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In this paper, we explore the roots of perceptions of local corruption in U.S. cities, using survey data collected from 39 cities during 40 different mayoral election campaigns. We examine the impact of the city-level corruption context alongside measures of political information, partisan and racial/ethnic representation in local government, evaluations of personal and policy satisfaction, and other individual-level attitudinal and demographic characteristics. We find that perceptions of local corruption are responsive to the local corruption context—though this relationship is heavily conditioned by political knowledge—satisfaction with local conditions, other attitudinal measures, and, to a lesser extent, co-ethnic representation in local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invalid votes are pervasive in many democracies and can threaten the legitimacy of elections. While often associated with factors such as choice complexity and disengagement, especially under compulsory voting rules, intentional ballot spoiling can also signal a political protest. We examine the argument that spoiling ballots as protest should occur under compulsory voting where voters perceive limited legitimacy to the electoral process and a lack of viable options. Using municipal elections in Ecuador, a context featuring both compulsory voting and a period of democratic erosion, we examine subnational variation in both spoiled and blank ballots. While factors related to sophistication and choice complexity explain variation in both forms of invalid voting, our results also reveal patterns consistent with the expectation that spoiled ballots reflect a protest of a lack of competition in the political system. Specifically, we find that areas opposed to Rafael Correa's dominant party had a higher rate of spoiled ballots in the 2014 mayoral elections, a period when party dominance was consolidated and competition weak. This pattern declined in 2019 when the system's competitiveness increased. A separate analysis of the 2019 elections for the Correa-era participatory governance body suggests continued use of spoiled ballots as protest by opposition voters, but primarily in higher connectivity areas where the online coordination on use of this tactic may have had greater influence. Overall, our study sheds light on factors shaping invalid vote patterns in compulsory systems and highlights spoiled ballots' potential as a means to signal protest under conditions where some voters would perceive a decline in the legitimacy of democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most local elections are officially nonpartisan, a debate exists regarding how much ideology matters in local politics. I test the effects of national polarization toward policing at the local level using a conjoint survey experiment and novel observational data. I find that police union endorsements send clear ideological signals about mayoral candidates to voters and voters respond accordingly: liberal (conservative) respondents are significantly less (more) likely to vote for police union‐endorsed candidates. I create a new dataset of police union endorsements in every mayoral election in American cities with populations above 180,000 between 2011 and 2022. I find police union endorsements have significant negative effects on incumbent vote share in liberal cities at the same time as polarization occurs nationally. This evidence suggests that when national politics polarize on a local issue, ideology becomes an important component in local politics and that police union endorsements now inform about local candidate ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the complex relationship between campaign spending and electoral outcomes in local elections. We focus on (1) how spending influences the distribution of votes across candidates; (2) its impact on voter turnout; and (3) the differential effects of different types of campaign spending. Using the case of Chile’s 2016 mayoral elections, a candidate-level dataset, and linear regression techniques, we estimate the impact of campaign spending on the share and dynamics of votes obtained. The study reveals that an additional investment of 50 cents per voter correlates with an average 5% increase in vote share as a proportion of elegible voters. This increase is attributed to a double effect: mobilizing new voters and attracting support from competitors. The disaggregated analysis shows that radio advertising is especially impactful for campaign dissemination. These results enrich the literature on electoral strategies, campaign finance dynamics and financing regulations in multi-party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines blank and null voting in Brazilian mayoral elections using a large dataset covering 5570 municipalities between 2000 and 2020. The study finds that more competitive elections reduce blank and null percentages, with re‐election scenarios leading to more valid votes. Blank and particularly null voting are found to be more prevalent in municipalities where a second round is possible. Economic factors and age categories also contribute to determine unconventional voting patterns. The results also highlight important differences between blank and null voting patterns and between urban and rural areas, the later suggesting that more sophisticated voters tend to be less prone to invalidate the vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Term limits are theoretically expected to boost voter participation which has been confirmed by multiple empirical examinations. This study uses a robust causal assessment within the difference-in-differences framework to evaluate this hypothesis. It leverages an exogenous 2018 term limit reform in Ecuador which prohibited some, but not all, incumbent mayors from running in elections. Contrary to expectations, the