Candidates For Political Office Research Articles

Green New Deals in comparative perspective

AbstractIn February 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio‐Cortez and Senator Ed Markey introduced into the US Congress a non‐binding resolution for a Green New Deal, with the aim to catalyze policies and programs to rapidly decarbonize the US economy while achieving wider progressive economic, social and environmental goals. This motion sparked widespread interest, in and beyond the US, in the potential for more ambitious and solidaristic climate policy under the banner of a Green New Deal (GND). This Overview, after introducing the history of the GND concept and exploring its dimensions in theory, provides a snapshot of GNDs proposed (or adopted/enacted) by politicians, candidates for political office, political parties and governments around the world in the period 2019–2022. Drawing on theories of comparative politics and comparative political economy, the Overview illuminates key patterns in the prevalence and content of this set of GND proposals, as well as their ideological underpinnings and implicit “theories of change.” Specifically, it ventures that: GND policies are more commonly proposed in high‐income, industrialized democracies; variation in GNDs' prevalence and content are associated with varieties of capitalism and electoral institutions; GND policies are more commonly proposed by left‐of‐center parties and candidates; and GNDs are being proposed at all levels of government, but their content is shaped by constraints on government powers. On the basis of this analysis, the concluding section proposes a detailed research agenda on GNDs, with an emphasis on comparative research.This article is categorized under: The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Benefits of Mitigation Policy and Governance > National Climate Change Policy Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance

Blater's power in local politics, village head election in Madura

The involvement of elite groups or certain groups in winning political contests is often carried out by candidates for political office. This also happens in local political contestations, village head elections. This research was conducted to reveal the role and behavior of blater in village elections in Sumenep, Madura, East Java. This research uses a descriptive qualitative model. The data collection technique was carried out using in-depth interviews with various informants involved in the election, such as blater, village head candidates and voters. Apart from that, document searches were also carried out regarding village election activities and after the election of the village head. To obtain accurate data, the research cross-checked the data collected, between the data obtained through in-depth interviews, and the documents traced and obtained by the researcher. From the research conducted, blater has an important role in the election of village heads. This is caused by several factors. Blater has influence, blater also has a strategy for carrying out his role, blater has certain preferences when the village head election takes place, and blater's role has an impact on the village head election process. Apart from that, the blater has a network that shapes the winning process.

Pre-Colonial Kamba People and Women’s Political Mobilization

Participation of women in politics is of paramount importance. This is because its within the politics that resource allocation and conflicts resolution takes place. People join politics to pursue self-interests and if women as a category are left out, it would mean that key policies and decisions made will ignore their aspiration. Women constitute more than half of the Kenyan population and form a sizeable part of the electorate, yet they still face political discrimination. Women are invisible as candidates for political office. The study was guided by Socail Relations Gender Approach. The basic tenets of this theory are, that human well–being is the primary goal of development, that social relations determines people’s roles, rights as well as their power over others and that institutions plays an integral role in perpetuating social inequality. The researcher employed exploratory research design. The findings of the study are that the Pre-colonial Kamba women exercised some degree of political power. There was a women council locally known as Iveti sya Ithembo which was equivalent to the community’s senior most council of the elder of the shrine (Atumia ma Ithembo).

Poe in Cyberspace: Web 1, 2, 3 . . .

Poe in Cyberspace: Web 1, 2, 3 . . .

A Gender Perspective on Electoral Processes in Malawi: The Right of Malawian Women to Participate in the Political Process under the Maputo Protocol

Against the background of recent political developments in Malawi, this article provides a gender perspective on Malawian women’s participation in political life. It focuses on the position of women as candidates for political office and explores what determines women’s positioning, the hurdles that exist in their path when entering the political domain and, correspondingly, the obligations that the state has to level the playing field to overcome such hurdles. As a point of departure, it is proposed that Malawi, which since the coming into force of the 1994 Constitution is democratically organised, cannot be deemed fully democratic and legitimate if women and men do not have an equal opportunity to serve their communities through parliamentary representation. Malawi has ratified the African Charter, the Maputo Protocol and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. Therefore, it is bound by a multitude of international provisions which promote and protect democracy and women’s rights to political participation. The objective of this article is to analyse how effective the Malawian government has been in implementing women’s political rights as guaranteed under regional human rights law. Using the method of positionality to unveil discrimination and disadvantage, the authors’ arguments presented in this article depart from the idea that internal change can be grounded on legal interventions which implement the legal obligations set out in the African Charter, the Maputo Protocol and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.

