Elected Officials Research Articles

Populist agenda-setting

ABSTRACT Populist agenda-setting is under-theorized, in part because of the fragmentation of scholarship on populism and agenda-setting. Policy studies has concentrated on the ideas, agents, and mechanisms of mainstream agenda-setting; comparative political economy, political sociology, comparative politics have centred on the sources of populism; and party politics, social movement, and political communication studies have focused on the characteristics of the populists themselves. This article builds on all such literatures to theorise the interactive effects of populism on agenda setting when populists are on the outside, in elective office, or in government. Using the four ‘Ms’ of populists’ ‘discursive construction of discontent’ – message, messenger, medium, and milieu – the article examines how populist messages shape the policy narrative; how populist messengers frame the debate; how they use the media to captivate ‘the people;’ and why, depending on milieu, populists are able to leverage ‘the people’s’ support to upend the mainstream and/or capture power.

Marshall Plan or neocolonization? The Model Cities Program and Black planning criticism

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the writing of Black activists, planners, and critics to reconcile two opposing perceptions of the Model Cities Program: an initiative known for its elevation of Black elected officials and a program that used the guise of citizen participation to stifle more radical forms of dissent. In 1966, Model Cities emerged in part from the call for a domestic Marshall Plan for Black Americans. Yet as the program began making incremental changes to the country’s neighbourhoods from 1967 to the early 1970s, participants and critics instead began to see Model Cities’ relationship to Black Americans as a new form of colonialism. To determine how this shift occurred, this paper analyses this critical commentary against the archival evidence of Model Cities implementation in the cities in which it appeared. Situating these authors’ arguments within the parallel emergence of Black studies and participatory planning as well as within larger Cold War diplomatic history, planning history, and African American intellectual history reveals how visions of revolution turned into a program of representation. Meanwhile, the plans these figures produced as part of Model Cities point to what a revolutionary program might yet be.

NAMI poll reveals MH care should be high priority for Congress

A bipartisan majority of Americans want their elected officials to do more to improve mental health care in this country, according to NAMI's new poll.

교수의 자유에 대한 제한과 그 한계

This paper attempted to identify the possibilities and limits of restrictions on the freedom of professor’s lecturing, which is a constitutional right under the Korean Constitution, through a commentary on the Supreme Court's 2014Do3923 decision.
 The core issue of the 2014Do3923 decision commented in this paper is whether the professor's conduct of lecturing by distributing press articles unfavorable to a presidential election candidate as part of the lecture content and method can be considered a violation of the Public Official Election Act, in relation to academic freedom, especially the freedom of professor’s lecturing.
 Among academic freedoms, which are constitutional rights guaranteed under the Korean Constitution, there is little in-depth prior research on the scope or degree of protection, restrictions, and limits on the freedom of professor’s lecturing.
 The significance of the Supreme Court's 2014Do3923 decision is summarized as follows.
 First, this decision is significant as the first Supreme Court’s ruling regarding restrictions on the freedom of professor’s lecturing and its limits. In particular, there were almost no court rulings or decisions of the Constitutional Court that directly address the relationship between the freedom of professor’s lecturing and positive law or deal in depth with the content, possibility of restrictions, and limits of the freedom of professor’s lecturing. In this respect, the Supreme Court's 2014Do3923 decision directly addresses the relationship between the freedom of professor’s lecturing and the Public Official Election Act, and argues in depth the content of the freedom of professor’s lecturing, the possibility of restrictions, and its limits. It can be positioned as the ‘first’ Supreme Court ruling that ‘directly’ addresses the possibility of restrictions, and its limits.
 Second, the legal principles regarding the restrictions on the freedom of professor’s lecturing and their limits presented in this ruling can present theoretically and practically meaningful judicial judgment standards in actual cases related to the freedom of professor’s lecturing in the future.

Some aspects of direct participation of the people in the exercise of state power

