Direct Popular Election Research Articles

Critical Analysis on the Comparative Advantage of Presidentialism over Parliamentary System on Liberty and National Unity in Ethiopia

Abstract The Ethiopian Federal Democratic Republic (EFDR) Constitution is promulgated in 1994. Under Article (45) of the EFDR the country is restructured from presidential to parliamentary system of government. Since then, the country has been ravaged by the gross violation of the liberty of citizens and the crisis of national unity and consensus among the diversified ethnic groups. The impact of the parliamentary system in aggravating those critical challenges and the comparative advantage of presidantialism is the most ignored political research topic. In this Article, I investigated that the blurry separation of powers of the parliamentary structure of the country has created fusion of powers which has undermined the system of checks and balances. Thus, the executive organ of the government has enabled to concentrate unchecked and unaccountable power which has manifested in the gross violation of the liberty of citizens. Likewise, Article (73) of EFDR has declared that the prime minister and council of ministers of the country to be appointed by the legislators. This has deprived their boarder popular base and authenticity; and equivocally undermined their potency and decisiveness in addressing the existing crisis of national unity and consensus. Comparatively, the presidential structure of government is defined by the firm separation of powers and genuine system of checks and balances. The direct popular election of the president enables the president and council of ministers to secure broader popular base and authenticity. Thus, it is advantageous over parliamentarian structure in terms of protecting the liberty of citizens and addressing the crisis of national unity and consensus in Ethiopia.

Swiss Federalism. The Transformation of a Federal ModelVatter, AdrianLondon, Routledge (2018), 286 p., ISBN 978‐1‐138‐29427‐1

Swiss Federalism. The Transformation of a Federal ModelVatter, AdrianLondon, Routledge (2018), 286 p., ISBN 978‐1‐138‐29427‐1

Russia’s Return to the Direct Election of Governors: Re-Shaping the Power Vertical?

The Russian leadership was taken aback both by the relatively poor showing of the ruling party in the 2011 parliamentary elections and by the size of the popular protests against alleged electoral fraud that followed. Realizing that the existing system of top-down rule was no longer effective or fully served the elite’s own interests, the leadership initially responded by offering a number of concessions, including the restoration of direct popular elections of regional governors. The gubernatorial elections held in 2012 were stage-managed, but at least some of those held in 2013 were open to a degree of competition. The results encouraged the leadership to declare its intention to open the system up to further competition. The aim seemed to be not only to contain popular dissent but also to bring about more efficient regional government, thereby securing the elite’s continued hold on power.

The Reinstated Gubernatorial Elections in Russia: A Return to Open Politics?

Rescission of the direct popular election of Russia’s regional executives was interpreted by many observers as a cardinal indicator of the trend toward authoritarianism in Russia. In the wake of a series of vocal national protests against electoral fraud following the State Duma elections of December 2011, President Dmitrii Medvedev announced the reinstatement of gubernatorial elections, and a federal law was passed in May 2012 implementing this decision; the first gubernatorial elections under the new system took place in five Russian oblasts on 14 October 2012. This paper analyzes the campaigns and outcomes of these elections, as well as media and expert commentary surrounding them, with a goal of exploring whether the reinstitution of a gubernatorial electoral process presents a significant potential for renewed political competition or popular political mobilization at the regional level in Russia. Analysis of these early cases suggests that while these elections offer a real potential for genuine electoral contestation, the political establishment also exhibited the ability to apply a variety of formal and informal mechanisms to assure the desired outcome. Realization of the potential of gubernatorial elections to promote electoral competition would require a greater resolve and unity of opposition parties, including at the subregional level.

Have Putin's Policies on Local Government Changed the Way Yaroslavl Is Governed?

