Electoral Benefits Research Articles

Anchoring or Expanding? Gender and Judicial Nominations

Since both parties committed to adding women to the federal bench in the 1970s, Democratic and Republican presidents have sought out qualified women for judgeships. Diversifying the bench offers symbolic and substantive benefits to both parties, but those benefits come at the cost of finding non-traditional nominees. Presidents can take one of two different approaches to diversification: maintain existing diversity by anchoring women to a seat, or increase diversity by considering women for every opening. Given presidents consider many factors, including electoral benefits, when selecting potential judges, we expect partisan politics influence approach. Examining all lower court nominations made between 1981 and 2022, we find that Republican presidents tend to anchor while Democratic presidents expand diversity. Additionally, Senate diversity influences diversification, as women are more likely to get nominated when the relevant state Senate delegation includes a woman. Overall, we offer new perspectives on the mechanisms of judicial diversification.

The logic of ambitious legislators in fluid party systems

AbstractClassic theories of political ambition assume relatively stable and programmatic party systems. However, in many parts of the world, ‘fluid’ or ‘inchoate’ party systems do not provide ambitious legislators with the electoral benefits associated with stable party brands. In this paper, we examine ambition in fluid party systems: What is the frequency of party switching for legislators who seek re‐election, and what are their characteristics? What incentives do parties create to push away or retain legislators? And which parties do ambitious legislators seek out? Using a systems approach, we argue that in fluid party systems, legislators' office‐seeking behavior is driven by their attitudes towards parties and their constituents, their prospective evaluation of party performance, and ideology. Incentives for politicians to switch parties act as negative feedback mechanisms which keep the party system stuck in a fluid state. We test the determinants of party switching using two data sources from Ecuador: a public records dataset of every legislator who earned re‐election from 1979 to 2021, and the Parliamentary Elites in Latin America (PELA) surveys of all legislators from 1994 to 2017. Both sources distinguish between switchers and non‐switchers. The results support the conclusion that ambitious legislators in fluid party systems are strategic actors that seek or keep parties to maximize their probability of re‐election—and thereby further exacerbate the party system's fluidity.

Unveiling the enigma: Exploring organizational dysfunctional learning modes and institutional amnesia in the Indian Universal Service Obligation Fund

AbstractDespite various government initiatives and substantial unutilized funds in the Indian Universal Service Obligation Fund (USF), a significant population in rural and remote areas still lack broadband services due to inadequate consideration for demographic and geographical challenges in planning and implementation strategies, mainly stemming from focus on quick electoral benefits, favoritism, organizational politics and a sense of indifference. This study employs a multiple‐case approach to analyze the USF institution using the proposed integrated organizational learning framework, offering a novel perspective. The proposed framework identifies factors influencing effective outcomes and provides a comprehensive assessment of cross‐project learning culture within the organization. Additionally, by unveiling systemic deception and hidden intentions, the application of this framework may act as a deterrent to improper practices, contributing to an improved outlook for future projects. Our analysis reveals that despite encountering distinct experiences and outcomes in different initiatives, the USF has missed opportunities to fully leverage lessons learned and avoid repeating past mistakes. To bolster the efficacy of future projects, we propose that the USF adopt a proactive organizational learning strategy involving thorough evaluations and analyses of past projects by experts. This process should aim to extract key lessons, challenges, and best practices, culminating in establishing a repository of learnings. Regularly updating and utilizing this repository can foster a culture of continuous improvement and informed decision‐making. Such an approach can improve project delivery across traditional metrics of time, cost, and quality and maximize benefits delivered to beneficiaries.

Do local leaders prioritize the poor: Identifying the distributive preferences of village politicians in India

We investigate the distributive preferences of elected leaders in local democracies, who are tasked with ”everyday assistance” and personally know their constituents. In this setting, economic distribution is driven more by leader preferences and less by efficiency concerns, as in the lower information setting typically described in the literature. In local democracy, we argue voters can explicitly select leaders who prefer to distribute to a broad group of supporters, who further conform to norms of targeting the most needy among supporters. In this article, we develop a novel behavioral measure that isolates leaders’ distributive preferences from direct electoral benefit, which we implement in villages across the Indian state of Rajasthan. We find elected leaders prefer to distribute 94% more to supporters and 17% more to supporters one standard deviation below the mean village wealth. This suggests local elections are consistent with significant distribution to the poor, albeit with political biases.

