Electoral Practices Research Articles

Voter Education: Provincial Autonomy and the Transformation of Chinese Election Law, 1920–1923

Beginning in 1909, mainland Chinese governments routinely held elections and lawmakers devoted considerable resources to writing and revising election laws. The earliest elections, held during the late Qing and the early Republic, utilized laws based on restricted electorates and indirect voting. By contrast, election laws designed by the provincial autonomy movements of the 1920s and the post-1927 Nationalist government featured direct voting in elections with (near-)universal adult suffrage. Each of these two systems of electoral law incorporated elements of foreign electoral practice with concerns and ideas that arose from the experiences and ideals of late imperial Chinese political thought. The transition between these two systems highlights the surprising influence of the short-lived provincial autonomy movement on the legal structures of the centralized one-party states that followed.

Towards an emotional electoral geography: The performativity of emotions in electoral campaigning in Ecuador

Building on feminist geopolitics and emotional geography, this paper calls for an emotional electoral geography that understands electoral practices as grounded, embodied and intertwined with the time-spatial context in which electioneering takes ‘place’. I argue that a performative understanding of emotions not only facilitates linking emotions to certain places, histories and (collective) bodies, but also helps to think of emotions as expressed both through body and speech acts. Empirically, the paper draws on visual ethnographic fieldwork of a local electoral campaign in an Amazon town in Ecuador. The observed emotional performances of female and indigenous local politicians are compared with the emotional performances of national populists who are mainly mestizo men and have dominated Ecuadorian politics throughout the past decades. The research identifies similar emotional patterns turning around a Manichean rhetoric of rabia (rage) and amor (love). The comparison shows, however, that the emotional performances of different candidates performatively generate the gendered, racialized and classed boundaries of el pueblo in different ways in particular times and places. The empirical case study illustrates the claim that electoral geographies need to be more attentive to the emotional dimension of electoral spaces to understand the affective dimension of contemporary populist politics.

Political Parties and Election Fraud

Autocrats face a dilemma. Continue with fraudulent electoral practices and risk revolt, or reduce fraud and risk losing elections. One solution is to structure electoral governance such that it allows for independence and professionalism at the center, lending credibility to the electoral process, and partisan local-level administration, enabling fraud at the micro level. Partisan poll workers can help deliver the vote by the use of ‘smart fraud’ – fraud that minimizes the risk of being caught and is used only when needed. In Armenia, the ruling party’s vote share, as a proportion of all registered voters, increases with 8.2 percent in polling stations where the chairperson was randomly assigned to the ruling party. Fraud forensics suggests that one of the mechanisms behind this was falsification of the results protocol during the count. I conjecture that fraud is only used in high-stakes elections and that election observers are unable to detect it.

Multimember Districts and the Substantive Representation of Women: An Analysis of Legislative Cosponsorship Networks

Women's representation in elected and appointed positions is often seen as a matter of justice and equity (Burrell 1997). Beyond symbolic representation, many believe that a greater presence of women in institutions that have traditionally been controlled by men can facilitate the attention to issues that disproportionately affect women (Dahlerup 1988; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Kanter 1977). As the election of women has grown in the past decade, researchers have shown a renewed interest in understanding under what conditions women's descriptive representation can produce more effective substantive representation of women's interests. A number of feminist scholars argue that increasing the descriptive representation of women in legislatures is essential to remedy existing inequalities suffered by women (Mansbridge 1999). But electoral practices aimed at increasing women and minorities in office, such as majority-minority districts or gender quotas throughout European and Latin American countries, have produced varied results concerning the substantive representation of women and minority interests. Understanding the electoral and institutional features that strengthen or attenuate women's representation, therefore, merits further study.

