Electoral Mandate Research Articles

Canadian Senate Reform: Lessons from Its First Decade, 1867–78

During the 19th century and through the 20th century, the role of the parliamentary upper house (especially, but not exclusively, within the Westminster system of government) changed in subtle, yet dramatic, ways. Among those changes was increasing deference to elected lower houses of parliament, a reduction in partisanship in its actions and legislative goals, the development and pursuit of greater specialization of interest and function, appeals to the public interest beyond the electoral mandate, and greater practical attention to technical overview and improvement of legislation and policy, especially through the engagement of the committee process. This article argues that the role of the current Senate of Canada is a result of that historical transformation and was evident as early as the first decade of its existence (consistent with an institutional evolution that continues through the 21st century) and should be strongly considered in relation to current and future proposals for its reform.

‘A state of almost surreal vice versa’: the devolution referendums in Wales, 1979 and 1997

ABSTRACT Referendums in 1979 and 1997 asked if an elected Assembly should be created in Wales to oversee some government responsibilities. The proportion of voters supporting devolution grew from 20.3% in 1979 to 50.3% in 1997. Growth was concentrated within Welsh identifying Labour voters, but the literature lacks a multicausal explanation of this shift. This article compares the circumstances surrounding both referendums to make two arguments. One is that three factors reversed: the dominant industrial role of the UK state receded under Conservative Governments to prompt deindustrialisation; the growing profile of Wales-specific governance structures exposed their control by Conservative politicians lacking a direct electoral mandate; and, voters were more positive towards Labour in 1997 than 1979. The other is that these factors impacted most on Welsh identifying Labour voters clustered in deindustrialising areas, who no longer trusted the UK state to represent their interests. Their class-based political identity evolved to include a greater sense of Welshness, increasing their support for devolution when offered by a trusted Labour Government. This sequence was prompted and sustained by deindustrialisation, echoing Tomlinson’s arguments that it undercut political assumptions and structures to provide the best underpinning narrative for late twentieth-century Britain.

The legislative cost of ruling: Voter punishment of governing parties fuels legislator party dissent

AbstractPolitical parties in office generally incur a cost of ruling among the electorate. This article considers the broader implications of this phenomenon for democratic governance. We argue that the electoral cost a party incurs in office entails that its individual legislators become more inclined to vote against the party line as a way to distance themselves from the deteriorating party brand. We test and support several observable implications of this argument using time series data including all members of parliament in the British parliament between 1992 and 2015 coupled with monthly opinion poll data. The well‐established electoral cost of ruling thus translates into a legislative cost of ruling by reducing incumbent party legislators’ loyalty to the party line. We discuss how the legislative cost of ruling complicates effective governance but may also strengthen democratic accountability by reducing legislative capacity of governing parties that have lost their electoral mandate.

The Political Capacity of President Biya as a Guarantor of Peace and Unity in Cameroon: A System Legitimising Perspective on Solutions to the Anglophone Crisis

Influence over political affairs is a crucial aspect of a leader because it ensures that he/she can make impactful changes that can transform the nation. Such a leader should be a guarantor of whatever need arises for his/her country. Since October 2016, protests anchored by corporatist demands by teachers and lawyers in Cameroon morphed into civil disobedience acts resulting in what is now known as the anglophone crisis. The English-speaking part of the country has been attempting to secede from its French-speaking majority. In line with the continuous spread of tensions, there have been several suggestions and recommendations on how to resolve the anglophone crisis. There have been no signs of plausible solutions despite the crisis's escalation (Cok, 2019). However, several peaceful solutions have been made through preliminary talks and dialogue involving government agents, centralists, federalists and separatist representatives, yet to be successful due to lack of cooperation by separatist factions. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the numerous efforts and measures taken by President Biya and to reiterate that peace talks alone will not resolve the crisis, primarily when hardline disunited separatist groups are determined not to collaborate with the state and accept solutions. With the employment of a qualitative research method, this article further seeks to bring to light reasons why Cameroon, under the Stewardship of President Biya, should have no hard time finding lasting solutions to the crisis, taking into consideration his political capacity and will. An outline of the President's completed and ongoing measures to resolve the anglophone crisis is thus highlighted herein. Isn't it time for Cameroonianians and stakeholders to take advantage of Biya'spolitical capacity to influence as leverage to resolve the anglophone crisis, given he was re-elected on a ticket of ‘force of experience' to safeguard Cameroon's unity with a renewed electoral mandate? This article thus analyses why all stakeholders need to collaborate with President Biya’s efforts to establish lasting solutions to the anglophone crisis and maintain peace and unity.