results indicate null findings: the adoption of term limits has neither increased turnout, nor depressed the casting of blank and spoiled ballots (alternative indicators of voter engagement under compulsory voting). This is puzzling given that the reform impacted the electoral competition by significantly increasing the number of mayoral candidates in the newly open-seat contests. Two possible solutions to the puzzle of the null findings are presented with implications for understanding the scope conditions for the effect of term limits on voter participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We present the core support criterion, a voting criterion satisfied by Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) that is analogous to the Condorcet criterion but reflective of a different majority rule philosophy. Condorcet methods can be thought of as conducting elections between each pair of candidates, counting all ballots to determine the winner of each pair-election. IRV can also be thought of as conducting elections between all pairs of candidates but for each pair-election only counting ballots from voters who do not prefer another major candidate (as determined self-consistently from the IRV social ranking) to the two candidates in contention. The appropriateness of including all ballots or a subset of ballots for a pair-election, depends on whether the society deems the entire or a selected ballot set in compliance with freedom of association, which implies freedom of non-association, for a given pair election. Arguments based on freedom of association rely on more information about an electorate than can be learned from ranked ballots alone. We present a freedom-of-association based argument to explain why IRV may be preferable to Condorcet in some circumstances, including the 2022 Alaska special congressional election and the 2009 Burlington Vermont mayoral election, based on the political context of those elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a research strategy that treats a government form as a specific arrangement of institutional features and conducts the study of government form at the institutional-feature level. Consistently, it examines how the three core features of a government – CEO (chief executive officer) selection by appointment based on managerial expertise, mayoral election by the council among themselves, and at-large council election – affect municipal COVID response, a highly politicized area. These features are theorized to reduce the intensity of politics and create space for the effective working of public administration, and hypothesized to be positively associated with active COVID response. The hypotheses are confirmed on the whole from the analysis of original survey data gathered during the pandemic from municipalities in eleven western U.S. states. The implications of the findings for the council-manager form of government are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This document is a letter from the editor of the Urban Affairs Review, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the journal. The letter highlights the influential article by Zoltan Hajnal and Jessica Trounstine titled "What Underlies Urban Politics? Race, Class, Ideology, Partisanship, and the Urban Vote." The article explores the factors that drive urban politics, including race, class, ideology, and partisanship. The authors analyze two data sets to understand the patterns in urban elections and find that race and ethnicity play a significant role in shaping urban politics. They also discuss the competition between racial and ethnic groups, particularly Black voters, and the impact of race on policy areas in cities. The authors conclude that race continues to be an important organizing principle in urban politics, but more research is needed to fully understand the complexities of the urban electorate. [Extracted from the article]

The municipal elections of 2015 and 2019 transformed local party systems towards multiparty models and decentralized the power historically held by the two major state-based parties. This study presents an unprecedented global view of this process of change in the political configuration of power in the Spanish city councils of provincial capitals and the two autonomous cities. It adopts a broad longitudinal perspective, covering six electoral moments over the last two decades, analyzing a total of 312 mayoral elections cases. The analysis is based on an original database that tracks variations in the number of parties with representation, the types of governments on which the constitution of the mayoral offices is based, and the resulting positions occupied by the different parties. The results indicate that in 2015 and 2019, there was an increase in parties sharing power, with a reduction in majority governments in favor of coalitions and minority governments. In 2023, despite a return to a scenario with fewer parties and an increase in majority governments, it cannot be asserted that the party system has reverted to its pre-Great Recession state, as major parties such as the PP still rely in other political formations to form the governments in many provincial capitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lithuanian parliament in 2015 amended the electoral system of local elections by introducing direct election of mayors. The reform was intended to increase the accountability of mayors, to stabilize mayoral terms, and to encourage higher turnouts in local elections. We find that these aims were achieved partially. First, we observe reduced electoral fragmentation, increase in the vote shares of independent candidates, and a higher number of independent politicians elected to mayoral posts. Second, although the reelection rates of mayors increased, stability of local coalitions did not change much. Finally, the reform did not increase turnouts significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although parties are documented to invest significant amounts of resources towards strengthening their hold on local governments, whether mayors benefit their parties in national elections remains an open question. More specifically, it is unclear if mayors are electorally valuable in periods when party-affiliated central governments do not support them via politically discriminatory policies. We address this gap by studying "reverse coattails" in a unique setting: under a technocratic central government instituted following an unexpected, exogenous tragic event that forced the previous government's resignation. Investigating close mayoral races in Romania in a regression discontinuity analysis, we find that local incumbency generated meaningful vote share premiums in the 2016 parliamentary elections. Exploring the underlying mechanism, we retrieve evidence for prospective voting, suggesting that the reverse coattails we document are partially driven by voters' expectations of future preferential resource allocations by the central government. We show that preferential central policies were implemented after, but not before the national elections, and find that reverse coattails were stronger in constituencies where funds received from the center are an important component of local revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The built environment anchors social, economic, and political community. A limited neighbourhood milieu fosters and maintains relationships that enable a community to realize its values. Fundamental civic activities such as getting out the vote depend on this empowerment. Voting has declined across New York City, but especially in the Bronx, which experienced the largest decline in voting between the 1969 and 2021 mayoral elections. The South and Central Bronx is now the largest city area of extremely low voter participation. This paper explores how public policies generated by the real estate industry – specifically redlining, urban renewal, and planned shrinkage – in conjunction with the Permanent Registration article in the 1938 New York State Constitution suppressed voting. The distribution of premature mortality and other health problems in the Bronx appear to be another consequence of these policies. That is, disempowerment and health erosion appear related and stem from influence of the real estate industry on mayoral policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can voters in clientelist countries be swayed by programmatic promises? Results from a structural model and a field experiment disseminating candidate policy platforms in Philippine mayoral elections indicate that they can. Voters who received information about candidate policy promises were more likely to vote for candidates who were closer to their own preferences. Voters who were informed about incumbent candidates' past commitments were more likely to vote for incumbents who fulfilled them. The structural model uncovers mechanisms. Information about campaign promises increases policies' salience relative to other voter concerns; it also affects voter beliefs about candidate quality and candidates' platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the impacts of ranked choice voting (RCV) on voter efficacy is important as more areas consider adoption. The greater number of choices provided by longer RCV ballots may introduce opportunities for voters to misunderstand the ballot, make errant marks, or accidentally mark two or more candidates for one ranking, resulting in voidable ballots due to "overvoting." Using ballot data from the 2013 general election, the 2017, and 2021 New York City democratic mayoral primaries, this paper asks whether voidable overvote ballots are more concentrated in constituencies with lower levels of educational attainment, average household incomes, and differing racial make-ups, and if this relationship is more pronounced under RCV than traditional elections. In the first RCV election in 2021, voters in locations with lower levels of educational attainment and median household incomes had higher shares of overvote voidable ballots than those in locations with higher educational attainment and incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a qualitative study conducted using a questionnaire in February 2023, which aimed to reveal the peculiarities of the legal status of the mayors of Lithuanian municipalities in the presence of two different municipal structure models (the model that was applied from March 2015 to April 1, 2023, and the model that has been applied since April 1, 2023). The idea of conducting this research arose just a few weeks before the regular municipal council and mayoral elections took place on March 5, 2023, a few months before the new Local Self-Government Law came into force on April 1, 2023. This law introduced a new municipal structure model and changed the dominant role of the mayor in Lithuanian municipalities. This research is unique because of the target group chosen for it-only the ten mayors of Lithuanian municipalities who have served in these positions for four or more terms (20 or more years) were consulted. The results of the research show that: the mayors have a good understanding of the specifics of the new municipal structure applied since April 1, 2023; and the mayors are essentially prepared to take on a new role (the role of the municipal executive institution), replacing their previous role (the role of the chairman of the municipal council). However, the fact that the mayor of the municipality, who continues to be the organizer of municipal council meetings (the other role of the mayor of a Lithuanian municipality), will not have the right to vote when the municipal council makes decisions at its meeting is cause for concern. Mayors are also worried about the different interpretations regarding the possibility