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This article is a cross-national study of the impact of electoral system design on electoral misconduct. It argues that elections held in single-member districts (SMD) under plurality and majority rule are more likely to be the object of malpractice than those run under proportional representation (PR). Two reasons are advanced in support of this argument: Candidates in SMD systems have more to gain from individual efforts to manipulate elections than is the case for candidates in PR contests; and malfeasance is more efficient under SMD rules, in that the number of votes that must be altered to change the outcome is typically smaller than it is under PR. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed on a new data set of electoral manipulation in 24 postcommunist countries between 1995 and 2004. The proportion of seats elected in SMDs is found to be positively associated with levels of electoral misconduct, controlling for a variety of contextual factors. Keywords: electoral systems; electoral manipulation; corruption; democratization

This study examines the proposition that political business cycle theory is relevant to private foreign lenders to developing countries. We find that: credit rating agencies downgrade developing country ratings more often in election years, and do so by approximately one rating level; bond spreads are higher in the 60 days before an election compared to spreads in the 60 days after an election: spreads trend significantly downward in the 60 days before an election, but then flatten out in the 60 days after an election. Agencies and bondholders view elections negatively, increasing the cost of capital to developing democracies. JEL classification: D72; F30; F34; G12; G14; G15; G29 Keywords: Political business cycles; Elections; Developing countries; Credit ratings; Bond spreads

The two different views of the role of elections in policy formation are evaluated. According to one view voters affect the candidates' policy choices, and the other is that they merely elect the available choices. The relevance of these policies for the U.S. House are assessed.

This paper presents a rational political budget cycle model where devaluation acts as a tax on consumption due to a cash-in-advance constraint. Competent governments can signal their competency by reducing the rate of devaluation prior to elections. When voters also ignore the degree to which governments are opportunistic, i.e. the extent to which they are willing to distort the economy for electoral gain, an incompetent, opportunistic incumbent can reduce the rate of devaluation in the run-up to an election. The main theoretical implication in either setup, that the rate of devaluation is significantly higher in the months following an election, is consistent with evidence drawn from 26 countries in Latin America. Keywords: Devaluation; Seigniorage; Political budget cycle; Two-dimensional asymmetric information JEL classification: E31; D72

This article presents evidence of name-order effects in balloting from a study of the 1998 Democratic primary in New York City, in which the order of candidates' names was rotated by precinct. In 71 of 79 individual nominating contests, candidates received a greater proportion of the vote when listed first than when listed in any other position. In seven of those 71 contests the advantage to first position exceeded the winner's margin of victory, suggesting that ballot position would have determined the election outcomes if one candidate had held the top spot in all precincts.

Using panel data for 104 countries between 1975 and 1998, this article tries to explain interruptions of IMF programmes around election dates in the recipient countries. On average, programmes seem to be more likely to break down before elections. This increase in interruption probabilities is, however, less severe in more democratic countries. In true democracies interruption frequencies are even lower prior to elections. While no other political variables than elections and democracy were found to influence compliance systematically, programme interruptions are significantly more likely in countries with high government consumption, high levels of short-term debt and low GDP per capita at programme initiation., I. INTRODUCTION When the IMF was founded in Bretton Woods in 1944, there was no consideration of intrusive conditionality now common under its programmes. The Fund was assigned the task [...]

The rightest party Our Ukraine won the election with 85% of the votes. The author finds that the Ukraine needs Europe and Russia.

A study of aggregate and survey data in Queensland explains how the Keating government was resoundingly defeated in March 1996. Much of the Labor party's traditional, core constituency was made up of blue-collar workers who shifted their support away from Labor. The trend was also noticed in other states, but the swing was not as pronounced., In the immediate wake of the 1996 Australian federal elections pundits variously attributed the ALP's defeat to the loss of its `heartlands', to the party's failure in government to retain [...]

