Research Projects and Grants

| Conflict in Northern Ireland | Democratic Transitions in Postcommunist Societies |
| Electoral Systems and Democracy | Political Leadership | Australian Politics |
| Australian Election Study | The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems |

Conflict in Northern Ireland

Ever since the start of the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' in 1968, a large number of public opinion surveys have been conducted examining Protestant and Catholic opinion. With the exception of Richard Rose's Governing Without Consensus (published in 1971 and based on surveys conducted prior to the start of the violence) and Edward Moxon-Browne's Nation, Society and Creed (1983) there has been no book-length attempt to examine the extent of societal divisions in Northern Ireland, and how they have changed over the course of time. Perhaps the closest attempt to chart these divisions was John Whyte's Interpreting Northern Ireland (1990).

This project, in collaboration with Bernadette Hayes (University of Aberdeen) draws on the multitude of public opinion surveys conducted in Northern Ireland since 1968, to examine divisions within Northern Ireland society, and the dynamics of change. Particularly since 1985, the regular Northern Ireland Social Attitudes/Life and Times surveys, conducted by Queen's University, contain a wealth of information about the dynamics of social, economic and political change within the province.

The book that will come out of the project argues that divided societies usually have two or perhaps three cleavages which reinforce one another, generating divisions. Resolving one or two of these cleavages will usually moderate the conflict. The Northern Ireland conflict is so enduring because a whole range of cleavages reinforce one another, dividing the two communities. Each of the chapters outlines the extent of the division, how it has changed over time, and its impact on social, economic and political behaviour.

Numerous articles, papers and chapters will already come out of the project. Recent and forthcoming publications include:

• Bernadette C. Hayes, Ian McAllister and Lizanne Dowds. 'Those Who Dared To Be Different: Integrated Education in Northern Ireland.' Unpublished. <download>
• Bernadette Hayes and Ian McAllister. 'The Political Impact of Secularisation in Northern Ireland.' Unpublished. <download>
• Bernadette Hayes and Ian McAllister. 'Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.' Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming. <download>
• Bernadette Hayes, Ian McAllister and Lizanne Dowds. 2005. 'The Erosion of Consent: Protestant Support for the 1998 Northern Ireland Agreement.' Journal of Elections, Parties and Opinion 15(2): 147-67. <download>
• Ian McAllister. 2004. 'The Armalite and the Ballot Box': Sinn Fein's Electoral Strategy in Northern Ireland.' Electoral Studies 23(1): 123-142. <download>
• Bernadette Hayes and Ian McAllister. 2001. 'Sowing Dragon's Teeth: Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland.' Political Studies 49(5): 901-22. <download>

The late twentieth century has seen the greatest experiment in democracy in human history. Freedom House estimates that by the end of 2004, 119 of the world's 192 countries were electoral democracies, approximately double the number of democracies that existed just two decades earlier. A wide range of research centres, public opinion surveys and academic projects have converged on this phenomenon of 'third wave democratization'—to use Huntington's phrase—in order to understand its problems and prospects. This project studies both the normative and practical support for the principles and practices of democracy among the mass publics of the postcommunist societies.

Research in this area has include examining attitudes towards defence and security, mass media and voting, and political participation. Recent and forthcoming publications include the following.

• Ian McAllister and Stephen White. Forthcoming. Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Postcommunist Societies. Party Politics (special issue on Parties and Party Development, edited by Russell J. Dalton and Ian McAllister). <download>
• Stephen White, Margot Light and Ian McAllister. 2005. 'Russia and the West: is there a Values Gap?' International Politics 42(1): 314-33. <download>
• Stephen White, Sarah Oates and Ian McAllister. 2005. 'Media Effects and Russian Elections, 1999-2000.' British Journal of Political Science 35(2): 191-208. <download>
• Stephen White and Ian McAllister, 2006. 'Politics and the Media in Post-communist Russia'. In Mass Media and Political Communication in New Democracies, eds Katrin Voltmer. London: Routledge. Pp. 210-227. <download>
• Stephen White and Ian McAllister. 2004. 'Dimensions of Disengagement in Postcommunist Russia.' Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20(1): 81-97. <download>

Electoral Systems and Democracy

Since the onset of the current wave of democratization, there has been a growing interest in researching the institutional factors underlying citizen support for democracy. This has also, in part, reflected a renewed interest in seeking answers to the questions of whether and how institutions affect democratic stability. Of all the institutions that may matter, few would deny that electoral systems are among the most significant. They are the central institutional design issue for a new polity to resolve and they are also among the most malleable of the political institutions.

