Landmark Election Research Articles

Electoral Governance and Human Rights Amid Pandemics in Africa: Key Lessons from the Early COVID-19 Experience

AbstractOver 25 African countries had planned elections for 2020. In the face of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, states resorted to one of two courses of action: adherence to planned electoral timelines in the shadow of the outbreak, which largely led to record low voter turnouts and hastened the spread of the virus; or adjourning elections with ill-defined election programming, constitutional tensions and unrest over delayed polls. The global health crisis not only frustrated the organization of the electoral process but set severe challenges to democracy, the rule of law and human rights in the region at a time of landmark elections, notably in Ethiopia, Burundi and Malawi. This article analyses initial state responses in electoral administration in light of international electoral norms, and interrogates the role of national and regional mechanisms in securing safe, inclusive, timely, free and fair elections amid new infectious disease outbreaks.

Trade Disruption, Industrialisation, and the Setting Sun of British Colonial Rule in India

Colonial trade encouraged the colonies to specialise in primary products. Did this prevent in-dustrialisation in the colonies? And did lack of industrialisation, in turn, help to keep the colonies under control? To answer these questions, we examine the impact of the temporary collapse in trade between Britain and India due to World War I, on industrialisation and anti-imperial feelings in India. Exploiting cross-district variation in exposure to the trade shock stemming from initial differences in industrial specialisation, we find that districts more exposed to the trade shock experienced substantially faster industrial growth in 1911-21, placing them on a higher level of industrialisation which has persisted up to today. Using the World War I trade shock as an instrument for industrialisation levels, we also find that more industrialised districts were more likely to express anti-imperial feelings in 1922, and to vote for the Indian National Congress in the landmark election of 1937. These results suggest that colonial trade may have played an important role in preventing colonial industrialisation, and in embedding foreign rule.

Guam

Guam Elizabeth (Isa) Ua Ceallaigh Bowman (bio), Michael Lujan Bevacqua (bio), and Tiara Na'Puti (bio) The year 2018–2019 in Guam began on a high note with a series of landmark elections and ended more forebodingly with a federal court case threatening the rights of the island's Indigenous people. November 2018 saw the victory of Democrat Lourdes "Lou" Leon Guerrero as the island's first female governor. For centuries, chief executives on island have been referred to as "maga'låhi," a colonial appropriation of the CHamoru term for a male leader. With Leon Guerrero's election, she assumed for the first time in modern history the title of "maga'håga," or female leader (pdn, 7 Nov 2018). Leon Guerrero led a local "blue wave" of Democrats who seized a super majority (ten out of fifteen) seats in I Liheslaturan Guåhan (Guam Legislature). Among those elected was former journalist Clynt Ridgell, the first Guam-elected leader of Chuukese descent (pdn, 7 Jan 2019). Leon Guerrero's lieutenant governor, Joshua Tenorio, became the first openly gay man in US history to hold that position. In I Liheslaturan Guåhan, ten of the officials elected were women, including seven Democrats and three [End Page 195] Republicans. With 67 percent of its legislature made up of women, Guam held one of the highest percentages of female elected leadership in world history. This milestone reflected the wave of women winning public office in the continental United States, but it could also be tied to a resurgence of CHamoru values long suppressed by patriarchal colonialism (pdn, 8 Nov, 2018). As a way of combining these two narratives, a company called Maga'håga Rising began to sell "The Future is Famalao'an" t-shirts shortly after Leon Guerrero's inauguration. "Famalao'an" is the CHamoru term for women, playing on the popular American hashtag #thefutureisfemale (pdn, 13 Jan 2019). At the same time, the maga'håga appointed Tony Babauta as her chief of staff and Jack Hattig as director of the Chamorro Land Trust Commission. This was despite past scandals involving sexual misconduct toward women—Babauta at the federal level and Hattig at a high school (pdn, 10 Dec 2019; gdp, 19 Jan 2019). Leon Guerrero survived a divisive four-way primary to become the Democratic Party's nominee. Leon Guerrero and Tenorio beat their closest primary opponents, former Senator Frank Aguon and former Attorney General of Guam Alicia Limtiaco, by under 300 votes (8,218 to 7,958). Aguon and Limtiaco, despite signing a party unity pledge during the campaign, mounted a write-in campaign during the general election. Their effort was boosted through significant self-inflicted wounds by the Republican nominee for governor Ray Tenorio, then lieutenant governor. In the midst of the campaign, Tenorio was charged and tried for official misconduct for taking a police officer's gun. While Tenorio was found not guilty after the election, the scandal tarnished his campaign (pdn, 22 March 2019). With Leon Guerrero the heavy favorite, much attention was focused on whether or not her camp would be able to garner enough votes to avoid a runoff election. According to Guam law, a candidate must receive a majority of the votes in order to be elected, or else a runoff is held. Aguon and Limtiaco's write-in campaign won an unprecedented 22.9 percent of the general election votes, just 1,258 fewer than Ray Tenorio and his running mate, former Senator Tony Ada (26.4 percent). Leon Guerrero narrowly avoided a runoff by winning 50.7 percent of the votes. Maga'håga Leon Guerrero, a former nurse, was a pro-choice community activist in Guam in the early 1990s. Guam remains a heavily Catholic island, although recent child sexual abuse scandals have weakened the influence of the church. Though not damaging her campaign, her support for reproductive rights as maga'håga created a minicontroversy. After the election, Leon Guerrero's Bureau of Women's Affairs began actively seeking an abortion provider for Guam, as there had been no official provider for nearly a year. The bureau director stated that a recent case in which a twelve-year...

