Options
Michael Bechtel
Former Member
Title
Prof. Dr.
Last Name
Bechtel
First name
Michael
Homepage
Google Scholar
SSRN
http://tinyurl.com/cxll4nu
Now showing
1 - 10 of 17
-
PublicationReality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects in Salient Policy Decisions(Cambridge Univ. Press, 2015-09)
-
PublicationAll Policies Are Glocal : International Environmental Policymaking with Strategic Subnational GovernmentsNational governments have intensified their attempts to create international institutions in various policy fields such as environment, finance, and trade. At the same time, many subnational policymakers have begun to duplicate international efforts by setting their own, stricter policies while others remain inactive or enact more lax regulation. This "glocalization" of policy creates a complex and economically costly patchwork system of regulations. To shed light on this phenomenon we analyze the interaction between subnational and national governments within a general model of international treaty negotiations. The glocalization of regulatory policy can be understood as an attempt by subnational policymakers to strategically constrain or empower national governments in international negotiations. We find that the shadow of international treaty formation gives rise to within-country and cross-country policy balancing dynamics that may explain some of the subnational policy polarization currently observable in many countries. We specify the conditions under which they occur, spell out empirically testable hypotheses, and identify possible theoretical extensions.Type: journal articleJournal: British Journal of Political ScienceVolume: 45Issue: 3
Scopus© Citations 11 -
PublicationPreferences for International Redistribution: The Divide Over the Eurozone BailoutsWhy do voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries? Despite the prominence of public opinion in the ongoing debate over the eurozone bailouts, voters' preferences on the topic are poorly understood. We conduct the first systematic analysis of this issue using observational and experimental survey data from Germany, the country shouldering the largest share of the EU's financial rescue fund. Testing a range of theoretical explanations, we find that individuals' own economic standing has limited explanatory power in accounting for their position on the bailouts. In contrast, social dispositions such as altruism and cosmopolitanism robustly correlate with support for the bailouts. The results indicate that the divide in public opinion over the bailouts is not drawn along distributive lines separating domestic winners and losers. Instead, the bailout debate is better understood as a foreign policy issue that pits economic nationalist sentiments versus greater cosmopolitan affinity and other-regarding concerns.Type: journal articleJournal: American Journal of Political ScienceVolume: 2014Issue: 58 (4)
-
PublicationMass Support for Climate Cooperation Depends on Institutional DesignEffective climate mitigation requires international cooperation and these global efforts need broad public support to be sustainable over the long run. We provide estimates of public support for different types of climate agreements in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using data from a large-scale experimental survey, we explore how three key dimensions of global climate cooperation---costs and distribution, participation, and enforcement---affect individuals' willingness to support these international efforts. We find that design features have significant effects on public support. Specifically, our results indicate that support is higher for global climate agreements that involve lower costs, distribute costs according to prominent fairness principles, encompass more countries, and include a small sanction if a country fails to meet its emissions reduction targets. In contrast to well documented baseline differences in public support for climate mitigation efforts, opinion responds similarly to changes in climate policy design in all four countries. We also find that the effects of institutional design features can bring about decisive changes in the level of public support for a global climate agreement. Moreover, the results appear consistent with the view that the sensitivity of public support to design features reflects underlying norms of reciprocity and individuals' beliefs about the potential effectiveness of specific agreements.Type: journal articleJournal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of AmericaVolume: 110Issue: 34
Scopus© Citations 184 -
PublicationNot Always Second Order: Subnational Elections, National-level Vote Intentions, and Volatility Spillovers in a Multi-level Electoral SystemThe widespread second-order view on subnational elections leaves little room for the idea that subnational election campaigns matter for national-level electoral preferences. I challenge this perspective and explore the context-conditional role of subnational election campaigns for national-level vote intentions in multilevel systems. Campaigns direct citizens' attention to the political and economic fundamentals that determine their electoral preferences. Subnational election campaigns and the major campaign issues receive nationwide media coverage. This induces all citizens in a country to evaluate parties at the national level even if they themselves are not eligible to vote in the upcoming subnational election. Thereby, subnational election campaigns may lead to a reduction in the uncertainty of voters' national-level electoral preferences throughout the country, which is reflected by a decrease in the volatility of national-level vote intentions. I explore weekly vote intention data from Germany (1992-2007) within a conditional volatility model. Subnational elections reduce uncertainty in nationwide federal-level vote intentions for major parties. However, patterns of incumbency and coalitional shifts moderate this volatility-reducing effect.Type: journal articleJournal: Electoral StudiesVolume: 31Issue: 1
Scopus© Citations 28 -
