Electoral Goals Research Articles

Facebook-сторінка Анджея Дуди та імідж Польщі у період повномасштабного вторгнення російських військ в Україну

The aim of the article is to study the image of the President and the national brand of the Republic of Poland during the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine through the prism of the informational content of Andrej Duda’s page on Facebook. Methodology of the research lies in conducting content-analysis of Andrej Duda’s Facebook page concerning the information related to the Russian-Ukrainian war and correlating it with the image of Andrzej Duda as well as with the overall image of Poland on the international arena before and during the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The scientific novelty lies in conducting the analysis of posts on Andrzej Duda’s official Facebook page to study whether they contain information on Ukraine and Western partners of the anti-Russian coalition as well as correlating them with the image of Andrzej Duda and the overall image of Poland on the international arena before and after the full-scale invasion of the Russian troops into Ukraine. The article studies as the team of President of Poland Andrzej Duda extensively used Facebook social network to achieve the set political and electoral goals, focusing both on the internal and external audience. Conclusions. Content analysis of President of Poland Andrzej Duda’s Facebook page has shown that during full-scale invasion of the Russian troops into Ukraine the Presidents’ team continued to actively exploit this resource as an important channel for internal political communication as well as for establishing relations with foreign partners. The study observes a priority shift from cohesion of internal traditionalist catholic electorate to shaping an international anti-Russian coalition. Looking at short-term consequences of this priority shift, it may be considered negative for “Law and Justice” as Andrej Duda’s party has lost at the Parliamentary elections in autumn 2023. However, when analyzing the situation from the perspective of Polish state interests, protection of democracy, European security and sustainability of Western civilization, Andrzej Duda achieved positive results in his international activities.

Facebook-сторінка Анджея Дуди та імідж Польщі у період повномасштабного вторгнення російських військ в Україну

The aim of the article is to study the image of the President and the national brand of the Republic of Poland during the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine through the prism of the informational content of Andrej Duda’s page on Facebook. Methodology of the research lies in conducting content-analysis of Andrej Duda’s Facebook page concerning the information related to the Russian-Ukrainian war and correlating it with the image of Andrzej Duda as well as with the overall image of Poland on the international arena before and during the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The scientific novelty lies in conducting the analysis of posts on Andrzej Duda’s official Facebook page to study whether they contain information on Ukraine and Western partners of the anti-Russian coalition as well as correlating them with the image of Andrzej Duda and the overall image of Poland on the international arena before and after the full-scale invasion of the Russian troops into Ukraine. The article studies as the team of President of Poland Andrzej Duda extensively used Facebook social network to achieve the set political and electoral goals, focusing both on the internal and external audience. Conclusions. Content analysis of President of Poland Andrzej Duda’s Facebook page has shown that during full-scale invasion of the Russian troops into Ukraine the Presidents’ team continued to actively exploit this resource as an important channel for internal political communication as well as for establishing relations with foreign partners. The study observes a priority shift from cohesion of internal traditionalist catholic electorate to shaping an international anti-Russian coalition. Looking at short-term consequences of this priority shift, it may be considered negative for “Law and Justice” as Andrej Duda’s party has lost at the Parliamentary elections in autumn 2023. However, when analyzing the situation from the perspective of Polish state interests, protection of democracy, European security and sustainability of Western civilization, Andrzej Duda achieved positive results in his international activities.

Little Samaritan Brothers: Crowdsourcing Voter Surveillance

Abstract Voter surveillance for digital campaigning is perceived as enacted from above. Political parties are “all-seeing actors” combining access to the Voters’ Registry with digital tools to maximize voter turnout. At the same time, new forms of lateral surveillance emerge as citizens voluntarily participate in the data collection process to help political parties achieve their electoral goals. This article examines the reconfiguration of the concepts of crowdsourcing and political participation through the use of voter-surveillance applications. Theoretically, it explores how crowdsourced voter surveillance (CVS) builds on the emancipatory rhetoric of political participation and crowdsourcing while relying on social, technical, and political surveillance infrastructures. Empirically, it maps the information flows and knowledge hierarchies afforded by Elector, a CVS app used by the Likud party in the Israeli election of March 2020. The findings indicate that contrary to the logic of crowdsourcing as democratizing knowledge and participation, CVS cultivates controlled individuals and normalizes lateral surveillance as a ritualistic and desired form of political participation. The article therefore describes the type of political action that CVS constructs as Little Samaritan Brothers: citizens who collectively resign their rights and the rights of their peers for the party’s success.