The Vested Interest Theory: Novel Methodology Examining US-Foreign Electoral Intervention

News of Russia potentially influencing the 2016 US Presidential election shines a light on the United States' own history of foreign electoral intervention. The United States has a tumultuous history of foreign electoral intervention starting in 1947 with the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. Since then, the US has intervened in as many as eighty-one elections around the world. This article provides a novel theory, called the vested interest theory, that is used to identify the vested interest of the United States, or any global power, in a foreign electoral intervention. It identifies vested interest by utilizing a threefold methodology of analysis: the methods and tactics of a predator-country, the stated justification, and the magnitude of the election in relation to the global power. This article applies the vested interest theory to four landmark elections in the history of the United States: the 1948 Italian election, the 1964 Chilean election, the 1970 Chilean election, and the 2002 Bolivian election. With the application of the vested interest theory, this article develops a unique perspective of how and why the United States intervenes in foreign elections.

Introduction: Centering Communication Scholarship in the Wake of Political Turmoil

The 2016 presidential election will surely stand for some time as a landmark election. Not only was this the first presidential election in U.S. history in which a woman candidate was the nominee o...

A fresh start? The Northern Ireland Assembly election 2016

ABSTRACTAs voters across Northern Ireland went to the polls on 5 May 2016, it was by no means obvious that they were participating in a landmark election. The preceding campaign was largely lacklustre, voters were left uninspired, and competition for votes was primarily conducted along predictable ethno-national lines. The Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin retained their positions as the dominant unionist and nationalist parties respectively, while the Ulster Unionist Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party struggled to retain their existing support, let alone expand it. The cross-community Alliance Party remained stagnant in fifth place. However, these ostensive signs of continuity with previous elections mask deeper signs of substantive change. The establishment of Northern Ireland’s first official opposition within current structures and the publication of a draft Programme for Government framework within a month of the election are indicative of a new era in consociational power sharing. Meanwhile, the growth in support for smaller parties, a further fall in voter turnout and an audible debate around social issues suggest at least a partial decline in the salience of the ethno-national dimension in the electoral arena.

Screening to improve ovarian cancer prognosis?

Despite increasingly radical surgical approaches and the huge efforts put into new and targeted therapeutic agents, prognosis for patients with ovarian cancer has hardly improved in the past three decades. 1 Vaughan S Coward JI Bast Jr, RC et al. Rethinking ovarian cancer: recommendations for improving outcomes. Nat Rev Cancer. 2011; 11: 719-725 Crossref PubMed Scopus (933) Google Scholar Besides aiming to revolutionise treatment further, efforts need to focus on early detection of disease. In The Lancet, Ian Jacobs and colleagues 2 Jacobs IJ Menon U Ryan A et al. Ovarian cancer screening and mortality in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS): a randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2015; (published online Dec 17.)http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)01224-6 Google Scholar report the results of the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS), which has assessed whether screening improves diagnosis and prognosis of ovarian cancer. Iran: promises and prospects for healthFeb 26 marked a landmark election for Iranian Parliament and the top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts, coming only weeks after the historic lifting of sanctions. Health will continue to be important under President Rouhani's Government who launched the national health transformation plan in May, 2014, in an effort to address the 52% out-of-pocket payments for health care. Last week, The Lancet was welcomed to Kish Island, Iran, to review progress in health research and to attend a collaborative research meeting led by University College London and Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Full-Text PDF Ovarian cancer screening and mortality in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS): a randomised controlled trialAlthough the mortality reduction was not significant in the primary analysis, we noted a significant mortality reduction with MMS when prevalent cases were excluded. We noted encouraging evidence of a mortality reduction in years 7–14, but further follow-up is needed before firm conclusions can be reached on the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of ovarian cancer screening. Full-Text PDF Open Access

