Electoral Considerations Research Articles

Opposition Parties and the Timing of Successful No-Confidence Motions

The power to remove the government via no-confidence motion is a powerful tool afforded to the opposition. By triggering the government’s downfall, opposition parties can substantially influence policy direction in parliamentary democracies. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how government and opposition parties interact to determine the occurrence of no-confidence motions and their chance of success. In this project, I develop a simple formal model that identifies the factors influencing when opposition parties propose no-confidence motions and their outcomes. I find support for these expectations by estimating an empirical model that is explicitly derived from the underlying theoretical model. Unlike previous empirical studies of government stability, this project honors the strategic interactions that occur between government and opposition parties. In addition to the possibility of the motion passing, opposition parties are motivated by electoral considerations, which induce different behaviors at various stages of the electoral cycle. This project offers a number of implications for the study of parliamentary politics, including theories of opposition behavior, democratic accountability, and government duration and termination.

Courting the Voters? Policy Implications of Party Competition for the Reform Output of the Second Merkel Government

Understanding party competition as a ‘political market’, we explore its characteristics during the second Merkel government, 2009–13. On the demand side, analysing opinion polls and the Länder election results, we find that the outcome of the next Bundestag election was uncertain. Thus, electoral competition was likely to be intense. On the supply side, opposition parties presented credible alternatives to government policies with regard to social as well as environmental policy. Regarding the Euro crisis, however, a consensus across the established parties existed. Studying three of the most salient policy issues, we identify party competition as a crucial determinant of decision-making. While the debate on minimum wages was substantially shaped by party competition, resulting in ‘anticipatory obedience’, nuclear energy only became affected by electoral considerations after the ‘Fukushima shock’ which resulted in a major policy shift. Regarding the response to the Euro crisis, however, party competition was essentially suspended.

The Militant Strain: An Analysis of Anti-Secular Discourse in Britain

Issues about the relationship between the religious and the secular have become increasingly prominent in recent years. In Britain, one of the central themes around this topic has been the emergence and propagation by leading religious and political figures of a concerted anti-secular discourse. This warns of the dangers posed by a militant, aggressive and intolerant form of secularism which is said to be driven by an ideological desire to force religion out of the public square, representing a clear threat to religious freedoms and social morality. This discourse has been shaped by a number of interrelated causal dynamics, but the religious and political influences involved differ substantially. Respectively, these relate to ongoing processes of secularisation and the increasing use of identity politics, set against the changing capacities of the British state and the electoral considerations of the Conservative Party.

Making Budget Rules Work, 2014 Edition

The United States faces severe fiscal challenges that can no longer be ignored. Entitlement spending, especially Medicare, is a ticking time bomb that must be defused. A growing debt burden raises concerns about the government's ability to pay back debt without strangling economic growth. These threats reflect the inability of legislators and presidents to make the hard choices needed to restore fiscal responsibility to the US system. Legislators face two problems?commitment and enforcement. Legislators cannot make promises today that are credible tomorrow, in part because temptations to spend are always present and electoral considerations tend to favor spending over fiscal discipline. Even worse, attempts to enforce any promises they make are subject to the same credibility problems. In this paper, I argue that well-designed budget rules can help solve these commitment and enforcement problems to create credible and sustainable changes to the federal budget.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy: January to June 2013

On 1 January 2013, Australia took up its seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC), having been elected to a two-year position as a non-permanent member of the council in 2012. By the end of June, the driver of Australia’s tilt at the UN Security Council seat — Kevin Rudd — had returned to the Lodge as Prime Minister. It was a spectacular comeback from the former leader, whose unpopularity within his own party had seemed to scupper any chances he had of returning to the role.1 The political turmoil associated with the Labor leadership was itself part of the broader federal election circus that defined the first half of 2013. Ultimately, this period was all about the election. In January, Prime Minister Julia Gillard had taken the unprecedented step of announcing a date for the federal election some eight months in advance, triggering what some described as the “world’s longest election campaign”.2 The dominance of electoral considerations in the first half of 2013 had important implications for Australian foreign policy. Confirming previous analysis that suggested Australians do not tend to vote on foreign policy issues,3 the first half of 2013 saw considerations of Australia’s place in the world and engagement with it feature even less prominently in Australian political debate than usual, despite Australia’s position on the UNSC and something of a breakthrough in relations with China. And those international issues that did feature in public debate (in particular asylum and climate change) were ultimately viewed and approached through the lens of domestic political considerations. These tendencies were crystallized with the 2013 budget, which included a delay in reaching ambitious aid targets and a stagnating budget for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade despite increasing diplomatic activity and growing criticisms of inadequate funding. Two key themes were particularly evident in Australian foreign policy in the first half of 2013, and feature prominently in this review: the (growing) gap between ambition and resourcing of Australia’s global engagement; and the growing tendency for Australian engagement with transnational issues to be defined by domestic political considerations, potentially at the expense of key regional relationships. This review begins with Australia taking up its seat in the UNSC, and notes Gillard’s diplomatic breakthrough in China before exploring the politics of funding for Australia’s foreign and defence policy machinery and the dominance of domestic politics in Australian political and foreign policy debates.

