Search

The Curfews period of December 2015 to February 2016 in south-eastern Turkey was a time of collective violence in multiple forms, among which the Cizre Basement Massacres are the most known. The period of the general elections in June 2015, until the later and most recent attempt to carry out a military coup in July 2016, covers multiple curfews and military operations in the south-eastern regions of Turkey, and some social media material shared from the region caught international attention and provoked artistic as well as political responses. Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish journalist and artist, modified and re-shared some footage that was first posted in social media accounts of the special forces in Nusaybin and as a result was sentenced to three years in prison. She continued to produce artworks in prison, even though it was 'prohibited' for her to draw. She started to use her own body fluids, hair, newspaper, toilet paper, and any other available daily material in the prison to produce works of art. She also produced a series of work with her menstrual blood. For this article, I conducted two thematic one-to-one discussions with Zehra Doğan and studied her series of works produced with menstrual blood within the scope of mimesis and embodiment theories. Further sections of the article discuss: the function of these series of works for her acting out and working through processes of the collective political violence of which she became both a witness and a victim; methods of artistic transmission of political violence both for the artist and for the audience; and the possible ritualistic functions of using blood while producing work of arts in relation to collective political killings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provincial Liberal government, then led by McCullagh's good friend Premier Mitchell Hepburn, quickly moved to oppose the action and the I Globe and Mail i soon became a gramophone strongly supporting Hepburn's attack on the UAW. The McCullagh-King relationship Bourrie describes was not positive, with the wily King thinking McCullagh hopelessly naïve and the restless McCullagh convinced that King was too cautious and yesterday's man. [Extracted from the article]

Since Donald Trump's political campaign, Americans have appeared increasingly divided over public opinion issues and U.S. policies with the media seemingly reflecting these divisions. One of Trump's early initiatives was the "Muslim ban," which restricted visitors from seven Muslim‐majority countries. Focusing on the portrayal of Muslims in over 900 hand‐coded articles, our study uses multilevel modeling techniques to examine how newspapers changed their frames and claimsmakers in discussions about Muslims before and after Trump was elected. After the election, newspapers were more likely to include government claimsmakers and an immigration frame and were less likely to mention a radical terrorist leader or portray Muslims as violent. Trump's election and the ban may have ushered in a more sympathetic view of Muslims with more articles focused on them as victims of violence and negative expressions. Across counties, states, and newspapers and between the national versus local presses, we find almost no significant differences in how Muslims were portrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the subject of letters to the editor as one of the longest standing forums for public discussion and debate by ordinary citizens. To show how the voice of ordinary citizens is presented in letters to the editor during national election campaigns over a period of ten years (2008, 2013 & 2017), we are focusing on the Austrian Kronen Zeitung: A newspaper with an exceptionally high market share of up to 40% during the examination period, a heavy focus on the letters section with three pages per day, and a self-declared willingness to take a stance, especially during election periods. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 530 letters to the editor and 525 articles in the politics section as well as survey data from the Austrian national election study on the political positions of the Kronen Zeitung's readers, we find that letters to the editor in the Kronen Zeitung do not reflect, but complement the articles in the politics section. The tone of the letters is more negative than that of news articles, but the letters closely reflect the readers' political positions, therefore offering identification with the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party system institutionalization (PSI) is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non‐democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that a modified version of electoral volatility – the most common measure of PSI in democracies – conveys useful information about PSI in competitive authoritarian contexts by signalling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility and further divides opposition party volatility into Type‐A and Type‐B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party's seat share coincide with an increase in opposition party Type‐B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of PSI has utility for understanding regime dynamics in competitive authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether personality affects support for populist parties either directly or indirectly through "populist attitudes." It theorizes that populist attitudes should be disambiguated into their component facets and that the attitudinal components of populism are best understood as loosely related characteristic adaptations, which mediate the relationship between personality and vote choice. Using data from a nationally representative survey of 2200 Australians fielded prior to the general election in 2019, the paper demonstrates that the three attitudinal components of populism (People-centrism, Anti-elitism, and a Manichean outlook) are weakly associated with one another and distinctively connected with underlying personality traits. Our results indicate that populist attitudes are better conceptualized as a cluster of weakly related psychological tendencies rather than as a coherent worldview or personality. Mediation analysis indicates that personality traits affect support for populist parties both directly and indirectly through the attitudinal components