Libyan Election Breaks Arab Spring Pattern

In landmark elections, Libyans went to the polls for the first time in 60 years to elect a General National Congress which will form an interim government, oversee the writing of a constitution, and supervise polls for an elected government based on the new constitution. Taking place only nine months after the successful conclusion of the 17 February Revolution, the elections were widely hailed as an extraordinary achievement. The election results were a surprise to many observers as Libyan voters largely supported moderate parties and candidates, reversing a regional trend in support of Islamists.

Repairing the Cracked lens: Redefining British Muslim Identity in Conservative Britain

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The recent landmark election results in 2010 witnessed the end of an era for Labour under Gordon Brown and the herald of a new political landscape with the Coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The challenges for the new coalition are no less daunting than they were under the former government. The need to examine aspects of British identity from political and cultural perspectives has never been more poignant, especially in the face of continuing threats from domestic and international extremism – both far right and religious. The defeat of the BNP in Dagenham last year, resulting in all of its twelve councilors failing to be reelected can be considered a positive outcome for British politics so far as right wing extremism is concerned. The increase in Muslim MPs is also considered by many as another positive for British politics. While these apparent achievements may reflect the more appealing façade of the political climate, a redefining of who and what represents Muslim identity in 21</span><span class="s2">^st</span><span class="s1"> century Britain is necessary in view of the increasing misunderstanding and rictus gap between wider non-Muslim society and Muslim communities.</span>

The Impossibility of Cynthia Hopkins: Or, Can Autobiographical Musical Performance Save the Space Program?

Against the background of a highly charged political year—a landmark election in the U.S., another in Iran, and worldwide economic depression, to name a few events—a programmatic and ideological split within NASA may as well exist, well, in a vacuum in space. But a brief piece in the May 23, 2009 Washington Post discusses the simple yet significant dilemma: is money better spent on maintenance or invention. At the center of the debate is the nineteenyear-old Hubble telescope, now in need of a shuttle to make adjustments and repairs. Hubble team leader David Leckrone stirred up quite a bit of controversy, with strong words against his employer, saying, “It just makes me want to cry to think that this is the end of it. [ . . . ] There is no person out there, there is no leadership out there, there is no vision out there to pick up the baton that we’re about to hand off and carry it forward.” NASA, it seems, is at a flash point where it must decide whether to continually reinvent its missions and objectives at the risk of forsaking past achievements, or to slow down and pay better attention to the past, nurture it, and help it survive. All of this rhetoric comes at a vital time, when space exploration has all but fallen out of public and international spotlights. NASA is struggling for visibility and, by extension, survival.

CHANGING AND STAYING THE SAME: COMMUNICATION IN CAMPAIGN 2008

In 2004 Journalism Studies commissioned a number of senior journalists to reflect on their experiences of reporting the Presidential election and to draft ‘Front Line’ reports documenting continuities and changes in media coverage and shifts in campaign communication strategies, as well as developments in new media technologies, especially the Internet and their impact on political communications. In 2008, we again invited distinguished journalists and public relations specialists to offer brief, but first hand, accounts of their experiences in reporting this landmark election. Walter R. Mears reports on newspaper coverage of the campaign, Debora Halpern Wenger and Susan A. MacManus offer an account of television coverage of an “election ‘season’ like no other”, Josh Kraushaar provides an insider account of the presidential election in which the Internet “became a crucial cog in how voters get their political news”, while Merrie Spaeth analyses aspects of Presidential politics and public relations. Distinguished communication scholar Lynda Lee Kaid introduces these reports from the front line with an essay which identifies “some campaign mainstays” such as the continued focus on the horserace elements of the campaign, which “remained significant elements of the 2008 contest”, but also highlights developments in new technologies which nurtured “unprecedented advances in candidate strategies and tactics and in news media coverage of the campaign.”