Coalition-Based Gender Lobbying: Revisiting Women's Substantive Representation in China's Authoritarian Governance

AbstractWhile research on women's substantive representation in legislatures has proliferated, our knowledge of gender lobbying mechanisms in authoritarian regimes remains limited. Adopting a state-society interaction approach, this article addresses how women's interests are substantively represented in China despite the absence of an electoral mandate and the omnipresence of state power. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this article maps out the intertwining of key political agents and institutions within and outside the state that mobilize for women's grievances and demands. We find that representation of women's interests in China requires the emergence of a unified societal demand followed by a coalition of state agency allies navigating within legislative, executive, and Party-affiliated institutional bodies. The pursuit of women's interests is also politically bounded and faces strong repression if the lobbying lacks state alliances or the targeted issue is considered “politically sensitive” by the government.

Why Change a Winning Team? Explaining Post-Election Cabinet Reshuffles in Four Westminster Democracies

Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers. These post-election cabinet reshuffles have important implications for policymaking and present a puzzle: why would prime ministers alter the ‘winning team’ that has just received an electoral mandate? Existing literature has largely overlooked post-election reshuffles, so offers few compelling answers. At most, a plausible but under-theorised and untested conventional wisdom suggests that electoral success increases prime ministers’ authority over their ministers. This article thus provides the first systematic study of post-election cabinet reshuffles in single-party governments. It argues that re-elected prime ministers use a temporary increase in their authority to pre-empt future leadership challenges by moving or sacking cabinet rivals. Larger election victories should thus produce larger reshuffles. However, analysis of post-election cabinet reshuffles in four ‘Westminster’ democracies since 1945 shows no support for this expectation, suggesting that further work is needed to understand these important political events.

Trump and the “deep state”

ABSTRACT Donald Trump and his loyalists invoked the concept of the deep state when confronted with resistance to the president’s agenda. The hazy concept of the deep state was tied to the long-standing conservative critique of the administrative state and the growth of the federal bureaucracy. Together, they conveyed reproach that Trump was subverted by a shadowy network of unelected bureaucrats that illegitimately holds the levers of real power in the United States. But there is no deep state. The conflict between the bureaucracy and Trump underscores a conflict between liberal and populist conceptions of democracy; between, utilizing Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation,” an ethic of responsibility and an ethic of conviction. The bureaucracy’s commitment to liberalism and instrumental rationality butts up against the Caesarist authority claimed by a leader on the basis of his presumed plebiscitary electoral mandate. Trump’s rhetorical accusation of a deep state undermined confidence in government and the legitimacy of the state.

Businessperson Deputies and Party Cohesion: Evidence from the Russian State Duma

Previous explorations of Russia’s mixed electoral system uncovered conflicting results on party discipline in legislative voting. The effect in recent convocations is modest, with single-member district deputies expressing slightly less factional loyalty than those elected under proportional representation. However, factors other than electoral mandate may also affect party cohesion. In particular, a definitive connection exists between holding public office in Russia and the opportunity to maximize personal profit-seeking. Using individual-level reading voting data on budgetary bills from the 7th State Duma, I examine how the profit-seeking behavior of deputies who previously held business positions at the executive level influences party cohesion. I find significant evidence that deputies with previous executive business positions defect from their party more frequently than those without. The effect is marginally greater for deputies elected from single-member districts rather than the party-list. These findings have greater implications for party cohesion and the involvement of businesspeople in national legislatures.