of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major preventative approach adopted by the Nigerian state to forestall election-day violence is the increased deployment of state security agents, particularly, the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) to ensure the safety of voters, electoral materials and officials. But has the inordinate expansion of police presence in balloting spaces clamped down on violence? Part of a PhD study with 15 participants and empirical findings from Rivers State, Nigeria, are presented here to answer the above question. Using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, data were elicited from electoral officials and independent electoral observers. The paper’s contribution is bi-dimensional. First, it adds to the empirical literature on electoral violence in Nigeria by analysing the outcomes of police deployment patterns in balloting spaces. The study finds that the lack of operational capacity and the politicisation of the NPF are mainly responsible for the police’s inability to guarantee the safety of voters and electoral officials. Second, the paper adds to the scholarship on democratically responsive policing. Utilising the NPF as case study, the findings demonstrate the explanatory power of the concept to capture the (un)democratic policing credentials of a given police service. The paper is relevant for understanding the challenges of policing elections in non-Western, illiberal quasi-democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How political speech is regulated has changed, with online spaces presenting new challenges. Private platforms now play a significant role in providing spaces for political speech with their own rules and algorithms. This paper examines the current state of legal regulation for political speech, both online and offline, and identifies gaps in governance. As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of online political speech, it is essential to consider the changing and stricter rules that are being put in place. Private actors have played a crucial role in providing space for this speech. It is worth examining the similarities and differences between offline and online political speech and advertising regulation to ensure everyone's voices are heard and respected. Analyzing applicable public and private law, we investigate how different compliance pulls from national and EU law (existing and upcoming) influence the commitments made by the parties, using the most recent federal elections in Germany as an example. Thus, we assess the German legislative framework, which is also influenced by EU legislation. These investigations reflect new European rules, including the Digital Services Act. After analyzing how parties engage with national law and (self-regulatory) commitments, the paper provides suggestions for improving online speech governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores politics and political participation from the voices and perspectives of migrant slum dwellers in Agbogbloshie, the most populous migrant slum in Accra. Using in-depth interviews, the paper found that residents' conception of politics is couched in a pejorative sense as they view politics as a "dirty and deceitful game." While most migrants see politics as contested elections in which political elites struggle for power, they participate in politics mainly by voting in periodic elections. The main driver of migrants' political participation is the need to vote for political parties and governments that protect them against forced eviction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives partisan competition over the pursuit of legislative majorities in contemporary congressional elections? While conventional wisdom suggests that the chances of a legislative majority is largely predicated on the public's ideological policy preferences or national standing of the president, there is little work assessing the dynamics of partisan competition over the course of the electoral cycle. Leveraging over 60 years of new generic congressional ballot data measuring the monthly preference of the mass public's partisan presence for the congressional majority, this paper finds that partisan competition for the majority largely centers on the national policy mood and the public perception of presidential performance rather than partisan conflict. This paper validates the importance of these findings relating to partisan competition for the legislative majority by showing that this electoral competition plays a significant role in predicting the national normal popular vote and partisan seat turnover from 1960 to 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 15th Malaysian General Election (GE-15) took place on 19 November 2022 successfully. This time the general election was held a year earlier than the 5-year maturity period on 16 July 2023, which is the date of the swearing-in of members of Parliament for the 14th term. The GE-15 results show that there is a pattern of voter support based on a specific geographic location. Therefore, the purpose of writing this article is to analyze voter support patterns based on regional factors. Based on data analysis of the GE 2022 results, observations in the field and analysis of secondary sources such as journal articles and conference papers, the findings of the study show that PH continues to dominate the West Coast region of Peninsular Malaysia as well as in Sabah and Sarawak in urban and semi-urban areas with ethnic mix and Chinese majority, PN controls the East and North Coast regions as well as a small part in the West and South of Peninsular Malaysia in the rural areas of the Malay majority, namely in the East Coast Peninsular zone, namely Kelantan, Terengganu and East Pahang and Central Pahang; North of the peninsula, which is Perlis and Kedah and Penang Seberang Prai North and Central, North Perak, Central Perak; the western part of Peninsular namely North Selangor and West Selangor as well as West Melaka and South Melaka while BN remains in power in the rural areas of central Peninsular Malaysia but with a shrinking number of seats. Therefore, regional influence also affects the voting pattern and needs to be taken into account by the relevant parties to implement campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marked by the killing of a senior ICT professional working