Since 1990, the city of Yaroslavl, Russia, has provided me with a unique window for observing post-Communist Russia.1 One of the advantages of watching the changes in post-Communist Russia through the microcosm of this city is that it is not Moscow or St. Petersburg. Moscow and St. Petersburg are the centers of political life in Russia where the reforms are made; Yaroslavl is a small city beyond Moscow's direct jurisdiction where those reforms are implemented. Moscow and St. Petersburg are cosmopolitan and ethnically heterogeneous; Yaroslavl is overwhelmingly ethnically Russian. Most important, perhaps, the pace of life moves more slowly in Yaroslavl, allowing one to see the effects of the rapid changes initiated in Moscow in more nuanced detail.I have visited Yaroslavl more than a dozen times. I first went in the spring of 1990, when perestroika was already being felt. I was one of a team of American specialists on Russia who were among the first to observe the workings of regional politics in Soviet Russia firsthand and to conduct interviews with local officials.2 I conducted survey research on political attitudes among a fully representative sample of the population in March 1990. The survey research project coincided with the first truly competitive elections in Russia. I observed the Yaroslavtsy as they came to the polls to choose their city, regional, and national deputies. The survey research was replicated in 1993, 1996, and 2004, allowing a longitudinal view of changes in public opinion about political and economic reform.3 My repeat visits enabled me to view the evolution of Yaroslavl's political institutions. Because what I was observing was unfolding on a smaller stage, I could see more easily what changes occurred from one year to the next. Yaroslavl became my prism. Many of the results of my research from 1990 to 2000 appeared in Regional Russia in Transition: Studies from Yaroslavl', which was published in 2001.4In this article, I assess how Yaroslavl's political institutions have changed since 2000 and compare those changes with the transformations that took place between 1990 and 1993 and those that followed the post-1993 constitutional order. The timing is propitious in that May 2008 marked the end of Vladimir Putin's second term as Russia's president. Therefore, I examine the impact that his leadership has had on local government in Yaroslavl and how Yaroslavl's city government changed between 2000 and 2008, when Putin was president. I also explore the impact Yaroslavl's municipal government has had on the life of its inhabitants. How important are decisions taken by the city's government and has its role increased or decreased? Are politics in Yaroslavl more determined locally or by the central government's efforts to assert control?To investigate these questions, I begin by examining the initial transformation of Yaroslavl's political institutions between 1990 and 1993. I then examine the new institutions that were introduced following the abolition of the Yaroslavl city soviet, or council, in October 1993. Next, I offer a picture of Yaroslavl's government on the eve of Putin's ascendency as Russia's president in 2000. I also briefly discuss the 2003 Russian Law on Local Self-Government and assess its impact on Yaroslavl's municipal government. Finally, to evaluate the impact of Yaroslavl's city government on the life of the city, I analyze the long-term General Plan that the city government adopted in 2006. Information relevant to these questions was gathered during an October 2007 visit to Yaroslavl.The First Transformation: 1990-93Before the March 1990 elections, Yaroslavl was governed in the same manner as all other Russian cities during the Soviet era. In elections devoid of competition, deputies to the city soviet's 200 seats were elected in direct popular elections held every two-and-onehalf years. At the first session after their election, the deputies would select an ispolkom (executive committee) from among their members. …

The Empirical Implications of Electoral College Reform

The events of 2000 inspired renewed debate in America over the manner in which presidents are chosen, with many critics of the existing system favoring the alternative of direct popular election. These advocates of reform often argue that the strategic environment shaped by the electoral college distorts the democratic process by encouraging candidates to focus on a few politically competitive states while virtually ignoring the majority of the nation. Using empirical evidence, we evaluate the claim that the electoral college is antidemocratic due to its effect on campaign strategy. Furthermore, we consider the possible alternative strategies adopted by candidates under a hypothetical national popular presidential election. We conclude that many of the consequences of electoral college reform, unacknowledged by its proponents, would not necessarily make presidential elections substantially more democratic, and we call for additional empirical research on a topic that has heretofore been dominated by theoretical debate and speculation.

Trial and Error: Electoral Reform through Bypass and its Repeal

‘The second republic’ is how Asher Arian defined Israel's government in the 1990s, referring to the ‘new issues, new constitutional rules, new leadership’ that emerged at the beginning of that era....

S'emparer du pouvoir ou créer du pouvoir ?

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, both Argentina and Brazil decentralized their governments. Both countries also started this process with similar institutions of intergovernmental relations and in the context of military regimes. However, whereas the military in Argentina took an administrative decentralization measure first (i.e. the transfer of primary-level education from the central government to the provinces), the Brazilian military began the process of decentralization with a political measure (the reinstallation of the direct popular election of governors). The article shows that different types of militarism, in particular the different ways in which the military occupied the state apparatus and controlled the political system, explain the occurrence of opposite initial steps in the decentralization process. Such different beginnings led ultimately to varying degrees of autonomy for governors and mayors. Thus, by the end of the century, Brazilian governors and mayors had gained significantly more autonomy than their counterparts in Argentina.