Women in Management and Leadership in the Olympic Movement in Muslim Majority Countries: An Empirical Evaluation of Huntington's Clash of Civilisations Typology

This article seeks to evaluate whether there are differences between Samuel Huntington's ‘civilisational groups' of countries in terms of women's leadership of Olympic organisations. This article draws on two questionnaire surveys which evaluate the electoral practices and outcomes of Olympic bodies (i.e. National Olympic Committees and International Federations) relating to gender equity and governance, with a specific intention to compare the role of women in the leadership of such bodies between Islamic societies and non-Islamic contexts. The vehicle for analysing the data employs Huntington's well-known but controversial civilisational typology which identifies nine major cultural civilisational groups (including Western and Islamic states). This allows the authors to explore the extent to which differences may exist between Western and Islamic societies and others, with regard to women's roles in leadership and governance of Olympic bodies. Differences between Muslim, and other religious groupings on the one hand and secular liberal democratic groupings on the other, are often assumed to reflect the distinction between tradition and modernity, and sort is seen in the literature in large part as a product of modernity. However, results of the statistical analysis of women's roles in senior positions in NOCs in particular, do not reflect Western ‘superiority’ in terms of women's representation. This article thus casts doubt on the appropriateness of considering the Islamic norm as traditional, and the Western norm as modern.

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and the 'Aggregate Powers' of Congress over Elections

In NAMUDNO v. Holder, the Supreme Court suggested that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional. The Court explained that Section 5, requiring preclearance of electoral changes in certain jurisdictions, rests on Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power, yet does not appear congruent and proportional to recent unconstitutional discrimination as required by City of Boerne v. Flores. Further, it imposes substantial federalism costs both because it interferes with local electoral practices, and because it does not apply uniformly to all states. NAMUDNO disposed of the case on other grounds, but an appeal squarely presenting the issue is before the Court. This article proposes that NAMUNDO overlooks the fact that the Constitution grants Congress a portfolio of powers to regulate elections. In other contexts, the Court has referred to “an aggregate of the powers of the Congress,” reading several powers together to understand the Constitution’s intended scope. Several other provisions sustain Section 5: the Elections Clause (Article I, § 4) as to federal elections, and the Guarantee Clause (Article IV, § 4) as to state elections. Both provisions appear in the legislative history, and the court has previously discussed both in support of the Act. The Elections Clause and the Guarantee Clause grant Congress direct powers, so unlike legislation based on the Reconstruction Amendments, there is no necessity to measure Section 5 against constitutional violations. In addition, although Section 5 does not apply to all states, it is “uniform” under the Court’s decisions requiring uniform exercise of federal powers. Section 5 is a heartland exercise of the powers of Congress. The Elections Clause authorizes Congress to prevent misconduct in one state that might disadvantage other states or distort the national government. The Guarantee Clause is designed, among other things, to ensure that minorities do not wrongfully usurp lawful majorities of voters. The history of African American suffrage involved disenfranchisement of absolute majorities or of minorities so large that they could win with only a sliver of the non-African American vote. Today, in a closely divided nation, it is plausible that African Americans could provide the margin of decision in many elections. Accordingly, Congress legislated well within its powers when it enacted Section 5.

Ballot Order Positional Effects in British Local Elections, 1973-2011

Ballot order positional effects, electoral advantage gained from a candidate's surname location on the ballot paper, have been extensively studied. For ‘low-information’ elections especially candidates located at or near the top of the ballot paper are advantaged relative to their competitors. This examination of alphabetic bias uses data from local council election results in Britain. The examination of election contests featuring more than half a million candidates provides evidence of an alphabetic bias which increases as the number of vacancies increases. We calibrate the effects upon votes and vote share of alphabetical ordering of candidates. Comparing votes cast for last- and first-placed candidates in the ballot order demonstrates a clear advantage to those placed first. This increases in size as both the number of seats and competing candidates increases. Those located in the top half of the ballot paper are more likely to finish in the top half of the vote order. Subsequently, the distribution of surnames among elected councillors is clustered towards the top of the alphabet. Measures could remove the effects of alphabetic bias, such as randomising name order and introducing experiments in local council electoral practice, a cost-effective means for evaluating change.