for the Electoral Commission and the invalidation of the presidential election by the Supreme Court, the 2017 Kenyan elections make for a good case through which to study how digital technologies shape contemporary electoral practice. This article examines the practice of electoral transparency through technology and argues that it can be conceived as a socio-technical device based both on distancing people from knowledge of the electoral infrastructure and on staging a simplified discourse on public access to the electoral infrastructure. Drawing on interviews with key actors in election technology implementation and ethnographic observations of public events around it, the article argues that digital technology has had three sets of implications for elections. First, it has shaped the electoral infrastructure and the nature of the final result (now a paper and digital hybrid). Second, it has shaped the distribution of knowledge among electoral professionals, giving a central role to ICT actors, objects, and knowledge in the definition of electoral transparency. Third, the centrality of ICTs in elections and the order of knowledge they bring are highly controversial and criticized by other electoral actors who demand for material proof for understanding the inner workings of elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overriding principle of ballot design is that it should not confer any a priori advantage to one candidate over another. Ballot format should not determine or condition an election outcome. Yet, there is a sizeable body of evidence which demonstrates that in many circumstances the design of ballot papers and voting machines contravenes the normative assumption of electoral neutrality. In this article, we look at the impact of ballot paper design at local elections in the Republic of Ireland (hereafter Ireland). The article uses data from an experimental election study conducted at the local elections in Ireland in 2009. Overall the study finds some evidence of a primacy effect and it also demonstrates that candidates located in the middle of the ballot face a challenge as they receive the lowest vote shares of all candidates across the four replica ballots. This mid-table obscurity remains even when party affiliation is known. Thus, it can be argued that candidates placed in such positions incur a disadvantage. To neutralise this effect, the article concludes with a recommendation that a system of random ordering of ballot positions across ballot papers should be implemented so as to ensure that each candidate appears at each ballot position on an equal number of times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper attempts to look at the factors leading to the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party which have not been taken up by the traditional political analysis. Making an ethnography of the Punjab assembly elections 2022 in the Malwa belt of Punjab, it chronicles the social and cultural impact of the farmer’s movement, particularly its far-reaching impact on changing the mood of the electorate. The paper also focuses on the novel digital election campaign which resulted in new election outcomes from the past trends and a massive victory for the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion polls have become vital and increasingly visible parts of election campaigns. Previous research has frequently demonstrated that polls can influence both citizens' voting intentions and political parties' campaign strategies. However, they are also fraught with uncertainty. Margins of error can reflect (parts of) this uncertainty. This paper investigates how citizens' voting intentions change due to whether polling estimates are presented with or without margins of error. Using a vignette experiment (N=3224), we examine this question based on a real‐world example in which different election polls were shown to nationally representative respondents ahead of the 2021 federal election in Germany. We manipulated the display of the margins of error, the interpretation of polls and the closeness of the electoral race. The results indicate that margins of error can influence citizens' voting intentions. This effect is dependent on the actual closeness of the race and additional interpretative guidance provided to voters. More concretely, the results consistently show that margins of error increase citizens' inclination to vote for one of the two largest contesting parties if the polling gap between these parties is small, and an interpretation underlines this closeness. The findings of this study are important for three reasons. First, they help to determine whether margins of error can assist citizens in making more informed (strategic) vote decisions. They shed light on whether depicting opinion‐poll uncertainty affects the key features of representative democracy, such as democratic accountability. Second, the results stress the responsibility of the media. The way polls are interpreted and contextualized influences the effect of margins of error on voting behaviour. Third, the findings of this paper underscore the significance of including methodological details when communicating scientific research findings to the broader public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections are devices, through which the abstract concept of representation gains its specified institutional form, therefore they are highly relevant for populists. The paper examines the illiberal-populist project of redesigning the legal framework of elections in Hungary after 2010, focusing on the role of the Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) in reviewing electoral law as well as interacting with the ordinary courts through electoral adjudication. It is argued that although a distinct 'populist imagination' (Müller) of elections is discernible, there is no special populist electoral politics, rather the 'inherent authoritarianism of democracy' (Pildes) is exacerbated. In Hungary the electoral legislation was shrewdly tailored to the governmental parties' needs, and electoral politics is constantly subjected to instrumental changes. It is argued that although apex courts could be key players in checking electoral manipulation, the HCC did not protect effectively the integrity of electoral law, and at a later stage it even intervened in an arbitrary and arguably politically