Bloc Voting in the Electoral College: How the Ignored States Can Become Relevant and Implement Popular Election Along the Way

The electoral college is enshrined in our Constitution, yet it is widely viewed to have outlived its usefulness. Constitutional requirements and the state of national politics make it unlikely that direct popular election of the president could be achieved through amendment of the Constitution. The alternative, action at the state level, is currently a topic of discussion. However, efforts by the states are hampered by a collective action problem, i.e., a lack of incentives to act alone without a guarantee that others will follow. This article examines a set of four alternatives for electoral college reform which can be accomplished through legislation at the state level, all of which lead to national popular election of the President on a basis of "one person, one vote," and two of which provide powerful incentives for all states to join. The advocated approach is for a given state to pass legislation that appoints its electors according to the popular vote of, not only its own voters, but those of all states that pass similar legislation. This approach, explicitly allowed by the Constitution, creates a powerful voting bloc whose electoral votes will all go to one candidate. Presidential campaigns which normally ignore the citizens of a majority of states will be unable to ignore this bloc. As other states join the bloc in order to gain this increased influence, the power, and incentive to join, only grows. The result may be popular election of the President without a constitutional amendment through action by as few as eleven states. This article looks at the political viability as well as the constitutionality of such a system. It also examines in detail how such an approach would work within our current federal system of elections.

A general stability analysis on regional and national voting schemes against noise---why is an electoral college more stable than a direct popular election?

By discarding the previous restrictive weak average distribution assumption on region sizes, we have developed a new general probabilistic model on the regional voting (known as ''direct popular vo...

A general stability analysis on regional and national voting schemes against noise—why is an electoral college more stable than a direct popular election?

By discarding the previous restrictive weak average distribution assumption on region sizes, we have developed a new general probabilistic model on the regional voting (known as “direct popular voting” in political science) and the national voting (typically, the electoral college), where we regard the percentage of a candidate's supporters in the nation as the probability of a voter voting for the candidate. Our analysis demonstrates that the regional voting is always more stable than the national voting, and that the stability margin of the regional voting always increases as the size of such partitioned regions decreases down to a certain critical value of region size, beyond which the stability margin starts to decrease, asymptoting to a national voting level where the size of the partitioned regions approaches the unit of voting cell so that the improved stability of the regional voting by localizing the effects of noise into a restricted number of smaller effective areas will not be effective. Our stability analysis remains valid over the entire range in size of the partitioned regions for regional voting. We show that the regional voting asymptotes to the national voting in two extreme limiting cases, when the region size decreases to a voting cell size and when the region size increases to the size of the nation.

Value/Ethical Issues in the 2000 Election

Elections offer significant insight into ethical and value issues related to candidates and political parties and changes in the electorate including the non-voters. This election brought numerous value issues to the fore that will continue to be relevant to political activity. The winner of the popular vote lost in the Electoral College after a contentious vote count in Florida. The election brought into focus issues of direct popular election with a loss of power to less populated states and reform of ballot/election procedures and campaign financing. Overall, the Supreme Court and Ralph Nader lost credibility; John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman gained. The belief that every vote counted was shown to be false in this as in other elections. The press gave life to the issue of capital punishment even though the issue did not separate the two major presidential candidates. The election revealed significant geographical differences in voting patterns and minority vote choices with significant implications for the future.

The December 1998 elections in Taiwan

The 5 December 1998 elections in Taiwan mark the first time that the national city mayoral elections and Legislative Yuan elections were held simultaneously. There was an increase in the number of candidates and seats for the Legislative Yuan election compared to the 1995 election; the Legislative Yuan sits for a three-year term. The mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaoshiung were the second direct popular elections featuring two well-known incumbents and two tough challengers vying for the four-year post. All Taiwanese elections in the 1990s were seen as referendums on the fate of the long-ruling Kuomintang, but many political commentators saw the 1999 elections as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the presidential election in 2000.

Wei Jingsheng and the Prospects for Democracy in China (review)