High caloric intake, poor cognition and dementia: the Caerphilly Prospective Study

To examine the hypothesis that caloric intake in mid-life is associated with later dementia or cognitive impairment not dementia (CIND). A prospective cohort study was conducted in Caerphilly, South Wales, United Kingdom. Men aged 45-59 years were identified from the electoral roll and general practice. 2,512 men were examined between July 1979 until September 1983. Four follow-up examinations were conducted every 4-5 years until 2004. Participants were categorized on the basis of their average daily caloric intake over each of the first three phases. Outcomes were CIND and dementia ascertained at phase five (2004). 192 men (15% of 1,248 participants at phase five) had CIND and 100 (8%) dementia. Age adjusted odds ratios demonstrated strongest associations between average energy consumption and vascular CIND or dementia (OR 1.62 95% CI 1.25-2.10). Adjustment for nutritional factors, vascular disease, diabetes, smoking, BP and BMI if anything increased the association (OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.03-2.60). After adjusting for social class, associations were attenuated and consistent with chance (OR 1.48, 95% CI 0.92-2.38). When adjusted for social class, the previously observed association between caloric intake and cognitive outcomes is modest, consistent with chance, and may be due to residual confounding.

Defenders of the Motherland or Defenders of the Autocracy?

Iosif Iosifovich Kolyshko, Velikii raspad: Vospominaniia (The Great Disintegration: A Memoir), ed. Igor Vladimirovich Lukoianov. 464 pp. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2009. ISBN-13 978-5981873317. Matthew Rendle, Defenders of the Motherland: The Tsarist Elite in Revolutionary Russia. xii + 274 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN-13 9780199236251. $99.00. Aleksandr Vital'erich Repnikov, Dnevnik L. A. Tikhomirova, 1915-1917 (The Diary of L. A. Tikhomirov, 1915-17). 440 pp. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008. ISBN-13 978-5824308969. The three works under scrutiny make a valuable contribution to the revisionist discussion of the prerevolutionary Russian elite's social and ideological adaptability to modernity. While Matthew Rendle's Defenders of the Motherland conceptualizes the nobility's responses to the revolution of 1917, the publications of L. A. Tikhomirov's diary and I. I. Kolyshko's memoirs, conspicuously titled The Great Disintegration, partially support and partially modify Rendle's findings by demonstrating that ideological adaptation stood behind social adaptation. As a result, the most influential and eloquent representatives of the regime's defenders gave themselves over to pessimism. The cleavage between the modernization of social and intellectual practices was an important factor in the alienation of the late imperial Russian Right from the tsar. Soviet historians used to consider the Russian Right of the early 20th century a subsidized political group, organized by the police to secure mass support for the autocracy. According to this viewpoint, after the downfall of the Romanovs, conservatives aimed at the restoration of the pre-February political order, the Third of June system. (1) This oversimplified interpretation was a result of the absence of detailed knowledge about the Russian Right, rather than the product of ideological pressure. For decades, Soviet historiography concentrated on the history of the revolutionary movement and ignored the social and political forces situated on the right. Only from the late 1960s onward did Soviet historians begin to explore Russian conservative politics and ideology of the late imperial period. The works by Valentin Semenovich Diakin and Aron Iakovlevich Avrekh on political struggle in the State Duma and the State Council between 3 June 1907 and the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917 revealed that the Right was far from a voiceless political instrument manipulated from above. It had a substantial degree of autonomy, tried to influence the government's decision making, and sometimes even succeeded in doing so.2 These works helped eliminate the most absurd stereotypes and paved the way for the final rejection of the classical Soviet interpretation of late imperial history in the 1990s. This process was considerably stimulated by Western historiography, which began to analyze the Russian Right earlier than Soviet scholars did. The first specialized work on the genesis of the Russian political Right was written by Hans Rogger; (3) the author of the first monograph on the Nationalist Party was Robert Edelman; (4) the first study of the electoral practices of the Russian Right was by Rex Rexheuser. (5) Heinz-Dietrich Lowe examined antisemitic elements in Russian conservative ideology. (6) The last 20 years, however, have witnessed a radical shift. Contemporary Western historians have seemingly lost all interest in Russian while Russian scholars are deeply immersed in studying it. (7) Matthew Rendle's latest book deserves serious attention as an important contribution to studies of conservatism, although one undertaken from an unconventional angle. He approaches the right-wing organizations from the field of the social history of the nobility in late imperial Russia. (8) From studying the strategies of survival and social networking practiced by the nobility, Rendle switches to how broader layers of elites ideologically conceptualized the new political reality created by the revolution of 1917. …

Electoral practices in a changing world: study case of the Patriots’ Union Organization. Bihor county organization (1945-1947)

Situated in the category of “the traveler fellows” of the communists, the Patriots’ Union of Romania played an important role in the eff ort to conquer the power, along with other such structures as Plowmen Front, Hungarian People’s Union, Patriotic Defense etc.The Union of Patriots was founded by the communist circles in Romania as an illegal organization in the summer of 1942, in order to contribute to fi nalize a comprehensive internal opposition as against the war unleashed against the Soviet Union. After August 23rd 1944, its work was quickly redirected in order to un-fascism the country.