Towards the De-Criminalization of Elections and Politics

We study the role of crime and money in elections and politics in the context of several recent far reaching judgments of the Supreme Court and the Central Information Commission. Based on publicly available data of over 62,800 candidates who contested National and State Assembly elections from 2004 to 2013, we show that both crime and money play an important role in winning elections. Thus average assets go up from Rs.1.37 crore per candidate to Rs.2.03 crores for third place candidates, Rs.2.47 crores for runners up, Rs.3.8 crore for winners, Rs.4.27 crore for winners with some criminal record, and Rs.4.4 crore for winners with serious criminal records. About 30% of elected representatives in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies have criminal cases against them. Similarly, while only 12% of ‘clean’ candidates without any criminal record win, 23% of those with a criminal record, and again, 23% of those with serious criminal records win. Several candidates and winners have multiple cases, and on average there is 1 serious case for every 5 candidates and 1 for every 2 winners. Women candidates and representatives clearly show a much lower level of criminal records. With rising inequality, proliferation of political parties leading to winners with smaller percentages of the votes, and the role of big money in elections, votes can be easily ‘bought’. We end with some tentative recommendations for improving the situation. These include legal, and administrative changes, and the role that civil society and voters can play. We look at options of moving beyond the current first past the post ‘British’ system to other systems including the American Presidential system, the European proportional representation system, the French style run-off elections and the Japanese system of multi member constituencies. Immediate electoral political considerations might promote ad hoc changes that would lead us astray. A long public debate and discussion is needed to try and evolve a reasonable consensus.

The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign. By Brendan J.Doherty. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012. 203 pp.The Presidential Road Show: Public Leadership in an Era of Party Polarization and Media Fragmentation. By Diane J.Heith. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013. 193 pp.

Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign. By Brendan J. Doherty. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012. 203 pp. Presidential Road Show: Public Leadership in an Era of Party Polarization and Media Fragmentation. By Diane J. Heith. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013. 193 pp. In the March 2013 issue of this journal, Lawrence R. Jacobs authored an essay, The Public Presidency and Disciplinary Presumptions (Presidential Studies Quarterly, 43:1, pp. 16-34), concerning the contemporary state of on what he termed the promotional presidency, a piece motivated by his observation of the repeated misstating of the realities of going by nonexperts both within and beyond the academy. In this essay, Jacobs calls for translational research that simultaneously disseminates findings while confronting misunderstandings about presidential public leadership (pp. 18, 29-31). Recent books by Brendan Doherty and Diane Heith represent exceptional examples of this kind of work, as both are driven by theoretical arguments firmly grounded in the growing body of literature that Jacobs reviews (and that many ill-informed commentators ignore). Moreover, both Doherty and Heith successfully reconcile what Jacobs identified as the two strands of public presidency research--how presidents go public and the effects of those public leadership efforts--and they do so in a way that manages to advance our understanding of the institution while clearly conveying an accurate portrayal of what going looks like and accomplishes today. Though both books identify separate and discrete central questions, the overlap between them is significant. Elections and presidential travel are central components to the core model offered in each book, albeit in ways that are conceptually distinct. In a sense, one could describe the role elections play in Doherty's volume as prospective, in that he analyzes how presidential efforts are designed to affect future outcomes, while the role of elections in Heith's book is retrospective, as she assesses the explanatory power of a president's electoral coalition on subsequent behavior. In Brendan Doherty's Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign, the focus is on how electoral considerations shape the way presidents allocate strategic resources, particularly their time and the use of their staff. Doherty operates under Mayhewian assumptions (p. 9), expecting presidents to behave strategically in order to maximize their reelection prospects, especially with respect to fund-raising and travel. In the course of the book's analyses, which are exceptional in their linkage of archive-sourced qualitative information and empirical data measuring aspects of presidential behavior, Doherty confirms many conventional assumptions (i.e., presidents fund-raise more today than previously; presidential travel is driven by electoral incentives, etc.) but goes beyond these confirmations in significant and laudable ways. Two examples perhaps best illustrate this: first, Doherty's observations of for whom presidents raise money is illuminating; he shows that variation in where presidents put their political chips can be explained by a few key factors, most notably, the increasing nationalization of parties and, at least for Bush II and Obama, a greater focus on themselves and not on their party or their party's congressional candidates (pp. 83-88). Second, Doherty links the rise of targeted presidential travel to, among other factors, the rise of a particular type of president that has emerged in recent administrations because of the way contemporary nomination and general elections are structured. That is, presidents who want to be elected to a second term continue to allocate scarce resources in a way that is driven by the same factors that determine campaign season allocation decisions, namely, how valuable a state is in achieving nomination and adding to one's Electoral College vote tally (pp. …