Die transformasie van die Suid-Afrikaanse gevangeniswese tot 'n openbare instelling met positiewe vrede as waardestelsel* Transforming the prison system in South Africa into a public institution with positive peace underlying its values

Die transformasie van die Suid-Afrikaanse gevangeniswese tot 'n openbare instelling met positiewe vrede as waardestelsel* Transforming the prison system in South Africa into a public institution with positive peace underlying its values

The corruption of popular sovereignty

Abstract Populism marks a departure from the central forms of democratic governance over the past two centuries. As opposed to the primacy of the legislative branch and of institutional actors, most notably political parties, populism tends toward the unilateral authority of a charismatic leader, ruling on the basis of an electoral mandate. This article starts from an understanding of populism as being grounded in political mobilization in disregard of the institutions of governance. Even more centrally, populist leaders try to dismantle institutional constraints to allow for greater individual discretionary power. This article looks to legal vulnerabilities that might allow the institutional framework of democracy to withstand the new populist assault. The central insight is that corruption might prove the means of checking governance by the new breed of caudillos, the strongman rule that stands in opposition to separation of powers limitations on the executive. Two forms of corruption are examined. The first is the attempt to subordinate the electoral system itself. The second is the use of state discretionary authority to push the boundaries of clientelism and ultimately outright corruption. Whereas questions of electoral integrity are more commonly checked by formal constitutional boundaries, the question of ordinary corruption surfaces with regularity under populism. The article offers reasons why this might be the product of a descent from clientelism to cronyism to outright capture of public resources for private gain. In turn, the article offers arguments for how corruption invites review by broader layers of judicial and prosecutorial authorities than constitutional law.

Keep Your (Horse) Hair On? Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Exposure to Legitimising Symbols on Diffuse Support for the High Court

Positivity theory posits that the courts rely on powerful legitimising symbols—such as elaborate judicial attire, honorific forms of address and imposing courtroom design—to ensure legitimacy in the eyes of the public in the absence of an electoral mandate. The argument is that such legitimising symbols evoke images of learning and pageantry and create the presumption that the process by which the decision was made was fair. Typically, positivity theory has been tested by examining whether people who have a greater awareness or knowledge of the courts express higher diffuse support for their decisions. Yet, such an approach assumes that those who know more about the courts will have greater exposure to their legitimising symbols. It does not directly test if exposure to the courts’ legitimising symbols causes people to be more acquiescent with decisions with which they disagree. In this article we use a survey-based experiment to examine if exposure to the legitimising symbols of the High Court makes people more willing to accept decisions of the Court with which they disagree. We assess whether the decision of the High Court Justices to simplify their attire, including, since 1988, ceasing to wear wigs when sitting on the Bench, has adversely affected the Court’s institutional legitimacy by removing some of the mystique associated with the decision-making process. We find that exposure to the Court’s legitimising symbols is associated with higher acquiescence with decisions which people disagree with, but the Court’s decision to simplify the Justices’ attire has not adversely affected diffuse support for its decisions. Our findings are important because the Court is reliant on maintaining legitimacy to enforce the rule of law. Our results speak directly to how the Court can best take steps to increase its institutional legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

How Clientelistic Parties Go Programmatic: The Strategic Logic of Responsiveness in a Least Likely Case (the AKP of Turkey)

Policymakers in democratic systems are expected to respond to the issue preferences of citizens and fulfill their electoral mandate as this responsiveness is central to democratic theory. Most empirical research on opinion-policy/program-policy linkage found a significant relationship between opinion and policy as well as program and policy. However, these studies have concentrated on a few developed Western countries with programmatic party systems. I focus on an emerging democracy with a highly clientelistic party system, Turkey, and address the following questions: Are policymakers' priorities driven by public opinion? Do parties take into account their electoral mandate in the legislature? To answer these questions, I use a novel dataset of parliamentary activities and public priorities in Turkey. I also offer an alternative method to measure party priorities which proves superior to the currently used measures.