Inconsistencies Signals from the Declared Patrimony of Politicians in Brazil: Application of Newcomb-Benford Law

Goal: This research aims to seek evidence of inconsistencies or signs of fraud or other financial crimes in the assets declared by candidates for political office by applying the Newcomb-Benford Law (NB). Theoretical foundation: The mainly empirical research is based on the ability of asset information to be useful to the analysis of economic and financial facts as well as in the NB Law capacity signal potential distortions in the statement of assets, considering the observed distribution and the expected. Method: Law applies to NB, in relation to the first digit values of goods, compared with the distribution observed distribution expected from statistical tests and indicators (Nigrini, 2012). In the second stage, the digits are analyzed by differing relevance and the amount of deviation value (Bugarin & Cunha, 2015). The application of the criteria set by the NB and the average deviation identifies the items of potentially inconsistent declared goods. Results: The first digit analysis identified six discrepant digits, two of which differ in quantities exceeding the waiting. In detail, after application of the methods, these digits it identified assets potentially inconsistent first digit values, including cash declared in cash in foreign and national currency, as a typical estate use in money laundering. Contributions: search results demonstrate the application of the utility of NB Law to control agencies in the search for evidence of goods with potentially inconsistent or fraudulent values, and advances beyond the indication of convergence to NB to reveal the different items within the sample.

O comportamento informacional do eleitor sob a perspectiva da democracia brasileira

Diante dos revezes ocorridos ao longo da história da democracia brasileira e da importância de se proporcionar o empoderamento da população, pode-se afirmar que o voto é um instrumento valioso para o cidadão operar mudanças diante de uma condição de fragilidade. Nessa perspectiva, parte-se das seguintes indagações: quais são as prioridades dos eleitores? Os eleitores estão bem informados em relação aos candidatos que pleiteiam os cargos políticos? Quais são as fontes de informação mais utilizadas para conhecerem os candidatos e as propostas? Objetiva-se analisar os padrões de comportamento informacional do eleitor, elucidando os modos como este se prepara para votar mediante a busca e o uso de informação. Para tanto, realizou-se uma pesquisa de natureza quantitativa e exploratória com trezentos eleitores de todas as regiões brasileiras, por meio de questionários. Constatou-se que o comportamento informacional do eleitor é influenciado por distintos aspectos socioeconômicos. Constatou-se que, na classe social mais baixa, há uma premente necessidade de apropriação efetiva da informação para efetuar o voto consciente, enquanto que o extrato social mais alto necessita vencer o ceticismo quanto ao poder transformador do voto.

Do Bilinguals Respond More Favorably to Candidate Advertisements in English or in Spanish?

Candidates for political office in the United States can appeal to constituents in either English or in Spanish. We investigate the consequences of this choice in a series of survey experiments conducted on large, diverse samples of both monolingual and bilingual Americans. We take advantage of parallel advertisements produced in both English and Spanish by real candidates for national office—one presidential and two congressional. Because our design holds constant candidates’ policy positions, we can attribute the effects on vote choice directly to the choice of language over and above other candidate attributes. In two of our three experiments, the Spanish-language advertisements increased candidates’ electoral support by 5 percentage points among bilinguals. We find the opposite pattern of results among English-speaking monolingual Americans, who respond very negatively to Spanish-language advertisements. Our results shed light on the strategic calculus of candidates who must appeal to multiple linguistic communities at once.