The politics of immigrant policy in the 50 US states, 2005-2011

AbstractThis article asks what shaped immigrant policy in the 50 states between 2005 and 2011. Theoretically, politicians are influenced by electoral considerations as they craft laws. Law-makers consider both current public opinion and how the electorate is likely to change, at least in the near future. Empirically, the article analyses an original dataset on immigrant-related laws enacted by the states with a Bayesian spatial conditionally autoregressive model. The analysis shows that state immigrant policy is affected primarily by legislative professionalism, electoral ideology, state wealth and change in the foreign-born population.

Vice Presidential Selection in the Convention Era: Experience or Electoral Advantage?

This article examines all formally contested major party vice presidential nominations from 1832 through 1928 to test the notion that strategic considerations trumped those of qualification, or experience in public office, in the selection process. Conditional logit demonstrates that parties chose presidential running mates in order to further their electoral goals, and were not necessarily concerned with issues of qualification. In particular, findings show that the electoral consideration of state competitiveness was a significant factor in the selection process. In addition, while other electoral considerations such as state size and regional balance were not significant, descriptive analyses reveal that the candidate pool was overwhelmingly limited to those individuals who came from larger states and who added regional balance to the ticket. Importantly, candidate qualification, as measured by years of political experience, was not significant in the analysis. The research represents the first empirical test of vice presidential selection in the convention era.

Municipal Choices during a Recession

This study reports the findings of a comparative case study analysis of sixteen U.S. municipalities to provide an in-depth examination of the choices municipal leaders are making to address revenue shortfalls. The findings suggest that municipal fiscal choices during a recession fit the bounded rationality model. While local government leaders will attempt to follow a rational sequence of fiscal management decisions, as the economic situation worsens, the external pressures from electoral considerations, state government restrictions, and interest group involvement increase, leading a divergence in strategies. The greater the pressures (the bounds), the more unpredictable the choices among municipalities become.

The Creation of the ‘New City’ of Craigavon: A Case Study of Politics, Planning and Modernisation in Northern Ireland in the Early 1960s

This article will examine the politics of the early 1960s in Northern Ireland by exploring the debates that surrounded the creation of the ‘New City’ of Craigavon. The central argument will be that all decisions taken by O'Neill and the Stormont administration that affected demographics were underpinned by electoral considerations. The maintenance of unionist hegemony was paramount to all decisions taken despite the supposed liberalism of O'Neill. This study of Craigavon illustrates how these policies operated within a specific local context. Nationalist positions regarding the project will also be explored.

Smith (and Jones) Go to Washington: Democracy and Vice-Presidential Selection

AbstractThe American vice president's most notable constitutional function is that of succession: if the president unexpectedly leaves office, the vice president becomes president. The process of selecting vice-presidential running mates has fallen into fewer hands over time, moving from the electorate, to party bosses and delegates, to a single person: the presidential candidate. The selection process presents challenges for democratic governance: electoral considerations may provide presidential candidates with incentive to choose vice-presidential running mates who differ from themselves politically. In cases of succession, this can lead to undemocratic outcomes and unstable policy.

Strategic electoral considerations under proportional representation

Scholars have long assumed that voters do not employ strategic considerations when casting a vote in systems of proportional representation. Either this would not be necessary because few votes were wasted or impossible because the calculations involved would be too difficult to make. This research note examines the latter and concludes that (Dutch) voters are better able to make such calculations than traditionally has been presumed. Under quasi-experimental conditions that involved what can be called coalition preference voting, voters show tendencies to react to strategic considerations when determining their vote preference.

The Effects of Sexual Orientation on State Legislators' Behavior and Priorities

This article explores whether sexual orientation, surrogate representation, and political factors affect legislators' work on gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) interests, and whether the latter explains away the influence of sexual orientation. A survey of openly GLB state legislators and their colleagues was conducted to measure legislators' campaign issues, legislative priorities, surrogate representation, and ambition. This information is supplemented with bill introduction and district data. The results indicate that legislators' sexual orientation strongly influences their work on GLB issues and although surrogate representation and electoral considerations also affect GLB work, they do not explain away the importance of sexual orientation. The implications of this for the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation are explored.