biased manner. The paper argues that the Hungarian example underscores the need for enhanced court activism in terms of electoral law, especially when populists already came to power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relating electoral laws to electoral integrity has long been a focus of academic research. Using the strategic-relational approach, as outlined in this special issue, it is possible to better understand how electoral laws shape the voter experience and electoral outcomes. This paper contributes to this understanding by looking at Voter Identification (ID) laws. With no consolidated dataset of voter ID laws existing outside the U.S.A. it is difficult to answer research questions put forward in this special issue, especially the second. This paper begins to address this shortfall by presenting the Comparative Voter ID Law (CVIL) index. Which has collected data on 246 individual electoral jurisdictions. Data presented show how voter ID laws are distributed globally, regionally, by regime type and level of democracy. The second part of the analysis goes on to describe voter ID laws by whether a jurisdiction has compulsory ID laws, how many different types of ID are accepted and the minimum number of ID documents that must be shown. Thirdly, other variables within the dataset are described. The CVIL will provide opportunities to understand how Voter ID laws are part of institutional design, are used by actors, shape the voter experience and electoral out-comes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue focusing on the intricacies of Turkey's party system and the evolution of Turkish party competition amid democratic challenges. The introduction provides a brief overview of each paper in this special issue, which delves into the relationship between economic factors and voter behavior, offering insights into the continued dominance of the ruling party. While doing so, the special issue specifically examines the 2023 Turkish General elections, presenting alternative perspectives on how the incumbent party maintains its electoral success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Candidate debates are increasingly organized during elections in democracies and electoral autocracies. How do debates impact partisan divisions and preferences in these contexts? One theoretical perspective suggests that debates should amplify these preferences and divisions, while another implies debates should attenuate them. This paper evaluates these expectations by studying presidential debates organized during Malawi's May 2019 elections. With an experiment and national panel survey, the paper provides evidence consistent with attenuation: debate watchers were substantially more likely to vote across partisan lines (cross-party voting), became more favorable toward out-partisan candidates, and became less favorable toward co-partisans. Suggestive evidence on causal mechanisms shows that these effects were driven by policy persuasion and debates' impact on perceptions of the candidates' policies and qualities. Results advance debates about information processing, campaign effects, and voting behavior in new democracies and electoral autocracies, and have implications for electoral institutions' impact on partisan divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars concur that free and fair elections are essential for proper democratic functioning, but our understanding of the political effects of democratic voting systems is incomplete. This article mitigates the gap by exploiting the gradual transformation of voting systems and ballot structures in Brazil's 1998 executive elections to study the relationship between voting systems and viable and nonviable candidates' vote shares, using regression discontinuity design. It finds that the introduction of electronic voting concentrated vote shares among viable candidates and thus exhibited electoral bias. We posit that this result occurred because viable candidates were better able to communicate the information that electronic voters needed to cast valid ballots than were their nonviable counterparts. The article uses survey data to demonstrate that electronic voters responded to changes in ballot design and internalized the information viable candidates made available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many democracies, citizens complain that elections do not provide palatable options - none of the candidates are particularly appealing. More candidates imply more choice, and could potentially increase participation. However, too many candidates may overburden voters and thus discourage participation. In this paper, we use election results and experimental data to show that more candidates results in less participation. Effects are apparent even when comparing ballots with two or three candidates and are not assuaged by party labels. Our results suggest that too much choice on election day can be just as bad as too little. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have delved into issue attention in parliamentary questions directed at the executive cabinet, yet our understanding of cabinet members’ answers to these questions remains limited. Consequently, this paper investigates whether cabinet members strictly adhere to the issues raised in questions or actively divert attention in a different direction. Analyzing over 60,000 question-answer dyads from more than 3,000 question time sessions across the parliaments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, and the UK, the study reveals that over 70 per cent of answers divert from or ignore issues raised in the questions. Furthermore, diversion is prominent when the prime minister answers questions, especially those from the opposition and concerning cabinet-owned matters, particularly in the early stages of the electoral cycle. This research significantly contributes to legislative studies, emphasising the importance of examining the cabinet agenda and its dynamic interaction with the agenda pursued by members of parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the high throughput and resistance to Byzantine node attacks in the microgrid trading scenario of consortium chains, this paper proposed a multi-leader Byzantine fault tolerance consensus algorithm based on Raft, named MLBRaft. The algorithm first utilized the VRF to select a group of