Post-Soviet Electoral Practices in Comparative Perspective

Elections and referendums have played an integral part in defining the divergent trajectories that post-Soviet states have taken since 1991. Though electoral practices and outcomes are by no means ...

Democracy as a Cause of Electoral Reform: Jurisprudence and Electoral Change in Canada

Unlike other policy-makers, courts are forced to give reasons for their decisions that are based in principles rather than raw interests. The jurisprudential democratic theory developed as courts decide cases concerning elections thus becomes an important source of electoral reform. Taking the case of Canada as an example, this article shows not only that courts can play a major role in shaping electoral practice, but also that they do so in a way that privileges expression over decision as the primary democratic purpose of elections.

Thai Electoral Campaigning: Vote-Canvassing Networks and Hybrid Voting

Based on evidence gathered through participant observation, this article illuminates the nature of vote-canvassing, previously a black box in Thai electoral studies. Offering a close-up study of the internal mechanisms of an individual Thai election campaign, this article reveals that vote-canvasser networks are underpinned by long-term dyadic relationships, both hierarchical and horizontal, between the candidate, vote-canvassers and voters. These networks continue to be the most important factor in winning elections. This article documents how candidates draw up an election campaign map and identify voters along residential lines to maximise their vote-canvassing strategy. The findings of this article challenge Anek's 1996 concept of “two democracies”, which argues that rural voters are influenced by money, local leaders, political factions and corrupt politicians while more well-educated, urban, middle-class voters are more oriented toward the alternative policies offered by competing parties. The case study of Kom's election campaign showed that the role of the much-vaunted middle-class voters is not decisive, even in suburban areas of Bangkok. While political marketing has grown in importance in Thai elections, it has not displaced traditional electoral practices. Thai society is, in fact, deeply fragmented and diverse – too complex to be divided in such a simplistic manner. This article suggests that rather than undergoing a linear transformation, political hybridisation is a key trend in Thai election campaigns.

Democratic Designs: International Intervention and Electoral Practices in Postwar Bosnia‐Herzegovina by Kimberley Coles

<i>Democratic Designs: International Intervention and Electoral Practices in Postwar Bosnia‐Herzegovina</i> by Kimberley Coles

Literacy and suffrage: the politicisation of schooling in postcolonial Hispanic America (1810–1850)

After independence, the new Latin American polities adopted republican systems of government. This crucial decision stressed the importance of vast projects of popular education for the shaping of the virtuous citizenry to come, a clearly different agent from the old colonial society. As a means of creating new citizens and, at the same time, guaranteeing political rights, many Latin American constitutions and electoral laws foresaw restrictions of male universal franchises on the basis of literacy. Only those citizens able to read and write would be considered full citizens with regard to electoral practices. The illiterate had the use of their political rights temporarily revoked. The article explores the origins, meanings and implementations of this association of elementary school policies and political rights by analysing constitutions and constitutional drafts from all Latin American countries until the middle of the century. Not only will the different voting restrictions and their development be analysed, but also some discursive configurations that accompanied the consolidation of this conception of modern citizenship through formal education in the region.

Consagrando a los ciudadanos. Procesos electorales comparados en la campaña de Buenos Aires durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX

The aim of this work is to undertake the first comparative analysis of the electoral practices in the campaign of Buenos Aires from the establishment of the law of «broad» suffrage in 1821 up to and including Rosism, from the study of differentiated political jurisdictions such as the «partido» (minimum political jurisdiction) of Quilmes and Azul-Tapalque, distanced both geographically and historically. Through correspondence, minutes of meetings and electoral lists, etc., we contrast electoral behaviors related to socio-demographic, economic and cultural aspects, stressing the importance of the middle and subordinate sectors and of the negotiation and consensus during the process.

