Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / ECPR Press
Pages: 278
978-1-907301-73-5 • Hardback • May 2014 • $116.00 • (£89.00)
978-1-78552-141-6 • Paperback • May 2015 • $54.00 • (£42.00)
Diego Garzia is Jean Monnet postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. Previously, he studied at the Universities of Rome (Sapienza), Leiden, Siena and Oxford. His areas of expertise include comparative political behaviour, parties and elections in Western Europe. He has authored numerous publications and professional reports including articles in journals such as Electoral Studies, Political Psychology, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly and West European Politics. He is co-editor (with Lorella Cedroni) of Voting Advice Applications in Europe: The State of the Art – the first comparative volume ever devoted to VAAs.
Stefan Marschall is a full professor of political science and Chair of German Politics at the Department of Social Sciences, Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf. Before moving to Düsseldorf in 2010, he was full professor of political science at the University of Siegen. Stefan Marschall is a specialist on the political system of Germany, political communication online, and comparative as well as transnational parliamentarism. He has published textbooks on Germany’s political system and on parliamentarism, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters about online political communication and parliamentary affairs.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xv
Chapter One – Voting Advice Applications in a Comparative Perspective:
An Introduction
Stefan Marschall and Diego Garzia 1
Chapter Two – The Content and Formulation of Statements in Voting
Advice Applications: A Comparative Analysis of 26 VAAs
Kirsten Van Camp, Jonas Lefevere and Stefaan Walgrave 11
Chapter Three – Comparing Methods for Estimating Parties’ Positions in
Voting Advice Applications
Kostas Gemenis and Carolien van Ham 33
Chapter Four – What’s Behind a Matching Algorithm? A Critical
Assessment of How Voting Advice Applications Produce Voting
Recommendations
Fernando Mendez 49
Chapter Five – Voting Advice Applications as Campaign Actors:
Mapping VAAs’ Interactions with Parties, Media and Voters
André Krouwel, Thomas Vitiello and Matthew Wall 67
Chapter Six – Data Quality and Data Cleaning
Ioannis Andreadis 79
Chapter Seven – Profiling Users
Stefan Marschall 93
Chapter Eight – The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Electoral
Participation
Diego Garzia, Andrea De Angelis and Joelle Pianzola 105
vi Matching Voters with Parties and Candidates
Chapter Nine – The Impact of Voting Advice Applications on Vote Choice
Ioannis Andreadis and Matthew Wall 115
Chapter Ten – Social Representations of VAAs: A Comparative Analysis
Vasiliki Triga 129
Chapter Eleven – Being a VAA-Candidate: Why Do Candidates Use
Voting Advice Applications and What Can We Learn From It?
Patrick Dumont, Raphaël Kies and Jan Fivaz 145
Chapter Twelve – Using VAA-Generated Data for Mapping Partisan
Supporters in the Ideological Space
Fernando Mendez and Jonathan Wheatley 161
Chapter Thirteen – Matching Voters with Parties in Supranational Elections:
The Case of the EU Profiler
Maria Laura Sudulich, Diego Garzia, Alexander H. Trechsel
and Kristjan Vassil 175
Chapter Fourteen – Does the Electoral System Influence the Political
Positions of Parties and Candidates? Answers from VAA-Research
Andreas Ladner 183
Chapter Fifteen – Keeping Promises: Voting Advice Applications and
Political Representation
Jan Fivaz, Tom Louwerse and Daniel Schwarz 197
Chapter Sixteen – Voting Advice Applications and Political Theory:
Citizenship, Participation and Representation
Joel Anderson and Thomas Fossen 217
The Lausanne Declaration on Voting Advice Applications 227
Bibliography 229
Index 251