The scientific article examines some aspects of the people's direct participation in the exercise of state power.
 Defined, direct democracy, a system of government in which citizens, rather than elected officials, vote directly on major national issues, is supported by about two-thirds of the population worldwide, with little difference in opinion between regions.
 It has been established that the direct exercise of power by the people should be distinguished from other legitimate types of public-authority powers. Along with this, the specified term-concept can be considered as: a separate full-fledged institution of constitutional law, the normative consolidation of which involves a set of relevant material and procedural legal norms; a complex system of social relations in the sphere of implementation of people's power with observance of the basic fundamental legal principles, in particular, the principle of people's sovereignty.
 Emphasized, views on the economy are closely related to satisfaction with democracy. A public that has experienced high rates of economic growth and is satisfied with their country's economy has more confidence in the national government. Similarly, people who support the ruling party or parties in general in their country tend to rate their democracy more positively than those who support either the opposition or no political party at all.
 It is noted that the level of satisfaction with democracy varies significantly in different regions and countries and even within the country. People's assessments of the functioning of democracy differ significantly depending on their economic attitudes and party orientations.
 It has been determined that public authorities that initiate referendum votes tend to seek legitimacy for policies on the government agenda, regularly advocate for a positive vote, and will have many ways to influence the process and outcome, including official communication resources.
 It is emphasized that the natural (organic) right of the people to directly participate in the formation of state policy for the benefit of socially significant interests is an integral indicator of the development of democratic processes in every state.

Ensuring an Equitable Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Pima County, Arizona, Through Local Political Support and Policy Action.

In the United States, persistent health disparities and preexisting gaps in local public health infrastructure led to disproportionate effects of COVID-19 across populations at high risk of COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality. In Pima County, Arizona, equity-centered local government engagement and policy action, multipronged community-based responses, and expansion of historically underfunded local public health infrastructure improved equitable outcomes and addressed multiple systemic factors. This case study examined Pima County's 3-pronged public health response to COVID-19 using an equity-based approach. As a result, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Pima County in 2021, compared with being the leading cause of death in Arizona. Strong political support from local elected officials created the authorizing environment for the Pima County Health Department to advance health equity. Passage of a resolution in December 2020, which framed the racial and ethnic health and socioeconomic inequities as a public health crisis, supported innovation and fostered the creation of an Office of Health Equity, a public health policy program, and a data and informatics program. New structures for community engagement were formed, including an ethics committee and a community advisory committee, to ensure a formalized process for community participation in public health actions, during and after the pandemic response. Key lessons learned included (1) the importance of local government support, codified to allow implementation of creative strategies; (2) opening avenues for community voice and engagement in planning and implementation to respond in areas of greatest need; and (3) having flexible funding to sustain an equitable response.

The Invincible Gender Gap in Political Ambition

ABSTRACTWhen we uncovered a large gender gap in political ambition in the early 2000s, our research highlighted how far the United States was from gender parity in politics. Given marked increases in women’s numeric representation throughout the past two decades, many might expect the gender gap in political ambition to have begun to close. Results from our new study of potential candidates, however, reveal that the magnitude of the gender gap is just as large 20 years later, and two primary explanations persist as well. We posit that even though candidate recruitment has propelled more women into electoral politics, patterns of traditional gender socialization persist. These dynamics, coupled with negative perceptions of how female candidates are treated, continue to depress women’s interest in elective office. As long as running for office is a more remote endeavor for women than men, women’s full political inclusion will remain a distant goal.

Elite Politicians or Ordinary Citizens? Decree Making and Political Friendship in fifth-century Athens

Summary This article aims to advance our understanding of Athenian politics through a quantitative study of the proposers of decrees in the Assembly during the fifth century BC. Based on the accounts of Greek historians, biographers and orators, scholars have traditionally envisioned Athenian politics as dominated by an elite whose members competed for power and prestige and controlled the Assembly through dynamics of political friendship. Recent studies of the decree proposers attested in the epigraphical and literary sources have questioned this model. They have shown that, at least during the fourth century, political initiative was not the prerogative of an elite but was rather widespread among ordinary citizens. Yet, the traditional, elite-centred view of Athenian politics is still widely supported among scholars working on the fifth-century democracy. This article challenges this view through a comparative study of the respective pictures of fifth-century decree proposing provided by the literary and epigraphical evidence. By means of statistical tests and analyses, it argues that, while wealth certainly gave elites an advantage in the Assembly through rhetorical training as well as an edge in the run for elective offices, Athenian democracy since the fifth century provided occasional proposers and ordinary citizens with significant pathways for exerting political agency. By reviewing the problematic evidence for the practice of proposing decrees through proxies, this study also shows that the significant level of popular participation attested in the observed data was not a by-product of political friendship, and that Athenian democracy since its early history encouraged models of political aggregation which could cut through friendship groups and enable forms of participation not limited to passively supporting one’s political leaders.