leader nodes, increasing throughput by allowing multiple leaders to submit blocks in parallel. A coordinator role was then introduced, responsible for the election and management of leaders and system consensus. During the block replication process between leaders and followers, the consensus process of the practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm was integrated and simplified to achieve the Byzantine resilience of this algorithm. Experimental results show that, under a large-scale network node environment, compared to the Raft algorithm, this algorithm improves throughput and consensus efficiency at the cost of some communication overhead. Compared to the PBFT algorithm, this algorithm enhances Byzantine fault tolerance and reduces communication overhead. In summary, this algorithm can effectively ensure the timeliness and security of alliance chain microgrid transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the acceptance of data-driven political campaigning depends on four different message characteristics. A vignette study was conducted in 25 countries with a total of 14,390 respondents who all evaluated multiple descriptions of political advertisements. Relying on multi-level models, we find that in particular the source and the issue of the message matters. Messages that are sent by a party the respondent likes and deal with a political issue the respondent considers important are rated more acceptable. Furthermore, targeting based on general characteristics instead of individual ones is considered more acceptable, as is a general call to participate in the upcoming elections instead of a specific call to vote for a certain party. Effects differ across regulatory contexts, with the negative impact of both individual targeting and a specific call to vote for a certain party being in countries that have higher levels of legislative regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referendums differ from general elections in the choices that are offered to voters and in the cues that are available to them to reach a decision. This difference makes the quantity and quality of the information that is available during a referendum campaign crucial to the outcome. This paper uses a unique panel survey to examine the role of the campaign in shaping the outcome of the October 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. We find that the political cues offered to voters – reflected most prominently in voters’ views about the major party leaders – were the most important campaign effects shaping the result. Interpersonal communication also mattered, but government-supplied information and mass media exposure had no effect. The findings highlight the central role that a campaign driven by elites plays in shaping the outcome of a referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of digital technology has become an increasingly prominent feature of election campaigns. While many of those using online tools are familiar partisan actors, many others are not. As concerns about electoral transparency have grown, policy makers have moved to implement regulation designed to help citizens recognize the identity of campaigners. In this paper, we test the rationale behind such regulations by asking how disclosures on online adverts—both informal badging and formal imprints—affect evaluation by UK voters. Using experimental survey design, we test the reactions of participants to real Facebook adverts, labeled as originating from both partisan and apparently non‐partisan sources. Across three experiments, we consistently find evidence to support concerns about what we term “clandestine campaigning”; a phenomenon whereby apparently non‐partisan groups can receive a more favorable reception for incongruous partisan advert content than overtly incongruous partisan‐badged campaign material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore whether perceived individual inequality is associated with popular demand for democracy in 33 African countries. Past research has diverged on whether individual-level inequality should increase or decrease support for democracy, with some arguing that people might see democracy as a solution to inequality, and others that people might see it as a cause. Much of this research however uses country- level measures of inequality. Recent research however increasingly suggests that such country-level scores of inequality insufficiently capture how ordinary people perceive levels of inequality. I advance our understanding of co-variates of demand for democracy by using a perceptual measure of inequality from the Afrobarometer survey: how people feel their living situation compares to others in their country. I find that perceived relative equality is significantly associated with greater demand for democracy, while perceptions of both relative deprivation and relative advantage are significantly associated with lower democratic demand. These effects are largely significant above and beyond the effect of absolute poverty and known predictors of demand for democracy, such as free and fair elections and level of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies examining parties' attack behaviour, also called negative campaigning, largely neglect temporal dynamics. Therefoe, this paper examines how the electoral cycle, the period between two elections, impacts parties' attack behaviour in parliaments. We argue that parties attack all the time but that the (i) level, (ii) type, and (iii) nature of attacks are affected by the electoral cycle as parties adapt their objectives. Analysing longitudinal data on parties' attacks in the parliaments of Belgium, Croatia, and the UK (2010–2020), we find that when elections draw closer parties' use of attacks, trait attacks, and uncivil attacks increases. We also find support for the notion that not all parties' attack behaviour is equally impacted by the electoral cycle, as parties differ in sensitivity to the electoral cycle based on risk acceptance. Overall, the impact of the electoral cycle on parties' strategic choices in general, and attack behaviour specifically, should not be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Europe's parties realign around a new, transnational cleavage, this article turns back to a historical case in which national identity conflicts also coincided with profound economic