Band 14, Heft 2

In Denmark, as in other Western European countries, the working class does not vote for social democratic parties to the same extent as before. Yet, what role did the social democratic parties themselves play in the demobilization of class politics? Building on core ideas from public opinion literature, this article differs from the focus on party policy positions in previous work and, instead, focuses on the group-based appeals of the Social Democratic Party in Denmark. Based on a quantitative content analysis of party programs between 1961 and 2004, I find that, at the general level, class-related appeals have been replaced by appeals targeting non-economic groups. At the specific level, the class-related appeals that remain have increasingly been targeting businesses at the expense of traditional left-wing groups such as wage earners, tenants and pensioners. These findings support a widespread hypothesis that party strategy was crucial in the decline of class politics, but also suggests that future work on class mobilization should adopt a group-centered perspective.

The article criticises current conceptual frameworks focused on the evaluation of the performance of electoral systems. It offers a new tool allowing researchers to measure the size of the deviation of electoral outcomes from theoretical expectations. The index d=log[ N S /( MS ) 1/6 ] is built on the Seat Product (Taagepera, Rein (2007b) Predicting Party Sizes: The Logic of Simple Electoral Systems . New York: Oxford University Press) and captures the deviations of electoral outcomes from predictions solely on the basis of two institutional factors – average district magnitude ( M ) and size of assembly ( S ). The theoretical background of index d is explained, and its reliability is further supported by conventional econometric methods based on empirical data.

This article combines Multiple Stream Framework and stage model to analyse developments in the European Union regulation of pesticides. In so doing the purpose of this article is threefold: first, it contributes to the theoretical literature by providing an argument in support of the merits of integration of approaches. Second, it provides a refinement of the Multiple Stream Approach by extending it from the original agenda setting stage to the entire policy process. Third, it explains policy changes in a crucial but under-researched area of EU regulation.

The article proposes a typological framework of myths which applies to empirical research on political thought. The framework introduces three typologies of myths distinguished by a subject criterion. Their subjects are things, people, and animals. Each typology consists of the dyads of antinomic ideal types located on continua by the extent of the valuation of the myth’s subject. The tool will help researchers identify the processes for understanding the revaluation and devaluation of the myth’s subject over time. Furthermore, it enables researchers to determine the extents of the diversification of mythical political thought as well as to distinguish between myths in their morphology. This research tool applies to empirical research because it encompasses the objectively identifiable and verifiable theoretical models consisting of the essential features of myths.