of transferring part of their powers to vice mayors (political appointees). The results of this research could be useful for improving the legal regulation of the powers of municipal institutions (both municipal councils and municipal mayors, in terms of the scope, composition, transfer and delegation of powers to other municipal entities) and the relations between these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that larger legislatures reduce the electoral power of incumbent parties in the executive. The electoral effects of legislature size have been largely overlooked by a literature that emphasizes its impact on policies. I estimate the effects of municipal council size on the performance of the local incumbent party in gubernatorial, presidential, and mayoral races in Brazil. The regression discontinuity design exploits variation from a law that set nonlinear council size caps after 2012. In a nutshell, every additional seat triggers a 5 percentage point vote loss for the candidates backed by the mayor's party. Additional evidence suggests that these losses are a consequence of a breakdown in the political brokerage relationships that often characterize developing democracies: in Brazil, mayors exchange patronage for the councilors' electoral support. Larger councils raise this transaction cost for mayors, more so when the council and mayor have unaligned electoral incentives at the state/national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We combine a model of symmetric information with selfish and office‐motivated politicians and a Regression Discontinuity Design analysis based on close municipal elections to study partisan bias in the allocation of drought aid relief in Brazil. We identify a novel pattern of distributive politics whereby partisan bias materialises only before municipal elections, while it disappears before presidential elections. Furthermore, before mayoral elections, it fades for extreme (high or low) aridity levels while persisting for moderate levels. Our empirical results show that in this case alignment increases the probability of receiving aid relief by a factor of two (equivalent to 18.1 percentage points). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tackle the question of the role of pivotality in voter turnout decisions by testing for the first time whether the occurrence of a tied election generates information spillovers onto nearby localities' subsequent elections. First, we develop a model where voters update their beliefs regarding the probability of their vote being decisive upon observing earlier elections' outcomes. Next, by exploiting Italian mayoral elections ending in close outcomes during the past two decades and the quasi-experimental conditions created by the staggered electoral calendar, we find a substantial impact on voter turnout rates of exposure to spillovers from tied elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore how political leaders used Instagram to execute self-presentation strategies in mayoral elections, including the dominant use of personalized tactics. The article reports findings of a visual framing analysis of 2,776 images featuring 2019 Istanbul mayoral election candidates Ekrem İmamoğlu (the Republican People's Party, CHP) and Binali Yıldırım (the Justice and Development Party, AKP). The case is unusual because the initial election, which had resulted in İmamoğlu's victory, was cancelled and a re-run was subsequently held. After many events, İmamoğlu succeeded again, becoming the first opposition politician to take control of Istanbul from the ruling AKP. In this study, we adapt Grabe and Bucy's (2009) quantitative visual framing analysis to examine Instagram posts, from candidacy announcements until the election re-run. The results show that both candidates used the Ideal Candidate frame, with occasional increases in the frequency of the application of the Populist Campaigner frame. Self-frames in different time periods during this election are discussed, as well the frames that voters engaged with most frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on opposition coordination within competitive authoritarian regimes (CARs). Defining oppositional unity as the ability of key opposition parties to select one joint candidate for elections, it introduces the concept of an intermediary party that facilitates such unity. An intermediary party is perceived less threatening by other opposition parties in their opportunistic and ideological conflicts and has the potential to offer a more agreeable joint candidate or a more conciliatory method of selecting the joint candidate within the opposition bloc. The article illustrates this argument by examining the Budapest and Istanbul mayoral elections held in 2019 in Hungary and Turkey. Drawing on data from 30 anonymized elite interviews and media statements of the opposition leaders in each country, the article demonstrates the significance of an intermediary party that facilitates oppositional unity in CARs, adding that the participation of intraparty actors with strong communication skills during the negotiations further reinforces this outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-election opinion polls are an increasingly prominent aspect of political campaigns, yet they often vary in terms of their results, sources, and where they are published. Citizens are therefore increasingly confronted with the proposition of which polls to give more credence to than others in shaping their voting behaviour. This study investigates the relationship between subjective determinations of poll credibility and voting behaviour in the polarised context of Turkish mayoral elections. The theoretical perspective of motivated reasoning is employed to consider how individuals determine and act upon credible opinion polls in mixed information environments. Using an original two-step experimental approach