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Articles by Gunnar Thesen
From bonus to burden: The cost of ruling from a new(s) perspective
The cost of ruling – the fact that incumbents lose support at the next election – is one of the few empirical laws of political science (Cuzan, 2015), documented in a number of studies (Nannestad & Paldam, 1999; Narud & Valen, 2008; Paldam, 1986; Stevenson, 2002; Wlezien, 2017).1 A recent study estimates that governments on average lose two to three percentage points of their support at each election (Cuzan, 2022), a loss that is close to or larger than the plurality margin in most recent...
The Determinants of the Media Coverage of Politicians: The Role of Parliamentary Activities
Research Article Gunnar Thesen, University of Stavanger, Will Jennings, University of Southampton, Erik De Vries, University of Stavanger, * Tevfik Murat Yildirim is Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Stavanger, Norway (email: murat.yildirim@uis.no). Gunnar Thesen is Professor of Political Science at University of Stavanger, Norway. Will Jennings is Professor of Political Science at University of Southampton, United Kingdom.
Cost of ruling as a game of tones: The accumulation of bad news and incumbents’ vote loss
Original Article Abstract An extensive body of research documents how governing parties generally suffer electoral defeats. Varying explanations have been offered, most of which touch upon the liabilities of policy responsibility. Although media coverage is generally acknowledged as one of these liabilities, few empirical studies have examined how news content affect government support.
Incumbents dominate the news. But does it help or hurt them?
Politicians in power — presidents, prime ministers, Cabinet-level officials and legislative leaders — usually dominate the news. And that’s usually assumed to be good for those in power. Scholars who study political communication refer to it as the “incumbency bonus”: Politicians from incumbent parties appear more frequently in the news than challengers from the opposition. Thus, the visibility in the media of President Trump is an extreme case of a more general phenomenon.
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