transformation: multinational and industrializing Imperial Austria. While Austria is an important case for Lipset and Rokkan's classic cleavage theory, they overlooked the long evolution of its party system pre-WWI. This paper introduces the Habsburg Manifesto Dataset (HMD), demonstrating its usefulness by tracking the formation of Imperial Austrian party system cleavages under universal manhood suffrage. Based on the qualitative content analysis of historical electoral manifestos, HMD measures the policy offers and group appeals made by Imperial Austria's German and Czech parties. This allows testing Lipset and Rokkan's claims by applying contemporary methodologies to a case that was effectively excluded from their original analysis. Doing so reveals a surprising degree of structure: parties consistently combined issue and group claims around center-periphery, class, and state-church cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools quickly became a salient issue nationally and in local elections despite CRT's origins as an academic theory. In this paper, we argue that elite asymmetries regarding the importance of CRT spillover to the electorate. We show that Republican legislators and conservative media's use of the term "critical race theory" dwarfed that of Democratic legislators and liberal media, respectively. A spike in general interest in the term happened concurrently with this elite push. We then hypothesize that in part due to this asymmetry in exposure to the term "critical race theory" itself in elite messaging, CRT policy may have an asymmetric effect on political mobilization, favoring Republicans, who tend to oppose the teaching of CRT in schools. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a survey experiment and find that Republicans presented with a pro-CRT policy change are politically mobilized, while Democrats presented with an anti-CRT policy change are not. In particular, Republicans exposed to the pro-CRT policy reported a higher likelihood of voting, encouraging others to vote, and contacting their local politicians. Thus, the case of CRT helps to illustrate the conditions under which issues can asymmetrically mobilize citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We study cooperation in a social dilemma experiment: the governance game. • Our between subjects' factorial design compares three institutions (Random replacement of rules, Referendum, and Voting) to a Baseline condition in which the ruler is never replaced. • Contribution levels are not significantly different across conditions, but voters retain a larger proportion of the surplus generated by the game in democratic regimes (Voting and Referendum). • Voters tolerate the electoral uncertainty associated with Referendum as rulers strategically learned to use transfers to stay in power. In this paper we study electoral systems in an experimental governance game in which citizens contribute to a public good and policymakers decide how to distribute it. In the Voting condition, citizens receive information about the policymaker performance (how much she shared of the public good with individual participants), her skills and her altruism, and vote directly for a policymaker for the next election cycle. In the Referendum condition voters receive information about the policymaker's performance before deciding whether to remove her from office in a simpler binary choice (in or out). If they decide to remove the incumbent, a new policymaker is chosen randomly from the remaining group members, in the spirit of referendums like Brexit or the plebiscite about the peace agreements in Colombia. We compare these two electoral mechanisms with two baselines in which the policymaker is never replaced (Baseline) and another one (Random) in which the policymaker is always randomly replaced by another participant. Our results show that both electoral mechanisms are largely effective in improving citizens' earnings by generating more equitable sharing rules. Citizens in Voting and Referendum extract greater surplus from policymakers than in the other conditions and voting against a candidate (Referendum) is more effective in increasing surplus than voting for a candidate (Voting). Contributions to the public good and conditional cooperation patterns remain strikingly similar in democratic (Referendum and Voting) and non-democratic (Baseline and Random) conditions. Empirical expectations about contributions of other citizens are similar as well. However, we show that policymakers distribute the public good differently in democratic institutions, and more effectively in Referendum than in Voting , as policymakers use clientelist transfers to avoid being replaced. Overall, both democratic institutions are effective in improving citizens' payoffs by indirectly limiting policymakers' surplus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on the foundations provided by the History of Parliament Trust, utilising previously unconsidered documents from the papers of the Dukes of Hamilton to chart and analyse the conduct of parliamentary elections in later eighteenth-century Lancaster. It shows that these elections were more contentious than previously thought; the full range of political issues at play in these elections, and the engagement of the freemen electorate with these; and forms of electoral management and organisation in use that were not known in the borough until now. It places these new insights in the context of Lancaster's electoral politics through the long eighteenth-century, and draws out developments in this period that played an important role in the borough's nineteenth-century elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do democratization processes affect voter turnout in new democracies? Existing work points to an expected boost in electoral turnout after democratization as newly democratic citizens are euphoric to exert newly democratic freedoms or because they developed new political attitudes and behaviours by mobilizing for democracy. While intuitive and normatively appealing, these explanations have not been theoretically nor empirically scrutinized within the literature. This paper develops and tests novel theoretical expectations on the processes and legacies of democratization that impact voter turnout in new democracies. Using electoral turnout data from 1086 national elections between 1946 