Partisan communication in two-stage elections: the effect of primaries on intra-campaign positional shifts in congressional elections

Abstract The influence of congressional primary elections on candidate positioning remains disputed and poorly understood. We test whether candidates communicate artificially “extreme” positions during the nomination, as revealed by moderation following a primary defeat. We apply a scaling method based on candidates language on Twitter to estimate positions of 988 candidates in contested US House of Representatives primaries in 2020 over time, demonstrating validity against NOMINATE (r > 0.93) where possible. Losing Democratic candidates moderated significantly after their primary defeat, indicating strategic position-taking for perceived electoral benefit, where the nomination contest induced artificially “extreme” communication. We find no such effect among Republicans. These findings have implications for candidate strategy in two-stage elections and provide further evidence of elite partisan asymmetry.

Presidential particularism, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and the Biden administration

AbstractFederal spending has been a strong governing instrument for the president and governing party, who have pursued their political and electoral benefits by strategically allocating federal grants, procurements, and loans to subnational governments. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), in which the federal government issued almost $1 trillion in loans over three rounds between April 2020 and May 2021 to support small businesses' operations in response to the COVID‐19 crisis, was no different. I build on previous research in distributive politics by examining the third round of PPP loans, in which $277 billion was allocated in the first months of the Biden administration. I find significant evidence of presidential particularism, as the Biden administration issued a large amount of PPP lending to Pro‐Biden and core Democratic counties as well as to congressional districts with copartisan (Democratic) house members. Furthermore, the magnitude of these presidential particularism findings immediately following the presidential election year is considerably larger compared to previous studies.

Assessing Trump's presidential endorsements while in and out of office (2018–2022)

In the 2022 midterm elections, Donald Trump made a slew of high-profile endorsements, continuing a trend of prolific endorsement activity established during his time in office. While existing works have largely focused on presidential campaigning in congressional races from sitting presidents, little is known about the effects of this continued activity once a president has left office. This paper therefore assesses trends in President Trump's endorsements across three election cycles (2018–2022), testing whether the types of candidates that Trump chose to endorse and the engagement and electoral effects of these endorsements changed over time. Across all election cycles, his endorsements produced little benefit for candidates in the general election. Endorsed candidates did not benefit financially and collectively received an aggregate vote share penalty of approximately 1.5 percentage points. However, endorsed candidates received a consistent and substantial electoral benefit in Republican primary elections, with these benefits growing marginally over time. Trump's endorsements came increasingly early in the election cycle, with an increased focus on backing likely winners and rewarding political allies during the primaries. As such, significant changes in the types of candidates receiving endorsements after President Trump left office highlight an important shift in post-presidency endorsement strategy, where partisan electoral goals were secondary to a strategic focus on retaining personal influence within the Republican party.

Risk Assessment and Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts in Mexico for Indigenous and Women

The present article<strong> </strong>studies the policy, numbers, and costs of disaster risk management (DRM) in Mexico, a country highly exposed to climate change, due to two oceans warming up. The PEISOR methodology facilitates interrelating complex interactions and pressures between the natural and the societal system (P), where dangerous effects (E) occur in extreme events, such as floods, landslides, and drought. The impacts (I) of global warming, the pressure of historical poverty, and vulnerable regions were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These societal outcomes (SO) are aggravated by gender and ethnic discrimination. The governmental response (R) has built up an alternative health system with access to medical attention. About DRM against climate catastrophes, loss and damage (L&D) policies prioritized cash transfers to affected people. This policy increased the dependency of poor people but produced electoral benefits for the leading party. Nevertheless, this DRM limits adaptation and resilience-building among social groups living in exposed regions mainly in the South, where indigenous groups suffer from low human development index and extreme poverty. The article also compares the quantitative costs of disasters in Mexico during the last five decades. Growing L&D invoices for the government and affected people occurred predominantly during the last decade. Worsening climate conditions, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, public insecurity, and extreme poverty, represent survival threats for exposed people, where only a local bottom-up resilience-building may create an integrated DRM. In conclusion, the reactive policy of L&D has raised the electoral support of needed people but limited adaption to deal with extremer climate impacts. The official DRM policy impacts allocated 96% of the disaster budget for reconstruction and emergency management and only 4% for prevention. Especially affected are women, girls, and indigenous people with the highest death toll. Empowering these vulnerable groups would create greater resilience, where training in care economy, and environmental restoration could reduce the risks. The lack of adaptation also created a dependency on foreign countries for climate advice, hurricane tracking, early warnings, and disaster recovery, where affected people are trapped in poverty and often forced to migrate.

