Electoral Level Research Articles

Social Housing Contracts: Does Election Result Matter?

This study examines whether election results affect the annual number of social housing contracts in Australia, focusing on the doctrines of public entrepreneurialism and public interventionism associated with political parties. Using panel data analysis of voting rates at electorate level in Queensland State, the study finds that an increase of one standard deviation in the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) voting rate, compared to the Liberal-National Coalition, corresponds to an increase of 1.07 contracts from the mean value of 21.47. This equates to approximately a 5% increase in the number of social housing contracts managed by Queensland State. The analysis further reveals that the ALP’s voting rate has a disproportionately positive impact on the supply of social housing for indigenous communities. These findings underscore in influencing the provision of social housing and offer insightful implications for policymakers and researchers, suggesting that electoral preferences can serve as a barometer for public demand for social welfare initiatives.

Adapting Traditional Media to the Social Media Culture: A Case Study of Greece

This study is situated within the ongoing scholarly discourse surrounding the role of social media in the evolving communication landscape. The main aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the Greek traditional media and journalists have adapted to the ethos of social media. In particular, this study conducts a comparative analysis to assess whether the Greek media and journalists have effectively embraced the communication challenges arising from advancements in social media, particularly during election cycles. The theoretical foundation rests on the network theory of power, a concept pioneered by the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. The empirical component presents the findings obtained through an examination of journalists’ participation in political discourse on Twitter (now named X) throughout seven distinct election periods encompassing all electoral levels in Greece (presidential, national, European and regional/municipal elections, plus a referendum). The findings reveal low levels of adaptation, in contrast with western countries, where journalists and the media have embraced the online culture to a greater extent and appear to take on more prominent roles in debates. The findings provide valuable insights for journalists, politicians and the media in understanding the role of social media in political communication.

From austerity to Brexit: the failed populist moment in the UK

After the 2007-8 financial crisis, movements - and later parties - which brought 'the people' to the forefront began to dominate the European political scene. These mobilisations brought electoral success for left parties, translating the energies of the movements to the electoral level. Although many people saw Corbynism as a similar political phenomenon, in the UK it was the Brexit campaign that was most successful in constructing a mass popular subjectivity. This article discusses the failure of the anti-austerity mobilisations in Britain to create a transversal popular subjectivity, as happened in Spain and Greece; and it looks at Corbynism within the context of the popular left moment after 2007-8. In particular, it argues that, although the party under Corbyn's leadership did try to absorb the anti-austerity energy, and ultimately to present it in a manifesto that could bring electoral victory, it did not succeed in this attempt. This was partly because the British anti-austerity movements had not had the same social extent as the movements of the squares in Greece and Spain; partly because the Labour Party has very rarely seen itself, or behaved as, a populist party; and partly because Corbynism did not manage to deal with the challenge of Brexit. But there are also factors outside of the control of the leadership of the party, including the interplay between Corbynism and the Conservatives; the relationship between Corbynism and Momentum; and the nature of the discourses in circulation during this period.

Is the selection of Ghanaian policy makers based on socio-cultural and ethnic reasonings relevant in today’s politics? Evidence from the Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana

This study examines the effect of appraisive attitudes on citizens’ participation behaviour at the sub-national electoral levels in the Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana. The study was quantitative with cross-sectional explanatory design. The study population was 1145 with a sample size of 291. The SPSS was employed for descriptive analysis and the Smart PLS was employed for structural equation modelling. It was found that all the three dimensions of appraisive attitudes (policy responsiveness, performance and integrity) used in this study have positive effects on citizen participation behaviour in the study area of the Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana. This means Africans have come of age and the days of choosing Africa policy makers based on socio-cultural and ethnic reasoning appear to be over. Policy makers must, therefore, take into consideration the interests of the citizens and work to improve on their living conditions in order to sustain their political career.

Beyond the Ballot box: Rethinking Greek Communism Between the Wars

The assimilation of more than one million Anatolian Greek refugees into the social, economic and political life of Greece following its defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) accounts for much of the conflict that defined the period of the Second Hellenic Republic (1924–1935). The impact of the refugees on the traditional balance of mass politics at the electoral level, is well documented; their contribution to the electoral gains of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in the 1930s gave legitimacy to the communist threat and ultimately served as a pretext for the suppression of competitive politics and the end of republican governance. The nature and extent of refugee identification with communism is not well understood in the historiography, however, and remains largely based on the male refugee vote, even though the adult male refugee population accounted for a minority of the refugee population. The census of 1928 reported an ‘abnormally high’ number of widows and girls, especially among the refugees of Asia Minor, as all the males of military age (18–50) had been retained by the Turks as hostages during the evacuation of Smyrna in 1922, and many of them had perished before their release. This paper begins an overdue examination of generational radicalization outside the ballot box, among the ranks of refugee youth, and young women in particular, the group regarded by contemporaries as most vulnerable to the excesses of liberal cosmopolitanism in the new ‘motherland’.