The Electoral Connection and Participation on House Roll Call Votes, 1819-1921

It is commonly understood by students of Congress that representatives use their roll call votes as a signal to constituents. The vote choice – whether on a single bill or motion as a position taking device (Mayhew 1974) or as a string of votes (Fenno 1978) – offers the constituent a metric for congruence on policy matters on the congressional agenda. The act of voting itself can also be a signal to constituents the degree to which the member fulfills his or her professional responsibilities; whereas committee work and constituency service do not have a clear metric, roll call voting does. But the act of casting a roll call vote, like a vote cast at the ballot box, is not costless. Attendance in Washington may come at the expense of private business or electioneering at home. Especially in the early House, travel was difficult and conditions in the Capitol inhospitable. In the 19th century Congress as in the 21st, a great deal of the Washington work by a representative occurred outside floor voting – introducing resolutions, responding to constituent inquiries, meeting in committee – and whose time commitments may compete with roll calls. Moreover, abstaining might at times be a dominant strategy, especially when exercised by a sizable minority attempting to prevent a quorum for business. Certainly a great deal of nonvoting in the 19th century House is due to idiosyncratic and nonpolitical factors like illness, drunkenness and apathy. Even so, we argue in this paper that the calculus of roll call participation is shaped and influenced by changes in legislative and electoral institutions and practices, and that this is observable in the variation in the rates of nonvoting across representatives and over time. More specifically, we consider how changes in the role of parties, elections and quorum rules altered the incentives for members to cast roll call votes. The paper proceeds as follows. First, we consider institutional changes in the 19th century House of Representatives which may have affected the calculus of voting for members. The list is not exhaustive, but does suggest three broad eras for considering their participation choices. Second, an overview of the contours of House roll call participation from 1819 to 1921 is offered. Third, we model roll call participation rates at the member level across the century in order to understand the magnitude of the systematic component of nonvoting. Together the results suggest that members were responsive to institutional change, but that the standard markers of modernizing House institutions – in particular the adoption of the Reed Rules and the spread of the Australian ballot – resulted only in modest shifts in the roll call participation of representatives.

Creating the Islamic Republic of Iran: wives and daughters of martyrs, and acts of citizenship

This paper develops a notion of citizenship which accounts for interruptions of, and compliances with, routines in governance. It applies the concept beyond a legal status and electoral practice to decipher how everyday encounters with the state can lead to creative institutional reconfigurations. Focusing on the wives and daughters of martyrs from the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), this paper poses ideologically committed contestation and collaborations with national structures of power as acts of citizenship. With particular attention to temporality and constructive uses of memory, this discussion introduces a governing technique created and utilized by women to remake the state as they assert a self-determined citizenry status.

'We changed the laws': Electoral practice and malpractice in Sudan since 1953

This article explores the history of elections by secret ballot in Sudan since the 1950s, and considers what lessons this history may offer in the run-up to the national elections planned under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The article locates the repeated use of the secret ballot in Sudan in the context of a wider state-directed project of modernity, for which the secret ballot offers a performative enactment of the relationship between an efficient state and a disciplined citizenry. The article therefore focuses on the actual procedure of elections, rather than on high politics, and it argues that despite a formal insistence on consistent procedure, practice often deviated from the supposed rules. While in some cases such deviations were driven by political manipulation, they were at other times simply the result of a lack of resources; such deviations were covered up by officials who were well aware of the immense value placed on the performance of the secret ballot. It seems likely that the coming elections will see similar problems and deviations from the rules, and that the elections are unlikely to achieve the intended aim of developing a more inclusive political culture

The Failure of Electoral Modernization: The Elections of May 1936 in Granada

There are many studies of elections under the Second Spanish Republic, some of them of great merit. Most, however, are narrow accounts lacking in contextualization, and fail to examine the broader history of parliamentary politics in Spain. The present article analyzes Republican democracy in its final phase — the months in which the Popular Front was in power — through an examination of the elections of May 1936, the last to be held in Spain until 1977. The comparison between the general elections of February 1936 and the partial elections of May, as well as the comparison with broader electoral history in Spain, reveals the rapid deterioration of parliamentary and electoral practice on the eve of the Civil War.