The effects of proposal power on incumbents' vote share: updated results from a naturally occurring experiment

AbstractA pioneering study by Loewen et al. made use of the Canadian legislature's newly instituted lottery, which enabled non-cabinet Members of Parliament (MPs) to propose a bill or motion. Their study used this lottery in order to identify the causal effect of proposal power on incumbents' vote share in the next election. Analyzing the first two parliaments to use the lottery, Loewen et al. found that proposal power benefits incumbents, but only incumbents who belong to the governing party. Our study builds on these initial results by adding data from four subsequent parliaments. The pooled results no longer support the hypothesis that MPs—even those who belong to the governing party—benefit appreciably from proposal power. These updated findings resolve a theoretical puzzle noted by Loewen et al., as proposal power would not ordinarily be expected to confer electoral benefits in strong party systems, such as Canada's.

Crisis of Identity in 20th Century: The Case of the Sikhs in India

Punjab has been in turmoil since the partition of British India and now its predicament is the outcome of blend of factors. These factors may include mixing of religion with politics, central machination, vote-bank polities and obvious economic grievances. In the post-partition period, the Sikhs demanded affirmative discrimination largely based on colonial heritage job and regional autonomy. They started using ethnic symbols like history, geography, culture and land to gain sympathies of the masses and to attain greater political autonomy and economic benefits. Unfortunately, the Congress considered their struggle for identity disturbing for the secular outlook of India and put this social issue into the conceptual framework of communal politics and aligned it with Sikh tradition. The situation was politically engineered by Congress through mixing religion with politics and it took decisive actions following the divide and rule policy and extracted electoral benefits out of it. The militant operations against fellow the Sikh citizens and manipulated actions radicalized the society which created social unrest and urged the Sikhs to demand a separate state. This article has highlighted the Sikh political struggle for the
 recognition of their separate identity and demand for Khalistan. The critically analyzed historical study is based on qualitative methods by using secondary sources. 
 Punjab has been in turmoil since the partition of British India and now its predicament is the outcome of blend of factors. These factors may include mixing of religion with politics, central machination, vote-bank polities and obvious economic grievances. In the post-partition period, the Sikhs demanded affirmative discrimination largely based on colonial heritage job and regional autonomy. They started using ethnic symbols like history, geography, culture and land to gain sympathies of the masses and to attain greater political autonomy and economic benefits. Unfortunately, the Congress considered their struggle for identity disturbing for the secular outlook of India and put this social issue into the conceptual framework of communal politics and aligned it with Sikh tradition. The situation was politically engineered by Congress through mixing religion with politics and it took decisive actions following the divide and rule policy and extracted electoral benefits out of it. The militant operations against fellow the Sikh citizens and manipulated actions radicalized the society which created social unrest and urged the Sikhs to demand a separate state. This article has highlighted the Sikh political struggle for the recognition of their separate identity and demand for Khalistan. The critically analyzed historical study is based on qualitative methods by using secondary sources.

Bucovina - metamorfozele unei provincii

"Central and Western European empiresʼ territorial expansions to the continentʼs south and east were accompanied by policies to modernize the economy and society of the annexed regions. Although locals bore the majority of the costs of the transition from the traditional to the liberal order, imperial authorities contributed to establishing adequate codes of law, creating a stimulating framework for social relations, and the improvement of relations between the state/monarchy and the subjects. The study reveals how placing a territory under multiple administrations causes changes not only in legal and economic terms but also in the ethno-demographic structure. In the situation of Bukovina, substantial colonization and immigration from within the empire, particularly from Galicia, had an impact on the province's ethnic composition. More significantly, the decrease in Romanians in the general population was the outcome of a policy of quantitative balancing of ethnic groups and the avoidance of such a situation in which one nationality numerically dominates the others and has political and electoral benefits. As a result, the picture of Bukovina society in 1918 was very different from that of 1775, and the twentieth-century extremism and world wars changed the character of Bukovina even more deeply. "