An Analysis of Political Ambition in Britain

AbstractRepresentative democracies require sufficient numbers of citizens to put themselves forward as candidates for political office. Existing studies have shown that political institutions are not representative of the population as a whole, suggesting that political ambition is not evenly distributed across all potential candidates. We discuss evidence from the first systematic study of political ambition in Britain, examining the question of who is interested in putting themselves forward for political office. We find patterns in the distribution of political ambition that help to explain why British political institutions do not look like the British people as a whole and include a gender gap, a social class gap, an education gap, a north–south divide, and a personality gap. We discuss the implications of our findings for political parties, arguing that they need to adjust practices of candidate recruitment in such a way that minimises the effects of these biases.

Political Leadership and the Social Value of Privacy

Candidates for political office undergo close and even crushing public scrutiny of their personal lives by the press and by their political adversaries. Philosophers such as Thomas Nagel have argued that the political process scares off good candidates and becomes immersed in irrelevancies when it obliterates the distinction between the public and the personal. But by paying attention to the private lives of politicians, the electorate may acquire information it deems relevant to public issues, and there are reasons to believe that it is right.

Women Candidates for Political Office in the US in the Twenties

The US politics changed significantly with the presence of women in the same and their entrance in all areas of government, something just unthinkable a decade ago. The political culture of the American society changed dramatically during and since the twenties. The different political interests as well as the style introduced in politics by the first women legislators made citizens change their formed image of politics and politicians. Women were breaking into the political landscape with more strength, but what we were quite certain about was the arduous task that women had to face in the twenties in order to reach relevant public or political office. Perhaps the most noticeable changes had to do with the impact that women voters had on the electoral process itself, in the places where they voted, their behaviour, and above all, the meaning given to the voting process. Therefore, the main objective of this detailed study is on the political activity of women from the twenties. Women have been the backbone in a process by which federal and local governments assumed greater responsibility for the welfare of their fellow citizens. The presence of women in Congress made possible a transformation of party politics in the XIX century to the policy based on interest groups and candidates that characterised both the XX and XXI centuries. Henceforth, the presence of women in American politics had already been noted in the twenties with women in the positions of state governors, city mayors and representatives of the various state legislatures. Quite often though, women have been involved in politics with the aim of promoting various causes, especially those related to family matters or to the health of the local community, putting it ahead of their own personal interests.

“Self-Appointed Executioner”:

As Claire Hirschfield notes, “The politically active or socially committed actress has become in recent years a familiar icon: today’s actresses routinely lend support to candidates for political office, participate in anti-nuclear marches, and travel to third world capitals to promote a political agenda” (72). This situation was very different for much of the nineteenth century. Victorian actresses were struggling even to attain respectability and could hardly be considered influential leaders or models of what Hirschfield refers to as the “actress-as-activist” (73). In fact, historically, the actress was a symbol of what not to be. Since 1660, the year that women were permitted onstage in Britain, the occupation of the actress functioned within a public rhetoric that was degrading and dehumanizing for the women of the theater. Debates during the early seventeenth century, for example, claimed that women were “responsible for the theater’s corrupting influence and more susceptible to it” (Nussbaum 149). In this vein, Jeremy Collier’s famous attack on theatricality, A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), indicates that to allow women on the stage was “to make monsters of them, and throw them out of their kind” (Collier 185). In the eighteenth century, actress Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) challenged the negative stereotypes about the actress as a woman who expertly balanced her life offstage as a wife and mother while also becoming the “beau ideal of acting,” as she was called by Lord Byron (qtd. in Manvell 299); however, she was

Citizens United, Davis v. FEC, and Arizona Free Enterprise in Context: Lochner on Steroids and Democracy on Life Support

