The democratic interface: technology,political organization,and diverging patterns of electoral representation

Democracies are experiencing historic disruptions affecting how people engage with core institutions such as the press, civil society organizations, parties, and elections. These processes of citizen interaction with institutions operate as a democratic interface shaping self-government and the quality of public life. The electoral dimension of the interface is important, as its operation can affect all others. This analysis explores a growing left-right imbalance in the electoral connection between citizens, parties, elections, and government. This imbalance is due, in part, to divergent left-right preferences for political engagement, organization, and communication. Support on the right for clearer social rules and simpler moral, racial and nationalist agendas are compatible with hierarchical, leader-centered party organizations that compete more effectively in elections. Parties on the left currently face greater challenges engaging citizens due to the popular meta-ideology of diversity and inclusiveness and demands for direct or deliberative democracy. What we term connective parties are developing technologies to perform core organizational functions, and some have achieved electoral success. However, when connective parties on the left try to develop shared authority processes, online and offline, they face significant challenges competing with more conventionally organized parties on the right.     

Generic frame building in the 2008 Austrian elections

Media critics repeatedly refer to the adversarial and trivializing nature of contemporary political journalism, whereas the role of political public relations in the formation of these aspects of public political discourse is widely neglected. To gain empirical insight into the formation of negativity, dramatization, game- and conflict-centeredness in campaign communication in the 2008 Austrian elections, this study introduces a biaxial matrix localizing levels of confrontation (negativity and conflict) and entertainment (game and drama). The analysis rests on the comparative investigation of generic frames in political parties’ PR and the media, and the examination of underlying frame building processes. The role of journalism and political public relations in shaping campaign communication is investigated by utilizing concerted content analyses of newspaper and TV news coverage and party press releases. The study finds that Austrian party and media communication can be predominantly categorized as antagonistic substance, characterized by high levels of confrontation (negativity and conflict) and lower levels of entertainment (game and drama). The empirical investigation outlines that conflict and negativity are prevalent features of the electoral communication of Austrian parties and the media likewise, whereby party press releases are even more marked by confrontation and entertainment framing than the subsequent media coverage. In addition, the media are not the principal and exclusive sponsors of confrontation and entertainment in electoral communication; rather, they even moderately decrease conflict and drama as compared to the impulses set by political PR.     

Competition for popular support: a valence model of elections in Turkey

Models of elections tend to predict that parties will maximize votes by converging to an electoral center. There is no empirical support for this prediction. In order to account for the phenomenon of political divergence, this paper offers a stochastic electoral model where party leaders or candidates are differentiated by differing valences??the electoral perception of the quality of the party leader. If valence is simply intrinsic, then it can be shown that there is a ??convergence coefficient??, defined in terms of the empirical parameters, that must be bounded above by the dimension of the space, in order for the electoral mean to be a Nash equilibrium. This model is applied to elections in Turkey in 1999 and 2002. The idea of valence is then extended to include the possibility that activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties in response to policy concessions from the parties. The equilibrium result is that parties, in order to maximize vote share, must balance a centripetal electoral force against a centrifugal activist effect. We estimate pure spatial models and models with sociodemographic valences, and use simulations to compare the equilibrium predictions with the estimated party positions.     

A GREAT DIVIDE?

Since 1980 most social scientists have found little evidence in support of popular and recurring commentaries that identify religion (and evangelical Protestants, in particular) as a major source of conservative political trends in the United States. But in the past several years a new line of research has reported results suggesting that earlier studies underestimated evidence that partisan change among specific religious groups has contributed to an emerging Republican electoral advantage. We assess this latter body of research, presenting the most comprehensive analysis to date of the effects of religious group memberships on political outcomes in national elections from 1972 through 2000. We address the limitations of past studies by incorporating advances in the measurement of religious denomination, adjudicating competing statistical models of the changing interrelationship of religion and voter alignments and extending previous investigations by simultaneously considering the impact of religion on (1) voting behavior, (2) partisanship, and (3) the representation of religious groups within the Democratic and Republican parties' electoral coalitions. Our results refine and extend past studies of religion and political change, providing evidence of limited changes in group-specific voting coupled with much larger changes in religion-based partisanship and party coalitions.     