Do Governments Always Take Unpopular Decisions Knowingly? How Perceptual Inaccuracy Affects Policy Decisions

ABSTRACT Governments’ occasional failures to respond to voters’ preferences are usually ascribed to ‘rational’ behaviours; that they are knowingly being ‘responsible’ rather than ‘responsive’, prioritising perceived policy benefits over electoral goals. Yet given the increasing evidence that decision-makers are poor at estimating public opinion, could an additional explanation for their occasional failure to respond simply be that they fail to anticipate the unpopularity of such decisions? In this study, I trace the decision-making process in three cases where UK governments took electorally costly decisions to explore whether and why decision-makers misjudged voters’ reactions. I find that key decision-makers dismissed signals that voters would punish them for these actions, often prioritising information that reinforced their existing policy preferences. The results support findings that decision-makers’ judgements are compromised by motivated reasoning and shed light on how politicians’ failure to estimate public opinion plays out in practise.

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.

When Parties Move to the Middle: The Role of Uncertainty

AbstractPolitical parties face a crucial trade-off between electoral and partisan goals: should they put electoral goals first, pursuing the policies they think will win them the most votes in the next election, or should they put partisan goals first, pursuing the policies their members, activists, and most loyal voters prefer? In this paper we argue that main political parties make different choices depending on the information environment they are in. They have strong incentives to follow the median voter when the median voter's position is well known, but when there is more uncertainty they have strong incentives to adopt policies they prefer for partisan reasons, since uncertainty makes party leaders more willing to bet that the party's preferred policies are also vote winners. We develop an empirical analysis of how the main parties on the left and the right in twenty democracies have changed their platforms from election to election since the 1960s.

Posting or Advertising? How Political Parties Adapt Their Messaging Strategies to Facebook’s Organic and Paid Media Affordances

Facebook plays a key role in election campaigns because it provides strategic marketing affordances for political parties’ electoral goals. Organic media allow to engage regularly with broader audiences through publicly visible Facebook posts. Paid media advertisements draw on personal data to target tailored messages only at selected users. Thus, political parties can misuse them to highlight contradictory issues or drive negative narratives to susceptible voters. However, studies are lacking about how and to what extent parties adapt the use and content of their messaging strategies to Facebook’s organic and paid media affordances. To provide answers to these questions, this study draws on data from a manual content analysis to compare the timing and content strategies of all posts, sponsored post, and ads which were distributed by six parties in a four-week time span before the 2018 German state election in Hesse. Our results add to the political marketing literature by showing that parties use organic and paid media as independent messaging strategies. Both are published at rather different times in the campaign and with different campaign functions, issues, and degrees of negativity. Further, we show that parties’ organic and paid messaging strategies are dependent on party characteristics and electoral competition.

Leveraging legislative power: distributive politics and Committee work in Kenya’s National Assembly

ABSTRACT How do legislative Committees in emerging democracies spend their time? Committees are organisational devices for expanding valuable legislative time. Existing works posit that Committee work reflects legislatures’ need to rationalise their processes and outputs, acquire specialised expertise and information, and improve members’ electoral prospects by maximising policy impact. However, not all legislatures have the capacity to significantly shape policy design, influence executive agency behaviour during implementation, or advance their members’ political careers. This paper argues that in legislatures that fall in the latter category, Committee work focuses on maximising the personal benefit of individual legislators, as opposed to being geared towards policy impact or electoral goals. These findings increase our understanding of the industrial organisation of legislatures in emerging democracies where the executive-legislative balance of power favours the executive branch.

