Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "(WHY) DO POLITICIANS CARE ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION? Politicians' accountability beliefs: the missing link in explaining policy (in)congruence." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Politicians nowadays face the criticism of not being responsive towards citizens' demands, with as a classical though crucial example the recent populist uprisings. Citizens seem to believe that, even if they convey their preferences loud and clear, they are ignored by those who should represent them. One crucial guarantee of responsive politicians, lies in the threat of electoral reprisal: politicians are incentivized to do what citizens want because they want to retain in office. Politicians' desire to be reelected makes them presumably enact more congruent policies. In this project, I focus on this important mechanism, by examining politicians' beliefs about how and to what extent the congruence of their behavior with what citizens want, will have positive or negative electoral consequences. In strong contradiction with the centrality of this research question in the public debate, it has rarely come to the attention of academics. In this project, I address this gap with an in-depth study of politicians' so-called ""accountability beliefs"". First, I aim to conceptualize those accountability beliefs. Second, I examine accountability beliefs empirically by means of an extensive survey with politicians in three different countries. Third, I aim to explain those beliefs by leveraging differences between countries, parties, politicians and issues. Finally, by conducting a survey-embedded experiment, I investigate whether politicians' accountability beliefs affect their behavior." "Politicians as opinion leaders. How politicians' news sharing influences media trust and polarization." "Peter Van Aelst" "Antwerp Media in Society Centre (AMSoC), Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "This proposal puts the role of politicians as opinion leaders central. The new digital media environment has given politicians more tools to influence, both directly and indirectly, people's consumption and interpretation of news and information on current affairs. We will study what news stories politicians share on social media and how this affects their followers and public opinion in general. First, politicians can influence to what extent people trust mainstream and alternative media. By sharing and commenting on the content of news stories on social media, politicians can help disseminate their messages, circumventing the gatekeeping role of the media. This influence can enhance the trust in (alternative/partisan) media outlets, but also damage the media's reputation as a democratic institution. Second, politicians can promote more extreme views and opinions, and contribute to the polarization of their audience. Ultimately, politicians, by acting as opinion leaders, may contribute to their followers getting stuck in so-called 'echo chambers' of like-minded information. We will use a multi-method approach (content analysis, user engagement analysis, survey, experiment) to study the news sharing behavior of politicians and its effects on their followers in Belgium (Flanders), the Netherlands, and the UK." "Why are female politicians not making it into the news? And why do they get different coverage if they do? A comparative eight-country study." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Research shows that female politicians receive less media coverage than their male colleagues. And, when female politicians do get in the news, they get different media coverage with more attention to their family situation, less attention for the issues they raise,and a greater emphasis on their age, sex and appearance. The goal of this project is to account for the under- and misrepresentation of female politicians: how come? Why are female politicians not making it into the news and why do they get different coverage if they do?" "Communicating Populism on Social Media: Comparing Facebook Communicative Patterns of Parties and Politicians in Taiwan and Germany" "Liao Da-chi, Leen d'Haenens" "Institute for Media Studies" "The main research question tackled in this dissertation is as follows: How is populism communicated by political parties and politicians on social media? Drawing from current literature, this research extracts three theoretical drawbacks. First, although most state-of-the-art research on populist communication has conceptually equated populist rhetoric to populist style, this dissertation distinguishes rhetorical and stylistic roles and investigates relationships between both. Second, previous studies have mostly accentuated communicative patterns of specific populists from cross-sectional analyses. However, this dissertation provides a comprehensive and interactive analysis that scrutinizes political actors’ rhetorical and stylistic uses of populist communication. Third, different from most populism literature emphasizing European and Latin American viewpoints, this dissertation provides a unique Asian-European perspective to compare populist communication patterns in different social contexts. Following the communication-centered approach, this dissertation focuses on populist communication patterns of political actors (i.e., political parties and politicians) on Facebook in Taiwan’s 2020 legislative election and Germany’s 2017 federal election. This dissertation covers four empirical studies. On the one hand, we systematically sketches the merits and omissions of the current research on populist communication. On the other hand, we investigates populist communication from three dimensions, including party types, campaign stimulus, and stylistic devices. Methodologically, multiple methods for data acquisition and analysis are employed. We conclude with four main contributions, 1) initially theorizing relationships between populist rhetoric and style, 2) highlighting that the association between the campaign stimulus and the use of populist communication is context-dependent, 3) indicating similarities and discrepancies among populist communication in different social contexts.  