PAC Contributions Help APA Ensure Congress Hears Us

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article From the PresidentFull AccessPAC Contributions Help APA Ensure Congress Hears UsPedro Ruiz, M.D.Pedro RuizSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:6 Oct 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.41.19.0003 As you know, APA has a wide range of advocacy and educational activities and programs, and I would like to focus this column on one of them: APA's political action committee (PAC). Obviously, one of APA's major objectives is not only to continue but also to significantly increase our advocacy activities.While APA is committing substantial financial support to our district branches and state associations for state-level grass-roots advocacy priorities, our political action committee (designated as APAPAC) is also working at the national level to educate and lobby members of and candidates for Congress on psychiatry's interests. Some members believe that PAC contributions are distasteful, but an effective PAC is a vital part of our coordinated grass-roots and political strategy.While APAPAC is still in its infancy, it is already a success. Under the dedicated leadership of the PAC Board of Directors, contributions from APA members and staff continue to increase (see chart).APAPAC works hand in hand with the day-to-day lobbying of our dedicated Department of Government Relations (DGR) staff to advance APA's legislative priorities and to provide greater access to members of Congress than ever before.These are among the results of the collaborative efforts:In June Rep. John sullivan (R-Okla.) introduced the Healthcare Truth and Transparency act to promote patient safety by distinguishing between physicians and nonphysicians who foster confusion by cloaking themselves with the “medical” or “physician” label. APAPAC's efforts and coalition building played a central role in this legislation's introduction and gathering of bill cosponsors.Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) bucked his own party's committee chair to secure House passage of an important amendment that exempted antipsychotics and antidepressants from Medicaid's tiered pricing scheme.Reps. Ben Cardin (DMd.) and Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) sponsored APA-proposed legislation to provide benzodiazepine coverage under Medicare Part D.APA became the first physician group to brief the Blue Dog coalition (a policy-oriented group of moderate and conservative Democrats in the House). As a direct result of this opportunity to educate members of Congress, APA picked up new cosponsors for a parity bill, a bill to end Medicare's 50 percent coinsurance for outpatient mental health services, and a bill to ensure benzodiazepine coverage under Medicare Part D. The briefing was made possible by APAPAC and DGR collaboration.Membership of the Congressional Mental Health Caucus is at an all-time high, as APAPAC continues to work to educate members of Congress on our issues and urge them to join the caucus and express their support.Congress passed legislation to lift the 30-patient limit on group practices treating outpatients for addictions to opiates.APAPAC has greatly facilitated DGR lobbyists' access to House leadership and committee chairs during the health information technology debate.APAPAC support has facilitated education of members of Congress and staff about Scientology propaganda.There is much more to accomplish—2006 is a landmark election year with control of Congress up for grabs. We need your support to help APA take full advantage of this opportunity to educate and work with key legislators as they debate these issues:improving reimbursement of psychiatrists and participating in the pay-for-performance discussion.Preventing arbitrary exclusion of the full range of psychotropic medications under Medicare Part D.Ending discrimination in insurance plans, including medicare, against people with mental illness.Stopping the erosion of medical records privacy.Opposing draconian cuts to Medicaid programs.Maintaining funding for research and VA health care.APAPAC is an absolutely essential part of our advocacy efforts; however, only 6 percent of the APA membership contributes to our PAC. The remaining 94 percent of us need to do our part. Because psychiatry has unique legislative issues, and APAPAC is the only political action committee exclusively dedicated to our medical specialty concerns, it is essential that APA members support it, particularly during this important election.To obtain more information about APAPACand to contribute, please go to the Members Corner section of APA's Web site at<www.psych.org/members/apapac/index.cfm>. Certain federal contractors may not be eligible to contribute.▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Reagan's victory: the presidential election of 1980 and the rise of the Right