Compulsory civic duty and turnout: evidence from a natural experiment

Abstract We study the effect of compulsory civic duty on turnout. We take advantage of a natural experiment in Spain, where electoral officers are selected through a lottery and being an electoral officer is compulsory for those drafted. We analyze whether acting as an officer changes turnout and attitudes in subsequent elections. Our findings show that compulsory civic duty has a strong short-term and positive effect on electoral participation, but has no impact on political attitudes. The positive effect of the civic duty treatment, however, fades after a few months. Our results have implications for theories about civic duty and the formation of political habits.

Causes and Consequences of Post-Election Violence in Kenya

The election of leaders by the people is the aim of democratic procedures. An electoral system is intended to ensure that the outcomes reflect the preferences of the majority of voters, providing elected officials’ legitimacy, and that the results are unchallenged in any form. The aim of this study was to identify the causes of the post-election violence. Voting theory served as the foundation for this work. A descriptive study approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods was used by the researcher. The research was carried out from July 2022 to December 2022. Political parties, political analysts, IEBC members, legislators, and voters made up the study's target population. The researcher employed the stratified random sampling technique. The target population established the strata, and a random sample was taken from each stratum. The researcher used interview guide techniques to collect data, using items that were developed from the study objectives and research questions. Questionnaires and interviews were the two main ways that data were gathered. Voters were handed questionnaires, and interview guidelines were provided for political experts, electoral experts, and IEBC officials. The information gathered through the use of questionnaires was statistically analyzed using descriptive methods. According to the findings, disputed election results, tribalism, inadequate electoral conflict resolution mechanisms, the "winner-takes-it-all" election system, perceived bias of the electoral management body, and voter incitement by politicians are among the main causes of post-election violence in Kenya since 1963. Casualties, internally displaced people, the damage to private and public property, economic instability, and emotional and psychological suffering are only a few of the key effects of the post-election violence in Kenya. The report recommends, among other things, looking at alternative choices, including mixed-member and proportional representation models, since they are more inclusive and produce fair representation, as a remedy for the existing polarizing plurality voting system.

Child Penalties in Politics

Abstract Women tend to experience a substantial decline in their labour income after their first child is born, while men do not. Do such ‘child penalties’ also exist in the political arena? Using comprehensive administrative data from Norway, we find that women are less likely than men to secure elected office after their first child is born. The effects already manifest from the nomination stage, where mothers receive less favourable rankings on party lists relative to comparable fathers. This paper broadens our understanding of a fundamental social issue in political representation and demonstrates how motherhood even affects positively selected women.

Redefining “No Evidence of a Breach” in Election Security

For legal purposes, we rightly understand the lack of evidence to mean a lack of existence. For example, many candidates in the 2022 elections baselessly claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. But, absent evidence of systemic fraud, the law correctly determines that President Biden was duly elected. If the law entertained any outlandish assertion regardless of evidentiary support, accusers could peddle whatever claims they please, forcing the accused to disprove them. Similar to the legal understanding of “no evidence,” many appear to believe that no evidence of a security breach in our voting equipment indicates no breach. For example, in the run-up to the 2022 elections, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “spent months voicing skepticism that . . . a security breach ever occurred” in Coffee County’s voting machines, arguing that “[t]here’s no evidence of any of that” and therefore that “[i]t didn’t happen.” A lack of evidence is rightly equivalent to a lack of existence, for legal purposes. But, for security purposes, no evidence of a breach does not necessarily mean no breach because security breaches can occur without the target’s knowledge. Indeed, the more competent the infiltrators are, the more likely they are to commit breaches undetected. The Allies taught the world this lesson in World War II, when they infiltrated the encrypted communications of the Axis powers without being exposed. To this day, it remains an axiomatic rule of cyber security practice that one should never interpret the lack of evidence of a security breach to mean no breach. Shortly after Raffensperger claimed that a breach did not happen because there was no evidence, it was revealed that voting machines in Coffee County had been breached. This Article calls for a bifurcated understanding of “no evidence of a breach” in the context of elections. For election fraud claims, we should continue to take no evidence to mean no fraud. But for evaluating the security of our election infrastructure, officials and legal scholars must understand that a breach can still occur despite the lack of evidence of a breach. I argue that the widespread conflation of no evidence of a breach and no breach is a frequently overlooked obstacle to election security reform. If one interprets no evidence of a breach as no breach, both the public and the politicians who represent them can rationalize not spending money on updating voting equipment as long as there is no definitive evidence that it was breached. Persuading the public of the fact that security breaches can occur despite the lack of evidence, while also showing why no evidence must still be interpreted as no existence for legal purposes, is a critical challenge that scholars must meet in order to effect meaningful election security reform.