A Reexamination of Women’s Electoral Success in Open Seat Elections: The Conditioning Effect of Electoral Competition

This article reexamines gender differences in electoral outcomes. We consider whether electoral competition has a differential impact on the electoral fortunes of male and female quality candidates. This study uses an original data set containing detailed candidate information for US House open seat primary and general elections between 1994 and 2004. The results indicate that when multiple quality candidates enter the race, female quality candidates are at a greater disadvantage than their male counterparts. The results suggest that null findings from previous work are a product of the way the relationship between gender and electoral outcomes is typically modeled.     

Elections in Post-Communist Ukraine, 1994–2004: An Overview

The paper attempts a comprehensive and theoretically grounded analysis of all parliamentary and presidential elections carried out in Ukraine in the decade 1994 to 2004. It is organized into four sections. The first deals with the electoral system, how it came into being and has been amended, how it translates votes into seats, the "effective number" of political parties in the electorate and the legislature, and the battle over the electoral system itself during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma. In the second section, voting behaviour of the Ukrainian electorate is examined. Using voting data, along with the results of public opinion surveys and reports on the conduct of the various election campaigns, the paper sorts through the relevant determinants of voting choice to identify the most pertinent ones as they operate in the Ukrainian context. Generally speaking, such determinants are: (1) background social characteristics of the voters, including the regional and ethnic factors; (2) the public's assessments of the current political and economic conditions in the country; (3) individual voters' partisan identification and opinions on prominent issues; (4) their retrospective evaluations of the incumbents; (5) leadership qualities of the contenders; and (6) prospective evaluations of parties and candidates as to their expected performance in office. To determine which of these are consistently more important is an essential aim of the paper. The third section assesses the degree to which accountability has been achieved in any of these elections—those to the Verkhovna Rada of 1994, 1998, and 2002, and the presidential elections of 1994, 1999, and 2004. A penultimate section is devoted to evaluating the policy consequences of these elections: what difference have Ukraine's elections made to policies over the past decade? In the concluding portion, a characterization of the emerging party system is given along with a summing-up on the voting behaviour of Ukrainians in the post-communist era.     

How Local Social Movement Groups Handle a Presidential Election

How do local social movement groups respond to national electoral politics? Previous studies, often based on aggregated data on public protests, focus on the effects of elections on established social movement organizations (SMOs). Some find that SMOs flourish during election years, taking advantage of the political opportunities that elections pose. Others conclude that elections hurt SMOs, siphoning members and resources. Using ethnographic, in-depth interview, and document data on new and emerging social movement groups (SMGs) in Pittsburgh for 20 months before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, we examine how members think about elections and whether and how groups decide to respond to national electoral campaigns. We find that SMGs vary considerably in the strategies of action or inaction they adopt, depending on their changing sense of whether the election poses an opportunity or a threat to the group and that these strategies of action are patterned in path-dependent sequences. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities for integrating concepts of path-dependency and timing into social movement research.     

Electoral Context,Issues, and Voting for Women in the 1990s

Abstract

This research hypothesizes that, because of the particular stimulation provided by the focus on candidate sex and gender-related issues in the electoral environment, there was a unique set of demographic and attitudinal variables related to voting for a woman candidate for the House of Representatives in 1992. Because the environments of the elections of 1994 and 1996 were relatively “gender-free,” these variables were not related to voting behavior in these years. The analysis supports the hypothesis that the determinants of support for women congressional candidates are different in 1992 than in subsequent elections. It also suggests that the differing environments of the three elections may be a contributing factor to these differences.     

