IPR - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University

Politics, Institutions, and Public Policy
< Quality of Democracy
As more of the world turns democratic, scholars have
begun to worry about the quality of new democracies.
Many suffer from weak rule of law, low government
accountability, and high rates of corruption. Andrew
Roberts aims to produce a workable concept of
democratic quality and to find appropriate ways of
studying quality. His forthcoming book, “The Quality
of Democracy in Eastern Europe: Policy Reforms and
Public Preferences” from Cambridge University Press,
provides a comprehensive analysis of the quality of
democracy via issues of electoral accountability, policy
responsiveness, and the informativeness of political
campaigns in 10 Eastern European countries. He argues
that politicians of Eastern European democracies are far
more responsive and accountable to the public than is
often assumed.
< Electoral Laws and Women’s Representation
Along with Northwestern political scientist Jason
Seawright, Andrew Roberts is investigating the determinants
of women’s
representation in national
legislatures. In particular,
the two scholars probe
conventional wisdom that
proportional electoral
rules increase the percentage
of women elected
to assemblies. Currently,
women occupy only 18
percent of legislative
seats around the world,
with Rwanda (56.4
percent) and Sweden (47
Andrew Roberts studies whether percent) at the top, and
electoral laws can increase the
Saudi Arabia, Belize, and
number of women legislators.
Qatar having none at all.
The United States ranks 69 th in the world, with 17.4
percent of legislative seats held by women. Using new
techniques, including within-country comparisons and
matching methods, they find that electoral laws might
not be a “magic bullet” for increasing women’s representation;
effects are not as strong as in previous studies
and vary across countries. While the researchers show
evidence of social and cultural changes driving increases
in female representation, they do not dismiss using electoral
laws, such as quota laws under certain conditions,
to increase representation. However, more research is
needed to identify the possible background conditions
that would promote the success of such laws.
< Political Messages and Campaign Web Sites
How do campaigns work? What determines the
messages candidates put forth? Political scientists
Druckman, Michael Parkin of Oberlin College,
and Martin Kifer of Mathematica Policy Research
address these questions, with a particular focus on
U.S. congressional campaigns. The researchers have
developed a framework and are currently testing their
predictions with a unique data set, coming from
content analyses of more than 1,000 candidates’ Web
sites from four election cycles between 2000 and 2006.
The data also enable them to explore the evolution of
new media in the context of campaigns.
One recent study looks at how candidates use advanced
and interactive Web technologies, such as audio,
video, and instant messaging. They find that in tight
races candidates usually drop the bells and whistles of
interactive features, reasoning that doing so will preserve
their campaign’s central message. In another study, the
three researchers use data on congressional candidate
Web sites between the 2000 and 2006 elections to show
that close elections pushed more candidates to go
negative against their opponents. Since virtually all
candidates now have Web sites, the project is providing
the researchers with a unique opportunity to test
multiple campaign theories—from issue engagement to
image ownership and position-taking—in addition to
comparing strategies across different media.
< The Digital Reproduction of Inequality
Alongside the advent of the Internet in the mid-
1990s arose speculation about its implications for
social mobility and stratification. Communications
researcher Eszter Hargittai recently reviewed the state
of online inequality, suggesting that the concept of the
digital divide should be shelved for the term digital
inequality. She points to how the new term better
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