Evaluating ‘Blair’s Educational Legacy?’: some comments on the special issue of Oxford Review of Education

The December 2008 special issue of the Oxford Review of Education provided a review of education policy during Tony Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister. This paper forms a response to the ten contributions to that special issue and discusses some of the issues raised in them. While a few positive aspects of education under New Labour were identified in the special edition, it focused more on the failures of New Labour than its achievements. A common theme to emerge from the papers included the government’s pursuit of neo‐liberal market policies at the expense of its professed commitment to social justice. While accepting that the government’s failure to tackle the differences in educational outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils constitutes a major failing, the present author argues that significant achievements, such as early years provision, were neglected in the special issue. He also discusses the electoral considerations facing New Labour and the personal role of Tony Blair in determining policy. The paper goes on to consider whether New Labour’s education policy has changed since the departure of Blair and identifies some hints of a potentially more progressive approach developing under Brown. It concludes by suggesting that contributing towards a debate about alternatives to Blairite policies should now become a priority for the ‘educational establishment’.

How Politics Matter When Policies Change: Understanding Policy Change as a Political Problem

The paper presents a model of the decision-making process that can help to understand the politics of policy change and stability. The model takes as a starting point veto players. Since these actors are mostly political parties in Western democracies, their preferences can be modelled as policy seeking and vote maximization. Thus, governing parties try to adopt certain policies which differ according to their partisan orientation. The adoption of policies may, however, be impeded by electoral considerations unless the government is confronted with economic problems that put its re-election at risk. In addition, the existence of further veto players can make the adoption of reforms difficult. Policy change comes about if at least one element of the veto player constellation changes or if an external shock occurs. Both of these mechanisms are discussed in more detail, taking a change in the partisan complexion of government and globalization as examples.

Does Landholding Inequality Block Democratization?: A Test of the “Bread and Democracy” Thesis and the Case of Prussia

Recent cross-national studies have returned their attention to the structural determinants of political regimes, highlighting in particular the factor of “landholding inequality” as a decisive barrier to democratization. This article provides thefirstsystematic test of such hypotheses at the microlevel and proposes a new account of authoritarianism's durability by examining the crucial case of pre-World War I Prussia. The article analyzes the results of a roll-call vote on a watershed piece of legislation that was defeated on the eve of World War I-legislation that would have democratized suffrage rules in Germany's largest state. When examined systematically, this historically and theoretically important vote reveals two surprising lessons: first, landholding inequality undercuts the prospects of democratization even holding income inequality constant. Second, the nature of elite competition and electoral considerations, shaped by the institutional configuration of nondemocratic regimes, can also thwart democratization, even when socioeconomic conditions may appear to make a society ripe for regime change.

Explaining legislators’ positions on outside income limits: Voting on honoraria ceilings in the U.S. Senate, 1981–1983

This article examines roll-call voting by members of the U.S. Senate on three proposals to limit members’ outside income in the 1980s. I find that several factors influenced legislators’ votes on outside income limits legislation (OILL). First, financial self-interest was an important constraint on members’ willingness to support OILL. Members who earned more honoraria were less likely to vote yes, but this opposition was neutralized when limits were attached to the compensating mechanism of a pay raise. Senators from poorer states were generally more likely to support honoraria limits alone but less likely to support limits linked to a pay raise, suggesting a responsiveness to constituent interests in both cases. Finally, when OILL was linked to a pay raise, electoral considerations became prominent in legislators’ vote decisions, with electorally vulnerable members less likely to vote yes.

The Domestic Politics of British Policy on the Euro

A wide variety of explanations have been applied by academics and journalists to explain the details of British government policy on the Euro. This article examines four leading explanations rooted in an analysis of domestic politics, arguing that British government reluctance to support Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) membership can be explained more in terms of ideologically infused intra‐party politics and the realities of neo‐pluralist (interest group) politics, while explanations rooted in an analysis of inter‐party politics (electoral considerations) and public opinion are less helpful. The article also compares the relevance of the four domestic political explanations of British policy with regard to the positioning of respectively the two largest political parties in the country: (New) Labour and Conservative (Tory).

Slavery, Partisanship, and Procedure in the U.S. House: The Gag Rule, 1836–1845

From the 24th through the 28th Congresses, the House of Representatives operated under versions of a “gag rule” that blocked petitions dealing with abolition and related matters. This article presents the gag rule as not only a historically important window into slavery deliberations in Congress but also a case study in majority party restrictions of minority rights—and in the boundaries that constituency politics can place on majority power. Through analysis of vote choices and voting changes over time, I demonstrate that the gag rule's partisan origins gave way as northern members voted against party and with specific constituency pressures as well as general sectional sentiment. The gag rule shows the power of electoral considerations and constituency in the early U.S. House, and it also illustrates the force that constituency can have over majority procedural maneuvering.