The Concept and Models of Representation

The model of representation is a theoretical framework that delineates the manner in which elected officials or political representatives are anticipated to advocate for the interests, desires, and necessities of their constituents. This study elucidates various models of representation, each presenting distinct viewpoints on the functioning of this representation. Several prominent models of representation in politics include the trustee, delegate, partisan, and political representatives. The findings indicate that there are several elements that pose challenges to the functioning of representative government. These problems include defection, corruption, and the absence of clear ideological frameworks within political parties. The study concludes by offering recommendations for increasing representative governance through practical means, including the participation of all individuals, the promotion of political equality, and the cultivation of a sense of political responsibility.

Aligning Land Grant leadership programs with the needs of elected officials through Extension: Perceptions, priorities, and participation among Florida county commissioners

Addressing complex challenges has become the norm for local elected officials, and the need for skilled leadership at the local level has never been greater. County commissioners are not only tasked with day-to-day county management but must also make crucial decisions on issues such as pandemic response, rapid population growth, and natural disasters. The purpose of our study is to assess a university-based leadership development program for county commissioners, offered in collaboration between Extension at the University of Florida and the Florida Institute for County Government. We explore attitudes toward leadership programs among Florida county commissioners, show which competencies commissioners prioritize for leadership development, and identify potential barriers to participation. We find that county commissioners believe that leadership programs improve the effectiveness of leaders and the quality of local government. Additionally, we discover that the highest priority leadership competencies are strategic planning, communication, economic trends, conflict resolution, and critical thinking. Finally, our study shows that universities that partner with county government associations to offer leadership programs can create an important avenue for rural, resource-constrained counties to build the capacity of elected officials.

Political representation and perinatal outcomes to Black, White, and Hispanic people in Georgia: a cross-sectional study

PurposeOur goal was to estimate differences in perinatal outcomes by racial differences in political representation, a measure of structural racism. MethodsWe gathered data on the racial composition of county-level elected officials for all counties in Georgia (n = 159) in 2022. We subtracted the percent of non-White elected officials from the percent of non-White residents to calculate the “representation difference,” with greater positive values indicating a larger disparity. We linked this to data from 2020–2021 birth certificates (n = 238,795) on outcomes (preterm birth, <37 weeks, low birthweight birth <2500 g, birthweight, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, cesarean delivery). We fit log binomial and linear models with generalized estimating equations, stratified by individual race/ethnicity and including individual and county covariates. ResultsMedian representation difference was 17.5% points (interquartile range: 17.2). A 25-percentile point increase in representation difference was associated with a greater risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy [White: adjusted risk ratio (RR): 1.12, 95% confidence interval (CI): (1.05, 1.2), Black: 1.06, 95% CI: (0.95, 1.17), other: 1.14, 95% CI: (1.0, 1.3), Hispanic: 1.19, 95% CI: (1.07, 1.32)] and lower mean birthweight for Black birthing people [adjusted beta −15.3, 95% CI: (−25.5, −7.4)]. ConclusionsParity in political representation may be associated with healthier environments.

Jimmy Carter, Vietnam, and the Rhetoric of Gratitude: Antecedents to the Noble Cause

Abstract The study of the Vietnam War and American presidential discourse has followed a somewhat meandering path. The Vietnam discourse of Jimmy Carter remains the most poorly understood of the late Cold War presidents. Throughout the 1970s, Carter participated in, and at times led, the national debate over the federal government's responsibility to Vietnam veterans. He spoke of a debt of gratitude that the American people owed to the war's veterans. As president, parts of his domestic agenda prioritized Vietnam veterans, leading him to preside over commemorative events for the war's veterans on several occasions. During his time in elective office, he alternatingly defined the purpose of the war in Southeast Asia as preserving the American way of life, promoting democracy, or defending liberty and freedom. Carter practiced an ethics of remembering that sought to redeem the American soldier, to erase the divisiveness of the past, and to “delegitimize and marginalize anti-war opinions.”1 Despite the obvious importance of both his discourse and his actions, Carter's Vietnam War rhetoric has received very little attention.

