Who Is Influential and Why? The Determinants of Reputational Power

Power is one of the most fundamental concepts in political science, and it is a crucial aspect of decision-making structures. The distribution of power between political actors and coalitions of actors informs us about who is actually able to influence decision-making processes. It is thus no surprise that power is a centerpiece of our assessment of political decision-making in Switzerland. In line with the main argument of this book, Chapter 3 has uncovered important changes in decision-making structures, which resulted in a rebalancing of power between governing parties, interest groups and state executive actors. Conjecturing about the reasons that may account for these changes, we pointed to factors of an organizational and institutional nature. For example, we put forward the decline of pre-parliamentary procedures oriented towards corporatist intermediation as a possible explanation for the weakening of interest groups. More generally, in several chapters it has been suggested that there is a relationship between the institutional design of a decision-making process, the related importance of decision-making phases and an actor's participation in these phases on the one hand, and the power of actors (and coalitions of actors) on the other. In addition, the analyses carried out in Chapters 2 to 5 draw our attention to the differences in power structure across decision-making processes or types of processes.

Co-authorship Networks in Swiss Political Research

Co-authorship is an important indicator of scientific collaboration. Co-authorship networks are composed of sub-communities, and researchers can gain visibility by connecting these insulated subgroups. This article presents a comprehensive co-authorship network analysis of Swiss political science. Three levels are addressed: disciplinary cohesion and structure at large, communities, and the integrative capacity of individual researchers. The results suggest that collaboration exists across geographical and language borders even though different regions focus on complementary publication strategies. The subfield of public policy and administration has the highest integrative capacity. Co-authorship is a function of several factors, most importantly being in the same subfield. At the individual level, the analysis identifies researchers who belong to the “inner circle” of Swiss political science and who link different communities. In contrast to previous research, the analysis is based on the full set of publications of all political researchers employed in Switzerland in 2013, including past publications.

The economic voter and economic crisis

Theories of economic voting have a long tradition in political science and continue to inspire a large group of scholars. Classical economic voting theory assumes a reward-and-punishment mechanism (Key, 1966). This mechanism implies that incumbents are more likely to stay in power under a good economy, but are cast out under a bad economy (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000). The economy has repeatedly been shown to be a major determinant of electoral behavior (see especially the recent book by Duch and Stevenson, 2008), but the current economic crisis seems to provide a marked illustration of how the economy affects voting. In recent elections across the Western industrialized world, most ruling coalitions lost their majority. Opposition parties, on the other hand, whether right wing or left wing, have appeared to benefit from the economic downturn.

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Mode of access: Internet.

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Mode of access: Internet.

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Mode of access: Internet.

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Mode of access: Internet.

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Mode of access: Internet.