Gentrification in The Monterrey Metropolitan center, 2010-2020

The purpose of the study is to identify areas that are possibly gentrified or in the process of being gentrified, through a localized typology of two components: youthification and an increase in the quality of life. This typology can be applied in similar investigations. Thisd paper addresses the case study of the Metropolitan Center of the City of Monterrey (CMM), Nuevo León, Mexico. The current urban regeneration plans and the increase of housing density in the CMM have caused a vertical real estate “boom” of apartment buildings and have strengthened the emergence of gentrification in the area, understood here as the decrease in social backwardness (increase in the quality of life) over time, with an increase in young adults (25 to 34 years-old), compared to older adults (60+ years-old). This article suggests a procedure to measure gentrification by overlapping the Index of Social Backwardness (ISB) at the Basic Geostatistical Area (AGEB) level, with a youthification index at the electoral section level between the 2010-2020 period. Both the decline of social backwardness (2010-2020) and youthification (2010-2020), are analytically articulated for successive census years, to generate a localized typology of the gentrification process.

A comparative perspective of local electoral management bodies in Latin America

AbstractThere are not many studies on subnational electoral bodies in Latin America, especially with a comparative approach. This article describes these bodies based on their main traits and presents the first hypotheses to explain their development or atrophy. It posits that the nations' geographic extension and the complexity of the different levels of government—federalism or significant levels of mid‐level autonomy—are associated with a greater degree of institutionalization, autonomy, and strength at the subnational electoral level, such that a smaller nation, or the absence of a mid‐level government, limits consolidation. The article uses a comparative approach.

Spanish electoral archive. SEA database

This paper introduces the SEA database (acronym for Spanish Electoral Archive). SEA brings together the most complete public repository available to date on Spanish election outcomes. SEA holds all the results recorded from the electoral processes of General (1979–2019), Regional (1989–2021), Local (1979–2019) and European Parliamentary (1987–2019) elections held in Spain since the restoration of democracy in the late 70 s, in addition to other data sets with electoral content. The data are offered for free and is presented in a homogeneous and friendly format. Most of the databases are available for download with data from various electoral levels, including from the ballot box level. This paper details how the information is organized, what the main variables are on offer for each election, which processes were applied to the data for their homogenization, and discusses future areas of work. This data has many applications, for example, as inputs in election prediction models and in ecological inference algorithms, to study determinants of turnout or voting, or for defining marketing strategies.

Agenda‐setting under pressure: Does domestic politics influence the European Commission?

AbstractThe European Union (EU) has become increasingly visible and contested over the past decades. Several studies have shown that domestic pressure has made the EU's ‘electorally connected’ institutions more responsive. Yet, we still know little about how politicisation has affected the Union's non‐majoritarian institutions. We address this question by focusing on agenda‐setting and ask whether and how domestic politics influences the prioritisation of legislative proposals by the European Commission. We argue that the Commission, as both a policy‐seeker and a survival‐driven bureaucracy, will respond to domestic issue salience and Euroscepticism, at party, mass and electoral level, through targeted performance and through aggregate restraint. Building on new data on the prioritisation of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (1999–2019), our analysis shows that the Commission's choice to prioritise is responsive to the salience of policy issues for Europe's citizens. By contrast, our evidence suggests that governing parties’ issue salience does not drive, and Euroscepticism does not constrain, the Commission's priority‐setting. Our findings contribute to the literature on multilevel politics, shedding new light on the strategic responses of non‐majoritarian institutions to the domestic politicisation of ‘Europe’.

Macrointerest

AbstractAn interested and engaged electorate is widely believed to be an indicator of democratic health. As such, the aggregate level of political interest of an electorate – macrointerest – is an essential commodity in a democracy, and understanding the forces that change macrointerest is important for diagnosing the health of a democracy. Because being interested in politics requires time and effort, the article theorizes that the electorate's level of political interest will be highest when the electorate believes the government cannot be trusted or is performing poorly. To test hypotheses derived from a proposed theory against rival explanations, the study develops a measure of macrointerest using a quarterly time series of aggregated survey items (1973–2014) of political interest. The authors find support for the theory that the electorate responds as reasonable agents when determining how closely to monitor elected officials: interest is positively related to decreases in trust in government.