This project examines how and why electoral systems influence political behaviour, from turnout and participation, to party support and satisfaction with democracy. Much of the research has focussed on Australia, but a comparative dimension is also important, especially using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems datasets, which include a wide range of measures relating to the micro and macro aspects of the countries in question. One important focus of my Australian research on this area has been on support for, and the consequences of, compulsory voting, one of the distinctively Australian aspects of electoral engineering.

Recent and forthcoming publications include the following.

• David Farrell and Ian McAllister. Forthcoming. 'Voter Satisfaction and Electoral Systems: Does Preferential Voting in Candidate-Centred Systems make a Difference?' European Journal of Political Research. <download>
• Ian McAllister. 2005. 'Accountability, Representation and Satisfaction with Democracy.' International Journal of Public Opinion Research 17(3): 371-9. <download>
• David M. Farrell and Ian McAllister. 2005. 'Australia : The Alternative Vote in a Compliant Political Culture.' In The Politics of Electoral Systems, eds Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp.79-98. <download>
• David Farrell and Ian McAllister. 2003. 'The 1983 Change in Surplus Vote Transfer Procedures for the Australian Senate and its Consequences for STV.' Australian Journal of Political Science 38(3): 479-92. <download>
• David Farrell and Ian McAllister. 2005. '1902 and the Origins of Preferential Electoral Systems in Australia.' Australian Journal of Politics and History 51(2): 155-167. <download>
• Ian McAllister and Malcolm Mackerras. 1999. 'Compulsory Voting, Party Stability and Electoral Advantage in Australia.' Electoral Studies 18(2): 217-33. <download>

Political Leadership

In a trend that has been shared by all of the liberal democracies, politics has become increasingly personalized. It is now commonplace for governments to be named after their leader, rather than after the party that holds office, particularly if the party and its leader have won successive elections. Nor is the trend towards the personalization of politics restricted to presidential systems, its traditional institutional home. The popular focus on leaders is now commonplace across almost all of the major parliamentary systems, where parties once occupied centre stage.

The focus on leaders within parliamentary systems has been so marked over the past two decades that it has spawned a large literature which has variously labelled it the 'presidentialization of, 'institutional presidentialization', and 'presidential parliamentarism'. Despite the diverse labels, the common underlying theme of these works is that the operation of democratic systems is experiencing fundamental change, without any concomitant change in their formal institutional structures.

This project examines the presidentialization/personalization phenomena in both parliamentary and presidential systems. A current focus is using the handling of the Iraq War as a case study of the personalization of politics, and several comparative papers are envisaged which will examine this in Australia, Britain and the United States.

Recent and forthcoming publications include the following.

• Ian McAllister. Forthcoming. 'The Personalization of Politics.' In Russell J Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, editors, Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <download>
• Ian McAllister. Forthcoming. 'A War Too Far: Bush , Iraq and the 2004 US Presidential Election.' Presidential Studies Quarterly. <download>
• Ian McAllister. Forthcoming. 'Political Leaders in Westminister Systems.' In Political Leaders and Democratic Elections, editors Kees Aarts, Andre Blais and Hermann Schmitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ian McAllister. 2003. 'Prime Ministers, Opposition Leaders and Government Popularity in Australia.' Australian Journal of Political Science 38(2): 259-77.
• Ian McAllister. 1996. 'Leaders'. In Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective, eds Lawrence LeDuc, Richard Niemi and Pippa Norris. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage. Pp.278-96.