© 1997 by University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 153 inquiry, with a care taken in understanding the interpretative limits ofdocuments that should be a model for those who work with complex sources ofany kind. Robert André LaFleur Colby College RobertLaFleur is an assistantprofessor ofhistory specializing in Chinese cultural history and historiography. mm Tom Hart and Torbjörn Lodén, editors. Wei Jingsheng and the Prospects for Democracy in China. Stockholm, Sweden: The Center for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, 1995. i, 58 pp. Paperback, isbn 91-6303962 -1. The meaning ofdemocracy in China from the days ofthe 1978-1979 Democracy Wall movement to the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 has been a complex and sometimes contradictory problem for anyone concerned about China and its future —and expecially for its dissident intellectuals. There are questions that need to be answered by dissidents inside and outside China. How committed are they to democracy? How have they defined democracy in a Chinese context, and how divergent are their views? What ideas can exiled dissidents offer for the possible liberalization and democratization of China? The direct popular election of the president ofTaiwan raises the question: do dissidents in exile support the thesis that economic reform will in time lead to political reform or democracy in China, as it has in Taiwan? Despite its limitations, which this reviewer will discuss shortly, this slim volume ofessays selected from the writings ofthree dissidents in exile is a welcome addition to the growing literature on democracy in China, its meaning, and its prospects. This book was published in Sweden in honor ofWei Jingsheng, who was first arrested in 1979 for his participation in activities connected with the Democracy Wall. It will be recalled that Wei was then fhe editor ofthe underground journal Tansuo (Exploration), in which he not only advocated freedom of speech, democracy , and human rights, but also "slandered" Marxism, Leninism, and Mao's Thought. Moreover, Wei even advocated the abandonment of socialism. He was arrested in March 1979 along with thirty other dissidents. In a special one-day trial he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on the dubious charges that he had supplied military intelligence to Western reporters on China's military action 154 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. ?, Spring 1997 against Vietnam, and that he had encouraged the overthrow of the socialist system . Wei subsequendy appealed to the Beijing municipal court, but his plea was rejected. Wei was released in September 1993 after spending just under fifteen years in prison—on the eve ofthe International Olympics Committee's vote on Beijing's bid for the Olympic games in the year 2000, a bid that subsequendy went to Sydney, Australia. His release was viewed as a gesture on the part of Chinese authorities to placate Western criticism ofChina's human rights violations. In December 1995, Wei was again arrested, tried, and sentenced to fourteen more years for "sedition" and for writing provocative articles that were critical of the government, for newspapers abroad. Wei is known, particularly in the West, for his most famous essay, "The Fifth Modernization," which advocates that China must have democracy first and then modernization. In 1994, Wei was awarded the OlofPalme Prize, given in memory ofthe late prime minister of Sweden. Since it was not possible for Wei to go to Sweden to accept the prize, the Olof Palme Memorial Fund, in cooperation with the Center for Pacific Asia Studies, the Institute of Oriental Languages at Stockholm University , and the Sweden branch ofAmnesty International, organized a one-day conference in March 1995 at Stockholm University on "Political Activism and the Prospects for Democracy in China." Three Chinese dissidents in exile were invited to present papers at the conference. These papers, plus a paper given by a Swedish China scholar, were published in book form. This collection ofessays in a slim, fifty-eight-page volume includes Wei Jingsheng's 1978 dazibao "The Fifth Modernization" and his trial defense as appendixes . Wei's famous essay discusses why democracy is better than autocracy. There are three themes: (1) why democracy? (2) what kind ofdemocracy? and (3) democracy should come first, before implementing the modernizations of agriculture , education, science, technology, industry, and defense. To Wei...

The Power Structure in Taiwan's Political Economy

The year 1995 was a critical one in Taiwan's political history. It commemorated the centennial of the Manchu Dynasty's cessation of the island to Japan under the Shimonoseki Treaty of 1895 and marked the 50th anniversary of the Kuomintang's (KMT) one-party rule. The year also set the stage for the first direct popular election of Taiwan's president in the spring of 1996. There is no doubt that Taiwan today is fundamentally different from its colonial and authoritarian past. It is a new Taiwan, a dynamic powerhouse and a competitive political democracy. The economic miracle has been widely recognized around the world, but in the last several years under Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan has also emerged dramatically as a dynamic working democracy. Gone are the days of political repression and secret police control. More than 70 political parties have officially registered since martial law was lifted in 1987. Press controls were relaxed in the same year, and the mass media has become one of the most energetic and dynamic in the world. The path to political liberalization and democratization in Taiwan, however, has by no means been smooth. In the political arena, reform had to wait decades for the power grip and conservative heritage of the KMT to erode and change; the strengths of social protest and political opposition also took a long time to nurture and grow; the socioeconomic foundation as a prerequisite to democratization took an even longer time to build. While the essential elements of democratic institution are now very much in place, the very forces that the KMT had skillfully used to support its authoritarian rule and that later corroded its Leninist one-party control, thus

Presidential parliamentarism: Direct popular election of the Prime Minister, Israel's new electoral and political system

In 1992, the Israeli parliament enacted the new Basic Law: The Government, which provides Israel with the distinction of being the only country to have direct popular election of its Prime Minister (beginning with the next election, scheduled for mid-1996). This new law not only effectively alters the electoral system, but also changes the entire political system in Israel, replacing its pure parliamentary system with a new, hybrid and unique regime type. This article describes the circumstances that brought about the recent reforms in Israel, delineates the electoral changes which were adopted, and analyzes whether Israel has switched from a parliamentary to a presidential political system.

Changing Israel's electoral system: The direct popular election of the Prime Minister

Italy, Japan and New Zealand are not the only countries to have overhauled their electoral systems recently. During recent years pure party list proportionality has contributed to unstable government in Israel. The following article describes a unique reform whereby the country ’will encompass aspects of both presidential and parliamentary regimes‘.