Out of Step? Voters and Social Issues in U.S. Presidential Elections

Recent political commentary has argued that the Republican Party is “out of step” with voters on social issues, costing Republicans the 2012 presidential election. This dramatic claim is deserving of scrutiny in its own right and also for the way it offers new perspective on long‐standing controversies concerning the role of social issues in U.S. national elections. We present results that seek to advance established scholarship on electoral politics as well as journalistic claims concerning the rising importance of social issues for elections. Using data from the American National Election Study, we find that social issues mattered to voters in presidential elections from 1992 through 2012. The influence of social issues on voter choice rivals those of attitudes toward defense spending and government provision. We find further evidence that liberalizing trends in social issue opinion consistently benefited Democratic candidates in presidential elections. We consider the relevance of these results for scholarship on voter choice and elections, noting further implications for commentary on the 2012 presidential election.     

Familial Conflict and Attitudes Toward Marriage

The present study examined the relationship between current and past familial conflict, as perceived by college students, and their current attitudes toward marriage. This study also explored the relationship between the family structure in which the students lived (intact vs. divorced) and their current attitudes toward divorce. Contrary to expectations, perceived levels of conflict were not significantly related to attitudes toward marriage, and family structure was not a significant predictor of attitudes toward divorce. Compared to students from intact homes, students from divorced homes reported significantly higher levels of conflict in their homes while growing up. Implications of these findings and limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Electoral turnout of foreign-born residents in Chile: an analysis with data from the administrative census and opinion polls

Based on an administrative census of the 267,116 migrants registered for the 2017 presidential elections and a survey applied to 4771 migrants, we conclude that (1) the electoral participation of migrants shows a significant gender gap, with women participating in a higher proportion; (2) migrants who registered earlier in the electoral registers, are more likely to vote compared to the rest; (3) when migrants come from countries that implement compulsory voting, they increase their likelihood of voting in the receiving country; (4) the declaration of wanting to remain in Chile and not return to their countries of origin or migrate to another country increases the probability of voting, and the same happens with married migrants, with Chilean children, with a Chilean partner, and with a better economic situation; (5) social capital has a positive influence on electoral participation.     

Cajoling or coercing: would electoral engineering resolve the young citizen–state disconnect?

The relationships between citizens and their states are undergoing significant stresses across advanced liberal democracies. In Britain, this disconnect is particularly evident amongst young citizens. This article considers whether different electoral engineering methods – designed either to cajole or compel youth to vote – might arrest the decline in their political engagement. Data collected in 2011 from a national survey of 1025 British 18-year-olds and from focus groups involving 86 young people reveal that many young people claim that they would be more likely to vote in future elections if such electoral reforms were implemented. However, it is questionable whether or not such increased electoral participation would mean that they would feel truly connected to the democratic process. In particular, forcing young people to vote through the introduction of compulsory voting may actually serve to reinforce deepening resentments, rather than engage them in a positive manner.     

Why dictators hold semi-competitive elections and encourage the use of semi-independent courts: a comment on Thornhill and Smirnova’s “litigation and political transformation”

In this comment, I highlight similarities between Russia’s contemporary political system and other post-Cold War dictatorships. Most modern dictatorships hold semi-competitive elections. That is, regime officials face competition in elections, but playing fields are tilted so as to leave little suspense about who will win. I suggest that semi-competitive elections and the encouragement of litigation by citizens against local and regional officials, as described by Thornhill and Smirnova (Accepted/In press), have similar functions from the dictator’s point of view. They help the ruling elite with monitoring and controlling local officials whose behavior might otherwise alienate citizens enough to threaten the dictatorial elite with overthrow. Thus the real benefits citizens receive from the increased use of the courts to resolve disputes and electoral competition among politicians are counterbalanced by the contribution these institutions make to the prolongation of dictatorship.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

A top-down movement with grass-roots effects? Alexei Navalny’s electoral campaign

Today’s Russia is a hostile environment for genuine political activity, and especially for movements that aim at changing the current power structure. This is due to the factually limited manoeuvre space of oppositional actors who face obstacles in the form of repression, surveillance and restricted access to the public sphere. Moreover, society is largely apolitical, with political activity often considered futile, immoral, or dangerous. In this profile, we portray the electoral campaign of the opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who built a popular movement around his bid to participate in the 2018 presidential elections. Although the campaign failed to build up sufficient pressure for Navalny to be granted access to the elections, and despite the strong hierarchy inside his campaign, we argue that it contributed to the politicization of parts of the younger generation in the country’s provinces – which may have greater long-term effects than any concrete projects envisioned or controlled by the campaign’s strategists.     

