Election Issues Research Articles

The Insulation of Local Politics Under the Nonpartisan Ballot

The purpose of this article is to analyze the relationships between partisan and nonpartisan voting patterns in four cities using nonpartisan municipal elections. It is part of a larger comparative study on the process of policy formation in middle-sized cities. The data have been used to test the nonpartisan rationale which states that the removal of party labels from the ballot insulates local elections from state and national political party influences.The “insulation” argument states that national political parties do not and cannot adequately serve the needs of the local political unit. Their intrusion into the local scene invariably represents the introduction of irrelevancies which confuse the voters and prevent them from dwelling on local issues in city elections. Thus, the nonpartisan idea is partially based on the belief that local democracy will be improved through rationalizing its political universe. Citizens will choose well if specific, pertinent, and familiar questions are posed to them.

Foreign Policy Issues in Japan's 1958 Elections

THE GENERAL ELECTIONS for the Lower House of the Diet, which were held in May I958, provide useful material for a study of Japanese attitudes to foreign policy and to the related questions of rearmament and war. There have been no detailed public opinion polls in these fields for a considerable time and an examination of election issues offers one of the few available statistical methods (albeit a very indirect and inexact one) for judging what Japanese people are thinking in i958 about such crucial problems as their country's alignment with the Western powers, the need to rearm and the use of nuclear weapons. It is generally agreed that foreign policy issues played an unusually important part in the I958 elections. The left-wing opposition (Socialists and Communists) gave more stress than ever to the field of foreign relations; at the same time, the leader of the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party, Mr. Kishi, has, since he first became Prime Minister in February I957, attached the greatest importance to foreign affairs, and his government has done its best to popularize the active policy of economic diplomacy advocated by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Fujiyama. Among the factors that helped to focus attention on foreign policy was the crisis in Japan's relations with China, which came to a head shortly before the elections. As we shall see, the two major parties and the Communists all devoted considerable attention to Sino-Japanese trade and to the vexed problem of policy towards Communist China. Even more important was the fact that both the conservatives and the Socialists tended to avoid controversial domestic issues. There was an extraordinary wide measure of agreement on almost all questions of internal policy that were prominent in the election platforms and speeches. On many of the main domestic issues (including social insurance, help for small and medium business enterprises, tax reduction, government aid to agriculture and fisheries, and the improvement of educational facilities), the two major parties spoke with one voice. At the same time, such moot points as support for constitutional revision or for the control of large business combines were largely avoided. It is significant that in analyzing the election results Mr. Suzuki, the chairman of the Socialist Party, should have mentioned his party's failure to emphasize the differences

Election Issues in Western Germany

Adenauer will go down in history as one of the greatest of postwar statesmen. When he became Chancellor of the German Federal Republic in 1949, his country was still occopied, it was the subject of widespread distrust and disdain, and it was still suffering from the effects of the economic collapse that had immediately followed the war. He was the architect of recovery. Industrial production, which in 1946 was about a third of the 1936 figures, had risen by the end of last year to two and a half times the prewar level. Between 1950 and 1955 exports more than trebled, while gold and dollar reserves went up during the same period from $170 million to $2,300 million. In May, 1955, Western Germany became a full member of NATO and, subject only to certain reservations made necessary by German division, regained her sovereignty. She has won world-wide respect and, in a surprising measure, the confidence of her former enemies in the West. The German people showed their gratitude to Dr. Adenauer in the federal elections of 1953. His party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian counterpart, the ChristianSocial Union (CSU) together obtained ninety-three more seats than their nearest rival, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and for the first time in German history under a system of proportional representation got a clear majority in the federal parliament. The federal elections due next September will have a special significance as the first since Western Germany regained her sovereignty. For the last two years there has been a greater fluidity in German politics than during the previous six, when recovery and rehabilitation were the main objectives. Now for the first time since the war the German people will vote without the shadow of a foreign occupation and with their eyes directed to the future rather than to the past.

Election Issues in Western Germany

Election Issues in Western Germany

British Election Issues

Essay| December 01 1935 British Election Issues Ralph Thompson Ralph Thompson Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1938) 43 (3): 307–311. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1935.43.3.307 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ralph Thompson; British Election Issues. Current History 1 May 1938; 43 (3): 307–311. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1935.43.3.307 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1935 by The Regents of the University of California1935 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Congressional Election Issues

Congressional Election Issues

Electoral Reform in France

Since the separation of church and state in 1905 the paramount question of French internal politics has been that of electoral reform. No other question has been so much discussed in parliament and in the country, or has been the subject of so many reports, books, brochures and magazine articles. It has occupied a leading place in the ministerial declarations of the last five cabinets and has caused the downfall of one. It was one of the paramount issues in the parliamentary elections of 1910 and an overwhelming majority of the deputies in the present chamber were chosen upon programs which pledged them to the support of electoral reform. Furthermore, the present chamber, elected in 1910, has on four different occasions by large majorities voted in favor of electoral reform and on July 10, 1912, it passed a bill by a vote of 339 to 217 embodying the more important reforms demanded by the country. But so far the senate has refused its concurrence.