and 2015, and turnout survey data of over 1 million respondents between 1982 and 2015, we find that the boost in voter turnout (1) exists only for the first election after transition, (2) its effect depends on the life cycle during which individuals experienced the transition and (3) it is less dependent on transition type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On August 2nd, 2022, Kansas held a vote to lift state constitutional protections for abortion access. The vote gained national attention, as it was the first statewide plebiscite on the subject since the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which had overturned the remaining U.S. Constitutional blocks on restricting abortion that had been in place since Roe v. Wade. The turnout for the election was unprecedented for a primary in the state, and to the surprise of many, the amendment failed by a large margin in deep red Kansas. In this paper, we use both precinct-level election results and individual-level voter registration and history data to explore who was mobilized to vote in the August 2022 primary and their behavior in the November 2022 general election. We find that the primary mobilized an electorate that had more women and young people, fewer Republicans, and more first-time voters than a normal primary, but that these demographics were also more likely to then abstain in the general election. Thus, the engagement of young people, especially young women, on the abortion issue remains, but preliminary findings suggest the future of this groups' electoral participation separate from abortion activism is unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many U.S. states require election workers to check signatures on ballots returned by mail, causing tens of thousands of ballots to be rejected at each general election. This paper applies Bayes' theorem, along with findings from prior research, to show how rejection rates are likely to vary under plausible assumptions about signature checker accuracy and the prevalence of invalid signatures. This approach yields a pair of predictions. On the one hand, given findings from research on handwriting forensics, the Bayesian analysis implies election workers are more likely to wrongly reject valid ballots for purported signature mismatch than to correctly reject invalidly signed returns. On the other hand, research on election workers as problem-solvers suggests they may try to minimize the wrongful rejection of ballots. I find empirical support for each prediction, including signs that election workers learn from past errors to calibrate signature rejection rates downwards. This suggests election worker discretion may be an unexpected source of resilience against laws otherwise liable to disenfranchise eligible voters, although I also discuss conditions under which such discretion may conflict with democratic norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their unmistakable advantages, the use of voting machines in elections is a topic of vivid debates. This article focuses on the experiences of voters using three types of voting equipment: (a) a paper ballot, (b) a voting machine, and (c) a voting machine with paper audit trail. An independent-groups experiment was conducted in which voters had to cast a vote for a donation to a charity organization and afterwards filled out a questionnaire about their voting experiences. The paper ballot was considered to be the most anonymous way of voting, especially by female voters. The voting machine (with or without paper trail), on the other hand, was considered to be more user-friendly than the paper ballot and gave the voters more confidence that their votes would actually be processed correctly. No differences were found between the voting machine with and without paper audit trail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs on the commonwealth countries. Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated in Malta in regards to the Panama Papers leak. Bangladesh and Myanmar take a stand to repatriate Rohingya Muslim refugees. Protests in India by Hindu fundamentalists against the screening of Rajasthan's royal queen related movie "Padmavati".

Objective/context: In 2019, promoted by President Martín Vizcarra, the Congress of the Republic of Peru sanctioned a law on mandatory primary elections for voters and political parties. However, the regulation was not implemented, given that it was suspended by the Legislative Branch for the general elections in 2021 and the regional elections in 2022. Methodology: This paper studies the reform process of mandatory, simultaneous, and open primaries (PASO, for its acronym in Spanish) in Peru and its counter-reform based on its suspension on two occasions (2021 and 2022). Twenty-three key actors were interviewed for this research, including congresspersons, ministers, electoral officials, and researchers, in addition to the revision of secondary sources and newspapers of legislative sessions. Conclusions: The paper concludes that PASO were a "decorative" reform, i.e., a law passed without the intention of implementing it. Its sanction was the product of a reformist coalition between civil society and the President of the nation, where the objectives of increasing popular support for President Vizcarra and the need to improve the legitimacy of the political system converged. The reform was resisted by congresspersons who formed two counter-reformist coalitions that suspended the PASO on two occasions. Originality: The research shows that these counterreform coalitions are intrinsically linked to the atomization and personalization of the Peruvian party system, characterized by hyper-personalism and a lack of party structures. In addition, it generates theoretical contributions to studying the processes of reforms and counter-reforms in the context of institutional weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has instrumentalised the Turkish army by conducting military operations in the run-up to elections. Although ending military tutelage has been interpreted in other countries as a sign of the professionalisation of the army, in Turkey it has done the opposite: the civilianisation discourse and civilian hegemony over military institutions have led to the instrumentalisation of the army. I demonstrate that the number of military operations significantly increased