Supporting Veterans: Source Cues, Issue Ownership,and the Electoral Benefits of Military Service

Supporting Veterans: Source Cues, Issue Ownership,and the Electoral Benefits of Military Service

Shaping Electoral Outcomes: Intra- and Anti-systemic Violence in Indian Assembly Elections

AbstractElectoral violence is perpetrated by anti-systemic actors opposed to the democratic system, as well as by those vying for power through the electoral process. Even though the motivations for violent tactics are distinct, we do not know whether intra- and anti-systemic violence differ in their effects. Focusing on state-level elections in India – a country that combines nationwide elections with persistent political violence – we demonstrate that the distinction is crucial for understanding spatial patterns of electoral violence and effects on election outcomes. Based on an original dataset of violence in legislative assembly elections between 1985 and 2008, we show that both tactics depress turnout overall but that the effect is larger for anti-systemic violence. Intra-systemic violence not only appears to be more selectively targeted, as it is more likely to occur in constituencies where the incumbent belongs to the state-level opposition, but also generates electoral benefits for the party in control of state government.

Vote-buying, anti-corruption campaigns, and identity in African elections

The literature on democracies in the developing world paints a picture of rampant vote buying. A growing research field has shed light on how politicians decide whom to target, how individuals view vote buying, and the consequences of such practices. Yet, most research compares support for candidates offering handouts to those who do not. It fails to explore how offering handouts compares to other campaign strategies – promising future targeted goods or community goods, explicitly eschewing vote buying campaign tactics, or garnering support based on ethnic or local social ties. In this study, we employ a conjoint experiment fielded in Malawi (n = 1,166) to examine the relative power of vote buying versus other campaign tactics. Our experimental results reveal that respondents view candidates who promise community service provision or criticize vote buying more positively than those who offer handouts. We also find that the magnitude of the effects for community service provision and anti-vote buying campaigns are greater than that of platforms associated with coethnicity and local social ties. These findings are both substantively and theoretically important. Policymakers and practitioners engaged in voter education efforts may counter vote buying by informing candidates of the potential electoral benefits to championing anti-vote buying platforms and providing community services. Likewise, scholars can better understand elections, representation and democracy by further exploring how different types of voters respond to various campaign appeals in Africa.

Politicians' complaint response: E‐governance and personal relationships

AbstractWhen do politicians respond to individuals' public service complaints? Technological solutions—termed e‐governance—have been shown to help increase responsiveness in some developing nations where they serve to connect individuals, politicians, and bureaucrats for the first time. I argue that in country‐contexts like India, where personal connections to bureaucrats and politicians are common, politicians are less responsive to complaints registered with e‐governance systems than to complaints delivered via personal connections. Using data from public complaints, complaint responses, and field interviews in Delhi, I show that politicians are not responsive when complaints submitted to e‐governance systems increase, but that they are responsive to complaints submitted to them through personal connections. This result suggests that the introduction of an e‐governance system does not necessarily increase government performance. Politicians are incentivized to be more responsive to complaints registered directly with them because those complaints are more likely to generate electoral benefits.

Who Moved my Welfare Scheme? Federalism and the Politics of Credit Attribution in Rural India

The growing popularity of welfare schemes across several developing countries is crucially predicated on whether incumbent governments can derive consequent electoral benefits. A federal structure like India’s, characterized by overlapping policy design and implementation responsibilities, provides opportunities for diffused credit attribution. Therefore, the question of electoral returns depends on the ability of voters to assign credit for welfare benefits to different levels of government. We investigate voter attribution of credit for welfare policies and their electoral consequences using data from a large sample survey from the 2014 parliamentary elections in India. Our results indicate that welfare delivery and credit attribution mattered to the electorate and was one of the few factors that worked in favour of the incumbent United Progressive Alliance, but it was not decisive enough to yield an overall electoral victory. There are strong political imperatives for the roll-out and expansion of welfare schemes, as well as contestations around credit claims. Our analysis provides empirical support for intense party competition over credit for welfare benefits in a federal structure—which has been widely observed and commented upon in the media but has not been econometrically tested for its electoral significance. We find that welfare schemes are an essential dimension of performance evaluation by the electorate, a problem understudied in the extant literature on ‘performance voting’ and undertheorized in the literature on ‘distributive politics’ and ‘welfare provisions’, particularly in a federal structure.