Research on Australian politics is a major focus through the Australian Election Study survey. At least one article usually appears after each federal election explaining the outcome of the election. A priority over the next year is to complete a monograph examining trends in Australian electoral behaviour, going back to the first AES in 1987, and in some cases back to the pioneering surveys conducted by Don Aitkin in 1967, 1979 and 1979.

• Ian McAllister and Clive Bean. 'Leaders, Social Infrastructure, the Economy or Iraq? Voting Behaviour in the 2004 Australian Federal Election.' Unpublished. <download>
• Rachel Gibson and Ian McAllister. 'Does Cyber-Campaigning Win Votes? Online Communication in the 2004 Australian Election.' Unpublished. <download>
• Clive Bean and Ian McAllister. 2005. 'Not an Election of Interest (Rates): Voting Behaviour in the Australian Federal Election of 2004.' In Mortgage Nation, eds Marian Simms and John Warhurst. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. Pp 319-334.
• Ian McAllister. 2003. 'Australia: Party Politicians as a Political Class.' In The Political Class in Advanced Democracies, eds Jens Borchert and Juergen Zeiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 26-44.
• Ian McAllister. 2003. 'Border Protection, the 2001 Australian Election and the Coalition Victory.' Australian Journal of Political Science 38(3): 445-464. <download>
• Ian McAllister. 2001. 'Elections Without Cues: The 1999 Australian Republic Referendum.' Australian Journal of Political Science 36(2): 247-269. <download>

Australian Election Study

The Australian Election Study (AES) surveys are designed to collect data during federal elections for academic research on Australian electoral behaviour and public opinion. In addition, since 1998 the AES has been a member of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) group. The AES commenced operation in 1987 (although three academic surveys of political behaviour were collected in 1967, 1969 and 1979, respectively, but they are not strictly speaking election surveys).

The AES routinely collects data among a nationally representative sample of voters and among major party candidates standing for election. Both the voter and candidate instruments combine a common set of questions. The AES is mounted as a collaborative exercise between several Australian universities. The first survey was funded by a consortium of universities; all of the subsequent surveys have been funded on a competitive basis by the Australian Research Council.

Each of the seven surveys (plus a survey conducted in 1999 during the Constitutional Referendum) has had a central theme:

• 1987 The economy
• 1990 The environment and environmentalism
• 1993 Political culture
• 1996 National identity and citizenship
• 1998 Constitution, rights and minorities
• 1999 Australian republic
• 2001 Challenges to governance
• 2004 The Decline of political parties

All of the data are publicly available from the Social Science Data Archives at the Australian National University (http://ssda.anu.edu.au/). In the case of the candidate data, demographic variables are removed so that individual respondents cannot be identified.

A novel feature of the 2001 and 2004 surveys was an online component, conducted in conjunction with NineMSN and the Bulletin magazine. The 2004 online poll was the world's first conducted on a daily basis during the course of an election campaign. An evaluation of the poll can be found in <Online Bulletin article> and in as presentation given at Parl House in May 2005 <download>

Download the Outline of AES surveys.pdf

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems

The CSES is a 50-nation collaborative effort to gather data to study the effects of various electoral systems and other democratic institutions on citizens' choices and political perspectives. The election studies in each of the collaborating countries donate a fifteen-minute section of their national post-election survey, in which they ask a common set of questions that the CSES designs. Each CSES “module” of questions is used for a period of approximately five years in length, to allow for the varying schedules of elections in different countries. Each module has a different theme. Module 1 (1996-2001) examined the impact of the performance of government; module 2 (2002-2006) was concerned with accountability and representation. Module 3, which will be in the field until about 2010, will examine the choices open to voters. All of our data are freely available to the academic community; the data and other project details can be found at www.cses.org.

This project is notable because it is a broadly based international collaboration of some 50 countries and more than 200 scholars, dedicated to addressing basic questions about elections and electoral systems. It provides a unique resource for research by scholars and students.

<Powerpoint Presentation> <ICORE News Issue 12>