Biased politicians and independent agencies

Some agencies derive legitimacy from their political independence: for example, political meddling in monetary policy is problematic, as politicians favor short-term electoral goals over long-term economic stability. Nevertheless, the process of agency reform, even for agencies that are thought to be independent, is seldom onerous and often follows standard legislative procedures. Furthermore, citizens frequently lack expertise to hold policymakers accountable for new bureaucratic policies. Why then do politicians abstain from exercising influence through agency reform? This article delineates an informational cost to agency reform. In issue areas where politicians are frequently biased and citizens cannot perfectly observe the quality of agency reforms, citizens assume that reforms serve the politicians’ self-interest and punish politicians for any reform at all. Agency independence then comes more from informational challenges than from institutional design. This article develops a formal model to explain when agencies are reformed and when they retain their independence.

Review: Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics, by LaFleur Stephens-Dougan

Review: <i>Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics</i>, by LaFleur Stephens-Dougan

Leveraging Legislative Power: Distributive Politics and Committee Work in Kenya’s National Assembly

How do legislative committees in emerging democracies spend their time? Committees are organizational devices for expanding valuable legislative time. Existing works posit that committee work reflects legislatures’ need to rationalize their processes and outputs, acquire specialized expertise and information, and improve members’ electoral prospects by maximizing policy impact. However, not all legislatures have the ability to significantly shape policy design, influence executive agency behavior during implementation, or advance their members’ political careers. This paper shows that in legislatures that fall in the latter category, committee work focuses on maximizing the personal benefit of individual legislators, as opposed to being geared towards policy impact or electoral goals. These findings increase our understanding of the industrial organization of legislatures in emerging democracies where the executive-legislative balance of power favors the executive branch.

How Governments Respond to Business Demands for Tax Cuts: A Study of Corporate and Inheritance Tax Reforms in Austria and Sweden

How responsive are democratic governments to business demands for tax cuts? We research this question in comparative case studies of cuts in corporate taxes and inheritance taxes in Austria and Sweden. We find that governments, regardless of partisan composition, are responsive to business demands, but that fiscal and electoral goals attenuate responsiveness. In both countries, the limited revenues generated by inheritance taxation and greater alignment of business demands with middle‐class voter interests resulted in governments heading business demands for an abolition of this tax. Goal conflict were larger for corporate tax cuts. In both countries, governments tried to minimize these goal conflict by adopting compensatory policy measures, specifically measures to broaden the tax base and simultaneous tax cuts for low‐income groups. The findings suggest that the policy output of business‐friendly tax cuts reflect a balancing of conflicting goals, rather than outright business dominance.

Reconsidering the Electoral Connection of Speeches: The Impact of Electoral Vulnerability on Legislative Speechmaking in a Preferential Voting System

Recent literature highlights the incentives emanating from the electoral system and intraparty politics to explain unequal access to the plenary floor. This article contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of electoral vulnerability on the likelihood to deliver speeches in a preferential voting system. Drawing on data from Finland, it argues that intraparty vulnerability has a negative impact on the likelihood to deliver speeches, whereas the opposite effect is expected regarding interparty vulnerability. The findings show that intraparty vulnerability is negatively correlated with the number of speeches and that this effect is even larger when intraparty competition is tougher. The article underlines the importance of individual electoral goals when exploring legislative speechmaking. It also shows the need to distinguish the two forms of vulnerability and to consider factors that mediate the electoral connection.

Activist Parties and Hybrid Party Behaviours: A Typological Reassessment of Partisan Mobilisation

Integrating insights from party politics, social movement and political communication literatures, with a qualitative discussion of hybrid party behaviours observable in different contexts and regions, the article offers an original typology of four models of partisan mobilisation and focuses on a novel possibility, the activist party. Referring to parties that combine a professionalised organisation with the deployment of movement-like tactics to achieve electoral goals, the article points to current resources reducing the organisational trade-offs previously assumed to restrict the combination of electoral appeal with partisan militancy. Through this argument, the article challenges the thesis that under democratic conditions political parties should be expected to abandon outsider strategies for insider ones, while providing an analytical account of emerging patterns of organisational innovation and partisan behaviour being witnessed in contemporary party politics.