PublicationThe Green Side of Protectionism: Environmental Concerns and Three Facets of Trade Policy PreferencesA large literature in international political economy views individuals' trade policy preferences as a function of the income effects of economic openness. We argue that the expected environmental consequences of free trade play a noteworthy and underappreciated role for protectionist attitudes that has not been noted so far. We use unique Swiss survey data that contains measures of individuals' environmental concerns and different aspects of trade policy preferences to examine whether those who are more concerned about the environment also hold more protectionist trade policy preferences. Our results support this expectation. Individuals who are more concerned about the environment tend to think that globalization has more negative than positive effects, more strongly support jobs-related protectionism, and place more emphasis on aspects that go beyond price and quality when evaluating foreign products. Our results suggest that also the expected environmental consequences of free trade matter for trade policy preferences and not just the potential effects on the domestic wage distribution.Type: journal articleJournal: Review of International Political EconomyVolume: 19Issue: 5
Scopus© Citations 49 -
PublicationHow Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short- and Long-term Electoral Returns to Beneficial PolicyDominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightedness may obstruct the welfare-improving effect of democratic accountability. However, we know little about how long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies. We exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster, the 2002 Elbe flooding in Germany, to provide an upper bound for the short- and long-term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits. We estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election. Twenty-five percent of this short-term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election. We conclude that, given favorable circumstances, policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far, and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior, democratic accountability, and public policyType: journal articleJournal: ajps American Journal of Political ScienceVolume: 55Issue: 4
Scopus© Citations 228 -
PublicationForecasting European Union Politics: Real-time Forecasts in Political Time Series AnalysisForecasting plays an increasingly important role in the scientific study of European Union politics and in political science in general. This is because forecasts are not only indispensable for (political) actors who need to form expectations about future events, but can also be used to judge the validity of (competing) theoretical models. While the debate about whether political science should engage in forecasting is largely over, many questions about how this should be done in everyday research are still open. One of these is how forecasts of political time series can be derived from theoretical models. Using a practical example from European Union research, we start to address this question. We first show how forecasts of political time series can be derived from both theoretical and atheoretical models. Subsequently, we use an atheoretical time series (ARMA) imputation approach to demonstrate how they can be fruitfully integrated in order to overcome some of the limitations to making forecasts of political time series which are based on theoretical models.Type: journal articleJournal: European Union PoliticsVolume: 11Issue: 2
Scopus© Citations 14 -
PublicationEliciting Substance from ‘Hot Air': Financial Market Responses to EU Summit Decisions on European DefenseThe results of deliberations in multilateral fora are often considered as ineffective. Decision making in the European Union (EU) and in particular its key intergovernmental body, the European Council, poses no exception. Especially in the domain of EU foreign and security affairs the unanimity requirement governing this institution allegedly allows nationalist governments to torpedo any attempt to build up a credible European defense force and a unified foreign policy stance. In this paper, we take issue with the claim that multilateral summits merely result in "hot air" by looking at whether and how decisions made during EU summit meetings affect the European defense industry. We argue that investors react positively to a successful strengthening of Europe's military component - a vital part of the intensified cooperation within the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) - since such decisions increase the demand for military products and raise the expected profits in the European defense industry. Our findings lend empirical support to the view that financial markets indeed evaluate the substance of European Council meetings and react positively to those summit decisions which consolidated EU military capabilities and the ESDP. Each of these substantial Council decisions increased the value of the European defense sector by about 4 billion Euros on average. This shows that multilateral decisions can have considerable economic and financial repercussions.Type: journal articleJournal: International OrganizationVolume: 64Issue: 2
Scopus© Citations 32 -
PublicationThe Political Sources of Systematic Investment Risk: Lessons from a Consensus DemocracyThis study examines the relationships between democratic politics and systematic investment (or capital) risk. Low risk is crucial to any well-functioning economy, as it encourages capital investment, facilitates growth, and enhances overall economic performance. Up until now, scholars have not analyzed how politics affects uncertainty about investment conditions on financial markets. This study distinguishes pre-electoral, post-electoral, and institutional factors and examines how these influence systematic investment risk using daily stock market data from Germany. The results suggest that more (less) favorable and reliable investment conditions during the incumbency of right(left)-leaning governments lead to lower (higher) investment risk. This partisan effect is stronger, the more inflation increases and depends on whether government is unified or divided. Investors also anticipate the effect of government partisanship: Systematic risk decreases (increases) if the electoral prospects of a right(left)-leaning government enhance. Finally, grand coalition governments as well as periods of coalition formation trigger higher investment risk.Type: journal articleJournal: The Journal of PoliticsVolume: 71Issue: 2