conducted in 2020, this paper establishes that while the effects of opinion poll credibility on party choice are limited to the strategic considerations of the supporters of smaller parties, opinion polls can have considerable demobilising effects when polling environments are conflicting or deemed not credible. The findings produced in this study are more suggestive of accuracy-seeking than directional motivations, and they have considerable implications for how we think about the relationship between polls, politicians, and voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of Law 81/1993, which introduced a different rule for the election of mayors, on the technical efficiency of Italian cities over the period 1998–2006. Since 1993, municipalities below 15,000 inhabitants vote with a single‐ballot system, whereas cities above 15,000 inhabitants are subject to a double ballot. We first estimate the output‐oriented technical efficiency of municipalities through data envelopment analysis, and then we perform a regression discontinuity design analysis by exploiting the exogenous change in the electoral scheme at the 15,000 inhabitants cut‐off. We find evidence that municipalities voting under a double‐ballot rule show lower levels of efficiency—in terms of provision of public goods—compared with cities voting under a single‐ballot scheme, by about 6.5%. This effect is driven by inefficiencies registered in specific sectors, that is, police, education, and maintenance of roads. Furthermore, the overall lower efficiency of municipalities voting under runoff is related to the different level of educational attainment of elected mayors, whereas it is not driven by the features of Law 81/1993 relating to the number of lists forming a coalition in support of mayoral candidates and to disjoint votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a dossier on subnational electoral systems in Latin America, highlighting the introduction of a second round of voting for the election of the mayor of Bogotá in Colombia starting in 2023. It is mentioned that changes in subnational political systems have received little attention in the literature and it is unknown how they work and what the reasons and consequences of their reforms are. The importance of better understanding the rules of the game in the election of political authorities at the subnational and multilevel levels is emphasized. The dossier includes studies on electoral systems in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, and Bolivia, analyzing topics such as candidate selection, abstentionism, minority representation, and women's political participation. It also mentions a document that compiles studies on women's political participation in Latin America, specifically in the Andean region and Chile, addressing topics such as the conditions for access to political participation, electoral reforms, and female representation in local and subnational politics. [Extracted from the article]

This paper discloses the effect of reelection on the fiscal behavior of incumbents. We use regression discontinuity design (RDD) to compare the expenditures and revenues of first and second term mayors in close elections between 2005 and 2020. The results indicate a recent trend of increasing the seasonality of budgetary political cycles over the analyzed period, with greater concentration of revenues and expenditures in the electoral years in municipalities with first-term mayors who faced competitive elections, especially in intergovernmental transfers, personnel expenses, other current expenses and investments, concentrated in the functions of education, sports and leisure. Therefore, this study underscores the necessity for enhancing the Fiscal Responsibility Law and the Electoral Law in a manner that would restore their original capacity to oversee public expenditure during electoral periods. Morover, we highlight the importance of addressing solutions to the current context of federative imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recognition that government officials have politically motivated incentives to pursue new infrastructure construction at the expense of infrastructure upkeep, no prior research directly addresses how political incentives affect road maintenance separate from road construction. This paper investigates how local political incentives affect local road maintenance using unique data on completed road maintenance projects and difference-in-differences which leverages exogenous timing of mayoral elections. Since residents complain about damaged roads and can also be frustrated by travel delays caused by road maintenance, it is theoretically ambiguous how elected officials manipulate road maintenance, assuming they do so for political purposes. We show local election cycles shift road maintenance timing and location. We provide evidence that maintenance follows different patterns in mayoral election years and that maintenance is shifted around sub-city geographic units based on those units' political similarity of registered voters. A mayoral election costs $90,623 in additional road-related costs, translating to $28,093,182 per election for large cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to shed light on the visual aspect of digital storytelling during elections and its effects on a candidate's overall campaign narrative. Focusing on Turkey's 2019 mayoral elections, the study examines how Ekrem İmamoğlu from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), who was elected mayor of Istanbul used visual imagery in terms of political storytelling on Instagram.The study utilises an image type analysis and reports findings from 261 Instagram posts shared on İmamoğlu's verified Instagram account during the last month of the initial election on 31 March 2019 (n = 167) and the rerun election on 23 June 2019 (n = 94). This approach reveals that İmamoğlu mostly