Political Parties and Policy Change in Canadian Agricultural Marketing Institutions

ABSTRACT Examining issue politicization of regulated marketing in Canadian agriculture, this article investigates factors affecting political parties’ strategies in response and the ensuing consequences for policy change. It argues that parties adopt a politicization strategy when doing so advances both their ideational and electoral goals. Politicization strategies of Canadian parties are also affected by territorialism’s impact on their capacity to align their ideational and electoral goals. When territorialism has favored conservative political parties, they have pursued politicization strategies associated with paradigmatic reforms. When issue politicization transcends regions, national office-seeking parties have adopted depoliticization strategies associated with first- and second-order policy change.

Mincing Words: The Three Layers of the AKP’s Narrative on Kurdish Politics

In 2009–2015, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) put forward several initiatives to end insurgency in Kurdish majority areas. However, successive “openings” failed to make progress. The electoral and international goals of the AKP gradually became incongruent with the peace process, and the AKP espoused heavy-handed tactics in July 2015. The ups and downs of the process in 2009–2015 show that it was already fragile. Some causes of this fragility were external to the AKP, such as the opposition parties’ eagerness to use the process to poach nationalist voters and the PKK’s violence. However, I argue that the contradictory nature of the AKP’s narrative was also a crucial factor. The party’s earlier narrative required the strict separation of two layers: security policies to fight terrorists and democratization policies to address the legitimate grievances of citizens. However, the intersubjective strategies that it experimented later required a gray area between these two fields. The AKP, instead of changing strategies, has constructed a three-layered, contradictory narrative.

Party Nomination Strategies in List Proportional Representation Systems

In list proportional representation (PR) systems, parties shape political selection. We propose a theory of party list choice and elections in list PR systems. Our results describe how a party allocates candidates of heterogenoeus quality across list ranks depending on (1) its electoral goals and (2) its competitive environment. We test our predictions on the universe of Swedish local politicians from 1991 to 2014. While parties assign better candidates to higher ranks at all ballot levels, the pattern is most pronounced among electorally advantaged parties, i.e., those with the strongest prospect of controlling the executive. These results contrast with existing accounts of candidate selection, which emphasize that parties prioritize candidate quality in their nomination strategies only when constrained by electoral incentives. Our results, instead, suggest that the principal demand for high-quality politicians derives from parties, rather than voters.

Understanding the political goals of non-binding resolutions: evidence from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies

ABSTRACTBy primarily focusing on bill initiatives, the literature on legislatures and parliaments has understudied other important legislative instruments -such as non-binding resolutions, minutes or speeches- which might help parties and legislators achieve their electoral and policy goals. Non-binding resolutions (NBRs) do not carry the force of law and are primarily used for parties or legislators’ position taking and the request of government actions. This article examines the political goals of NBRs by examining these tools in the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress. Employing a novel dataset, we claim that legislators strategically utilise NBRs to strengthen their relationship with their political principals. We find differences on the use of these instruments across political parties, based on the types of policy areas they choose to target. The analysis also indicates that SMD legislators tend to introduce more particularistic NBRs that might further their political careers at the subnational level.

Is Social Media Transforming Canadian Electioneering? Hybridity and Online Partisan Strategies in the 2012 Quebec Election

AbstractThis article investigates the extent to which provincial political parties made use of social media in their strategy, organization and communication in order to achieve their electoral goals during the Quebec 2012 general election. Using data from a series of 19 interviews conducted with online strategists and campaign directors from the five leading parties active in the 2012 election, we identify the strategic objectives these organizations followed when developing their social media campaigns. The strategists' narratives reveal that social media became a central component of electioneering and that parties were carrying out, in various forms, hybrid campaigns that combined traditional and emergent communication technologies and employed both old and new types of organizational principles.

National Political Parties and Career Paths to the European Parliament

AbstractThis paper explores how career paths leading to the European Parliament (EP) are influenced by the strategic goals of national political parties. Considering both individual career factors and the national electoral fate of political parties, it determines what conditions increase the likelihood that experienced or inexperienced politicians serve in the EP. Experienced politicians are more likely to reach the EP when they serve vote‐seeking and policy‐seeking parties while inexperienced politicians are more likely to enter the EP when their parties are opportunity seeking. Overall, I find the role of individual ambition is conditioned by party strategy to determine the institutional composition of the EP, contributing to a growing literature on the strategic use of European elections by national political parties. It suggests that the electoral goals of parties should be examined in order to understand the nature of democratic representation in the European Union.