Theory: Theories of party government suggest that party strength and electoral competition have unique and independent influences on policy-making. Hypotheses: District-level electoral competition leads to increased public policy liberalism; greater liberalism among the public leads to the enactment of more liberal public policies; more liberal legislatures enact more liberal public policies; and the percentage of Democrats in a state legislature is related significantly to policy adoptions. Methods: Erikson, Wright, and McIver's (1989) cross-sectional model of state policy liberalism is replicated on the original set of states, a smaller set of states, and with an additional variable added. Estimates are from an OLS routine in SPSS-Windows software. Results: The original results are replicated successfully. The measure of district-level electoral competition enters the model positively and significantly and adds to the variation explained. The results provide evidence for independent effects of electoral competition and legislative party strength on state policy-making.

The successful elections in Bangladesh in June 1996 have opened up immense opportunities for economic development and industrial growth. The holding of free and fair elections by the caretaker government, the army's cooperation and the high voter turnout have contributed towards restoring the democratic tradition and ending the 1994-95 parliamentary crisis. Non-governmental organizations have played an important role in increasing public awareness of the country's problems. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank, which offers credits to the poor, have contributing greatly to rural development.

Many democratic governments give weight to political gains rather than to national interests while formulating foreign policy, and nonpartisan decisions may be taken only by a government which is sure of reelection. A government facing electoral uncertainties is more likely to be adventurous in its foreign policy. The chances of a government's misuse of foreign policy for electoral purposes are less in a political system involving more decision makers. A model is examined to show how reelection desires motivate governments to follow suboptimal foreign policies.

A study on the influences of images of candidates created by the flow of information and media coverage in the 1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign revealed a positive relationship between candidate's images and voting pattern. The researchers based their concept of candidate image on the idea that intermediary influences such as news coverage and interpersonal communication along with information about the candidates formulate the image of the candidate. The study used a three wave panel design that recorded voter's evaluation of candidates at various stages of the campaign.

The 1930s and the 1980s were decades of significant political economic change in the capitalist democracies. Depression and the rise of the industrial working class created opportunities for the establishment of social democracy in the 1930s. Stagflation and the decline of the working class made possible waves of radical rightist reform. However, this article suggests that only governments that do not have to concentrate myopically on the exigencies of winning the next election have the political space to undertake structural changes, the benefits of which may only be manifest in the medium term. In turn, successful reforms are likely to entail changes in underlying social structural conditions - such as the strengthening or weakening of organized labor movements - that both expand the electoral constituencies of the government's partisan-preferred policies and improve their macroeconomic efficacy. These propositions are examined with respect to the construction social democracy in Sweden in the 1930s and the Construction of neoliberalism in Thatcher's Britain. Although the consequences of these two instances were diametrically opposed, the conditions that created the possibility for radical reform, and the strategies pursued by the governments to precipitate structural change were very similar., Significant economic change precipitate changes in the political structure of governments. The construction of social democracy in Sweden in 1930's and neoliberalism in Britain in 1980's support the idea that successful reforms involve social structural changes such as the strengthening or weakening of organized labor movements which in turn influence elections and economy. Governments are likely to undertake structural change when this has no adverse effect on the next election.

What factors affect ballot measure outcomes? This study uses a data base of citizen-sponsored ballot measures in California cities to examine the effect of two factors--voter turnout and campaign spending--on ballot measure outcomes. The results are examined in light of efforts to reform the initiative process.

This rejoinder challenges Keith Archer's claim that the National Election Studies may be used to 'predict behaviour.' It calls for more modesty and circumspection and less pretension in formulating 'explanations' of Canadian voting behavior based on demonstrably questionable survey reports. It pleads for more critical analyses of the NES rather than for the abandonment of surveys. Some historical evidence is offered to demonstrate the remarkable stability, rather than alleged volatility, of voters in specific ridings and provinces.

This article responds to Nelson Wiseman's critique of the Canadian National Election Studies. It argues that Wiseman misunderstands the nature of the election studies, that he takes an unjustifiably narrow view of the research that has used those data, that he often makes his argument by purposefully distorting the data, and that the solutions he offers to the problems of data analysis with National Election Studies are themselves seriously flawed. Overall there is very little that redeems his article, and much that redeems the National Election Studies.