Peripheral Elites in West European Central States’ Apparatus: An Introduction

AbstractThe presence and influence of peripheral elites in national political institutions is frequently handled by the press. But, oddly enough, the lack of a comprehensive vision of this issue tends to feed flashy titles alerting about the influence of some territorial groups in central institutions such as the “Scottish Raj,” the “Tartan mafia,” or the “Cosa Scotia” in London. This article aims to provide a general theoretical framework able to orient those fragmented researches. This literature review was led from May 2018 to June 2020. It presents those results in six sections. The ways in which peripheral elites get access to central institutions are analyzed in the first section. In the second section, we introduce the literature about the presence of peripheral elites in the state apparatus, before stressing the different networks representing the interests of peripheries in the city capitals in section three. Fourth, this article points out the various career orientations of peripheral elected officials. This leads us to question their policy influence in different fields. Lastly, a short section tackles the phobias provoked by the rise of peripheral elites occupying central political positions, before proposing a general framework for orienting future research on this topic.

지방자치단체 예산의 방만운영과 낭비 예방을 위한 입법적 해결방안

Among the writings on local government operation published since the 1970s until recently in the UK, which can be said to be the suzerain of local autonomy the representative characteristic is the focus of research on the logic that threatens the traditional status of local autonomy which has been understood as a sound symbol of democracy in the past. Korea has been experiencing incomplete local autonomy with insufficient decentralization for over 30 years but it is not much different in that local autonomy is rapidly being absorbed into turbid central politics as in the UK and Western Europe. In addition to the influence of central politics lacking national trust local election officials bandwagon of popularism drives unit local governments to serious budget waste. The problems arising from the continuous budget waste and lax financial management of local governments can be limited to a unit area in a microscopic view but expand as a side effect of the nation's overall financial management in a macroscopic view. In particular, such a side effect is that it promotes distrust between social classes, while eventually causing serious obstacles in the operation of local autonomy, which is the basis of democracy. The patterns of budget waste in the budget management process of local governments typically show behaviors such as hasty decisions, exhibitionism, patronage and sharing. The main background of this problem is the selfish judgment of the political party that does not properly accept the voters' demands. In other words, rather than managing their finances soundly, they focused only on spending their budgets by pandering to popularity. It has also encouraged a waste of budget due to the private use of public powers. Therefore, we urge the introduction of a local government bankruptcy system and a taxpayer lawsuit system as a way to solve the problem. At the same time, the improvement and strengthening of the ordinance legislative power which has been continuously requested from the local government field and that is an urgent issue. Along with improvement of the current self-audit function of local governments. In the future I would like to suggest that it is necessary to establish a 'Local Board of Audit and Inspection' gradually divide the country into regions.

Studying Representation and Equity-Seeking Candidates in Canadian Elections

Every election, as Canadians sit down at the polls to cast their votes, they ask: how truly representative are our elected officials? And how can we make politicians more representative of the public? As part of the USSRF, I provided important data to answer these questions. I studied how the barriers to elected office differ among equity-seeking groups, including women, BIPOC, and 2SLGBTQ+ people, and how parties can increase their representativeness. This research falls in three streams: data collection on federal candidates, data collection on provincial candidates, and a literature review of the role of voluntary targets to increase diversity and representation in political parties. The research on federal candidates has gathered important data on candidate race, 2SLGBTQ+ identities, and political experience from archived candidate biographies and news sources. The research on provincial candidates uses similar sources to extend analyses based on federal politics to provincial politics. The literature review draws on international examples to explore the impact of voluntary targets for representation within parties. These targets have historically not been a focus of study because the presumption is that voluntary targets will not be effective, but there is evidence that they have been increasingly effective in Canadian federal and provincial parties. By assessing the factors contributing to the representativeness (or under representativeness) of our elected officials, the research builds the groundwork for future work that compares party and voter biases across under-represented groups. The research engages with public debates in popular news media, social media, and non-profit/citizen groups surrounding the representation of women, BIPOC, and 2SLGBTQ+ people. The implications of this research are tangible for people, especially those belonging to marginalized groups, because the way we relate to the systems of power that govern us are crucial in understanding relationships of trust between citizens and the state.

U.S. agency growth aspirations and the effect of ideological extremism

AbstractDoes ideological extremism curb a public agency's desire to grow? This article theorizes that changes in the political environment affect a public agency leader's growth aspirations. Specifically, increased ideological extremism across an agency's elected principals leads an agency leader to be more cautious and less growth‐minded. The assessments of over 10,000 American state agency leaders are studied across 11 points in time from 1964 to 2018 and matched to data capturing the leader's ideological environment. Agency leaders, who face heightened extremism from elected state officials, are found to report a reduced interest in future growth. The results are strongest during periods of divided government, which may occur because the signal sent from greater extremism is more useful to agency leaders during these periods. When aggregated across thousands of agencies, the article's findings imply a driver of slower growth in the future size and scope of government.