From Historical to “Dialectical” Populism: The Case of Post-Communist Romania

This article begins with a brief discussion of the differences between “historical populism” and “neo-populism” in the post-communist context. The second part concentrates on “neo-populism from below,” exemplifying the category of neopopulist politicians aspiring to power, with the case in point being George Becali and his New Generation Party (PNG). The third part turns to “neo-populism from above,” that is to say, to populist policies employed by incumbent politicians for the purpose of preserving power and enlarging support. The example chosen here is that of President Traian B?sescu and the role played by intellectual elites in making possible “neopopulism from above.” The fourth examines successes and failures of the two categories of neo-populists in two electoral contests, namely the 2007 elections for the European Parliament and the 2008 local elections. It is pointed out that the latter electoral contest produced a prospective “populist dialectics,” namely, a symbiotic mergence of the two Romanian post-communist populisms. Finally, the fifth and last part turns to theoretical considerations of a general and comparative nature.     

A Signaling Model of Repeated Elections

I develop a two period model of elections in which voters’ first period actions affect candidates’ estimates of voter preferences and thus affect second period electoral and policy outcomes. I find an equilibrium in which centrist voters abstain in the first election, despite facing zero costs of voting and having a strict preference between the alternatives before them. The reason centrists abstain is to signal their preferences to future candidates and thereby promote future policy moderation.For helpful discussions and comments I thank David Austen-Smith, Tim Feddersen, Roger Myerson, Tom Palfrey, Ronny Razin, two anonymous reviewers, and seminar participants at Kellogg, NYU, and the 2000 World Congress of the Game Theory Society.     

LEVIATHAN AT BAY: CONSTITUTIONAL VERSUS POLITICAL CONTROLS ON GOVERNMENT

I integrate constitutional constraints in a model of electoral control of politicians. Two types of politicians compete for office: angels, who never misuse power, and knaves, who abuse delegated power. Political theory suggests that constitutional constraints and elections are substitutes; I find a more complicated relationship. Elections sometimes substitute for constraints, while constraints complement and strengthen electoral controls based on politicians' payoffs. Elections must work perfectly to generally allow constraints to be dispensed with. Knaves might self-select out of politics with constitutional constraints, which consequently appear inconsistent with the observed character of politicians. ( JEL H1, D72)     

Public Management at the Ballot Box: Performance Information and Electoral Support for Incumbent English Local Governments

Publishing performance information about local public services,an increasing trend in many Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development countries, matters politically because it hasan effect on incumbent local governments' electoral support.Voters are able to use performance information to punish orreward incumbents in the elections that follow their publication,which may fill a gap in the chain of accountability betweenvoters and governments. We model the introduction of publishedComprehensive Performance Assessments of local authorities inEngland, which make summary information about performance availableto voters, as a "shock" to the relationship between voters andincumbents. Controlling for an unpublicized measure of performancechange over time, change in the local tax level, change in localeconomic conditions, and whether the local incumbent is theparty of the incumbent government at the national level, wefind negativity bias. Incumbents in local authorities in the"poor" performance category experience a substantial reductionin aggregate vote share at the election following publication,but there is no similarly sized reward for those in the highestperformance category.     

Choosing an electoral rule: Values and self-interest in the lab

We study the choice of multi-person bargaining protocols in the context of politics. In politics, citizens are increasingly involved in the design of democratic rules, for instance via referendums. If they support the rule that best serves their self-interest, the outcome inevitably advantages the largest group. In this paper, we challenge this pessimistic view with an original lab experiment, in which 252 subjects participated. In the first stage, these subjects experience elections under plurality and approval voting. In the second stage, they decide which rule they want to use for extra elections. We find that egalitarian values that subjects hold outside of the lab shape their choice of electoral rule in the second stage when a rule led to a fairer distribution of payoffs compared to the other one in the first stage. The implication is that people have consistent ‘value-driven preferences’ for decision rules.