Democracy and participation history and hopes of the scottish constitutional convention

Israel enters this trial period, it could well become a laboratory for electoral experimentation. Several other countries have also begun to contemplate the direct popular election of their Prime Minister — Italy, Japan, and Germany, for example — and will be watching the Israeli experiment very closely.

The Great Transition

I n the 1980s, political change reverberated across the Pacific Basin: In early 1986, a revolution in the Philippines revived democracy and replaced an autocrat who had ruled for nearly fifteen years; in late 1987, the ruling party in the Republic of Korea allowed direct popular elections for the presidency to be held for the first time in more than a decade. In late 1986, the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT)-which had ruled the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan without significant opposition for some forty years-lifted martial law, allowing new political parties to form and compete with the KMT, and launched other reforms. These countries have cultures and institutions very different from those in the West. Can these Asian-Pacific societies still develop a democratic political system like the West's, yet remain compatible with their cultures and institutions? If so, what kind of democratic polity might be expected to emerge? To answer these questions, we examine the ROC, because of all three countries mentioned above, its transition from a powerful ruling party to a polity of new political opposition seems to have been the most successful.

Mass-Participatory Economy: A Democratic Alternative for Korea (review)

Book Reviews Mass-Participatory Economy: A Democratic Alternativefor Korea, by Kim Dae Jung. Lanham, Maryland: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and the University Press of America, 1985. xi, 81 pp. $17.75 cloth. Kim Dae Jung has been one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the political opposition in South Korea in the last two decades, and is certainly the one best known outside Korea. He was narrowly defeated by Park Chung Hee in the hotly contested elections of 1971, receiving 46 percent of the popular vote in spite of widespread electoral fraud perpetrated by the government . Having gone into self-imposed exile, he was kidnapped by Korean government agents while on a speaking tour of Japan, and eventually imprisoned for violating the election law. His civil rights were restored in 1980 after the assassination of Park, but he was again imprisoned and sentenced to death following the military coup led by ar^ny general Chun Doo Hwan. His death sentence was later commuted to life in prison, and subsequently to a twenty year term. In 1982 he was released and allowed to travel to the United States for medical treatment. He returned to Korea to face house arrest in 1985. Kim has offered to remove himself as a candidate for president if the Chun regime revises the current constitution to permit direct popular election of that office. He remains one of the most popular and influential political figures in contemporary South Korea. Mass-Participatory Economy is a much needed English language introduction to the political and economic philosophy of so significant a figure. Its central premises and concepts have their genesis in Kim's earlier writings, principally his 1970 master's thesis from Kyung Hee University and his 1971 Korean language work, Kim Dae Jung ssi ui Taejung Kyongje. There is, therefore, a remarkable continuity, which is at the same time laudable and disturbing, in his apprehension of Korea's political and economic difficulties, as well as the policy proposals posited as solutions. It is laudable in that Kim remains committed to his early ideals, such as democratization and social equality. It is disturbing in that he has apparently not updated his grasp of international political economy in light of the developing refinement of dependency and world system literature. Had he done so, I think that many of the proposals, if not the criticisms, contained herein would be significantly modified. Nevertheless, the book is of value to laymen and specialists alike in that it describes the causes and consequences 66BOOK REVIEWS of various government policies, and also prescribes strategies for redefining Korea's political economy along lines that are politically democratic and economically equitable. One should not be taken aback by the brevity of the text, for it discusses the nexus between the control of economic resources and the manipulation of political power far better than many scholarly works several times its length. Since 1945, the two most passionately pursued goals in both North and South Korea have been security and development. The central premise of Kim's work is that the regime's faulty definition or comprehension of the latter jeopardizes the former. The critique is that successive authoritarian regimes have defined development primarily in terms of GNP growth—the expansion of industrial productivity—rather than in terms of the equitable distribution of the benefits of growth to all segments of Korean society. The consequence of such social inequity and sectoral imbalance has been economic dislocation and political instability. Kim fears such conditions invite an attack by North Korea. His critique is cogent, in that South Korea remains plagued by unrest and instability in spite of the spectacular economic gains registered during the last twenty-five years, and must devote vast sums to the maintenance of a 575,000 man military establishment to deter any potential aggression from the north as well as to maintain domestic order. According to Kim, such single-minded pursuit of growth was facilitated by the systematic imposition of an authoritarian order which advantages some—the military, big business, state technocrats— and disadvantages others—industrial workers, farmers, small and medium businessmen. He argues that by excluding key segments of the population...