Reassessing the gap-hypothesis: Tough talk and weak action in migration policy?

Much of the literature on migration policy has proclaimed a gap between what parties say and what parties do. The “gap-hypothesis” expects political parties to deliver “tough talk” and “weak action” on the issue of migration. This article tests this idea empirically by asking whether political parties keep their electoral promises on migration policy. The analysis of governments across 18 West European countries between 1980 and 2014 makes use of a new cabinet-based data set of migration policy outputs and two different data sets measuring parties’ preferences on migration. The results show that governing parties enact systematically more liberal policies on immigration and integration than their electoral manifestos would suggest. The purported democratic deficit in migration policy is substantially the result of a limited fulfillment of the electoral mandate by governing parties. Nevertheless, governing parties act upon their electoral mandate dependent on the governing constraints and the electoral incentives. Overall, governments tend to deliver on their integration policy positions but not on their immigration policy positions. The manifesto–policy link is stronger in the domestic policy dimension where governments face fewer external constraints.

Mandatos Eleitorais e Ciclos Político-Orçamentários: Evidências dos Estados Brasileiros

A literatura sobre ciclos político-orçamentários aponta que os gestores aptos a concorrer à reeleição possuem maiores incentivos para manipular gastos públicos em períodos eleitorais. Nesse sentido, o objetivo da pesquisa consistiu em averiguar a influência do mandato eleitoral sobre os gastos públicos dos governos estaduais brasileiros. A amostra foi composta pelos 26 estados brasileiros no período de 2003 a 2014, compreendendo três ciclos eleitorais. Utilizou-se como metodologia a técnica de regressão com dados em painel. A pesquisa concluiu que o comportamento oportunista é restrito aos governadores que estão em primeiro mandato e a manipulação é restrita aos investimentos. Percebeu-se uma alteração na composição dos gastos públicos em direção aos investimentos nos períodos eleitorais nos estados cujos governadores estão em primeiro mandato. Essa pesquisa contribuiu com a literatura nacional ao identificar o mandato eleitoral como um fator capaz de influenciar os gastos públicos estaduais nos períodos eleitorais.

Explaining Electoral Change in the 2018 US Midterm Elections: The Three Components of Electoral Mandates

AbstractWhy did the American electorate elect a solid majority of Republicans to the House in 2016 and then 2 years later replace it with a solid majority of Democrats? This article revives the idea of an electoral mandate and applies it to the 2016 and 2018 elections. It proposes a trinity of partisan attitudes serving as the components of electoral mandates: performance, values, and leadership. The election of President Trump in 2016 depended on a mix of performance evaluations (a weak economy) favoring the Republicans and leadership evaluations (Trump’s behavior difficulties) muted by value considerations (conservative anger at being unrepresented and the necessity of a choice between Trump and Clinton). These offsetting partisan attitudes made the election close enough that a small number of votes in key states decided the electoral vote outcome. In 2018, performance evaluations again favored Republicans, but now because they presided over a stronger economy. Evaluations of Trump’s leadership remained negative. The interaction of values with these leadership assessments now favored Democrats. As the out-party, polarized liberals were motivated by anti-Trump anger. Never-Trump conservatives who had drifted back to vote Republican at the end of the 2016 campaign did not feel that same pressure without the presidency being at stake. About two-thirds of voters in 2018 said their vote was about Trump. Republicans lost to Democrats among these voters by 16 percentage points. Republicans delivered on their 2016 mandate to boost the economy, but had failed to provide leadership that many Americans could feel comfortable with.

