Where and why can expatriates vote in regional elections? A comparative analysis of regional electoral practices in Europe and North America

ABSTRACT

The article constitutes the first systematic attempt to survey and account for the enfranchisement of non-resident citizens in regional elections. Shifting the focus away from the state to the regional demos, it is divided into two parts. First, it examines whether the spectacular horizontal diffusion of external voting legislation widely observed in existing scholarship has also spread vertically to regional elections, through a comparative overview of the conditions of eligibility to the regional franchise in 292 American and European regions. The remarkable diversity of regional electoral arrangements both within and across states calls for a more in-depth explanatory analysis of the ‘micro-foundations of diaspora policy’ in specific regions. The second part thus compares two negative cases, Flanders and Scotland, where expanding the franchise to expatriates has been seriously considered and yet ultimately failed. It goes on to examine the frustrated outcome in the light of three dimensions of the political opportunity structure: whether the region has the power to alter the composition of the demos (self-determination powers), the expected electoral gains and losses among political parties within the regional party system (electoral interests), and the (in)compatibility of extending the suffrage to expatriates with the pursuit of autonomy goals (self-determination aims).     

国际组织的投票表决与协商一致决策机制

为加深对国际组织各种决策机制的认识,促进国际社会的合作和国际法律秩序的发展,运用比较研究方法对国际组织投票表决制的类型与利弊以及协商一致决策机制的特征与利弊作了细致的分析。分析认为,投票表决制包括平权表决制和加权表决制,有利于发挥主权原则,促进高效合作,但是容易导致集团对抗和牺牲公平;协商一致决策机制具有兼容并包和多赢互利的优点,但是由于时间较长而容易陷入僵局,只有综合采纳各种决策机制才能取得最佳效果。     

股权分置改革中股东间博弈的实证研究

股权分置问题是中国证券市场最大的制度症结,股权分置改革的过程是非流通股股东与流通股股东之间,就非流通股获得流通权应支付的对价而进行的持续博弈过程.首先论述了股权分置改革中的博弈论基础,就股东间博弈的行为,博弈过程中股东的收益、股东的策略选择、博弈结果对市场平均对价水平的影响进行了论述;其次,研究了股权分置改革中以博弈论为基础的股东协商机制问题,并就股东间博弈的有效性进行了实证研究;最后,对投票表决制下的有关问题做出了分析并提出了建议.     

略论和谐的马克思主义——阶级斗争理论与构建社会主义和谐社会

阶级斗争理论是马克思主义的重要组成部分。但是，理论发展与应用应该与具体社会发展阶段相一致。社会主义制度确立后，阶级矛盾不是中国社会的主要矛盾。在当前，更应该强调社会和谐发展理论。也只有把社会主义作为一种运动，从社会发展的实际出发，不断推进社会主义理论创新，才能真正实现马克思主义理论与实践的统一，推进社会主义事业不断发展。     

介乎士大夫与平民之间的文学形态——南宋中后期游士阶层的诗歌创作

游士自视为士人阶级并努力向士大夫靠近，但其社会身份却更接近平民。游士议政诗歌具有士大夫般的忧时忧国情怀，却因为过于激烈直白而被质疑为卖直钓名、粗豪亢厉之作；游士诗歌力求风雅，却被视作矫语高蹈的伪风雅；游士诗歌情调语调通俗，却与平民赏爱的话本、杂剧、南戏尚有一点距离，无法被庶民百姓广泛接受。游士阶层介乎士大夫与平民之间的中间游移性质，使其诗歌成为传统文体大幅度变革的载体，是南宋文化转型以及文学转型时期一个士庶交接、雅俗杂糅的文学形态，也是俗文学冲击下雅文体之俗化达到了临界点的标本。     

CAI课件在历史文选课堂上的应用

随着现代教育拉术手段的不断提高，CAI多媒体诨件越来越多地应用于现代教学当中，本文将就此项技术在历史文选课堂的具体应用进行探讨。     

Exit polling in a cold climate: the BBC–ITV experience in Britain in 2005

Summary.  Conducting an exit poll to forecast the outcome of a national election in terms of both votes and seats is particularly difficult in Britain. No official information is available on how individual polling stations voted in the past, use of single-member plurality means that there is no consistent relationship between votes and seats, electors can choose to vote by post and most of those who vote in person do so late in the day. In addition, around one in every six intended exit poll respondents refuses to participate. Methods that were developed to overcome these problems, and their use in the successful 2005 British Broadcasting Corporation–Independent Television exit poll, are described and evaluated. The methodology included a panel design to allow the estimation of electoral change at local level, coherent multiple-regression modelling of multiparty electoral change to capture systematic patterns of variation, probabilistic prediction of constituency winners to account for uncertainty in projected constituency level shares, collection of information about the voting intentions of postal voters before polling day and access to interviewer guesses on the voting behaviour of refusals. The coverage and accuracy of the exit poll data are critically examined, the effect of key aspects of the statistical modelling of the data is assessed and some general lessons are drawn for the design and analysis of electoral exit polls.     

“People in Stockholm are smarter than countryside folks” – Reproducing urban and rural imaginaries in film and life

This article explores the celebrated film The Hunters (Swedish title: Jägarna) within the context of the discourse of Internal Orientalism. By juxtaposing a contemporary Swedish film with historical accounts and contemporary news media, I demonstrate how the film reworks and (re)produces representations of the rural North (Norrland), constructing stereotypes enmeshed with familiar and global genre-specific stereotypes of a traditional and intransigent population positioned in rural areas and a modern and progressive population in urban areas. This paper shows how the representation in popular culture becomes enmeshed with the representation in news media and politics and how this helps obscure geography, gender, ethnicity and class by way of positioning representations of the middle class in urban spaces and white male working class in rural spaces, and by way of constructing class as a choice of lifestyle or culture.     

Two’s a Crowd: Women Candidates in Concurrent Elections

ABSTRACT

Most research on evaluations of women candidates considers single elections in isolation. Using two Dynamic Process Tracing experiments, this article examines whether voters alter their evaluations of women candidates, as well as their willingness to learn about and vote for them, based on the presence of other women running simultaneously in concurrent contests. We find a consistent pattern in which female candidates are not adversely affected when they are the only woman on a voter’s ballot, but they are disadvantaged when other women appear on the same party’s ballot in other races. This effect is more prominent for women in lower offices: women running for the House of Representatives are more disadvantaged than women running for higher offices are.     

Who counts and who is counted? Conversations around voting,access, and divisions in the disability community

Online voting platforms have been introduced in some locations as the solution to the many barriers to political participation that disabled people continue to face. Reading the experiences of disabled student voters on university campuses alongside broader trends in electoral reform taking place in jurisdictions across Canada allows us to attend to the dangerous ways in which conversations around access have been limited through virtual solutions that encourage the physical absence of disabled voters. This article situates these absences alongside other categories of exclusion – including groups who are formally disenfranchised – and recalls many unstated values that are active in shaping citizenship cultures. Probing online voting through a critical disability angle, we present a critique of techno-fixes that builds upon broader notions of accessibility and inclusion.