2012 is a year of unprecedented amounts of political advertising, much of it paid for by billionaires and millionaires or by corporations, often with the identity of the funders hidden. These mega-funders act through “independent” groups, groups supposedly independent of the candidates. This is a good year to reflect on the health of our political system. Does it work well as a device to promote informed democratic decision-making and speech from multiple perspectives? The problems are deep and systemic. They go farther and deeper than recent Supreme Court decisions that increase the previously very substantial influence of huge corporations and the very wealthy on the American political system. Still, recent decisions can lead us to think about the larger environment of our free speech system and about democratic system. Citizens United conferred a free speech right on corporate officers to spend unlimited amounts of corporate treasury funds for “independent” broadcast ads that support or oppose candidates for political office. Davis v. FEC protected self-funded millionaires and billionaires from the millionaire amendment to the McCain Feingold Act. That amendment allowed somewhat higher contribution limits (in a total not to exceed the millionaire’s or billionaire’s spending) for candidates facing and outspent by millionaires or billionaires. The Court found this limited effort to protect the opportunity of the underfunded candidate to respond impermissibly chilled the speech of millionaires and billionaires. Arizona Free Enterprise struck down an important system for public finance of state elections, again on the idea that a limited amount of publicly facilitated matching equals chilling. These decisions are in considerable tension with the constitutional text and with the historical context and purposes of free speech guarantees. In the case of the 14th Amendment, the transformation of the text, from one protecting natural persons born or naturalized to one protecting corporations, has its origin in Lochner era jurisprudence. The Davis and Citizens United decisions can best be understood in light of their impact on the already troubled larger environment necessary to sustain robust free speech and meaningful democracy. Citizens United threatens to undermine further the fiduciary duty of elected officials to the people. It is inconsistent with historic understanding of the then radical idea that helped to create the system. By that approach, free speech was a right for people, was anti-hierarchical, and was designed to produce adequate information from multiple perspectives. It is in tension with the recognition that government has a positive role in furthering free speech and democracy. Government action may support free speech. It is not always a threat. Nor is unrestrained private power merely a benefit for robust free speech. The Citizens United, Arizona Free Enterprise Freedom Club’s PAC, and Davis v. FEC decisions can best be understood in light of the ecology of freedom of expression and a host of threats it faces. As de Tocqueville, Daniel Webster, and James Madison were aware, extreme concentration of wealth in few hands tends to undermine democracy as well as effective speech from multiple perspectives. In addition, undermining the anti-trust laws to permit extensive corporate consolidation threatens democracy. That candidates need huge advertising budgets for television and often must rely on those with great wealth for contributions undermines their fiduciary duty to “the people.” That they are funded by “independent” groups raises similar problems. Both facilitate an insidious form corruption of the political process. Concentration of media power in a few corporate hands exacerbates the problem. The demise of the Fairness Doctrine further facilitates one sided political communication. It is no surprise that candidates supported by corporate groups act to diminish sources of funding for other perspectives, by undermining unions and public employee unions and restricting the rights of victims of torts and so income of trial lawyers. The decisions of the Lochner era struck down progressive legislation, but left the political process relatively open. Decisions which undermine the democratic nature of the political process are worse. They strangle reform in the crib. The Court’s rejection of any consideration of equality of access to speech in the political process and its refusal to see any threat to the fiduciary role of public officials beyond outright bribery block almost all meaningful reform. A revived and more pervasive fairness doctrine for television and cable (where most of the political money is spent) would be one reform to limit monopolization of speech by wealthy interests, though implementation would raise its own problems. Another would be a required amount of free time for candidates on television and radio.

Citizens United and Davis v. FEC: Lochner on Steroids and Democracy on Life Support