Keywords: populist communication, communication-centered approach, populist rhetoric, populist style, campaign stimulus, 2020 Taiwanese legislative election, 2017 German federal election (Bundestagswahl), Facebook communication" "The Executive Triangle: Politicians, Ministerial Advisors and Top Civil Servants" "Koen Verhoest" "Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Hertie School of Governance, University of Exeter, Catholic University of Louvain, University of Oslo, Ghent University, Politics & Public Governance" "Our scientific research network, known as the ""The Executive Triangle"", was informally established in 2015, initially comprising 12 senior academics with an interest in researching executive-level public administration from across Europe and the UK. We have since grown to include more than 26 senior researchers across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Fortunately for Flanders, Professor Marleen Brans in the Public Governance Institute at KU Leuven, was a key founding partner of the network, a key researcher, and is a leading voice in the group. We have only just made early steps to formalise our network, by, among other things, coordinating specialist panels at international conferences, preparing joint grant applications, developing a research agenda, and plans to launch a website. If successful, the Scientific Research Network (WOG) grant will provide a timely contribution to strengthen the network and help our Flemish partners improve their scientific leadership and knowledge exchange. We aim to use grant funding for building scientific collaboration by organising workshops, symposia, specialist technical exchanges, and joint publications. Plus, we aim to submit joint research projects with international research bodies (such as the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, Research Council of Norway, German Research Foundation, and international/multi-lateral level opportunities like the successor of Horizon 2020, NORFACE, and Open Research Area), which, if successful, would provide Flemish researchers access to new comparative projects and publications. Our research questions focus on the impact of politicisation on policymaking and legitimacy across Europe. Building a research infrastructure to answer our research questions will be a major step beyond purely descriptive analyses towards understanding the consequences of politicisation. In a more nuanced sense, the Executive Triangle delves into the tension between political craft and professional competence; or in other words, tension between democracy and technocracy. Critically, the network could potentially lay the foundation for a major push forward in the comparative study of the apex of governments, which has only progressed incrementally since the early 1980s." "How politicians evaluate public opinion (POLEVPOP)." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "In democracies, policies are expected to be responsive to public opinion. Extant research showed that responsiveness is selective. It varies across issues, time and countries. Yet, how come policies vary in their responsiveness has not received a satisfying answer. POLEVPOP formulates and examines a novel answer to the puzzle why policy responsiveness varies. Its core argument holds that politicians evaluate public opinion and let their actions—in line with public opinion or going against it—depend on their appraisal. When public opinion is evaluated negatively, it has no effect on what politicians do; that it is evaluated positively increases the chance that politicians act congruently. Politicians' appraisal of public opinion has been completely overlooked as a mechanism bringing about responsive representation. Considering it a core factor POLEVPOP examines three matters: (1) which criteria politicians use to appraise public opinion; (2) how, depending on the opinion content of the message, the channel through which the opinion is conveyed and the group from which it comes, concrete public opinion signals are evaluated; and, (3) which effect these evaluations have on politicians' political action. The central expectation is that public opinion is evaluated by politicians based on a consistent and common scoreboard. For instance, opinion signals are rated based on their representativity and underlying public opinion is evaluated on its quality and its intensity. The project tackles these matters drawing on a comparative study in eight different countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden). In two consecutive rounds of data gathering, a large sample of politicians is surveyed and interviewed, and they are subjected to a series of survey-embedded experiments. To put politicians' behavior in perspective, their answers are compared to parallel citizen surveys in all countries." "(Why) do politicians care about public opinion?Politicians' accountability beliefs: the missing link in explaining policy (in)congruence." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Politicians nowadays face the criticism of not being responsive towards citizens' demands, with as a classical though crucial example the recent populist uprisings. Citizens seem to believe that, even if they convey their preferences loud and clear, they are ignored by those who should represent them. One crucial guarantee of responsive politicians, lies in the threat of electoral reprisal: politicians are incentivized to do what citizens want because they want to retain in office. Politicians' desire to be reelected makes them presumably enact more congruent policies. In this project, I focus on this important mechanism, by examining politicians' beliefs about how and to what extent the congruence of their behavior with what citizens want, will have positive or negative electoral consequences. In strong contradiction with the centrality of this research question in the public debate, it has rarely come to the attention of academics. In this project, I address this gap with an in-depth study of politicians' so-called ""accountability beliefs"". First, I aim to conceptualize those accountability beliefs. Second, I examine accountability beliefs empirically by means of an extensive survey with politicians in three different countries. Third, I aim to explain those beliefs by leveraging differences between countries, parties, politicians and issues. Finally, by conducting a survey-embedded experiment, I investigate whether politicians' accountability beliefs affect their behavior." "Dynamic Interplay between Public Approval Polls and Politicians' Behaviour." "Zeljko Poljak" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Public opinion has a substantial impact on politicians, yet the intricate dynamic between both remains poorly understood. This raises a fundamental question: If politicians genuinely respond to public opinion, as scholars suggest, how can we explain widespread citizens' dissatisfaction with politics? This research project aims to unravel this puzzle by adopting a novel approach, looking into the interplay between public approval polls and politicians' online behaviour on social media. Specifically, the project involves hiring student coders to analyse politicians' Facebook posts before and after the release of public approval polls to (i) understand how polls (t-1) influence politicians' behaviour (t) and, consequently, (ii) how politicians' behaviour (t) influences subsequent public approval (t+1). Ultimately, this research endeavour will enhance our understanding of the relationship between the public and politicians, offering insights into how to address challenges facing modern democracies. On a personal level, this project provides an opportunity for me, an aspiring academic, to lead an independent research project and establish a new research trajectory centred on the influence of public approval polls on politicians' behaviour and vice-versa." "Politicians' Evaluation of Public Opinion." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "When taking policy decisions, elected politicians balance their own ideological views against public opinion. As a result, responsiveness is selective: politicians' course of action sometimes follows and sometimes contradicts popular preferences. It is not yet well understood how politicians make this trade-off. This project examines a novel and understudied explanation at the micro level: how politicians evaluate public opinion signals. The core idea is that some public opinion signals are appraised more positively by politicians than others; and that this appraisal affects whether public opinion weighs on their actions. The objectives are (1) to lay bare the criteria that politicians use to evaluate public opinion; (2) to study how characteristics of a public opinion signal (sender, channel and content) affect its evaluation; (3) to understand how these evaluations affect political actions; and (4) to explore the interplay between politicians' own opinions and their evaluations of public opinion. To study these questions, the project draws on surveys, survey-experiments and interviews with politicians in Belgium. In two rounds of data collection, we will scrutinize what role evaluations of public opinion play in the coming about of political representation. The findings have the potential to inform us on important debates such as why certain disadvantaged groups (e.g. the poor) are represented worse than other groups." "It's a Matter of Timing. The Practice and Effectiveness of Strategic Communication Timing by Politicians in Belgium." "Stefaan Walgrave" "Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)" "Political decisions are more and more made with the press in mind. Politicians' communication efforts are increasingly professionalized and ever more resources go to news management. Accordingly, there is growing scholarly attention for the mediatization of politics and the adaptation of politicians to the media logic. Yet, this stream of literature has remained largely theoretical. Few studies investigate the activities by which politicians try to shape media coverage. Furthermore, studies examining politicians' media work are almost exclusively about 'what' the content of the messages is and 'how' these are sent. 'When' the messages are communicated is mostly neglected. The timing of a message, however, is a crucial factor to explain whether political messages are covered in the news. What is picked up by journalists is highly dependent on media dynamics at a certain moment. Moreover, timing strategies are gaining relevance because of the 24-hour news cycle and the advent of news websites and social media. This project constructs a theory on strategic timing and empirically analyzes whether timing is an effective tool for politicians to gain or avoid media coverage. Via a classic gatekeeping study, observation of press officers and experimental surveys with Belgian politicians, this project investigates how political actors strategically plan their communications (the practice of timing) and to what extent this influences what becomes news (the effectiveness of timing)."