adopted campaign works, contact with public, and positioning image types. Utilising these image types, he mainly pursued unifying and personal/biographical political storytelling narratives through visuals on Instagram. During the re-election period, he also pursued an incumbent strategy in addition to existing storytelling strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the protest voting phenomenon in the Surakarta, Indonesia, mayoral election in response to political oligarchy. It uses a qualitative method, and the data analysis uses NVivo 12 Plus software. The findings reveal that the protest voting movement in the Surakarta mayoral election occurred as an effort to resist political parties. The protest vote made ballots invalid, showing no trust in candidates. Political parties practiced oligarchy by jointly endorsing the president's active son as a candidate. The parties had no initiative in bringing up alternative candidates due to the pragmatism of powers. Then, this political oligarchy became headline news. This research implies that public trust in political parties as instruments of democracy has increasingly degraded due to the parties' pragmatic behavior. Moreover, voters have understood that oligarchic practices must be resisted in order to select ideal leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is to understand how Bogotá's policies on graffitiing shifted from a criminalized act to a decriminalized practice and how those policies were implemented across two mayoral administrations. The case study examines two policies, Decrees 75 and 529, that decriminalize graffitiing in Bogotá using the theoretical framework of policy path dependence and policy layering coupled with decentralization of power. The article argues that decentralization of power established the ability of Mayor Petro to pass Decree 75, which created a policy path. Policy layering occurred with the passage of an amendment, Decree 529. Policy path dependence explains why the decrees were resistant to drastic changes under the leadership of Mayor Peñalosa; incremental changes occurred in the institutional structure and implementation of the policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local democratization aims to improve the decentralized capacity of governance regimes to generate meaningful municipal spending geared towards realizing societal outcomes. In the late 1990s, following the Asian financial crisis, Indonesia initiated a significant institutional transition from centralistic and authoritarian rule towards decentralized and more democratic governance through the introduction of direct mayoral elections. Extant research analyzed the effects of the introduction of these elections on local public spending and local societal outcomes separately. This paper offers an integrated analysis of the impact of the introduction of direct mayoral elections on both local public spending and local societal outcomes in 456 Indonesian municipalities between 2002 and 2012. Analyses of growth models, using panel data on three domains (education, health, and infrastructure) provided by Indonesian Ministry of Finance, Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs, and Statistics Indonesia, show that the introduction of direct mayoral elections in Indonesia resulted in an increased growth in educational expenditures. It also improved outcomes in health and infrastructure domains. However, the introduction of direct mayoral elections reversed a positive association between public spending and the attainment of societal outcomes or worsened a negative association between them. These results would support a view on local democratization in Indonesia asserting that the introduction of direct mayoral elections stimulated local clientelist practices rather than local accountability and policy responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores women's experiences of local government in Worcester between 1907 and 1939. The city saw a limited suffrage movement, and to date has never elected a female MP. Yet while women in Worcester arguably played little role in 'national' politics, they were active in local government, first through wartime local authority committees, and then, in the interwar years, when seeking election as Labour, Liberal, Conservative or Independent candidates, with Conservative women being most successful. Drawing on city council records and local newspaper reporting, the article considers the ways in which women made an impact on Worcester's government, particularly as elected councillors. Some women were also involved with more ceremonial – and consequently more visible – roles in local government, though these were generally the preserve of elite women. As such, the article contributes to wider debates about the changing nature of women's political activism post-enfranchisement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning literature finds that incumbency effects reflect mostly a personal rather than a partisan advantage. We attribute this to incumbents' mobilization incentives. Incumbents have weaker incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of their copartisans in national races than in local ones, where their local power is at stake. We examine these implications in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina's largest subnational unit, where midterm elections give mayors a strong incentive to help their copartisans running for the local council, but much weaker ones to support those running for a national seat. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find a large positive effect of incumbency in local mayoral and midterm elections. In contrast, local incumbents neither help nor hurt their copartisans running for the presidency or the national legislature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safety-net hospitals are vulnerable to government financing. After the Nixon administration encouraged states to conduct utilization review to identify medical cost savings, federal campaigns against hospital subsidies placed public hospital systems in perilous states and paralleled efforts in cities to eliminate "underutilized" facilities. New York City mayor John Lindsay sought a political balance between community participation and the technocratic search for underused beds. Subsequent mayors Abe Beame and Ed Koch proved less sympathetic. With community participation limited to symbolic input on hospital administrator hiring, south Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem all suffered closures. This article contributes to literature on urban governance and health care administration by showing how macroeconomic fiscal decision-making overrode local demands and eventually became microeconomic motivators between and within hospitals. Municipal hospitals and Community Accountability Boards debated austerity budgeting's negative effects on chronic and epidemic disease readiness, while the Health and Hospitals Corporation framed deprivation as patient choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This article investigates the extent to which perceptions of the competitive context of mayoral elections reflect actual levels of competition and how that relationship is shaped by political expertise. Methods: We use a unique survey data set of more than 6000 respondents interviewed in 40 separate mayoral elections. Results: In broad strokes, people living in competitive cities are more likely than others to predict competitive outcomes. However, in keeping with the knowledge gap hypothesis, the relationship between objective levels of competition and perceived levels of competition is much stronger among those with relatively high levels of political knowledge than those with low levels of political knowledge. Conclusions: The connection between actual and perceived conditions does not hold evenly for all segments of society—the information‐rich respond to their political environment, while the information‐poor are relatively unmoved by that environment. This pattern of asymmetric information acquisition is a familiar one in American politics and provides further evidence of an important source of political inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enforcing party loyalty is particularly difficult in settings where parties are not strongly differentiated by policy or ideological platforms, as is the case in many African countries. Instead, the system of party nominations serves an important role in maintaining loyalty and discipline. Yet, direct mayoral elections at the subnational level affect these dynamics by expanding the range of positions that politicians can occupy, thereby creating opportunities for them to forge greater visibility within their party or enabling them to defect and create an independent political identity. Drawing on the case of Zambia, which shifted in 2016 from indirect to direct mayoral elections for its district councils, this article discusses how the change in electoral rules contributed to more independent mayoral candidates and growing intra-party frictions, especially among mayors governing large urban areas. Additional case studies from Senegal, which shifted to direct elections in 2022, and Mozambique, which reverted to indirect elections in 2018, further underscore the external validity of the analysis while refining its scope conditions. The article emphasizes that while political decentralization is often viewed as a mechanism for enhancing downwards accountability to citizens, it can also exert considerable impacts on party loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disabilities can occur either physically or mentally. This is often what undermines people with disabilities, while political participation is an important aspect in a democratic state. There was an increase in the participation of people with disabilities, based on PKPU No. 8 of 2017 through 10 existing socialization methods. This study looks at volunteer democracy strategies involving the planning, ideas, and execution of an activity, and the obstacles that affect socialization. Participation of persons with disabilities in the Mayoral Election in Bandar Lampung in 2020 reached 97% of the total DPT of 745 people, which was very different to the participation of people with disabilities in 2015. This figure was only 87% of the total number of DPT which is only 141 people. The method in this research is a qualitative descriptive research approach using the snowball sampling technique. The data collection process was done using observation, interview and documentation techniques. Analysis of the data used several stages, namely the data reduction stage, the data presentation and the data verification stage using a data triangulation method. The theory in this study employs theoretical indicators from Firmanzah which is a political strategy in which there is a strategy (message and media) that looks at the supporting and inhibiting factors of democratic volunteers in socialization. The results of this study indicate that the participation of persons with disabilities in the 2020 Bandar Lampung Mayoral Election experienced an increase, from the total number of DPT 745 people and 729 participating. Messaging and media strategies carried out by democracy volunteers using face-to-face communication socialization methods and social media is an effective strategy because it can reach people with disability in all aspects. The participation of persons with disabilities is also increasing, supported by two factors. Factor supporting facilities like supporting facilities, village officials support, organizers (KPPS), and many DPT (permanent voter lists) have been recorded. Inhibiting factors include the lack of sensitivity from the community housing for persons with disabilities, and persons