The Politics of Interruptions: Gendered Disruptions of Legislative Speeches

Floor time in legislatures is a valuable commodity that legislators use to gain political capital and electoral benefits. There are well-known political and institutional barriers to participation, but these do not explain gender differences in access to floor time. In this article, we look at the role interruptions play as potential barriers to floor time. We explore how women strategically react to these barriers and consider how these reactions ultimately lead to gendered differences in legislative participation. Our findings show that differences in participation across genders are a consequence of rational strategies followed by women who sacrifice floor time in the short term to avoid the long-term consequences of challenging gendered barriers, such as interruptions. We test our argument using original data on legislative speeches from the Ecuadorian Congress between 1988 and 2018.

Energopower, statecraft and political legitimacy

This paper draws on the notion of energopower ( Boyer 2014 ) to show the foundational role of electricity in the (re)production of political power in Australia. I show how conflicts surrounding electricity have reconstituted state-market-society relations and rescaled governance. I study a series of notable national-scale interventions and argue that, through the contingent and chaotic play of events in the political sphere, market-oriented governance regimes for electricity have been weakened, and the issue of electricity decarbonisation has become ‘weaponised’ for electoral benefit. I explain how national political leadership in Australia has stepped in from a constitutionally-weak position to govern electricity under pressure for environmentally-driven adaptation. I show four statecraft techniques that reconstitute electricity in new ways: discursively linking electricity governance to socio-environmental futures; national interest framings that are weaponized for electoral gain; tactical governance through parliamentary compromise and appeasement; and jettisoning market logics in favour of state intervention. This study recognises the limits of centralized state-making under a Federalist system but shows the potential for statecraft to reshape scalar-territorial relations and strengthen the role of the central state vis-à-vis the market. Vital resources like electricity are not just struggled over but, under the right conditions, can come to shape political power. There is neither infinite potential for state rescaling through the performance of legitimacy, nor do rigid scalar hierarchies simply block reconfigurations of state power. To understand the potential for resource struggles to re-scale state power attention must be paid to the techniques of statecraft that support and undermine legitimacy.

Fighting fire with fire: the ethics of retaliatory gerrymandering

ABSTRACT Focusing on the contemporary US context, this article examines the ethical quandaries raised by partisan gerrymandering, where constituency boundaries are manipulated for electoral benefit. More specifically, it will examine the ethics of retaliatory gerrymandering. Though gerrymandering cannot be defended as a political practice by any agent who assigns intrinsic value to democracy, it might be justified as a ‘dirty hands’ (DH) practice, where it is all-things-considered justified as a lesser evil that still leaves a moral residue. However, it does not work as a standard DH problem, as the stakes of gerrymandering are usually less extreme and the causes more structural, making the usual language of DH a poor fit. The core moral intuition behind DH, of doing wrong to do right, is still appropriate, but is best understood within the context of retaliation. When others set the terms of the competition to make a practice such as gerrymandering essential for political victory, a proportionate use of these practices might be necessary to compete.

Abstaining from the Iraqi Parliamentary Elections: A Case Study of 2018 and 2021 Elections

The reluctance to attend the parliamentary elections in Iraq is one of the most important issues facing the democratic system since the change of the political system in Iraq in 2003. Electoral benefits، including the parliamentary elections 2018 and the 2021 parliamentary elections، and in order to enhance political participation and try to avoid the crisis and study the reasons for reluctance (political، economic، and social)، there must be a set of means that help activate political participation as a necessity to ensure the provision of the basic requirements and needs of citizens and enable them to contribute to the election and deepen the practice Democracy by respecting the opinion of the citizen، raising the level of political awareness، and enhancing the citizen's confidence in the importance of his participation، which allows the individual a degree of readiness to participate in public life.