversies (justification...