with mental disabilities who have voting rights are mobilized. As there have been many records of persons with disabilities, this study can futher increase the participation of persons with disabilities in the next election to a 100%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Turkey, administrative decentralization is a political issue rather than a technical one. the central government follows up centralization policies associated with intensive administrative supervision with three mechanisms according to "who governs the municipality": The opposition municipalities, especially from the main opposition party, CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) are systematically supervised by the inspectors of the Interior Ministry while appointed trustees (kayyim or kayyum) are given control in the municipalities governed by the pro-Kurdish party (HDP). The existing literature on decentralization process in Turkey mostly insists on its normative, administrative, and historical dimensions,[7] However, considering the political dimension of decentralization in Turkey, this paper offers a new perspective to elucidate the failure of the decentralization policies initiated by the AKP governments. A striking return to centralization policy was deployed by the AKP government that can also be considered as path dependence to the centralizing tradition of the Turkish State and is actively in use to preserve the asymmetric position of the state in relation to local authorities. According to some CHP politicians, the government has been orchestrating an attempt to replace Imamoglu with an appointed trustee of the government before the general election in 2023.[54] As can be seen, decentralization dynamics in Turkey are extremely politicized. [Extracted from the article]

Mayors are increasingly tackling environmental issues. To enact demonstrable change, however, mayors first need to be elected – leading one to question: How can a candidate create cohesive messaging on environmental issues and win? By content analyzing Anne Hidalgo's successful 2014 and 2020 mayoral elections in Paris, this study seeks to illuminate potential environmental communication strategies for future candidates. Results revealed Hidalgo favored traditional environmental frames over alternate frames, treatment recommendations over blame attributions, and ecological solidarity frames. Further, Hidalgo employed gender adaptive strategies moving between elections, which enabled her to navigate gendered expectations in becoming Paris's first female mayor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Research on violence against women in politics (VAWIP) has exploded in the last five years. One of the reviewers dismissively commented that he did not understand a section on "policy solutions" even though the paper discussed a real-life problem with important implications for women's political representation and a multitude of ideas proposed by civil society and state actors worldwide to solve it. One way for political scientists to achieve these goals is to strengthen their collaborations with international institutions, state actors, and civil society organizations. The first publications assessing the prevalence of VAWIP and describing the problem were done by civil society organizations (Krook [15]; Restrepo Sanín 2022). [Extracted from the article]

Although mayors can have important impacts on citizens' daily lives, local politics remains understudied, especially compared with national and regional politics. This study focuses on Canadian mayors' digital political gender performance—or self-presentation—on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and the context in which this gendered performance arises. Overall, results confirm that mayors' gendered performances are on a continuum rather than binary. Results from a visual content analysis of nine Canadian mayors' social media accounts show that, broadly speaking, women mayors gravitate toward congruent, mixed gendered performances and avoidance strategies, whereas men mayors also display mixed performance of their gender, while more freely exploring congruent and incongruent approaches to gendered stereotypes. Additionally, semistructured interviews with these mayors show that women mayors still work under added constraints because of their gender, which translates into comments on their appearance, attitude, and lifestyle choices; increased aggression and lack of respect; and a generally greater mental load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with debates about the role of 'global cities' in international relations and in the governance of global capitalism. Much of the discourse on global cities reproduces the hierarchical stratifications of the international system that divide the 'global' from the 'local' along a North-South or centre-periphery axis. We argue that while Rio de Janeiro's 'Porto Maravilha' urban regeneration project apparently follows the global city model, its failure suggests the articulation of the international and the urban presents complexities that escape recent attempts to rethink world politics from the point of view of cities. In our analysis we consider how Rio's mayor took up the notion of 'Olympic City', articulating narratives of a global urban condition as part of the strategies of integration for an emerging power into world politics and the neoliberal reconfiguration of capitalism. We examine the overlapping events, trajectories and lived realities that interfered with and undermined the coherence of that project, as well as the practices of resistance that produced other representational spaces. We conclude that despite the dominance of global discourses and conceptions regarding urban regeneration, it misses much of the creative politics taking place in ordinary sites in which international and urban meet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]