Group Selection and Opportunities for Gender Diversity in the Judiciary

ABSTRACTIn the legislative context, there is a persistent empirical relationship between party-list proportional electoral systems and higher levels of gender diversity in office. I apply the logic of party-list selection to the judicial context and argue that the selection of judges as pairs or in groups may facilitate the process of gender diversification on courts by making it easier – or at least more likely – for observers to notice and be critical of gender disparity in judicial selection. Evidence from a survey experiment fielded in the United States demonstrates that observers are more likely to notice and are more critical of gender homogeneity when judges are selected as a group rather than one-by-one. These micro-foundations demonstrate that the logic of party-list PR in the legislative context may also apply to the judicial context, suggesting that one way to improve prospects of judicial diversity could be re-structuring the timing of judicial turnover.

(Dis)enfranchised citizens: informational messaging and Puerto Rican political mobilization

ABSTRACT Puerto Ricans are a growing population on the U.S. mainland. They hold a distinctive position in the hierarchy of American citizenship because they are disenfranchised in national elections on the island but immediately become eligible to vote if they move to the mainland. How can Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland be mobilized to participate in politics? This paper explores whether campaign contact increases Puerto Rican political participation. Using observational data, we establish that campaign contact is associated with political participation among mainland Puerto Ricans. We also conduct a survey experiment, testing the mobilizing effects of positive and negative campaign messages that prime Puerto Ricans to think about their group’s distinctive political experiences. These messages convey the enfranchised status of Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland and their disenfranchised status on the island. While the negative treatment has limited effects, the positive treatment increases intentions to vote, to participate in non-electoral political activities, and feelings of political efficacy relative to a pure control. We observe heterogenous treatment effects across electoral contexts and levels of linked fate with other Puerto Ricans.

What if it Kicked in More Strongly? A Counterfactual Analysis of Protest Voting's Electoral Consequences in Greece, Italy and Spain

ABSTRACT Within the framework of the current democratic crisis, the electoral success of the so-called anti-establishment parties has been repeatedly and often associated with protest voting. Several scholars have tried to deal with this topic in the past, focusing particularly on the psychological dimension of the matter, i.e. on whether individual support for these actors was actually characterised by protest motivations. Yet, in so doing, they have almost completely overlooked the issue of how protest actually contributes to the electoral performance of apparent protest actors. The aim of this paper is precisely to fill this gap. Indeed, by looking at three Southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy and Spain), it aims to test the common-sense hypothesis that a higher strength of protest motivations in voters’ minds implies an increasing success of anti-establishment parties at the electoral level. Methodologically, this is accomplished by a series of counterfactual regression models on data from the 2014 European Election Voter Study (EES).

Contesting Constitutional Multi-Culturalism in Tanzania: The Trials of Christopher Mtikila

Conflicts over the permissible limits on speech that weaponizes racial, religious, and ethnic identities are a global phenomenon. Tanzania’s constitutional and legal debates over this matter are a microcosm of a global dialogue. Since the early years of independence, Tanzania has imposed constitutional and legal restrictions on speech that speech that espouses ethnic, religious, or racial divisions. These restrictions are the surviving portion of founder-President Julius Nyerere’s multi-faceted effort to construct a multi-cultural political environment. Tanzania’s early leaders were deeply aware that ethnic rivalries had come to cominate the political life of other countries in their region. They were determined that Tanzania should become and remain the non-Sudan, non-Rwanda, and non-Kenya of Eastern Arica. They did so by introducing constitutional and restrictions on ethnic political appears into the country’s constitution and electoral laws. Since independence, each iteration of the Tanzanian Constitution has forbidden the registration of political parties that base their electoral appeal on these forms of speech. Tanzania has also embedded these limitations in its electoral laws, which limit candidacy for electoral office, at both national and local levels, to candidates nominated by registered parties. These limitations have given rise to more than twenty years of constitutional litigation. This article presents a study of the key constitutional cases. The methodology of this article is a close examination of a series of trials in which Tanzania’s constitution and electoral laws have been subjected to litigation. Four trials are of utmost significance: two, before the Tanzanian High Court; one, before the Tanzania Court of Appeal, and one before the African Court of Human and People’s Rights. Despite adverse court rulings, Tanzania’s political leaders appear determined to retain the restrictive portions of their constitution and electoral system; these remain in place to the present time.