Many have pointed to the Iran hostage crisis, others to galloping inflation. In reality, as Andrew Busch makes clear, Ronald Reagan's defeat of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 was attributable to more than any one issue, no matter how galvanizing. It marked the growing ascendancy of conservative attitudes that had been brewing for two decades - and marked the clear end of the era of New Deal liberalism. Busch offers the first comprehensive study of this contest, going beyond journalistic accounts to show why it remains one of the truly landmark elections of the past century. Through a compelling story full of colorful characters, unexpected plot twists, and dramatic finales, he reveals how it both reflected the politics of its time and foreshadowed our nation's political future. Beginning with Carter's crisis of confidence speech on July 15, 1979, Busch introduces the field of candidates, follows their campaigns through the primaries and general election, identifies the key turning points and winning strategies, and assesses the results, including the GOP's first Senate majority in twenty-six years. He shows how the Democrats were weakened by the demise of the New Deal coalition and a decline in public confidence, while Republicans were bolstered by the growth of the conservative movement and by all that had gone wrong during the Carter presidency. He also examines the creation of a Sunbelt coalition, the growing influence of religious conservatives, and the independent candidacy of John Anderson, which held Reagan's majority to 51 per cent and foreshadowed Ross Perot's 1992 run. Reagan's victory marked a major turning point in American presidential history, realigned the demographics of party affiliation throughout the nation (especially in the nation's Sunbelt), and gave conservatives their first real victory in their fight against Big Government. Busch's book recaptures the people and events of that historic campaign and greatly enlarges our understanding of American politics from the 1960s to the present.

Consolidating democracy? The structural underpinnings of Ghana's 2000 elections

In 2000, Ghana's landmark elections ushered in a new era of democracy. Scholars, however, have yet to scrutinise the structural underpinnings of the country's electoral system. This article offers a detailed assessment of Ghana's bloated voters' register, patterns of voter turnout and the lingering accusation of electoral irregularities in the Volta and Ashanti Regions in the 2000 elections. Most significantly, it critically analyses the severe malapportionment of the country's 200 parliamentary seats. While the 2000 elections helped to consolidate the democratic process in Ghana, structural inequalities continue to plague the country's electoral system.

Turkey's landmark election

The landslide victory of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in the 3 November 2002 elections marked the beginning of a new era in Turkish politics, with potentially profound repercussions for domestic and foreign policies. Both its opponents and supporters perceive the JDP as having an Islamist agenda. Although in the short term it is likely to concentrate on consolidating its grip on power rather than trying to erode the secular principles enshrined in the Turkish constitution, there are already signs that the Turkish establishment - led by the military - is mobilising to restrict the JDP's room for manoeuvre and undermine its authority by targeting the JDP leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The British General Election of 1970, by Michael Pinto-Duschinsky and David Butler

Foreword by David Butler Preface 1. The Election That Never Was: 2007 2. Recession, Scandal and War: The Political Context 3. From Blair to Brown: Labour 4. A Coup of Chums: The Conservatives 5. Three Leaders, Little Progress: The Liberal Democrats 6. Fragmentation and Diversity: The Others 7. Losing It in January: The Coming of the Election 8. Cleggmania and Bigotgate: The National Campaign 9. A Long Night, With No Winner: Election Night 10. Five Days in May: The Formation of the Coalition 11. Where We Work, We Win: The Constituency Battle 12. Worms and Surges: The Polls 13. The X-Factor Election: On the Air, Martin Harrison 14. Labour No More: The Press, Margaret Scammell and Charlie Beckett 15. More Diverse, Yet More Uniform: MPs and Candidates, Byron Criddle 16. A Landmark Election: The Campaign in Retrospect Appendix 1: The Voting Statistics Appendix 2: An Analysis of the Results, John Curtice, Stephen Fisher and Robert Ford

Timetable for a Take-Over

Organized labor arrived formally on the campus of Central Michigan University on September 24, 1969. On that day, 463 full-time faculty members, including instructors and some temporary instructors, voted on the issue of whether MAHE (Central Michigan University District of the Michigan Association of Higher Education, associated with MEA, the Michigan Education Association) should serve the faculty as its exclusive bargaining agent. A total of 239 said yes and 22i no (three ballots were challenged and not opened). Thus, by eighteen votes, MAHE won what a number of people believe is a landmark election. Although it is not a major school in the sense of an Ivy League or Big Ten university, CMU is representative of numerous other state-supported institutions throughout the United States.1 And with bargaining looming as an issue in much of higher education, the election may be considered a harbinger of the future, a precursor of a direction colleges and universities may be forced to take. On Monday, March 23, 1970, the second formal faculty election was held. At issue this time was the ratification of an actual collective bargaining agreement. Of 45I ballots cast,