The light on the hill and the ‘right to work’

AbstractIn 1945 the Curtin Labor Government declared it had the capacity and responsibility to permanently eliminate the blight of unemployment from the lives of Australians in its White Paper ‘Full Employment in Australia’. This was the culmination of a century of struggle to establish the ‘right to work’, once a key objective of the 19th century labour movement. Deeply resented and long resisted by employer groups, the policy was abandoned in the mid-1970s, without an electoral mandate. Although the Australian Labor Party and union movement urged public vigilance to preserve full employment during 23 years of Liberal rule, after 1978 they quietly dropped the policy as the Australian Labor Party turned increasingly to corporate donors for the money they needed to stay electorally competitive. While few leading lights of today’s Labor movement care to discuss it, it is right that Australians celebrate this bold statement of our right to work, and the 30 years of full employment it heralded.

The Rhetoric of “The Mandate” in Contemporary Australian Context

The “electoral mandate” serves a useful function as a political weapon in competitive party democracies, notwithstanding the ambiguities, multi‐layered complexities and uncertainty of many of the issues which the concept involves. The diverse uses of “mandate” indicate competing ideas in Australian politics about the responsibilities of parties to pursue commitments made during campaigns and the extent of rights to govern. This article portrays mandate not as a “theory” or “doctrine”, but as a rhetorical device that needs to be examined in the context of “contested word use” in political speech. The renewed interest in the study of rhetoric reflects the usefulness of examining multiple and layered meanings that exist under what ostensibly may appear as “empty rhetoric”, and to understand how rhetoric is used to persuade an audience of the validity of a particular action or viewpoint. While mandate often comes under attack as “meaningless”, it is a useful persuasive tool employed by politicians to consolidate their legitimacy and justify their rights to implement a political agenda and, as such, it contributes to public discourses relating to the nature of political representation.

“Closer” or Context? Explaining Donald Trump’s Relations with Congress

Donald Trump entered office with aspirations for transformational policy change, much of which would have to be approved by Congress. Despite the president’s many unique characteristics, we can employ the framework of the president’s strategic position to explain his lack of success. The president’s opportunity structure was mixed. He lacked an electoral mandate but was fortunate enough to serve in a unified government. Nevertheless, Republican cohesion was imperfect, partisan polarization was high, and there was little public pressure for Democrats to abate their strong opposition. The structure of most of the choices before Congress did not favor the president. As a result, he has not been successful in obtaining congressional support for most of his major initiatives. Making strategic assessments by asking a few key questions about the president’s political environment provides us with crucial leverage for evaluating a president’s likely success in obtaining the support of Congress for his initiatives.

Are Backbenchers Fighting Back? Intra-Party Contestation in German Parliament Debates on the Greek Crisis

Over the course of the Eurozone crisis, we have witnessed a disintegration of the pro-European consensus in the German Bundestag. This study focuses on patterns of intra-party contestation by examining individual-level determinants of the growing party disunity. Party leaders constrain the room of manoeuvre of individual legislators, but the degree of party control they face varies depending on their position within the party, and we expect this to be reflected in their behaviour. Our comprehensive case study of plenary debates on the Greek crisis in the Bundestag (2010–2015) analyses legislative speech, voting defection and explanations of vote. Our results show that an MP’s rank, experience, electoral mandate and gender matter in their inclination to voice dissent. Here, the frontbencher–backbencher categorisation shows the most consistent effect.

The Isolated Presidency: John Tyler and Unilateral Presidential Power

In recent years, a growing scholarly literature has considered the presidency’s unilateral powers by examining under what circumstances presidents act alone to achieve their policy ends. This article seeks to extend this literature by examining John Tyler’s unique presidency. Lacking an electoral mandate, congressional support, and a political party, Tyler was completely isolated from institutional supports and forced to rely exclusively on his presidential powers; however, despite this disadvantageous position, he achieved many of his initiatives. Tyler therefore provides a least likely case study for evaluating Howell’s unilateral presidency model that a strong Congress diminishes unilateral presidential power and a weak Congress enhances it. Using Tyler as an example also allows us to temporally extend the unilateral literature into the nineteenth century with an understudied president. In comprehensively observing Tyler’s administration, we see the extent and limits of what an embattled president relying only on his own authority can accomplish.