Do Citizens Enforce Accountability for Public Goods Provision? Evidence from India’s Rural Roads Program

While a vast literature examines the prevalence of ethnic voting and clientelism in low-income contexts, empirical tests of whether elections are being used to hold politicians accountable for public goods provision are few. Leveraging a rare exogenous variation in the World's largest rural roads program, a high visibility Indian program that is unprecedented in using informational devices to raise citizens' awareness about roads provision, this paper examines this question at a scale than has previously been possible. With an original dataset of 180,000 rural roads provided across half a million Indian villages aggregated to various electoral levels, national, state and polling booth, over last 20 years, I find that roads provision fails to boost electoral support for the incumbent party. Exploiting subnational variation in program implementation and Indian politics, I show that quality or corruption concerns, attribution errors, timing of provision or variation in political competition, media access or literacy, cannot explain these results. The findings have implications for democratic governance and suggest that information constraints are unlikely to be a barrier to accountability in low-income contexts.

Voting after the change: A natural experiment on the effect of electoral reform on party system fragmentation

This article analyses the causal effect of the 1993 electoral reform in New Zealand on party system fragmentation using the ‘synthetic’ control method. Previous studies using cross-national evidence suggest that electoral reforms change the number of parties. However, they do not take into account possible endogeneity problems and usually focus on their short-term effects. Since the electoral system in use in this country before the change was first past the post (FPTP), I can create a ‘synthetic’ control democracy that had the same institutional framework but did not modify the rules of the game. The results indicate that the electoral reform produced the expected effects on party system size at the electoral level, but that these effects tended to disappear in the long run. In contrast, electoral system effects at the legislative level were larger and stickier over time.

The Grapes of Path Dependence: The Long-Run Political Impact of the Dust Bowl Migration

In this paper, we show that the migrations of millions of Okies from the central plains to California has a demonstrable effect on political outcomes to this day, even after accounting for other relevant geographic and demographic factors. After demonstrating this pattern at the electoral level, we leverage a decade's worth of survey data and show that Hispanics living in areas with large Okie migrations in the 1930s are much more likely to have conservative social values and, importantly, to vote and identify as Republicans. Put together, these results suggest that the historical legacies of migration can have a strong and sustained impact even after nearly a century after the fact.

Students’ electoral behaviour in small Russian towns as the main criterion of patriotic upbringing

This study is aimed at estimating the existed students’ patriotic level in a small town of Rostov region. The main components of patriotism are selected among important personal, social and professional characteristics that can be stimulated in electoral campaign and improved in education process. The authors’ model of evaluating students’ patriotism is based on the comparative analyses of students’ electoral behaviour during different electoral campaigns as integrity of sociological survey and pedagogic theory. The correlation data between electoral behaviour and levels of patriotic upbringing are pointed out. Scientific novelty of the paper consists in a methodological unity of psychological and pedagogic principles expanded by the synergy approach explaining the development of students’ patriotism. The article presents theoretical justification and experimental analyses proving the necessity to develop electoral culture as the methodological principle of improving patriotic upbringing. The article is of practical use for teachers, scientists elaborating methodology of improving patriotism based on election culture in educational environment of technical university.Keywords: Electoral behaviour, synergy, models of electoral behaviour, youth, the average Russian town.

Candidate selection methods and electoral performance in comparative perspective

AbstractThe purpose of the article is try to assess whether inclusive procedures of selection are more likely to appoint a candidate who can be competitive in the general elections compared with less inclusive ones. Accordingly, I took into account nomination processes (NPs) to select/appoint the prime ministerial/presidential candidate for general elections held in four Western European countries (France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom) over approximately the last two decades. Using an original data source and innovative indicators, I assessed the inclusiveness of each NP and the party/candidate’s performance in the following general election in order to look for a possible relation. The outcome shows a very weak negative correlation between the two variables. Thus, while it does not appear that inclusive systems of selection have a clear positive impact at the electoral level, it is likewise hard to maintain that systems such as primary elections cause electoral failure.

Electoral support for left wing populist parties in Europe: addressing the globalization cleavage

ABSTRACTDrawing on the European Electoral Study (EES) for the 2014 European Parliamentary elections, we analyse the electoral competition between left wing populist parties and their non-populist counterparts in the nine European countries where this type of competition has occurred. By using the EES, we hold constant the electoral level and the electoral system, the timing of the elections and the question wording. To our knowledge, this is one of the broadest comparative analyses of European left-wing populist parties so far. The focus on the competition between leftist parties draws attention to the key question of the vulnerabilities of the non-populist left vis à vis their populist competitors. We test a battery of bivariate clustered logistic models and find that the losers of globalization theories help account for left wing populist parties’ support. However, the sociodemographic profile of these supporters does not fit the mainstream view on who these losers are. Moreover, we obtain strong support for the globalization cleavage theories: citizens who hold critical attitudes towards the EU and who perceive immigration as a threat to their ‘way of life’ are more prone to support left wing populist parties than non-populist left parties. These findings apply both to the entire sample of countries and to each one of them individually.