in the lead-up to elections, which strongly indicates the extent of instrumentalisation. Previous studies have primarily focused on the army’s praetorian role, neglecting the instrumentalisation process in which the military is engaged. This paper analyses the operational aspect of the army and introduces the concept of instrumentalisation. I contend that the cessation of military tutelage in Turkey has resulted in the securitisation of both society and politics. The failed coup in 2016, the double elections of 2015, and the heightened interest in the defence sector during election periods provide strong grounds for examining the instrumentalisation hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates a systematic geographic bias in the German mixed-member electoral system. This bias concerns the composition of the individual party groups, and, by extension, the composition of the parliament: The Bundestag is much more urban than it would be under equal geographic representation. The bias is caused by the distribution of list seats across districts: since parties have incentives to give the best list positions to candidates from their strongest districts, regions where the vote is more fragmented systematically get more representatives. Since the vote is more fragmented in urban districts, these districts have more MPs than rural districts. The paper empirically analyses Bundestag elections between 1994 and 2017 and demonstrates that geographic disproportionality has increased strongly with the growing fragmentation of the German party system. This affects substantive representation in terms of leadership positions and voting behaviour in the Bundestag. Unequal representation in the German political system therefore also has a geographic component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A unifying setup for opinion models originating in statistical physics and stochastic opinion dynamics are developed and used to analyze election data. The results are interpreted in the light of political theory. We investigate the connection between Potts (Curie–Weiss) models and stochastic opinion models in the view of the Boltzmann distribution and stochastic Glauber dynamics. We particularly find that the q-voter model can be considered as a natural extension of the Zealot model, which is adapted by Lagrangian parameters. We also discuss weak and strong effects (also called extensive and nonextensive) continuum limits for the models. The results are used to compare the Curie–Weiss model, two q-voter models (weak and strong effects), and a reinforcement model (weak effects) in explaining electoral outcomes in four western democracies (United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany). We find that particularly the weak effects models are able to fit the data (Kolmogorov–Smirnov test) where the weak effects reinforcement model performs best (AIC). Additionally, we show how the institutional structure shapes the process of opinion formation. By focusing on the dynamics of opinion formation preceding the act of voting, the models discussed in this paper give insights both into the empirical explanation of elections as such, as well as important aspects of the theory of democracy. Therefore, this paper shows the usefulness of an interdisciplinary approach in studying real world political outcomes by using mathematical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various electronic voting channels have been introduced across a range of countries. In some countries these new channels have proved uncontroversial, while in others, they remain contentious and have even been abandoned. Relatively little is known about whether and why voters have confidence in new and old voting channels. Australia provides a useful case for researching these issues, since it is a mature democracy in which election processes and outcomes are widely accepted. The 2013 Australian Election Study results show that in this context, voters have most confidence in paper-based voting and least in voting via smartphones. Positive political attachments, ease of voting and familiarity with technology are all associated with higher levels of confidence in voting channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second I electoral continuity path i , transitions are initiated by stable ruling parties confident of their ability to thrive under democracy. Were these stable ruling parties created by a violent shock and an unsuccessful push toward democracy? For instance, protests, civil society forces, and sanctions can expedite the process of democratization but are more likely to do so after a violent shock or in the presence of a stable ruling party.[2] A structural factor such as economic development reduces the chances of shocks but enhances the probability of democratization if a shock occurs. [Extracted from the article]

The humble ballot paper is a defining technology of elections throughout the world. This article interrogates its contested past by demonstrating - over a long period and in the context of three contrasting countries - how and why it emerged in the early modern period and how it was then used, abused and regulated in the context of the expanded, and eventually mass, electoral arenas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ironically, by the time that the ballot paper was firmly established, its monopoly was already being challenged by mechanical and then electronic media, which may eventually condemn it to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is known about the topic? Little is known about the state of mental health reform in Australia. This article describes the struggle to develop the systems of accountability necessary to assess national progress. What does this paper add? We provide some historical context regarding mental health reform and consider recent efforts in particular, before then describing current key opportunities. What are the implications for practitioners? Many people working in mental health are struggling to deliver quality services to Australians. This paper considers the broad policy issues which have led to this situation. This is useful for practitioners who can then better respond and participate in processes of systemic reform. Opportunities to engage now in key policy formulation are identified in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]