Citizens United conferred a free speech right on corporate officers to spend unlimited amounts of corporate treasury funds for “independent” broadcast ads that support or oppose candidates for political office. Davis v. FEC protected self-funded millionaires and billionaires from the millionaire amendment to the McCain Feingold Act. That amendment allowed somewhat higher contribution limits (in a total not to exceed the millionaire’s or billionaire’s spending) for candidates facing and outspent by millionaires or billionaires. The Court found this limited effort to protect the opportunity of the underfunded candidate to respond impermissibly chilled the speech of millionaires and billionaires. These decisions are in considerable tension with the constitutional text and with the historical context and purposes of free speech guarantees. In the case of the 14th Amendment, the transformation of the text from one protecting natural persons born or naturalized to one protecting corporations, has its origin in Lochner era jurisprudence. The Davis and Citizens United decisions can best be understood in light of their impact on the already troubled larger environment necessary to sustain robust free speech and meaningful democracy. Citizens United threatens to undermine the fiduciary duty of elected officials to the people. It is inconsistent with historic understanding that free speech was a right for people, that it was anti-hierarchical, and that it was designed to produce adequate information from multiple perspectives. It is in tension with the recognition that government has a positive role in furthering free speech and democracy. Government action may support free speech. It is not always a threat. Nor is unrestrained private power merely a benefit for robust free speech. The Citizens United and Davis v. FEC decisions can best be understood in light of the ecology of freedom of expression and a host of threats it faces. As de Tocqueville, Daniel Webster, and James Madison were aware, extreme concentration of wealth in few hands tends to undermine democracy as well as effective speech from multiple perspectives. In addition, undermining the anti-trust laws to permit extensive corporate consolidation threatens democracy. That candidates need huge advertising budgets for television and often must rely on those with great wealth for contributions undermines their fiduciary duty to “the people.” It facilitates an insidious form of corruption of the political process. Concentration of media power in a few corporate hands exacerbates the problem. The demise of the Fairness Doctrine facilitates one sided political communication. The decisions of the Lochner era struck down progressive legislation, but left the political process relatively open. Decisions which undermine the democratic nature of the political process are worse. They strangle reform in the crib. The Court’s rejection of any consideration of equality of access to speech in the political process and its refusal to see any threat to the fiduciary role of public officials beyond outright bribery block almost all meaningful reform.

Two Steps Forward or Two Steps Back? Institutional Change in Post-Soviet Russia

Much of the research on the socioeconomic transformations that shook Russia in the 1990s has focused on two interrelated themes: the path-dependent nature of insti tutional change and the nature of the post socialist stratification order. Each of the books reviewed here advances the discussion of these two topics, albeit from different angles. In my comments I suggest several ways to improve the level of debate about institutional change and distributional out comes in contemporary Russia, including the need for more detailed attention to eco nomic transactions among firms and house holds in order to balance path-dependencies with an appreciation for the manner in which markets are shaping incentives and thereby generating social change. How Russia Really Works is based on inter views the author conducted between 1997 and 2003 with 50 informants, including busi nesspeople, journalists, law enforcement offi cials, accountants, and legal experts. In the book, Ledeneva shows how defects in the formal structure of Russian society have forced individuals and organizations to rely on informal practices, many of which date back to the Soviet period, to achieve their goals. The author devotes separate chapters to six informal practices in particular: chernyi piar (the release of negative information about candidates for political office), kompro mat (the gathering of compromising infor mation on politicians and businessmen for purposes of blackmail), krugovaia poruka (the mutual cover-up of illicit activities within elite circles), tenevoi barter (reliance barter chains, surrogate financial instruments, and other non-market mechanisms of exchange), dvoinaia bukhgalteriia (double accounting and other financial schemes which allow entre preneurs to avoid taxes and export capital abroad), and, last but not least, tolkachi (the Owning Russia: The Struggle over Factories, Farms, and Power, by Andrew Barnes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 273pp. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780801444340.

Another World Is Possible: The Rise of the Brazilian Workers' Party and the Prospects for Lula's Government

In October 2002 Brazil elected as president a former metalworker and founder of a socialist party, a man whose family had left the miserable northeastern hinterland fi ve decades earlier to face prejudice and hardship in industrial Sao Paulo. The election of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) was a clear signal that deep changes were going on in a country marked by huge social inequalities and a contempt for manual labor engendered by almost four centuries of slavery. In the fi rst round of the 2002 presidential election, the former trade union leader had received 46 percent of the vote and won in twenty-four of twentyseven states. In the runoff election on October 27, Lula received 52.8 million votes, 61.3 percent of the nationwide total, and won in all but one state. With their vote, Brazilians had overwhelmingly supported a candidate and a party who were harsh critics of the procapitalist orthodoxies of neoliberalism and contemporary globalization. In doing so, Brazilian voters defi ed attempts by Washington, London, and the international fi nancial markets to warn them away from this use of their democratic rights, an attempt at blackmail that failed even though the value of Brazil’s national currency went down by 40 percent between the beginning of 2002 and the October elections. The vote for Lula was more than twice as large, in absolute terms, as the vote given to all other PT candidates for political offi ce. Yet it would be misleading to label this triumph as only personal in nature, since one of the most surprising developments was the jump in overall support for the PT. Although the PT and its allied parties did not win control of the Chamber of Deputies, the PT did become, for the fi rst time, the party with the largest number of deputies (91 of 513 seats) and the only one with representatives from all states, also a fi rst. Thus the 2002 election was both a personal triumph of the candidate Lula and a PT party victory (it also doubled its senators), although the PT did less well in gubernatorial races (winning in only three states) and lost control of Rio Grande do Sul (an area of party strength). C O N T E M P O R A RY A F FA I R S

Why Women Don't Run

Abstract Women are dramatically underrepresented in all of America's elective political institutions. Previous research has demonstrated that once women choose to become candidates they not only receive equal levels of party and financial support, but are just as likely as equally situated men to win. The primary reason for women's underrepresentation is that women are significantly less likely to choose to run than men. Using survey data from four different age cohorts in a central New York county, this paper provides some additional insight into why women are so much less likely to become candidates for political office than men. The findings suggest that a multiplicity of factors including political gender role socialization, a lack of political confidence, family responsibilities and the relatively few numbers of visible women role models in politics all contribute to why women don't run.

Getting Older, Getting Wiser? The Impact of Aging on Candidate Evaluation

Domain‐specific measures, such as political ideology and sophistication, have been used in models of how citizens evaluate candidates for political office. Non‐domain‐specific factors, such as age, may have additional explanatory power in models of evaluations and affect the type of information processing strategies employed by citizens. Specifically, the use of person‐ and issue‐based information in evaluation strategies may be affected by the cognitive structure of aging, including the acquisition of person impression skills and resources. We test this hypothesis using the Pooled Senate Election Study (1988–92) and the 1974 American National Election Study. The analysis reveals that younger citizens base their evaluations mostly on issue‐based criteria, but as citizens age they add person‐based criteria to their evaluations. Implications for decision‐making models are discussed.

Political Discourse of a Working-Class Town

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies have examined the construction, reproduction, and mental appropriation of `top-down' discourses of dominance but have paid little attention to `bottom-up' analyses of semi-formal texts such as Letters to the Editor (LEs) in small-town newspapers. We investigate here the discourse of LEs written by candidates for political office, their supporters, and opponents. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on a corpus of 123 LEs. Four research questions were addressed. The results of the study indicate that (1) letter writers used four specific forms of argumentation and selectively addressed issues; (2) LEs furnished a convenient platform for political campaigning but did not provide an effective medium for constructive dialogue leading to action and social change; (3) tax increases, ratables, the environment, and morality in education emerged as major topics; and (4) gender and class differences were salient in the discourse of LEs. An underlying discourse of disaffection, perceived as loss of social cohesion, emerged from the linguistic choices, content, tone, and structure of the letters. Reader-writers feel powerless at their inability to effect social change in their own communities.

Political Discourse of a Working-Class Town

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies have examined the construction, reproduction, and mental appropriation of `top-down' discourses of dominance but have paid little attention to `bottom-up' analyses of semi-formal texts such as Letters to the Editor (LEs) in small-town newspapers. We investigate here the discourse of LEs written by candidates for political office, their supporters, and opponents. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on a corpus of 123 LEs. Four research questions were addressed. The results of the study indicate that (1) letter writers used four specific forms of argumentation and selectively addressed issues; (2) LEs furnished a convenient platform for political campaigning but did not provide an effective medium for constructive dialogue leading to action and social change; (3) tax increases, ratables, the environment, and morality in education emerged as major topics; and (4) gender and class differences were salient in the discourse of LEs. An underlying discourse of disaffection, perceived as loss of social cohesion, emerged from the linguistic choices, content, tone, and structure of the letters. Readerwriters feel powerless at their inability to effect social change in their own communities.